Program Notes

Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake

(Minutes : Seconds into program)
02:39 Rupert Sheldrake:
“The other side of this is the reform of the existing professions.”

05:24 Ralph Abraham:
“Somehow there would have to be a miracle to get the whole system onto a new track.. And the revascularization aspect that we are mostly longing for might never happen. We need to trigger it.”

07:37 Rupert:
“I’m thinking of a pioneering experiment in a limited area.”

08:55 Ralph:
“How could we possibly attract an eighteen year old to a workshop? What would be necessary?” [Terence McKenna] “You have to talk about psychedelic drugs.”

11:13 Rupert:
[describing his concept of a series of workshop initiations] “To get there you have to be recommended by someone who’s been here, and therefore there’s a much greater sense of initiation into this world. The fact is, a lot of teenagers may not know that this world exists, or if they do they have a totally distorted view.”

17:11 Ralph:
“Corruption is a known mechanism for the downward spiral of society.”

26:57 Terence McKenna:
“Because the old method is breaking down. There’s either some substitute in the future, or we’re just looking at a generation in anarchy.”

34:07 Rupert:
“Because right now education is one of the areas that is being insulated from free market economics by being a state monopoly run by bureaucratic institutions and operated by an old style hierarchal priesthood.”

Essay referred to by Lorenzo in this podcast: “Drug Control: National Policies”
by Dr. A.C. Germann, Professor Emeritus
Department of Criminal Justice
California State University, Long Beach

Previous Episode

075 - Education in the New World Order (Part 1)

Next Episode

077 - The Apocalypse (Part 1)

Similar Episodes

Transcript

00:00:00

Greetings from cyberdelic space.

00:00:20

This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.

00:00:23

This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:00:30

Even though it’s only been about eight days since my last podcast, it seems like it’s been a month.

00:00:34

Sorry about the delay in getting this week’s program out to you,

00:00:39

but I just returned from a trip to the East Coast to visit my children and grandchildren.

00:00:44

And to tell you the truth, it’s a little hard to get back into the swing of things.

00:00:52

Particularly when I logged in after being offline for a week and found several hundred emails waiting for me.

00:00:57

But more about that after we hear the rest of the trialogue that we began last week.

00:01:10

As you know, I’ve been podcasting a series of conversations that Terrence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake held at the Esalen Institute in 1989 and 1990.

00:01:18

And today’s program is the second half of a tape from that series that was titled, Education in the New World Order.

00:01:26

And we’ll begin where we left off last week when Rupert opened the conversation up to a discussion of a school voucher system.

00:01:37

So let’s rejoin the merry trialogers and see where their discussion leads with a topic that has caused a lot of controversy here in the States in the last ten years or so.

00:01:45

And I’ll pick up by playing a couple of minutes from the end of the previous podcast with Ralph Abraham speaking.

00:01:52

I think that some people have suggested, actually, that the public

00:01:53

school system be replaced with a voucher

00:01:56

system. That’s an active

00:01:58

proposal at the moment.

00:02:00

This is a Thatcherite idea, too.

00:02:02

The point is, this voucher system is part of the

00:02:04

current political orthodoxy, so it’s very easy to see how it might be of this entrenched public school system.

00:02:29

It would have to be, if we’re talking about politics here,

00:02:32

there would have to be a plebiscite.

00:02:36

The voters insist on the opportunity to control the school system

00:02:44

and that they want a voucher system.

00:02:47

You simply privatize it.

00:02:49

And you privatize the education.

00:02:51

You have a voucher system valid at any school.

00:02:53

We’re on an approved list,

00:02:55

which is constituted by a new kind of educational board,

00:02:58

not the old one.

00:02:59

And the approved list includes Waldorf schools,

00:03:02

Montessori schools.

00:03:04

It would include Catholic schools, Islamic schools. I mean, there would be a whole range of accredorf schools, Montessori schools, it would include

00:03:05

Catholic schools, Islamic schools, I mean there’d be a whole range of accredited

00:03:09

schools including former public schools which would now become sort of

00:03:12

autonomous town schools or something. They’d compete in the open market and this

00:03:18

system would be extremely pluralistic, it would be extremely

00:03:22

responsive to what people actually want and

00:03:25

what parents and students are really interested in. And it would have the advantage of being

00:03:31

very decentralized and self-regulating.

00:03:33

School is a business that you’re proposing.

00:03:38

Yes. Well, right now, school is a business. It’s a professional career. The only thing

00:03:41

is that it’s administered by money taken from us through taxes and administered through a centralized bureaucracy for a bureaucratic organization.

00:03:51

Now, a school is a business. Both ways we’re paying for it. I mean, it’s not coming free either way.

00:03:55

But the way that you can deal with this is the voucher system are issued by the government to each student by the Ministry of Education.

00:04:03

When you’re 18, you get a book of vouchers.

00:04:02

to each student by the Ministry of Education. When you’re 18, you get a book of vouchers.

00:04:05

Probably medical schools and attorneys and so on

00:04:08

would continue more or less as at present.

00:04:12

And they would have entrance requirements

00:04:14

that somebody in B courses for biology

00:04:16

or S courses for science or something like that.

00:04:21

But I think that the…

00:04:22

You see, the voucher system,

00:04:29

the workshop mode, like… You, like the other side of this is the reform of the existing professions.

