001 - Psychedelic Thinking and the Dawn of Homo Cyber

Program Notes §

Guest speaker: Lorenzo

A talk by Lorenzo presented at the Mind States II conference in Berkeley, California in May of 2001.
Full text of Lorenzo’s talk

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Transcript §

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Greetings from cyberdelic space.

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I’m Lorenzo and I’ll be your host for today’s edition of the Psychedelic Salon.

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Our program today is titled Psychedelic Thinking and the Dawn of Homo Cyber.

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And it’s part of a series of audio recordings from our website, palancanorte.org.

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There you can find talks given by Eric Davis, Bruce Dahmer, Daniel Pinchbeck, Terrence McKenna, and many others.

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I’ll tell you more about Planque Norte at the end of today’s program, but for right now, let’s just get into the presentation.

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And this is a talk that I gave at the end of May in 2001, less than four months before the events of September 11th, I might point out.

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Now, this talk was given at the MindStates2 conference being held in Berkeley, California that Memorial Day weekend, and it came near the end of the

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conference, right after a presentation by an esteemed panel of elders. In this talk,

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I presented my personal concept of a psychedelic thinker, and I hope you’ll enjoy it.

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This comes at the end of the weekend, which has been kind of a psychedelic weekend, to say the least.

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But the more I got thinking about it, the subject, the topic I want to talk about, psychedelic thinking.

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Psychedelic thinking is really like this beautiful multifaceted jewel that we all hold up and illuminate with our own consciousness.

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And so it’s a little different for each and every one of us. And like all of you, I’ve come to my view of this beautiful jewel by personal experience,

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by reading books, talking with elders,

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but probably more than anything from visiting and meeting other psychonauts like yourself.

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Because that’s what I see as the real value of these conferences,

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where we can get together and exchange one-on-one experiences,

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and that’s what we’re really all about.

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So today, I would like to present a mosaic that’s made of many pieces.

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Some of these pieces I’ve crafted myself.

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Many pieces have come from books from the elders,

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but most of them have come from interactions with you all.

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And when we’re done with this conference this weekend we can take

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all these pieces back home including myself and rearrange them into other pictures but for today

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this is my view of psychedelic thinking at at this particular moment in time i think that it’s safe

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to say dickens can you hear me in the back okay okay the i think it’s safe to say that dickens

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famous line these are the best of, these are the best of times,

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these are the worst of times, have probably never been so true. But at the very least,

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I believe we can all agree, these are extremely interesting times. You know, it’s this magical

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time that doesn’t come very often in the course of the human history. It’s a time between ages.

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The industrial age, with its materialistic outlook

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and its scientific progress and its wage slavery, is starting to recede into the background.

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And up ahead of us, we see this new thing called the information age, which isn’t very

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clearly defined yet, but it is clearly defined that we are at this stage between ages right

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now. And before long, we’re going to be posed right between the midpoint of these two ages,

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and we’re either going to go boldly into the future

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or sink down into some quicksand wellhole of Western civilization and pseudo-democracy and chaos.

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I mean, we’re at a very important time in the history of this planet,

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and particularly of the history of our species.

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Under the best of times category comes the things like human knowledge is doubling

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almost every ten years now.

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And we are more and more coming into contact with people like us,

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not necessarily all psychedelic people, but people that are achieving global views

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and starting to see that what we do in our daily lives has an effect on the other side of the planet.

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And people are becoming a little more introspective.

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And I think that really is a best-of-time scenario.

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But then there’s the worst of times, and that list is really quite long.

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It’s been touched on several times this weekend.

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Basically, I see one of the biggest problems we’re facing is the overpopulation of this

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planet by our own species.

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We have actually altered the balance of life in

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the biosphere because of our own actions. And we’re in the midst of the worst mass extinction

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of species since an asteroid or meteorite hit this planet 65 million years ago. We are at a

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species extinction rate that is unequaled since then. Only this time, we’re the meteor. We have to realize

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that we are the meteor this time. And the overpopulation and encroachment on species,

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plant, and animal habitats, along with our pollution, has actually changed the biosphere

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to where it’s in a decline. That some estimates of species extinction rates go to as high as 100 per hour. But even at the lowest estimate of species

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extinction rate, 20 species have gone extinct since the panel of elders began their talk.

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We have lost at least 20 species. During the course of this conference, somewhere between 330

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and 5,500 species will become extinct, never again to be seen in living form on this planet.

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Now, people say, well, how does that affect me?

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You know, a few plants and insects and going out of existence on the planet.

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How can that affect me?

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Every time we lose a species, our biosphere becomes more rigid.

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And if there’s fewer opportunities for life to express itself,

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when the inevitable ecological accidents occur,

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it’s going to be much more difficult each time to recover.

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Recently, the theory of keystone species has been established pretty well now,

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and a keystone species is one which, if it’s removed from an ecosystem,

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the entire ecosystem collapses.

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Once these ecosystems and species are gone, particularly a keystone

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species, they’re gone forever. We’ll never see them again in living form, and we don’t know

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their importance until they are gone. It was about a little over a year ago, I was at a conference,

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actually in this area, the Ayahuasca Conference that I know many of you were at too. And at that

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conference, Constance Grouds asked what I think is one of the

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most important and obvious questions I’ve heard in many years. She said, why haven’t we saved the

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rainforest by now? Now, that’s a pretty good question. We’ve known about this for a long time.

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This is a question we have to ask not of ourselves individually as much as our whole species. You

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know, why haven’t we done that? For our species, I think, and for this biosphere to have

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any chance of a long-term recovery

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is we’re going to have to

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answer questions like that

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in a little different way. And I think

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there’s a lot of reasons why

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we haven’t saved the rainforest by now,

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but they all circle back to the problem

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that most of the people in charge

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of solving these problems think

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in the same way as the people

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that created these problems. And I think that it’s time for our species, if it’s going to have any

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hope of long-term survival, we’re going to have to become psychedelic thinkers as a species. We’re

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going to have to expand our species consciousness to see the big picture. And the word, the topic

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of psychedelic thinking is obviously so big it could cover weeks of conferences.

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So I’m going to confine myself to just five little sections,

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and I’ll touch on each one of these points,

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and hopefully we’ll have a little time at the end for questions.

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But the first part is I’m going to talk about my view of what psychedelic thinking encompasses.

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I’m going to talk about ideas of where I see psychedelic thinking fitting into today’s culture.

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And then my favorite new topic is what I consider the dawn of a new species,

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and it’s not a transhuman species, it’s a metahuman species.

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And then what’s at stake at this moment in time?

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And then in the few minutes left, I will try to leave you with some of my guerrilla tactics for psychedelic thinkers, which you may find interesting.

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First of all, I want to clarify one thing.

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Just using a substance doesn’t automatically make someone a psychedelic thinker

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any more than reading the Bible makes somebody a Christian. There’s a lot of work that

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has to be done, a lot of commitment. And so, these are my views of

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a psychedelic thinker, but I think a psychedelic thinker has to do a little

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bit more than just take a magic pill, go into another state, and come back and say, I’m a psychedelic thinker.

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This is my view. A lot of people don’t agree with this. But I think that psychedelic thinking

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begins in the place, I call it in theospace. In my book, I’ve used that term simply because

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it’s difficult if people have never been there to know what we’re talking about.

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And I’ve played on the word entheogen,

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and theospace to me is essentially that sense of place that you feel when you’re doing a real deep inner exploration of your own inner landscape,

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and all of a sudden you have that aha moment,

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and you see there’s a whole universe there.

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And that’s what I call entheospace.

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If you’re more technically inclined, you can think

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of in theospace as an operating environment in which consciousness operates. Many types of

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consciousness live and interact in this space. Now, just like most of the speakers this weekend,

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it’s not about how you get into this space. You can use chemicals, you can use plants,

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meditation, yoga, and before long, some of the new virtual reality

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devices I’m sure will be classified as digital drugs. There’s going to be a lot of ways to alter

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your consciousness to get into in theospace. But no matter how you arrive, what I’d like to do

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is concentrate on what you do after entering in theospace, because it’s not until you get there

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that the possibility for psychedelic thinking can begin.

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So my view centers around a lot of things,

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but it was an interesting twist I heard recently.

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There was a conference Normal put on in Washington that was on ESPN,

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and Gary Johnson, the governor of New Mexico, made a statement.

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I don’t know if it’s his original, but he said, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and over again

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and expecting different results each time.

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By that definition, our species is pretty borderline insane,

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and this country, I think, definitely qualifies.

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The reason, I think, that we keep doing that

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is because we don’t see the big picture.

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It’s like the story of, like we’re all flatlanders.

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As you recall the story of Flatland, it was a two-dimensional world, and they only had two

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dimensions. So everybody was a cube or a square or a rectangle, and one day a spear comes and visits

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Flatland. Of course, he looks like a circle to the people at Flatland, and he’d move up and down his

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three dimensions, and the circle would get bigger or littler but he couldn’t describe to the flatlanders what their true reality was because they didn’t have the the language for it

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so one day he took a flatlander and moved him up to the third dimension where he could see the true

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reality of his existence and it’s only by being lifted to a higher dimension that we can really

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see the true reality of our existence and and as virtually every one of the elders talked about,

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the reality of our existence is we are the same being. We are part of the same consciousness.

