Program Notes
Guest speaker: Myron Stolaroff
(Minutes : Seconds into program)
02:29 Myron Stolarofftalks about writing “The Secret Chief”, a biography of Leo Zeff.
06:06Lorenzodescribes Dr. Michael Mitthoefer’s research where he is using MDMA to treat victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
12:52 Myron tells how he strikes up conversations about psychedelics with strangers he meets while traveling.
18:00 Myron: “The DEA, they’ve been the toughest ones. To a man they’re really refuting these things with all the power that they have, and they’re not interested in learning anything about them. They’re not interested in learning if anything [positive] is possible.”
25:31 Myron: “Even though it’s painful, you’re much better off, if you’re willing to experience the pain, be with it and let it go, because once it breaks through and is gone you’re at a whole new level.”
30:51 Myron: “And so you try to pretend that it’s [pain] not there, but it is there. And as long as it’s there it’s going to control you.”
35:32 Myron: “I used the phrase ‘worked on that’, and the working is not really struggling and trying to make things happen. It isn’t that at all. What it is is learning to just be still, to just let everything go, just absolutely be still and let our hearts open.”
54:43 Myron tells about instigating, along with Al Hubbard, the meeting between Alan Watts and Timothy Leary.
58:31 Myron (in a conversation with Timothy Leary)“I don’t have it in my heart to tell you not to do what you’re doing, but, really, what you’re doing isn’t going in the right direction.”
“The
Secret Chief Revealed”
by Myron Stolaroff
“Thantos
To Eros” by Myron Stolaroff
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:21 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:25 ►
As you might remember, a few weeks ago,
00:00:28 ►
my friends Ron and Claudia gave me a ride up to Lone Pine,
00:00:31 ►
where we spent several days visiting
00:00:33 ►
with Gene and Myron Stolaroff.
00:00:36 ►
And you’ll remember some of the earlier conversations
00:00:39 ►
I had with the Stolaroffs at their home in the high desert,
00:00:42 ►
as well as my podcast of the talk Myron gave at the
00:00:45 ►
100th birthday celebration for Dr. Albert Hoffman.
00:00:49 ►
And if you missed those programs, they are podcast numbers 83, 84, and 60.
00:00:55 ►
So I’ll let you refer back to them for some of Myron’s background, which you can also
00:00:59 ►
read about in his autobiography, Tantos Terros, and in John Markoff’s great book, What the
00:01:06 ►
Dormouse Said, which talks about Myron’s work at the Institute for Advanced Studies, where
00:01:11 ►
participants learned to use LSD as a tool in their creative work.
00:01:15 ►
After the U.S. began the prohibition of psychedelics like LSD, the Institute closed, but Myron
00:01:22 ►
and his wife Jean continued their work with various legal psychoactive compounds
00:01:27 ►
until the government finally banned all research into virtually every psychedelic substance known and unknown.
00:01:34 ►
And during the transitional years, when the medicinal use of these substances, such as MDMA, was being closed down,
00:01:41 ►
well, that’s when another professional in the field, who at the time
00:01:45 ►
was called the secret chief, did some of his best work.
00:01:49 ►
And it eventually fell to Myron to chronicle this important work in a book of the same
00:01:53 ►
name, The Secret Chief.
00:01:56 ►
And so now I’ll pick up on a conversation Myron and I had during a quiet Saturday afternoon
00:02:00 ►
while we were sitting on a couch in his living room.
00:02:03 ►
And we were just beginning to talk about how he went about writing his book about Leo Zeph,
00:02:09 ►
the man who was once known as the secret chief.
00:02:11 ►
And that’s where I’ll pick up.
00:02:14 ►
Oh, and one more thing.
00:02:16 ►
If you think you’re hearing the wind blowing a couple of times during this conversation,
00:02:20 ►
you’ll be correct.
00:02:21 ►
It was a very windy day day as you will soon hear
00:02:25 ►
I guess as a result
00:02:30 ►
I never really gave much thought
00:02:31 ►
to how you went about doing the book
00:02:33 ►
but of course you’d known Leo for a long time
00:02:35 ►
and so then you sat down
00:02:36 ►
and just interviewed him for the book
00:02:39 ►
oh yeah, Gene and I worked together
00:02:41 ►
we went to visit him
00:02:42 ►
and we spent time
00:02:43 ►
and we recorded everything that was being said,
00:02:47 ►
and we probably got together with him several times
00:02:53 ►
until we’d covered the whole documentation.
00:02:57 ►
And at first, you know, we did it on the agreement.
00:03:05 ►
We developed the information, but we wouldn’t necessarily prevent it.
00:03:11 ►
And so what made it get prevented is that Leo left us.
00:03:19 ►
So then we had to agree with several people that were really close to him,
00:03:27 ►
and from that we went ahead and developed the book.
00:03:31 ►
And was he happy about getting this out there eventually or excited?
00:03:36 ►
How did he feel about it?
00:03:38 ►
Oh, I think he felt very good about it.
00:03:39 ►
I think he was happy that somebody was interested enough to present the material.
00:03:47 ►
And so he was happy to cooperate.
00:03:53 ►
And he trained so many people.
00:03:55 ►
I know he trained George Greer and his wife, Riqua, among others,
00:04:00 ►
because we did a podcast with them.
00:04:02 ►
But, yeah, I guess hundreds of people he must have trained.
00:04:05 ►
Now, how did, do you know,
00:04:07 ►
and I’m going to ask some questions that are in the book
00:04:09 ►
that the people should go out and read the book,
00:04:11 ►
but how did he,
00:04:14 ►
did he personally take MDMA with the people
00:04:17 ►
when they were taking their training,
00:04:18 ►
or did he, how did he?
00:04:20 ►
Well, I don’t think so.
00:04:21 ►
I think he preferred to just sit with them
00:04:24 ►
and just be alert and present.
00:04:28 ►
I don’t think he felt like he had to take anything.
00:04:32 ►
I was talking more about the trainers when he was training the other therapists that were doing it.
00:04:39 ►
I remember George and Rico tell the story about they took it themselves first
00:04:44 ►
before they gave it to anybody else as therapists.
00:04:48 ►
So I guess that would be part of the training for everybody,
00:04:51 ►
is don’t give this medicine to somebody if you haven’t taken it yourself.
00:04:55 ►
Oh, I’m pretty sure that would be essential.
00:04:59 ►
What was his name?
00:05:01 ►
Phil Donahue used to do these talk shows on television.
00:05:04 ►
And this is back around 86 maybe.
00:05:09 ►
No, it was probably around 84 when MDMA had hit the streets in Dallas.
00:05:14 ►
There was ecstasy and it was really getting big.
