130 - Timothy Leary 1966 Radio Interview

Program Notes §

Guest speaker: Dr. Timothy Leary

[NOTE: All quotes below are by Dr. Timothy Leary.]

“Psychedelic drugs are to the human mind today what the discovery of the microscope was to medicine and biological science three or four hundred years ago. Psychedelic drugs expand and speed up consciousness. They are going to bring about a tremendous change in our society, in our view of man and our way of life in the future.”

“When you take LSD you do go on a trip. It’s a voyage. It’s the most ancient voyage that man has ever known, the one beyond your mind and your current tribal situation into the incredible possibilities which lie inside. So it’s a fair statement to say an LSD voyage is a trip.”

“A chemical age is going to have a chemical sacrament.”

“Every great breakthrough in religion and science has always involved a new method of bringing into consciousness what you couldn’t see before, the telescope, the microscope. And you remember, the fellow that developed the telescope back in Florence a few hundred years ago got into the same sort of trouble with society that we’re in today. Any new instrument which opens up consciousness threatens the establishment.”

“It takes a long time to learn to use LSD. It’s no shortcut. It’s no instant mysticism. It’s no instant psychoanalysis. It’s tough, hard work.”

“Stay away from it unless you’re willing to take LSD in a state of grace for serious and important purposes.”

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131 - A Model for Sustainable Psychedelic Therapy

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Transcript §

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Greetings from cyberdelic space.

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

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Well, surprise, surprise,

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here we are back together again and it’s been less than a week since my last podcast,

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so I’m obviously feeling a little better. In fact, I’m going to try to get two programs out this week in an attempt to catch up for a little for the weeks that I miss during the holidays and my bouts with the flu.

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To begin with, I want to thank Gerard S. for his generous donation to the salon.

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Thanks for that, Gerard. I deeply appreciate you taking the time to send a donation to the salon,

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and I’m sure that all of our fellow salonners join me in thanking you.

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And I also want to mention a gift that I learned about during the

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holidays but have completely forgotten to mention until now. Our friend Aja West, whose music you’ve

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heard in the salon a while back, helped pay for a goat to be provided to a third world family where

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it’ll make a big difference in their lives. And he and his friends made that donation in the name of

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all of us here in the salon.

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Now, while it may seem like a strange gift to us Westerners, I’m sure that in the village where what I think of as our goat, where our goat now lives, I’m sure they think it was a perfect gift.

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So thanks a lot, Aja, and I apologize for being so tardy in thanking you. And that also goes out to a couple of other donors who I may not have mentioned here in the podcast.

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I hope I’ve not missed thanking any of our wonderful donors, but sometimes I’m not the most well-organized person,

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and things slip through the cracks here in the salon.

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If I missed thanking one or more of you, please let me know via an email to lorenzo at matrixmasters.com,

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and I’ll try to make it up to you.

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Hopefully, nobody is in that situation, but just in case, I want to be sure to not overlook your generous deed.

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As promised, today I’m going to play another talk from the Timothy Leary Archive.

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to play another talk from the Timothy Leary archive, but for our fellow salonners who have been asking for talks given by Dr. Leary that cover some of the more esoteric topics

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that he spoke about in the last decade or so of his life, I’m going to go back to 1966

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in an attempt to give you a little flavor of the history of our psychedelic community.

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to give you a little flavor of the history of our psychedelic community.

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For me, 1966 was the year that I entered the U.S. military and eventually led me to service with the Navy in Vietnam.

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So it was definitely a pivotal year for me.

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But from what I know about our fellow salonners,

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my guess is that about three-quarters of you weren’t even born yet.

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And so I feel it’s important to pass along a little of the flavor of the early days of

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the psychedelic movement, just to give you a small idea of how far we’ve come.

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The tape I’m going to play for you today is from a radio interview that Dr. Leary gave

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sometime in 1966.

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And while it may not contain as many aha moments as a Terrence McKenna or Eric Davis talk,

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I think it’s important to hear the hatred and abuse that Dr. Leary had to put up with

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in order to kickstart the psychedelic revolution, which is only now, at long last, getting fully

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underway.

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As you’ll hear, he had to put up with being mocked and abused,

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and not just by the people in the audience, but even by the hosts of the program.

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The host’s name is Alan Burke, and according to Wikipedia,

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he was a conservative talk show host who was on the air primarily in New York from 1966 to 69.

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And according to this article, he was a pioneer of the confrontational style

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where he would attack or insult his guests

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and even plant ringers in the audience who would then attack the guest.

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Burke’s best-known caller was known only as Raymond,

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a presumed burnout who spouted comically clever poetry,

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often espousing the virtues of his hero, the host, Alan Burke.

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And while Raymond doesn’t make an appearance in this program,

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there is a Christian minister who shows up after about ten minutes,

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and he’s a real hoot.

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And by that, I mean he’s funny,

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but only if you can see how seriously twisted his mind is,

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particularly when he claims that we now have control over the environment.

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And then he goes on to say that he doesn’t approve of LSD

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because it’s a pleasurable tension reliever.

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Hmm, I wonder how he feels about Xanax or Valium,

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or just plain relaxing for that matter.

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My guess is that if it feels good, he thinks it’s a sin.

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And then there’s a little old lady who claimed to have had one acid trip herself, a bad one

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I might add, that not only caused her to denounce LSD, but to also become an instant expert

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on it as well.

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Now the reason I think it’s important for you to hear this decades-old talk

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is that without having a handle on the recent history of the psychedelic movement in our

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culture, it’s really difficult to grasp how far we’ve come, even though at times it may seem as

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if we’re still in the dark ages when it comes to discussing these sacred medicines. As I just

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mentioned, this radio interview took place sometime in 1966,

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and it sounds like there was a brief gap in the beginning of this recording,

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just as Burke was asking the first question of Dr. Leary.

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But other than that, it sounds like the rest of the program was faithfully recorded.

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The only thing I’ve cut out was the commercials.

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So let’s fire up our time machines and set the dial to 1966,

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just when the anti-Vietnam War and civil rights movements were beginning to gain a little traction on the American consciousness.

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And it was also a time when any talk about LSD almost paralyzed most of our parents with fear.

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almost paralyzed most of our parents with fear.

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Now, I know that you’re very interested in the mail,

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and of the 14,343 letters that came in this week,

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I simply grabbed a handful off the top.

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This one is from Gloria Santaniello of Brooklyn.

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She says, Dear Mr. Burke, you are magnificent.

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Of course.

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Here is one from Mrs. Berg

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of the Bronx,

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Psychedelic Drugs.

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Am I correct, Dr. Leary?

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I think that’s a fair statement, Alan.

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Why are you a champion

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for the use of psychedelics?

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Psychedelic drugs are to the human mind today what the discovery of the microscope was to medicine and biological science

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three or four hundred years ago. Psychedelic drugs expand and speed up consciousness. They’re going

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to bring about a tremendous change in our society, in our view of man,

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and in our way of life in the future.

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Well, I’ll agree it’ll bring about a change in our view of man.

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That is, if you take it, it’ll bring a different view to you.

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How many trips have you taken?

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Is it correct to say trips?

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I’ve never taken one of these things, but I’ve heard it referred to as trips.

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Is that correct?

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Well, the word trip comes from the younger generation, and like any folk statement, it

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has a great deal of meaning. When you take LSD, you do go on a trip. It’s a voyage. It’s

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the most ancient voyage that man has ever known, the one beyond your mind and your current

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tribal situation into the incredible possibilities which lie inside. So it’s a

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fair statement to say an LSD voyage is a trip. Now before those here in the studio

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audience come forward to ask you questions, and I’m sure there are

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thousands of them sitting out there who want to do just that, there’s something I

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want you to do for all of us. I want you to give me a word picture, a description of what happens to Timothy Leary when he takes LSD.

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Where do you go? What do you see?

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Will you do that for us?

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I will try to respond to your question.

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I can’t possibly do it.

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Every minute of an LSD session is different from any other session.

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Every time you take LSD, and I’ve taken LSD over 315 times, it’s different.

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You’re quite a traveler, aren’t you?

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To me, yes.

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You see, people say, why do you take LSD?

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And I say, well, why does the scientist look through the microscope?

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I don’t know that that’s a good analogy, Dr. Leary.