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We really are one. We are the earth, and the earth is us. And when we harm the biosphere,

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we’re harming ourselves. And it’s only at that higher dimension, I believe, that it’s easier,

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or at least possible, to understand the interconnectedness of life and what our real situation is.

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Now, it’s from this dimension, I think, is where we first get this feeling.

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We grok it.

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But then the job of a psychedelic thinker, as I see it, is to start bringing this sense back down to this plane

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and trying to put into words and actions

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what we really feel up in that space.

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Psychedelic thinking is what brought

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all of us here together this weekend.

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The subtitle of this conference,

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Investigations on Further Perspectives

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and Altered Consciousness.

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Now, this is definitely

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a psychedelic thinking group.

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You’re not out doing the normal

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holiday weekend thing. So it’s already in a psychedelic crowd group. You’re not out doing the normal holiday weekend thing.

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So it’s already in a psychedelic crowd, if you will. We’re here because we’re all explorers

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searching for new ways of being. Henry James, the writer, the brother of William James,

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probably commenting on his brother’s work, once said, the most profound discovery of my generation is that simply by changing one’s

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thinking, one can change one’s entire life. And that is really the core of psychedelic thinking.

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A psychedelic thinker understands, truly understands the unlimited power of consciousness.

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And a little twist I’m adding to the concept of psychedelic thinking from my perspective

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is I don’t see a psychedelic thinker as merely somebody sitting around thinking.

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I really think it’s a psychedelic thinker-doer,

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because unless you engage some of this thinking and try to put it into action

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and try to put it into words, try to live it,

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that you’re not quite, in my definition, a psychedelic thinker,

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because a psychedelic thinker I because a psychedelic thinker, I see, is a person of action,

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somebody that can skillfully navigate the deep reaches,

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farther reaches of entheospace,

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and then actively, actively participate in the evolution of consciousness itself.

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Now, the work begins for a psychedelic thinker,

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the real hard work begins by asking that first question,

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why do I believe what I believe? And this is my starting point with a lot of people who I have very different

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opinions of that sort of attack my beliefs, is the first question I ask them is, why do you believe

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what you believe? And you’d be amazed at how that starts turning your thinking around. And this is

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what happens to psychedelic thinkers and people in a theospace. You start questioning, why do I believe what I believe? The people

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who have, you know, they come back and they have all the final answers are not necessarily,

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I don’t see, as psychedelic thinkers. Because psychedelic thinkers realize that the truth

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is ever shifting and changing. And the people that have absolutes and the absolute with

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the mystery of life, they come back and form religions. And the people that have absolutes and the absolute with the mystery of life,

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they come back and form religions.

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And I really think psychedelic thinkers

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are beyond some of those earthly absolutes.

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You know, babies are born,

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as Sasha was just pointing out,

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babies are born as psychedelic thinkers.

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Some of them actually remain that way.

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Like the Dalai Lama, I think,

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has maintained filter-free.

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He’s still a psychedelic thinker.

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He was as an infant.

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But most people, myself included,

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eventually start conforming to our culture.

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And, you know, culture is sort of an insidious thing.

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It begins, you know, the children are the why people.

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You know, why is the sky blue?

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Why do I have to go to church?

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Why do I have to go to school?

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Why, why, why?

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And eventually, even the best of us parents will finally say one day, because I told you so, that’s why. I mean, that

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just happens. And that’s when those filters of culture start coming in, and the children start

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realizing that maybe it’s just easier to go along if I want to get along. And so we’re in these

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prisons that we incarnated in, and it’s very difficult to break out of these prisons.

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In fact, most people wind up trusting their culture

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over their personal experience.

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And that’s true, I believe, of the current war on drugs.

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A lot of people who have no personal experience with drugs

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still think reaper madness is scientific evidence.

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And that’s, you know, they’re trusting the culture.

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And psychedelic thinkers are exactly the opposite,

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because psychedelic thinkers are into personal experience.

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You know, if we only had one culture on this earth as a survival strategy,

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trusting the culture would probably work okay.

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But we have a lot of different cultures.

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We have fundamentalist religious cultures that go out and blow out 2,000-year-old statues

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because it conflicts with their religion.

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And by the way, a little aside here,

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the money that went for those shells that blew up those 2,000-year-old Buddhas,

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part of that came from the $43 million, our tax dollars,

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that were sent to them in the war on drugs.

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So we are actually, our nation is participating in the destruction of that art.

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It’s terrible, this war that we’re in.

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But the common element among a lot of these cultures,

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whether it’s a fundamentalist religious culture or a corporate culture,

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the common element of most cultures is the people are taught to trust in the culture,

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in others’ beliefs, above and beyond their own experience.

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And the fundamental aspect of psychedelic thinking

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is experience comes before all other people’s beliefs. Personal experience comes before belief.

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So I think constantly we have to ask, why do we believe what we do?

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At that conference, that ayahuasca conference, Tony Rich made a statement that resonated with everyone

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there. And so simple, the words are so simple. And I think that they’re very profound and only

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psychedelic people will understand it. But he said, we do know what we know. And that’s something that

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we all resonate. We know what we know, but we’re now coming back to flatland and we don’t have the

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vocabulary to bring into words what we know. And we don’t even can’t express it other than we know, but we’re now coming back to flatland and we don’t have the vocabulary to bring into words what we know. And we don’t even

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can’t express it other than we know it. And that’s why I say psychedelic thinkers

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are the most green people on earth. The psychedelic thinkers don’t

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read the Wall Street Journal and say, well, maybe they’re right. Maybe this one

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scientist hadn’t signed on to the 700 UN scientists that say we’re in global

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warming right now. Maybe we’ve got to study it more. Now, psychedelic thinkers, if you’ve been doing

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theospace, you know we have an ecological crisis. And our job is to put this information in some

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way into words and action, which brings me to the next little subtopic, where psychedelic

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thinking can fit into our culture today. And someone asked that question. I was almost like I’d set them up to ask it, I guess.

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But I think there is a place for it.

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When I think of American culture,

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one of the first things that comes to mind is a line from that old Talking Heads song,

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and the line goes,

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My God, what have I done?

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We have the highest standard of living in the world,

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and yet we are polluting the world at a rate far ahead of anybody else.

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Are these two inexorably linked?

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Is high standard of living pollution tied together by some natural law?

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Or is it our culture that links these things together?

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Now, I once heard Terence McKenna say, culture is the ultimate cult.

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And I think he was right on there.

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You know, culture is what teaches us what to believe

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and what to question and what to think about,

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what to dream about, what to avoid.

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Psychedelic thinking did try to enter the culture in the 1960s.

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There was a lot of young people,

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especially when LSD was still legal,

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that took LSD and other substances,

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went into entheospace, became very psychedelic.

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But when they tried to bring some of those emotions back into the world, they caused great

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clashes. There was tension. There were fights. There were riots. And what happened is our culture

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at that time just wasn’t resilient enough to absorb this type of thinking. Now, I don’t think

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it was a total failure of what happened in the 60s.

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Because at the beginning of the period of the 60s,

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this country had two major subcultures.

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The traditionals, who essentially wanted to go back to some pre-urban,

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mythological, glorious time that never existed.

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And the moderns, who pretty much say,

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well, it’s not too bad the way it is.

00:19:03 ► §

I’m starting to get my share,

00:19:04 ► §

and I want to don’t make too many changes so I can get mine.

00:19:07 ► §

That’s the way our country was at the end of World War II.

00:19:11 ► §

And yet by the end of the 60s, things have changed.

00:19:14 ► §

There’s a book I’ll recommend to you by Sherry Ruth Anderson and Paul Ray called The Cultural Creatives.

00:19:20 ► §

And if you ever get disheartened and say there is no hope, no hope, I’ve been pushing this rock uphill too long, read that book. I think you will be really impressed with the potential we have at this moment in time. And at the end of the 1960s, they discovered that 4% of the people in this country

00:19:46 ► §

had left the traditionals and the moderns and had become what they call a cultural creative.

00:19:52 ► §

And the cultural creatives, as they define them, were people who started to move outside of themselves

00:19:57 ► §

and adopt more of a global perspective, a global worldview.

00:20:01 ► §

And they were more green.

00:20:04 ► §

They were getting beyond environmentalism and moved into ecology and were looking at a bigger

00:20:10 ► §

picture. The really exciting news is the latest round of surveys they did, which was about last

00:20:17 ► §

year, because their book came out in September or October of last year, I believe, they now have

00:20:21 ► §

discovered that the percentage of cultural creatives in this country has risen from 4% in the late 60s to 26% today.

00:20:29 ► §

There are 50 million people in this country, adults, 50 million adults, who share at least part of our worldview right now.

00:20:38 ► §

Now, these are different from the Greens, the New Agers.

00:20:41 ► §

These people come from all walks of life because they’ve evolved there from

00:20:45 ► §

being moderns. And so the cultural creative can be, you know, a liberal, a conservative in an

00:20:51 ► §

organized religion on a private spiritual path. But they, in one way or another, have changed

00:20:56 ► §

their worldview to where they no longer feel like they fit. You know, it’s like being an alien at a

00:21:02 ► §

family gathering, which I suspect one or two others besides myself have felt from time to time.

