S2E41: Ibogaine Inquiries Part III: The Sacred Roots of Iboga

Long before ibogaine entered Western clinics and laboratories, the plant it comes from held a sacred place in Gabonese life. In Part III of Ibogaine Inquiries, we travel to Gabon to explore Bwiti, the spiritual tradition in which iboga is understood as a teacher, guide, and living presence. Gabonese practitioners and Bwiti initiates describe the preparation, community, music, mentorship, and lifelong practice that surround the medicine. They explain why Iboga cannot be separated from the larger body of knowledge developed around it. As Western interest continues to grow, this episode asks what may be lost when a sacred plant and its active compound are removed from the people, traditions, and relationships that have safeguarded them for generations. A note to listeners: This series is intended to inform, not encourage the use of ibogaine. Ibogaine is a powerful psychoactive substance with serious medical risks and should never be used without thorough medical evaluation and appropriate supervision. As you'll hear throughout this series, increasing global demand has also had profound consequences for the Indigenous communities in Gabon who have safeguarded Iboga and its traditions for generations. We encourage you to listen to the full series before drawing conclusions or seeking out treatment. _______ To support the indigenous peoples of Gabon, Africa and help protect the sacred Iboga plant, please visit https://blessingsoftheforest.org/ where you can learn about those who use this medicine ceremoniously, have for thousands of years, and whose access is in grave danger. _______ Join The Telepathy Tapes Backstage Pass to get ad-free episodes, never-before-heard interviews, behind-the-scenes documentary footage, and access to our private Discord community. This is your invitation to come closer. To help shape what’s next. To be more than a listener… to be a co-creator of this paradigm shift. So if you’ve felt moved, if you’ve felt seen, if you’ve felt the call, subscribe today and join us: thetelepathytapes.com. https://thetelepathytapes.com/ See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Speaker names marked ? are inferred from speaking time and the show’s known hosts — they are not voice-verified.

• 0:01Speaker 00

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• 0:30Speaker 01

  Before we begin, a brief disclaimer. Ibogaine is a powerful psychoactive substance. It is not legal in the United States, can be dangerous when administered improperly, and is not appropriate for everyone. This series is not intended as medical advice or an endorsement of treatment. The experiences described by guests reflect their personal accounts, and listeners should conduct extensive research and consult qualified medical professionals before making any decisions related to ibogaine or other psychedelic substances.

• 1:08Ky Dickens?

  Hi, everyone. This is Kai Dickens, and welcome to the Ibogaine Inquiries, a mini-series from TTT Media exploring one of the most promising, controversial, and misunderstood substances in the world of mental health and addiction recovery. This is episode three. In our last episode, we discussed the science behind ibogaine, how it works in the brain and body, the mystery of its intelligence, as well as the unexplainable experiences people have while under its influence that call into question our current paradigm and understanding of consciousness. Is this plant a conscious being that wants to teach us and help us? Does it want to heal us? And what would it look like if that healing and help was spread across the world? We've noted that there are serious consequences in Africa

• 1:52Ky Dickens?

  to the already rapid increase in demand for ibogaine. There, the plant Iboga, from which ibogaine is derived, is absolutely essential to community and everyday life. It's a teacher, a guide, a living entity that has been used in sacred ceremony for thousands of years. It plays a central role in culture and individual identity. Today, we're going to focus on the roots of ibogaine and what those who've been studying it and working with it for hundreds, even thousands of years, know to be true about its mystery. We'll also look at the powerful rituals developed around it. And to do that, we head to the west coast of Africa, to the country of Gabon. Gabon sits right on the equator with a population of a little over 2 million people.

• 2:36Ky Dickens?

  It's a small country with a massive history.

• 2:39Speaker 03

  For Gabonese, iboga is sacred. It's the most sacred medicine of Africa. For them, of Gabon. It's a spirit. It's a living entity. It's the tree of the knowledge of the good and evil. For them, it's the master tree. It's the best link with God.

• 2:57Ky Dickens?

