Show Notes

• Randy Morris writings
• Nagasaki Spirits, Hiroshima Voices: Making Sense of the Nuclear Age book
• Paul Gilbert Unstress Episode
• LSD and the Mind of the Universe – Christopher Bache book
• Jung Society Seattle recommended readings

Timestamps

• [00:00:00] Introduction by Dr. Ron Ehrlich
• [00:02:53] Randy Morris introduces himself
• [00:03:07] Randy’s land acknowledgment
• [00:05:44] Randy’s journey to Hiroshima and initial experiences
• [00:11:23] The impact of Hiroshima on its people
• [00:17:48] Discussion on extinction anxiety
• [00:25:51] Joanna Macy’s work on despair and empowerment
• [00:32:13] Trauma and distraction in Western culture
• [00:38:41] The need for grassroots change and wisdom circles
• [00:44:12] The transformative power of psychedelics
• [00:48:36] Introduction to depth psychology and Jung
• [00:57:36] The new creation myth and the journey of the universe
• [01:02:40] Making the most of our dreams
• [01:07:06] Overcoming extinction anxiety and embracing the Great Turning
• [01:11:04] Conclusion and final thoughts by Dr. Ron Ehrlich

Randy Morris: Extinction Anxiety and Dreams

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Unstress. My name is Doctor Ron Ehrlich. Before I start, I would like to acknowledge the traditional custodians of the land in which I am recording this podcast. The Gadigal people of the Eora nation who with other First Nations people have occupied this land for and nurtured it and managed it for 65,000 years. And I want to pay my respects to their elders, past, present and emerging, and acknowledge also that we have a great deal to learn about connection and respect for not just people, but country. The two are inseparable. Well, today we have guest who will be talking about some, challenging, concepts and images, extinction anxiety, something, many people have become focussed on and, a great deal of anxiety being generated about that. And you do wonder about what is going on in the world. And, my guest today is going to be addressing some of those issues. My guest is Randy Morris. Now, Randy is a professor emeritus at Antioch University in Seattle, Washington, where he taught in the liberal studies program for over 30 years and was the coordinator of the Psychology and Spiritual Studies concentrations. Prior to his career at Antioch University, Randy taught K-12 students for ten years, including three years at Hiroshima International School in Hiroshima, Japan. And we go into that rather remarkable experience that he had very early on in his career. He is also the president emeritus of the board at Right of Passage Journeys, a not for profit organisation dedicated to restoring rites of passage for youth, adults and elders, and where he led adult vision quests for many years. Randy also teaches classes in Dreamwork, and we discuss that, and he gives us some wonderful insights into how we can access those our dreams as well. He also, teaches Ritual Process, elder, and Rites of Passage. He’s the co-author of the book Nagasaki Spirits Hiroshima Voices Making Sense of the Nuclear Age, and co-editor of the book Rites of Passage into Elder Hood. In his spare time, he’s a grandfather to four, which is a great reminder of the awesomeness of birth and of course, the cycle of life, and also happens to like he likes to play pickleball, strum his guitar, paddle his kayak in his beloved Salish Sea, which I’m guessing is in, around, in and around Seattle. I hope you enjoy this conversation I had with Randy Morris. Welcome to the show, Randy.

Randy Morris [00:02:54] Nice to be here.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:02:56] Randy. Now, I do start every podcast with an acknowledgement to country. And before we came on, you mentioned that you would also like to do that. So yes. Would you like to start with that?

Randy Morris [00:03:07] Sure. Well, I’m coming to you from the greater Seattle area. I live on South Whidbey Island in a little town called Langley. And, we have a land acknowledgement for the indigenous people around here that we always like to do when we start, something public just to honour what’s going on. And so I just like to read that for the audience. We feel privileged to live in the spectacular landscape of the Salish Sea, shaped 10,000 years ago by glacial ice a mile thick. As the ice receded, peoples moved in. They cared for this land, fished its waters, built long houses, and carved canoes from its majestic trees. We honour those who call this place home. The peoples who lived, loved, fought and died here. Their children played upon its shores, and their stories covered the land and laid the foundation for the ancestral soul of Seattle. We acknowledge their thousands of years of care, taking in their contributions to the physical and psychic structure of this landscape. We recognise the pain and trauma visited upon them through colonisation, and we dedicate ourselves to reconnecting to this land and its ancestors, human and non-human, and commit to restoring our relationship to the animal mundi. The soul of the Salish Sea. In turn, may we be good ancestors for those who follow.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:04:34] Thank you, thank you, thank you. That is brilliant. And, certainly, you know, for us here in Australia, where we have, 65,000 years of indigenous culture and caretaking of the land. You know, like in America where you’ve only been there 2 or 300 years. You know, I’m not sure we’re going to have I hope we have thousands of years to reflect on. So listen. Welcome. And what a great, opening, unique for any one of my guests. And thank you for sharing that with me. I noticed the I know you have a PhD in liberal arts and what I loved, I was doing love reading about what you’re writing. You’ve written. You said you were intensely interested in who I am and who I can become in the midst of this historical moment in which I find myself. And it occurred to me that perhaps we should all be doing the PhD in liberal arts. And that led you very early on to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And and I was fascinated by that. I wondered if we might just start with that to Randy. Tell us about that journey. Why why you went and what you observed and learned.