00:04:30

Because if you have a group of astronomers, for example, revisioning astronomy, you know,

00:04:35

workshop weekend led by some astronomer plus maybe Terence or you or somebody or me, or

00:04:42

an outside person also to be part of your workshop

00:04:45

it may be George, Leden, Sir Chanting

00:04:47

and then you go into what’s their original vision in astronomy

00:04:51

what is it that’s interesting most

00:04:53

what could astronomy be again today

00:04:55

well one thing it could be is helping to reconnect people with the heavens

00:04:59

designing these hinges that we were talking about

00:05:01

setting these things where you know where Jupiter and things are

00:05:04

so that this goes into every school and so that children actually learn about the heavens

00:05:08

this would be you know then there’d be things where people who are learning astronomy go out

00:05:14

at night have class at night under the stars and learn the constellations and have tests and how

00:05:19

well we know them so astronomy related once more to the actual heavens that would be the new vision

00:05:24

in astronomy

00:05:25

which with the direct experience including maybe communicating with stars and start the subject of

00:05:31

star space together with all the stuff on radio passing nebulae and and quasars and stuff yes

00:05:40

so and in each science Gaia geology new geology, would not only involve studying rocks and knowing about them, but studying them in the context of a sense of the life

00:05:50

of Gaia, a Gaian geology that would, you know, be in a Gaian perspective, and which would

00:05:55

begin and end with right rituals that connect the geological profession to its patroness,

00:06:01

Mother Earth. Well, as the bond issue and the plebiscite are put on the ballot and passed, the students

00:06:10

are issued their booklets of 55 vouchers, and the new structure is put in place and

00:06:16

simply begins.

00:06:18

There still may remain a terrific lack of teachers who would wish to or be able to offer such courses.

00:06:28

The ignorance of the meaning of the ancient sites and the significance of the stars and so on can’t

00:06:34

be overcome in a day. So chances are in the new form people would continue teaching exactly what they teach today and that the the workshop of astronomers to

00:06:47

revision astronomy and so on would not have a very quick feedback or maybe any feedback into

00:06:58

the curriculum or the actual conduct of the school so that while they envisioned a new

00:07:05

actual conduct of the school so that while they envisioned a new astronomical profession that the workshops at all the workshop centers kept on teaching the

00:07:11

old one and some somehow there would have to be a miracle to get the whole

00:07:17

system on to a new track and wouldn’t have no tonight the re-sacralization

00:07:22

aspect that we are mostly longing for could never happen, might never happen.

00:07:31

We need to trigger it.

00:07:33

Well, I think that it would have to happen in this new model.

00:07:35

You wouldn’t just get a booklet of vouchers through the post.

00:07:39

To start your path, you’d now be entering the stage of a kind of apprenticeship or learning.

00:07:45

There’d be an initiation ceremony, and you could be initiated in any one of a number of ways,

00:07:50

through a Christian, Jewish, Muslim.

00:07:52

Each religion could run, or if you didn’t want to have any of the ones offered by the various religions.

00:07:57

The New World religion would always be a possibility.

00:08:00

There’d be a chance for free enterprise in this area, sort of New Age initiations with vague

00:08:06

stuff about crystals and…

00:08:08

Green feminists.

00:08:09

Yes, that kind of thing. There’d be all sorts of… but you’d have to go through one of these initiations which would be

00:08:15

based on initiating you on the path you’re going on and

00:08:18

calling in blessings on your journey and that kind of thing. Then you get your book of vouchers as part of this ceremony.

00:08:24

And this happens at one of a sacred place of your choice and you’re not forced to go through any one

00:08:29

tradition so setting up that particular system of initiation rights would be uh the key step

00:08:38

for switching the whole system onto a new path you’d have to sort of engineer that. That would be fairly easy though because you’d say the importance of initiation for the psychology of

00:08:51

children is of vast importance is now universally recognized and you can make

00:08:55

a strong case that therefore our educational system needs to have a more

00:08:59

initiatory quality. We are talking secular state. Well, we’re talking about the 27 million young Americans who are of the age for this

00:09:08

first initiation this coming fall, and how exactly are we going to accommodate this number

00:09:15

of people in a new system with the production of 3,000 to 5,000 new teachers?

00:09:21

Well, I’m not thinking… You’re thinking about a model of overnight change of the entire American system.

00:09:26

I’m thinking of a pioneering experiment in a limited area.

00:09:29

That slowly grows if it deserves to.

00:09:32

The thing is, the way that things happen organically in society,

00:09:34

you never convert a system without some prior model of it working.

00:09:38

Whenever you try and get any money, any persuading…

00:09:41

If you can say, look, this is… I’ve got it going.

00:09:44

Here it is. You can come and see it you know it’s vastly more space and short-term

00:09:48

does not that kind of thing up here the plants this is the Botanic Garden that

00:09:52

rather than with a bit of paper saying that this project and you know I know

00:09:56

something concrete yeah and so if the workshop system is already up and

00:10:02

running as a concrete alternative to the present age,

00:10:06

that’s its great advantage. It exists.

00:10:08

It exists in a pluralistic free market form,

00:10:11

which is self-sustaining so far without state subsidy.

00:10:14

That people do because they want to do them.

00:10:17

And they want to do them because they know that in the workshop

00:10:19

they’ll on balance come out feeling better than when they went in.

00:10:23

So it’s not much growing now, but perhaps if people did have vouchers,

00:10:27

then it would suddenly start a rapid expansion.

00:10:30

I think it would be a completely new format,

00:10:33

because at present no one aged 18 goes to a workshop.

00:10:36

It’s a system of education entirely for the middle-aged.

00:10:39

What’s the oversight?

00:10:41

I guess, no, he’s on to something.

00:10:43

It’s made no contact.

00:10:44

How could you possibly attract an 18 year old to a workshop?

00:10:49

What would be necessary?

00:10:50

If to talk about psychedelic drugs, I’d give him.

00:10:53

Not quite 18, but 20 to 25.

00:10:57

I think if we did dialogues on morphic resonance and chaos and psychedelics and trialogues,

00:11:03

I think there are a lot of…

00:11:05

younger crows. Yes, if right now they have to pay $385

00:11:10

they don’t have the money, they don’t have the vouchers.

