Program Notes
Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake
(Minutes : Seconds into program)
03:48 Ralph Abraham:
“So eventually the 60s happened, and probably my first experience that I would now identify as a real religious experience was the experience of LSD.”
07:17 Ralph:
“What’s gone wrong in the world now is a loss of connection to the sacred within and without organized religion.”
13:30 Ralph:
“The revascularization of music, I think, is very important. If I had to point to a single factor that I thought was destroying society faster than any other I think it would be evil music.”
18:28 Ralph:
“The value of getting the true partnership into the church would mean that we then wouldn’t have to replace the church just because it had been on the wrong track for 5,000 years.”
18:48 Terence McKenna:
“But isn’t this a little like trying to reform the Soviet Union and keeping the Communist Party around? I think the momentum of these institutions makes them hard to reform.”
23:27 Rupert Sheldrake:
“I think the most important aspect of this process really, because I agree with Terence about the archaic revival, is to find behind the existing forms and existing festivals the pre-Christian roots, which in all cases are the ones that feed the timing of the particular festivals and the particular locations of the sacred places, and which ground the new religion in the old.”
32:39 Terence:
“In America attendance at church is much higher, and it convulses the body politic because, unable to fulfill it’s sacral function, the church has become simply a lobbying force for fundamentalist social policy… . I think we should level [churches] to the ground and start over.”
35:13 Rupert:
“There is little way in which the political life in America could be sacrelized, since by definition it’s secular.”
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:20 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:24 ►
Well, we’re winding down to the last three tapes in this series of podcasts.
00:00:29 ►
Those of you who have been with us here in the Psychedelic Salon for a while know that I’ve been podcasting a series of conversations
00:00:36 ►
between Terrence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake that were held at the Esalen Institute in the fall of 1989 and 1990.
00:00:47 ►
The cassette recordings of these discussions, which the participants called a trialogue,
00:00:53 ►
were loaned to me by Ralph Abraham a few months ago,
00:00:56 ►
and I’ve been trying to get at least one tape out each week since then.
00:01:01 ►
After we listen to today’s trialogue, I’ll come back and let you know where we are in the series,
00:01:06 ►
and I’ll give you a rough idea of what the next month or so of programs will include.
00:01:11 ►
But first, let’s get on with today’s trialogue, in which our intrepid trialogers approach the topic of the re-sacularization of the world.
00:01:29 ►
I don’t know if I have shared with you the story of my religious training and upbringing.
00:01:37 ►
Maybe that will be appropriate for this discussion, as I have heard a little bit about yours.
00:01:46 ►
My parents, of course, were derived of some Jewish background, but after some remove of generations,
00:01:47 ►
particularly my father.
00:01:53 ►
My mother had been a regular temple visitor in her town until she married my father.
00:01:56 ►
And since his parents had relocated from New York
00:02:00 ►
to the backwoods of Vermont in their youth,
00:02:03 ►
they had no connection with any Jewish
00:02:06 ►
tradition. So my father was brought up in somewhat of a vacuum. Nevertheless, I think
00:02:12 ►
he developed an aversion to organized religion of any sort, and particularly Jewish. I thought
00:02:19 ►
he might have forbade the mention or presence of any Jewish religious stuff in the house,
00:02:26 ►
but my mother denies this.
00:02:28 ►
Anyway, there wasn’t any.
00:02:32 ►
And in the meanwhile, he developed a kind of religion of his own, which was centered
00:02:38 ►
on the family and on a concept of love, which was fairly abstract.
00:02:43 ►
So he used to say that love was everything.
00:02:48 ►
Occasionally, some circumstance would cause me to be in a church
00:02:52 ►
while a service was going on,
00:02:53 ►
and then I would look around at the other people with heads bowed
00:02:57 ►
when told to bow their heads,
00:02:59 ►
thinking, I’m the only one who’s not casting my eyes down.
00:03:04 ►
I’m the only one that doesn’t believe this stuff.
00:03:07 ►
So I don’t know if there’s a name for this
00:03:10 ►
kind of religious upbringing, I guess, total vacuum.
00:03:15 ►
Explicitly, my father’s idea was
00:03:17 ►
it’s better to start when you’re an adult
00:03:19 ►
and then you can acquire whatever religious training you want,
00:03:24 ►
sort of considering all with an open mind.
00:03:26 ►
Now, I never considered all with an open mind
00:03:30 ►
and decided whether to have one or none.
00:03:33 ►
I just didn’t bother to think about it.
00:03:35 ►
And then I studied, you know, psychoanalysis and music and physics
00:03:42 ►
and eventually mathematics that has no relationship to any
00:03:45 ►
religious tradition.
00:03:49 ►
So eventually the 60s happened, and probably my first experience that I would now identify
00:03:57 ►
as a real religious experience was the experience of LSD and whatever intrinsic meaning it carried to me
00:04:08 ►
without too much suggestion from the setting, the popular books, and so on.
00:04:14 ►
And I immediately thought, as many people did in those days, but not so many today, I think,
00:04:22 ►
that this was a religious experience in the true sense of religion,
00:04:25 ►
as was probably lost from organized religion,
00:04:29 ►
which I knew on the basis of no knowledge
00:04:31 ►
or anything, just a guess,
00:04:32 ►
because, of course, I knew people.
00:04:34 ►
In fact, practically everybody I did know
00:04:36 ►
went to some kind of church,
00:04:38 ►
or at least had been brought up with one
00:04:40 ►
and formally rejected it.
00:04:41 ►
And through them, I got the idea
00:04:44 ►
that there was no evidence
00:04:46 ►
of any sacred knowledge outstanding in any of these churches.
00:04:53 ►
Through, eventually, in the study of art, architecture, music, and so on, I could see
00:04:59 ►
in the recent past that there had been a sacred knowledge in the churches of Europe that was embodied in the architecture, the music, and so on.
00:05:08 ►
It occurred to me that there might be what I had recently discovered in the form of religion
00:05:13 ►
had become extinct only in the recent past in the Western world.
00:05:19 ►
These were just idle thoughts, as in these days, in the 60s, we were very preoccupied
00:05:24 ►
with politics then when i got to india
00:05:28 ►
i found that this lapse of the extinction of the sacred in organized religion was sort of reduced
00:05:36 ►
to zero there that at least in the with the jungle babas and so on you had a live tradition of identification with sacred what I recognized as sacred at that time
00:05:51 ►
and an easy sharing of the idea of it with the student the chalice and and so on and then when
00:06:01 ►
I returned from India to California about the time I met you, Terrence,
00:06:05 ►
I began to think that there might be some way to revitalize the Western tradition.