Randy Morris [00:05:45] Sure. Well, going to Hiroshima was kind of a destiny project for me because I was born in eastern Washington state in the town of Richland, Washington, which is right along the Columbia River, which is where the plutonium that was created during the Manhattan Project of World War Two was synthesised and then dropped in a bomb on Nagasaki. And so I grew up in, an atmosphere of nuclear consciousness, if you will. The, cheerleaders of the only high school in town where my dad taught school, had a big mushroom cloud on their chest. So while they’re doing their pom poms, you know, they’re bouncing up and down with a with a nuclear cloud, a mushroom cloud on their chest. And the B-52, the Enola Gay was, a huge painting on the side of the gymnasium. So that’s the town I grew up in. And then, through a series of events, I ended up on the East Coast, crab fishing in Beaufort, South Carolina, then ended up in Atlanta with some cousins, stumbled into this graduate program at Emory University called the Institute of Liberal Arts, and met their, the person who became probably the most influential person in my life, a friend, my, next door neighbour to the apartment I moved into, who was the son of Christian missionaries, the first Christian missionaries allowed into the city of Hiroshima not until the late 50s did they allow, non-military personnel into the city of Hiroshima. And, he became, the headmaster of the Hiroshima International School. I was teaching at an alternative school there as I was writing my PhD, and I really I was into human development, and I wanted to study what a normal kid was at every age group K through 12. So if somebody said, well, I know this ten year old girl, I don’t I know what a ten year old girl normally is. So that I could assess whether this this kid was off or not. Anyway. So I accepted this invitation and, it was the only age group I hadn’t taught fifth or ninth graders in a small, you know, multi grade class room of about, 18 students. Most of them, were, expats from Australia and New Zealand, some Americans, a few Japanese. And I thought I wanted to go because I grew up in Richland and some may recall this was in 1981. This was at a time when nuclear war and the fear of nuclear war was at a fever pitch. Ronald Reagan had just been, elected president. There was a big Boeing jet shot down over North Korea. Bad things were happening. It looked like the whole thing was going to go up in smoke. So I landed in Hiroshima, and, the first day I was there, my after actually a couple days later, because I had to get over the jet lag. But my friend took me to Hiroshima Peace Park and there was this, these magnificent. Displays of the whole history of it. And we’re walking through it and there’s the cenotaph, which is the most sacred part of the park, and there’s the Peace Dome, you know. And, Sadako, where people fold a thousand paper cranes and mailed them to the Hiroshima International School to put on her a memorial. Long story there. I’ll let that one go. But we come to this mound, and it was a mound, maybe about ten feet high, sort of a gentle mound, sort of shaped like that. And people were sitting in front of it or standing in front of it, lighting Joss sticks, you know, incense sticks. And I turned to my friend. I said, what’s going on over there? What’s that about? He said, well, there, that’s where the unidentified ashes of 60,000 people. Are laid to rest, and I just. Wow. I just burst into tears. You know, I yeah, it was it was such an overwhelming fact that there were 60,000 people in this under the hill. And it’s the first time I ever remember crying in public. You know, it’s I’m very unlike me. And. And so I knew then that I was being initiated into something extremely profound. And I wanted to follow those tears into what Hiroshima had to tell me. And that’s and that’s how I got into. So I was there for three years, and, my son was born there, and, lovely people in Hiroshima. It has the, highest percentage of, liquor bars in any city in, Japan. And, when you look out from a high point and look out over the city, you can see all the gleaming structures. And then there’s a hill, a huge Yama, where there’s, graveyards and stuff. And then behind it, the whole colour turns brown because that’s where the old wooden structures were. And all the other structures have been burned down in the fires. Storms that, were created by the bomb. But behind the Mount Fuji armour, you can see the old kind of, buildings that existed, before the war. So. Yeah. Hiroshima.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:11:23] Well. Yeah, I mean, one can only imagine, you know, people talk about being affected by a trauma, a traumatic event that a traumatic event that is so cataclysmic. I mean, the the people that survive that. What how did how what was your impression of the people living in this city who had experienced such a cataclysmic event, which in a moment annihilated? You said 70, 60, 70,000?

Randy Morris [00:11:55] Well, more than that in the moment, that’s just the, unidentified bodies under their, eyes. Many more were identified, various things that various statistics say that within, six weeks after the bomb, 120,000 people died. And then even when we were there in the 1980s, on August 6th, there’s a big ceremony, and they opened this crypt, and they put the latest names of the people who have died from what they call A-bomb disease, which is basically forms of cancer, leukaemia and stuff like that, into that box for that year. And when we were there, they put 2500 names in there for that year. So I’m just saying it’s an ongoing thing. There are so many weird things about radiation poisoning. You know, the fact that you can’t see it and you don’t know because it affects chromosomes. You don’t know how it affects the generations. And so there are many, marrying age women from Hiroshima who have no effects, who couldn’t find a partner because you don’t know if their exposure was going to, go into the next generation. And so they’re all kind. But in a short answer to your question, because it’s a very complex one about how people responded to it. I would say the vast majority relied on their Buddhist background, and they use the term Sugata gan I. Can’t be helped. It can’t be helped. So acceptance. You know, this is this is what it was. Now, of course, there are many people who. Are very angry about it. I only got in a few confrontations when I was, the only American in a setting and a couple, you know, guys that had a little too much to drink and, my protection, you know, doing that kind of stuff. But, in general, the people were incredibly nice. They wanted to, take all of the energy and, sorrow and grief and put it towards peacemaking. Just take that energy. It’s like the only way you can liberate yourself from trauma, which locks up psychic energy, right, is to revisit the trauma and liberate that energy. But it doesn’t just go anywhere. It goes somewhere consistent with the theme of your trauma. That’s because your trauma is an initiation. Into something. You’ve been traumatised in a certain kind of way because that’s your destiny calling you. And so the therapeutic move with that kind of trauma is to relive the story, which can, of course, be extremely painful and turn what you thought was being a victim into a story of initiation that liberates the psychic energy that was bound up in the trauma. And now you know where to go. You know where to what to dedicate yourself to. I had trauma locked up from years of doing what we call duck and cover as elementary school kids. You know, you get under your desk because there’s sirens going off of nuclear bombs being dropped. I’m totally traumatising my generation, right? Especially in a town that’s so familiar with the nuclear issue. And, so this was a way for me to liberate the trauma that the energy that had been locked up by my trauma and become an advocate for peace, using the images from Hiroshima.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:15:31] And actually, what a what a bizarre, situation to find yourself in, to go to, a gymnasium or sporting field and watch all the cheerleaders jumping up and down with a bomb, mushroom cloud. I mean, only in America, I think, only in America. But, you know, it’s so interesting to hear you say this because a common theme that we talk about on our podcast is that while you may not have control over people or events in your life, you do have control about how you think about it. And I was in and I know that, you know, you are very, you’ve written a lot about, Carl Jung, the famous psychoanalyst, and he pointed out that what happens to us is only half the story. The other half is the meaning we make of it.

Randy Morris [00:16:18] Yes, exactly.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:16:20] Which is a powerful tool to use.

Randy Morris [00:16:23] Yeah, well, it’s like Hiroshima, like Auschwitz. Survivors saying, if you can understand the meaning of your suffering, you’re willing to go all the way with it. You know, that’s that logo therapy. I’m sorry. The name is speak to Frankl. Thank you. Referring to Frankl.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:16:43] Frankl? Yes.

Randy Morris [00:16:44] Logo therapy, meaning therapy.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:16:46] Meaning therapy.