00:11:13

The problem with the workshop system, because it’s self-financing, it’s

00:11:17

expensive. What about Esalen giving, what do you

00:11:20

call them, scholarships for young people?

00:11:24

That would be, yes, well that would be all right,

00:11:26

but I think it would be a kind of token,

00:11:28

a token thing at Esalen.

00:11:31

I think they maybe have to have some

00:11:33

young people’s workshops here.

00:11:36

That would be at two or three a year,

00:11:38

where they’re offered at a much reduced price.

00:11:40

Yeah.

00:11:41

And that the people who come on them

00:11:42

have to be recommended by somebody who’s been to

00:11:45

Asselin, something like that.

00:11:46

So it would create the sense of the Asselin community.

00:11:48

Oh, we have to recommend this to Steve, because we’re really lacking that generation now.

00:11:52

It’s a serious problem.

00:11:54

You know, the Lindisfarne Fellowship, which is just one of these many invisible colleges

00:12:01

existing around the globe, I think they’re valuable it’s now proposing to dissolve itself on his 20th birthday because there is no coming

00:12:10

generation people are dying of old age and nobody knows a young person to

00:12:14

introduce into the circle so this is a tremendous hole in our bucket

00:12:22

exactly well this is exactly where there’s a tremendous scope for the initiatory model.

00:12:28

You see, coming to Esalen is a kind of initiation for most people. Whenever you come here for the

00:12:33

first time, it has an initiatory quality. And most people are the initiates who have an easy

00:12:38

familiarity with things like hot tubs and getting wet towels and that kind of thing.

00:12:45

like hot tubs, getting wet towels, and that kind of thing. So if you create this one group of initiates, the teenage workshops, the 18 to 20 year old

00:12:52

workshops that happen at Esalen, which are initiations into kind of the shtas and the

00:12:57

kind of things that happen here, and you talking about here, and so on, which to get there

00:13:02

you have to be recommended by someone who’s been here

00:13:05

and therefore there’s a much greater sense of initiation into this world.

00:13:08

The fact is a lot of teenagers may not know that this world exists or if they do

00:13:13

have a totally distorted view but it is an independent autonomous adult world

00:13:17

and that’s exactly what people want to be initiated into.

00:13:21

So the sense of a kind of somewhat more mysterious realm of possibility that you don’t

00:13:25

know about. This is a real thing. There is a whole world that most people don’t know about.

00:13:31

That’s a great idea. We should end this trialogue and run out immediately and grab

00:13:37

Steve and Nancy and tell them all the Ethelen Youth Program. But you see, things like in schools, initiatory things you could do here, like I did on my

00:13:48

Rebirth of Nature weekend. One of the things everyone did was the tree ceremony, where

00:13:53

you go out to the tree and you ask a tree four questions, and you go north, south, east,

00:13:57

west, side, the tree oracle.

00:13:59

Yeah.

00:14:00

Well, Jo does this in her workshops, and I’ve found that within three hours of talking about, in this kind of context,

00:14:07

you know, the reasons for thinking the old worldview is inadequate, the problems of the mechanistic worldview,

00:14:11

it’s a temporary nature in relation to resurgent animism, the rising tide of new attitudes, etc.,

00:14:17

the temporary nature of the mechanistic predominance itself,

00:14:21

then, you know, everybody is happy to go and hold the tree and ask it

00:14:26

questions and sit down by this tree oracle is very effective it really works now that can be done and

00:14:32

is being done with kids because the ohai foundation has now started workshops for school teachers to

00:14:37

teach them about the kinds of things you can do no chance fire cycles no vision quests tree ceremonies

00:14:43

fire cycles, you know, vision quests, tree ceremonies.

00:14:48

And they’re now doing this with various schools,

00:14:51

including bringing them onto the land and doing ceremonies with them there. From Holland, there’s 15 schools now involved.

00:14:54

So they’ve actually already got something going along these lines.

00:14:59

And so you see this initiatory quality, so that if you’re doing botany,

00:15:02

then you learn about tree oracles.

00:15:04

this initiatory quality so that if you’re doing botany then you learn about tree oracles. Part of it, you know, you have at the beginning of your course a tree oracle quest at the

00:15:10

beginning of each term. And you have vision quests of various kinds built through the

00:15:16

system. So I think that the Esalen and places which could be centres for these quests, these

00:15:21

initiatory journeys, could fulfill an immediate and I

00:15:25

think the age range they should have to be doing the initiation is not the key

00:15:28

one from 12 to 13 I think that’s best done through modified summer camp

00:15:32

specially designed but this could be the initiation into that up at 18 or 21 so

00:15:38

these 55 workshops they would begin it with adulthood. Is that your idea? That the entire elementary and junior and

00:15:48

what we call high school, that all that would remain as it is? Well I think that the model

00:15:54

of having, trying it out with the initiation at 18 into adulthood, all applicants must be 18 or over,

00:16:00

and you know this would have, be a pioneering thing that we could talk

00:16:07

to Steve about it could happen in six months time right here yeah now the

00:16:11

other thing we’re talking about is to change the initiation through summer

00:16:15

camp since none of us are in elementary or primary middle school education no

00:16:21

but if you are in that it’s quite easy to do. The people who we were studying with, Master Andres, their sons are at a very open school.

00:16:29

I said, you know, why not get… He did the tree ceremony here, he really liked it.

00:16:34

No, why not? She used to teach that. Why not do it at their own school?

00:16:38

They do a vision quest at the tree ceremony. They’ll do it.

00:16:42

So the 55 vouchers and the workshops, how long are they? Are these weekend workshops,

00:16:47

week-long workshop or privately week-long mini courses or?

00:16:51

Well, I mean, this, this, these are all details that one would work out. But obviously

00:16:56

there’d need to be a whole new weed of workshop type leaders. So another thing is that Esalen,

00:17:02

Hollyhock, Omega and so on take on a new role as they’d have workshops for workshop leaders where you’d actually train people how to do workshops.