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I take LSD because itary. Let me interrupt you,

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because this is the second time you’ve made this analogy. You compare it to looking through a

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microscope. Is it really the same? Is this a fair analogy? One looks through a microscope

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to see something that is small and enlarge it.

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Nothing artificial is used with the object on the slide

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to make that in itself expand.

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You are looking through a glass.

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This magnifies it.

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Now, LSD does something,

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and you say it expands the consciousness, is that it?

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So there is an enlargement.

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You are not using a glass.

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As far as I’m concerned, if you gave LSD to the object, to the microbe, as it were, on the slide,

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then it would be a fair comparison.

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Well, one often gets entangled in one’s metaphors.

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comparison? Well, one often gets entangled in one’s metaphors, and LSD is different from the microscope, but it’s the best metaphor. Here are people who’ve never had this experience,

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and how can I explain to someone who’s never had experience what it’s like?

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400 years ago, if I were to come before an audience like this and say, do you know

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that around us here there’s another level of reality which is invisible, which you can’t

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possibly see with the naked eye,

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but with an artificial aid or with just a changing of the focus of energy,

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you can see there’s a lawfulness, a beauty,

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and eventually a meaning to this microscopic world.

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You might at the beginning think I was insane,

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but if I could persuade you to look through the lens,

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then you say, well, you’re right.

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Now what do we do about it?

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That’s the same metaphor, metaphorical situation in regard to LSD.

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But let me go back to your question, Alan.

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Let me try to describe what happens when you take LSD.

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I’ve already said that each minute of every LSD session is different from any other minute.

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There are certain things that are characteristic of LSD sessions.

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One is a tremendous acceleration of consciousness. Now, we usually think in a very slow way. We think in English language, most of us. Subject, predicate,

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object. The dog chased the cat. Well, ladies and gentlemen, your brain, which is made up

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of 13 billion cells, is equipped to deal with much more material. Your brain receives about

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a thousand million signals a second. And once you go beyond your mind,

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you’re open to these thousands and thousands of messages

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which are whirling around inside your nervous system at each moment.

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There’s a tremendous intensification of the senses.

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Your eyes become like microscopic cameras.

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So a person will look for a long time just at a flower

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or he’ll look at a raindrop on the window.

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Almost everyone who’s taken LSD or similar drugs reports the intensification of vision.

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The world is alive.

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For the first time, instead of seeing just tired objects like pieces of paper and microphones,

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I’m seeing energy which is hurtling into the retina of my eye.

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Tremendous intensification of hearing, of the sense of touch.

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Now, for many people, this is too much.

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Most of us are satisfied with the rather dull and gray and static world we see around us,

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of red lights and green lights and green dollar bills and so forth.

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Many people, when all of this inundation of light occurs, say,

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no, turn it off, turn it off.

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But you can’t turn it off, because when you take LSD,

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for eight hours, for about eight hours But you can’t turn it off, because when you take LSD, for eight hours,

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for about eight hours,

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you’ve got these microscopes,

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you’ve got these cameras,

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you’ve got this illumination coming,

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and that’s where the fear and the terror comes

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when the unprepared person takes this experience.

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The Apostle Paul,

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Jesus,

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Mohammed,

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Dante, Walt Whitman have all written accounts of their infinite variety of senses. This illumination that you speak of and they did it without any artificial means and

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it has happened to many others in addition to the few I mentioned,

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why this sudden need for LSD or any other psychedelic or artificial means to increase awareness?

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That’s a good question. I think I should attempt to answer as well as I can.

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Every historical era develops its own religious method.

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In an agricultural or pastoral society, the religious rituals and metaphors were pastoral.

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We now live in a chemical age.

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Everyone who’s listening or watching this program is completely dependent on chemicals.

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You got here with petroleum in your car.

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Your clothes are made of chemicals. The food you eat comes from chemical agriculture.

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Does it come as any surprise

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that we’re going

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to use chemicals

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to do what we all want,

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which is the most

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important thing,

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that is to accelerate

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our consciousness

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and deepen our understanding?

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A chemical age

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is going to have

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a chemical sacrament.

00:14:00 ► §

Dr. Leary,

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you said,

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if I may,

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you said,

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I think you said, if I may, you said, I think you said, increase our understanding through expanding our consciousness. Is that?

00:14:13 ► §

Yes.

00:14:14 ► §

Don’t you think we can arrive at a better understanding without this expansion of consciousness?

00:14:22 ► §

Absolutely not.

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Why not?

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expansion of consciousness? Absolutely not. Why not? Because every adult is trapped in his mind. You can’t get beyond your mind. You’re trapped by the concepts that

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you learned in school. And every great breakthrough in religion and science has

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always involved a new method of bringing into consciousness what you couldn’t see

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before. The telescope, the microscope. And you remember the fellow that developed

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the telescope back in Florence a few you remember the fellow that developed the

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telescope back in Florence a few hundred years ago got in the same sort of trouble with society

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that we’re in today. Any new instrument which opens up consciousness threatens the establishment.

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Let me ask you this, Dr. Leary.

00:14:58 ► §

Given the telescope to youngsters in Florence about 500 years ago, they’d come home

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to their parents and say,

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do you know the world isn’t flat

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and that the world goes around the sun?

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And they’d say, why, my child,

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what is this heresy they’re teaching you at school?

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Lock that professor up.

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It’s always the same thing.

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Let me ask you this, Dr. Larry.

00:15:22 ► §

Did the presentation

00:15:24 ► §

to the world of the telescope cause anyone to lose his ego factors? Did it cause anyone to end up in a mental institution? Did it cause anyone at all to lose touch with reality?

00:15:42 ► §

Well, I can’t accept any of these generalizations that are implied.

00:15:45 ► §

Well, I can accept them because LSD does those things, and it has done these.

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There are cases of people who have taken LSD and are presently institutionalized because

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of that.

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Now, you may say, well, they were psychotic before they took it.

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Well, maybe they were, but this pushed

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them over that one line that separated. How do you know? Because you said so. I said so.

00:16:11 ► §

Yes, I have some of your writings that go back a few years. You said so. I’ve said that

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LSD, like a microscope, doesn’t show you anything that’s not there. And if a person is extremely

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disturbed and he takes LSD, he’s going to

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see his own disturbance. But the chances are that in most cases, he will see his disturbance

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in a broader context and indeed will be much better.

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I think the thing that I…

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Statistics on the number of casualties caused by LSD are astoundingly small. When you think

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that in the United States every year, 1,000 college students kill themselves and 9,000

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try just from going to college. And in the history of 15 or 20 years of LSD use, and

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we’re told 3 or 4 million people are using LSD, there have been 3 or 4 recorded cases

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of suicide. I would say that LSD is preventing the expected rate of suicide.

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Dr. O’Hara, I find you extremely clever with words, extremely clever. And I have a great deal of admiration for your being able to juggle words in that fashion.

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These are not words.

00:17:09 ► §

Yes, they are words, Dr. Leary.

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Here you’ve compared LSD to the microscope, which has been beneficial to mankind because of the scientific developments.

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You’ve compared it to the telescope.

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Now you say it’s a preventive measure for suicide.

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telescope. Now you say it’s a preventive measure for suicide. You’ve compared LSD favorably, and college is unfavorable. In effect, you’re saying LSD is better than a college education.

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Or some people could be misled to believe that, and I think this is a very clever juggling.

00:17:41 ► §

And maybe you need some Indian clubs or something. I happen to believe what I’m doing. I’ve devoted my life to this study. I’m here to try to pass on what I’ve learned. Well, I will tell you later, Doctor, exactly why. I can’t agree with the generalizations that you’re making, which just aren’t. Well, that’s all right. I don’t agree with the mass taking of LSD. What is your name, sir? I’m Mr. Cooper. I’m an Episcopal clergyman connected with the

00:18:06 ► §

Diocese of Long Island and St. Paul’s Church College Point. I have come over here to ask

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some questions about LSD, raise a couple of problems, because unfortunately for my peace of mind, I ran into an LSD user.

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And he’s a professional entertainer with a wife and child.

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And I find that the gentleman has lost an interest in his wife and child.

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And he’s went out in the streets of the city preaching about God.

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And after preaching about God in the city, he preached about God to the people with whom he worked,

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and became quite violent and arrogant about the matter,

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till they had to fire him.

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And he now has no job at all,

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and is still running around in quite a happy state,

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and deliberately feeling the joys of God are enlightening his life and what need he of anything else.

