1_9 Ruby Singh: DMT, Sikhism, and Art as a Canvas for Connection and Solidarity

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Ruby Singh: Oh, thanks for having me, Raad It's good to be here.

Raad Seraj: So you and I met a couple of weeks ago on Cortes Island in front of ours, Kim Haxton. And I've, when people say there's a vibe and right away there was a vibe. And I, we shared many beautiful moments on Cortes Island and I'm really grateful that you decided to join me on the podcast.

Ruby Singh: I'm [00:01:00] really grateful for the invitation and I'm also very grateful to Kim Haxton for to hooking us up and introducing us. 

Raad Seraj: Absolutely. Kim gets a second shout out cuz she was our first guest on the podcast. So Kimmy, thank you. Yeah. Sweet . So let's dive right in. So, Ruby. You call yourself Ruby Singh that is your artist moniker. That is the name that most of your fans and friends know you as. But your ancestral name is different. So let's start there. What is your ancestral name, your birth name, and then what was it like to grow up in Canada with that name? 

Ruby Singh: Right, right. So my ancestral name is Rupinder Singh Siddhu And I think it was actually pretty early on that my family started calling me Ruby Like all of us have like these official Sikhi names that are given to us and then we have these family names as well. And so Ruby was what I was called from a young age at home, but in the world I would, I went as actually Rup for a long time, especially at school cuz Rupinder was like, white [00:02:00] tongues weren't curving around that so, Rapinder I think is the worst that happened to it.

Ruby Singh: Yeah, I was the first in my family born on Turtle Island. I was born in southern Alberta in traditional blood territories there. And I, we lived that migration story here in Canada as well, where I was born in southern Alberta, spent the first four years of my life there. And then I went off to live with my uncle in, I think he was in maybe Mississauga at that time, then came back to Cranbrook, bc then back to Brampton and Rexdale, and then back to Abbotsford, bc and that's where I spent my high school years.

Ruby Singh: And for the past 25 years now I've called Vancouver home and it's been the home base. 

Raad Seraj: Wow. So you did the whole. Western GTA circuit then? 

Ruby Singh: Definitely Rolling around. Rolling around. Having asthma attacks on bikes, trying to get between places. 

Raad Seraj: So what, which part of the country did you relate to?

Raad Seraj: Cause it sounds like you traveled a lot. Did certain place call out to you more than the [00:03:00] others? 

Ruby Singh: Yeah, I would definitely say the West Coast grew me up, you know what I mean? I would say like the lands out here really are the ones that speak home to me.

Ruby Singh: When I, whenever I've traveled, whenever I've gone on longer travels abroad, even back home to India and coming back, there's always a sense of finding home when I return and I smell the ocean and I see the mountains the. This is the kind of land that I think understands me the most and that I understand the most.

Raad Seraj: What does that mean? That it understands you the most and you understand the most? What about the land? 

Ruby Singh: I think in large part, us as humans, we like to separate ourselves off into our little ego identities and how we are like these individuals with 

Ruby Singh: this career or that, and I think. In my heart of hearts and my truth of truths, I see us as interdependent beings, interwoven in a tapestry of life that has existed for millennia upon millennia and will [00:04:00] continue to exist for millennia upon millennia.

Ruby Singh: We're already getting out there, Raad. That's really what it means to me is that, that we are in relationship to the world around us. We are not these singular entities floating abouts, and, this matter of choice. This idea that we really direct our lives, I think is something that we fool ourselves with because, even, through, we look at our own microbiology, there are how many billions of different, creatures living on and in us that are helping us make these decisions.

Ruby Singh: So I really feel like we are these interdependent, interwoven beings. 

Raad Seraj: When did you first develop an understanding or awareness this is spectral consciousness, for the lack of a better word, . 

Ruby Singh: That's a, I like that as a word myself. Spectral consciousness. You know what this podcast is about?

Ruby Singh: Psychedelics came into my life at a young age. And in a way it did an interesting thing because it turned me towards the idea. My family's Sikhi and [00:05:00] Sikhi faith is what I grew up with. But I grew up here in Canada, I didn't understand Gurmukhi. I didn't understand what they were necessarily saying in the temple.

Ruby Singh: And then as a, when I first got into music as a late late teens, early twenties, I went and studied tabla at the local Sikh temple in Abbotsford. And one of the Babas there would just like point at things and call them God, including like styrofoam. Containers that were in the garbage and other people and frames and seats and all these things.

Ruby Singh: And so this idea of spectral consciousness really took me on a long trip back to the understandings of Gurus from the 15th century Guru Nanak. First words are in the Guru Granth Sahib are Ik Onkar which, like hard to translate, but there's a, that there's a, to me it means that there's a interwoven resonance to everything.

Ruby Singh: And so it's really interesting to think about the various psychedelic journeys that I've [00:06:00] been on and how they've opened that up to me, and how that is also the roots of where we come from when we live in devotion as well. Yeah, so there's a really interesting correlation I, that I like to explore there.

Raad Seraj: Did you grow up feeling Sikh? What's your connection to your faith or your culture growing up? 

Ruby Singh: I would say growing up I was like one of those at a time where I would feel quite often as a teenager. I think I felt almost ashamed, if not trying to push it back, if not trying to Anglo size myself more, if not trying to be different than who I was or ex try and push that part, those parts of my being away in order for some relevant acceptance into this white supremacy woven society that we live within.

