#7 — The Psychedelic Enlightenment? with Alexander Beiner

In & Through: The Onaya Podcast

With challenges to the so-called psychedelic renaissance, do we now need a ‘psychedelic enlightenment’ that changes not just ourselves, but our culture?

Alexander Beiner is an author, journalist and facilitator focused on bringing new ways of seeing and being from the margins of culture into the mainstream.

Last year, Ali published a bestselling book, The Bigger Picture: How Psychedelics Can Help Us Make Sense of the World (2023), and now writes a popular Substack with the same name.

He is an executive director of Breaking Convention, Europe's longest-running conference on psychedelic medicine and culture, and he was also one of the founders of Rebel Wisdom, a popular alternative media platform that explored the cutting-edge of systems change and cultural sensemaking.

This episode focused on how we might use psychedelics in the effort to fix our systems and change our cultures, exploring:

• Ali's background and early fascination with altered states
• Crisis, meta-crisis, and the need for systems change
• ‘E-Cognition’ and cultural frameworks that shape our thinking
• The problem of false insights under psychedelics
• The need for discernment and collective interpretation
• 'Saving the world’ vs changing culture
• Artificial intelligence and the prospects of an animist revival
• AI interactions as entity encounters
• Shipibo perspectives on progress and technology

Ali Beiner is one of many experts on Onaya's new 6-month Psychedelic Mentorship Training programme. For more information and to find out how to enroll, visit Onaya's website and use the code 'INTHROUGH10' for a special 10% discount.