00:05:17 ►
And he did a program, a whole hour program on it,
00:05:20 ►
in which he had several different points of view represented on stage you know i had a dea
00:05:28 ►
guy and a doctor and then a therapist but the audience was full of people who had i think
00:05:35 ►
probably been helped by people maybe that leo had trained because uh person after person got up on
00:05:41 ►
the audience saying oh let me tell you what it did for me, let me tell you what it did for me, and let me tell you what it did for me.
00:05:46 ►
For years I had a copy of that tape loaned at somebody and it disappeared.
00:05:52 ►
I’m sure there’s an archive somewhere of all his programs that it could be recovered eventually.
00:05:58 ►
But that was when it was still legal.
00:06:01 ►
And people could talk about it and talk about their work with it.
00:06:04 ►
it was still legal and people could talk about it and talk about their work with it.
00:06:11 ►
It’s amazing what’s been happening just recently with what Michael Mithoffer is doing with PTSD and MDMA,
00:06:15 ►
that he’s had some just really amazing results. And if I remember right, he believes now that many cases of post-traumatic stress disorder,
00:06:22 ►
at least that are associated with rape,
00:06:24 ►
Many cases of post-traumatic stress disorder, at least that are associated with rape,
00:06:31 ►
can actually, most of the people can be essentially cured of the heavy-duty problems with PTSD in as few as one or two MDMA sessions with a skilled psychotherapist.
00:06:38 ►
But they do the whole session, and then the person stays there that night,
00:06:44 ►
and they cook them a meal and they i
00:06:46 ►
mean they they keep them for the whole you know like a 18 hour session it’s not like you just
00:06:51 ►
go to the doctor’s office and do it and they send you on the way home so i think they’re they’re
00:06:56 ►
doing a very responsible job of it yeah what would be the highlights you know what are what are some
00:07:02 ►
of the things that uh you’ve had this huge, long, exciting career,
00:07:07 ►
you’ve known all these people from Sasha to Hoffman,
00:07:11 ►
and then all the participants and everything, the craziness in the 60s,
00:07:15 ►
that anything stand out as either more comedy or more tragedy than any others?
00:07:24 ►
Well, first of all,
00:07:26 ►
I don’t think there’s any tragedy.
00:07:28 ►
I think we’re pretty lucky
00:07:30 ►
to get around that.
00:07:36 ►
We’ve spent quite a bit of time,
00:07:37 ►
you know, at first
00:07:39 ►
we were fortunate
00:07:44 ►
to be able to have experiences with compounds that were promising,
00:07:52 ►
and so it meant a lot for us personally.
00:07:55 ►
And then in due time, we had moved over here.
00:08:00 ►
We’d gotten quite a bit of information, and we began to feel that it was worthwhile
00:08:08 ►
dealing with other people who might be interested.
00:08:13 ►
And so that lasted for over ten years, I think.
00:08:19 ►
We’d have people come maybe every other week,
00:08:24 ►
and sometimes it might be two or three people,
00:08:28 ►
probably not more than four others besides ourselves.
00:08:34 ►
And we did that for quite a few years,
00:08:40 ►
and we enjoyed it,
00:08:41 ►
and I think the people who went through it, I think they were very grateful and they enjoyed it, and I think the people who went through it,
00:08:46 ►
I think they were very grateful and they enjoyed it.
00:08:49 ►
I don’t think we ran into any real difficulties.
00:08:53 ►
Every once in a rare while you might find somebody who’s kind of scary or afraid,
00:09:01 ►
and I don’t really remember specifically that there was anyone who was really in bad shape.
00:09:09 ►
But by and large, most of the people were very happy and had a lot of benefit from just participating
00:09:16 ►
and experiencing those things.
00:09:19 ►
You know that you’ve been associated with this for more than 50 years now,
00:09:29 ►
so it’s probably an unfair question to ask,
00:09:32 ►
but it’s the question I get asked most often,
00:09:35 ►
is people say, you know, I’m sitting out here and wherever in the hills of Scotland or the outback of Australia
00:09:39 ►
or a big city in China,
00:09:41 ►
and I think I’m the only person around in this whole part of the country
00:09:45 ►
that’s interested in these subjects.
00:09:47 ►
How do I find other people?
00:09:49 ►
And, you know, I usually tell them, well, you know, you have to go somewhere,
00:09:52 ►
go to a conference or something like that to meet them.
00:09:54 ►
You had no problem finding people because people find you.
00:09:59 ►
You have any ideas about that?
00:10:02 ►
Well, it’s an interesting thing to think about.
00:10:05 ►
I don’t know.
00:10:07 ►
It seemed to all fall together pretty naturally.
00:10:11 ►
Of course, you know, we had wonderful guides ourselves
00:10:16 ►
where we learned about different substances
00:10:19 ►
and what it meant for us personally.
00:10:21 ►
And then in time, we began to recognize
00:10:25 ►
how some of these things
00:10:26 ►
could be used with other people.
00:10:28 ►
So then we began opening the doors
00:10:30 ►
and having more and more people come.
00:10:33 ►
So that I’d say over 10 or 15 years,
00:10:38 ►
we had actually worked with quite a few people.
00:10:43 ►
And the way that it spread you know we’d start
00:10:48 ►
with people that we knew and were interested and then they in turn you
00:10:53 ►
know they enjoyed the experience and felt it’s worthwhile and so they would
00:10:59 ►
introduce us to other people and say is it all right if so-and-so comes and so on? And so that just kept growing and growing,
00:11:08 ►
and so it kept going for, you know,
00:11:11 ►
I don’t know the exact number,
00:11:13 ►
somewhere between 10 and 20 years.
00:11:17 ►
I’m pretty sure it was 10 years at least.
00:11:22 ►
But that went on for quite a while, and we really enjoyed doing that work.
00:11:29 ►
Yeah, you know, I guess in my own case, I spent so many years feeling isolated, and
00:11:35 ►
then finally I met one or two people, and they introduced me to somebody else, and I
00:11:39 ►
met somebody else, and now it seems like everybody i know is involved in psychedelics that uh and i don’t by
00:11:47 ►
involved i don’t mean they’re a lot of my friends who i i would consider involved don’t really use
00:11:53 ►
psychedelics so some have never used them but they’re fascinating and i’ve got a lawyer friend
00:11:57 ►
who’s uh just intrigued uh with lsd but he’s never been able to screw up the career he should take it, you know, all these years.
00:12:05 ►
And I can understand that.
00:12:07 ►
I was pretty intimidated my first time.
00:12:10 ►
But I came in, you know, a whole generation after you were using it,
00:12:15 ►
and I’d come in after all the government scares about all this thing,
00:12:18 ►
all the false information they put out.
00:12:21 ►
And so a lot of people have to overcome that.
00:12:24 ►
But, you know, at breakfast this morning, Gene was kind of, they put out. Yeah. And so a lot of people have to overcome that.