Randy Morris [00:16:47] And this is so important right now, given all that we’re going through as a global community, you know, we have to find meaning because it’s crazy out there. It’s crazy. And so you have to find your centre and ground yourself in your own personal meaning.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:17:04] Well, you know, we did a program, a few months back last year, with Professor Paul Gilbert, who’s written of the compassionate mind. And what struck me was that he was talking about always being with we faced with a threat. We then take action, we respond, and then we soothe. And that’s the cycle that we ideally should go through. But if we just go through that threat and response, threat and response, and we don’t get an opportunity to soothe, we have a problem. And I know you’ve used the term extinction anxiety, in, in some of your writings. I wondered if you might just share with us. What does that I mean, the name is certainly gives a little bit of give away there, but what does that mean?

Randy Morris [00:17:49] Well, so being immersed in nuclear imagery, one of the consequences of, being attuned to that issue is that the entire Earth can be incinerated. You have the push of a button, and we know already that a couple opportunities, arose and passed us by, and we came very close to having that happen a couple of times. And, a local, four star general here in the US Army said, yeah, sometime in the next ten years, a nuclear device is very likely to go off, and we’re going to have to sort of deal with that in some way or another. Well, now, in addition to, the nuclear problem, we have, climate change and the possibility of that, extinguishing the species as a whole. Well, if you start working with the whole notion of the entire human species going extinct, it leads to certain kinds of thoughts. One is that. Well, if we’re going to avoid that, then, we are going to have to be in relationship with the future generations that won’t be born if we screw it up. And so this automatically, enhances or illuminates the, the partnership of generations between us living today and those in the future. So it makes the future beings much more what we might say, imaginatively real that we’re that we’re literally working on their behalf and they have a stake in what happens. Well, that’s an imagination that, a lot of people in the West, of course, a lot of people, they understand that working for the seventh generation. But that’s kind of a wake up call to, Western consciousness, to be thinking about the partnership of generations. And of course, then, there’s the issue of, well, what do we do with this energy that’s built in like the fear of, the anxiety? Well, anxiety. Sorry. Anxiety is defined as fear without an object. So it’s a beer, but we don’t know of what. Right. So you can lump a lot of those kinds of fears under the larger umbrella of extinction. But extinction itself is a kind of corollary of death. Right death. And so whether I think about my own death or whether I think about the death of the species, it’s going to elicit similar and feelings of anxiety. But also then we begin to realise that, well, human beings have been dying for hundreds of thousands of years. There must be instinctual wisdom inside the unconscious of every human being that will be constituted when someone is in a death situation. So it turns out that there’s actually wisdom that has been acquired by our ancestors that we want to call on. If this anxiety gets extreme. So that’s a way of saying, well, one of the functions then of, extinction anxiety is to wake us up in ways that we haven’t been woken up yet. And one of my mentors, Joanna macy. You know, who, I read her first article that she ever wrote on nuclear stuff. In 1983, while living in Hiroshima. And her work is on despair and empowerment in the nuclear age, despair and empowerment. And so what she’s saying is, look, of course, despair. I mean, oh, my God, we’re talking about the end of human life. All the things that you love, you know? Yeah, well, most people shut down. They, there’s a kind of a hardening of the heart and a hardening of feelings. Right. Because you can’t stand that kind of, looking at such bad news. Right. Well, the good news in it, though, is that. It will wake you up to the preciousness of life itself. So despair and empowerment. So in her whole way of thinking, you know, the first thing you do before you do any kind of work with dark material. If you give thanks for the gift of being alive. Thank you. Thank you for this incredible gift. Oh my God, all these molecules, all these out came together to create me. Like, what are the chances? Gratitude for the gift. Then you can go into your pain for the suffering of the world. That’s the despair part then. Now you’re ready. You’ve got your. You’ve got your armour on with gratitude, you know, and with gratitude armour on. You can go into those dark places. And her question there is how many are willing to sustain the gaze of Hiroshima’s terror? How many are willing to sustain the gaze of what’s coming at us with climate change? How many are willing to go to the edges? And I’ve been thinking about Australia in relation to your fires. You know how many are willing to go to those images of those beautiful animals running from these gigantic fires? No, I’m not going there. Well, how many people are willing to go there? And you might ask, well, why would I want to go there? Because revelation awaits you. Things that you could not have expected will come to you if you’re willing to go into those dark places. Always. If you. And by the way, this is a basic principles of psychedelic therapy. Hmhm, which is psychedelic therapy, of course, dissolves the ego. And so the raw emotions start moving. And one of the principles is the full expression of an emotion is the death of that emotion. So if you go in and start going to some kind of grief ritual or something, and you’re crying and you’re bawling and you’re wailing in it, the fear is you’ll just stay there forever. That’s not how the body works. You go into it for a while and then something happens. And then I don’t know, you’re done. But then what happens is you get this rush of images, of ideas, of feeling states that weren’t available to you before because they were locked up by your resistance to going into the dark night of the soul. So that’s the promise of looking into the gaze of hiroshima’s terror, or any other kind of terror that we’re confronting now. If you go in there and know how to do it. And there’s a skill to doing it right. Well, first of all, you got to really have a good gratitude practice, you know? Yes. Well, you go in there and then the third stage of Joanna’s model is then you can see with new eyes. That’s the revelation part. Hmhm if you go in there, you know, because your grief is only for things you love. You know. So you’re really when you grieve something, you’re loving it. And then when you come out the other side, you’re seeing things with new eyes. And then her fourth stage is going forth. Hmhm head out into the world. You’ve done your inner work. Now you’re going to find a level of energy that’s not yours alone. It’s not just your energy you’re working with anymore, because you have just been blessed by the energies of the Earth itself, and you’re taking that energy now with you into the world, and you feel like you can do anything.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:25:53] So we go from despair to gratitude to empowerment to go forth.

Randy Morris [00:26:00] Almost. Start with gratitude.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:26:03] Start with gratitude.

Randy Morris [00:26:04] Order. How very important. Well, I start with gratitude.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:26:08] Start with gratitude. Okay.

Randy Morris [00:26:09] Then despair. If then seen with new eyes, then going for it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:26:13] Yes. Wow.

Randy Morris [00:26:15] If I can add one more.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:26:16] Yes. Please do.