Ruby Singh: And I'd say it was probably in my early twenties where I started to decode and defragment and detach myself from those I think quite harmful beliefs in all honesty. And [00:07:00] it's really interesting for me to think about . I, at the time when I grew up in Abbotsford, I was one of like maybe three to four brown kids in the class.

Ruby Singh: And then by the time my little brother, who's just seven years younger than me graduates from high school, most of his high school classes is Punjabi. They are having Punjabi days where they're rolling up in tractors. The cafeteria is serving Punjabi food. And it's like this it's a celebration of who we are as opposed to a a constant mocking and a constant like trying to fit in.

Ruby Singh: There wasn't that need for him to do that. He could come and celebrate who he was and all of who he was, which I think is an amazing. 

Raad Seraj: Yeah. It's amazing how the world has changed in some ways, maybe the art that comes from that is very different from the art that comes from the inner conflict that is generated because you're made to feel like a, you're otherized constantly.

Raad Seraj: But what I wanted to ask was, did that sense of tension or conflict, did you feel [00:08:00] that, did it exist with you endogenously, or was it you think it's because of the way other people saw you and how they made you feel? 

Ruby Singh: I think probably a combination of both. You know what I mean?

Ruby Singh: I feel like the. Like you as a teenager, you're trying to fit in, you're trying to, like you, you got hormones running through you. You're trying to figure out what your purpose in life is. Also, you're trying to figure out why this like mad capitalist society is existing, the way it's existing and how we're like, it's, we are really in an experiment.

Ruby Singh: There's no other time in history except for the last hundred years where we decided that we're gonna divvy up generations and put them with each other as opposed to have them integrated with the rest of the generations to be learning in cyclical ways from everybody, from children to grandparents.

Ruby Singh: But instead we're like, Hey, here's a great idea. Let's take all the teenagers who have crazy ass hormones going inside themselves and all sorts of issues around self and [00:09:00] identity and stick them all together. So I think it's inevitable that like it's gonna be a combination of both an internal struggle and external pressures.

Raad Seraj: Yeah, it's well said, right? Growing up when I saw Western movies and I grew up in Saudi Arabia, and so most media at that time at least was fully censored. But every now and then, things slip in, right? Yeah. And so you discover movies like American Pie and I was like, how do you make sense of this?

Raad Seraj: It's awesome. On one hand, cuz you're like, 15, and girls. Totally. On the other hand, there's this depiction of high school and all this insanity and of course like there's the opposite spectrum of the tone of American pie, right? It's very dark, very lots of turmoil, but it's always wonder why is high school like this?

Raad Seraj: We had a high school experience that was also equally, let's just say full of turmoil and tension, but not in the sort of way you see high school experiences depicted in the West. But I to your point, it doesn't make sense. You put all these crazy kids with all this sort of confusion, [00:10:00] hormones. And of course then you have media and all this stuff. It makes sense. 

Ruby Singh: And then the class and how that plays out in it class. The way the class and race interacts you're trying to go with fads and where the like thing and like trying and at tame this idea of cool that came out some like fifties advertisement asshole in New York, trying to tell you how you're supposed, what like the way to be is like, there's one way to be for everybody.

Ruby Singh: And of course I don't have that critique as a young person, as a young person, I'm just like, holy shit. I want what all the rich kids have. I want to try and fit in with them cuz they're the like, Cool kids or whatever. And yeah, so I think it's just just a bunch of insecurities playing out and like in, in all honesty, like from the rich kids to the poor kids, to the brown kids, to the white kids. I feel like high school is just a, like a big play of insecurities. 

Raad Seraj: A big melting pot of all the suffering insecurities of [00:11:00] all. Classes class is actually a really interesting one. I'm glad you brought that up because nowhere does class become more obvious in a school than during lunchtime.

Ruby Singh: Word.

Raad Seraj: Right? When you see each kid bring out what they're eating and what kind of lunchbox they have, you're like 

Ruby Singh: oh, it's like that. All right. 

Raad Seraj: Then of course there's lots of trauma that comes from that. You're the guy or the girl with the smelly food or whatever, and you get taunted for it, or you are the person who's at the fancy lunchbox and all the other sort of like bells and whistles around that stuff.

Raad Seraj: Right? Totally. An interesting thing. But what I, coming back to your Sikh ancestry. I think most of us, and I'm guilty of this as well, and I would love to learn more, is that, without getting into, let's just say the technicalities, I would love to know what is the spiritual framework of Sikhism as a cultural, spiritual practice.

Raad Seraj: Going back and thinking about it now you touched on it a little bit. I'd love to [00:12:00] know I forgot the word that you mentioned 

Ruby Singh: Ik Onkar 

Raad Seraj: yeah. So things like that and kitan, stuff like that. I would love to know what is the overall spiritual framework? How do, let's say, practicing p seeks, how do they see the world?

Ruby Singh: Oh, if I was a practicing P seek, I might be able to tell you. So I will speak for myself in this and any Sikhis tuning in, feel free to, make comments and such. Cuz I'm curious, I think each of us carries like a different way of relating. But from, My understandings and like what for me has really resonated with me are the teachings that Guru Nanak brought who's the founder of Sikhism.

Ruby Singh: It's a set up, I think the kind of wider scope is that Guruship was passed along to 10 Gurus. And then that was finally turned into the Living Guru, which is the Guru gr, which is the Holy Text which is full of essentially poetry and hymns. And so art is at the center of it for me.