  This is Jan Guinyan. He runs an organization called Blessings of the Forest. Its goal is to conserve and sustain the cultural heritage of the indigenous people of Gabon. And a lot of that work is focused on the preservation of iboga. Jan is also a member of the Bouiti tradition, which is a practice of spiritual beliefs native to Gabon under which iboga has been used for millennia. A vital part of the spiritual practice of Bouiti involves something called initiation, in which the iboga plant is consumed in the company of community. Our producer Catherine spoke with Jan more about this, and most notably, the way the plant is never taken for granted. It's revered. So I'll let them take it from here.

• 3:39Speaker 03

  It's the best medicine plant. It's very sacred. So the way they care of it, the way they talk about it, the way they harvest it, it's a whole process. The way they plant it, it's a whole process. The place we plant it, it's a science. And the way they transform it, the way they use it, it's a whole science. It's a whole preparation. It's very important. I mean, it's the most important initiation for Gabonese people.

• 4:09Ky Dickens?

  Every single detail of this whole process he describes is important. This knowledge has developed over such a long period of time, and the consumption of the medicine doesn't only apply to the spiritual realm, but also to their sense of community, physical health, and even their education.

• 4:24Speaker 03

  It's the way they find their place in the society. It's the way they heal their traumas. It's the way they get connected to their ancestors. It's the way they understand who they are. It's the way they understand the environment around them. It's the way they learn life. It's their biggest university.

• 4:43Speaker 01

  The very intimate process of initiation involves being connected to community members who help guide you through your experience with this incredibly powerful medicine. It's not something you can do randomly or on a whim. It's a long and considered process. The relationship to the person who gives it to you even matters.

• 5:01Speaker 03

  The master who gives you this medicine in Gabon become as important as your father.

• 5:05Speaker 01

  Throughout this episode, when you hear someone refer to medicine, they're talking about iboga. Masters are experts in the tradition.

• 5:12Speaker 03

  You call him daddy, right? Or mommy if it's a woman who initiates you. It becomes as important as your father. It takes a huge responsibility on you, like a good father, you know? Like a good father in Christians is in charge of your education, sometimes more than your own father or mother. He has a responsibility to your life, the nature, everything. So, yeah, it's very sacred.

• 5:39Speaker 01

  To really understand the depth of the importance of this plant, we need to learn more about the Bwedi tradition. Bwedi is practiced by at least half of the population in Gabon and has been around an extremely long time, potentially dating back to ancient Egypt. It has certainly existed well before Gabon was an independent nation.

• 5:57Speaker 04

  My name is Apollon. I'm from Gabon. I'm living in Gabon in central Africa. And we were colonized by the French people, so we speak French. But we have more than 40, something like 50 different languages, local languages.

• 6:18Speaker 01

  I was put in touch with Apollon because he's been studying the Bwedi tradition for many years. He knows the history of the tradition as well as the iboga plant and is very involved in the Bwedi community.

• 6:27Speaker 04

  First about iboga. Iboga, ebora, eboo, mabora, all the words. There's different way to talk about iboga words. It means the same in most of the languages of the South of Gabon, healing.

• 6:44Speaker 04

  This is what does it mean, healing?

• 6:46Speaker 01

  Apollon's current understanding of Bouiti is now extensive, but his exposure to the tradition didn't come until his teenage years. The French colonization of Gabon played a massive role in Bouiti becoming less mainstream and even suppressed in Gabon than it had been for centuries prior. Apollon actually initially identified as Catholic.

• 7:04Speaker 04

  When I was a teenager, I started to ask to myself, why we have this tradition, where it's come from? And then I heard about slavery, colonization, and things like that. I said, whoa, why people who have to practice a religion who came with, I mean, force, like they impose the religion? The reason why in Africa they practice Muslim or Christianity is because the colonization.

• 7:34Speaker 01

  Apollon started to question his beliefs after realizing that the only reason he was exposed to them was due to French colonization, the religion that was imposed upon those who came before him. The people in the area Apollon was raised didn't have much exposure to people practicing Bouiti.

• 7:50Speaker 04

  Me, I'm not coming from a region who practice the Bouiti. In the south, the east of Gabon, we don't have the Bouiti. We have, of course, different culture, rituals, but we don't have the Bouiti. During the colonization, they tried to stop the tradition, and especially the Bouiti, for example, the strong tradition, the colonization, they tried to stop, and they killed a lot of people who practiced the tradition.