00:12:25 ►
You know,
00:12:27 ►
at breakfast this morning,
00:12:29 ►
Jean was kind of,
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I forgot how she said it,
00:12:31 ►
but she said,
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oh yeah,
00:12:33 ►
everywhere you go,
00:12:34 ►
you’re riding on a shuttle from the airport
00:12:35 ►
to a hotel or something.
00:12:36 ►
You strike up a conversation
00:12:37 ►
about psychedelics.
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How do you approach strangers?
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I mean,
00:12:42 ►
if you’re just sitting on a bus
00:12:43 ►
with somebody,
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do you just strike up a conversation?
00:12:45 ►
I really had a lot of fun with that.
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I had to go to catch an airplane,
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and we’re usually at my daughter’s house,
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and it’s quite a distance to the airport.
00:13:01 ►
And so we’d get the, what do you call it?
00:13:05 ►
The shuttle? The shuttle. Yeah, we’d have the, what do you call it? The shuttle?
00:13:06 ►
The shuttle.
00:13:07 ►
Yeah, we’d have the shuttle come pick us up
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and it took, oh, 45 minutes usually to get over there.
00:13:16 ►
So we’d get in and, you know,
00:13:18 ►
sooner or later they’d pick up other people.
00:13:20 ►
There’d be a few people in the car
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and they were close and if they looked friendly,
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I might bring up an issue and ask questions and so on.
00:13:32 ►
And it kind of struck me that how frequently it was that somebody that were sitting there,
00:13:43 ►
Frequently it was that somebody that were sitting there,
00:13:45 ►
usually it’s not a big,
00:13:48 ►
I think it was only maybe half a dozen people that would get in the same unit,
00:13:52 ►
but almost always I’d get the interest of at least one person,
00:13:58 ►
maybe some more than that,
00:14:00 ►
and then we’d go from there, you know,
00:14:02 ►
and just see how far we were willing to discuss it.
00:14:06 ►
I don’t think I was ever totally shut off.
00:14:09 ►
It might have been that sometimes, you know,
00:14:11 ►
nobody was interested and so you just had to forget it.
00:14:14 ►
But it was kind of interesting.
00:14:17 ►
I think I got somebody’s interest almost every time.
00:14:21 ►
I wouldn’t be surprised.
00:14:22 ►
And I just did it just to see if I could
00:14:25 ►
raise that interest.
00:14:29 ►
Well, it beats talking about
00:14:30 ►
politics and religion,
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you know.
00:14:35 ►
And, of course,
00:14:35 ►
you always had to be careful,
00:14:37 ►
you know,
00:14:37 ►
that I’m not doing anything now.
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Right.
00:14:39 ►
This is stuff that
00:14:40 ►
I used to do,
00:14:42 ►
and unfortunately
00:14:42 ►
our stupid government
00:14:44 ►
shut things down. So not much is going on, stuff that used to do unfortunately our stupid government shut
00:14:45 ►
things down
00:14:46 ►
so not much
00:14:48 ►
is going on
00:14:48 ►
but we’re
00:14:49 ►
fortunate that
00:14:50 ►
there was a
00:14:51 ►
time when we
00:14:51 ►
could do these
00:14:52 ►
things
00:14:52 ►
and at least
00:14:53 ►
we can at
00:14:53 ►
least for the
00:14:54 ►
time being
00:14:54 ►
still talk about
00:14:55 ►
these things
00:14:55 ►
so hopefully
00:14:56 ►
that’ll go on
00:14:57 ►
so yeah you
00:14:59 ►
never had any
00:15:00 ►
ugly incident
00:15:01 ►
with anybody
00:15:02 ►
preaching to you
00:15:04 ►
about the
00:15:04 ►
evils of these substances?
00:15:06 ►
Not a one.
00:15:08 ►
Yeah, I’ve been amazed at how
00:15:10 ►
many
00:15:10 ►
times I’ve been someplace
00:15:14 ►
and one way or another the subject comes up
00:15:16 ►
and next thing you know
00:15:18 ►
everybody’s gathered in the conversation.
00:15:21 ►
I think
00:15:22 ►
there’s just a lot more interest in these things
00:15:24 ►
than anybody really has an inkling about.
00:15:28 ►
Well, I think that’s absolutely right.
00:15:32 ►
And it seemed to me we were pretty lucky
00:15:33 ►
that we very often had people join us
00:15:38 ►
in the car we were going in
00:15:40 ►
and were curious
00:15:42 ►
or sometimes they had better information
00:15:47 ►
and they enjoyed pursuing it.
00:15:52 ►
Yeah, I think that’s the whole thing
00:15:54 ►
is you just start talking to people
00:15:56 ►
and one thing leads to another.
00:15:59 ►
I found that it’s really in my life,
00:16:04 ►
at least in my case, it’s more important for me to be in contact with people that I can talk to about these things than actually even have access to the substances.
00:16:22 ►
When you first get involved and you get all inflated.
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I got carried away and I thought, wow, this is going to change the world and save the whole human race.
00:16:31 ►
I still believe that, by the way.
00:16:32 ►
It’s just it didn’t happen as quickly as I thought.
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Unfortunately, the government really put the clamps on.
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It’s really sad.
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The thing that’s so sad,
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and I report this any time that I can,
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but what’s so sad is
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we’re supposed to be
00:16:54 ►
one of the most understanding people
00:16:58 ►
of the whole world.
00:17:01 ►
So it’s very disappointing to see
00:17:05 ►
the way everything has been shut down
00:17:07 ►
and you’re not able,
00:17:09 ►
made it outlawing to fool around
00:17:12 ►
with these substances.
00:17:13 ►
Yeah, something that just struck me
00:17:16 ►
when you said we’re supposed to be
00:17:18 ►
the most open people,
00:17:20 ►
and we, the people on the vans
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going to the airports,
00:17:23 ►
really are open, apparently.
00:17:24 ►
But it’s our government that really shut all this stuff down. And we, the people on the vans going to the airports, really are open, apparently.
00:17:29 ►
But it’s our government that really shut all this stuff down.
00:17:37 ►
Oh, the government is the one that’s totally responsible for making all this stuff difficult.
00:17:42 ►
Well, these things eliminate fear and break down boundaries,
00:17:46 ►
and that’s how they keep us all in check with the boundaries and the fear.
00:17:51 ►
And so I can see how these substances are a threat to the status quo,
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which the status quo never stays the same very long,
00:17:58 ►
even though people fight to maintain it.
00:18:02 ►
The DEA, they’ve been the toughest one. To a man, they’re really refuting these things
00:18:06 ►
with all the power that they have.
00:18:11 ►
And they’re not interested in learning anything about it.
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They’re not interested in learning anything possible.
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We’re just really lucky that in the last maybe three years or so
00:18:23 ►
that we’ve been able to get a few of these projects open.
00:18:29 ►
And hopefully, we hope that those will grow
00:18:32 ►
and some of them are showing great success.
00:18:37 ►
So based on that, they’ll begin to expand
00:18:39 ►
and more and more people will be able to have access to it.