Randy Morris [00:26:19] The key to doing this kind of work. This is about extinction and working with extinction. Anxiety, right? Is. Don’t do it alone. You know, when we go into these dark places, we need companionship to go down there. Even if it’s just one other person, a small group, you know? I will tell you one other great teaching that came to me out of Hiroshima, that, I collected the dreams of nuclear nightmares over these years. I did a kind of anecdotal study, and, and then my own dreams and a certain kind of pattern emerged. And the pattern was this. There is a kind of a scene of a rocket, nuclear weapon, you know, going in. And then on the other side is some kind of hill or some kind of, you know, small mountain or something. The Doe, missile hits and everybody’s looking up. You know, you may be moving around in a in a, shopping mall or somewhere in a neighbourhood or something. And everybody’s watching the TV and they go like, yeah. And then the mushroom cloud starts coming and you’re like, oh my God, oh my God, this is it, this is it. We only have 20 30s left before that wave is going to annihilate us. And so the question is what do people do? You got 30s left. What are you going to do? And in these dreams, again and again, a recurring motif and therefore an archetypal power. People get together in a small circle of 6 to 8 people, and they put their arms around each other’s shoulders and they lean their heads into the circle. And then. They’re annihilated. I have been very, very intrigued by that, that, motif, that image, you know. And, it’s led me to think that, what we need to be doing in extreme times is forming small circles. You know, I’m part of this organisation called Staging International, and its goal is to create small wisdom circles, you know, of 8 to 10, maybe 12 people. And you set up, you know, topic of conversation in this case in relation to conscious elders. But you can whatever the interests of the group are, and it’s a place where you can talk freely and, even if you don’t know the people. You can be like a true soul friend. I feel like I’m a soul friend with you. I hardly know you. Right? Because we’re talking about intimate matters, right? And all. And, as I hear you know, what you’re trying to do with your podcast. You know, I. All I want to do is support you. That’s good work. That’s good work in the world. All I want to do is support you. Like, my feelings about that can be very clear and clean. You can be a soul friend for me in the short time that we’ve known each other. Right. And so these circles, the same things happen, in a very short period of time, very intense, relationships in there, because you can have a sincerity of compassion for the person that you’re working with. In your presence of weight.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:29:39] Well it’s one of the reasons why indeed. It’s interesting to hear you draw that image, that recurring theme from dreams of people just in those last 30s coming together, putting their heads and arms around each other and their heads together. Because I do think, and this is again, from indigenous knowledge about connection and respect for people and country and the way they are inexorably linked to one another. The the work of Joanna macy was another part of your writings that I also found fascinating. And I know she talked about the greening of the self and, and, you know, the Great turning or the alternative is the Great Unravelling. I can the greening of the self. I mean, this is all you talk about trauma being a trigger to go from despair, gratitude, empowerment and, and action, you know, or go forth. The the the trauma is interesting because in healthcare, often people experience a trauma of a cancer diagnosis or something, and it turns them around. And some people I’ve even heard say, the best thing that ever happened to me, you know, changed my life for the better. And I’m also fascinated by agriculture, by farming, regenerative agriculture. And people on the land will say, I was facing bankruptcy. It was drought. It was fire. We had to change the way things, we did things, and that was the best thing that ever happened to me. And and yet here we are faced with an existential threat, and yet we seem to be distracted. There’s no shortage of distraction to distract us from engaging in that. Four steps that Joanna talks about. Is that your perception, too?

Randy Morris [00:31:25] Absolutely. By the way, I just want to make sure that, you change the order, because if you don’t do the gratitude.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:30] Oh, did I say I’m sorry? Sorry I shot.

Randy Morris [00:31:33] This one, too.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:33] It’s gratitude.

Randy Morris [00:31:35] I’m a bit of a stickler about that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:36] No, no, no, I wrote I wrote notes, and I put the wrong numbers in the wrong place. Okay, I’ve got it. Gratitude. Despair. Empowerment. And go forth. Thanks.

Randy Morris [00:31:45] Well. Yes. So.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:50] Trauma and distraction.

Randy Morris [00:31:51] Trauma and distraction. I’m sorry, I just lost that.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:31:58] No, no, I was just. I was just saying the trauma is often a trigger to to go through that gratitude, despair, empowerment and go forth. But unfortunately, the vast majority of the population seem to be distracted by distraction. Distraction?