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Now, I’m just a little bit worried about this question of God.

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I’m quite ready to concede that the human nature possesses the capacity

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for an awareness of reality and orders other than those which we call our common everyday experiences.

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Some people attain an awareness of this order and a vivid consciousness of it through a

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great intense amount of prayer and an intense amount of fasting perhaps, something that

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is a little unusual readies them for an experience that invades their consciousness.

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Now, this is all very well, because the people who do this are disciplined human beings.

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And the outcomes of these visions, which they possess, now, not all,

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people who take this road for enjoyment, for their personal enjoyment,

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People who take this road for enjoyment, for their personal enjoyment,

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and for their personal pleasure in the experience,

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have been warned by St. Paul,

00:20:16 ► §

do not eat and drink without proper behavior, lest you eat and drink to your own damnation.

00:20:21 ► §

And all the mystics up and down warn against a contact with God that can be completely destructive and unbalancing of personality.

00:20:24 ► §

contact with God that can be completely destructive and unbalancing of personality.

00:20:36 ► §

Now, the outcomes of the Judeo-Christian concept of a God have been the modern civilization in which our culture has produced people who have produced more control over the environment and contributed more to human comfort

00:20:48 ► §

and the power of this earth to support greater numbers of human persons than any other culture

00:20:54 ► §

that exists. Other cultures have been in contact with God, such as the Buddhist culture, and we

00:21:01 ► §

find that it’s quite an ideal to get away from life sit with your hands

00:21:06 ► §

on your stomach and dream delightfully of nirvana and other lsd parallel experiences and we find

00:21:15 ► §

that they have little concern of what happens our boys from vietnam come in here and tell us that

00:21:21 ► §

a man is hit by an automobile in v Vietnam and nobody does anything to pick him up

00:21:26 ► §

lest he be responsible for him the rest of his life

00:21:28 ► §

or interfere with the man’s fate.

00:21:31 ► §

Now, our divine experiences

00:21:35 ► §

are tied up to a love of the human race and the people in it.

00:21:40 ► §

And they have worked out a method

00:21:43 ► §

by which the outcomes of divine experience are practical, efficient, living.

00:21:50 ► §

In other words, it took this divine experience to form a culture that could make people

00:21:55 ► §

who could conduct scientific investigations and conduct business and industry.

00:22:00 ► §

Pardon me, sir, but you’re trying to tell me that you don’t approve of LSD?

00:22:04 ► §

I don’t approve of it in a big way because it’s a tension reliever that’s pleasurable,

00:22:09 ► §

and when you take tensions away from the human race, you take away the motive which should make

00:22:15 ► §

them operate and try to solve their problems. If a fellow is going out with a girl and and he’s what that’s my girl and I proceed to find this very

00:22:27 ► §

frustrating and take some LSD I’ll bet you any amount of money he gets the girl

00:22:32 ► §

and I get the dream you know I think that’s the best analogy I’ve heard all

00:22:38 ► §

night I didn’t care too much for dr. Leary’s analogies but yours I understand

00:22:42 ► §

thoroughly no and dr. Leary I’ll put it to you this way.

00:22:46 ► §

Thank you very much, sir.

00:22:46 ► §

I’ll put it to you this way.

00:22:48 ► §

You take LSD, I’ll take the girl.

00:22:51 ► §

And we’ll be back with you in just a moment.

00:22:54 ► §

This is Dr. Timothy Leary, whom I’m sure all of us associate with LSD.

00:23:00 ► §

What is your name?

00:23:00 ► §

My name is Bruce L. Simon.

00:23:02 ► §

All right, sir.

00:23:00 ► §

What is your name?

00:23:02 ► §

My name is Bruce L. Simon.

00:23:03 ► §

All right, sir.

00:23:10 ► §

Dr. Leary, I think what LSD will do for education in a number of years is very obvious.

00:23:17 ► §

I think those who hesitate now, well, we’ve seen people hesitate in the past on the brink of something which is very valuable.

00:23:22 ► §

I think we should belay a number of fears in the general public

00:23:25 ► §

as to how it will be regimented,

00:23:29 ► §

who will distribute LSD and when,

00:23:32 ► §

and for what use in education it will play.

00:23:35 ► §

I’d like you to tell the people.

00:23:37 ► §

I’d like to know myself how you feel about this.

00:23:39 ► §

Have you ever taken it?

00:23:40 ► §

Yes, sir, I have.

00:23:41 ► §

How many times?

00:23:43 ► §

00:23:44 ► §

119. How old are you? I am 21. 21? Yes, sir.

00:23:47 ► §

It’s very interesting. When did you find time to do anything else? It is not very difficult. I might

00:23:54 ► §

say that things become a great deal easier while under the influence of LSD. Well, let me ask this

00:24:00 ► §

of you, Dr. Leary, if I may, and then answer his question, of course. Do you suppose that

00:24:05 ► §

for a young man of 21

00:24:07 ► §

that finding the easy way

00:24:09 ► §

is the answer?

00:24:11 ► §

Only if it’s the correct way, sir.

00:24:13 ► §

And you determine that it is correct

00:24:15 ► §

once under the influence of LSD?

00:24:17 ► §

Oh, no, sir. I’m told of my actions.

00:24:20 ► §

I am in full consciousness of my

00:24:22 ► §

actions, and I assure you those people

00:24:24 ► §

around me are conscious of what I do.

00:24:26 ► §

If I did something wrong, they would let me go.

00:24:27 ► §

While under the influence of LSD, this is going to be a difficult phrase,

00:24:31 ► §

while under the influence of LSD, have you ever committed any act,

00:24:37 ► §

no matter how small or large,

00:24:39 ► §

that you might be ashamed of if you had never taken lsd

00:24:48 ► §

i would

00:24:50 ► §

never do anything i was ashamed of at any time

00:24:53 ► §

i hope you wouldn’t either sir

00:24:55 ► §

well this is very very sweet and peaceful and uh…

00:25:00 ► §

very god-like

00:25:02 ► §

but you did not answer my question. My question was this, young man.

00:25:07 ► §

You have taken LSD 119 times.

00:25:10 ► §

My question is this.

00:25:11 ► §

Have you ever, during any one of these trips, 119 of them, committed any act that had you never taken LSD, had your thinking been the same prior to your first trip, you might feel some guilt or shame about it.

00:25:32 ► §

Not to my knowledge, sir.

00:25:33 ► §

Not to your knowledge.

00:25:34 ► §

No, sir.

00:25:34 ► §

What I’m trying to establish is that once you take LSD, this justifies everything because you suddenly have this so-called awareness that you didn’t have before.

00:25:44 ► §

Come on.

00:25:44 ► §

Alan, you’re just wasting all of our time.

00:25:46 ► §

Not really, I’m not wasting it.

00:25:48 ► §

Hold it, doctor.

00:25:49 ► §

It’s just your own fantasy.

00:25:49 ► §

Hold it, doctor.

00:25:51 ► §

These are just your own fantasies.

00:25:52 ► §

Hold it, doctor.

00:25:53 ► §

These are just your own fantasies.

00:25:54 ► §

You got it said.

00:25:55 ► §

Now listen to me and hear me out.

00:25:57 ► §

Don’t ever tell me you want to hiss.

00:26:00 ► §

Wait till I’m through, please.

00:26:02 ► §

Are you presently on a trip?

00:26:04 ► §

Is that causing you to hiss? Wait till I’m through, please. Are you presently on a trip? Is that causing you to hiss?

00:26:07 ► §

Doctor, I respect you.

00:26:10 ► §

I respect the fact that you are a Ph.D.

00:26:13 ► §

I respect your knowledge.

00:26:15 ► §

I respect everything about you.

00:26:16 ► §

But you, at this point, have just done what so many other people who have a crusade going are guilty of. All of a sudden,

00:26:28 ► §

you wave your own flag in such a fashion as to be completely intolerant of anyone who disagrees

00:26:34 ► §

with you. That’s what you do, and that’s what all of your followers do when they hiss.

00:26:40 ► §

I simply ask this man if he had ever done anything that he would be guilty of.

00:26:46 ► §

Now, do you want to answer his question?

00:26:49 ► §

You do remember asking one.

00:26:51 ► §

Yes, sir, I do.

00:26:57 ► §

Hello?

00:27:00 ► §

The question had to do with the educational uses of LSD.

