Comedian Myq Kaplan has a spiritual epiphany while experimenting with ayahuasca.
Myq Kaplan is a comedian named Mike Kaplan. He has been seen on the Tonight Show, Conan, the Late Show with David Letterman, Late Night with Seth Meyers,the Late Late Show with James Corden, in his own half-hour Comedy Central Presents special, and in his own one-hour special on Amazon, "Small, Dork, and Handsome." He has been a finalist on Last Comic Standing and recently appeared on America's Got Talent. His album "Vegan Mind Meld" was one of iTunes' top 10 comedy albums of the year, and his latest available now is called "No Kidding." And that's only the past! Even more to come in the future! Check out myqkaplan.com for more information, and/or live your life however you choose. Thanks!
This story originally aired on Dec. 1, 2017 in an episode titled “Psychotropic Substances.”
Story Transcript
I’m not a scientist, but I do have a beard and glasses, so this should be good. This is a story about the universe. The universe is made of science, so let there be story.
In the beginning, there was everything, but not the “me” part of everything. Then billions of years passed if time is a thing, or thousands of years if it’s a different thing. Then there was me.
I was born to two parents that I'll call mom and dad to protect their identities. I’m calling mom “Dad” and dad “Mom” for extra security. They taught me a lot of stuff relevant to right now. They taught me as a child “Don’t smoke,” “Don’t drink,” “Don’t do drugs.” I've never smoked, I don’t care that much about drinking, and now for the rest of the story.
I was raised Jewish-ish. Like I believed in “God." I believed in an afterlife. That was very calming to think about, the fact that I would keep being, because I'd always been, so that was nice to be like, “Oh, yeah. Good. It’s not gonna stop. That’d be terrifying. Oh, God. Oh, boy. You ever think about not being? Oh, God, the void.” It was the most terrifying in the world or out of the world in and out of the world, Schrödinger’s world. It’s hard to tell.
And it’s weird that God, there's so many things that go into the idea of God. Like there's the created everything part and then there's the rules and ethics and governs what’s going on during life part. And then the afterlife part. They always get lumped all together. And it could all work together like, in theory, the three branches of government do. Or they could not work together at all like, in practice, how the three branches of government don’t.
So I stopped believing in the amalgamation version of God that was everything, because I heard that God was supposed to be all-loving and there was suffering in the world. I was like, “Oh, if God was all-loving why wouldn’t there be zero suffering?”
The hardest part to get rid of, the hardest part to let go of was the afterlife part, so I held on to that for a while. Here’s how I did it. I was like, there's absolutely no evidence, no proof, no support empirically for an afterlife. But there's also no proof against it. Nobody has any proof that there's not. So I’m like, it’s fifty-fifty. It’s like, it’s fifty-fifty, you can choose whichever one you like. That’s what I did.
I was a good kid. I got good grades in school. I think I was nice. They didn’t grade you on that. Shows where our priorities are in society. Am I right? That wasn’t very nice. I’m sorry. But I liked being good according to the rules. It was mathematical, logical, just very structurally sound. You could input studying and then output good grades and praise. Follow along the path like school, college, job, life, living. That’s what it was all about. That was what the rules were about. Like don’t do drugs, don’t smoke, don’t drink. Yes, living. Live. Just keep living.
When I went to college I had friends who did drugs, but my parents’ advice still stayed strong with me. I was like, my parents were smart. They were right about a lot of stuff. I didn’t realize they were the only parents that I ever knew. I didn’t have like a double-blind experiment with a control group with different sets of parents saying different stuff. So I got pretty lucky. There's like worse parents out there, I learned. But I didn’t even realize at the time that those were like the only ones that I had so that worked out pretty well.
But then after college I got married, and there's more to that but not for here. So, mystery. A boring mystery.
My wife smoked pot. She liked it a lot. She was a musician. She said it helped her, and she was offering it to me. I was like, “No, it’s fine. I’m good. I’m fine. I’m happy. I've been alive for many years. It’s been going great. Been following the rules, following the path.” If I smoked pot, then I could never go back to never having smoked pot. Would have sullied my perfect record.
But the same parents had given me the pathway of school, college, job, life, they’d also given me a personal one of those as well. They were like, dating, relationship, marriage, life, you know? Love honor, respect, obey. I don't know if that one’s in there, for heteronormative men and women, but now, here is my beloved, respected, honored wife suggesting an alternate life path: Drugs are good.
So out of respect for the institution of marriage, as instilled in me by my wonderful parents, I tried marijuana for the first time, and I didn’t love it. I still try it every once in a while to make sure that I still don’t love it. I’m not a scientist, but I do what I can. It was a failed experiment basically, like my marriage. She's not here. Also, she doesn’t have the internet, maybe. I don't know. Also, she understands and likes jokes.
A couple of years later, still in my twenties, I tried mushrooms, and those are great. They knew what they were doing. People think that pot is a gateway, but I actually think that the gateway is really not enjoying pot. If you liked pot, then you're just like, “I’m good with pot.” If you don’t like pot, you're like, “What else is there?” It’s not like if you tried beets you're like, “Hmm, I don't like these. I guess I’m not gonna eat any food.”