00:18:44 ►
And it should really begin to grow.
00:18:47 ►
So it’s been a very slow process,
00:18:51 ►
but at least there’s still some hope in there.
00:18:54 ►
Yeah, I think there is a little ray of hope.
00:18:56 ►
The people who are just now getting really to retirement age
00:19:01 ►
are the children of the 60s,
00:19:04 ►
and a lot of those at least had one or two experiences
00:19:07 ►
you’d hope they would remember fondly.
00:19:11 ►
And yet there’s a whole, the following generation
00:19:14 ►
grew up under the just say no draconian rules.
00:19:18 ►
And now I think it’s like skipped a generation
00:19:21 ►
because the people I know who are 30 and under
00:19:26 ►
are really much more like what you guys were back in the 50s and 60s pioneering these things.
00:19:34 ►
For one thing, they’re armed with a lot of information that nobody’s had before because of the Internet.
00:19:41 ►
That’s really helpful.
00:19:43 ►
I think that’s made a big difference.
00:19:45 ►
for because of the internet and that’s really helpful i think that’s made a big difference that you know it’s it’s still a lot of young people and i wasn’t that young when i got involved but i
00:19:51 ►
i started it felt good i enjoyed it you know and and uh granted i was starting to make some
00:19:57 ►
spiritual connections and work on some issues myself and our family But on top of all of the positive benefits like that,
00:20:06 ►
it just felt good.
00:20:08 ►
And human beings like to do things that feel good.
00:20:11 ►
So now I think it’s happening where a lot of young people
00:20:14 ►
are encountering these substances for the first time
00:20:17 ►
at gatherings, at raves, at dances, parties.
00:20:23 ►
And not even a majority of them, but a significant percentage of them seem
00:20:29 ►
to get it.
00:20:30 ►
And then they’ll go out and start doing the work in smaller groups and really start paying
00:20:35 ►
attention.
00:20:36 ►
And they’re the ones that are coming to Arrowhead and reading your books and the Shulgin’s
00:20:41 ►
books and really searching out the information,
00:20:47 ►
trying to learn how to better do these things.
00:20:50 ►
Unfortunately, there are people producing books
00:20:54 ►
and producing excellent information that’s available.
00:20:59 ►
Yeah, I know just…
00:21:01 ►
Well, I’ve only been involved in this in, you know, 20-some years.
00:21:05 ►
And back in the beginning when I was involved, you know,
00:21:08 ►
it’s like pulling teeth to find out any information,
00:21:11 ►
that there’d be a few mimeograph sheets that were passed
00:21:14 ►
or Xerox sheets, you know, passed around that here’s some information.
00:21:18 ►
But now you could spend the next six months full-time at Arrowwood
00:21:22 ►
and still not even get halfway through their material.
00:21:26 ►
Well, they’re doing a great job.
00:21:29 ►
And actually, the government is using them, too.
00:21:33 ►
They realize that they’re careful and they’re honest,
00:21:37 ►
and a lot of times they get very worthwhile information from them.
00:21:44 ►
Yeah, I’ve heard that the government does contact them
00:21:48 ►
because their information is rock solid.
00:21:51 ►
It’s been researched.
00:21:53 ►
Those are hard-working people up there.
00:21:56 ►
They are.
00:21:56 ►
They really are.
00:21:58 ►
They’re a wonderful couple.
00:22:00 ►
They are.
00:22:00 ►
But, yeah, the information, information at least is readily available now.
00:22:06 ►
And people keep, not many, but I get frequent requests for,
00:22:13 ►
how do I find this stuff?
00:22:14 ►
And everybody always says, well, you can trust me.
00:22:18 ►
And I’m sure I probably could.
00:22:20 ►
But first of all, I make a point of not knowing where to find stuff
00:22:24 ►
because when I started doing these podcasts, I thought, you know, I better be squeaky clean.
00:22:31 ►
But I’ve kind of gotten to the point where I think that if you start researching this
00:22:38 ►
and thinking about it and really kind of working on yourself and paying attention,
00:22:46 ►
somehow they seem to find you.
00:22:48 ►
I don’t know quite how to do that,
00:22:50 ►
but I’d spent years just really trying to figure out how I could do ayahuasca.
00:22:56 ►
And then all of a sudden, without me even thinking about it,
00:23:01 ►
the opportunity just popped into my face, you know,
00:23:03 ►
and it turned out to be a good time for me.
00:23:05 ►
Oh, good.
00:23:07 ►
These medicines have a little spirit of their own that they seek you out.
00:23:12 ►
Certainly sought you out.
00:23:15 ►
Did you have much experience with mushrooms,
00:23:19 ►
or was yours mainly work in chemicals?
00:23:23 ►
We’ve had mushrooms.
00:23:25 ►
I can remember a case or two,
00:23:27 ►
and this goes back quite a few years,
00:23:31 ►
but I can remember some where it was pretty intense,
00:23:36 ►
but it ends up with a tremendous opening.
00:23:41 ►
How did you enjoy the plant experience
00:23:44 ►
any differently from a chemical experience
00:23:47 ►
there’s a lot of pros and cons about that
00:23:49 ►
I don’t know
00:23:51 ►
I think you have to be careful
00:23:53 ►
how you assign those things
00:23:55 ►
what determines what’s happening
00:23:59 ►
is a lot of the stuff
00:24:01 ►
that you’ve already experienced
00:24:03 ►
and a lot of us have stuffed a lot of the stuff that you’ve already experienced and a lot of us have
00:24:05 ►
stuffed a lot of stuff down
00:24:07 ►
out of consciousness
00:24:11 ►
you know we
00:24:12 ►
got even starting from
00:24:15 ►
childhood you run into
00:24:17 ►
difficulties places
00:24:19 ►
where you’ve been mistreated and
00:24:21 ►
maybe
00:24:23 ►
going up to school getting running into people who were not
00:24:29 ►
friendly and all this kind of stuff.
00:24:32 ►
And what happens with a lot of people is they just push that away and pretend that it’s
00:24:40 ►
not there.
00:24:41 ►
Yeah.
00:24:42 ►
But it is there until you’re really willing to open and see what it is. And that’s not there. But it is there until you’re really willing
00:24:46 ►
to open and see what it is.
00:24:48 ►
And that’s not easy.
00:24:50 ►
I’ve been through that process.
00:24:52 ►
Now, I’m talking about going back
00:24:53 ►
maybe 10 to 15 to 20 years.