00:27:04 ► §

The question had to do with the educational uses of LSD.

00:27:11 ► §

LSD is going to be used in education in the future.

00:27:16 ► §

I want to say one thing in response to Alan’s comment about something easy.

00:27:18 ► §

LSD is not easy.

00:27:22 ► §

It’s the toughest, longest, and hardest road to knowledge around.

00:27:25 ► §

Everyone that doesn’t take LSD avoids LSD because they’re afraid,

00:27:28 ► §

because they know that you’re going to get into something

00:27:30 ► §

that’s faster, more powerful, more incomprehensible

00:27:33 ► §

than anything you’ve ever known.

00:27:35 ► §

The use of LSD takes longer than any other instrument.

00:27:40 ► §

The computer, jet planes,

00:27:41 ► §

these are simply the toys that man’s mind has developed.

00:27:45 ► §

When you’re dealing with LSD, you’re opening up instruments which are two billion years old.

00:27:50 ► §

The human nervous system, the human cellular structure.

00:27:53 ► §

It takes a long time to learn how to use LSD.

00:27:55 ► §

It’s no shortcut.

00:27:57 ► §

It’s no instant mysticism.

00:27:58 ► §

It’s no instant psychoanalysis.

00:28:00 ► §

It’s tough, hard work.

00:28:03 ► §

Did you want to say something else?

00:28:04 ► §

No, I’m listening.

00:28:10 ► §

LSD will be used in the future in education

00:28:13 ► §

to speed up learning, to intensify memory.

00:28:22 ► §

It’s an enhancer of creativity.

00:28:24 ► §

The reason that we are bogged down

00:28:26 ► §

in our individual lives,

00:28:28 ► §

or, for example, in Vietnam,

00:28:30 ► §

is because we get into these chessboards of symbols

00:28:32 ► §

where we can’t move.

00:28:33 ► §

It’s in a stalemate.

00:28:35 ► §

When you take a psychedelic drug like LSD,

00:28:37 ► §

you get a different perspective of it.

00:28:39 ► §

You can see a different point of view,

00:28:42 ► §

and you can move out of the stalemate.

00:28:46 ► §

But LSD is going to do more than that.

00:28:49 ► §

Before we get to the educational uses of LSD, we have to start with the individual and the family.

00:28:56 ► §

There are present in the United States many thousand families that I know of who are using LSD regularly.

00:29:02 ► §

They use it the way Catholics go to mass or the

00:29:05 ► §

way Jews go to the synagogue. They take LSD together. Husband and wife deepening their

00:29:10 ► §

marriage relationship. Parents and children take LSD together. They really find out what

00:29:16 ► §

the parent-child relationship is about. What you’re saying is that families that take LSD together, stay together. Dr. Leary.

00:29:28 ► §

Yes.

00:29:28 ► §

Let me go on record with you

00:29:30 ► §

that I have no objections whatsoever

00:29:35 ► §

to LSD

00:29:38 ► §

being used in controlled experiments

00:29:43 ► §

by men of science working with mentally ill.

00:29:49 ► §

Because I am aware of what has happened with medical doctors, psychiatrists,

00:29:55 ► §

in institutions using LSD to try to understand the schizophrenic patient, for example.

00:30:03 ► §

I have no objections to this any more

00:30:05 ► §

than I would object to when penicillin was first discovered

00:30:09 ► §

being used experimentally,

00:30:12 ► §

because this must be done.

00:30:14 ► §

This is research.

00:30:15 ► §

I do have a tremendous inner negative attitude

00:30:20 ► §

toward LSD being spoken about,

00:30:26 ► §

being used in the same fashion

00:30:28 ► §

as one goes to the corner

00:30:30 ► §

drugstore and orders a soda.

00:30:32 ► §

Well, I agree with you there.

00:30:33 ► §

How many people have you given LSD

00:30:36 ► §

to? Well, our

00:30:38 ► §

group over the last six years has given LSD

00:30:40 ► §

to over 3,000 people. 3,000

00:30:42 ► §

sodas. Are these 3,000

00:30:44 ► §

people? No, no, no, come on. All right.

00:30:46 ► §

I want to agree with you. LSD is our sacrament. We don’t want to see LSD sold in vending machines

00:30:53 ► §

or in the drugstore any more than the Catholic priest wants to see the host distributed, or my

00:30:57 ► §

friend from the Episcopalian Church. He doesn’t want his sacramental wine in the drugstore,

00:31:01 ► §

neither do I. And nothing I’ve said tonight can possibly imply

00:31:05 ► §

that I want mass distribution quickly of LSD. Didn’t I say a minute ago that LSD is the

00:31:10 ► §

longest, most difficult discipline of all? Stay away from it unless you’re willing to

00:31:15 ► §

take LSD in a state of grace for serious and important purposes. In a state of grace. That’s what you mean. Now, it is purely to be used religiously. Is that correct?

00:31:25 ► §

Mm-hmm.

00:31:26 ► §

How do you explain your apparent self-belief that you are qualified to judge the mental,

00:31:39 ► §

moral, emotional, spiritual makeup of 3,000 people?

00:31:44 ► §

What’s this we didn’t do I said

00:31:46 ► §

that over the past six years you have administered this or sought to it you in

00:31:50 ► §

your group that 3,000 people took LSD then I am assuming that you have set

00:31:56 ► §

yourself up as one qualified and able to judge yeah these 3,000 people and their

00:32:04 ► §

ability to take this and have the proper response to it?

00:32:07 ► §

Yes.

00:32:07 ► §

Then this makes you not Dr. Leary, but what shall we call you?

00:32:12 ► §

God?

00:32:13 ► §

Of your own group, of course.

00:32:14 ► §

You’ve taken 3,000 people, doctor, and you’ve given them LSD.

00:32:19 ► §

Do you, one individual, Dr. Timothy Leary, feel qualified to judge these three thousand people

00:32:25 ► §

in their ability to accept what they might learn or c on this trip

00:32:31 ► §

it is a hallucinogenic i have to compare are giving lsd three thousand people to

00:32:36 ► §

other research groups the facts of the matter are

00:32:38 ► §

that our research group which started harvard six years ago

00:32:42 ► §

involved more trained people more more doctors and professors,

00:32:45 ► §

who gave more, published more papers.

00:32:49 ► §

We’ve given it to more people.

00:32:50 ► §

We’ve done more hard work.

00:32:52 ► §

When we say that we know more about judging and evaluating to whom LSD should be given,

00:32:57 ► §

I’m not saying I’m God.

00:32:58 ► §

I’m simply saying that we’ve done the hard work.

00:33:01 ► §

The psychiatrists have been going around publishing papers and issuing press releases

00:33:05 ► §

without having given LSD.

00:33:07 ► §

Dr. Goddard of the FDA,

00:33:09 ► §

Dr. Luria, the great spokesman in New York City,

00:33:11 ► §

has never given one case LSD.

00:33:15 ► §

We’re not God at all.

00:33:17 ► §

We’re simply hard-working, dedicated men,

00:33:19 ► §

very open to learning what this is all about.

00:33:23 ► §

And we’ve made mistakes,

00:33:26 ► §

but that’s how you learn in science. And of these 3,000 people, there isn’t one of them that can come before me

00:33:30 ► §

today and look me in the eye and say that we didn’t do our best and that they didn’t

00:33:34 ► §

benefit from the experience.

00:33:35 ► §

How about the four cases of prolonged psychosis?

00:33:38 ► §

I include them. One of them called me last night from Washington. He’s got a good job

00:33:42 ► §

with the Peace Corps, and he’s doing fine.

00:33:45 ► §

What is your name?

00:33:45 ► §

My name is Penelope Paluccia, and Mr. Burke, it seems to me that no one, but no one, really

00:33:53 ► §

tells what really takes place under LSD.

00:33:56 ► §

Have you ever taken it?

00:33:57 ► §

I did, yes.

00:33:58 ► §

Tell us what happened to you.

00:33:59 ► §

You see, I first heard about LSD, that it was a religious experience and a consciousness expansion.

00:34:09 ► §

And I bought the book by Mr. Really, it’s a Catholic experience, and it impressed me very much.

00:34:17 ► §

So myself and my friends decided to obtain LSD and take it.

00:34:22 ► §

Did you have any difficulty in obtaining it?

00:34:25 ► §

Well, a little.

00:34:26 ► §

Not too much.