• 8:16Speaker 01

  So not only was new religious practice introduced during this time, but the native Bouiti tradition was seen as evil and primitive by colonial powers. French colonization even extended to what languages the French allowed people to speak. People were punished for speaking their mother tongue.

• 8:33Speaker 04

  They want to force people to speak French. And if you talk your language, for example, they put bones of animal. Like a necklace. People in the village, when you speak your mobile language, the moketong, they put a necklace with the bone, sometimes the bone of the head of an animal, like monkey. And with the tradition, they say, you don't practice. Tradition is not good. You have the Bible. God is inside the Bible. This is why, after 100 years, people practice more Christianity. It's not because they want. Because many years ago, people say, Bwiti is bad.

• 9:18Speaker 04

  Iboga is bad. You have to go to church.

• 9:22Speaker 01

  So during this time, this centuries-old practice of Bwiti was largely banned and vilified. It was forbidden, and as you heard, people were shamed and sometimes even killed. This is how Bwiti became marginalized in the Gabonese culture. But after independence in 1960, things began to change.

• 9:39Speaker 04

  I realized that before the colonization, we have our own tradition. And then I start my quest to understand what is my tradition? What is my culture? It's about what? And things like that. And slowly, slowly, I start to talk with people. And I was in touch with people who practiced a different tradition here in Gabon. And then I start to get initiated to several different ritual and tradition of Gabon.

• 10:13Speaker 01

  So Apollon was able to get in touch with those in Gabon who practiced Bwiti. And he immediately felt an inherent connection to the tradition.

• 10:21Speaker 04

  And when I participated for the first time, Katrina, really, it was as an African, as Gabonese. It was a wow.

• 10:32Speaker 03

  It was wow.

• 10:35Speaker 01

  Avalon was blown away by that first initiation. As we mentioned, initiation in Bwiti involves chopping up and ingesting the root of the iboga plant. The ritual requires time, preparation, community, and trust-building in order to access the plant's healing effects. And this is the part that diverges completely from how ibogaine is used in the West. Many of the people you've heard from so far in this series have taken ibogaine with strangers in medical settings. But as Jan from earlier explains, in the Bwiti tradition, things take time. They require intimate connections. And the rituals used to guide someone through the psychedelic are tailored to the specific needs of the person being initiated.

• 11:15Speaker 03

  You can't get the medicine easily. It's not like you go to a shop in Gabon and you say, "I want one gram of iboga." And they give you into a plastic bag. It's not about that. If you want the medicine, right? You need to have a consultation. You need to find a village. Most of the time, it's a village from your own tribe, your own community. But it doesn't have to be your family. So you need to find your proper village, and you have to find someone who comes with you. You need to be introduced. You need to be confident. You make a consultation. Then you're observed by the community, who was first before giving you the medicine to analyze who you are and maybe to make some treatment on you, because maybe they

• 11:59Speaker 03

  will see that you have some problems to treat before giving you the medicine. Sometimes you have some witchcraft on you. Sometimes, what we call in the West, like transgenerational traumas or karmas, you know, that we have to heal. Sometimes they will see that you have some health problems to heal first before taking the medicine. They can see that, for example, that you are weak, your stomach is weak, or your heart is weak. So sometimes you need to make some treatments before, some needs to give you medicine to drink. To clean your livers, to clean your stomach, to clean your sinuses,

• 12:44Speaker 03

  to have a better experience with the medicine and also for you to be confident with the place you're going to do it because it's very important for you to be confident with the people who give you the medicine.

• 12:55Speaker 01

  Going through the process of an iboga trip isn't something to be taken lightly. He underscores the importance of trust in those around you during the ceremony. It's not just as simple as taking a pill.

• 13:07Speaker 03

  When you will be eyeing the medicine, you'll be to be very confident with people around you, with the spot, with the place around you. So you go through that and then there was the whole process around, the whole ritual around. Also, there is some step to go through the medicine in Gabon.