00:24:59 ►
And this is when times,
00:25:01 ►
actually when some of these materials
00:25:03 ►
were still legal
00:25:06 ►
at least they hadn’t been
00:25:07 ►
knocked out
00:25:09 ►
and
00:25:10 ►
it takes a lot of
00:25:13 ►
courage to
00:25:15 ►
learn that
00:25:16 ►
you need to open your heart
00:25:20 ►
and allow
00:25:22 ►
whatever it is you’ve stuffed down
00:25:23 ►
within yourself
00:25:24 ►
that’s holding
00:25:26 ►
you down even though it’s painful you’re much better off if you’re willing to
00:25:33 ►
experience the pain be with it and let it go because once it breaks through and
00:25:39 ►
it’s gone you’re at a whole new level and it’s an enormous opening
00:25:46 ►
and it’s
00:25:46 ►
God you feel worlds better
00:25:49 ►
because you’ve been freed up
00:25:52 ►
and sometimes
00:25:54 ►
you just realize
00:25:57 ►
well now I got through that one
00:25:59 ►
there’s another one down here
00:26:01 ►
that’s pretty tough and dragging
00:26:03 ►
so I got through the other one.
00:26:06 ►
Maybe I’ll make my way out of this one.
00:26:08 ►
You work your way out of that one and you feel even better.
00:26:10 ►
Then finally you realize that, my God, you should never try to not handle those things.
00:26:19 ►
The important thing to do is to be willing to get right into the heart of it.
00:26:23 ►
And there are ways to
00:26:25 ►
do that, and there are people who have described that, and that’s really very important and
00:26:31 ►
very helpful.
00:26:33 ►
Yeah, Ann Shulgin talks about that some, because I asked her one time about, because I’ve really
00:26:39 ►
only had one or two times, I would say, I had a bad trip. And so I asked her, am I saving up for
00:26:46 ►
the mother of all bad trips? And she said, only if you’re not willing and prepared to
00:26:51 ►
handle stuff that comes up, just exactly what you said. If you can deal with those things
00:26:56 ►
and then you can move on and you have the openings. I guess the only thing that’s from
00:27:01 ►
time to time discouraged me a little bit is i’ll have those epiphanies after
00:27:06 ►
i clear out some garbage and in the next week or so i’m just really flying high and then the old
00:27:12 ►
habits kick in and that stuff starts coming back again you know and i do have to say that after
00:27:19 ►
a number of years now that that doesn’t really happen too much anymore, but I was really discouraged for a while there,
00:27:26 ►
thinking, gosh, you know, I’m never getting through.
00:27:28 ►
You think that just because you did this,
00:27:31 ►
everything’s okay,
00:27:33 ►
but you forget that there’s layers of other stuff there
00:27:36 ►
waiting to be released.
00:27:39 ►
And so the sooner you’re willing to face that
00:27:42 ►
and open that up,
00:27:43 ►
the more quickly you can get free of all that stuff.
00:27:47 ►
And when you do get free, you feel better and better,
00:27:49 ►
and you’re more alive, and life is a lot better.
00:27:57 ►
But I have a lot of trouble with that,
00:28:00 ►
because I have a lot of deep places which are very hurting,
00:28:05 ►
and they’re so hurting,
00:28:06 ►
you know, I don’t want to deal with them.
00:28:08 ►
So you have to make the decision
00:28:12 ►
of what you want to do.
00:28:14 ►
And I’ve learned that it’s very, very helpful
00:28:18 ►
to really be willing to feel discomfort and pain,
00:28:23 ►
to stay with it until it opens up.
00:28:26 ►
Because once you’re released from it, it’s a whole new life.
00:28:31 ►
And see, a lot of times, the release that you get
00:28:35 ►
comes from areas that were so painful and so difficult
00:28:41 ►
that we’ve stamped them down,
00:28:44 ►
and so difficult that we’ve stamped them down and we refuse in our consciousness to admit that it’s there.
00:28:51 ►
It’s just too much to handle.
00:28:54 ►
And so we pretend we’re okay,
00:28:58 ►
but actually we’re still carrying all this pain around.
00:29:01 ►
But it just takes time to realize
00:29:06 ►
that
00:29:06 ►
you can
00:29:08 ►
get rid
00:29:08 ►
of it
00:29:09 ►
and you
00:29:10 ►
have to be
00:29:10 ►
willing to
00:29:11 ►
do whatever
00:29:11 ►
is necessary
00:29:12 ►
if it’s
00:29:14 ►
hurting
00:29:14 ►
and it’s
00:29:15 ►
hurting real
00:29:15 ►
bad
00:29:16 ►
you just
00:29:17 ►
have to
00:29:17 ►
face it
00:29:18 ►
and be
00:29:18 ►
with it
00:29:19 ►
and
00:29:20 ►
eventually
00:29:22 ►
it lets
00:29:23 ►
go
00:29:23 ►
and my
00:29:23 ►
God
00:29:24 ►
it’s just
00:29:24 ►
such a relief when that happens.
00:29:27 ►
You’re a new person.
00:29:29 ►
But, you know, in a way, I’m in the process of going through some of that right now.
00:29:35 ►
And a few weeks ago I was at kind of a bad point where I didn’t want to face up to something.
00:29:41 ►
I was trying to avoid it and something in the past.
00:29:45 ►
And this dear friend of ours down in Southern California, he said,
00:29:50 ►
well, you know, you can’t change the past, but you can change the way you think about it.
00:29:56 ►
I mean, that’s such a simple thing.
00:29:58 ►
And so I started changing the way I think about this series of events in the past, because I can’t change, you know,
00:30:05 ►
up until then I’d been beating up myself,
00:30:08 ►
thinking, well, if I’d only done this,
00:30:09 ►
or I should have done this, or I could have done that.
00:30:11 ►
And now I think, well, you know, I can’t change that,
00:30:14 ►
but I can, what did I learn about it?
00:30:16 ►
What, you know, what did we all learn about it?
00:30:17 ►
And sometimes that involves calling people up and talking,
00:30:22 ►
or writing letters, or getting together with them,
00:30:23 ►
and say, hey, you know, let me rewind here.
00:30:26 ►
And that’s really hard for me to do sometimes.
00:30:30 ►
Yeah, but it’s very, very worthwhile.
00:30:34 ►
See, the main trouble in all this stuff
00:30:37 ►
is that there is a part of us that’s frightened
00:30:41 ►
and afraid of the pain
00:30:44 ►
and we don’t want to deal with it
00:30:47 ►
and so uh you try to pretend that it’s not there but it is there and as long as it’s there it’s
00:30:55 ►
going to control you you’re going to feel it you’re going to run into situations uh where where it hurts. And the sooner that you decide,
00:31:07 ►
you know, I’ve got to get rid of that
00:31:08 ►
and be willing to really do whatever it takes
00:31:12 ►
to go through it and see what it is
00:31:15 ►
that you have locked up.
00:31:17 ►
Be willing to face it and experience it.
00:31:20 ►
Because once it comes to the surface
00:31:22 ►
and released, you’re through with it
00:31:25 ►
and that’s what’s really really important
00:31:29 ►
yeah the letting go
00:31:31 ►
what is it
00:31:33 ►
he said something else
00:31:34 ►
gosh I don’t know if I can quite remember
00:31:37 ►
moving on
00:31:40 ►
is letting go
00:31:43 ►
transformed
00:31:44 ►
uh huh yeah that’s very well said Moving on is letting go transformed.