00:17:10

You’d initiate them into being workshop leaders and where better to initiate them than in a workshop here.

00:17:18

So you’d have these and then instead of these so many thousand people come to Esalen, if a few hundred of those that came to Eston every year were initiated into being workshop leaders, and they were each

00:17:27

doing workshops, this system could very rapidly propagate.

00:17:32

Yes, very rapidly.

00:17:35

In a self-initiating, self-propagating mode.

00:17:39

And there would have to be some attention given to the initiatory structure of each

00:17:42

type of workshop.

00:17:44

To start with a dedication or an acknowledgement of the spirit of the

00:17:47

place and the powers in the light of which the workshop is being

00:17:51

done if it’s being done in the light of a spirit or reason or emotion or of

00:17:58

holism or integration or whatever I mean whatever what’s the guiding

00:18:02

principle an initial ceremony and a closing

00:18:05

ceremony and some kind of opening dedication or chant or, I mean this is a pattern of most

00:18:12

workshops anyway. And so initiating people into workshop reading would very easily, very

00:18:20

naturally be modified I think. And I don’t think even one would have to write the program for it.

00:18:25

I think that people have worked it out themselves in the workshop format.

00:18:31

Somehow standards would be maintained for workshops,

00:18:34

at least at the most famous workshop centers.

00:18:38

Yes, and then there would be some monitoring.

00:18:39

It wouldn’t be only the popularity of a certain workshop which guaranteed its

00:18:43

continued existence.

00:18:44

It would have to, for example, we wouldn’t want to continue

00:18:48

some workshop that only taught that the body is the body.

00:18:52

Well, presumably the feedback, the automatic free market feedback mechanism

00:18:58

would regulate this because if somebody…

00:19:00

No, because corruption is a known mechanism for the downward spiral of society.

00:19:06

And worse and worse workshops become more and more popular

00:19:10

because they give the valuation, the value, the accreditation, the coupon, the initiation

00:19:16

without your actually doing anything other than sitting in the hot bath

00:19:20

and repeating three times the event of the event or the body of the body.

00:19:25

Well, what you’re implying is what you sought to avoid, which is that there has to be

00:19:31

a second entity which tests the workshop graduate to see what they…

00:19:37

I want to avoid that. Well, it could be intrinsic in that industries would not employ somebody just from having graduated, that is to say spent 55 vouchers,

00:19:47

they would insist on the courses from some of their favorite teachers or institutions,

00:19:53

as obviously a bachelor’s degree from Stanford is worth more than a bachelor’s degree from Great Western.

00:20:00

Well, a corporation could post a list of courses

00:20:04

that would enhance your likelihood of being hired by them.

00:20:09

And then you could choose for yourself whether or not to include those as you formed your curriculum.

00:20:16

So this is the self-organizational model.

00:20:18

It’s highly self-organizational. I think it’s quite good.

00:20:21

I think it sounds doable also.

00:20:23

It has the very, very quality of most of these schemes.

00:20:26

Well, we’d have to persuade, I mean,

00:20:28

industries would have to suddenly start opening their doors

00:20:31

to graduates of the new system.

00:20:33

And this, of course, was a great inhibition

00:20:35

for students choosing UC Santa Cruz,

00:20:39

although they did,

00:20:41

because it was considered a great experiment

00:20:44

in its early days, twenty years ago.

00:20:47

Well, you would have to go to people like Lawrence Rockefeller and Andrew Mellon and

00:20:51

people like that to get a group of corporations to commit to accepting and hiring on the alternative.

00:21:00

Yes, who are the great railroad magnates of today who have not yet endowed a university?

00:21:06

Well, you could go to Apple Computer and explore Apple Computer, or you could go to, you know,

00:21:14

some of these hip haberdasheries, or, yeah, free music, and so forth.

00:21:19

Well, this is a big corporation.

00:21:21

Well, you could start it, actually actually with just a system, a voluntary

00:21:25

system right now. You could offer these scholarships where you have to be

00:21:29

recommended by an alumnus of one of the existing, you know, Omega, Esalen or

00:21:33

something, and you get these scholarships for say five workshop lectures, down

00:21:41

and over a six month period or something and with a beginning

00:21:45

ceremony and ending ceremony for the whole thing as this kind of initiation

00:21:48

into adult this could be started right away and you know they could do them in

00:21:52

their vacations or in their summer vacation you know it could fit in even

00:21:57

with a standard student life pattern and but there’d be then this category of

00:22:03

people had a different kind of initiation,

00:22:05

and each of them, when they went back to their college or university, people would be curious

00:22:09

about what they’d done.

00:22:10

And whatever it is they’d done, whatever they said they did, would be quite intriguing to

00:22:14

a lot of people.

00:22:15

So the New World System would actually begin with its educational program, and the New

00:22:19

World System educational program would have to have a pilot project, which I guess would

00:22:24

be the New Village, the New village school. The Hawaiian Island.

00:22:29

And then so we would have to seek a way to actually begin this pilot project

00:22:35

with, I guess it would take one leader, one workshop leader, one ritualist who

00:22:42

would make the arrangements for this first initiation, the class of 92, I guess.

00:22:49

And then there would be a few people coming of age, maybe children of people we know or something,

00:22:55

who would enthusiastically volunteer to be the first entrance of the class of 92. And then if successful in design, this

00:23:08

attractor would then grow. Where we have to begin, probably it would be here at Esalen,

00:23:15

because we’re here dreaming this up for some reason.