• 13:24Speaker 01

  We're going to hear some incredible accounts of people's experiences going through these steps and being initiated. But it's really important to point out that the specifics of these rituals are secret. They're protected knowledge. So you'll hear about the effects these rituals had on the initiates, but not a step-by-step process for how they happened. Part of this is to protect these sacred traditions and the other part is because the experiences may be tailored to the individual needs of each person. In addition to that, there are several different Bouitee traditions that use iboga, but their rituals vary.

• 13:54Ky Dickens?

  So let's quickly pause here for a moment. Catherine, you spoke to lots of people who've experienced Bouitee rituals associated with iboga. And even though, as you described, a lot of the process is protected knowledge, right, and secret, can you break down some of the common themes that aren't secret?

• 14:12Speaker 01

  Definitely. So like Jan is saying, most people need to find a community willing to and interested in initiating you. There are many communities in Gabon practicing Bouitee and several facets of Bouitee itself. During the initiation, there are a series of songs, dances and other physical traditions that accompany taking iboga. It truly is a science, down to the colors you're shown during the experience. This took centuries to perfect and it's all very critical.

• 14:38Ky Dickens?

  Okay, how so?

• 14:39Speaker 01

  Well, from what has been explained to me, iboga is really powerful. You need to be guided and supported. And many people believe that these traditions are vital to supporting that journey, that the initiate is going on while under iboga's influence. In fact, people in the West are starting to realize this and even returning to Gabon and asking for advice.

• 14:56Speaker 05

  Every village or every community has their own version of it. So there's not one single Buiti practice.

• 15:05Ky Dickens?

  That's Dr. Martín Polanco again. He's a psychologist who offers ibogaine treatment at a clinic in Mexico, who you heard from in earlier episodes. But he's also received the medicine of iboga in a more traditional Buiti ceremony. So he has an understanding of what occurs during this sacred practice and how it differs from his own usage in the West.

• 15:23Speaker 05

  They take it as a rite of passage. It could be the passage from childhood to adulthood. It could be, you know, menopause. It can be processing the loss of a loved one. Sometimes it's taken for healing, like people address physical injuries and diseases with it. Every village or every community has their own version of it. So there's not one single Buiti practice. But generally, it involves the ingestion of the root bark in pretty large amounts over a period of several days. It's a communal experience. It's not individual. So the community comes around, they play instruments. They, you know, hold space for the individual.

• 16:08Speaker 05

  They do it many times in their life. It's not kind of a one-time thing.

• 16:13Ky Dickens?

  What was so fascinating in learning about different people's experience with iboga is how varied they are and how personalized their initiation ceremonies were. When we come back, we'll hear from Apalan again about his experience taking iboga and the ways it connected him more to himself, as well as a greater understanding of the universe. More on that in a minute.

• 16:38Ky Dickens?

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• 18:56Ky Dickens?

  Welcome back. If you remember from earlier in the episode, Apollon, a Gabonese Bouitee initiate who explored the tradition after growing up Catholic, has quite a powerful description of his journeys, describing his initiation ceremony as almost like being in a film.

• 19:10Speaker 04

  When I did my initiation, it was like...

• 19:14Speaker 04

  Being inside a movie. Not only watch, I used to watching movies, TV, yes. But during the initiation, you are inside your movie, the movie of your life. And many, in many dimensions of things like that, you are inside. I say, wow! It was more wow when I participated the first time to a ceremony of beauty. And wow, a big, big, big, big wow when I did the initiation for the first time. It was like you have million question and then you have access to the answers. You just have to ask. For me, it was like that. Maybe it's not the same for everyone. I mean, we are all different. And the experience is can be different from me, from you. It can be different.

• 19:58Speaker 04

  But for me, it was like, if I have a question about something in the life, it was like inside a book. Someone turn the page like that and I can read the answer to my question.

• 20:11Speaker 01

  Many people have described the medicine in this way, that you're able to ask direct questions and some greater entity gives you the exact answer. It certainly goes beyond our understanding. And this was just his first experience. He also underscores the fact that these amazing and unexplained experiences while under the influence is not necessarily the end goal. He sees its effects as more like a launching pad, accelerating your life to a new place, encouraging growth in all areas.