00:31:49 ►
Yeah, that’s very well said.
00:31:52 ►
Yeah, moving on is letting go transformed. A couple of these simple little aphorisms, if I can keep them in my head,
00:31:57 ►
I can get through these hard days sometimes.
00:32:00 ►
Although, in all honesty, the hard, hard days and weeks of my life are are over i’m
00:32:08 ►
i’m probably never been at a better point in my life i’m i know i haven’t been i’ve never been
00:32:13 ►
happier more fulfilled now that doesn’t mean i don’t have a lot of problems i’ve got the whole
00:32:18 ►
bundle of fears and anxieties that we but i i don’t pay much attention to them anymore you know they’re they’re still there but uh that’s great uh yeah and it shows you know because you’re really very alive and
00:32:31 ►
you’re fun to be with and but you know i i owe really i owe my life to all of these medicines
00:32:39 ►
that i was heading down a really dark way before I met him, you know.
00:32:49 ►
And really all they’ve done for me, I mean, it’s everything.
00:32:50 ►
It’s given me my life. But all it really did, it didn’t transform me or change me into somebody new.
00:32:56 ►
It took me back to who I was when I was a boy,
00:32:59 ►
before I had all of this other layers of stuff put on me.
00:33:03 ►
I got back to my old dreaming self
00:33:06 ►
sitting up in the maple tree guy, you know,
00:33:08 ►
and I’m not totally there yet.
00:33:12 ►
None of us ever will be, I don’t think,
00:33:13 ►
but the fact that right now, actually,
00:33:19 ►
if I really, for example,
00:33:21 ►
if I had a recurrence of my cancer,
00:33:24 ►
I would have no fear about it at all.
00:33:27 ►
The first thing I would do is head down to Peru, to the Amazon, and to my Ayahuasquero that I know down there.
00:33:33 ►
Because I am so absolutely convinced that I could deal with anything that way.
00:33:39 ►
Wonderful.
00:33:40 ►
And that’s a tool that maybe, hopefully I’ll never have to use that way.
00:33:44 ►
But knowing that these tools are there,
00:33:47 ►
and if there’s a relationship issue, you have a tool of MDMA that you can use.
00:33:52 ►
If you have a creativity issue, there’s the LSD tool for you.
00:33:57 ►
There’s a lot of different tools that could…
00:34:01 ►
And these things…
00:34:04 ►
I don’t know if you’ve given any thought,
00:34:06 ►
but it seems so strange that we could evolve these complex brains
00:34:12 ►
and have all these neat little receptors,
00:34:15 ►
and then these plants would grow that fit in these little receptors,
00:34:21 ►
these molecules that make it.
00:34:22 ►
It can’t be an accident that these psychoactive plants in our brains
00:34:28 ►
have co-evolved into some sort of a symbiosis
00:34:31 ►
to lift us out of flat land into another dimension.
00:34:36 ►
It just seems to me no accident.
00:34:39 ►
But then again, maybe that’s how I rationalize my love for using these medicines.
00:34:46 ►
Well, once you reach some of these higher levels
00:34:49 ►
and realize how the purity, absolute purity,
00:34:55 ►
the fantastic love, that’s there waiting for us.
00:35:01 ►
And from time to time, we can feel it at times and when we know
00:35:07 ►
that that’s very real and that’s probably the most important thing we can
00:35:12 ►
do is to get into that stage but that’s the most important thing that we could
00:35:18 ►
possibly do so if we focused on that and worked on that, and I have to be careful here.
00:35:26 ►
I said, I used the word worked on that,
00:35:29 ►
and the working is not really struggling
00:35:34 ►
and trying to make things happen.
00:35:36 ►
It isn’t that at all.
00:35:38 ►
What it is, is learning to just be still,
00:35:42 ►
to just let everything go,
00:35:44 ►
just absolutely be still, to just let everything go, just absolutely be still
00:35:46 ►
and let our hearts open.
00:35:49 ►
Because as that opens,
00:35:51 ►
we get into the area
00:35:53 ►
that we’re really looking for,
00:35:55 ►
where we’re really alive,
00:35:57 ►
where this is it, man.
00:35:59 ►
This is really what it’s all about.
00:36:02 ►
And it’s pure,
00:36:03 ►
absolutely pure love.
00:36:06 ►
You know, I hadn’t made that connection exactly like that, the pure love, until just this moment.
00:36:12 ►
Because you got me thinking about, Sasha has this scale, the plus five scale, where a plus one is a little tingle, you know, there’s something active going on.
00:36:23 ►
And plus five is the pure love, the bliss, but when you come back you can’t remember anything.
00:36:29 ►
And plus four is what you’re going for, it’s right on the edge of bliss, but you remember it.
00:36:34 ►
And I’ve not translated that into this moment, but that plus five state is that pure love. I’ve been there a few times, and what you said is exactly how I’ve approached those
00:36:49 ►
plus-five states. And I’ve not been there that often, but when you come back and somebody
00:36:56 ►
says, well, how was it? What happened? It was incredible. What was it like? I don’t know.
00:37:08 ►
But what you do… You’ve got to go one step further.
00:37:10 ►
That I don’t know, you’ve got to get rid of the I don’t know.
00:37:12 ►
Because you know.
00:37:14 ►
You’ve got to really know.
00:37:17 ►
You’re exactly right.
00:37:19 ►
I can’t put it into words, I guess, the answer.
00:37:22 ►
But that’s exactly what you said,
00:37:24 ►
is that you come back,
00:37:26 ►
and while maybe you can’t know exactly how to put this into your daily life at the moment,
00:37:33 ►
but you know that your core and everybody’s core
00:37:37 ►
and where we’re all touching each other is this core of love.
00:37:40 ►
And that’s that state that I sometimes, Mary C. and I sometimes, I joke with her that I’ve had several experiences that were like so incredibly blissful.
00:37:58 ►
But after a while, I thought, hey, it’s time for this to be over.
00:38:02 ►
I want the next act.
00:38:04 ►
What’s going on next?
00:38:06 ►
But I just stayed in this state of perfect bliss
00:38:10 ►
for 20, 30 minutes, way too long.
00:38:13 ►
And I came back and I said…
00:38:15 ►
Too long? How could it be too long?
00:38:17 ►
That’s what she keeps saying.
00:38:18 ►
I said, you know what?
00:38:19 ►
Bliss is really boring after a while.
00:38:23 ►
And I think we come back to this plane here just because we’ve been
00:38:28 ►
so blissed out we’re bored we want a little pain and agony so that we can appreciate the bliss i
00:38:33 ►
don’t know oh my oh my i i really did get to the point where and this one particular experience
00:38:41 ►
where it’s just like wow you know, and I did feel like I
00:38:45 ►
could stay there forever.
