Friday 31st August, Plaza Hotel, Tallaght, Dublin
Hosted by the Irish Institute of NLP. NLP Ireland - Home

The evening was introduced by Brian Colbert (co-founder of the IINLP). Brian has been very interested in altered states of conciousness for many years (which is why he has been the driving force behind the IINLP's famous "Trance Tripping" seminars) and this led him to the ayahuasca healing retreat in Brazil where he met Zoe.

He was careful to pre-frame the evening by telling us that Zoe was coming from his own place and that we should bear that in mind before he started.

Zoe was warmly greeted by the intimate crowd and started to tell us about his experiences as a consciousness researcher. From his early experiments with the OuiJa board onto testing psychoactive chemicals and later this was added to by seeing the effect of the chemicals in conjunction with different mind machines.

He did stress that this was all done with a scientific goal and he would use a voice activated recorder to record his thoughts during the experiences. These experiences led to his first book, "Into the Void".

While on the obligatory lecture tour, he was introduced to the idea of various naturally occuring substances used by shamen around the world. He described the number of different species of plants in the amazon rain forest and how the natives there have used them medicinally for generations (the pharma companies are down there now researching). With the number of species that exist, it is amazing how they have come up with the medicines that they have. The answer, so they say, is that the shamen are in communication with the plants and use the psychoactive plants to achieve states that help them with this.

He met his current partner who introduced him to ayahuasca, and the psychoactive "diviner's sage" Salvia divinorum, and the retreat in Brazil.

His second book, "Back from the Void", is based around his experiences with these plants, again using different mind machines.

He also shared some of his ideas of conciousness and higher dimensions (of course mentioning Quantum Physics). Not my map, but interesting none the less.

At the end of the evening, Brian shared some of his experience with ayahuasca. I think he got home the point that this is an extremely grueling process although the results are worthwhile. He said that he would go back but he wouldn't be rushing back. Of course, the next version of "Trance Tripping" was plugged and we are promised that Zoe will return to take part in that.

This was an interesting look into a world that I had never known about before. I don't think that I will be booking my flight to Brazil tomorrow, but I would not rule it out in the future.


Stephen