Ruby Singh: And of [00:13:00] course that's the way that I see it living as I do as an artist. But if you look at Guru, his life, I think pretty amazing. He traveled he was, oh, he was accompanied by his Muslim homey who played baab, and he would sing and they would go get into all sorts of philosophical discussions with holy people.

Ruby Singh: He migrated quite a distance and you know what I take away as the basic tenets of it. And one of the things that I admired about him was that he was looking for a way to be, to understand himself as a spiritual being in everyday life. Not a monk on a mountain mountaintop, but somebody who was integrated in his family, in community, and how he should exist.

Ruby Singh: And, of course within the context of Sikhism one, one of the things that I look at is like, where are the women in the writing? Cuz I, we have 10 male Gurus and there's women all around them doing [00:14:00] so much work and doing so much in lifting. And so one of the early things that I also love is around food and ood, which is that everybody is welcome at the table.

Ruby Singh: Everybody's equal when they sit at the table and in fact sit on the floor. would be the situation. But that it was a space that where no matter your belief, no matter your class. And that's the other thing that I actually really admired, but it was the idea of like really troubling class and cast and trying to eliminate those as strongholds in the social fabric of India at the time.

Ruby Singh: And think of everybody. Having a direct relationship with the divine as opposed to it also having to go through a funded or priest that each individual was divine and could have a relationship with the divine. And that's all mashed in with poetry and music and hymns and shads and gift and this way of being [00:15:00] together.

Ruby Singh: And for me, the essentuality is of, it is like most religions, you break a boil ole down, it's. Be a good person, don't be an asshole. 

Ruby Singh: You know what I mean? It's so simple. It's so simple. They really do break down. And there's, of course, farther levels of tens and discipline and meditation.

Ruby Singh: One of the things that I really love that shows up in some of my work through the time especially looking at Guru Nanak's work a couple of different things. One is the am deve or the like that the time for Amer to pass through us is during the morning. And I love looking at this idea of the, I've been really looking at this idea of the dawn chorus and like how the world is rising and all, and they rises in song, and that's a record that continues on and on around the planet.

Ruby Singh: As the sun hits the earth, the birds erupt into song. The insects are erupt into song. And I don. We should also be erupting into song and, bringing forth the day. And so that's one of one of the things that I [00:16:00] love and I've been exploring recently in my artwork. And another piece of Guru Not I said really I came around to again, is this interesting thing of finding the fring or the overlapping or weaving of what is this person from 500 some odd years ago falling in love with the night sky.

Ruby Singh: I've always been in love with the night sky and there's this particular piece by growing on it called Artie that I explored group of musicians from Delhi and Dr. Ma Gopel sing in particular. Who's this beautiful man who's works in translation of various Sufi works. And cuz if you're looking at that time, there's Poet, there's a poetic renaissance happening in the area around music and literature and PO and that is another way that is folded in, and it's this way of imbuing and seeing this gift of the natural world and natural state of being as the divine itself.

Raad Seraj: Music and art [00:17:00] is so central, right? A lot of people look at Islam, including my upbringing, not from my family, but growing up in the Middle East, experiencing Islam in that very rigid, oppressive, exploitative form. But also ironic is that if you hear the sermons, if you hear the recitations during prayer or the Khutbah after Friday prayers, they're very,

Raad Seraj: yeah, it's very musical. And it's to this day, when I hear prayer, when I go back to Bangladesh or even here, I get goosebumps, not because it's nostalgia, because it is such a creative, beautiful song like form. And here's, you have the sort of even the most oppressive format of Islam using this without any understanding or even acknowledgement that, hey, we are actually singing a song here. 

Ruby Singh: Yeah. I think like speaking of Islam and Sufism, look at Qawali, right? Qawali was a form of like religious outreach, you know what I mean?

Ruby Singh: And talk [00:18:00] about being able to convert anybody. I was hooked at 19. I remember we, listen I heard a bit in Neah growing up, but then I just dove like hard, hard dove in and I just, And the amazing elation that Kali can bring you to is it's undeniable that it's just infused in spirit.

Ruby Singh: And it's stir spirit inside you and makes it come alive. And, like it's really such a deep research into the ecstatic when we're looking at, especially when we're thinking of those different ways of reaching consciousness and breaching consciousness. Kawa is one of the ways that I've never felt more connected and more a part of everything.

Ruby Singh: Is like in the midst of a Qawal. 

Raad Seraj: And what's interesting is I grew up listening to Qawali I don't wanna say I listening to Qawali, cause I pushed it away. I'm like, this is shit. I'm full of shame. I'm just like no, this is brown. This is too brown. I don't wanna listen to it. It's too brown, right?

Raad Seraj: I won't listen to like Western music and [00:19:00] stuff. And then coming back to it, you're totally right. Breaching consciousness is such a beautiful way of saying it because it's not a four minute pop song. It goes for hours. 

Ruby Singh: It goes hours and because even Nusrat's, what recordings that we would get, they'd cut 'em off around like 15 to 20 minutes, you know what I mean?

Ruby Singh: Crazy the longer form of it. But then when I went and experienced it working with so one of my projects was j which was like a SoFi hiphop hybrid. And. I met this amazing family from Rogers, from Geir and Raan, the Cons, and chuge the eldest brother of that family and the kind of leader of that crew.

Ruby Singh: Actually studied Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan when he was a kid, is amazing. And you can hear him on some of the early, early, and that's what I thought they like on recordings. And to have that kind of thing come back around and meet these cats through Indian Summer Festival. Shout out to Sir Ra for that connect.