00:38:48 ►
But why not?
00:38:49 ►
But nothing was happening, you know, there was no action, no adventure, it was just,
00:38:53 ►
I was just at a perfect state of bliss.
00:38:56 ►
You know, I guess I wanted to talk to somebody.
00:38:58 ►
I didn’t want to, I felt alone.
00:39:00 ►
Maybe that’s what it was. Some of the different religious myths and legends talk about a God figure.
00:39:11 ►
Why did a God create a universe?
00:39:13 ►
Well, because it was lonely.
00:39:15 ►
And I’ve been in a couple of those states where I felt like I was the only soul in the cosmos.
00:39:23 ►
And that pure bliss state was one of those
00:39:25 ►
where I just needed somebody to talk to.
00:39:29 ►
But you see, you’re already them.
00:39:32 ►
They are already you.
00:39:34 ►
We’re all one together.
00:39:37 ►
You know, I do tell myself that a lot.
00:39:40 ►
And particularly when I see somebody that irritates me.
00:39:45 ►
What in that person am I seeing in myself?
00:39:49 ►
What’s reflecting back?
00:39:51 ►
So I’ve just had to stop watching the news.
00:39:54 ►
There’s so much about me I don’t like in the news.
00:39:58 ►
Yeah, but you’re overlooking the fact that you have an opportunity there
00:40:03 ►
because you look at someone,
00:40:06 ►
and of course, I think probably you have to
00:40:09 ►
be pretty well settled down for yourself
00:40:13 ►
and be feeling really good.
00:40:15 ►
And then you see another person,
00:40:17 ►
and they’re having problems, and they’re hurting,
00:40:21 ►
and you can recognize that,
00:40:23 ►
and you can wish them well, and you can recognize that and you can wish them well and you can you can send love to
00:40:29 ►
them and help them hopefully it might help them lift themselves up good point begin to change
00:40:37 ►
their lives something i’ve been thinking about like a lot lately is uh because i’ve got these
00:40:43 ►
new grandchildren coming into my life and
00:40:46 ►
and you know they talk about stem cell research and you get a stem cell and it can become any
00:40:51 ►
kind of a cell and I think these little infants that come into the world are sort of like stem
00:40:56 ►
cells you know if you take a baby no matter where it’s born and put it in an American family or you
00:41:02 ►
take the same baby put it in a Vietnamese family or a Chinese family,
00:41:05 ►
no matter where that child is placed,
00:41:10 ►
all of the overlays of family
00:41:12 ►
and society and culture and religion
00:41:16 ►
get laid into that.
00:41:17 ►
But that same little being
00:41:19 ►
could have been a Muslim or a Christian
00:41:22 ►
or a Jew or a Buddhist,
00:41:25 ►
depending on where they got the overlays put in.
00:41:28 ►
And so I see these medicines as cleaning house, cleanse the doors of perception,
00:41:33 ►
get rid of the overlays back to your little innocent stem cell body,
00:41:37 ►
and say, now I’m going to take charge.
00:41:39 ►
And I’m going to put the, you know, we all put overlays back on,
00:41:43 ►
but am I going to overlay myself as a Buddhist or as a Muslim
00:41:48 ►
or as just a free thinker who likes the spiritual tradition and picks the best ones out of it?
00:41:56 ►
I think that’s really maybe what we’re in the process of doing with some of these medicines,
00:42:01 ►
is getting rid of the childhood things back to the pure, innocent beings we are.
00:42:07 ►
Because these little babies,
00:42:08 ►
they just gurgle and goo.
00:42:11 ►
And as they get older,
00:42:13 ►
they start adapting the social norms.
00:42:17 ►
I don’t know.
00:42:18 ►
But I really think that there’s so much hope for humanity
00:42:24 ►
if we could just all get along.
00:42:28 ►
Right, right.
00:42:34 ►
Our conversation rambled on from there for a while,
00:42:37 ►
but most of it wouldn’t really be of much interest to you, I don’t think.
00:42:40 ►
Mainly we talked about the big windstorm we were experiencing
00:42:43 ►
and the fact that there was very little snow in the mountains this year
00:42:46 ►
so it was a nice surprise when we got up the next morning
00:42:50 ►
and found that a snowstorm had blanketed the high sierra during the night
00:42:53 ►
and I’ll post a picture of that scene with the program notes for this podcast
00:42:58 ►
if you want to see what it looked like
00:43:00 ►
and you can find those notes at www.psychedelicsalon.org
00:43:05 ►
at the breakfast table on Sunday morning
00:43:08 ►
when Myron started to tell a story about the last time he saw Alan Watts
00:43:12 ►
I asked him if it was okay to turn on my recorder again
00:43:15 ►
and so now we have a couple more of Myron Stolaroff’s Lone Pine stories
00:43:20 ►
you know it’s funny.
00:43:26 ►
You and I had talked a couple times about
00:43:28 ►
Alan Watts
00:43:29 ►
and you were about to say the last
00:43:32 ►
time that you saw him.
00:43:33 ►
Hubbard and I met him in
00:43:35 ►
San Francisco. I went
00:43:37 ►
breakfast with him and he
00:43:40 ►
was on his way to go
00:43:42 ►
to
00:43:43 ►
he was going to go east and see Tim Larry.
00:43:49 ►
And Hubbard, by this time, we had seen a lot of things going on.
00:43:55 ►
People were doing things, and Hubbard was very disturbed
00:43:58 ►
that these things weren’t being handled very well.
00:44:01 ►
And, see, Larry had taken a bunch of people down to Mexico I had a
00:44:10 ►
big place there like that I was down there part of the time with them oh
00:44:15 ►
really I didn’t know that so they had been there and then a bunch of people
00:44:23 ►
going together and had their own ways of handling
00:44:26 ►
things and some of it, I was there for a while and I didn’t think they were handling things
00:44:33 ►
too well, but anyway, Larry was getting out of hand and getting into all kinds of stuff and something really needed to be done to hold that back.
00:44:51 ►
And so he told us that he’d look into it and he’d take care of everything.
00:44:53 ►
By the time he got there, he just went right in with him.
00:44:57 ►
He thought everything they were doing was great.
00:45:00 ►
I’m pushing it out all over the place.
00:45:05 ►
So that was my last experience with that.
00:45:10 ►
Sending Alan Watts to calm down Leary is like throwing gasoline on the fire, right?
00:45:15 ►
Right, exactly. That’s exactly what happened.
00:45:21 ►
I guess that’s the first time I’ve heard, too,
00:45:23 ►
that Hubbard had gotten concerned about what Leary was up to.
00:45:27 ►
I guess we hadn’t talked about that.
00:45:29 ►
But Hubbard just was getting nervous about all of the press.
00:45:34 ►
Is that…
00:45:35 ►
Well, things were getting out of order.