00:23:18

Yes, I think it would be called the… what would it be called the personal the growth no no it’s something like

00:23:27

there’d have to be some kind of certificate you get from this this five

00:23:31

workshop course and beginning and end thing through places like Aspen initiative

00:23:37

education initiative education or initiative educational initiative initiative initiate you’ve been initiative initiate and

00:23:50

an ii for short and um this when you’re applying for a job with the new york times or

00:23:58

you know bank or something like that you’d have your degrees and you’d say i’m also initiative

00:24:03

initiate and and they get to know that

00:24:06

people had done this kind of thing if indeed it did do them any good were much cooler much better

00:24:11

much more together much more aware of group dynamics you know sort of like Kelly girls

00:24:18

and so this would then become something that’d be highly attractive to a lot of employers it would

00:24:23

be detractive to others of the more conventional kind, but the kind of people who’ve been through this

00:24:27

course wouldn’t want those jobs anyway.

00:24:29

It would be possible…

00:24:30

Yes, but all the corporate people who pass through a place like Esalen would feel a subtle

00:24:35

pressure to convert their hiring practices to recognize…

00:24:39

And to send their children…

00:24:40

And to send their children and to fire these kinds of people into their organization

00:24:45

and that would be the feeling of a kind of a real kind of group or because there is this initiatory

00:24:51

quality a feeling far actually more effective than the usual bonds from college and alumnus

00:25:00

graduation festivals i mean it’s much more true. Some colleges could be

00:25:05

persuaded to offer transfer credit for a set of five workshops in this program.

00:25:11

Yes. So five workshops would count as one course. It adds up about right.

00:25:15

And it’d be like an extension course or transfer of credit from a course taken

00:25:20

in another university. That’s right. And that would mean that students from the more

00:25:24

attractive, from the more liberal-minded experimental liberal arts colleges that

00:25:28

kind of thing could give students these bachelors and they can determine the freedom of the US.

00:25:33

Five weeks of the summer yes they could take workshops in five different workshops

00:25:39

and get a college credit for it. Yes. I think you should be made Minister of Education. Of the New World Order. The NWO.

00:25:54

Yes, well it’s a devious way of achieving the re-sacralization of the world,

00:25:59

assuming always of course that corruption doesn’t somehow annihilate

00:26:03

the system as soon as it started. But I think centering in a place like this which has inertia, a

00:26:10

track record, a good habit as it were would give a good chance for success

00:26:16

I think so I think a lot of I mean if I had the chance of spending a weekend

00:26:21

hanging around with my pimply teenage friends at home

00:26:25

or coming to Esalen and doing something that was a threshold and entirely new.

00:26:29

Yes, meeting some pimply teenagers from far away.

00:26:31

Right.

00:26:32

Well, I went to a summer camp when I was…

00:26:37

Of both sexes.

00:26:38

Yeah, from age nine to thirteen or something I went to a summer camp for musical prodigies.

00:26:47

And no one went there unless they were interested in music.

00:26:51

And anybody who was really interested in music went to this particular camp.

00:26:53

It was a great escape from a small town in Vermont,

00:26:58

because I went there, there were a lot of kids from Philadelphia and New York and Miami and so on.

00:27:00

And they were very exciting.

00:27:02

And mostly we played music together.

00:27:06

But such things, specialized camps to learn ballet you know sports and so on they exist and some of them have track

00:27:12

records they have terrific reputation compared to other ones for the quality

00:27:16

of the faculty also the quality of the students and such summer this

00:27:23

particularly the summer youth program that Aslan would give it a

00:27:26

huge additional scope and training workshop leaders would give them the

00:27:30

bigger choice of workshop leaders in future so then they would be creating

00:27:34

expansion of their own system as they don’t do now they have to hand down

00:27:38

serendipity to find new workshop leaders and as the popularity of workshop type

00:27:44

education grew in schools as people in in 16, 17, 18 got

00:27:48

into an age group where some of their friends had been on workshops and had come back, obviously

00:27:53

changed in some way. And talking about this thing, a kind of secret to which they were

00:27:57

not yet privy. The only way they could have this experience was to go on one of these

00:28:01

workshops and be part of it. They’d really want to do it. And a huge new market would open up in the sort of high school age.

00:28:09

Yes. We have to get this tape to Steve immediately.

00:28:17

With our bill!

00:28:22

Well, they may not want to expand Essendon, but if Essendon wanted to expand as a business

00:28:27

and take on a whole national dimension…

00:28:28

Well, they’re very interested in all these strategies, and because it’s a revolutionary

00:28:34

educational concept, it’s not simply a strategy for expanding revenue.

00:28:39

It’s actually a seminal kind of thing.

00:28:42

It took hold and seems very sound because the old

00:28:47

method is breaking down there is either some substitute off in the future or

00:28:52

we’re just looking at a generation in anarchy largely in American education

00:28:59

well this does seem immediately feasible this really could swing into action next

00:29:03

year makes sense and it could attract capital you know endowments from people Well, this does seem immediately feasible. This really could swing into action next year, next summer.

00:29:14

And it could attract capital, you know, endowments from people who see the value of extending our successful adult educational system downward.

00:29:16

And nobody seems to have thought of this. There aren’t any summer camps along these lines.

00:29:19

There are traditional summer camps which are excellent for everything, for tennis, for organists and so on, but not for the new world order. But most of what goes on

00:29:30

here could be extended down. It’s only shamanic rattling, chants before sessions

00:29:34

and groups, vision quests, shamanic type, all this stuff is instantly adaptable.

00:29:39

In fact, probably chanting chill does it. So the Ojai Foundation has apparently had a similar fantasy as they declared two or

00:29:47

three years ago that they were going into general education.

00:29:50

I think that this is something that they’re doing and I heard about this when

00:29:55

we were at Hollyhock but I didn’t I’ve never seen it in action somebody talked about it.

00:30:00

John Bloomfield talked about it.

00:30:01

About a voucher system?

00:30:03

No about Ojai training school teachers.

00:30:07

And then the teachers can bring some of the groups to the land and they do vision quests,

00:30:11

they do tree ceremonies, they do medicine wheel circles, sweat lodges, all this kind of thing.