Ruby Singh: He brought us together and was like, Hey, maybe you'd [00:20:00] to work with these musicians who are coming to town. I was like, oh yeah, I I'll try that out. And I hadn't heard them or seen them. I'm just kinda game for collaboration. You might have got that sense from me. And we met and they broke, started breaking into these kals, and I was beside myself and there I am doing a little bit of beatboxing.

Ruby Singh: And then I started doing a little bit of free styling along with it as well. And then, Chiu was hilarious cuz I was behind my table, my little safe zone with my electronics in front of me. And he just grabbed me and pulled me out from behind it. And just, and then the only way I could extract that uh, like really word, the word that comes to the description is like touching the ecstatic and like moving into the ecstatic and it's like a, it's a blur, but I remember I just felt like a kid in mud.

Ruby Singh: This was just like where I wanted to be and what I wanted to do. And then over the next seven, eight years, we went back and forth between here and India. Getting to know each other more, working together [00:21:00] more. And one of my, so I didn't start playing music until I was like 19. And I and like I was saying, I was in this deep dive of koala then.

Ruby Singh: And one of my biggest dreams was that I would be able to just sit in the back of a koala and just be one of the clappers doing some back vocals. And then fast forward however many years, maybe too many . And here I am in a cool wall beatboxing, wrapping along with them and like going back and forth and it is just it was such a dream project.

Ruby Singh: So music really has this way of transforming our consciousness just by itself, when it's like felt so intuitively when you really allow yourself to be immersed, when you allow yourself to go into trance, when you allow yourself to like really be moved in. Go through spirit that way. So I'm forever, ever grateful to that connection and being able to be within that.

Ruby Singh: And that's the other thing, like with our society kind of the way it is now and [00:22:00] even these rigid boundaries we wanna try and put next to us. Like I grew up sicky and I find I can find spirituality in everything. Like I can relate to folks in a qual, I can relate to Bud, I can relate to I can relate to like gospel.

Ruby Singh: I can find God in all those places. Cuz I don't feel a rigid boundary, that I can only find God in one way. 

Raad Seraj: And that is what's both. Powerful and also most threatening to those powers that be, because you've dis intermediated. , right? You found your direct connection to God. And that's where art and music, I find the most strictest cultures, whether it's political or religious or whatever, none of them like art or music, they say don't do that because you, they know exactly how powerful it can be.

Ruby Singh: Yeah, absolutely. There's a reason why, the Taliban assassinated, one of the Subry brothers. [00:23:00] Oh really? Man. Like they, they put a hit out on 'em and it happened and it's terrible. And the reason is cuz there's power. There's power there for to lift people. And there's reasons why the powers that be feel threatened by that.

Raad Seraj: You spoke about collaboration, you spoke about communal experiences, you spoke about transcendence. Let's switch gears and talk about your work and how you describe yourself as a you haven't said this, but I'll describe you as that.

Raad Seraj: Cause my experience of you, you are a really a what feels like a catalyst to me. That's who I've seen it. The, the week that we spent together on Cortes Island. And you worked with our group. I saw you as a community activator. A catalyst. A spark. Somebody who sparks the flame. Tell me a little bit about your approach to community activation you're working with communities across Canada and India and elsewhere, and also what does this idea of liberatory practice [00:24:00] of creativity?

Raad Seraj: I pulled this from your bio on your website. I think. What does this mean? 

Ruby Singh: Man I hate what people still from my bio and then ask me to explain it. . No, just joking. Yeah, no, of course. So creativity has clearly unlocked so, so much for me in my life and from an early time of feeling the power of that I really wanted to have that happen for other young people as.

Ruby Singh: At the time being a young person... yes totally. Forever young. Oh yeah. This is a podcast. I don't have Grace. 

Raad Seraj: Oh, you're the best you can be. Whatever you... 

Ruby Singh: totally, no, I'm happy to be the age that I am. These gray speak to great stories. So, so as a young person, I like felt that strength of creativity within myself and what it had done for me and helped me through so many hardships in my own life that I wanted to make that also available [00:25:00] for other young people that were going through various struggles.

Ruby Singh: And so it was pretty early on and if, again, like it is interesting, I never thought this conversation was gonna relate so much back toski, but it really is the central 10 is Seva, right? Which is like, how do we get. How do we selflessly give to other, to others and be honestly just contributing members of society towards the health and betterment of everyone.

Ruby Singh: And because of that, I started to think about, okay, there's these forms that have really unlocked inside of me, like music and hip hop in particular. And so at a young age I started like just teaching other people and working with other people. And it was like, felt quite natural to be with, be within that.

Ruby Singh: And I started first working for the Sarah McLaughlin School of Music way back then. And there were doing free music classes for inner city youth. And I was teaching percussion there. That moved on to become so many different things [00:26:00] over a 20 year span of being involved with that school.

Ruby Singh: And then I also started working with this organization called The Power of Hope, and where I met one of the dearest mentors of my life Charlie Murphy and Peggy Taylor. And they really like just took me in along with a few other real dear ones shouts out to Nadia Cheney, shouts out to, sorry, Kendall and.

Ruby Singh: Really pulled us in to show them, show us what they'd learned in all this time of working with creativity and working with young people. And that was how I actually was intro reintroduced to Cortez Island. The first time I went there. I went there as a musician to play, and then annually I would return once I started working with Power of Hope to do the summer arts camps there for young people.