00:06:13 ►
Of course, other people were speaking about this also,
00:06:17 ►
particularly those concerned with Western yoga,
00:06:23 ►
the remnants of the adepts of the Middle Ages
00:06:26 ►
and the Renaissance and so on.
00:06:29 ►
And, of course, we had our great influence
00:06:32 ►
from the theosophists and the studies of alchemy and so on.
00:06:37 ►
But there was still, at this time in 1972,
00:06:40 ►
a tremendous separation between political activity,
00:06:47 ►
which we were still involved with,
00:06:56 ►
particularly around issues of chemical pollution and things like that, on the one hand, and the loss of the sacred in religion on the other hand. I mean was more like it’s a shame this pretty thing is gone
00:07:05 ►
then in the course of time these uh these came together
00:07:10 ►
and uh in the suggestion which now i see many people have made in their books about it that
00:07:17 ►
what’s gone wrong in the world now is actually i mean a root cause is the loss of the connection to the sacred within
00:07:28 ►
and without organized religion.
00:07:31 ►
After this connection is made, then political activity has to address this.
00:07:35 ►
I mean, if people have different theories of evil, I would call them, whether the loss of the partnership society in 1400 BC
00:07:46 ►
or the loss of the sacred in church ritual
00:07:52 ►
after the scientific revolution
00:07:55 ►
or the population explosion
00:07:58 ►
and the advance of modern medicine
00:08:01 ►
in reducing infant mortality and so on.
00:08:06 ►
The different theories of evil,
00:08:08 ►
because of the strength of the direct experience I had with the sacred,
00:08:16 ►
this became and remains my favorite theory of evil.
00:08:19 ►
So if I was going to direct myself to some activity
00:08:22 ►
to not exactly save the world,
00:08:24 ►
but at least
00:08:26 ►
to hope in that direction, then I would try to create for some larger portion of humanity
00:08:36 ►
the lost thread of connection to the sacred.
00:08:40 ►
So this is the program that we have all thought about under the name, the re-sacralization of the world.
00:08:48 ►
So, as far as I know, there are just a few proposals
00:08:52 ►
for any kind of direct action that go in this direction.
00:08:58 ►
One is the resumption of rituals not native to us
00:09:05 ►
but native to other people
00:09:07 ►
that still exist
00:09:07 ►
in some kind of live form
00:09:09 ►
such as the shamanism
00:09:11 ►
of native tribes
00:09:14 ►
and another idea
00:09:19 ►
is the revitalization
00:09:20 ►
of existing religion
00:09:22 ►
by finding means
00:09:25 ►
to re-attract people
00:09:28 ►
to the wonderful churches
00:09:30 ►
of the Western world,
00:09:31 ►
having not only the shape,
00:09:36 ►
the architectural shape,
00:09:37 ►
most appropriate
00:09:38 ►
for communication
00:09:39 ►
with the sacred thread,
00:09:41 ►
but also the tradition,
00:09:44 ►
the morphic field,
00:09:48 ►
the run-all, the creode of this connection.
00:09:51 ►
By figuring out through some sort of archaeology of knowledge the missing link, when was it that this went out,
00:09:54 ►
for what reason was it that the organ replaced singing
00:09:58 ►
in the church, or what was it,
00:10:00 ►
and whatever it was to do experiments on bringing it back.
00:10:02 ►
what was it, and whatever it was to do experiments on bringing it back.
00:10:13 ►
And another idea is to remain within the context of Western society,
00:10:15 ►
but outside the organized churches,
00:10:18 ►
and replace churches with an equivalent institution,
00:10:22 ►
perhaps based in the sacred arts, music, architectural painting, and so on.
00:10:28 ►
And another one that we have all given great attention to,
00:10:30 ►
and I’m beginning to think too much attention,
00:10:33 ►
is the revitalization of science,
00:10:37 ►
acknowledging that science has replaced the traditional Christian mythology
00:10:39 ►
with its own substitute mythology,
00:10:42 ►
and the weaknesses of this mythology are at the root of evil.
00:10:47 ►
So those are four things I put on my list
00:10:49 ►
as top candidates already discussed.
00:10:52 ►
And in this connection,
00:10:55 ►
we probably should keep in mind
00:10:57 ►
the Partnership Society
00:11:00 ►
because there’s a connection.
00:11:03 ►
I mean, it’s suggested, I
00:11:05 ►
think, in
00:11:06 ►
these works
00:11:07 ►
like Leon
00:11:07 ►
Eisler’s on
00:11:08 ►
the Partnership
00:11:09 ►
Society, that
00:11:10 ►
the
00:11:11 ►
disintegration,
00:11:14 ►
the
00:11:14 ►
devitalization,
00:11:16 ►
the decline
00:11:17 ►
of the
00:11:18 ►
church, of
00:11:19 ►
organized
00:11:19 ►
religion, of
00:11:20 ►
the significance
00:11:20 ►
of organized
00:11:21 ►
religion, is
00:11:22 ►
associated with
00:11:23 ►
the patriarchal
00:11:24 ►
transformation of society and the embodiment of the patriarch of organized religion is associated with the patriarchal transformation of society
00:11:26 ►
and the embodiment of the patriarchal values
00:11:29 ►
within the organized church
00:11:30 ►
in the papal hierarchy of the Roman church and so on
00:11:33 ►
had contributed to the roots of its decline.
00:11:39 ►
So my favorite idea at the moment from this list
00:11:44 ►
has to do with rituals,
00:11:45 ►
these New Year’s rituals and so on.
00:11:47 ►
I would take the Eleusinian mysteries as a model.
00:11:52 ►
And I don’t think that everybody should take psychedelics, for example,
00:11:58 ►
or have a shamanistic experience in the Amazon jungle
00:12:01 ►
in order to reawake and to rebuild their connection
00:12:05 ►
to the divine.
00:12:07 ►
But it could be that
00:12:08 ►
the churches and their rituals
00:12:10 ►
and so on could be reinvigorated
00:12:12 ►
by having a certain class
00:12:15 ►
of priesthood
00:12:16 ►
as Jesuits and so on
00:12:20 ►
that may be a new class
00:12:21 ►
that specialized in maintaining
00:12:22 ►
this connection
00:12:23 ►
with the purity
00:12:25 ►
of this connection being devoid of any intrinsic cultural overlay, and that that could be one
00:12:35 ►
component among many.
00:12:37 ►
The weaknesses of the scientific mythology could be somehow fixed by incorporating scientific worldview into the church view and so on.
00:12:54 ►
There’s some sort of syncretism between the Christian tradition, the Judeo-Christian model, including its patriarchal weakness for the moment, trying to repair that
00:13:05 ►
in the ways that people are doing
00:13:07 ►
in the new church movement.