00:30:17

And I suppose there are private schools that are participating, but the kids love it. It’s

00:30:22

an incredibly successful program.

00:30:25

Formerly they had to go to Berlin to be able to do this. But now they can do this right

00:30:30

here in the Native American heartland.

00:30:35

So I think that there’s plenty of scope for starting straight away.

00:30:40

And yes, and for competing in systems and different versions, varieties, different flavors of the idea could be instituted in different locations.

00:30:48

Because there’s an infinite market, essentially, for real education.

00:30:53

And right now, people under 25 are totally insulated from this.

00:30:58

When I give talks in Germany, in England, here in America, in the kinds of places I’m usually invited to give them all consciousness the age ranges from 35 to 50 when I’m invited to give talks in

00:31:10

universities which in many ways I prefer not because I like the structure you

00:31:14

know there’s the kind of hierarchical structure of the professor of the

00:31:17

lecture theater and all that kind of thing but the face is full of bright

00:31:22

eager eyes yeah 1817 19 I’m very

00:31:26

yes a totally different experience and when I gave my lecture at the University

00:31:29

of Bern on my German Swiss tour the only university one I did on the trip was

00:31:36

much the best it was there were 250 people in the Botany Institute I was

00:31:40

introduced by the men invited me he’s a visionary holistic botanist who really

00:31:44

likes the idea of morphic resonance and understanding

00:31:47

evolution of plant form.

00:31:49

Quite enthusiastic, but all the professors from different faculties, students and so on, the whole thing in English, no translation.

00:31:58

And the atmosphere was absolutely electric. I mean these kids have never heard this kind of view.

00:32:03

I mean, it was totally new.

00:32:05

They’re normally insulated completely from ideas we take for granted.

00:32:09

And they were extremely interested, very excited.

00:32:12

Everyone was excited, positive, enthusiastic.

00:32:15

It was a really wonderful event.

00:32:17

Well, my courses in history of mathematics in Santa Cruz

00:32:19

have a very enthusiastic audience.

00:32:22

And, you know, my feeling is that this is sort of the radical fringe of the student population in Santa Cruz so there’s

00:32:29

10,000 students I get 50 60 or 70 of them once a year but these people are

00:32:35

very responsive and they love the hermetic arts magic astrology alchemy

00:32:40

and so on they’re seriously excited they’re really turned on by it

00:32:45

and they do great research and study and they they know a lot of it already

00:32:49

because they’ve been studying in the closet and this is their first

00:32:52

opportunity to come out and see that other people are also interested in this

00:32:55

and connect up and have fun and be able to to do it together. So what we do is

00:33:01

introduce this parallel system which operates alongside the existing system

00:33:05

but it becomes so powerful and attractive as it impacts on schools as six, seventy, eighteen year olds go to the Esalen and other summer programs

00:33:12

and they go back and tell their friends, you know, school is nothing like this.

00:33:16

It’s really fun. I think this is really our best and most revolutionary idea.

00:33:21

Everyone wants to do it.

00:33:22

I think it’s a good idea.

00:33:26

And it’ll spread enormously fast, I think, if it becomes something that slightly older people do.

00:33:30

See the possibility of the CIA instituting some negative publicity action on us,

00:33:38

such as older teacher, younger student taking drugs, commuting with tree or some kind of thing such as that.

00:33:48

They’re very paranoid about this kind of negative publicity here ruining.

00:33:52

And for this reason they may not want anybody age 16 or less

00:33:57

hanging around because of the danger of scandal.

00:34:01

Make it 18 to 23.

00:34:03

For a start.

00:34:04

I think make it 18 to 23 for a start.

00:34:05

Then the parallel for the sort of 11 to 13, this kind of puberty initiation,

00:34:10

the parallel which is often associated with transferring to a different grade of school,

00:34:14

or being in a middle school or whatever,

00:34:16

that that whole thing is ceremonialized, or at least puberty rites through vision camps.

00:34:22

But the people who best handle that are the people who run kids summer camps with

00:34:26

many of which do have another dimension and get back to nature.

00:34:30

Yes, and they have their watchdog mechanisms in place.

00:34:33

And they have campfires and so on.

00:34:35

I mean, better to… people from that world come to a workshop at Esslyn where there’s an exploration of new

00:34:41

revisioning education and the two are discussed together and they go

00:34:45

back and work out models that work there meanwhile this new one works out here we can i mean we can

00:34:51

handle that the people at esalen can handle in general this age group i think yes 18 yeah yes

00:34:59

we’ll start by the revision of higher education as they call it 18 to 23. that’s the university age

00:35:04

the revision of higher education as they call it 18 to 23 that’s the university age bracket and this would complete create such a powerful competing

00:35:09

attractor because the more people know that it’s more fun than that system

00:35:12

which I know the possibility of doing it through or within the traditional system

00:35:16

by vouchers or going out and getting credits the more and more people who

00:35:20

want to do it yeah and I think that it would then, the traditional systems’ faults

00:35:25

would become more and more apparent

00:35:26

because more and more people within it

00:35:28

would have seen,

00:35:29

had another take on what education could be like.

00:35:32

Yes.

00:35:32

And I think that morale would rapidly crumble

00:35:34

and they’d be faced with,

00:35:36

since they’d already got it,

00:35:37

by reform they could introduce more of this kind of thing.

00:35:39

Teachers would be rushing to take courses in the new methods.

00:35:42

Yes, through the new methods.

00:35:43

So that they could compete successfully with their neighboring teachers for students. Who

00:35:48

wants to have an empty home Rome? That’s right. No, this is free market economics

00:35:53

working in yet another area. Yes. Because right now education is one of the areas

00:35:59

that’s been insulated from free market economics by being a state monopoly run

00:36:03

by a bureaucratic institution

00:36:05

and operated by an old-style hierarchical priesthood with higher universities at the

00:36:09

top and higher degrees at the top and all teachers in regular schools in awe of all

00:36:14

these people with higher degrees because they’re lower officials, you know, they’re like deacons.