Ruby Singh: And as Power of Hope grew, it's like influence and spread, grew and became pie Global Partner Partners for youth empowerment. And started doing programs all over the place and connecting what Charlie Murphy called [00:27:00] social artists artists who were working in a social capacity using the arts as a tool for transformation and creativity as a tool for transformation.

Ruby Singh: And around then having learned some Pedagogy from them started to try and integrate it into my own art forms as well. And we started a hip hop literacy program in the local youth prison. And worked with the young people in the youth prison there for years and years. And to an incredible amount of success with the young people, of course.

Ruby Singh: Cause hip hop is a young person's language. Giving kids the ability to express themselves about what they care about and really asking them what they think, not what the song that they like listening to thinks, but what did they think? And then having a group full room full of people who are listening to that has a powerful impact with anybody sharing their story.

Ruby Singh: And that is at the base of it. The basis of that idea of creativity and liberatory practice is when we look at. No matter where we're coming from, whether class, race, gender, [00:28:00] sexuality, however we wanna subdivide ourselves in into those sections we know there's a root to everybody.

Ruby Singh: There's a story behind everybody. And if that story is listened to, especially in a deep way and often art is a great way to tell that story, and a great way for us to be able to relate. And when we're able to do that, we build connection and we build I would say strength within that person because they've been able to tell their story and a room full of people have held it.

Ruby Singh: People are holding that story and also seeing their own connection with it. When once we start holding other people's story, we can, we start to see connection. We start to see all these ways and these ideas of how we would wanna hate each other start to melt. And so that, that is one of the kind of ways that it moves towards I think a laboratory practice.

Ruby Singh: And I think the kind of key with myself and the crew of people that I was working with and continue to work with [00:29:00] is we try and bring those into marginalized communities because those are the places where power is purposefully trying to either stamp out our take, take away.

Ruby Singh: And there's a when I think about power, I often think, I'm always thinking about it on three levels of thinking about systemic, interpersonal and our personal power. And if we can there's levels of systemic power where, generationally we can create change and we can like move towards stuff.

Ruby Singh: Interpersonal, we have a bit of control over that, but our personal power is what's gonna give us that. Ability to navigate through the world to be able to center ourselves in our own magnetic north and move to move from that place. And so that's what I mean by that line from my bio... sorry, that was a big ass roundabout way to say, when I was talking about... 

Raad Seraj: when I asked, I knew it. There was a very good story there and I think that's really powerful. And I, to me, for the most powerful thing about [00:30:00] what you just said is that when you enable somebody to to tell their own story in the way that feels the most honest, it actually turns all the source of their pain, stress, tension from this arbitrary diffuse source to something that's now more tangible.

Raad Seraj: And once your story becomes very obvious to you and very true to you, you can start asking what are the stories? Are we not telling who stories are, is not being heard? And so then you start to ask, you start to question the real sources of power and like oppression and things like that.

Raad Seraj: So, absolutely coming. Okay. So talking about personal story and liberation. And not to put words in your mouth. Let's talk about your most meaningful psychedelic experience. 

Ruby Singh: Gotta narrow it down to one 

Raad Seraj: set of experiences, however you wanna describe it. 

Ruby Singh: Okay. Okay, this one's coming to mind. It's definitely one of the most powerful and then I didn't equate it to [00:31:00] something else as well. Sure. Cuz I felt a very similar experience doing this as well, but, I will not recall how old I was. I'm sure it's in my early twenties. And we are in the Wal Brand Valley on the west coast of Vancouver Island.

Ruby Singh: And I am nestled into the roots of an old gro cedar. There's a waterfall not too far from me. And that was my first time experiencing dmt. And inhale, lean back and I hear what I think is a rock. The vi, the vibration of a rock. And then I start to hear the other rocks vibrating.

Ruby Singh: And then the waterfall sound lifts up. And then the resonance of the entire place is building and building. And it's like rocket ship, whatever you wanna call it. It's like we are in the [00:32:00] astro planes. We are existing beyond time, we are existing beyond measure really. And I strangely feel a sense of home and I'm floating.

Ruby Singh: There's various images and veils moving through me. I'm moving through them. And. I get into a little conversation with a spirit, an entity, a reflection however we wanna label it. And very much just like having that feeling of being home. And, and I think I'm like, do I stay here

Ruby Singh: And they're like, oh no. Yeah, you have much work to be done. But and then with blessings be on your way. And then, it's a slow, beautiful come to is I'm in the most, one of the most delightful EC colleges on the planet. And can there's the is that Terrance McKenna, who is all about the Golden Infiniti.

Raad Seraj: Sounds like something you'd say. 

Ruby Singh: [00:33:00] Yeah. Right. So, so that starts to really make sense to me. The idea of cuz I remember a point of it feeling very golden, very like cellularly feeling like a golden spectrum opening. And yeah, so that was probably one of the most powerful psychedelic journeys for me.

Ruby Singh: And interestingly enough, about a year later I'm finishing a fasting period and I am going back and forth between this beautiful cedar sauna and this creek out in the COOs and within the sauna. I'm in prayer and doing month and A very similar thing happens. And again, I feel this ripple of the golden infinity, I move into this expanse and vastness out of time, out of measure.

Ruby Singh: And yeah. So those are the kind of two like really heightened experiences that I was like, oh, this is an amazing [00:34:00] correlation that's happening here as well. Which again, to me speaks about the multifold path to divinity. That there's a million, billion different pathways laid out and, choose which one works for you.