00:34:27 ► §

Not too much.

00:34:28 ► §

No.

00:34:29 ► §

Well, the thing is this.

00:34:31 ► §

As I said, no one really tells the truth.

00:34:34 ► §

There are three things that take place under LSD.

00:34:37 ► §

Only three and no more.

00:34:39 ► §

First is hallucinations.

00:34:43 ► §

Like, to me, it was the devil was standing beside me

00:34:46 ► §

laughing at me.

00:34:47 ► §

What did he look like?

00:34:48 ► §

He looked like a real devil.

00:34:54 ► §

What does a real devil look like?

00:34:56 ► §

Well, he had the face of the man who sold me the LSD.

00:35:00 ► §

Oh, he had the face of the pusher.

00:35:01 ► §

All right.

00:35:03 ► §

All right, now we’ve got that established. He had the face of the pusher. What else did he look like?

00:35:08 ► §

Well, he had horns.

00:35:10 ► §

He had horns.

00:35:11 ► §

Did he have a long forked tail?

00:35:13 ► §

I didn’t see that.

00:35:15 ► §

Better luck next time.

00:35:19 ► §

So that’s one thing that takes place under LSD. The second thing that takes place is the kaleidoscope that you see.

00:35:28 ► §

It is in space, and it comes at you, and it’s horrifying.

00:35:35 ► §

It’s just plain horrifying.

00:35:37 ► §

The whole experience of LSD is horrifying.

00:35:42 ► §

It’s the most horrible thing that can happen to a human being.

00:35:45 ► §

I call it the devil drug and the hell drug. That’s what I call LSD is horrifying. It’s the most horrible thing that can happen to a human being. It is, I call it the devil drug and the hell drug.

00:35:48 ► §

That’s what I call LSD.

00:35:50 ► §

The devil drug.

00:35:51 ► §

That’s true.

00:35:51 ► §

Did you hear that, Dr. Leary?

00:35:52 ► §

The devil drug.

00:35:54 ► §

The third thing that happens, the third and last thing that happens on the LSD is that the ego dissolves.

00:36:02 ► §

One feels that the ego is gone.

00:36:04 ► §

Now, these are the three things that happen on the LSD.

00:36:07 ► §

Now, I want Dr. Riddick to tell me this.

00:36:11 ► §

Where is religious experience and consciousness expansion?

00:36:14 ► §

Is it in the hallucination?

00:36:16 ► §

Is it in the eco-disappearance?

00:36:19 ► §

Or is it in the kaleidoscope show?

00:36:22 ► §

Where is the consciousness expansion? Where is the religious experience? Because that is the reasonidoscope show. What is the consciousness expansion?

00:36:25 ► §

What is the religious experience?

00:36:26 ► §

Because that is the reason I took it.

00:36:28 ► §

Now, I didn’t get any religious experience.

00:36:30 ► §

I didn’t get any consciousness expansion.

00:36:33 ► §

I only had such a terrible day.

00:36:35 ► §

I landed at Bellevue Hospital.

00:36:38 ► §

So, where is it?

00:36:40 ► §

Can you tell me

00:36:40 ► §

what is the religious experience, please?

00:36:43 ► §

Because I took this LSD because I was influenced by what you said about it.

00:36:49 ► §

Now, I’m not finished.

00:36:51 ► §

You say that on the LSD,

00:36:53 ► §

on the LSD, one is above the game playing.

00:36:59 ► §

Now, I want to ask you this.

00:37:02 ► §

How can one play the game of life under such abnormal condition,

00:37:08 ► §

in such an abnormal condition, in such a horrible state?

00:37:12 ► §

How can one play the game of life after the LSD goes?

00:37:20 ► §

Well, I’m very sorry that you didn’t have a religious experience.

00:37:24 ► §

Well, I’m very sorry that you didn’t have a religious experience.

00:37:33 ► §

The kind of experience you have when you take LSD depends upon your state of mind,

00:37:37 ► §

what you’re looking for, and apparently you were looking for a religious experience.

00:37:43 ► §

It also depends upon the circumstances, the environment, who’s there, what you surround yourself with.

00:37:52 ► §

In the old days, going to Chartres Cathedral was designed to give you a deep religious experience.

00:37:55 ► §

It was a turn-on thing to do.

00:38:01 ► §

Many people would come to Chartres hoping that Chartres Cathedral would give them this experience.

00:38:02 ► §

Some didn’t.

00:38:06 ► §

There’s no guarantee in LSD that any one thing will happen there’s no guarantee that you’ll have a religious or you’ll have a educational or

00:38:12 ► §

you’ll have an ecstatic or a hellish experience it’s highly uh variable uh like any other

00:38:19 ► §

complicated form of energy it takes discipline practice if you were to tell me after taking LSD

00:38:25 ► §

50 or 100 times that you’ve

00:38:28 ► §

never had a religious experience, I would just be

00:38:29 ► §

staggered. But your first experience

00:38:32 ► §

at anything in life is

00:38:33 ► §

no guarantee of success.

00:38:35 ► §

Are you telling her to try it again? I’m not telling anyone

00:38:37 ► §

to do anything. Mr. Raley,

00:38:39 ► §

I say this,

00:38:42 ► §

that when one takes LSD,

00:38:44 ► §

it is not a question of what you bring to it.

00:38:47 ► §

This LSD is your mess, though.

00:38:49 ► §

It gives you hallucinations.

00:38:51 ► §

It dissolves your ego.

00:38:52 ► §

It gives you that kaleidoscopic show.

00:38:55 ► §

And it’s your mess, so you can do nothing.

00:38:57 ► §

Your senses are abnormal.

00:39:00 ► §

You can’t see right.

00:39:02 ► §

Everything about you is abnormal.

00:39:04 ► §

And it isn’t what you bring to it because this is your mess.

00:39:07 ► §

It’s not a question of what you bring to it.

00:39:11 ► §

It is not.

00:39:12 ► §

It’s not so.

00:39:13 ► §

It’s not so.

00:39:14 ► §

And I say that a hundred times.

00:39:16 ► §

And anybody…

00:39:16 ► §

Well, see, I must disagree with you because there are thousands and thousands of people who have taken LSD.

00:39:22 ► §

And they all bring back a different report.

00:39:25 ► §

The people who have not taken LSD, like Alan here, he’s convinced he knows what it is.

00:39:29 ► §

Everyone is convinced they know what LSD is.

00:39:31 ► §

I’ve been in the situation of having over 3,000 people take LSD and then come to me the next day and say,

00:39:38 ► §

well, this is exactly what it’s like, and each one of the 3,000 stories is different.

00:39:43 ► §

I said at the beginning of this program that every time you take LSD, it’s different.

00:39:47 ► §

Every minute of an LSD experience is different.

00:39:50 ► §

And anyone who says that LSD is this or that,

00:39:53 ► §

good or bad, hallucination or not,

00:39:56 ► §

don’t believe them.

00:39:56 ► §

But that is not possible.

00:39:57 ► §

LSD is a wide variety of things.

00:39:59 ► §

I just want to say one thing.

00:40:00 ► §

That is not possible.

00:40:01 ► §

It cannot be.

00:40:02 ► §

For the simple reason that I said in the beginning,

00:40:04 ► §

that three things happen on the LST to everyone,

00:40:07 ► §

and nothing else happens, these three things.

00:40:10 ► §

How many people took it with you?

00:40:12 ► §

I took it alone, but after I took it, my friends said they’ll never take it.

00:40:16 ► §

They were going to take it, because they wanted to have also a religious experience.

00:40:21 ► §

But after what I told them, after they saw what happened to me,

00:40:24 ► §

they will never take it.

00:40:27 ► §

In Time magazine two weeks ago,

00:40:29 ► §

there was a report by Dr. Walter Pankey

00:40:31 ► §

from Harvard Medical School

00:40:32 ► §

who, with our research group,

00:40:35 ► §

three years ago on Good Friday,

00:40:37 ► §

we gave LSD to ten divinity students

00:40:39 ► §

from Andover Newton Seminary.

00:40:41 ► §

And all ten of them had the deepest

00:40:43 ► §

religious experience of their life.

00:40:44 ► §

But these men, young men, were preparing for it.

00:40:47 ► §

They were devoting their lives to the religious experience.

00:40:50 ► §

We gave it in the Boston University Chapel,

00:40:52 ► §

and Dean Howard Thurman came down and preached a sermon during it.