Randy Morris [00:32:14] Well, the word I use for that is trance. Trance, that people are in a trance. And, the the biggest trance that people like us have to deal with is the trance of Western consumptive culture. Yeah. And that is a trance, that people with, great powers have, a lot of incentive to keep us in that trance. So the thing about a trance is that you don’t know you’re in a trance. So, the only way to break out of a trance is to have something or someone outside of that trance. Illuminate to you that you’re in a trance. And I actually have a story about how that happened with me. You know, I’m, the president emeritus of an organisation called Rite of Passage Journeys, and they take kids out on two and three week, backpacking trips through the Olympic Peninsula of Washington state. And they do a 24, 48 hour vision fast on the Washington coast there. And so I’ve been doing that work for many years. And in 1991, I was out in eastern Washington, which is a desert, incredibly hot, 103 degrees, just in my shorts. It’s, late morning, like around 11:00. I’ve got, polls in each of the four directions and, poll in the centre. And, I hear a voice and the voice says, be a guardian of the west door. West door. Well, I’ve been studying the directions, and I knew sort of what the west door was about and the introspection where the sun goes down, you know, that sort of mythology of that direction. And. But it’s such a, like a voice. I was looking around who said that? You know, there’s nobody within a mile of me. So, I get up and I go to the different directions, you know, and I kind of, I figure was, is that really me, or am I just, like, making that up and is, you know, is that some something other or is that this is the great epistemological this, this, discernment that anybody who’s having a religious experience has to go through. Is this me? Or is this something else? So, I get back and I think, oh, yeah, yeah, I think I, I think I’ve got it figured out. I’m sitting on the ground just in my shorts and I’m writing in the middle. I believe I have achieved upward. Tick, tick. I wrote the word apoplectic, which in philosophy turns means certain apoplectic knowledge. And I’m writing the word knowledge k and o w, and I see a movement to my left, and I look down, and it’s a three foot rattlesnake stretched out and absolutely have to stay still. You don’t want to be bit by a rattlesnake out there. There’s nobody else around. And it’s really hot and it’s a disaster. And, so I just go here like this, and I look down and the snake literally looks up at me and does his little tongue thing. Yeah, he’s smelling me, you know, and I, like that stay perfectly still. And it just meanders off, you know? And I go, oh my God, you know, in fact, in my journal, I say, I’m Rick K and OWI. And then there’s a squiggly line says, Holy shit. Well, I get up and I go, okay, like I hear the voice, but then an animal has just done that. And now am I just making this up? Or is a snake reinforcing the notion that I should be a guardian of the West Door? Like, what does it all mean? You know, like, how am I going to make sense of this, you know? And then I get up and I see, because it’s sandy soil, I can see where the snake has gone. And the snake came towards me. I was sitting in the, in the West and, no, I was sitting in the east. Sorry. And the snake had come in from the west door stick and done a right angle turn and came by me and left. So it came in through the west door to tell me to be a guard in the West. Snake, in the mythologies of the North America is a guardian of the West door. So like, okay, so I’m thinking, okay, okay, what does this mean about the kind of world that I live in? I’m. I was trained my undergrad degree was in biology, you know, highly trained in Western philosophy and epistemology. You know, this is this could be understood as a series of amazing coincidences. Or it could be the sacred world speaking directly to me. And I realised that, you know. I could explain it with. Coincidence. But I don’t want to live in that world anymore. I want to live in a world where magic like this can happen. A complete turning point and an awakening from the trance of Western consciousness into an alternative worldview with much greater depth, beauty and meaning. And so the snake basically woke me up from my trance. Now other people have other stories about how they wake up from the trance of Western consumptive culture. But that’s mine. And, it’s a difficult trance to wake up from because all your friends are in it, you know, all the things you buy, your comforts of filling your, car with gas. Everybody’s in it, you know, and I’m still at it in some ways, but I’m aware that I’m in it, which is the big difference, right? I’m consciously participating in Western conservative culture because I’m not ready to completely drop out. But because I’m now awake to it, I can make conscious choices about my role in waking other people up and in being a prophet in the sense of not an old sense of, you know, prophets wake people up and tell them how bad they’ve been. The role of the prophet is to awaken people from the trance that’s killing us. And that’s, I’m sure, what you’re doing and other people who are trying to be as conscious as possible about what’s going on. We’re trying to wake people up to the trance that’s killing the planet.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:38:42] Well, I’m come to the conclusion, Randy, that, and this has been one of my mentors has said that if we’re waiting for the change to come from above and we’re not talking about God here, we’re going to be waiting a long time. The change has to come from the ground up and your wisdom circles and these other rites of passage journey things is very much about that and awakening. It’s, it’s interesting to think also about our preoccupation in the West with the scientific model, isn’t it? Because you could have just put it down to coincidence, but going back to you, you know, it’s the way you interpret things more than just what you’ve experienced that’s important. And this is kind of the power of the psychedelics to giving us a non-scientific perspective. I mean, we’ve explored this on the podcast, but I’m interested you actually referenced an amazing thing in one of your writings about this fellow, Christopher Bates, who had written the book Dark Night, Early Dawn Toward a Deep Ecology of the mind and LSD. And he’d done 73 high dose LSD sessions over a period of 20 years, and took meticulous notes of his experience. Wow.

Randy Morris [00:39:57] Yeah. So, so dark night, early dawn, was around 2000, but his latest is called LSD and the mind of the universe.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:40:05] Oh, right. Okay, okay.

Randy Morris [00:40:07] And. So, yeah, we had him speak at the local young society here. He was really a nice guy. And, you can find out more about him on the internet.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:40:17] Well, I’d love the introduction, crystal. I’d love to read to him. Yeah, yeah. But anyway, go on, tell me, tell me.

Randy Morris [00:40:23] So, he, as a he’s a professor of, religion at, Youngstown State, I think. I’m not quite sure. Haven’t looked at stuff just recently, but, yeah, he, wanted to explore LSD. Not as a recreational thing, not as a therapeutic thing, but as a form of spiritual inquiry. And, so he somehow got Ahold of very pure LSD and, took, what people now call a heroic dose of LSD. And, his wife was a psychotherapist, and she sat with him and he just lay down there, he had music picked out and, in advance and would have the experience for that day. And, then the next day, he would play the same music in the same order and use that music to help him remember his experiences. Of course, he was speaking to his, his, sister, and she took notes as well, and then would type all those notes up. And he showed me one time a three ring binder of one of his sessions. And it was that thick.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:41:35] Wow.

Randy Morris [00:41:35] You know, well, he synthesised all of that and, and, his most important insights and put it into that book on LSD in the mind of the universe. And, the most interesting thing to me was, the amount of psychic suffering that he had to go through on so many of his sessions. And it seems like even if he took a break and at one point he took a break, I think of a couple of years and came back and then did a he just picked up where he left off in the previous session. And these sessions built on one another, and entities came and talked to him. It’s it’s really far out stuff, but had some very important things to say. And he’s the one who coined the term that I now use that that humanity is basically now going through a dark night of the species soul. And that helped me because as a student of Rites of Passage and Vision Quest, I was and a vision quest guide. I could see the transitions that people were going through when they would go out on vision quests, huge transformations of their psyche. And I went, well, this is the closest I’m going to get to understanding how these same dynamics work at the level of the species. So humanity is going through a rite of passage. It’s going to go through a separation phase, which is where we’re at now. And we’re going to get to really hard liminal phase as the society, begins to break down. But it’s a very complex society. It’ll take a while, you know. And then at some point in that true breakdown of things, there’s going to be an awakening. And the wisdom that we’ve been repressing is going to flow through people. And yes, it may be a reduction of population, but it’s going to go through the people who are alive, and it’s going to completely transform how humans think about themselves. And this is just the I mean, it’s I don’t. To me, this is not a far out idea at all. I mean, this is just how consciousness changes. We’ve had something similar happen around the, what some people call the Axial age around 350, BC, you know, with Buddha and Socrates and, many people have been writing about, the first Axial Age and calling what we’re in now, the second Axial Age. But that’s going to come about through the same dynamics through which consciousness has always changed, namely through a rite of passage.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:44:12] Wow. Well, I can kind of follow up with this, Christopher, but I shouldn’t get in on as a guest. But but there is so much. I mean, it just gives a different perspective that we are not, you know, it’s it just gives us a certain clarity where this is why I think indigenous cultures have so much to offer, too, because, I mean, I think probably the first interaction with psychedelics would have been as apes over 6 million years ago, just stumbling upon some mushrooms or whatever and eating them and having an incredible experience. And it’s been going on ever since. I’ve just been reading The Immortality Tea, The Secret History of the Religion Without No Name, which is all about the use of psychedelics in in ancient Greece for 2000 years as a rite of passage, giving you a perspective. I mean, you know, you’ve had your own personal experience, and I know I’ve had mine. What what was some of the things which you, you know, you’ve come away from that with.