It’s not like mushrooms are super-pot. Like, “Oh, if you love pot you should try super pot.” Well, I didn’t like pot. You know what I mean?
People think that heroin is a gateway from pot to heroin. Like so many people that ended up with heroin started with pot. But most people who do pot don’t do heroin. That’s like saying kissing is the gateway to sexual assault. Where did I lose you? Okay.
Before I'd done mushrooms, I've heard of enlightenment. That was a concept, a word that I knew the same way that I understood Harry Potter’s magic powers. Those were things that seemed cool but had no actual context in my real life. Then I did mushrooms. But one time I was Jesus and I was like, “Oh, that’s basically like the original Harry Potter.” I’m not saying that doing mushrooms helped me attain enlightenment or understand enlightenment or become enlightened. That wouldn’t be a very enlightened thing for me to say. I’m not saying I get it, but I don’t not get it.
I’m in my thirties now, right now and also in the story, about a decade post mushrooms. P.M., if you want, which also stands for pre-mushrooms because time is meaningless. I discovered ayahuasca and now our story begins. The story begins at every point, the same way that every point in the universe is the center of the universe and the beginning of a story, and also my story will end even if it seems like it won’t and I said it just started.
Ayahuasca is a vine that gets mixed with a leaf and then brewed into a tea. You drink it and it releases DMT into your brain, which is what happens when we die. If I understand everything correctly, which I’m sure I don’t. It’s maybe the world’s most powerful hallucinogen. One of them. May be responsible for when near-death experiences happen or when this ceremonial ritual happens with ayahuasca with DMT and the brain lights up with white colors. White colors, yeah. Absolutely. There's all kinds of conflicts.
And you see your ancestors. Maybe your life flashes before your eyes. You see the universe, you see inside yourself, you see all these things. Maybe. That’s a thing that could happen.
Large swathes of my life have been dedicated to trying to reconcile science and magic, the natural and the supernatural, physical and metaphysical. In college I studied philosophy and psychology, and those are things for the brain and the body. I followed scientific study to try to determine what there was, like what is there? I liked rules. I liked empiricism. I liked following paths and I liked observable phenomenon. These are things that were important, but also like, was there more? Could I see everything?
I couldn’t see everything. So was there possibly more? Like there could be more? There could not be more. Fifty-fifty. So pick whichever one you choose, whatever you like.
It’s difficult to describe the experience of doing ayahuasca not only because it’s different every time for every person, though if we are all one, then that does take away one of the variables, or it doesn’t? I’m not sure.
Niels Bohr once said the opposite of a profound truth is often another profound truth. Then one of his friends said, “That sounds wrong.” He's like, “Yeah, you're right, too, probably.”
Before I did ayahuasca I didn’t believe in much supernatural stuff, like the soul. I didn’t think that we had souls. I thought that we were just meat. Our body is meat. Like electricity flows through us. If you're like, “What’s a human?” I'd be like, “Electric meat,” probably.
But then I did ayahuasca and now I believe in a soul. Literally one soul. “The soul” that is all of our soul. Like the universe is a soul. The universe is God's soul, if you want to call it that. You can call it anything. It doesn’t matter. There's no matter, no energy, yes matter, yes energy. hashtag Niels Bohr.
I think differently about a lot of stuff now. I don't know if I know anything new. I don't know if I know anything at all, but the same way that, before I did mushrooms, I know that I had no idea what enlightenment was. And after, I at least had the concept that I had no idea before what enlightenment was.
Now, I feel the same way, after ayahuasca, about the universe. Like I know that I am the universe. I’m part of the universe. You're part of the universe. I am meat and electricity, and so are you. We’re all recycled star parts that can trace our lineage back to the point before the Big Bang, at the Big Bang, which I understand, if I understand correctly, which I’m sure I don’t. At that point we were all one thing, and we all are one thing. We all are literally connected because we’re one literally connected universe, or not.
So my fear of death has mostly become done with. I've sort of overcome it. I’m told that nothing can ever be created or destroyed. No matter, no energy can ever be created or destroyed. That means that I can never cease to be because I've always been. Or I've never been and I’m not now, but it seems like I am. So I am always.
And if I cease to be, it will only be the same way that like a lap does when you stand up. Or like when groceries get put away. They're no longer a lap and they're no longer groceries, but nothing ceases to be.
So in my twenties I basically came to the idea that there was no God, thanks to logic, science and evidence. In my thirties, I decided that I am God, and we all are. We’re all God, we’re all everything, we’re all the universe. We can all call it that. Whatever you want to call it.
I also studied linguistics so that means that you can use whatever words you want for whatever concepts, and if you know that that’s not what linguistics is. But because no matter or energy can ever be created or destroyed, basically I used magic drugs to help use science to teach me to eliminate fear, which probably didn’t exist to begin with because nothing ever can be created or destroyed, so there never was any fear.
Basically, by teaching me that I am infinite and eternal, and we all are because the universe is, essentially I did a scientific experiment that said is magic real. The answer was yes and no. Fifty-fifty. So pick whichever one you like. Thanks.