00:40:55 ► §

What is it, a hallucination? That’s a religious experience?

00:40:58 ► §

The reason that these young men had a religious experience

00:41:00 ► §

is because they were in what I would call a state of grace and preparation,

00:41:04 ► §

and the circumstances or the surroundings were such that it would generate this sort of a situation.

00:41:10 ► §

If you take LSD in the Bronx Zoo, you’ll have an animal experience.

00:41:14 ► §

If you take it in a mental hospital, you’ll have a psychotic experience.

00:41:17 ► §

So there you are.

00:41:17 ► §

I wish that everybody who intends to take LSD would listen to me and not take it ever.

00:41:22 ► §

It’s a hell drug.

00:41:23 ► §

I hope they listen to you, too.

00:41:25 ► §

And furthermore, young lady,

00:41:26 ► §

I think that you probably did have a religious experience

00:41:30 ► §

in this fashion.

00:41:32 ► §

You found this to be, and I will vote on your side,

00:41:37 ► §

such a hellish experience

00:41:38 ► §

that you possibly learned from the negative aspects of this

00:41:42 ► §

that if you want a religious experience,

00:41:45 ► §

find it within yourself,

00:41:46 ► §

within your own prayers,

00:41:48 ► §

and not by taking LSD.

00:41:51 ► §

We’ll be back in just a moment.

00:41:55 ► §

I have here an ad that appeared in a paper.

00:41:59 ► §

It says,

00:41:59 ► §

in person, Dr. Timothy Leary,

00:42:02 ► §

a series of three psychedelic celebrations, reenactments of the world’s great religious myths using psychedelic methods, sensory meditation, symbol overload, media mix, molecular and cellular phrasing, pantomime dance, sound light, lecture, sermon, gospel.

00:42:28 ► §

That’s quite a lot. I don’t understand it,

00:42:32 ► §

but it’s quite a lot. It says sponsored by the League for Spiritual Discovery. Now,

00:42:40 ► §

the League for Spiritual Discovery, the initials LSD, is a new religion that you have founded.

00:42:46 ► §

Is that correct? Yes, Alan. We have founded a new religion. What have you done with the old religion?

00:42:49 ► §

What have I done with the old religion? Yes. I mean, were you a member of a specific faith prior to this?

00:42:54 ► §

Were you Catholic, Presbyterian, Methodist?

00:42:57 ► §

Yes.

00:42:57 ► §

May I ask, Doctor, what were you?

00:42:59 ► §

Yes. I was born and raised a Catholic.

00:43:01 ► §

I see. Are you still a Catholic?

00:43:03 ► §

Yes.

00:43:04 ► §

You are still a Catholic.

00:43:04 ► §

You do not find that this conflicts with the practice of Catholicism.

00:43:10 ► §

Not at all.

00:43:11 ► §

We have founded a new religion.

00:43:13 ► §

The thing that’s new about our religion is that psychedelic drugs like marijuana and LSD are used as our sacraments.

00:43:21 ► §

They’re our way of finding God.

00:43:23 ► §

They work for us.

00:43:21 ► §

as our sacraments.

00:43:23 ► §

They’re our way of finding God.

00:43:24 ► §

They work for us.

00:43:26 ► §

Marijuana and LSD,

00:43:28 ► §

taken by a serious-minded person who knows what he’s doing

00:43:29 ► §

in his own shrine,

00:43:33 ► §

where he’s prepared to do it,

00:43:34 ► §

will bring about a religious experience.

00:43:37 ► §

Now, I don’t care if it doesn’t do it for you

00:43:38 ► §

or anyone else.

00:43:39 ► §

LSD gives me my religious experience.

00:43:42 ► §

It puts me close to God.

00:43:44 ► §

If you don’t like that, don’t do it.

00:43:46 ► §

But you cannot prevent me from having my sacrament in my own home with my own family.

00:43:52 ► §

And that’s all we ask.

00:43:53 ► §

We don’t want to convert you.

00:43:55 ► §

We don’t want to proselytize.

00:43:57 ► §

But you’ve got to let us practice our pursuit of God.

00:44:01 ► §

And one thing that is very interesting, have we learned nothing from history?

00:44:04 ► §

pursuit of God. And one thing that is very interesting, have we learned nothing from history? Every generation, every historical era, there’s a small group of people have a new way

00:44:09 ► §

of finding a new ritual, a new method for finding God. And immediately the establishment, the

00:44:15 ► §

Orthodox churches, society come down in their heads. Haven’t we learned anything in the last

00:44:20 ► §

4,000 years? No, I’m with you. If you want to take this stuff, you go right ahead and take it.

00:44:25 ► §

By all means, take it.

00:44:28 ► §

And if you want to have hallucinations

00:44:29 ► §

and see whatever it is you see,

00:44:31 ► §

you have them.

00:44:33 ► §

If I want to do it by getting one martini too many,

00:44:36 ► §

that’s my privilege,

00:44:37 ► §

and I compare them.

00:44:39 ► §

I think getting loaded and LSD is about the same.

00:44:42 ► §

I mean, you can…

00:44:43 ► §

What about people that get hooked

00:44:45 ► §

on this? And don’t tell me people don’t get hooked. If people don’t get hooked, why would

00:44:49 ► §

that 21-year-old boy tell me he had taken it 119 times? You’re certainly past 21, Dr.

00:44:54 ► §

Leary. You’ve taken it 311. How many martinis you had? How many martinis? Who said that?

00:45:01 ► §

Where are you? Hold up your hand. Did you bring any with you?

00:45:06 ► §

Would you like to have one with me later?

00:45:09 ► §

You couldn’t be that lucky.

00:45:11 ► §

We have enough problems.

00:45:13 ► §

Go ahead, Dr. Larry.

00:45:15 ► §

You’re hooked.

00:45:16 ► §

Aren’t you hooked?

00:45:17 ► §

There’s never… There’s one thing that the medical profession and the psychiatric profession brings on.

00:45:20 ► §

LSD is not addictive.

00:45:23 ► §

Now, wait a minute.

00:45:23 ► §

Alcohol is addictive. Nicotine, our two most popular conscious LSD is not addictive. Now, wait a minute. Alcohol is addictive.

00:45:25 ► §

Nicotine, our two most popular conscious contracting drugs, are addictive and they’re toxic.

00:45:30 ► §

It may not be physically addictive, Dr. Leary.

00:45:34 ► §

Physically addictive.

00:45:37 ► §

Okay, it is not.

00:45:38 ► §

But people like to do it over and over again.

00:45:40 ► §

Yeah, over and over.

00:45:41 ► §

It’s like kisses, you know.

00:45:43 ► §

I use LSD the way the Catholic goes to Mass

00:45:46 ► §

or the way someone reads the Bible.

00:45:47 ► §

Is the Bible addictive?

00:45:48 ► §

Do you go once a week on a trip?

00:45:50 ► §

When I’m allowed to, I do, yes.

00:45:52 ► §

Do you use this on Sunday?

00:45:57 ► §

I’ve never stuck to a particular day,

00:46:00 ► §

but I have tried as my yoga, as my discipline

00:46:02 ► §

for finding the God within me.

00:46:04 ► §

When I could do it legally

00:46:05 ► §

I would take LSD once a day and devote 24 hours to nothing but the pursuit of what’s inside

00:46:11 ► §

That happens to be my sacramental method. I don’t urge it on anyone else

00:46:15 ► §

But I want to say one other thing the use of chemicals plants like mushrooms like LSD is

00:46:23 ► §

Much older than any other religious method.

00:46:25 ► §

For thousands of years,

00:46:27 ► §

holy men and religious people

00:46:29 ► §

in Greece, in Egypt, in India, and in Mexico

00:46:33 ► §

have used psychedelic plants to find God.

00:46:37 ► §

It’s not older than alcohol.

00:46:39 ► §

Yes, I think it is.

00:46:39 ► §

No, I don’t think it is,

00:46:40 ► §

because if I recall the Old Testament,

00:46:42 ► §

Noah was a keeper of the vineyards,

00:46:45 ► §

and Noah got stoned one day.

00:46:47 ► §

And his three sons, Ham, Sham, and Japheth, walked in upon their dear drunken father who had passed out naked.

00:46:56 ► §

And so, as not to see their nakedness, they came in backwards and covered Noah.