Randy Morris [00:45:15] Yeah. Yeah. Well, you know, I remember as a student of biology in graduate school, between my junior and senior year, taking, I believe it was some psilocybin. And, it was a Saturday. There had been a rain, a light rain earlier. And we’re out in a park somewhere, and I’m walking back to the car, when I step in a small puddle and, and I have this feeling something’s going on behind me, and I look behind me, and there is the puddle. And because my foot went in it, all the mud has come up. And you like this? And I go, oh, my God. So I get down on hands and knees and I stare at this puddle for about 20 minutes, watching the mud slowly dissipate like that. And what was really interesting, of course, is that in biology class, just a few weeks before, we had taken samples of rainwater and looked at them under the microscope. And so I knew all the little rotifers, the translucent, beautiful individual personalities, the way they, those rotifers, their world had been destroyed. But now it was coming back to a, stasis. Right? And I was going to. God. Look, think about all the interactions that were going there, you know, and and then I stand up and I look around and I go, oh, my God, I’m a rotifer in a larger system. And the earth itself is a rotifer in a larger system than that. And boom! Through a spiritual experience, I’m introduced to the concept of systems theory, which is the basis of ecological thought and the web of life. So it was a spiritual revelation of the web of life that influence and still does everything that I do.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:47:13] I mean, it’s this coming out of the trance which so many of us find ourselves in, paradoxically. You know, I mean, I think there’s always been this attraction to altered reality for humans, hasn’t there? I mean.

Randy Morris [00:47:25] Yeah, absolutely. And you can tell that’s true because of the desperate efforts of mainstream culture to repress it. Yes. You know, I mean, I grew up in the late 60s and early 70s. It’s like it’s dangerous. You don’t want anybody knowing you’re doing this, right? I mean, you could be thrown in jail. Who knows what. Why are governments so down on it? Why don’t they provide venues and places where people can go and and do it in a safe way? You know, because think of the creative ideas and the art and the beauty and the music that would come from it if it were sanctioned. Of course, there are dangerous to it. People who have a predisposition to splitting. Psychologically, you are not advised to take it. So it’s not for everyone. And I’m not saying it’s a panacea for everything, but, it is one of the, it’s, I believe, one of the gifts that are coming up from the earth at this particular moment in history to show us the way. It’s not the only way by any means, and it’s not everybody’s cup of tea. But for some, it can be a way to break through the trance.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:48:36] Hmhm. Now, I know you’re very interested also in Jung, in, depth psychology. And, I just wondered, what are you what is unique about that approach? Tell me. Tell us a little. Give us. You mean depth psychology 101.

Randy Morris [00:48:53] Okay. Well, it starts with the notion that, we are divided against ourselves. Every human being divided against themselves. We have this ego that I’m using and you’re using right now to talk, and that I’ll be using in a moment to fix my dinner or whatever. And it it, adapts us to our, environmental conditions, you know, so there’s the ego, but underneath that is this whole other world of the unconscious, like, the 10,000 ideas I could be thinking right now. Why am I thinking this one? What am I really feeling? If I just were silent for a moment and I went into my body, what other sensations am I having? You know, I haven’t been thinking about the temperature of the room I’m in, but I can turn my attention to where was it before I turned my attention to it? And what about, as I’m telling some of these, stories, I’m thinking about my friend Walter who led me there, who passed away, a year or so ago and feeling sadness about that. But I’m not going to be talking about that because that’s not relevant. It’s coming up from my unconscious. Right. So we filter. It’s like consciousness is this bubbling, fountain of images and thoughts and ideas, and the ego filters it out and makes whatever is relevant, to the situation at hand be what we think we’re thinking about. So we’re always divided against ourselves. But if you open up the dividing line and expand the ego more deeply into the unconscious, what Freud call, reclaiming the swamp. But he had a kind of a negative view of it. Whereas Jung said, no, it’s not just a swamp. You run into the swamp first, namely your shadow dynamics, the parts of yourself you don’t particularly like that you’ve repressed. So you’re going to run into the shadow first. But if you can navigate your way through the swamps, you get to this whole other terrain, which is composed of the archetypal beings of mythology. The question, well, the archetypal being of the being that writes your dreams every night. I mean, when you wake up with a dream, you go, oh, my God, I could never have thought that one up. Like, who’s that in my dream? And who is that? And like, why am I going there? I’ve never be like, well, who wrote that dream? I literally couldn’t have done it with my ego. I just had a dream recently that I’m working on right now and said. It came in kind of a voice. Actually, I’m going to tell both parts of the stream because it’s relevant to what I was saying earlier. And the first part of the dream, there’s the peace dome of Hiroshima. It’s the only structure left in that city of Hiroshima. It’s on all their billboards and all. It’s all there every day. And there’s the Peace Dome, just as I remember it. But it’s like the image is a skin, and the skin of the picture just splits like this. And underneath it is this black. Black. I don’t know how to describe it. A substance that’s literally indestructible. And in the dream, I think to myself. The peace dome is just the outer appearances. So that’s wondering. So it means that the outer part, there’s something underneath that. Then a voice appears. There are four therapies. A therapy of depth. A therapy of time. A therapy of dream and a therapy of God and of dream. Oh, okay. Whatever. You know, I’m waking up. I’m writing it down again. Who wrote that? I’d never thought those thoughts ever, you know? I mean, I’ve seen the Peace Dome, you know, but I never thought of it. It’s skin splitting, and it’s showing the bones that are underneath that image. Nor have I thought of their being for therapies, you know. But I am now because whoever wrote that in my unconscious and allowed it to come up through and make it perceptible to my ego, wants me to work on that. So what it means is, and this is a second principle of 101, union psychology, is that the psyche as a whole, ego and unconscious, is intentional. It wants something of you. There is a deep, hidden meaning in each of our lives that is waiting in the well of the unconscious. And if you work to manifest that, to make it as conscious as possible, work through the shadow dynamics that are obscuring it, and get to that. The Golden Fleece, the the pearl of great price at the centre of your heart, then you’re now in what Jung called the greater work of fulfilling your destiny. He called the lesser work is working with your shadow, which most people call therapy. But the deeper work, the greater work. The alchemical work is finding the deep meaning and purpose of your life. So that’s the second thing about it. And then the third, principle of depth psychology I like to talk about is, learning how to die. Well, like, I could have died if that snake had bit me, but it didn’t. It turned out to be a symbolic death, a death of my whole Western education. So it’s, and, an initiation to something new. Well, it turns out that we die several times in our lifetime. When I lead people on our vision quest, you’re going out there to die. And we usually do a ceremony just before they leave. That’s a death ceremony. They write their obituaries, and we might even have a hole that they lie down in and read their obituary there. I’m done with this life. I’m going to go out and find a new life. Of course, sometimes you come back with 90% of your old life because it’s good, but 10% new. So, the ego flexibility it requires to psychologically die to yourself is a skill that can be learned, and your dreams will guide you in that. And, you can put yourself in positions where you’re more likely to have that happen. One other dream so important to my way of thinking came in my, early 30s, when I was starting my teaching career at, university and Easter morning, mother Teresa’s voice. I didn’t really know who Mother Teresa was, but it was her voice. And she said, Randy, the point is not to save people. The point is to create the conditions for the possibility of grace and of dream. And that’s changed the whole way that I teach, write all. I can’t make people change whether I’m doing therapy with someone or teaching a class, I can’t make any of them. I can’t make them accepted ideas that I think are really good, but I can create the conditions. I can create the circle alter in the centre opening with, meditation. Yeah, I can create, the conditions where they’re more likely to have an experience of their own inner wisdom. Of their own grace that’s available to them. Under the right conditions. So what people need to be doing, I think, if I may say, is creating the conditions where people can have those experiences, don’t control what they’re going to experience, but create beautiful conditions, reverential conditions, you know, compassionate conditions. And if you create those conditions with a good heart, the people in them are going to experience compassion. You know, they can experience reverence because compassion and reverence are going to come to them from some other place. Whether you locate unconscious here, but really the unconscious in a much larger way is a world unconscious. A web of life is guiding this whole process, you know. And it wants to move towards wholeness. Everything wants to move towards wholeness, towards the web of life integrated every. It just wants to go that way. The entire cosmos wants to go that way. And if you looked at the work of Brian Swim and this incredible documentary called The Journey of the universe.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:57:38] Yeah. Yes, I’ve been trying to. That’s it. Actually been trying to find it on to look at.