00:21:07 ► §

Well, now there’s 50 million people out there feeling this way,

00:21:10 ► §

and the biggest weakness, maybe fatal weakness, is almost to a person,

00:21:14 ► §

they think they’re the only ones.

00:21:16 ► §

They’re the only ones in their family, the only ones they know about at work,

00:21:18 ► §

the only ones in their neighborhood or school or whatever.

00:21:20 ► §

Everybody feels isolated, and yet one in every four adult Americans

00:21:24 ► §

is ready

00:21:25 ► §

at least to listen to the truth, to see what’s out there.

00:21:28 ► §

They’re found everywhere.

00:21:30 ► §

I’d like to read a quote from their book, just to give you, from Ray and Anderson’s

00:21:34 ► §

book, The Cultural Creatives, to give you a concept of what happens to these moderns

00:21:38 ► §

when they get there.

00:21:39 ► §

They say, most of us change our worldview only once in our lifetime, if we do it all,

00:21:44 ► §

because it changes virtually once in our lifetime, if we do at all, because it changes

00:21:45 ► §

virtually everything in our consciousness. When you make this shift, you change your sense of who

00:21:49 ► §

you are and who you are related to, what you are willing to see, and how you interpret it, your

00:21:55 ► §

priorities for action and the way you want to live. Regardless of whether you leave your home, change

00:22:01 ► §

your job, or switch your career path, if your worldview changes, it changes everything.

00:22:07 ► §

Now, my guess is most everybody here today is a cultural creative.

00:22:11 ► §

Because if you weren’t, you’d be in American mainstream culture,

00:22:14 ► §

and you’d be at the beach eating unhealthy hot dogs,

00:22:17 ► §

or you’d be watching grown people drive around in a circle real fast,

00:22:20 ► §

and all the stuff that we do on this traditional holiday weekend

00:22:22 ► §

with our time, our very valuable, precious time.

00:22:25 ► §

But you’re here because you have a different worldview.

00:22:28 ► §

You are really here, whether you’ve thought about this or not,

00:22:31 ► §

is because you are consciously evolving on a daily basis

00:22:35 ► §

really into a new being.

00:22:38 ► §

Which brings me to my favorite topic right now,

00:22:41 ► §

is the dawn of a new species.

00:22:44 ► §

And I’m going to make it real clear up

00:22:46 ► §

front, I’m not talking about a transhuman. Now, I can argue that on both sides, and I have. I really

00:22:52 ► §

think there’s some interesting thoughts about that. But I’m talking about maybe a step between,

00:22:57 ► §

or maybe a final step instead of, what I call a metahuman. I think everybody agrees right now,

00:23:07 ► §

I call a metahuman. I think everybody agrees right now, even the forces of darkness that are running things in Washington, in their private moments, have to agree that globally something’s

00:23:12 ► §

got to give eventually. Population can’t keep going up, pollution can’t keep going, eventually

00:23:17 ► §

something’s got to give, no matter who you are. Our lives are so stressed, extinction rates are high.

00:23:22 ► §

Now for a moment here, I’m going to ask everybody in this audience to use a little of your abilities of psychedelic thinking and don’t react in

00:23:30 ► §

shock to what I’m going to say, but expand your consciousness and think about this. What

00:23:35 ► §

if the very worst predictions about what’s happening ecologically are true? What if our

00:23:41 ► §

species, the human species, becomes extinct?

00:23:48 ► §

Now, is that really necessarily a bad thing?

00:23:53 ► §

Let me point out, well, I don’t mean it quite that harshly,

00:23:56 ► §

because I want to stay around too.

00:24:00 ► §

But historically, if you look at the, if you back up to,

00:24:04 ► §

instead of our little short-term 50, 100-year lifespan view of the world,

00:24:08 ► §

if you look at things on a macro level where you’re looking at millions of years,

00:24:11 ► §

historically, every large-scale extinction on this planet has brought with it, afterwards, a very positive change.

00:24:15 ► §

After the worst extinction we’ve ever had came the rise of mammals.

00:24:20 ► §

After the mass extinction when the dinosaurs were lost,

00:24:26 ► §

what came after that?

00:24:26 ► §

primates now we are now in the middle

00:24:30 ► §

in the midst of the biggest mass extinction

00:24:32 ► §

since the primates arose

00:24:34 ► §

so what’s going to happen

00:24:35 ► §

after this mass extinction ends

00:24:37 ► §

and it will eventually end

00:24:39 ► §

what’s going to happen?

00:24:41 ► §

I agree with most of the people that spoke here

00:24:43 ► §

that if you have a high opinion of consciousness,

00:24:49 ► §

that we just can’t assume that we’re the end of conscious evolution.

00:24:53 ► §

Are we the highest pinnacle with all our wars and fighting and everything we do?

00:24:57 ► §

Consciousness is constantly seeking higher levels.

00:25:00 ► §

So I really don’t think we are the end of it.

00:25:02 ► §

And when the dust clears after this species extinction,

00:25:06 ► §

my concept is a new species will be walking this earth, a new primate,

00:25:11 ► §

and it’s one I call homo-cyber.

00:25:14 ► §

The term actually isn’t mine.

00:25:17 ► §

It goes back, the farthest back I’ve found it so far is in the writings of Marshall McLuhan.

00:25:21 ► §

And I’ve seen a number of people talk about homo-cyber this and homo-cyber that, and everybody assumes that we all know what homo-cyber is. But I haven’t found

00:25:29 ► §

anybody that defined it, so I thought, well, why don’t I just do that? So this is not a universal

00:25:34 ► §

definition. This is just Hagerty’s idea of it right now. I see homo-cyber as a new form of being

00:25:42 ► §

that’s part human and part information and is a full-fledged,

00:25:47 ► §

100% dyed-in-the-wool psychedelic thinker. And I’ll explain this in a little bit more detail,

00:25:52 ► §

but I see a homo-cyber as different from the homo-sapiens walking out in the street today

00:25:59 ► §

as we are today from chimpanzees. But here’s the very important point. I think this is crucial to the whole concept of this evolution of consciousness.

00:26:09 ► §

Consciousness itself has now actually entered into the processes of evolution.

00:26:13 ► §

Look what we’re doing with genetic research and gene splicing and nanotechnology.

00:26:18 ► §

All of these consciously evolved technologies and processes

00:26:22 ► §

are actually interacting in evolution itself.

00:26:25 ► §

And now that consciousness has taken a part in evolution, we are seeing for the very first

00:26:30 ► §

time a speciation that’s taking place by self-selection.

00:26:35 ► §

It’s not some earthquake that separates two parts of a herd and there’s a genetic mutation

00:26:39 ► §

and one becomes this new species branching off.

00:26:42 ► §

Homo cyber is a new species that is coming into being by self-selection.

00:26:48 ► §

And I think it’s interesting that it’s happening

00:26:49 ► §

right at this point in time

00:26:51 ► §

when things are getting so chaotic.

00:26:54 ► §

Evolution really demands

00:26:55 ► §

that something like this happen

00:26:57 ► §

because evolution always dances

00:27:00 ► §

right on the edge of chaos.

00:27:01 ► §

That’s where she does her work.

00:27:03 ► §

The rate of change of our scientific

00:27:05 ► §

and technological progress today

00:27:07 ► §

is beyond our comprehension.

00:27:09 ► §

And I’ll explain what I mean by that.

00:27:11 ► §

We know things are speeding up.

00:27:13 ► §

We know technology is improving.

00:27:16 ► §

But what has happened,

00:27:17 ► §

not only is the change in technology exponential,

00:27:21 ► §

but the rate of change itself

00:27:23 ► §

has also become exponential. So if you’re a mathematician,

00:27:26 ► §

you know that double exponential has some very, very strong impact. For example,

00:27:33 ► §

the 100 years that we’re in now, from 2000 to 2100, in that 100-year period of time with a

00:27:40 ► §

double exponential growth in scientific and technological progress means we’re going to experience in 100 years

00:27:45 ► §

the equivalent of 20,000 years of technological progress.

00:27:50 ► §

That means by the year 2025,

00:27:53 ► §

we’re going to experience the same amount of technological progress,

00:27:57 ► §

relatively speaking, that occurred in the entire last century.

00:28:01 ► §

So go back to 1901 and think of no airplanes, no cars,

00:28:04 ► §

no television, radio, no internet, and think of no airplanes, no cars, no television, radio, no

00:28:05 ► §

internet, and think of where we are today. Compress that into 25 years and you’ll see that’s where

00:28:11 ► §

we’re going to be in just 25 years. I’ve heard people talking about nanotechnology and robotics

00:28:16 ► §

and saying, well, yeah, those are dangerous, not going to be there, but it’s 100 years out.