00:47:01 ► §

And I dare say that you can’t go back with a mushroom

00:47:05 ► §

any further than I can go back with Noah.

00:47:07 ► §

Okay.

00:47:08 ► §

Did you have something you wanted to say?

00:47:10 ► §

There is one analogy, though, to alcohol.

00:47:12 ► §

Our situation legally in the United States today

00:47:15 ► §

is very similar to that of the Catholic Church,

00:47:18 ► §

the Jewish religion, during alcohol prohibition.

00:47:19 ► §

Remember that lunacy about 30 years ago?

00:47:23 ► §

The Catholic priest could import a forbidden and illegal drug, namely wine,

00:47:30 ► §

to be used only in prescribed places for sacramental purposes.

00:47:33 ► §

And our religious group is applying to the government at this time for the same privilege,

00:47:38 ► §

to import and to distribute under highly specified and controlled purposes psychedelic drugs like marijuana LSD

00:47:46 ► §

to be used only by the officials in our religion for our initiates.

00:47:52 ► §

So it’s a case then, if I wanted LSD,

00:47:56 ► §

all I would have to do, assuming that this ruling was passed in your favor,

00:48:00 ► §

would simply be to proclaim that I am a follower of the League of Spiritual Discovery,

00:48:06 ► §

and that would be made accessible to me. No, we are in no way interested in having a mass

00:48:12 ► §

religion at this time. We have a very small number of people, about 420. These people are very well

00:48:17 ► §

known to us. They’ve been initiated. We know that they can use these sacraments in a spiritual way.

00:48:24 ► §

Now, if other groups want to do this throughout the United States,

00:48:26 ► §

they’re going to have to get a lawyer.

00:48:28 ► §

They’re going to have to demonstrate to the courts, as we are,

00:48:30 ► §

that they are adult and serious people

00:48:33 ► §

who are using these chemicals for sacred purposes,

00:48:36 ► §

and then they’ll be allowed to do it.

00:48:38 ► §

But we’re not trying to have any mass conversion.

00:48:41 ► §

What is your name?

00:48:42 ► §

My name is Larry Kessler.

00:48:43 ► §

I’d like to make a few comments.

00:48:45 ► §

As far as the using of LSD for everybody,

00:48:48 ► §

it seems obvious that not everybody is going to take to LSD

00:48:52 ► §

like this lady that was just here and other people.

00:48:55 ► §

They see things that they don’t like about themselves more than likely.

00:49:00 ► §

Have you taken it?

00:49:02 ► §

Yes, but that’s irrelevant to the fact.

00:49:00 ► §

Have you taken it?

00:49:04 ► §

Yes, but that’s irrelevant to the fact.

00:49:11 ► §

Still, if you can use the ideas and not necessarily the drug itself,

00:49:19 ► §

it seems to me that some of the ideas that is coming from people that use LSD are very worthwhile ideas.

00:49:20 ► §

Such as?

00:49:27 ► §

Such as no more war and no more race problems and you know things that are troubling our world now I hope this doesn’t come as a great shock to you young man but people have been opposed to war and

00:49:32 ► §

for millions of years and the LSD was ever discovered well maybe this is an answer mr.

00:49:37 ► §

Burke you mean give LSD to the enemy if you think be a good idea.

00:49:46 ► §

That’s a thought and a very good one.

00:49:48 ► §

If you think of certain people as your enemy,

00:49:50 ► §

well, that’s perfectly, you know, legitimate.

00:49:52 ► §

Well, I assume that if I’m a soldier

00:49:54 ► §

and I’m fighting in Vietnam,

00:49:55 ► §

and if I could get the North Vietnamese

00:49:58 ► §

to take LSD, the war would soon be over.

00:50:01 ► §

I’m not talking about soldiers.

00:50:03 ► §

We would win the war

00:50:04 ► §

and they’d win the world

00:50:07 ► §

ho ho ho we would win the war and they would win the world you really believe this don’t you you

00:50:14 ► §

really do i can look into your eyes over power the spirit will conquer over power it always has

00:50:20 ► §

and we’re not worried about that at all we don’t have any guns we don’t have any money but we’re not worried about that at all. We don’t have any guns, we don’t have any money, but we’re going to take your country over

00:50:25 ► §

by raising your spiritual level.

00:50:29 ► §

And you’re going to do it with LSD.

00:50:31 ► §

And we’re going to do it again in the next…

00:50:32 ► §

Dr. Leary, I’m all for everybody’s spirit being lifted,

00:50:40 ► §

but I don’t honestly, and I hope this doesn’t offend you,

00:50:52 ► §

But I don’t honestly, and I hope this doesn’t offend you, consider you a threat to those of us who think that we can control our own spirit.

00:50:56 ► §

Yes, please go on. Sorry I interrupted you. That’s okay. Do you think that the President of the United States, if he had some ideas that were spiritually, not necessarily the president,

00:51:06 ► §

but or anybody that has anything to do with government,

00:51:08 ► §

if he had ideas of more spiritual feeling

00:51:11 ► §

that he would be more into where the people are,

00:51:13 ► §

not necessarily into his own ego himself,

00:51:16 ► §

wouldn’t you think it would be a good idea

00:51:17 ► §

if politicians lost some of their ego?

00:51:20 ► §

Well, which one do you want to discuss first,

00:51:22 ► §

the president or the politicians?

00:51:23 ► §

No, no, politicians.

00:51:25 ► §

Oh, you want to talk about politicians and their ego?

00:51:27 ► §

Yes.

00:51:28 ► §

Uh, I don’t know that it would help, because you see, we elect these politicians, they

00:51:33 ► §

suddenly don’t acquire an ego after they are elected.

00:51:37 ► §

We elect these officials, and if we don’t like them, then we shouldn’t put them back.

00:51:40 ► §

We elect officials on their promises.

00:51:42 ► §

Pardon?

00:51:43 ► §

We elect officials on their promises, not on their deeds.

00:51:46 ► §

Well, don’t vote for them, then.

00:51:48 ► §

Well, who else can you vote for?

00:51:54 ► §

Let me ask a question of you, young man.

00:51:56 ► §

Yes.

00:51:57 ► §

Now, when you find a politician who isn’t fulfilling all of his promises,

00:52:00 ► §

what do you do about it?

00:52:02 ► §

Nothing.

00:52:03 ► §

Nothing?

00:52:04 ► §

Right.

00:52:04 ► §

There is your answer.

00:52:06 ► §

Well, you know.

00:52:08 ► §

I think you can sit down now.

00:52:09 ► §

What can you do?

00:52:10 ► §

Because you do nothing, and that’s what everybody does.

00:52:12 ► §

Well, I’m personally doing something, but that has nothing to do with this show.

00:52:15 ► §

Well, if everybody personally does something about it.

00:52:17 ► §

Yes, I am personally doing something about it.

00:52:18 ► §

Wonderful for you.

00:52:19 ► §

What are you doing?

00:52:20 ► §

I am in communications, and I plan on broadcasting several messages through the use

00:52:26 ► §

of records and through the use of the particular means that I have of getting across certain

00:52:32 ► §

points that should be gotten across and certain things and certain feelings that should be gotten

00:52:36 ► §

across that haven’t been brought up to now, such as complete and utter freedom. Well, right or wrong,

00:52:42 ► §

whether I agree with you or not is of no concern at the moment At least you are doing something

00:52:46 ► §

Yes, I am, and I feel that more of the people that are into this type of thing should get into government

00:52:51 ► §

And should sort of…

00:52:52 ► §

I think everybody should get into it

00:52:54 ► §

Right, right

00:52:55 ► §

I think everybody, not simply because you’re in some form in communications, but everybody should

00:53:00 ► §

I heard someone in the audience say, what can we do about it?

00:53:03 ► §

Well, you can do something about it.

00:53:05 ► §

You have a telephone.

00:53:06 ► §

You know how to write.

00:53:08 ► §

There is a telegraph available.

00:53:10 ► §

Lady, are your false teeth bothering you?

00:53:14 ► §

I hear you hissing.

00:53:18 ► §

There are things everyone can do, but you must do it and stop waiting for the guy next door to do it.

00:53:23 ► §

Yes, sir.

00:53:24 ► §

All right.