00:36:19

You know, there are bishops out there, archbishops, cardinals and so on.

00:36:31

So it would dismantle, or it’s one of the last bastions of the old hierarchical order.

00:36:42

Now, I may be living in dreamland, but I think the ideas they talked about at the beginning of today’s trialogue about setting up a network of workshops that young people could attend for free

00:36:46

is a really good idea.

00:36:49

In fact, just last year,

00:36:51

Sobe and I were trying to generate interest

00:36:54

in a similar project

00:36:55

where there would be a series of raves held

00:36:58

beginning in, say, in Vancouver

00:37:00

and gradually heading south

00:37:02

until they reached L.A. or San Diego.

00:37:04

And preceding each party, there would be a series of workshops in Vancouver and gradually heading south until they reached L.A. or San Diego.

00:37:09

And preceding each party, there’d be a series of workshops where we’d get some of the local elders to come out

00:37:12

and exchange ideas and lessons learned with the generations who are now beginning to take over.

00:37:19

But we never quite got enough momentum going to get that little project off the ground.

00:37:25

However, I still think it’s a good idea in some form or other.

00:37:29

I know there are really a lot of psychedelic elders out there in almost every community who would be willing to participate.

00:37:35

In fact, there are already a few places where this type of underground university is taking place.

00:37:42

of underground university is taking place.

00:37:46

Besides the oracle gatherings in the Seattle area,

00:37:52

I’ve heard of events like this that combine a party with some lectures or workshops that are taking place all the way from Vancouver down to Portland.

00:37:56

And I’ve participated in things like Cinnamon Twists learning parties in L.A.,

00:38:01

as well as the underground university programs at the Blue Bongo, among

00:38:06

others.

00:38:08

So it’s an idea that seems to have taken hold and maybe now is a good time to try and expand

00:38:14

the concept so that we can reach even more people.

00:38:18

Maybe we can do some of it online, which would significantly reduce the costs involved and

00:38:23

allow students and other cash-poor people like me

00:38:27

to become more involved without having to incur the travel and other expenses that usually go along with the workshop model.

00:38:35

Of course, the suggestions for a new education system based on workshops that the trial loggers made came over 15 years ago. And, you know, not a whole lot has really happened on this front during all that time,

00:38:48

at least in the way of free ones.

00:38:51

And as my dear mother said shortly before she died a few years ago,

00:38:55

everything is different, but nothing has changed.

00:38:59

Well, maybe now is the hour to begin making some of these changes.

00:39:03

So if you have any ideas on how to get something like this started,

00:39:07

please pass them along, either in an email that I can read in a podcast

00:39:11

or on the notes from the Psychedelic Salon blog,

00:39:15

which you can participate in if you want.

00:39:18

You know, I had to laugh when Rupert said that a lot of teenagers may not even know,

00:39:25

or it might have been Ralph, I can’t remember which one,

00:39:27

said a lot of them may not even know that the worldwide psychedelic community even existed.

00:39:33

Or if they did know it, that they had a totally distorted view of it.

00:39:37

And the reason I had to laugh is that it isn’t just teenagers who don’t know about this huge community.

00:39:44

The reason I had to laugh is that it isn’t just teenagers who don’t know about this huge community.

00:39:52

As I’ve mentioned in past podcasts, I was over 40 years old before I stumbled into the tribe, as I like to call it.

00:40:01

Now, as hard as it is for me to believe now, I had no idea that there were millions of highly educated and very successful psychedelic people out there.

00:40:05

And even if I had known that there were so many people around the world who used cannabis and the psychedelics on a regular basis,

00:40:09

I’m sure that my view of what they were like

00:40:11

would have been completely distorted.

00:40:14

You know, here is what you really need to know

00:40:16

about the psychedelic community.

00:40:18

We’re everywhere.

00:40:20

I want to read something here that Dr. German,

00:40:24

he’s Professor Emeritus of the Criminal Justice School at Long Beach State University.

00:40:30

And here’s what he had to say.

00:40:32

If the ears of all the people in the nation who had ingested illicit substances in the past six months were to turn bright green for one whole week, the nation would be amazed, confused, astounded,

00:40:46

and quickly taught something very important,

00:40:49

as they identified friends, relatives, neighbors, doctors, lawyers,

00:40:53

accountants, priests, nuns, ministers, rabbis, soldiers,

00:40:57

policemen, firemen, military personnel, businessmen,

00:41:01

teachers, students, politicians, respected policy makers, administrators, supervisors,

00:41:07

and workers from a variety of private and government institutions everywhere.

00:41:13

And by the way, Dr. German was the founder of the graduate school that trains many of

00:41:19

the L.A. Police Department, among others, so he knows what’s going on at a street level,

00:41:25

and having met with him myself,

00:41:27

my guess is that he just might have green ears too.

00:41:32

So maybe that’s what we should all do next Halloween.

00:41:35

Our only costume should be to paint our ears green.

00:41:39

I’m not sure what we would tell people who ask

00:41:42

what the point of painting our ears green was,

00:41:44

but for those who knew what it meant, it might be a way to make a whole new range of contacts with our community.

00:41:52

Maybe we should try it first on St. Patrick’s Day,

00:41:54

and most people probably wouldn’t think much about why we were doing it.

00:41:59

Or maybe I’d better get on with today’s program and leave the realm of new ideas to you.

00:42:07

Actually, one idea that came in a recent email from John, who said, among other things,

00:42:13

listening to your back catalog kept me going through a dull software contract

00:42:18

and has really changed my views about a lot of things.