00:28:21 ► §

Well, not according to the curve that we’re on, it’s 25 years out. So I think that we need to

00:28:25 ► §

take into account that metahumans, like homo-cyber, are almost an inevitable result of consciousness

00:28:33 ► §

evolving at this quick rate. Right now, wireless internet is the hot deal, and it’s probably going

00:28:41 ► §

to stay the hot deal. There are estimates that before the next five

00:28:45 ► §

or six years are out, there’ll be over a billion people on this planet connected to the internet

00:28:49 ► §

24 by 7 with a wireless device, and over half of them will be speaking Chinese. This is going to

00:28:54 ► §

spread to the third world. This is not going to be just a rich American play toy. This is really

00:28:59 ► §

happening. If we’re going to experience 100 years of progress in 25 years, and wireless internet

00:29:05 ► §

technology is really already developed, it’s not really perfected, but it’s a lot better than

00:29:10 ► §

most people realize, in 25 years, it’s a trivial problem to have every child, woman, and man on

00:29:16 ► §

this planet with a wireless internet connection, where they have access to unlimited amounts of

00:29:20 ► §

human information, and can always be in contact with their friends, relatives, neighbors,

00:29:21 ► §

unlimited amounts of human information,

00:29:24 ► §

and can always be in contact with their friends, relatives, neighbors,

00:29:26 ► §

and people from all over the world.

00:29:29 ► §

Now, how is it going to change human consciousness when we have a universal wireless connection,

00:29:34 ► §

when wet-wired computers come,

00:29:36 ► §

and I don’t know if you know what that is all about,

00:29:38 ► §

but already a couple years ago, they did work with paraplegics

00:29:40 ► §

by putting electrodes directly on their brain,

00:29:43 ► §

and they can move a cursor around the screen and click a mouse by thought.

00:29:47 ► §

This summer, Kevin Warwick in England is implanting a chip in his arm,

00:29:51 ► §

attaching it to the nerve, and plans to input infrared and sonar signals

00:29:55 ► §

to see if he can read it.

00:29:57 ► §

Wearable computers, I believe this year IBM is coming out with their first wearable computer.

00:30:02 ► §

So it’s only a matter of time before we have our cell phones implanted. You know, if you think junk email is a problem now, wait till you have to

00:30:11 ► §

screen it there. But this is coming. Now, how is this going to change our species consciousness?

00:30:17 ► §

Even if they’re not wet-wired, if all these people are carrying around these devices,

00:30:21 ► §

consciousness is going to change. And if you’re a fan of the television

00:30:25 ► §

program Star Trek, the first thing that has to come to mind is the Borg, right? They’re

00:30:31 ► §

humanoids, they’re part human, they’ve got computers built into their brains, and they’re

00:30:36 ► §

all controlled by this master computer, so they’re not autonomous, they can’t think for

00:30:40 ► §

themselves. I see homo-cyber as the exact opposite of Borg. I see homo-cyber

00:30:46 ► §

as an autonomous being which has that same processing power. See, evolution seems to

00:30:54 ► §

favor more and more complex information processing. We don’t really appreciate, I don’t think,

00:31:00 ► §

our bodies as much as we should. From the DNA in our bodies up through the neurons and

00:31:04 ► §

the chemical processing,

00:31:05 ► §

we’re just information

00:31:06 ► §

processing machines.

00:31:07 ► §

We’re incredible

00:31:08 ► §

processing machines.

00:31:09 ► §

It seems inevitable

00:31:10 ► §

that the wearable,

00:31:11 ► §

wet-wired computers

00:31:12 ► §

are going to evolve

00:31:14 ► §

until we can process

00:31:16 ► §

more and more information.

00:31:17 ► §

The cybernetic part

00:31:18 ► §

is just getting information

00:31:19 ► §

to us and processing it,

00:31:21 ► §

but I still see the human

00:31:22 ► §

being the processor there.

00:31:24 ► §

The psychedelic part,

00:31:25 ► §

though, psychedelic thinking part, in my definition of homo-cyber, I see as crucial to not becoming

00:31:30 ► §

bored. Homo-cyber can, I believe, take information processing to levels that are undreamed of.

00:31:36 ► §

But what’s at stake today, at this pivotal moment of time? We’ve got the industrial age here,

00:31:40 ► §

we’ve got the information age, and we’re poised between it with this big extinction rate of species. We’re really poised, positioned perfectly for evolution to squirt up some kind

00:31:50 ► §

of new intelligent being. If you look at later current studies in evolution, it’s not this slow,

00:31:57 ► §

gradual, smooth line. There are these quantum jumps in evolution. And I think the nucleus for

00:32:02 ► §

homo-cyber already exists in the cultural creatives. The 50 million cultural creatives are all feeling isolated. They’re like in the movie

00:32:09 ► §

2001 with all those people in hibernation. And I see the mission of psychedelic thinkers is to go

00:32:15 ► §

around each one of them and wake them up. Say, hey, we’ve arrived. It’s time to get to work.

00:32:20 ► §

I think that the cultural creatives being open to new ideas, being 50 million of them out there,

00:32:26 ► §

many of them used LSD at one time.

00:32:28 ► §

We’ve got all of these time bombs in corporate America and government.

00:32:31 ► §

You don’t come back from entheospace the same.

00:32:34 ► §

So these are time bombs out there.

00:32:35 ► §

This is why the power elite fears entheogens so much.

00:32:40 ► §

They break down the barriers of culture.

00:32:43 ► §

And once those barriers are down, things can change.

00:32:45 ► §

The status quo is gone.

00:32:47 ► §

And the keepers of the culture are very intent on maintaining the status quo.

00:32:50 ► §

Those are their boundaries.

00:32:52 ► §

We already have enough people to change this entire nation, if not this planet.

00:32:58 ► §

Keep in mind, there were only 56 people who signed the Declaration of Independence.

00:33:03 ► §

And their psychedelic thinking brought on a whole

00:33:06 ► §

new change in consciousness. We’ve got

00:33:08 ► §

many times more of that in this room right now.

00:33:10 ► §

We have enough people in this room

00:33:12 ► §

alone, I think, to alter the

00:33:14 ► §

balance. It’s up to the psychedelic thinkers

00:33:16 ► §

to start contacting

00:33:18 ► §

these sleeping time bombs

00:33:20 ► §

and wake them up to the potential

00:33:22 ► §

of being a homo-cyber.

00:33:24 ► §

Or at least being a psychedelic thinker.

00:33:26 ► §

Our nation is just littered with these idealists,

00:33:29 ► §

former activists from the 60s, socially conscious conservatives even,

00:33:33 ► §

people from all walks of life, many of them thinking it’s just too late,

00:33:36 ► §

I’ve lost my chance, but they still have that little spark in them they had.

00:33:39 ► §

It’s up to the psychedelic thinkers to awaken them

00:33:42 ► §

and to help awaken our whole species from the sleep

00:33:45 ► §

that we’ve been in all these years but it’s up to self-selecting process homo cyber is self-selecting

00:33:50 ► §

you don’t need a wet wire you don’t need a computer you just need to get as much information

00:33:55 ► §

as you can readily get in whatever means you can get and self-select and say i’m going to

00:34:00 ► §

not do these crazy things these homo sapiens have been doing. They don’t make sense.

00:34:05 ► §

And when you make this little mental shift,

00:34:09 ► §

you don’t get quite so uptight about things.

00:34:10 ► §

You say, wow, I’m glad our species doesn’t do that,

00:34:13 ► §

and we’re going to have to get control.

00:34:15 ► §

So there’s some advantages emotionally.

00:34:18 ► §

It’s a very unique situation, I think, in this country.

00:34:21 ► §

I don’t know if it’s ever happened in human history before

00:34:23 ► §

where we have all of these people

00:34:25 ► §

that took LSD and other substances

00:34:27 ► §

once, twice, a dozen times,

00:34:29 ► §

and then haven’t done it

00:34:30 ► §

for all these years.

00:34:31 ► §

Once you’re in theospace,

00:34:32 ► §

in the theospace,

00:34:33 ► §

you don’t forget it.

00:34:34 ► §

You remember what happened there.

00:34:36 ► §

And many of the people that did that

00:34:37 ► §

have now evolved

00:34:38 ► §

into cultural creatives.

00:34:40 ► §

They’re almost mirrors

00:34:41 ► §

of the ancient mummers

00:34:42 ► §

or the medieval mummers.

00:34:43 ► §

Some of you may remember

00:34:44 ► §

that in medieval Ireland, the power elite at the time took,

00:34:49 ► §

instead of, they kind of outlawed the Irish folk tales or folk plays,

00:34:54 ► §

and the mummers would put on morality plays for the peasants

00:34:57 ► §

and trying to brainwash them into a new way of thinking.

00:34:59 ► §

But what they did was a little different.

00:35:01 ► §

They’d put on masks and go to the home of somebody they wanted to teach a lesson,

00:35:05 ► §

and then they’d give them this morality play.

00:35:07 ► §

Now, everybody knew that the people wearing the masks were shopkeepers and town officials.

00:35:12 ► §

They didn’t know exactly who they were.

00:35:13 ► §

They were mummers, and they were putting on morality plays.

00:35:16 ► §

Now, today, I think we have, in fact, let me do it a little aside here,

00:35:19 ► §

because Laura Huxley pointed out something that I had forgotten.

00:35:22 ► §

In fact, I wanted to write this speech a week after their panel

00:35:25 ► §

because I knew I could change some things.