00:13:10 ►
And in the inclusion of the sacrament,
00:13:13 ►
at least for a holy elite,
00:13:17 ►
the resacralization of music,
00:13:22 ►
I think, is very important.
00:13:23 ►
If I had to point to a single factor
00:13:24 ►
that I thought was destroying society faster than other,
00:13:28 ►
it would be evil music.
00:13:30 ►
It’s my personal bias.
00:13:33 ►
Well, that’s my view, for a start, on the re-sacralization of society.
00:13:36 ►
In short, I’m looking for something beyond the understanding of the virtues of the past
00:13:44 ►
that could be the basis of some kind of program in the present,
00:13:48 ►
even if it wasn’t something that we could do,
00:13:50 ►
but something that we could foresee that might happen
00:13:53 ►
that would create a successful society here.
00:13:57 ►
Very interesting, Ralph.
00:13:59 ►
Very interesting.
00:14:00 ►
Why don’t you just say a tiny bit more
00:14:02 ►
about what constitutes evil music?
00:14:07 ►
Well, since Orpheus, Pythagoras and so on, there has been a permanent tradition of sacred
00:14:19 ►
music. And we have record… sacred music is still played various places, and we have recordings of Gregorian chants and Gurdjieff playing and so on.
00:14:31 ►
But the best analysis of the relationship between style and music
00:14:37 ►
and style in society that I’ve come across is Cyril Scott.
00:14:42 ►
Cyril Scott is somebody that Janice Rosé pointed out to me.
00:14:46 ►
This was a moderately famous composer and pianist in England.
00:14:51 ►
And his pieces aren’t well known,
00:14:55 ►
but he’s in the process of rediscovery now.
00:14:57 ►
And some people have said, who are serious musical scholars,
00:15:01 ►
that he will one day rank with Beethoven.
00:15:04 ►
That might be an overvaluation.
00:15:07 ►
Anyway, he’s an interesting composer.
00:15:10 ►
I’ve heard his music played.
00:15:11 ►
And he wrote a book called, I forget,
00:15:14 ►
The Harmony of the Spheres or something,
00:15:16 ►
in which he analyzed the particular contribution
00:15:19 ►
and the evolution of Western society
00:15:21 ►
of the various composers.
00:15:23 ►
For example, Debussy and
00:15:25 ►
Buxtehude and Bach and so on. I don’t remember the details. He said, for
00:15:30 ►
example, that the, I think the woman’s movement when it began in England was
00:15:35 ►
enabled by a handle, that there’s something about handle which is
00:15:41 ►
supportive for political revolution and not for other things.
00:15:46 ►
And Beethoven developed the romantic and the emotional
00:15:51 ►
in German culture.
00:15:52 ►
This is spelled out in a book.
00:15:54 ►
Now, if Cyril Scott were alive today and watched MTV,
00:15:59 ►
I’m sure that he would say
00:16:03 ►
that this worldview embodied in this music was leading rather than following
00:16:12 ►
the decline of the biosphere. And he would see a causal connection. And I think we can
00:16:19 ►
take that as a hypothesis that maybe can’t be proved. I have no faith in experiments that have been done with music played to plants and so on,
00:16:27 ►
although it might be worth a serious review
00:16:30 ►
of that literature at some point.
00:16:33 ►
I see what you’re saying.
00:16:35 ►
I think that this music is very harmful to the ears.
00:16:38 ►
It’s much too loud if you go to a concert.
00:16:41 ►
It’s harmful.
00:16:42 ►
It’s physically harmful.
00:16:43 ►
It’s mentally, it’s emotionally harmful.
00:16:45 ►
And people flock to this, and I think it takes a long time of listening before you get really
00:16:49 ►
tired of it. And that has something to do with the starvation of the soul for beauty.
00:16:57 ►
The disconnection. This is the aesthetical side of the disconnection of the human species from some sort of divine guidance,
00:17:07 ►
which might go under the name of harmony or the world soul or whatever,
00:17:12 ►
if you’re not in resonance with this world soul,
00:17:15 ►
then you can’t have a future.
00:17:17 ►
So the aesthetics of the world soul.
00:17:21 ►
Well, a lot of what you’re saying is,
00:17:24 ►
you’re talking about an archaic revival these various things that
00:17:30 ►
you listed the resumption of ritual the revitalization of existing religion i agree
00:17:37 ►
completely with all of this the only thing that i would add, and I know you agree, is feminism comes in here somewhere
00:17:47 ►
in the form of the revitalization of partnership.
00:17:51 ►
I’m not entirely clear.
00:17:53 ►
Sometimes you seem to be talking about a revitalization
00:17:57 ►
of the forms of the 15th and 16th century
00:18:00 ►
and sometimes much further back,
00:18:03 ►
like all this business about organs and churches.
00:18:06 ►
That’s relatively recent stuff.
00:18:09 ►
Well, there’s been losses going on for 10,000 years.
00:18:12 ►
For a long, long time.
00:18:13 ►
And in different ages past,
00:18:15 ►
it’s something that couldn’t be revived in its original form.
00:18:18 ►
We may have to use video and film technology.
00:18:22 ►
So you’re saying incremental recovery of the Gaelic perspective.
00:18:27 ►
Well, the value of getting
00:18:29 ►
the true partnership into the church
00:18:32 ►
would mean that we then
00:18:33 ►
didn’t have to replace the church
00:18:35 ►
just because it had been
00:18:37 ►
on the wrong track for 5,000 years.
00:18:41 ►
True.
00:18:41 ►
It has to be…
00:18:42 ►
True.
00:18:43 ►
Maybe it’s possible to correct
00:18:44 ►
without rebuilding
00:18:45 ►
the gothic cathedrals
00:18:47 ►
but isn’t this
00:18:48 ►
a little like
00:18:48 ►
trying to reform
00:18:49 ►
the soviet union
00:18:50 ►
and keeping
00:18:52 ►
the communist party
00:18:53 ►
around
00:18:54 ►
I think the momentum
00:18:55 ►
of these institutions
00:18:57 ►
makes them
00:18:58 ►
hard to reform
00:18:59 ►
well the organization
00:19:02 ►
that collects
00:19:02 ►
the money
00:19:03 ►
and buys the land
00:19:04 ►
and so on
00:19:04 ►
might be totally replaced
00:19:06 ►
but I think the architecture is good
00:19:08 ►
as I think that the current music is evil
00:19:11 ►
oh I see what you’re saying
00:19:12 ►
even though an analyst more expert than myself
00:19:17 ►
could somehow
00:19:18 ►
could maybe see dominator forms
00:19:20 ►
are built into the actual architecture
00:19:23 ►
of many of the cathedrals, I
00:19:26 ►
still think it’s possible to revive them, that their form would take new meaning because
00:19:32 ►
of the life going on inside. If we have to start from scratch figuring out architecture
00:19:37 ►
for a partnership society, then that’s going to be very difficult, and I don’t know if
00:19:42 ►
we’ll have time to succeed.