00:42:21

Then he went on to ask if I’ve ever been to Amsterdam.

00:42:25

Well, John, just as you suspected, yeah, I’ve been there a few times.

00:42:29

And I guess my most memorable trip there was for the 11th Annual Cannabis Cup,

00:42:35

which I think was way back in 1998.

00:42:38

And I know that event is still growing strong,

00:42:41

but it doesn’t take place until next November.

00:42:44

So if you’re looking to get together in Amsterdam with a group of like-minded people before then,

00:42:49

you might want to consider the very first dope stock,

00:42:53

which is going to take place, I think, on April 20th this year,

00:42:58

that my friends over at the Cannabis Podcast Network are putting together.

00:43:01

podcast network are putting together.

00:43:04

And you can get the details about that on their website, which is

00:43:06

at

00:43:07

www.dopefiend.co.uk

00:43:11

And there are links

00:43:13

and feeds to several other

00:43:15

podcasts there that I think you’re going to find quite

00:43:17

interesting and definitely entertaining.

00:43:20

John also said,

00:43:21

Have you thought about accepting donations for your work?

00:43:24

This is how the Dope Fiend pays for his bandwidth, seems to work

00:43:27

Well, yes, I have been thinking about it

00:43:30

But, you know, I know you’ve got a lot of options on how to spend your time

00:43:35

And so I don’t really want to waste it by sounding like a preacher begging for money all the time

00:43:39

But that said, I do want to take a moment here to thank two of our fellow salonners who went way out of their way and searched through the Matrix Masters website to find the page where I’d kind of hidden a little PayPal donation button.

00:43:54

So Jason and William, who I think actually is better known as Bill, I want you to know that I was really touched to find your donations waiting for me when I returned from my recent trip.

00:44:07

Your generosity really means a lot to me, particularly since you both live outside of the U.S.

00:44:15

Interestingly, your financial help came the same day as I received a notice from my web hosting company

00:44:21

that the large number of downloads of these podcasts was causing them to throttle back access to the site at various times during the day

00:44:29

and that they wanted me to upgrade to my own server.

00:44:32

Well, the cost of doing that is still too high for me right now,

00:44:36

so I’ve come up with another plan, and thanks to the financial help some of you have been providing,

00:44:42

I’ve opened a companion site with another hosting company,

00:44:45

and they’ve promised to work with us as these podcasts continue to grow in popularity.

00:44:50

In fact, this podcast is the first one I’ve uploaded to this new server,

00:44:54

and I hope that you didn’t have any issues downloading it.

00:44:58

If you did, please let me know, because over the next few months,

00:45:01

I’m going to migrate all of the old podcast files to this new server.

00:45:06

In the process, I’m going to do a little cleanup on the file tags

00:45:09

so that these programs will be a little easier to find and to manage in your MP3 players.

00:45:15

As those of you who have been with us for a while already know,

00:45:19

I’ve gone through a number of different iterations and file naming conventions,

00:45:24

but I think I’ve finally come up with a way

00:45:26

that’ll make life a little easier for you

00:45:28

no matter what brand of MP3 player you decide to use.

00:45:32

I’ll tell you more about the changes to our website

00:45:34

in the next couple of podcasts,

00:45:36

but I think I’ve probably gone on long enough for today.

00:45:40

But before I go, I also want to mention

00:45:42

that Jeffrey just wrote to let me know

00:45:44

that he mentioned the Psychedelic Salon in his blog on the IONS website,

00:45:49

which reminded me that I wanted to let you know that I’m also shifting the program notes to our new server,

00:45:56

and I’m posting them on the WordPress-powered blog that you can participate in if you want.

00:46:02

And by participate, I don’t mean just adding comments to my posts,

00:46:06

but you can post items yourself.

00:46:08

It does require that you register,

00:46:10

but that’s only to keep the spammers from taking it over.

00:46:14

So if you’re interested, you can find the blog

00:46:16

from a link on the homepage at matrixmasters.com.

00:46:20

And eventually you’ll be able to click a link under each post

00:46:23

to dig it if you want.

00:46:24

And I’ve already got the code working for you to bookmark individual posts to delicious.

00:46:31

Also, I’ve got a long way to go before the new site is finished.

00:46:34

But with the help from Joseph, Robert, and a few others who have volunteered to help,

00:46:39

I think we’re eventually going to have a really interesting place to meet online.

00:46:43

Which finally brings me to the last point I wanted to make, and that is

00:46:48

that if you want to help us build the psychedelic salon community,

00:46:52

there are things that you can do that don’t require making a

00:46:55

financial donation, which I realize isn’t possible for many of you.

00:47:00

And what would be the biggest help right now would be for some of you

00:47:03

to go back through some of the older programs, the ones before program number 58, when I started posting the more detailed program notes, and to compile some program notes for them that I could put on the new blog.

00:47:26

community if you did that and all i’m really looking for is to get the time into the program and then the quote and who’s saying it and it’s just in the format i’ve been doing here lately

00:47:30

and i think it’s really is important to get some of these out there because the search engines will

00:47:37

pick them up and it’ll definitely help attract more people to the psychedelic salon so any help

00:47:44

like that in any other ways you can help to spread the word about these podcasts

00:47:48

will be most appreciated.

00:47:51

Well, before I go, I should mention that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic

00:47:56

Salon are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 2.5

00:48:02

license.

00:48:03

And if you have any questions about that,

00:48:06

you can click on the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,

00:48:09

which you can find at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts.

00:48:15

If you still have questions, you can send them to me at lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.

00:48:21

And thanks again to Ralph Abraham and Bruce Dahmer

00:48:24

for preserving and digitizing these wonderful trilogues.

00:48:28

And, of course, thanks again to Shetold Hayuk for letting us use your music here in the salon.

00:48:35

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

00:48:40

Be well, my friends. Thank you.