00:35:27 ► §

But she pointed out television.

00:35:29 ► §

Television is a modern-day mummer.

00:35:31 ► §

They’re putting on masks and coming into our homes

00:35:33 ► §

and giving us these morality plays.

00:35:35 ► §

MTV is one of the worst where there are holes in the brain lies about MDMA.

00:35:40 ► §

These mummers are coming in.

00:35:41 ► §

But I see cultural creatives as sort of the mirror image, almost, of the ancient mummers,

00:35:48 ► §

where today’s cultural creatives are putting on masks and going into the dens of the power elite.

00:35:54 ► §

The only thing that’s wrong with that picture is they’re still using the lines the power elite gave them.

00:35:59 ► §

Instead of reciting their own lines, that’s what would make them a perfect mirror image. I think one of the most powerful tools that homo-cyber has in the evolution of consciousness is to teach the modern-day mummers

00:36:11 ► §

who are already in place, wearing their masks in the dens of the power elite, to start reciting

00:36:15 ► §

their own lines, to quit spouting what they get-along, go-along philosophy. You know, these should be

00:36:21 ► §

the best of times. With a double exponential growth in science and technology,

00:36:26 ► §

we should be approaching this wonderful technological singularity

00:36:30 ► §

where something of magnificence goes beyond this event horizon that we can’t even imagine.

00:36:37 ► §

And yet, there’s a cloud on the horizon.

00:36:40 ► §

In fact, about 40 years ago, the cloud was on the horizon.

00:36:44 ► §

It was no bigger than a man’s hand. But ago, the cloud was on the horizon. It was no bigger than a

00:36:45 ► §

man’s hand. But today, that cloud is covering our skies, and it’s the cloud of war. I was

00:36:52 ► §

walking down a beach about a few or three or four weeks ago, and it was just south of a big

00:36:59 ► §

marine base where they were conducting war games, and they were dropping bombs and exploding

00:37:03 ► §

ordnance, and it was very clear on that beach. If you’ve ever been around an ordnance or in a war,

00:37:09 ► §

you know what that sounds like.

00:37:11 ► §

Even though it’s sort of a dull thud from a distance, you recognize it.

00:37:14 ► §

And I looked around on the beach, and nobody seemed to be paying attention to it.

00:37:18 ► §

Now, they just didn’t realize what they’re hearing is the sounds of war,

00:37:23 ► §

and the only time you usually hear the sounds of war is when you’re very close to the front lines.

00:37:29 ► §

And the front lines are all around us right now.

00:37:31 ► §

During the 50s, when I was growing up, I lived in terror of World War III.

00:37:36 ► §

In our classrooms in school, we actually did those duck-and-cover drills.

00:37:39 ► §

We were under the desk with our heads over it, waiting for that blinding flash,

00:37:43 ► §

and we knew we’d see our bones.

00:37:45 ► §

We went through all that terror, and we knew that at the end of all that flashing,

00:37:50 ► §

those of us that were left, if we didn’t do it right, would end up in a Soviet gulag.

00:37:54 ► §

Well, here it is almost 50 years later, and World War III is real.

00:38:01 ► §

And so is the gulag, only it’s an American gulag that we’re in.

00:38:05 ► §

The European Union has 100 million more people than we do,

00:38:09 ► §

and we have six times more of our citizens locked in cages.

00:38:15 ► §

We’re arresting people at the rate of,

00:38:17 ► §

at least if not more now,

00:38:19 ► §

of 1,600,000 people a year on drug-related charges,

00:38:23 ► §

over half of them for possessing pot. Now,

00:38:26 ► §

the facts in the drug war are just totally insane. Remember the definition of insanity,

00:38:32 ► §

doing the same thing over and over. Look at the facts. 400,000 people plus die each year

00:38:36 ► §

from tobacco-related illnesses. Over 150,000 die each year from alcohol-related illnesses.

00:38:43 ► §

That’s on top of all the people that have driving accidents on DUIs. And over 100,000 die each year from alcohol-related illnesses. That’s on top of all the people that have driving accidents on DUIs.

00:38:48 ► §

And over 100,000 people died last year from prescription medicines.

00:38:52 ► §

Now, take those numbers, 400,000, 150,000, 100,000, add them together.

00:38:56 ► §

In that same time frame, the combined deaths from crack, cocaine, and heroin, all three combined, were 8,000.

00:39:03 ► §

And in the last 50 years, as near as I can find out,

00:39:06 ► §

there hasn’t been a single related death from smoking pot.

00:39:09 ► §

Now, what’s wrong with that picture?

00:39:11 ► §

1.6 million people being arrested for a substance and substances

00:39:15 ► §

that are orders of magnitude more safe than the ones that are company approved.

00:39:20 ► §

You know, people are altering their consciousness with illegal substances

00:39:24 ► §

based by the power structure.

00:39:26 ► §

These substances being safer, this looks very Gulag-like to me.

00:39:30 ► §

It’s okay to take Prozac and Ritalin because they make you think like we want you to think.

00:39:35 ► §

It’s not okay to take MDMA or LSD or cannabis because that makes you think a little different.

00:39:42 ► §

Now, what’s this really all about?

00:39:43 ► §

Recently, I received an email from the Alchemine Society,

00:39:46 ► §

and if you don’t belong to that, you really should.

00:39:48 ► §

They send out all these notices.

00:39:50 ► §

They don’t overload you with information,

00:39:52 ► §

but they send out these little bits whenever there’s something worth seeing.

00:39:55 ► §

And they sent a link to an article in the Michigan Daily, a college paper.

00:40:02 ► §

A young man named Josh Wickram wrote

00:40:05 ► §

this. And I think he gets it. I don’t think he gets it. I know he gets it. Here’s what he said.

00:40:10 ► §

The war on drugs is not a war on substances. It’s a war on states of mind. Entheogens are not

00:40:16 ► §

illegal because a loving government is concerned that you’re going to hurt yourself by smoking pot

00:40:20 ► §

or tripping in your bedroom. Entheogens are illegal because they make you question authority. They break down socially constructed fables and cleanse the doors of perception.

00:40:30 ► §

They make you question the wrongs of society in a fundamental way, making you dangerous. You’re

00:40:35 ► §

like Neo in the Matrix when all of the illusions have been irrevocably stripped away. That’s what

00:40:41 ► §

they’re afraid of. I think it’s very well said and the thing I guess the single thing

00:40:45 ► §

that makes me an incurable optimist

00:40:47 ► §

that everything’s going to turn out alright

00:40:49 ► §

and I agree with Ann Shulgin

00:40:50 ► §

maybe things are going the way

00:40:52 ► §

they’re supposed to be going

00:40:53 ► §

I personally think that we’re on schedule

00:40:55 ► §

and under budget right now

00:40:56 ► §

it’s going to be uncomfortable

00:40:58 ► §

but the young people

00:41:00 ► §

and I’ve met so many of them here

00:41:01 ► §

the young people today

00:41:04 ► §

that are in their late teens and early twenties

00:41:07 ► §

are ahead of where I was two years ago.

00:41:10 ► §

I mean, young people today get it.

00:41:12 ► §

They really know what’s going on, and that’s our hope.

00:41:14 ► §

They’re going to be running things real soon.

00:41:16 ► §

I wish they were running them today, quite frankly.

00:41:19 ► §

I say that for them, too.

00:41:24 ► §

You know, World War III began in the United States.

00:41:27 ► §

It’s the war on drugs.

00:41:29 ► §

And it is truly a world war, but what is unique about it,

00:41:32 ► §

it’s not nation against nation this time.

00:41:35 ► §

It’s nations against their own citizens.

00:41:37 ► §

That’s what World War III is.

00:41:39 ► §

And a large majority, almost three-quarters of the people in this country,

00:41:43 ► §

believe the war on drugs is an absolute, complete failure.

00:41:46 ► §

Three-quarters of the people.

00:41:47 ► §

I thought this was a democracy.

00:41:50 ► §

Maybe not.

00:41:51 ► §

Now, what are the real objectives of the war on drugs?

00:41:53 ► §

It’s obviously not public safety, or we’d include cigarettes and alcohol in our real prohibitions.

00:42:00 ► §

The objective, obviously, is to remove the freedom from certain classes of people.

00:42:04 ► §

Of the 800,000 people arrested for possession of marijuana last year, over half were Hispanic.

00:42:10 ► §

Seven times more African Americans go to jail for the same drug-related offenses as Caucasians do.

00:42:16 ► §

As you all know, you’re all very familiar with the history of the war on drugs.

00:42:19 ► §

It began as a race war, particularly cannabis against Hispanics and expanded against jazz musicians, African-Americans.

00:42:27 ► §

It began as a race war and it still is a race war.

00:42:29 ► §

But what’s interesting now is it’s starting to expand a little farther than they thought.

00:42:35 ► §

You ask any current DEA agent today, and there’s maybe one or two here that you can find and ask.

00:42:42 ► §

And I hope they’re learning something if they’re here.