• 20:39Speaker 04

  It's not like that. But it was just a beginning because I used to say to people that, for me, all is like a process. And when you do the initiation, it's just the beginning of like a new chapter, but a new process to change something, not only inside of you, but also outside and with people. And this is the most important thing. It's not to receive iboga, for example, or something, the medicine and say, oh, I see many things. Oh, it's so wonderful. This is the first level. For people who use, who want to use iboga. The effect of iboga is just a label. After the initiation, you receive the knowledge and you start to practice. Because for me, with is practice.

• 21:24Speaker 04

  When you start to practice, you understand many things.

• 21:29Speaker 01

  So it's not just about going somewhere, taking iboga, then leaving and expecting everything to be changed. It's a process that requires intentional practice after the experience. That's the beauty of it all. It still requires your effort and life action based on what the medicine has revealed to you.

• 21:46Speaker 04

  And like a puzzle, you start to put things on the right place to see the picture. So, okay. And it's slowly, slowly you receive more and more and more and more.

• 21:58Speaker 01

  One of the many things iboga revealed to Apollon has really stuck with me. The medicine seems to have revealed to him a very profound truth about the universe.

• 22:07Speaker 04

  Time is not only past or present. It's all at the same time, at the same time. Time is like a circle. It's like a circle. Past, present and future. And future is like, you can see the future just like that. One second, two second. But you can be inside the future also. Like people can create something from the future. And this is how, for me, how I can explain how people can get access to what I call the collective memory.

• 22:43Speaker 01

  The collective memory Apollon is talking about is something we've heard many times throughout our shows. This concept of a universal consciousness or energy that holds all knowledge, past, present and future. It's where many people believe the foundation of reality stems. It's where many believe creativity is born.

• 23:03Speaker 04

  Then you can receive information from there, like inspiration for a song, for a movie or things like that. You can receive.

• 23:09Ky Dickens?

  Receiving downloads from collective memory, to hear it from Apalan, is so affirming because he's showing how Iboga connects you to a universal consciousness that others we've spoken to over the years have accessed in different ways. I think the biggest difference is that for bhuti practitioners, this collective consciousness is almost taken for granted. It's a given, not something that needs to be proven. And the idea that the medicine itself, or the Iboga, is part of this collective consciousness also seems to be common knowledge. Iboga is treated as a conscious guide in and of itself, and the bhuti masters simply need to assist it. As you've heard, this knowledge is also incorporated into the rituals themselves. The community and their experiences affects the initiates journey in profound ways.

• 23:53Ky Dickens?

  And the question really becomes, what happens if this integral part of the story gets lost in Western applications of Iboga's derivative that we're calling ibagane? If you simply walk into a doctor's office and take ibagane as a pill or injection and have a private individuated experience, what are we losing? Again, the bhuti who take Iboga have been doing this for hundreds, if not thousands of years. There's practices and traditions associated with taking Iboga based on what the bhuti masters have learned over centuries. And even though we've heard about incredible healing being done in the Western medical context, what more healing might be achieved by taking advice from the people of Gabban and incorporating them and their time-honored practices into the Western adoption of this medicine?

• 24:37Ky Dickens?

  When we come back, we're going to take a deep dive into some of the potential origins of this powerful medicine, how it may have started being used in Gabban, and how humans may have learned about it initially. More on that in a minute.

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• 25:31Speaker 07

  Je m'appelle Ovonno Eyenné Simon Pierre. My name is Ovonno Eyenné Simon Pierre.

• 25:38Speaker 01

  That's Simon. Catherine talked to him along with an English interpreter who translated from the French. In this episode, whenever you hear from Simon, you'll be hearing his interpreter. Simon is a deeply respected leader in his community. In Gabon, he's referred to as a Bouiti master. He's spent years studying Iboga and the spiritual discipline. I'll let him and Catherine take it from here.

• 25:59Speaker 07

  I learned enough, and I have been consecrated to say that, yes, I'm a Bouiti master. There's been a training trust, and then there's a consecration. It means there's an act of, okay, you are now a priest or a master. If we make comparisons with the West, somebody who needs to be, who wants to become a doctor, so he's trained, he studies, and then he gets a diploma that allows him to practice.

• 26:23Speaker 01

  Simon's father was the one who first initiated him into the Bouiti tradition.