Randy Morris [00:57:43] Yeah, you can find it on Vimeo. I think it’s also, journey of. You’ll find it if you go. Yeah. Brian. Swim YMCA. Yep. And to me, that story of the universe is the new creation myth of the of the global commons. Because you could take that to your native friends. In Australia. I could take it to my native friends here. They’d all recognise it. They’d all say, yeah, this is what we’ve been saying all along.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [00:58:14] Yes, it’s interesting to. The other thing I find so appealing about indigenous cultures is they seem to have understood quantum physics long before the West came to and, you know, even think about it. You know, it was just intuitively there there was no time. You know, time had little meaning. Past, present, future. We’re all connected.

Randy Morris [00:58:36] Yes. Well, I will say this, that young an idea that young said that I think it’s important that. Okay, so if going back to the old indigenous ways is, the right direction, why would archetypal forces create an ego like what has happened? What has Western consciousness, with its very strong ego accomplished? And there is something important that it’s accomplished. So I actually don’t think it’s a matter of going back to the way things were. No, it’s a matter of taking the way things were and bringing the best of ego consciousness to what’s coming in the future. And so what did the ego create? The ego created a capacity for reflection, a capacity for awareness. So we’re not just in the web of life anymore. In, as these things, begin to develop, we’re aware that we’re in the web of life. And because now we’re aware that we’re playing a role in the development of the web of life. Humans are the biggest geological force on the planet right now. We are co-creating with that force. Some could call it God, some could call it, the animal mundi, the whatever that intelligence is that’s moving not only through the earth, but also through the cosmos. It is, we’re now aware that we’re co-creating with that process the future of the planet Earth. And that’s the gift of ego consciousness. So we don’t want to throw the baby out with the bathwater. We still want to stay conscious. We just don’t want to stay in the trance of a superficial egotism. Yes. Which is the disease of our time.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:00:30] Well, I think one of the things that has been a force in the last 40 or 50 years is the rise of individual rights, and it’s certainly delivered some good things in terms of, you know, child children’s rights, women’s rights, sexual rights, you know, all this kind of gender equality, all that kind of stuff. But it’s created a total focus on the individual. And, and the kind of, how I don’t know what the word is. An entitlement and entitlement for the individual.

Randy Morris [01:01:02] Yeah, well, it’s a kind of a militancy, of a good idea. And the problem is it’s only 50% of the equation because the other equation is responsibility. Hmhm. So yes, individual rights understood in the context of responsibility and responsibility. To what? How about the partnership of generations? How about creating circles where people can experience more directly the wisdom that the earth is trying to bring up through them? You know, what about those responsibilities in the midst of you’re now finally having an identity that you feel comfortable with?

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:01:41] Yeah. No, that’s that’s key, isn’t it? They have responsibility.

Randy Morris [01:01:45] Yeah. And I should say I two as two white men, that, this is an important thing for men to realise, you know? Yeah. You may be the villains now, but you need to bring a certain kind of consciousness to who you are as a privileged white male and and quit feeling like you’re being victimised by people who are telling you how bad you are and find within yourself your own destiny. And when you do that, there’s no shame in anything you do. You’re doing it because you were told to do it by the web of life. And when you act out of that awareness and that knowledge there, can anybody put you down.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:02:27] The dreams, you know, which is obviously you’ve been very clear with your dreams and, and I and we all like I said, we should all be doing a PhD in liberal arts. We all dreaming. How do we make the most of our dreams?