00:19:43 ►
Well, I think beginning with a
00:19:45 ►
revival of gothic cathedral building in the high matriological style of Chartres sounds just fine.
00:19:53 ►
I certainly think that the romanesque style is a dominator style and a ponderous and uncomfortable
00:20:01 ►
way to do it but I love love the Gothic and Gothic revival.
00:20:07 ►
I mean, this is a celebration of vegetation
00:20:10 ►
and lightness and air.
00:20:14 ►
Well, my own sentiments exactly.
00:20:16 ►
I mean, I’m very interested to hear this proposal of Ralph’s
00:20:22 ►
because it’s something that I’ve formulated
00:20:24 ►
and it’s starting from a different point of view
00:20:26 ►
and
00:20:27 ►
try to follow
00:20:29 ►
because as a practicing
00:20:32 ►
member of the Church of England
00:20:33 ►
I obviously think that
00:20:37 ►
there’s a value in the traditional continuity
00:20:40 ►
of the institution
00:20:41 ►
I also believe that the way forward is
00:20:43 ►
since it’s obvious that organized
00:20:46 ►
religion is at one of its lowest ebbs ever, this in a sense creates an extraordinary openness
00:20:54 ►
and possibility for change. And I think that one of the ways in which
00:21:00 ►
modern Christianity could reconnect with the same sort of sources of inspiration
00:21:07 ►
that gave rise to the Gothic cathedrals
00:21:09 ►
is partly through the Gothic cathedrals themselves,
00:21:12 ►
which, at least in England and throughout the whole of Europe,
00:21:15 ►
are all still there.
00:21:16 ►
I mean, practically all of them are still functioning
00:21:18 ►
and they still have sacred chants going on in them every day,
00:21:22 ►
prayers offered up on a regular cycle,
00:21:24 ►
just as great temples should have.
00:21:26 ►
They’re continuously active sacral places
00:21:29 ►
that have been sacral for centuries
00:21:31 ►
and lead us to a position
00:21:33 ►
that would at least connect us
00:21:36 ►
with the kind of ancestral psyche
00:21:39 ►
because they’re still functioning.
00:21:43 ►
They put us into that particular model of the cosmos that they have,
00:21:46 ►
the cathedrals like temples, the models of the cosmos.
00:21:49 ►
And they have all the things that interest us in them, in a way.
00:21:54 ►
I mean, there’s the vegetation principle.
00:21:56 ►
There are gargoyles and protector spirits.
00:21:59 ►
There are green men, these mysterious vegetation gods
00:22:02 ►
that burst out everywhere in this mysterious way.
00:22:05 ►
They’re usually dedicated, the greatest ones are dedicated to Our Lady, who was seen in
00:22:10 ►
various forms, particularly the form of Our Lady of Wisdom and Sophia in the Middle Ages.
00:22:16 ►
And they have in their windows, geometrical designs, they have three threefold mandalas, fourfold mandalas, fivefold mandalas, and then there are rose windows
00:22:26 ►
with these extremely complex psychedelic mandala things
00:22:31 ►
with all these stained glass windows.
00:22:34 ►
They have all these qualities.
00:22:36 ►
So they’re one way, I think, of reconnecting us
00:22:39 ►
with the sacred places of Europe,
00:22:41 ►
and they connect us to the places
00:22:44 ►
and also to the traditional
00:22:45 ►
cycle of festivals. So I think that’s one important route. I think another
00:22:50 ►
important route is through the practice of festivals in general, you know, the
00:22:58 ►
sacralization of time, which some Jewish people are doing through revitalizing the tradition of the Sabbath
00:23:06 ►
you know, on a Friday evening
00:23:07 ►
lighting the candles
00:23:09 ►
with the invocation of the Sabbath bride
00:23:11 ►
or the Shekinah
00:23:11 ►
the feminine principles
00:23:13 ►
involved in the home
00:23:16 ►
and in space and time
00:23:17 ►
and in the world
00:23:18 ►
and in embodied existence
00:23:20 ►
and anyway, the sacralization of time
00:23:23 ►
is another way that can reconnect us with these traditions
00:23:26 ►
and I think the most important aspect of this process really
00:23:30 ►
because I agree with Terence about the archaic revival
00:23:33 ►
is to find behind the existing forms
00:23:36 ►
and existing festivals
00:23:38 ►
the pre-Christian roots
00:23:40 ►
which in all cases are the ones that feed
00:23:43 ►
the particular timing of
00:23:45 ►
the festivals and the particular locations of the sacred places, and which ground the
00:23:50 ►
new religion in the old, and connect it through the present tradition as it still goes on.
00:23:56 ►
There’s a continuous living strand in the tradition that goes right back to the pre-Christian
00:24:01 ►
shamanic societies of Europe. So I think that this is a connection that can still work.
00:24:07 ►
It works for me.
00:24:08 ►
I find it actually works, this connection.
00:24:10 ►
I find it does make me feel that I do have an affinity
00:24:15 ►
with the cathedrals in the high Middle Ages.
00:24:18 ►
And also with the particular places.
00:24:26 ►
But then obviously the whole thing has to be tied in with
00:24:28 ►
if this continued
00:24:29 ►
sacralization of space and time
00:24:32 ►
involves recognizing the importance
00:24:34 ►
of sacral places everywhere
00:24:36 ►
of every kind
00:24:36 ►
including the hills and the high places
00:24:38 ►
and the sacred graves
00:24:39 ►
and the national parks
00:24:41 ►
and so on
00:24:42 ►
so it would involve
00:24:43 ►
a much more animistic version of Christianity or Judaism.
00:24:49 ►
And it would involve the process that I’ve come to think of as the greening of God,
00:24:55 ►
this new greening of God process that’s going on.
00:24:58 ►
And it’s theologians who’ve revived the whole tradition of Hildegard von Bingen
00:25:02 ►
and the greening process and this whole hidden strand of the Judeo-Christian tradition,
00:25:08 ►
which may never have been a majority strand,
00:25:11 ►
but even as a minority strand,
00:25:12 ►
can be used to authenticate, feed,
00:25:15 ►
and give life to a burgeoning of that aspect of the thing.
00:25:18 ►
No, no, when that’s what’s needed.
00:25:23 ►
Yes, well, it seems, Ralph, you’re sort of advocating this.
00:25:27 ►
I find it…
00:25:28 ►
Well, I’m asking, is it possible? I’m not sure.