Raad Seraj: They often say that if you do dmt, there's gonna be a flashback later on. Right. But in your case, I wonder. What came first? You sound like you're already primed for spiritual experiences given your awareness of let's say life or how things work or what's really behind the veil, that kind of a thing, so were you more primed for dmt?

Raad Seraj: Did Sikhism make you more primed or did you think as it become more meaningful because of dmt? It's hard to say, right? This is chicken and egg kind of thing. 

Ruby Singh: Yeah. Interwoven, you know what I mean? And if I think about that idea of an interwoven divine resonance kinda sounds like that to me. 

Raad Seraj: There you go, right? Everpresent 

Raad Seraj: what about what about, and if you feel comfortable speaking, [00:35:00] bad trips or challenging trips rather. 

Ruby Singh: Yeah, totally. Definitely. I recall oh man, I think that might be Cortez again.

Ruby Singh: Yeah. And we were up there for I was hanging out with a bunch of European Pagans, at the time . So we're up there for sa which is like a a pagan holiday that Halloween was super superposed over top of. And it's considered to be a time when the veils are the thinnest. And boy did we cook up a lot of mushrooms

Ruby Singh: We made a decent vat of that. And I recall might have been a little bit too much medicine for the people. And I'm always of the ilk that there's something to be learned from any way that the journey goes. I try not to write it off as something that, oh, it happened as the scr moment cuz this thing or X thing was in the way.

Ruby Singh: There's something to be learned there for me. But I remember we are in the midst of the forest where we're camping. Made this kind of mushroom [00:36:00] tea V drank it, and then we're going to this particular place. Future reference, maybe wait till you get to the place

Ruby Singh: You know what I mean? Like things I would do now. I wouldn't necessarily be that smart in my younger twenties. But yeah, we're rolling to this place and on the way there, it's delightful. We're walking through a dark forest and like light bursts are happening to show me the way out of the forest.

Ruby Singh: We're just treking through and it's quite dark and we get to the place and we're hanging out outside and I start to see this like dark gray purplely, like electric situation bouncing around on top of people. . And I could see their body change. And then I, like it was happening to a dear friend and so I was just like, okay, I'm gonna go give him a hug.

Ruby Singh: And I gave him a hug and tried to absorb it. Cause I like that was a way that I could deal with bad juju or whatever. Cause like I'd just absorb it and then I'd [00:37:00] like meditate and bring in all that, all the like kind of strength that I know exists in the universe around me as well. And yeah, and it took me a long time and I felt this just like churning inside of me of this energy.

Ruby Singh: And, it took my mind to all kinds of dark places. And then there was an eventual pop that happened where it spirited and the rest of the night got much better. That would be one. And then like I got involved with psychedelics as I would say, as an escape route, as a teenager for sure.

Ruby Singh: Out of circumstance. So, there were some kind of rough acid trips cuz we were probably getting some dirty shit in the suburbs too. , , dirty suburban acid. Yes. That's, yeah, totally. And and like I said, there's always things to learn from them. There's always things to.

Ruby Singh: Try not to like completely just deny them. Some pretty dark visions can come your way via those things if things aren't aligned in a way. And I think now [00:38:00] I know where my place of psychedelics is. It's very much in the natural world. If I'm in the natural world, I'm like at tuning to to forces that are greater than me and that I'm yeah, less likely to feel these I don't know, the whole idea of dark and light entities is a binary that I don't really buy into myself, but for description sake it becomes the way to talk about it.

Ruby Singh: But yeah, now I really focus on like when I'm going there, what is the environment around me, because as I was saying, this idea of interdependence that we are indeed the world around us, then. I want to prime that instead of it being like a suburb where nature is cemented over and the world is not necessarily in favor of that natural world.

Ruby Singh: I try and bring myself into the natural world before I'm going into psychedelics. And that's the things that come along with grays, I [00:39:00] think, is that now we set ourselves up in those environments. 

Raad Seraj: That's a very interesting observation because I think when we, a lot of us decide to take these medicines or substances, we naturally are inclined to be in nature, but what is it about the urban built, chaotic city environment that actually is, feels very threatening, feels very hostile and.

Raad Seraj: If you think about infrastructure as a superposition of the mind, imposition of the mind rather. Yeah. Then you think of the urban environment as hostile because it's been built from that very consciousness alert, problem solving, practical perspective, which is detached into a visualistic, right? It's all organized and it's not a bad thing.

Raad Seraj: I know I would rather have street, traffic lights. 

Ruby Singh: Definitely . 

Raad Seraj: I think, when we open up our minds and to greater stimuli and we seek the, let's just say the natural programming that we've all been born with, civilizational, humanity like human [00:40:00] level programming that we've been blessed with.

Raad Seraj: I think we, we want to go back to our resonance, which is calm. It feels something just that's connected in a deeper way that we don't find in our regular day to day life. Default mode of consciousness. 

Ruby Singh: Definitely, and shadow to rave culture and I was a little raver as well. So, that's the place that I found like, a safer place to, in, in urban settings to explore psychedelics.

Ruby Singh: But having the ability to like, have pumping music and dancing and like visuals and like the whole thing being, and quite a communal activity again, is you're feeling interconnected in those spaces quite often. And then probably my favorite are, this is like a West coast favorite is bush RAs, right?