Randy Morris [01:02:41] Okay, well, a few things to say about that. One is that, when I was, at a moment of, how do I want to say about as dark and deep and, suicidal ideation as I could be when I was 24? I couldn’t trust anybody. I couldn’t trust my family, couldn’t trust the culture, you know? I couldn’t trust anything, anybody. I was down, and then I had a series of three dreams over three nights that read, like, scripture. You know what I got? What is this? You know, and I knew as a biologist that they were, brainwave patterns, you know, but how could the brainwave patterns be correlated to these images that look like they are biblical? And so I said, there’s something going on here bigger than me. And so I’m going to write down every dream I can remember from now on. Well, so I have every dream I can remember since I was 24 years old written down. And when you do that over that long a time, of course, the dreams start noticing that you’re paying attention to them. And so they start becoming clearer. And those kind of it’s true. I gave you sort of my best dream, you know, my top dreams kind of thing. But yeah, they’re, they just they’re they’re incredible. So the key, of course, is to start. And the reason people don’t start is because we live in a dream phobic culture. They’re not supported, you know? So one of the best things you can do is get together 2 or 3 other people and do a little dream group and meet. And, a person talks about a dream and, people, there are some techniques for doing that. I’d be happy to share with you a short little way of working with that. I like the book, called Inner Work by Johnson. It’s kind of a classic, you know, here’s another thing. If you go on to the Young Society website, Young seattle.org and you go to recommended readings, I’ve listed some things there and some other people have as well. A way to get into, track in your dreams.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:05:02] Oh, that’s that’s fantastic because and when you record these, I’m assuming as soon as you wake up you have something by your bed which, which does that always, always always.

Randy Morris [01:05:13] My wife knows we go to a hotel. They, she knows which side of the room I’m sleeping bad, I’m sleeping on because I need my right hand. The least amount of movement. I’ve been into a sleep lab where people are hooked up with their EKG, EEGs, and as soon as you move a little bit, the even like this, right? Totally interrupts the brainwave patterns. So if you the least movement to write down some, just jot down some notes. You know, I don’t write out the whole dream, just jot down some notes so I’ll remember it later. Then come back. And if I’m going oh, I don’t remember. Was that last part was I go back to the position I was in when I woke up and just allow the open field. oh, there it is, there it is. You can go back and write the rest of the dream. So, so the key is to, state in intention, like, just before you go to sleep, you know, sometimes especially, you know, I’ll go some days without a dream. But if I really want one, you know, I’ll take my pen or whatever, and I’ll slap it down on my dream pad and say, please bring a dream tonight. I say it out loud so that my ear processes it. Right. So it’s being processed by two different cognitive pathways. And, you know, I’ve been teaching dream classes for many, many decades and, almost always have a student come into the class. Well, you know, I’m coming here because I don’t remember my dreams and people saying they’re really important. So I don’t know if I’ll ever remember a dream. Never had anybody leave a dream class that didn’t remember their dreams. Because now they’re. They’re like shy little animals, you know? Got to bring out. Got to create the circle for them to be received. Yes. Any dream you have, no matter how odd, even if it’s like, you know, you letting your bad or whatever, all those dreams, they’re going to be welcomed here. We’re going to we’re going to welcome them into the circle. I talk about them now.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:07:06] I love I love that and listen, Randy, it’s been and I knew I knew when we met. We only met briefly that we would have a very interesting conversation. And I just want to in closing, just ask if you’re going to leave our listener with a few suggestions about overcoming that extinction anxiety which we are all going through, or avoiding the Great Unravelling and become part of the Great Turning, what what would be some of the things what would be a couple of things you would suggest to our listener?

Randy Morris [01:07:39] Yes. Well, it happens in one of my papers that I just wrote a little paragraph, therapeutic suggestions. And it’s very compressed, but it might, trip a few people’s imaginations. And, it goes like this. Track your individuation symbolism, like through dreams and stuff. Learn how to listen to the voice of the Earth. When acting on behalf of future generations, don’t be concerned with the outcome of your actions. Cultivate the heart. Live as if you have no fear of dying. Resist non-violently. Celebrate the gift of being alive. Practice random acts of kindness and beauty. Learn how to design rituals, especially grief rituals that use music, poetry, art and dance. Bury your illusions with dignity. Find your tribe of trusted allies. Know where your water comes from. Think globally. Act locally. Ask yourself what it means to be a caretaker of the soul at the beginning of the Anthropocene. Cultivate always an attitude of gratitude. These are the contours of a therapeutics for extinction anxiety. And then I have one more to. This was, written this I, I’ve left a copy of this around my house so that I can run into it every once in a while, and, because I found it really helpful. When I get down a little bit because, you know, staring into the more of the horror and terror of Hiroshima is not something you want to be doing 24 over seven, right? Sure. And things are looking bad for 2024. Although I will say this, it’s key to thinking about extinction anxiety. The future is a blank canvas for the projections of your psychology. And so we. No one knows what’s going to happen. So I’m not a boomer because that would say, oh, I know what’s going to happen. I don’t know what’s going to happen. It’s looking bad. But, you know, no, I want to stay in the present, listen to the voices that are speaking through me, and enjoy the gift of being alive. So here’s what Jim Garrison, who is the president of Ambiguity University, who was. That’s the old, Matthew Fox, creation spirituality. University goes like this. As we enter 2024, we are embarking on what all of us know will be an eventful year, possibly one that will determine our fate for generations to come. The world is getting worse and worse, better and better, faster and faster. And events are literally cascading at an accelerating rate all around us. Something immense is dying. Something magnificent is being born, and we are both hospice of the old and midwife in the new at the same time. Thus, our spiritual awareness, our integrity of thought, our speech and action, our clarity of purpose and our reverence for Mother Earth will help shape the outcome as humanity dangles on the brink of breakdown and break through. Randi, that’s how I think about it.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:11:04] Thank you so much for joining us today. I’ve so enjoyed our conversation. I’m going to have links to some of your writings which you’ve shared with me. Thank you so much.

Randy Morris [01:11:14] It’s a real pleasure. Thank you for this work and for doing the work you’re doing. Yeah.

Dr Ron Ehrlich [01:11:18] Well, as I said, when I first met Randi at a webinar, a few months ago, I was just spent a few minutes chatting to him, and we struck up an accord, sort of, there was a feeling there that I just felt there was some important issues which he likes to think about, has written a lot about. And we will have links to some of those writings. And I wanted to share him with you. I also would remind you to have a look at our unstressed health community, a community which is independent of industry and focussed rather uniquely, I think, on public health. What are unique? What a unusual idea that is a health organisation focussed on health. But this is independent of the chemical, food or pharmaceutical industry. And I think that is a very big, an important feature of it. Hide this find you will. Until next time. This is doctor Ron Erlich. Hello. This podcast provides general information and discussion about medicine, health, and related subjects. The content is not intended and should not be construed as medical advice, or as a substitute for care by a qualified medical practitioner. If you or any other person has a medical concern, he or she should consult with an appropriately qualified medical practitioner. Guests who speak in this podcast express their own opinions, experiences and conclusions.