00:45:41 ►
All kinds of stuff was going on.
00:45:43 ►
The people who were on the list,
00:45:47 ►
Osmond and Hopper,
00:45:51 ►
they said,
00:45:52 ►
you get him off or we’re getting off.
00:45:57 ►
Well, you know, these are real outstanding people
00:45:59 ►
and also very dear friends.
00:46:02 ►
So I went up to tell him that we had to take him off.
00:46:07 ►
Of course, all the other guys around there were very supportive of him,
00:46:11 ►
and they thought it was awful and all.
00:46:14 ►
But then I said, well, you know, he’s getting kicked out of Harvard.
00:46:21 ►
And they said, oh, that’s a lot of crap.
00:46:23 ►
Those are rumors that are going
00:46:25 ►
all the way around.
00:46:27 ►
And I said,
00:46:28 ►
Tim,
00:46:28 ►
is that right
00:46:30 ►
or isn’t it?
00:46:31 ►
He never told
00:46:33 ►
his own people
00:46:34 ►
that they were
00:46:35 ►
kicking him
00:46:36 ►
out of Harvard.
00:46:38 ►
Can you imagine that?
00:46:40 ►
Well, it’s consistent
00:46:41 ►
with the character
00:46:42 ►
I’ve heard of
00:46:42 ►
from other sources.
00:46:46 ►
What was their reaction?
00:46:48 ►
Were they like…
00:46:49 ►
Oh, they were…
00:46:51 ►
Well, it hurts.
00:46:53 ►
You know, here’s your key guy.
00:46:55 ►
You know, you think you’re with him.
00:46:57 ►
You think everything’s going okay.
00:46:59 ►
You find out he’s getting kicked out, and they didn’t even tell you.
00:47:04 ►
I imagine there was a little tension
00:47:06 ►
around the dinner table after that.
00:47:08 ►
Oh, there was.
00:47:09 ►
There was.
00:47:11 ►
Anyway, the next morning I was leaving.
00:47:14 ►
I had to leave early to catch a plane.
00:47:17 ►
And so I went up.
00:47:19 ►
I said, you know,
00:47:22 ►
I can’t, I don’t have it in my heart
00:47:24 ►
to tell you not to do what you’re doing.
00:47:27 ►
But really, what you’re doing is not going in the right directions.
00:47:32 ►
And so I said, I say goodbye to him.
00:47:37 ►
And then when I got home, I thought, Jesus Christ, what’s the matter with me?
00:47:41 ►
You know, what he’s doing is incorrigible.
00:47:44 ►
So I wrote him a long letter and sent it back. What’s the matter with me? You know, what he’s doing is incorrigible.
00:47:49 ►
So I wrote him a long letter and sent it back.
00:47:51 ►
I don’t think I ever heard from him anymore. Did you keep a copy of that letter?
00:47:54 ►
It might be somewhere.
00:47:56 ►
I don’t know if I can find it.
00:47:57 ►
If you find it, of course, I’d love to see it.
00:47:59 ►
But just so that you know, that letter still exists.
00:48:03 ►
I’m almost 100% sure because I’ve had some contact with the people
00:48:09 ►
who are trying to sell his archives to the university.
00:48:13 ►
And I’ve seen pictures of the storage sheds where it is,
00:48:17 ►
hundreds and hundreds of catalog boxes,
00:48:20 ►
and the man never threw a thing away, including his grade school report cards.
00:48:25 ►
So any letter…
00:48:27 ►
Leary’s?
00:48:27 ►
Leary, yeah.
00:48:28 ►
And so any correspondence he got from anybody,
00:48:32 ►
I’m sure any correspondence between him and your institute is still in existence.
00:48:37 ►
So someday that will be in some university archive where scholars can go through and see it.
00:48:41 ►
So it’s nice to know it exists.
00:48:44 ►
I just thought you should know.
00:48:41 ►
scholars can go through and see it.
00:48:43 ►
It’s nice to know it exists.
00:48:44 ►
I just thought you should know.
00:48:50 ►
Since this program is a bit long, I’m going to bring it to a close now, even though
00:48:52 ►
there have been several emails about
00:48:54 ►
ayahuasca that I’d like to cover.
00:48:56 ►
I’m still planning on posting parts of these
00:48:58 ►
email conversations on our program
00:49:00 ►
notes page, which you can find at
00:49:02 ►
00:49:04 ►
www.psychedelicsalon.org And in case
00:49:06 ►
you went there over the weekend looking
00:49:07 ►
for those postings, well,
00:49:09 ►
I have to apologize for not getting them online
00:49:12 ►
yet, but my intentions are
00:49:13 ►
honorable, and so I’ll eventually get some of this
00:49:15 ►
correspondence edited and posted.
00:49:18 ►
Until then, I guess I should say that
00:49:20 ►
there have been several experienced
00:49:22 ►
psychonauts who have different opinions
00:49:24 ►
than Mateo and I do about the
00:49:25 ►
ayahuasca diet and more importantly
00:49:28 ►
there are differing opinions about
00:49:30 ►
the wisdom of using ayahuasca as a
00:49:32 ►
solo journey outside of the
00:49:34 ►
normal support structure offered by
00:49:35 ►
an experienced ayahuasquero.
00:49:38 ►
And while I haven’t changed my own opinion
00:49:40 ►
I do think that some of these other opinions
00:49:42 ►
are also worth considering
00:49:43 ►
and so I’ll pass them along and let you make these kinds of decisions on your own.
00:49:48 ►
But I do want to thank everyone who has sent emails about this topic,
00:49:51 ►
and I’ll do my best to get your questions answered and your comments aired.
00:49:56 ►
Before I go, I want to mention that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon
00:50:00 ►
are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 2.5 License.
00:50:06 ►
And if you have any questions about that, just click on the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage.
00:50:13 ►
And if you have any questions, comments, complaints, or suggestions about these podcasts, well, just send them to Lorenzo at MatrixMasters.com.
00:50:21 ►
Thanks again to Jacques and friends at Chateau Hayouk for the use of your music here in the salon.
00:50:26 ►
And a big thank you goes out to Gene and Myron Stolaroff for their hospitality,
00:50:31 ►
and to Ron and Claudia, not only for making this interview possible,
00:50:35 ►
but also for the many great adventures we’ve shared together over the past few years.
00:50:39 ►
I really appreciate your friendship and support, you guys.
00:50:42 ►
The Psychedelic Salon wouldn’t be what it is today without your help.
00:50:46 ►
And I also appreciate you
00:50:48 ►
being here in the salon today again.
00:50:50 ►
It’s really great to have you with us on
00:50:52 ►
this mystical journey into the unknown.
00:50:54 ►
And for now,
00:50:55 ►
this is Lorenzo, signing off from
00:50:57 ►
Cyberdelic Space.
00:50:59 ►
Be well, my friends.