• 26:27Speaker 07

  My father was already a master who was initiating people already.

• 26:31Speaker 01

  Here's Simon's interpreter explaining how much experience he has.

• 26:34Speaker 07

  So he went to school like everybody. He worked in companies, and at the same time, he was learning the science, what we call the science, from his father. So he had his first initiation when he was seven. He is now 57, so 50 years of practice. His Bouiti name is Master Akamangang.

• 26:55Speaker 01

  Part of Simon's expertise isn't just in Bouiti rituals and traditions, but also in their history and origins.

• 27:01Speaker 07

  It's a very old tradition, and it dates back to antique Egypt. We can see that in Egypt as well, in the times. So when we look at ancient Egypt, like scripture, we discover that the priests were drinking a special beverage, and we don't know what it was.

• 27:18Speaker 01

  He theorizes that this was a concoction of Iboga, based on the depictions and contexts in which they were drinking it ceremoniously. The ceremonies included music and dance and resemble the same Bouiti initiation practices using Iboga today. We know historically that the earliest people in Gabon, known non-pejoratively as the Pygmy people, had contact with ancient Egyptians.

• 27:41Speaker 07

  The migration of these Pygmies who moved to this area, the Ogunier River, in the area around today's Gabon.

• 27:48Speaker 04

  They practiced this tradition, which looked very strange to the people here. These bunch of people started to have contacts with the pygmies. So they started to discover and to learn the science, this science, from the pygmies.

• 28:00Speaker 01

  Here, Simon is referring to the science of using iboga.

• 28:04Speaker 04

  So all these people, then after that, came back to their original area, bringing back the tradition, which was adapted to the local culture. Which means that Bwiti will end up being practiced in eight of the nine areas or provinces of Gabon. So it became almost an identity, a cultural identity of the country.

• 28:26Speaker 01

  Apollon explains how this migration of people to and from cities and villages, and the adoption of Bwiti traditions in different places, is why now today, there are many different types of Bwiti sects and practices.

• 28:38Speaker 04

  When people say that, "Oh, I practice Bwiti", it's good to know that in Bwiti, Bwiti is like a, say, more generic word, something like that. Bwiti, you have the Bwiti Disumba, you have the Bwiti Misoko. And inside of Bwiti Misoko are Mwoba, Ngonde, Busuka, Sengedia, Mabundi. And after you have Le Mabanti, Le Bilombo. And you have the Bwiti Fang. But Bwiti Fang, they had a religion like Christianity inside. They put a little bit of element of Bible, of the Bible.

• 29:14Speaker 01

  I asked if in layman's terms, we could compare this to Christianity and its sects to help me understand.

• 29:19Speaker 04

  Yes, it's a little bit like Protestant, evangelical, and feels like a little bit, yes.

• 29:24Ky Dickens?

  I want to return now to my conversation with Dr. Martin Polanco, because I was blown away by something he said. He makes the case that the history of all these varied Bwiti traditions might actually originate even deeper in the natural world. Before its potential usage in ancient Egypt, that the Bwiti master Simon described, in fact, humans may have first noticed that animals were eating the roots of the iboga plant.

• 29:46Speaker 05

  So we have documented use for at least 300 years, but very likely it goes back far. Deeper into time. In fact, one of the observations is that also animals seek it out. So they've seen elephants dig up the roots. So potentially, humans even learned it from observing animals. Because it's not something that you would just kind of grab and put into your mouth. It's a root and you have to scrape off the root bark. And then you have to eat a large amount of it. So it's a pretty intense and laborious process to get the right amount to have an experience. It's not something that somebody would just casually pick a berry and eat it, right? I mean, they've seen elephants seek it and also some gorillas.

• 30:30Speaker 01

  Wow.

• 30:31Speaker 05

  And then one of the origin myths is that there was a porcupine that was eating it. And the hunter got it with an arrow. And then when he consumed the porcupine, he had an experience. So he realized, oh, what was that porcupine eating? So that's one of the origin myths of how humans discovered it.

• 30:48Speaker 01

  However they may have originated, Simon makes clear that these ancient traditions have become part of Gabon's national identity and have instilled values in the culture derived from the plant itself.