00:25:31 ►
Well, what I was going to say was,
00:25:34 ►
you know, McLuhan said it was inevitable
00:25:36 ►
in the sense that he had this notion
00:25:40 ►
that he called electronic feudalism,
00:25:43 ►
and he felt that the consequence of the shift
00:25:48 ►
from illiterate phonetic alphabet cultures,
00:25:52 ►
which existed for us as recently as the 1940s,
00:25:57 ►
that the replacing of it with electronic forms of media
00:26:01 ►
would have an effect on the ratio of the senses,
00:26:08 ►
and that the ratio, the new ratio created by electronic media
00:26:12 ►
would be most similar to the ratio of the senses that existed in medieval Europe
00:26:18 ►
before the invention of printing.
00:26:20 ►
He based this on the idea that before the linear uniformity of print, you had to actually look at manuscript because every manuscript was different because it reflected the hand of its author.
00:26:50 ►
they read, and this was a very different function where you don’t actually study each E and L, you generalize.
00:26:58 ►
With television and electronic media, you’re again returned to the situation where you must look,
00:27:09 ►
you must assemble out of a gestalt, an image. You cannot read it. And he felt that the consequences of this shift in the sense ratio would be global and immense,
00:27:12 ►
that it would cause the fragmentation and dissolution of the nation-state,
00:27:18 ►
which we certainly seem to be seeing in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union,
00:27:22 ►
in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union,
00:27:26 ►
and that it would return people to a kind of pietistic fundamentalism,
00:27:33 ►
homebound,
00:27:35 ►
because electronic media brings information to you,
00:27:38 ►
and that all of these factors would conspire
00:27:41 ►
to create an era in which the Gothic model would be very strongly expressed.
00:27:47 ►
I, from my own point of view, with the theory of the time wave,
00:27:52 ►
see this coming in the mid-90s and expect it to be very strong.
00:27:59 ►
And it will have many aspects in the same way that the Middle Ages are certainly an ambiguous period of time.
00:28:08 ►
I mean, the glory of the Gothic cathedrals is one side of it, but it was a time of wandering, flagellants, pestilence, bigotry, suppression of women, hatred of outsiders, insularity, provincialism, barbarism, so forth and so on.
00:28:28 ►
But I think we’re in an excellent position from McLuhan’s point of view and from my own reasoning
00:28:34 ►
from entirely different premises to experience something very much like what you’re advocating.
00:28:40 ►
And I, for one, look forward to it. Well, I think the conditions under which this transformation could somehow take place
00:28:48 ►
would require, first of all, the decentralization,
00:28:54 ►
that one of the most patriarchal aspects of the church
00:28:57 ►
is the monolithic centralized government of it.
00:29:02 ►
And just as there’s the local movements,
00:29:07 ►
the little national movements
00:29:08 ►
for the resumption of languages
00:29:10 ►
such as Welsh and so on,
00:29:13 ►
and the return of the Slavic,
00:29:16 ►
the Baltic states to local control and so on,
00:29:19 ►
I think also the churches
00:29:20 ►
would have to be returned to local languages
00:29:23 ►
in order that the festivals could relate to the local hills,
00:29:26 ►
wells, and trees, and so on.
00:29:29 ►
And then on this local basis,
00:29:32 ►
the partnership of men and women
00:29:35 ►
emerging as a parallel movement within the society would,
00:29:42 ►
in the context of this emerging partnership,
00:29:48 ►
the locally controlled churches would then be transfigured so that their festivals had a new meaning
00:29:51 ►
and took place on the locally appropriate days and so on.
00:29:56 ►
I mean, that’s just one level
00:29:58 ►
that people would have to value their local church.
00:30:01 ►
Maybe they would have dances in it
00:30:03 ►
and actually have their marriages in it and and so on and a lot of rituals would
00:30:10 ►
have to be rewritten and then there would have to be scholarship as to the
00:30:16 ►
proper relationship of the ritual in the place and then they would have to be
00:30:21 ►
journals where the scholarship was published or something and then there would have to be an educational system something like sunday school where this
00:30:31 ►
new stuff or old stuff was taught and it could be that the society is much too rigid for any of
00:30:41 ►
these necessary conditions to be created.
00:30:50 ►
What you’ve just described sounded much more like a model of the Anglican Church than the Roman Catholic.
00:30:52 ►
I mean, the Anglican Church is autonomous.
00:30:55 ►
Each country has its own.
00:30:56 ►
The Church of England is the English Church.
00:30:58 ►
There’s a church in Wales.
00:30:59 ►
There’s a church of Ireland.
00:31:00 ►
There’s the Episcopalian Church of the U.S., the Episcopalian Church of Canada.
00:31:04 ►
And then in all these African countries they have their own.
00:31:07 ►
There with black bishops, and in each case, each church is autonomous.
00:31:12 ►
And some have decided to ordain women and have done so, like the Episcopalian Church
00:31:16 ►
in the United States and Canada and in New Zealand.
00:31:19 ►
Some have not decided to do so yet, like in England.
00:31:22 ►
And so there’s a kind of pluralism of each finds
00:31:25 ►
its own way. Now, it’s not the… The thing is, it’s quite a flexible model. Anglicanism
00:31:32 ►
doesn’t have the same problems with the Pope and the strong tradition of authority. It’s
00:31:39 ►
a much more autonomous church. And in its organization, each bishop has a high degree of autonomy and each parish priest does too
00:31:45 ►
so it’s
00:31:48 ►
in his own parish
00:31:49 ►
so that’s one model
00:31:52 ►
and it’s not the only one
00:31:53 ►
it’s not a perfect one but it’s one
00:31:55 ►
you’ve also said that organized religion
00:31:57 ►
is at its lowest ebb
00:31:59 ►
and I think you told me that attendance
00:32:01 ►
in churches and Anglican churches
00:32:04 ►
in England is at its lowest
00:32:05 ►
ebb.
00:32:06 ►
It’s now running at slightly under two percent of the population.
00:32:10 ►
Two percent?
00:32:11 ►
Two percent.
00:32:12 ►
So, somehow the flexibility of this system, which does indeed sound ideal for the purpose
00:32:21 ►
I’m describing in this fantasy fantasy is actually of no use,
00:32:26 ►
has no attraction to people.
00:32:29 ►
So what would be necessary in order to reverse this trend,
00:32:33 ►
to make it really of obvious benefit to go there?
00:32:36 ►
You might first ask, is it worth doing?
00:32:39 ►
In America, attendance at church is much higher
00:32:43 ►
and it convulses the body politic because
00:32:47 ►
unable to fulfill its sacral function the church has become simply a ruthless
00:32:56 ►
lobbying force for fundamentalist social policy so So, you know, I think new institutions,
00:33:08 ►
in your first statement you suggested…
00:33:11 ►
Replacement.