00:42:47 ► §

But you ask them what their biggest problem is today, and they’re going to say, oh, it’s young kids going to raves

00:42:51 ► §

doing MDMA. And it’s the problem because these are the young white kids going to raves doing it,

00:42:56 ► §

middle class kids, wealthy kids. Now science, as you all know, if you don’t know, go to MapSite

00:43:01 ► §

and you’ll learn real clearly. Science proves that used properly and under the right conditions

00:43:07 ► §

and at the frequency that’s recommended and all,

00:43:10 ► §

MDMA is perfectly safe used properly.

00:43:14 ► §

And yet the government, with our tax dollars, is just promoting this big lie.

00:43:20 ► §

It’s a total media misinformation about it.

00:43:23 ► §

Even MTV, and as I say, we own the youth.

00:43:27 ► §

MTV is a Trojan horse outfit.

00:43:29 ► §

If you saw that special on MTV, they showed this picture of this young woman’s brain

00:43:35 ► §

and told her she had a hole in her brain.

00:43:36 ► §

It ate holes in her brain.

00:43:38 ► §

It was only the day before that show aired that the people at MAPS were able to find her

00:43:41 ► §

and get a hold of her and say, you weren’t misinformed.

00:43:44 ► §

They lied to you.

00:43:46 ► §

That’s not really what that picture showed.

00:43:48 ► §

And yet, I know teenagers today, 15 to 18-year-olds,

00:43:52 ► §

who say, oh, I’m never going to do MDMA.

00:43:55 ► §

It puts holes in your brains. I saw it on television.

00:43:57 ► §

I mean, that is getting out there.

00:43:58 ► §

Why are the power elites so afraid of MDMA?

00:44:02 ► §

I don’t think they’re as stupid as I’d like to imagine.

00:44:05 ► §

I don’t think they’re just listening

00:44:07 ► §

to these government shills

00:44:08 ► §

who get paid atrocious sums

00:44:10 ► §

for bogus science

00:44:11 ► §

because they’re lazy.

00:44:12 ► §

I think that at least some of them

00:44:14 ► §

remember that back during the Cold War,

00:44:16 ► §

the CIA and the Pentagon

00:44:17 ► §

tested over 800 compounds

00:44:20 ► §

for chemical and biological warfare agents.

00:44:23 ► §

When they got to MDMA,

00:44:24 ► §

they didn’t spend

00:44:25 ► §

much time on it because all their test subjects became pacifists. Now, how is a military empire

00:44:32 ► §

going to survive if the nation is all pacifists? And that’s, I think, the big fear with MDMA,

00:44:38 ► §

my thought. War on drugs, World War III, I think, is now about to enter its final stages.

00:44:44 ► §

Gaia is on one side and primitive humans are on the other side.

00:44:48 ► §

And Gaia is slowly building her forces.

00:44:50 ► §

She’s got the Greens and the New Agers and the cultural creatives.

00:44:53 ► §

And now Robo-Man is coming, you know, the homo-cyber.

00:44:57 ► §

I think that it’s no coincidence that homo-cyber is appearing at this point in time.

00:45:02 ► §

We’re all experiencing accelerating change and strangeness and weirdness.

00:45:07 ► §

This is caused, I believe, primarily by these two ages rubbing up against each other.

00:45:13 ► §

There’s another phrase for the time we’re in,

00:45:15 ► §

and it’s coined by Jean Houston in her new book, Jump Time, which is the phrase.

00:45:20 ► §

And she’s detailed a lot of information about the fact that,

00:45:23 ► §

about evolutionary jump times when quantum changes take place.

00:45:28 ► §

And she really sees us in that time right now.

00:45:31 ► §

A quote from her book about the times that we are now in.

00:45:35 ► §

We are heirs to an extraordinary speeding up of the evolutionary process.

00:45:40 ► §

We jump to new professions, partners, lifestyles, and religions seemingly at will.

00:45:45 ► §

Nothing, it seems, is impossible for us.

00:45:48 ► §

Nature, through us, seems to be entering a new epoch.

00:45:52 ► §

Not so much biological evolution, but conscious evolution.

00:45:55 ► §

We have become conscious of our capacity to direct the next phase,

00:46:00 ► §

not only of our own lives, but of the world’s destiny as well.

00:46:05 ► §

Now, I really hope that when she says that,

00:46:08 ► §

she’s talking about psychedelic thinkers and homo-cyber,

00:46:11 ► §

and she’s not talking about the people that are running things today,

00:46:15 ► §

because there is a chance to direct the affairs of the world,

00:46:17 ► §

but they seem to be directing them in a downward spiral.

00:46:21 ► §

You know, there are many things that are pointing to the fact

00:46:23 ► §

that a big shift in

00:46:25 ► §

consciousness is about to take place. The Mayans, the ancient Mayans have their prophecy, as you

00:46:31 ► §

know, of 2012, in which there is a quantum change in human consciousness. The Hopis also use that

00:46:38 ► §

date 2012, but theirs is more of an apocalyptic change. They’re very mystical thinking to us.

00:46:43 ► §

A bridge between the mystics

00:46:45 ► §

and the scientists is probably Terence McKenna’s time wave, where he’s talking about the end of

00:46:50 ► §

history as we know it, the end of time, again, the 2012 date. And in the pure scientific realm

00:46:56 ► §

are writers like Werner Wenge, who has talked about the technological singularity that

00:47:02 ► §

mathematically he sees as inevitable. And by that singularity,

00:47:06 ► §

he is talking about

00:47:07 ► §

some form of intelligence

00:47:10 ► §

exceeding human intelligence.

00:47:12 ► §

It could be machine intelligence

00:47:14 ► §

or it could be humans

00:47:17 ► §

with machine augmentation.

00:47:19 ► §

Now, Vinci sees his date

00:47:21 ► §

as somewhere between 2005 and 2030.

00:47:24 ► §

So we’ve got this 2005, 2012, 2030,

00:47:27 ► §

at least we know something’s about to give,

00:47:30 ► §

and it has to.

00:47:32 ► §

Now, I see the jump in consciousness

00:47:34 ► §

being machine-augmented humans,

00:47:37 ► §

and it could be just the machinery

00:47:39 ► §

we have available today,

00:47:41 ► §

whether it’s a cell phone,

00:47:43 ► §

whether it’s the Internet,

00:47:44 ► §

whether it’s a personal assistant, whether it’s the internet, whether it’s a personal

00:47:45 ► §

assistant, PDA, whatever it is, we’re augmenting our capacity to bring information in, process

00:47:53 ► §

information at faster and faster rates. And I see somehow of a cybernetically enhanced human,

00:48:00 ► §

whether it’s in the head or outside the head or attached to the body, as being the prototype of this next change that is coming.

00:48:09 ► §

In my book, The Spirit of the Internet, which a lot of people think must be about e-commerce or dot-coms

00:48:15 ► §

because it says Internet in it,

00:48:16 ► §

the subtitle is Speculations on the Evolution of Global Consciousness.

00:48:20 ► §

And I try to blend the Mayans’ concept of a quantum jump in change in consciousness

00:48:26 ► §

with Vinji’s idea of machine-augmented humans

00:48:29 ► §

with Teilhard de Chardin’s concept of the noosphere.

00:48:33 ► §

If you haven’t picked up the book, it was very big in the 60s,

00:48:36 ► §

called The Phenomena of Man.

00:48:38 ► §

I highly recommend that as well.

00:48:40 ► §

In that book, Teilhard de Chardin spoke of the noosphere

00:48:43 ► §

as being actually a living tissue of thought surrounding the planet.

00:48:47 ► §

There’s the geosphere, the biosphere, the atmosphere, and the noosphere around it.

00:48:51 ► §

And he foresaw the noosphere essentially as our species consciousness

00:48:54 ► §

and predicted a time when the noosphere would achieve some form of sentience on its own, the omega point, he called it. And he described that as all members of the species

00:49:06 ► §

having an ability to tap into a global brain

00:49:10 ► §

and yet still being autonomous,

00:49:12 ► §

sort of about everyone having super psychic ability.

00:49:15 ► §

And when you read about some of these new wearable computers

00:49:17 ► §

and their ability to place you in space and time,

00:49:20 ► §

you’ll see that some of the things he’s talking about

00:49:23 ► §

may be coming to pass.

00:49:24 ► §

In fact, I found some of his writings after he had completed that book, and he spoke about

00:49:29 ► §

the mechanical infrastructure of the noosphere.

00:49:32 ► §

He wrote this article in 1947, when there probably weren’t more than five or six computers

00:49:36 ► §

on the world, on the planet, and he predicted that computers could play a part.

00:49:40 ► §

And in my book, again, I speculate, obviously, that the Internet is the mechanical

00:49:45 ► §

infrastructure of the noosphere. Not an original thought. I thought it was when I first came up

00:49:50 ► §

with it and started researching my book and found several hundred websites talking about it.

00:49:54 ► §

So this is in the air. And the discussion of a global brain is much more than science fiction.

00:50:01 ► §

In fact, there’s one of the mailing lists on the Internet is the global brain mailing list.

00:50:04 ► §

They’re almost all PhDs who are thinking about what is going to happen when

00:50:08 ► §

everybody does have universal connectivity. Is there a way for interaction of all these processes?