• 30:58Speaker 07

  Iboga started in a small corner of Gabon, then widespread everywhere. So Iboga, in fact, participated to the cohesion of the national spirit of Gabon. That's the first point. First point is the national cohesion, like solidarity. This knowledge is training the students about fantastic, remarkable moral values. For example, the respect of the ancients, respect of nature, respect of the community, values that we need for a structured society, well structured.

• 31:29Speaker 01

  And their foundation for those points of learning are being threatened as access to the plant is becoming increasingly difficult. People like Jan, who you heard from at the beginning of the episode, are fighting to preserve access to the plant throughout local communities in Gabon. Jan is a Westerner who experienced the profound healing of Iboga. He married a Gabonese woman and was adopted into the family. He feels it is his responsibility to work to protect what he has been welcomed into.

• 31:54Speaker 03

  At the end of the day, I'm a Westerner who has been healed in West, and then been adopted in Gabon. And I think I have like a responsibility as a white guy, as a French, towards Africa and Gabon. To not fucked up, you know, in the relation. And so, yeah, my job is to develop that project of sharing cultural and natural heritage in a fair way with the West to help people to get here, of course. We are not against, for example, United States to heal their veterans or drug addicts or stuff like that at all, of course, because, once again, I'm a Westerner who benefited from that, you know?

• 32:36Speaker 01

  What Yan and others in Gabon want is to be part of the conversation, for the process of sharing to be slow and thoughtful, free from the fast-paced attitude the West often adopts.

• 32:47Speaker 03

  We really advocate to make it fairly and sustainably. And really for people to really understand what's going on on the field in Gabon, what is the perspective of indigenous communities that have no voice. There is a history between the West and Africa, and we would like this time to make it the right way, you know, not in an extractive way, and I would say racist way, colonialist way, or, you know, abusive way, or naive way, sometimes or clumsy way.

• 33:19Speaker 01

  Yan is referring here to colonialism and the way that many natural resources from Africa and elsewhere have been taken and exploited by colonizing forces, including even Iboga. We're going to talk a lot more about this in the upcoming episodes.

• 33:33Speaker 03

  So I try to make that bridge for the benefit of everybody, in fact, for not only Gabonese, but of humanity.

• 33:40Speaker 01

  Here's Apollon again on the matter.

• 33:42Speaker 04

  You do something in your way, it's okay, we don't mind. And this is why I told you, for African people, even to share our knowledge with foreigners, we don't mind, but we just need people to respect what we do and respect the rules. Iboga is means healing, so if people can save people, it's okay. But if they want to save people, please, just want respect, welcome from.

• 34:11Speaker 04

  The iboga and Wu first gave the information of the therapy with iboga, Wu, the people who talk about the possibility to healing people with iboga is the people of Gabon.

• 34:27Ky Dickens?

  Despite this desire to share knowledge and healing contained in iboga with others, there is real concern about separating iboga from Buiti traditions. Because while this medicine is undoubtedly powerful, people in Gabon believe that it's actually inextricable from the other traditions we've talked about today. The songs, the dances, the colors, and the community support surrounding it are critical to its value. Here's the Buiti master Simon again.

• 34:53Speaker 07

  What the Western world understands wrongly is that it thinks that only the Ibogaine can be useful, although it's the whole process with the methods, with the knowledge, the rest of the knowledge, which is it's Wu. So iboga or Ibogaine is just a piece of the whole knowledge. So this is the main thing that people don't understand in the West.

• 35:15Ky Dickens?

  It's exactly this space between how people in Gabon see iboga as part of a much larger understanding of consciousness, life, healing, the world, and spirituality, and how the West is beginning to see iboga that we're going to look at more closely next episode. We'll dive into exactly how iboga first found its way to the West. How did it leave Gabon? And we'll hear about a teenager who's famous for bringing it to the United States, what happened when he did, and what could go wrong if we try to force its presence in the West too soon. That's next time on the Ibogaine Inquiries.

• 35:58Ky Dickens?

  If you enjoyed this podcast, you'll find even more on the main Telepathy Tapes feed, where each week we explore consciousness, human potential, and the mysteries that challenge our understanding of reality.