00:33:11 ►
Replacement.
00:33:12 ►
I think we should level to the ground and start over,
00:33:18 ►
at least in America.
00:33:20 ►
The Anglican Church, I think its great virtue,
00:33:23 ►
as I understand it, is that it’s fairly harmless.
00:33:27 ►
But in America, religion leads to hangings, in my experience.
00:33:32 ►
Well, the Episcopal Church in America in particular, since Rupert said they’re ordaining women,
00:33:39 ►
that seems to be a really major change.
00:33:42 ►
And maybe if this were the case in England which I gather it is not not yet but it might be gradually increasing rather
00:33:48 ►
than decreasing attendance in church well I think you see I think the reason
00:33:54 ►
why I think the main reasons for attending for people attending churches
00:33:58 ►
would have to do with an appreciation of collective participation in ritual
00:34:03 ►
appreciation of the benefit of established
00:34:06 ►
forms and a continuous tradition, and appreciation of sacred place. Now, I think that these are
00:34:15 ►
three strong arguments for going to services. You’re taking place in a traditional ritual
00:34:19 ►
at a sacred place which has a validity and a tradition behind it. Now I think any replacement of the Church of England or of churches as institutions, if it were
00:34:29 ►
to be effective and if it were to sacralize political life, would have to
00:34:33 ►
be more than just vast numbers of proliferating tiny cults. It would have to be
00:34:40 ►
more than that. It wouldn’t really work if it were like the religious
00:34:44 ►
landscape of Southern California,
00:34:45 ►
you know, with its sort of divisive cultism.
00:34:48 ►
There would have to be a certain validity to it
00:34:50 ►
where it could authenticate
00:34:51 ►
the power of the ruler
00:34:55 ►
and the power of the political system
00:34:58 ►
and validate the entire workings
00:35:01 ►
of the body politic.
00:35:03 ►
For that, you need something
00:35:04 ►
like an established church. And one of the problems of the body politic. For that you need something like an established church.
00:35:06 ►
And one of the problems of the United States is it doesn’t have one,
00:35:10 ►
and it can’t have one for constitutional reasons.
00:35:12 ►
So there’s very little way in which the political life in America could be sacralized,
00:35:17 ►
since by definition it’s secular.
00:35:20 ►
Now, so there’s a different problem here in America.
00:35:23 ►
But say in Britain, consider this possibility,, there is in fact already an established church, which fulfills many of the traditional sacralizing roles.
00:35:33 ►
It’s the custodian of the great sacred places of England, the great cathedrals and many other, Glastonbury Abbey, all these places, under the custody of the established church, which on the whole fulfills this role extremely well,
00:35:46 ►
maintains their sacredity and so on.
00:35:49 ►
Now, say that this is abolished
00:35:50 ►
or simply allowed to wither and disappear,
00:35:55 ►
and say one wants to replace it with another institution
00:35:58 ►
which would be able to accept a widespread claim to validity
00:36:01 ►
through all classes of society,
00:36:04 ►
how would one go about doing it?
00:36:07 ►
I mean, the one reason I don’t think that’s a feasible route to follow
00:36:10 ►
is that I think you’d simply have a proliferation of endless small cults or sects
00:36:17 ►
and that you’d be left with a secular authority,
00:36:19 ►
and a whole secular official life which was thoroughly desacralized? Well, one answer might be you have to find a religious mission
00:36:29 ►
of sufficient consequence to command that kind of loyalty.
00:36:33 ►
In mythology, you need a unifying principle and a tractor.
00:36:36 ►
This fellow that I mentioned, Dave Brower of the Sierra Club,
00:36:41 ►
he actually said, you know, to save the earth, we need an outbreak of religious mania
00:36:48 ►
that would dwarf Islam. This is an idea which can send millions on the move. This is the new
00:36:57 ►
idea. It counts above everything and it will sweep across national borders and topple dynasties and melt away empires.
00:37:07 ►
And this is what got him tossed out of the Sierra Club.
00:37:10 ►
I mean, he called for a jihad to save the earth.
00:37:14 ►
And I think, you know, this kind of thing is worth considering.
00:37:20 ►
The other thing I wanted to say is
00:37:21 ►
I’m a very big fan of the archaic revival, but as we talk about a new feudalism and look around the earth, we might ask ourselves, where is it that an archaic revival is actually underway and how is it going and the obvious example is Iran where you know people took archaic
00:37:49 ►
revival seriously took old religious forms seriously the importance of
00:37:54 ►
resuming old rituals the importance of returning to tried-and-true ways and
00:38:00 ►
it’s I don’t think the kind of not what we had in mind. Well, they returned to a time when the sacred thread was already broken.
00:38:11 ►
You mean the fourteenth century or something like that?
00:38:14 ►
Yes. I mean, the essence here is the actual connection to the sacred. And I think now we can’t have an archaic revival by going backwards exactly.
00:38:27 ►
We have to do our archaeology of knowledge to the point where we understand what the essence of it was.
00:38:34 ►
And to revive that would mean to bring it into modern forms.
00:38:37 ►
It would have to acknowledge, for example, that the total population of the planet is larger now than then.
00:38:43 ►
That means that recycling is mandatory.
00:38:46 ►
That means that green consciousness, Gaia, hypothesis consciousness, would have to actually
00:38:53 ►
play a leading role in the actual rituals performed on the various days and so on. So The mandate, I think, to create a new mythology
00:39:06 ►
that could organize different styles of churches
00:39:10 ►
on a path of convergent evolution
00:39:13 ►
would be one that was intrinsically attractive
00:39:17 ►
because it actually offered a reversal of the present trend
00:39:22 ►
that was somehow obvious to people.
00:39:26 ►
What about re-sacralization through religion as a slogan?
00:39:30 ►
I mean, it would come to many people as being a new idea.
00:39:33 ►
Well, the churches would have to be taken over.
00:39:35 ►
I mean, where you have still a church government,
00:39:39 ►
a world government that’s excommunicating preachers
00:39:44 ►
for acknowledging the
00:39:46 ►
equality of women or something
00:39:47 ►
is just too far removed
00:39:50 ►
from the current state
00:39:52 ►
of what the average person in our society
00:39:54 ►
knows to
00:39:56 ►
be attractive
00:39:57 ►
I think the thing is that religious reform has to
00:40:00 ►
come through a movement
00:40:02 ►
actually getting going and being practiced
00:40:04 ►
and through example and you know it could spread form has to come through a movement actually getting going and being practiced, for example.
00:40:06 ►
And, you know, it could spread.