00:50:14 ► §

Can an airborne sensor in Chicago sniff the air and say, man, that plant in LA is affecting my

00:50:21 ► §

citizens here and shut it down? Are we going to get to some sort of a regulatory basis?

00:50:26 ► §

I don’t know what’s going to happen, but there’s sure a lot of people studying these things

00:50:29 ► §

and talking about them.

00:50:31 ► §

I believe, honestly, the final battle over freedom of thought, freedom of consciousness,

00:50:35 ► §

is going to be fought in cyberspace.

00:50:37 ► §

And I say that because digital drugs are on their way.

00:50:41 ► §

And by digital drugs, people don’t like that subject, that title. But what I’m

00:50:45 ► §

talking about, to this audience, I can explain it with those terms. Some of the new virtual reality

00:50:50 ► §

devices and some of the things Gene was talking about yesterday can actually alter one’s state

00:50:55 ► §

of consciousness in much the same way as taking a tab of acid. What’s going to happen when these

00:51:00 ► §

things hit the market? Think about it. I think the war on drugs is going to enter its final battle there.

00:51:06 ► §

You know, the alchemine society has defined it as cognitive liberty,

00:51:10 ► §

freedom of thought, freedom to use our own minds as we please, as we choose,

00:51:14 ► §

and alter our consciousness as we choose.

00:51:16 ► §

What happens when we have digital drugs, virtual reality machines

00:51:20 ► §

that actually alter our consciousness and there’s no substances coming into the body?

00:51:24 ► §

You know, it’s not substances coming into the body.

00:51:27 ► §

You know, it’s not going to be about substances.

00:51:30 ► §

Once that’s done, once they are on the market, the power elite is going to have to admit

00:51:33 ► §

it’s not substances they’re trying to control.

00:51:35 ► §

It’s consciousness.

00:51:36 ► §

And I believe, ultimately, in this battle,

00:51:39 ► §

these primitive humans are going to be overcome

00:51:41 ► §

because homo-cyber has psychedelic thinking on their side.

00:51:44 ► §

You know, the humans just aren’t smart enough as a species to prevent war.

00:51:48 ► §

It’s pretty obvious. We fight among ourselves.

00:51:51 ► §

And this new species, I think, is going to rise to the top of the food chain.

00:51:54 ► §

And keep in mind, it’s self-selected.

00:51:57 ► §

Everybody on the planet, I believe by 2025,

00:52:00 ► §

is going to have the opportunity to have a 24x7 Internet connection, wireless,

00:52:04 ► §

and they can make their own decision whether they want to participate in this new speciation.

00:52:09 ► §

It’s not going to be accidental mutation that changes this quantum change in consciousness.

00:52:13 ► §

But to succeed, I think revolution is the wrong word.

00:52:17 ► §

I think Homo Ciber must become an evolutionary and not a revolutionary,

00:52:22 ► §

which brings me to my final topic, almost on time,

00:52:25 ► §

which is guerrilla tactics for evolutionaries.

00:52:28 ► §

You know,

00:52:29 ► §

they say it’s always darkest before the dawn,

00:52:33 ► §

which doesn’t make sense to me.

00:52:35 ► §

I think it’s darker a little farther back,

00:52:37 ► §

but I think we can agree

00:52:38 ► §

that the forces of darkness

00:52:40 ► §

are certainly in charge.

00:52:42 ► §

You know, we’ve got two oil company executives

00:52:44 ► §

setting our nation’s energy policy. You know, we’ve got two oil company executives setting our nation’s

00:52:46 ► §

energy policy. You know,

00:52:47 ► §

and on top of that, you know,

00:52:49 ► §

they don’t see any need to limit

00:52:51 ► §

carbon dioxide emissions. They want

00:52:54 ► §

to use tax dollars to subsidize the building

00:52:56 ► §

of new refineries. And they want

00:52:58 ► §

where are they going to get the crude oil for the

00:52:59 ► §

refineries? They’re going to pillage our national

00:53:01 ► §

or Arctic National Wildlife Refuge, the most

00:53:04 ► §

pristine land that us taxpayers own.

00:53:07 ► §

And the big lie they’re starting to promote,

00:53:08 ► §

well, we have this energy problem in California.

00:53:11 ► §

Less than two one-hundredths of one percent of the electricity in California comes from oil.

00:53:16 ► §

Less than three percent of the electricity in the United States comes from oil.

00:53:20 ► §

You know, Darth Vader has taken over Washington.

00:53:26 ► §

How are we going to get it back? Well, I once heard Ken Kesey say that somebody asked him what the most important thing

00:53:32 ► §

was he learned in the sixties. And he said, well, one of them was don’t go head to head with a dumb

00:53:37 ► §

guy with a, carrying a gun. And I think that’s excellent advice. I’d like to take it to a higher

00:53:42 ► §

level and say, we don’t even want to use guerrilla tactics against dumb guys carrying guns.

00:53:47 ► §

But the 60s, I think some of the activists made a mistake of trying to ferment a revolution.

00:53:52 ► §

Revolutions seldom change the daily life of the average citizen.

00:53:56 ► §

So for our species to end the threat of extinction,

00:54:00 ► §

and our species being homo sapiens that branches to homomo faber, man the tool maker, Homo cyber,

00:54:06 ► §

whatever branch of the species you want to place yourself on,

00:54:09 ► §

we need evolution of our culture, not revolution of our structures.

00:54:12 ► §

Our structures will evolve following the cultural revolution.

00:54:16 ► §

Homo cyber is an evolutionary, not a revolutionary,

00:54:19 ► §

and Homo cyber is a psychedelic thinker.

00:54:21 ► §

And the job of psychedelic thinkers is to nudge all of our species consciousness

00:54:25 ► §

into more of a Gaian awareness.

00:54:27 ► §

And we do it by standing up for the truth.

00:54:29 ► §

It’s not easy.

00:54:30 ► §

We have to counter that big lie about the hole in the head.

00:54:33 ► §

How do you do that when you’re a mummer deep behind enemy lines?

00:54:36 ► §

You can’t just lose your cover because we need people back there too.

00:54:41 ► §

But remember, psychedelic thinkers are people of action,

00:54:44 ► §

but not revolutionary

00:54:45 ► §

actions so much as evolutionary actions that accelerate the evolution of consciousness.

00:54:50 ► §

Now, if you’re a mummer in deep cover, I’m not suggesting that tomorrow morning you go

00:54:53 ► §

blast open your boss’s door and say, you know, I’m mad as hell about this drug testing and I’m

00:54:58 ► §

not going to take it anymore. I don’t think that’s the right approach. Instead, I think that when you

00:55:03 ► §

get home, you can take off your mummer’s mask and become a memer.

00:55:08 ► §

Now, Richard Dawkins coined that term meme as a unit of cultural transmission, sort of the DNA of consciousness.

00:55:14 ► §

They’re very powerful. They’re unpredictable.

00:55:15 ► §

You don’t know when one’s going to take off and when it’s not.

00:55:18 ► §

So in the few minutes I have left here, I’m going to give you a couple examples of what a meme could grow out of.

00:55:23 ► §

These are not memes because they’re not succinct enough. But here’s one. Right now, we’ve had this big tax cut because

00:55:29 ► §

we want to put money back in everybody’s hands so they can pay higher gasoline prices. Well,

00:55:34 ► §

why don’t they eliminate the middleman and just give the money to him directly, you know?

00:55:38 ► §

But I’ve got a better idea. Why don’t we nationalize the oil companies and use their

00:55:42 ► §

obscene prices to lower our gas prices?

00:55:45 ► §

There’s one.

00:55:49 ► §

Here’s one that could have some power.

00:55:55 ► §

Last year, over 50 million pieces of e-mail sent to the White House and Congress went unread, straight to trash.

00:55:56 ► §

Didn’t even look at it.

00:56:01 ► §

Well, why not, every time we send an e-mail to our congressperson or the White House,

00:56:04 ► §

send a carbon copy to a world leader that might be on your side. As soon as Bush said he’s going to abandon the Kyoto treaties, the chancellor of Germany was

00:56:09 ► §

right on his front door saying, hey, this is not right. Well, what if that guy had a million copies

00:56:14 ► §

of emails that we’d sent to Bush, and Bush says, well, that’s what my people want. He says, well,

00:56:18 ► §

I got a million of your people here that don’t want that. Why don’t you read your mail?

00:56:29 ► §

people here that don’t want that, why don’t you read your mail? Another one. At work or school or wherever, if somebody’s pointing out the big lie like hole in your head from MDMA, come back in the

00:56:34 ► §

next day and leave a printout from the map site that tells the other side of the story. Or print

00:56:38 ► §

out this talk. I’m putting the full text of this out on our website, matrixmasters.com. Be out there

00:56:44 ► §

by the end of the week.

00:56:47 ► §

Print it out and leave it laying around in conference rooms for other types of information, another little meme.

00:56:49 ► §

Here’s one.

00:56:50 ► §

Don’t vote for any incumbents in 2004.

00:56:53 ► §

And if you say, well, what about the good ones?

00:56:54 ► §

Well, you know, the Republicans want to cut down 100 trees

00:56:57 ► §

and the Democrats only want to cut down 60, you know.