Ruby Singh: Is where the rave is actually situated in this natural place. And we're able to kind have the best of both of those worlds is definitely also been another place where I have been on various psychedelic journey. 

Raad Seraj: Raves have always been a refuge [00:41:00] for outliers, outsiders, people who never felt part of a bigger community.

Raad Seraj: And raves weren't that thing when they first started. There were these dilapidated buildings and warehouses and stuff, like places where nobody would go. Cuz you can't, developers are like, oh, this is a hostile place. Whatever. That's where people went. . And that's where you found community.

Raad Seraj: Cuz everybody's an outsider. And when No, when everybody's an outsider. Nobody's on the outside. Everybody's on the inside. Everybody's part of that community. It's beautiful. Yeah. Last weekend just couple of days ago, Hold on. Today's Monday, two days ago,

Raad Seraj: Theres a festival that started I think during the pandemic or right before called the Geri Art Crawl and Gary Avenue. I used to live by there before I moved to Calgary two years ago. And I moved back. Now it's like one of the last few places in Toronto that is still lots, got lots of warehouses, lots of like mixed housing between industrial, residential, old, multistory, like low income housing and things like that. People who've owned homes there for decades. And now it's because artists have been [00:42:00] pushed out of every corner of the city. They're going and occupying these warehouses, turning them to ice cream shops, restaurants, artist studios. And so Geary Art Crawl is this long stretch of of a street that's was taken over for the weekend, and you had these crazy graffiti field alleys full of ra, raves.

Raad Seraj: You had street art, you had all the wacky things and it, the people that pulled in it made me think, oh man, this is a true essence of a beautiful city where you have a sense of community, but also creative friction. It's not overproduced. It's not glossy, it's real. They can touch it, you can feel it.

Raad Seraj: It's, and that's what raves are. And you could replicate and emulate. In a lot of places. But I think just going back to your point about raves, I think a lot of people misunderstand it. 

Ruby Singh: Again, you have this place where you are falling into trance repetitive rhythm, you are following melody. You are with a group of people that are also wanting to go there. And you're doing it over an extended period of time. I think they're [00:43:00] both like reaching for the ecstatic. Reaching toward this goal of the ecstatic.

Raad Seraj: Riz Ahmed has this line from one of his songs, he says, from the mosque to the mosh pit. I love that. 

Ruby Singh: Oh, that's amazing. 

Raad Seraj: Let's switch gears a little bit because I want talk about, the artist that you are now and why art is so important. We are both very imbued into this psychedelic, let's just say collage for the lack of a better word in different ways. Yeah. But different people based on, depending on where they are, where they stand, they will say psychedelic movement, psychedelic sector, industry, ecosystem. Do any of these words resonate with you? And if not, or if they do, why? I

Ruby Singh: think of more than any of that, the word culture might resonate with me the most. Mostly cuz it's a group of people with similar interests whether that's, transversing, the heights of, and, of consciousness and seeking new forms [00:44:00] of consciousness or seeking towards new forms of consciousness within yourself.

Ruby Singh: Cause I don't know. sometimes think I. We self importance, important size ourselves, a bit much. And we think a bit much of ourselves that we're like transversing new planes and we're inventing these, we're tapping into higher forms of consciousness than ever before. And I'm like are you though or are we a kind of another human manifestation of exploring consciousness and finding maybe a route that is very old and has existed within many societies for.

Ruby Singh: Thousands and thousands of years. So, that's maybe why I'm not super comfortable with industry because it lloyds to the world of capitalism and free market. And me and you have gotten into plenty of discussions about that. So we won't rock your listeners with that right now. But I like the idea.

Ruby Singh: I could live with ecosystem as well because it's complexity. [00:45:00] It's got a very diverse notion of how we come to it and how we might all still arrange ourselves to be able to create, an ecology of thinking around it as opposed to there's one. Straight capitalistic route to having an empire that sells psychedelics.

Ruby Singh: It's gonna be like Spotify for mushrooms. . Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I'd say ecosystem and culture are like the words that I would feel the most comfortable because they encompass within themselves a wide scale of looking at it and a wide scale of interacting with psychedelics and psychedelic culture.

Raad Seraj: I like culture because inherent to culture is this constant negotiation of values and the ways people show up. Systems show up, and it is important that it's a negotiation because, inherent to negotiating a future or interpretation of the present is , multiple interpretations or multiple [00:46:00] values, multiple, like realities, right? I always joke that you can't spell culture without cult. It's important that these are not cults, it's a culture. Yeah. Right? Okay, in the last sort of 10 minutes or so that we have left, I think it's really 

Ruby Singh: wait. Let's hang out on culture for just one more second here. Just cuz with all that we are learning about mushrooms and, this is also a popular thing and I would implore everybody who's looking at psychedelics as an industry to also learn from mushrooms and learn from mycellium. And understand the woven interconnected nourishment that psychedelics can be for humanity.

Ruby Singh: And that, that is my greatest hope is that it's a place of nourishment and transformation for the age that we're living in, which is like we've seen where the capitalist dream takes us. And it's not far. And we've seen, we're looking at the ecological crisis we're facing right now. And so please, if industry is the term [00:47:00] that you use, please learn from these.

Ruby Singh: Because, we, I think even if you relate to it as industry, if you relate to it as a through a business framework, we, I think we can all agree that we are learning from these entities, these medicines. And if we can learn about my and the interwoven interconnectedness that is, One of the greatest hopes that I have for the psychedelic culture and movement is that it allows us to tap into a consciousness that's wider than the human network.