00:40:08 ►
Either one could have the growth
00:40:09 ►
of a new religion, like, say, an Ayahuasca
00:40:12 ►
church or something like that, spreading
00:40:14 ►
spontaneously and entailing
00:40:15 ►
a new thing. But sooner or later,
00:40:18 ►
I think, to gain any
00:40:19 ►
authority, it would have to undergo a kind of
00:40:22 ►
syncretism with the existing structures
00:40:23 ►
of religion. And it could be be reintegrated in that way.
00:40:26 ►
That’s one way it could happen.
00:40:30 ►
So a localization of control of the church would aid this process? It would aid the process, yes.
00:40:36 ►
But
00:40:39 ►
I mean, the only other way it could happen as far as I could see would be through
00:40:44 ►
neo-pagan religious movements
00:40:46 ►
starting up in various ways.
00:40:49 ►
They’d then have to go back further than the sacred Christian sites.
00:40:53 ►
They’d have to connect with Aboriginal…
00:40:54 ►
Well, that would be this jihad to save the earth,
00:40:58 ►
an outbreak of paganism.
00:41:00 ►
But the thing is that paganism emerging in a post-Christian context
00:41:05 ►
would be so heavily flavoured with Christianity
00:41:07 ►
that one could say that it was a kind of neo-Christian paganism.
00:41:12 ►
Well, then shamanism, the yet further back…
00:41:15 ►
Well, jihads are not present in shamanism in the same way, I shouldn’t think.
00:41:19 ►
The thing is that jihad is a particular model with Jewish roots
00:41:22 ►
affected most by Islam whose color incidentally
00:41:26 ►
is green and the point says that the green movement should have a jihad one has to remember
00:41:32 ►
that all the shrines of the saints and the color of the prophet is green but jihads come out of
00:41:38 ►
the whole sort of Judaic crusade jihad and Jewish holy wars and so on, that’s the particular field from which the concept comes
00:41:45 ►
and a mass movement
00:41:48 ►
you see the most natural thing in a place like
00:41:50 ►
California
00:41:51 ►
would have decentralized movements
00:41:54 ►
of small cults, each with their following
00:41:56 ►
a kind of entrepreneurial
00:41:58 ►
cult economy
00:41:59 ►
with no dominating giants
00:42:02 ►
and probably some secular antitrust laws
00:42:04 ►
to stop any of them getting too big.
00:42:08 ►
But that wouldn’t cause a mass movement.
00:42:11 ►
A mass movement of crusade or jihad
00:42:13 ►
requires a much more unified movement.
00:42:17 ►
I think convergent evolution is a gentler way to go.
00:42:20 ►
I think that there’s a real gap, a conflict between these two different strategies of starting a new system based on the archaic revival or pagan revival on the one hand,
00:42:34 ►
and revolution of the churches, re-sacralization by religion on the other hand. and that has to do with traditional church practice
00:42:45 ►
of denying the validity of previous forms,
00:42:49 ►
archaic pagan forms,
00:42:52 ►
and particularly carried to the point of revising history,
00:42:56 ►
I mean pulverizing goddess figurines and statues and so on.
00:43:02 ►
What would be necessary besides partnership of the genders,
00:43:08 ►
local control,
00:43:10 ►
a green politic and so on
00:43:11 ►
within the ritual of the church
00:43:12 ►
would be an acknowledgement of the validity
00:43:15 ►
of the essential religiosity
00:43:18 ►
of the pagan forms,
00:43:20 ►
including the goddess,
00:43:22 ►
the worship of idols and so on.
00:43:24 ►
And that means that the Bible might have to be, including the goddess, the worship of idols and so on. And the psychedelic.
00:43:25 ►
And that means that the Bible might have to be, here it is, abandoned.
00:43:30 ►
The Bible might have to be abandoned as a sacred document of the Church.
00:43:38 ►
No, reinterpreted.
00:43:40 ►
Reinterpreted, okay.
00:43:41 ►
That’s a process that goes on continually,
00:43:43 ►
and the whole development of the Christian religion
00:43:46 ►
like any other
00:43:47 ►
depends on a series of reinterpretations
00:43:49 ►
of traditional texts
00:43:50 ►
so the reinterpretation that’s going on right now
00:43:55 ►
is through the process theologians
00:43:57 ►
in an attempt to develop the idea of an evolutionary god
00:44:00 ►
of an evolutionary universe
00:44:01 ►
that’s one major strand of theological reinterpretation and they have a very strong case because the god of an evolutionary universe. That’s one major strand of theological interpretation. And they have
00:44:06 ►
a very strong case because the god of the Old
00:44:08 ►
Testament is not a platonic, transcendent
00:44:10 ►
god outside history.
00:44:12 ►
He’s a thoroughly hands-on
00:44:14 ►
interactive god who’s present
00:44:16 ►
within history, even arranging
00:44:18 ►
details like the passage through
00:44:20 ►
the Red Sea.
00:44:21 ►
This is an interactive process.
00:44:24 ►
It’s an ongoing providence
00:44:26 ►
that’s guiding the historical process.
00:44:29 ►
That’s the Jewish conception of God,
00:44:31 ►
a kind of process God.
00:44:33 ►
They would say, and I think they’re right,
00:44:34 ►
that this is in fact the true Judeo-Christian conception.
00:44:37 ►
So a process evolutionary model
00:44:40 ►
is one revolution going on in theology.
00:44:44 ►
Another is the recovery of the
00:44:47 ►
feminine and a recovery of the tradition of the Shekinah, the feminine presence of God.
00:44:53 ►
Sophia, the holy wisdom, is the feminine wisdom principle which could fulfill many of the
00:45:00 ►
roles of the world soul which is feminine. And a revival of that whole tradition,
00:45:07 ►
these revolutions are actually occurring in theology right now.
00:45:14 ►
I guess I’m going to have to go back and re-listen to parts of the conversation we just heard,
00:45:19 ►
because every time they start talking about organized religion,
00:45:23 ►
well, my blood began to boil just thinking about how those institutions have caused so much death and destruction
00:45:30 ►
that I miss what people are saying next.
00:45:33 ►
So I did like Terrence’s suggestion, by the way, though, of leveling all the churches to the ground.
00:45:40 ►
I’d like to think that he was talking about the institutions themselves and not the old buildings,
00:45:45 ►
because I think that some of those old churches would make a great location for a rave.
00:45:50 ►
Just imagine a giant rave being held in all of the major churches of the world all at the same time.
00:45:57 ►
Now that, I think, would be a way to begin the re-sacralization of the world, don’t you think?
00:46:04 ►
Another way, of course, is to continue doing what I know a lot of you are already doing,
00:46:08 ►
and that is to create your own personal ceremonies and rituals for various days,
00:46:14 ►
like the solstice gatherings and full moon parties that seem to be sprouting up all over the place.