00:56:59 ► §

Well, if you’re a good incumbent,

00:57:01 ► §

why don’t you resign six months before the election and say,

00:57:03 ► §

I’m supporting the people, don’t vote for incumbents.

00:57:06 ► §

What if on 2004 election day, everything except two-thirds of the Senate,

00:57:10 ► §

all those officeholders were brand new?

00:57:12 ► §

Now that would be a mandate, I would think.

00:57:15 ► §

And a final little meme, don’t work for companies that do drug testing.

00:57:20 ► §

That takes your mind out of the military prison industrial complex.

00:57:24 ► §

They don’t use your mind out of the military prison industrial complex. They don’t use your mind.

00:57:28 ► §

And don’t buy products from companies that do drug testing.

00:57:32 ► §

We need to get some people putting databases up and say,

00:57:35 ► §

hey, these companies, these products and services, these people are doing drug testing.

00:57:39 ► §

Let’s just vote with our dollar and abandon those people.

00:57:41 ► §

Those are only approximations, but that’s the idea.

00:57:44 ► §

So what’s it

00:57:45 ► §

going to be here? The best of times or the worst of times? I think the answer to that question,

00:57:50 ► §

quite literally, is in the hands of psychedelic thinkers. I think they’re the only ones capable

00:57:54 ► §

of making it the best of times. Small numbers of people have changed the world before. Why not us?

00:57:59 ► §

Why shouldn’t we do it? We’ve been in theospace. We know what the truth is.

00:58:07 ► §

What we have to do is hold fast to the truth.

00:58:10 ► §

I see the human species, our entire species,

00:58:14 ► §

inching its way up this really beautiful mountain called consciousness.

00:58:16 ► §

You know, and we’re up to this ledge right now where we can look down and see, wow, we’ve really come a long way.

00:58:20 ► §

But, boy, the peak is way up there.

00:58:22 ► §

You know, it’s a high pinnacle.

00:58:24 ► §

Each and every one of us right now

00:58:25 ► §

needs to choose, which we do every day.

00:58:28 ► §

Do we continue our climb?

00:58:29 ► §

Do we slide back down the mountain?

00:58:31 ► §

Or do we hew out life here on this ledge that we’ve come to?

00:58:34 ► §

I think that it’s clear that you’re all here today

00:58:36 ► §

because you’re climbers.

00:58:38 ► §

And I can’t tell you where you’re going to find your next handhold.

00:58:41 ► §

Some of you may make the conscious decision

00:58:42 ► §

to become a homo-cyber.

00:58:44 ► §

Some may want to keep

00:58:45 ► §

your deep cover as memers

00:58:46 ► §

and operate behind

00:58:48 ► §

the enemy lines

00:58:48 ► §

but use your own dialogue

00:58:50 ► §

for a change.

00:58:51 ► §

Everybody has to choose,

00:58:53 ► §

or doesn’t have to,

00:58:54 ► §

but I recommend people

00:58:55 ► §

choose the path

00:58:56 ► §

that’s best for them

00:58:57 ► §

because we need people

00:58:58 ► §

on every path.

00:58:59 ► §

There’s not a single

00:59:00 ► §

right one here.

00:59:00 ► §

What’s important,

00:59:01 ► §

I believe though,

00:59:02 ► §

is for psychedelic thinkers

00:59:03 ► §

the world over

00:59:04 ► §

to finally stand up and be counted. We have to start speaking the truth and standing up in

00:59:11 ► §

whatever way we can. We’re at a point in time where the noosphere is beginning to really intensify

00:59:15 ► §

its focus in the internet. Human history is entering a new age between two ages. The pace

00:59:22 ► §

of life is accelerating. Our whole species and many others are dancing

00:59:26 ► §

right on that fine line of chaos. And yet that’s precisely where evolution does her

00:59:30 ► §

best work. So, you know, the choice is up to us. Do we take the red pill, evolve higher?

00:59:37 ► §

Do we take the blue pill, go back to sleep? My guess is everybody here has already taken

00:59:42 ► §

the red pill.

00:59:47 ► §

Some of you took it recently, I think.

01:00:03 ► §

You know, almost by magic, that little red pill releases one from becoming this lowly creature crawling on the ground.

01:00:05 ► §

And we become transformed into these beautiful butterflies

01:00:07 ► §

flying right on the edge of chaos.

01:00:09 ► §

And maybe, just maybe,

01:00:11 ► §

it’s going to be your wings

01:00:12 ► §

that create that little disturbance

01:00:14 ► §

that propels human consciousness

01:00:16 ► §

to its next higher level.

01:00:18 ► §

I really think all of you here today,

01:00:20 ► §

for sure,

01:00:21 ► §

have chosen to be evolutionaries

01:00:23 ► §

operating on the front lines of consciousness.

01:00:25 ► §

And as they say in the movies, may the force be with you. Thank you.

01:00:47 ► §

Thank you. I really appreciate that So that was my thinking on the subject in May of 2001

01:00:54 ► §

You know, and if you think about the fact that my comments about war in that talk

01:00:59 ► §

Came less than four months before the 9-11 attacks, the war on terror, and the Patriot Act

01:01:03 ► §

It almost begins to sound a little spooky, you know?

01:01:07 ► §

Hey, the psychedelic community is used to things being a little freaky from time to time, right?

01:01:12 ► §

In fact, I think a lot of us like it that way.

01:01:14 ► §

Of course, little did we know back then that the screwheads in Washington

01:01:18 ► §

were planning to unleash on a largely unsuspecting American public.

01:01:22 ► §

But hey, that’s another story for another day.

01:01:45 ► §

I might add, by the way, that my thinking about the concept of homo-cyber Thank you. Actually, we’ve got a small family of websites under the Matrix Masters banner. So if you go to matrixmasters.com, you’ll find links to our alternative news summaries,

01:01:51 ► §

our.netter experiment, our Planque Norte,

01:01:55 ► §

which is the select section of the site where our collection of MP3s are located.

01:01:59 ► §

And if you’re only interested in the audio section, you can just go there directly. That address is PlanqueNorte.org.

01:02:05 ► §

P-A-L-E-N-Q-U-E-N-O-R-T-E.org.

01:02:11 ► §

PlanqueNorte.org.

01:02:13 ► §

And I hope you’ll join us for our next edition of the Psychedelic Salon,

01:02:17 ► §

in which we’re going to present a talk given by Terrence McKenna

01:02:20 ► §

at one of the legendary and theobany conferences in Blanque, Mexico.

01:02:25 ► §

In fact, this one was given in January of 99.

01:02:28 ► §

It was one of his very last talks down there.

01:02:31 ► §

And it’s really a classic.

01:02:32 ► §

I’m sure you’ll enjoy it.

01:02:34 ► §

Well, that’s about it for today.

01:02:36 ► §

Thanks again for joining us.

01:02:37 ► §

And now why don’t you just kick back, relax, and spend a little time thinking about what psychedelic thinking can do to enhance your own life.

01:02:47 ► §

So for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from cyberdelic space.

01:02:52 ► §

Be well, my friends.

01:02:56 ► §

Hi, this is Lorenzo again.

01:02:58 ► §

The program you just heard was one of my first 70 podcasts, which I produced in 2005 and 2006. Over the last few

01:03:08 ► §

years, I like to think that the shows have gotten a little better, and now there are around 200 free

01:03:14 ► §

programs for you to listen to here in the salon, with more coming out each month. For the first

01:03:19 ► §

four years of the salon, our expenses were covered by a small army of donors who contributed their

01:03:25 ► §

hard-earned cash to help offset the costs of equipment, disk space, and bandwidth, among other

01:03:31 ► §

things. And some of those donors have repeated their generosity on more than one occasion.

01:03:36 ► §

But it’s always kind of bothered me that by mentioning the donors’ names at the beginning

01:03:41 ► §

of the program, I was also indirectly soliciting

01:03:45 ► §

more donations for the salon. And in a way, I guess that’s a fair assessment. However,

01:03:51 ► §

the majority of our fellow salonners, I find, aren’t in a position to make a donation.

01:03:56 ► §

And from the email I receive, it seems to bother people that they can’t do that.

01:04:00 ► §

So I’ve made a little change lately in that I removed the donation button from our web page

01:04:05 ► §

and stopped accepting monetary donations.

01:04:09 ► §

Instead, I’ve decided to fund the operation of the salon from the sales of my audio book,

01:04:13 ► §

The Genesis Generation.

01:04:15 ► §

And while the $12 cost is still too much for many of our salonners,

01:04:20 ► §

we only have to sell about a dozen books a month to cover our costs,

01:04:23 ► §

and so far we’re on track for doing that.

01:04:26 ► §

So if you’re interested in helping to support the Psychedelic Salon financially,

01:04:30 ► §

you can do so by either buying a copy of my novel for yourself or by sending a gift certificate for one to a friend.

01:04:37 ► §

And as you already know, you can listen to the first chapter for free in my podcast number 186.

01:04:46 ► §

for free in my podcast number 186. And if after hearing the first chapter, should you want to buy a copy, you may do so through my website at www.genesisgeneration.us. And hey, thanks again

01:04:54 ► §

for listening to The Psychedelic Salon. I’m really glad you found us.