Ruby Singh: That's more than human. That we are seeing how we are interconnected and affecting the ecology and the world around us, and what are ways that we can weave those in. Even if you are coming from a free market philosophy and you're entering into this space, even if you're coming from a [00:48:00] socialist perspective and you're coming into this place, even if you're coming from all these varying perspectives, let's see how we can weave these together for the betterment of humanity and not the betterment of stockholders necessarily.

Raad Seraj: Very well said. And I think just to add to what you just described here, ultimately it'd be really ironic that, the thing that opens up your mind. You actually are holding onto. It's deeply ironic that people, it really is nothing more ideological. Yeah. And that can happen.

Raad Seraj: And so just to add to your point, ultimately we have to be open minded. And that is not to tolerate bullshit. That does not mean you tolerate bullshit. It's like you, you speak up and you fight, but also ideology is what got us into this mess. Not being able to see, to your point, the interconnectedness, the complexity, and we have to remain humble at the helm of things we don't understand. Even if you are, a hyper rationalist coming from a pure [00:49:00] scientific sort of perspective or business. To me, good art and good science, there's no difference because both beautiful. The uncertainty and the limits of experience and knowledge.

Ruby Singh: And the question is the most exciting part. 

Raad Seraj: Exactly. And that is what is truly beautiful. Like whether you are, when Sasha Shulgin was studying creating novel molecules and the first time he created MDMA and Sasha would experience these things together with their friends, they weren't like, okay, I feel the molecules.

Raad Seraj: They're like, wow, holy crap. My mind is capable of so much. How is that different from being on top of a mountain and being completely overwhelmed by the beauty and majesty of nature and things like that? Right. So beautiful. I really love the way you described that. Let's come back to ultimately the power of art.

Raad Seraj: And I wanna ask you, as a practicing artist that s so powerful and so well spoken and has a very strong conviction in the arts and culture. In this very [00:50:00] chaotic, uncertain just, confusing time that we live in. , what role does art and culture play, whether it's in sense making, whether it's experiential art, whether it's immerser immersion and something.

Raad Seraj: Immersive art is everything now, but really what role does immersive art and culture and storytelling play in this very hyper convulated times you live in?

Ruby Singh: Big question. I think I need, I'll break it down into scale. Let's start at the personal. For us as individuals, I feel expression can be a place of solace and birth of imagination. So we can find solace in the art we create, or we can find solace in the art that other people have created. It can bring us peace, it can bring us rage, it can be an exploration of the human emotions.

Ruby Singh: And that's one of the, I think, most beautiful things about art, how it continues to be this extension [00:51:00] of human emotion, whether that's from devotion to rage, to ecstatic to joy, to soro. Art really has an ability for us to extend either into us, into our emotional escapee or for our emotional landscape to extend out, I think inter.

Ruby Singh: And then when I start to think about weaving it and how it, its role in the world, I think at the Imagine It, I think of the possibility, how it can really fold out possibility. It can give us new directions or new ideas. Ultimately a, it's a tool in creativity on it can give us from goal posts for us to reach towards.

Ruby Singh: If we're thinking about futurism and that side of art and how we're like trying to see a future where we can exist to the. Being able to connect [00:52:00] us, being able to bring us together. One of the interesting things that I find sometimes is sometimes you can categorize, and it quite happened bringing this full circle back to being in our teenage years, how we'd almost categorize ourselves around the music we'd listened to.

Ruby Singh: And art can bring us together, but, all depending, and it very much is a tool that way and it's depending how we're using that tool, it can be used within whatever the intention of that user is. My hopes are that it's used to connect us more, to bring us closer to ourselves, and bring us closer to.

Ruby Singh: Incredible gift of living on this planet. And it can be an expression of that and to draw people closer to that gift. And in my kind of most recent work that I'm working on right now called Polyphonic Garden that is how I'm approaching through an audio visual [00:53:00] poetic reach into exploring this feeling of being interdependent, exploring this feeling of being interwoven.

Ruby Singh: And it's really interesting when we start to think about art and copyright and where that starts to exist because, and that's the tension I feel inside a lot with myself lately, is how can I claim any ownership when. There's no way this exists without the rest of my world. There's no way, like all of a sudden there's this like individual bouncing around that the ideas are sprouting at or no, I am rooted and interwoven in a community, in an ecology, in a planet that is asking this to emerge from me.

Raad Seraj: It's very mycelial in that you are a fruit of that connection at the most, and so am I, so is [00:54:00] humanity. 

Ruby Singh: At the most. Yeah, absolutely. I love that. I'm so we're just trying to fruit over here, man. 

Raad Seraj: modify up mushrooms is what I took away from this conversation, and that's gonna be in the title

Ruby Singh: I'm into it, I'm. 

Raad Seraj: Ruby, when we spoke about you on the podcast, I knew it was gonna be awesome, but this has surpassed what I expected. So I'm deeply grateful for your friendship and for your wisdom and your knowledge and the immense amount of creativity and poetry that you hold.

Raad Seraj: Thanks so much for being here and spending the time. 

Ruby Singh: Raad, it is such a pleasure getting to know you more and more, and I am just I'm grateful Kimmy put our paths to cross each other and looking forward to walking those with you. Blessed to be here. Thank you. 

Raad Seraj: Thanks Kim again, and thanks Ruby.

Ruby Singh: Big love, brother.

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