00:46:20 ►
I’ve been quite fortunate to have participated in several of these new homegrown festivals,
00:46:26 ►
and I always feel better about life afterwards.
00:46:29 ►
So keep the flame going, you ritual pioneers.
00:46:33 ►
I’m really convinced that each time you conduct another little ceremony like that,
00:46:38 ►
you deepen the creode of the new basin of attraction that our psychedelic community is working so hard to create.
00:46:46 ►
And speaking of basins of attraction,
00:46:50 ►
there’s a strong attractor starting to take shape in Costa Rica right now.
00:46:54 ►
And that is the focus on the 2007 Mind States Conference that John Hanna has planned.
00:47:01 ►
You can find the details about this at mindstates.org,
00:47:06 ►
but here’s a little detail that you probably won’t find on the website.
00:47:11 ►
Just before I started recording this podcast,
00:47:14 ►
I received the following information in an email that John sent out.
00:47:19 ►
He said,
00:47:20 ►
For a short period of time, I am offering a 10% discount off of the early bird price
00:47:25 ►
to those people who are willing to put down a 50% deposit, that’s $585,
00:47:31 ►
on or before February 15th, and pay the remaining 50% on or before April 1st.
00:47:38 ►
This benefits you by allowing an additional $130 off of the conference cost,
00:47:43 ►
and also by allowing for the payment to be
00:47:45 ►
made in two installments, creating less expense all at once.
00:47:50 ►
Now, by the way, the price, he doesn’t say this in his email, but the price of the conference
00:47:55 ►
includes not only the speakers, but also meals and a room at the 2,000-acre eco-resort where
00:48:02 ►
the conferences will be held.
00:48:04 ►
at the 2,000-acre eco-resort where the conferences will be held.
00:48:07 ►
And while I can’t vouch for the food there,
00:48:11 ►
what I can say about events like this is that the community meals are where a lot of the magic takes place.
00:48:14 ►
It was at a similar event where I first met the Shulgens
00:48:18 ►
when they came and sat down at a table where I was eating
00:48:21 ►
with a couple of new friends that I just met.
00:48:24 ►
There’s just something about these conferences that take place outside the states that make them stand out.
00:48:30 ►
Maybe it’s because they’re smaller and thus more intimate,
00:48:34 ►
or maybe it’s simply because once you get out of this oppressively heavy vibe here in the U.S.,
00:48:40 ►
life just seems a little lighter and more worth living.
00:48:43 ►
Anyway, if you’re interested in attending a conference like this,
00:48:48 ►
well, I think this may be your only chance in 2007,
00:48:52 ►
so don’t wait too long if you’re being called.
00:48:56 ►
Now, where was I?
00:48:57 ►
Oh, yeah, John’s email.
00:48:59 ►
After mentioning the discount deal,
00:49:01 ►
he then went on to say that in the past,
00:49:04 ►
he’s had a sponsor who helped him with the upfront costs,
00:49:07 ►
like putting up the deposit for the hotel and things like that.
00:49:10 ►
But this year he’s on his own, and so he’s doing this limited-time discount offer to help with his upfront expenses.
00:49:17 ►
That’s the reason for all this, I guess.
00:49:20 ►
So if you plan on attending, here’s a way to save some money and to help John out as well.
00:49:24 ►
So if you plan on attending, here’s a way to save some money and to help John out as well.
00:49:32 ►
He’s certainly done more than his share of the heavy lifting for many of us who never would have met had it not been for a Mind States conference.
00:49:39 ►
And speaking of John’s conferences, I received an email from IWOL who said,
00:49:46 ►
Now don’t get me wrong, I do like the trialogues, but I also like to hear more of the other speakers you’ve featured in the salon.
00:49:51 ►
So how about breaking up the trilogues with some more of those Mind States talks now and then?
00:49:54 ►
Well, I will, you’ve got a good point.
00:50:00 ►
But I also don’t want to break the flow of this first series of trilogues.
00:50:02 ►
So here’s my plan for the next month or so.
00:50:09 ►
There are ten tapes in the first series, and we’ll finish tape eight in the next podcast.
00:50:14 ►
And then next week, I’ll do tape nine, and then do the last tape the following week.
00:50:18 ►
Then we’ll take a short break from the trial logs,
00:50:21 ►
and I’ll get out a few more of this year’s Palenque Norte talks from Burning Man.
00:50:27 ►
I know that I’ve got Mark Pesci’s talk and Amanda Fielding’s talk ready to go,
00:50:30 ►
and I think there are a couple more that I didn’t get out yet as well.
00:50:36 ►
As for the trilogues, as you may remember from the first podcast in the trilogues series,
00:50:43 ►
these conversations were held somewhat regularly from 1989 through 1998.
00:50:47 ►
And thanks to Ralph Abraham, we’ve got copies of almost all of them.
00:50:52 ►
But here’s what I thought might be the most interesting way to listen to them.
00:50:54 ►
Are you ready for this?
00:50:55 ►
How about backwards?
00:50:59 ►
No, not that kind. Although maybe it would be interesting to see if there’s any hidden messages
00:51:02 ►
that we might hear by playing a McKenna rap backwards.
00:51:07 ►
But I didn’t mean that kind of backwards.
00:51:09 ►
What I’m thinking about is that instead of just listening to the rest of these programs after this first series in chronological order,
00:51:18 ►
it might be more interesting to jump right to the last one, the one they did in 1998.
00:51:24 ►
And since there were about ten years between that trialogue and the ones we’re hearing now,
00:51:29 ►
I’m wondering if their positions have changed,
00:51:32 ►
or just where their conversation drifted to over the intervening years.
00:51:36 ►
Of course, the danger here is that we might learn that they didn’t have anything new to say
00:51:40 ►
after the passage of all that time.
00:51:43 ►
But my guess is that that won’t be the case.
00:51:46 ►
Well, it’s time to wrap up for today,
00:51:49 ►
but before I go, I should again mention
00:51:52 ►
that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon
00:51:54 ►
are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution
00:51:57 ►
Non-Commercial Share Alike 2.5 License.
00:52:01 ►
And if you have any questions about that,
00:52:03 ►
you can click on the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,
00:52:07 ►
which may be found at matrixmasters.com slash podcast.
00:52:12 ►
And if you still have questions, you can send them in an email to lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.
00:52:18 ►
And just so that you know, the reason for the Creative Commons license is to make this material more available, not to restrict it.
00:52:26 ►
Just check out the creativecommons.org website and you’ll see what I mean.
00:52:31 ►
Thanks again to the good folks from Chateau Hayouk for letting us use your music here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:52:38 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
00:52:43 ►
Be well, my friends.