00:53:27 ► §

My group has every intention of doing that. Thank you so much. Do you have something to say, young lady? Would you step forward? Dr. Leary, I sat… Excuse me, what

00:53:35 ► §

is your name? Mrs. Jane Morin. All right. I sat recently for an evening with a young fellow who listed for me a number of drugs, goofballs,

00:53:49 ► §

I can’t even remember the names of some of these things.

00:53:54 ► §

He told me about them and he told me about the use of them and I sat and looked at this

00:53:58 ► §

really lovely looking young fellow and I thought about conversations I’ve had with friends of mine. Parents, middle

00:54:09 ► §

class parents of young people who are in their late teens and early twenties and most concerned

00:54:17 ► §

about the fact that our children tell us, if I can try LSD, I will. I’m going to smoke pot. It’s not addictive.

00:54:30 ► §

And if I can have the experience, why not? I’ve thought a great deal about it. And I

00:54:36 ► §

feel that this is a behavioral thing among middle class children of that age, and I really feel that the cause

00:54:48 ► §

lies somewhere else than in a religious experience. And I would like to ask you

00:54:57 ► §

if you feel that our young people are searching desperately for something

00:55:05 ► §

which they may not find in all these drugs.

00:55:10 ► §

Yes, I certainly agree that young people today,

00:55:14 ► §

many of them are searching for something.

00:55:17 ► §

Our society, our social system just isn’t satisfying a hunger here.

00:55:22 ► §

Any child that’s been grown up in the atomic age

00:55:25 ► §

in the last 20, 25 years

00:55:28 ► §

has been living and learning about a society

00:55:32 ► §

which I have said is insane.

00:55:34 ► §

At any moment, the whole thing may be over.

00:55:36 ► §

It’s an unsettling and a difficult generation.

00:55:39 ► §

And you feel the answer lies in goofballs,

00:55:43 ► §

and I can’t remember the names of all these things.

00:55:45 ► §

See, goofballs and alcohol are narcotics.

00:55:49 ► §

I’m shocked that young people use alcohol or use goofballs or use heroin or use pep pills.

00:55:56 ► §

These are addictive, dangerous drugs.

00:55:58 ► §

But marijuana and LSD is an entirely different story.

00:56:01 ► §

These are conscience-expanding drugs, and you must not acquaint them.

00:56:01 ► §

is an entirely different story.

00:56:03 ► §

These are conscious expanding drugs and you must not acquaint them.

00:56:05 ► §

I have said over and over again

00:56:07 ► §

to parents who are concerned about

00:56:09 ► §

their teenage kids or their high school kids

00:56:11 ► §

who are taking marijuana or using LSD.

00:56:15 ► §

Instead of trying to denounce your children

00:56:17 ► §

or to send them to psychiatrists

00:56:20 ► §

or to get a policeman to arrest your own children,

00:56:23 ► §

why don’t you sit down with your children

00:56:25 ► §

and ask them what they know about it.

00:56:27 ► §

You’ll find that most teenagers

00:56:28 ► §

don’t know very much about marijuana and LSD,

00:56:31 ► §

that their motives are perhaps confused.

00:56:33 ► §

Why don’t you and your teenage or your college kids

00:56:35 ► §

then do a study, read all the books,

00:56:37 ► §

read the scientific articles,

00:56:38 ► §

talk to people who’ve had the experience,

00:56:40 ► §

and then after three or four months of study together,

00:56:43 ► §

you and your kids,

00:56:44 ► §

you may decide, well, this isn’t worth it, or you may decide, let’s try it,

00:56:48 ► §

and then I urge the middle class, middle-aged parents,

00:56:51 ► §

take marijuana or take LSD with your children and find out what it’s all about.

00:56:56 ► §

I have tried to understand these kids.

00:57:01 ► §

My personal experience is, of course, limited.

00:57:04 ► §

my personal experience is of course limited I feel however that it is possible

00:57:08 ► §

that these are children who are both deprived

00:57:12 ► §

and overindulged

00:57:15 ► §

this seems to me to be a pattern among these children

00:57:19 ► §

at least those of my friends and friends of friends

00:57:23 ► §

they seem to be children whose parents have been too busy acquiring things, possessions,

00:57:33 ► §

to pay enough attention to their children.

00:57:36 ► §

In other words, go kid, do anything as long as you don’t bother me

00:57:41 ► §

because I’m busy having a good time.

00:57:44 ► §

I’m playing.

00:57:45 ► §

So that I feel that these are children of families which are not close-knit families,

00:57:53 ► §

in which the parents are not mature.

00:57:56 ► §

What you’re saying, young lady, is that you’re blaming the search upon the parents?

00:58:00 ► §

Yes.

00:58:01 ► §

Well, there, I think, and I think you should agree, don’t you,

00:58:04 ► §

that a great deal of the searching among the young people today is based upon the fact that the

00:58:08 ► §

parents themselves do not have enough time to have a family relationship with their children.

00:58:13 ► §

It’s also one of the factors, when they go to college, they’re likely to find out that

00:58:17 ► §

the graduate student instructor and the young professors are themselves taking LSD and marijuana.

00:58:23 ► §

I would say in the English department, the philosophy department,

00:58:25 ► §

the art department,

00:58:26 ► §

the religious department

00:58:27 ► §

of all of your New York schools,

00:58:29 ► §

between a third and two-thirds

00:58:30 ► §

of the young instructors

00:58:31 ► §

are using LSD and marijuana

00:58:33 ► §

for serious purposes.

00:58:35 ► §

I would like to…

00:58:35 ► §

Which explains nothing.

00:58:36 ► §

Thank you, young lady.

00:58:38 ► §

Based upon what Dr. Leary has just said,

00:58:41 ► §

about two-thirds of the young instructors,

00:58:43 ► §

et cetera,

00:58:44 ► §

in all of the colleges in this area.

00:58:46 ► §

I would like to hear from you, and I’ll take a vote by mail and see if two-thirds of you are taking it.

00:58:52 ► §

It would be very interesting to see because I don’t believe it.

00:58:55 ► §

I just don’t believe that figure.

00:58:57 ► §

Dr. Leary, you’re obviously an extremely bright man.

00:59:01 ► §

There are many cases of expanded consciousness that have taken place from the beginning of

00:59:06 ► §

man without the use of drugs. I think that we would all be sorely misled if we bought

00:59:14 ► §

your theories concerning the use of LSD as being completely right and accurate. If you,

00:59:21 ► §

Timothy Leary, wish to take LSD, that’s fine with me.

00:59:26 ► §

You can drink to excess if you are so inclined,

00:59:29 ► §

or indulge yourself in any other exercise that you wish to,

00:59:33 ► §

because you are the only one involved with perhaps the exception of those who are very close to you.

00:59:40 ► §

You know, the title of Ph.D. that you have,

01:00:00 ► §

the notoriety, if you will permit me this word, that surrounded you upon your leaving Harvard, your appearance, the peyote bird that I believe you told me was given to you by a Mexican Indian.

01:00:01 ► §

An American Indian. An American.

01:00:02 ► §

The head of the religious group.

01:00:04 ► §

There are a quarter of a million American Indians

01:00:06 ► §

you know who use peyote as their

01:00:08 ► §

religious sacrament. Yes. Well, your appearance

01:00:09 ► §

and I must add further, you have a

01:00:11 ► §

very soulful

01:00:13 ► §

look. One that would be

01:00:15 ► §

I think appealing to young people

01:00:18 ► §

who are searching too. And I think

01:00:20 ► §

I would like to say also searching.

01:00:22 ► §

I think that this

01:00:23 ► §

attracts disciples who are searching. I think I would like to say also searching. I think that this attracts disciples who are searching.

01:00:28 ► §

I think it titillates a great number of people who are not searching,

01:00:32 ► §

but let’s put them in the category of the thrill seeker.

01:00:35 ► §

But I think, too, Dr. Leary, you’re doing a tremendous disservice to all of us.

01:00:42 ► §

You bring forth, in effect, a new religion,

01:00:45 ► §

which you say is nothing that contradicts other religions.

01:00:51 ► §

I call your new religion a red herring.

01:00:55 ► §

We live in a very free country,

01:00:58 ► §

and in this free country the word religion

01:01:00 ► §

is synonymous with protection.

01:01:03 ► §

You yourself pointed that out.

01:01:04 ► §

I hope that I will continue to be able to practice my religion, Religion is synonymous with protection. You yourself pointed that out.

01:01:09 ► §

I hope that I will continue to be able to practice my religion,

01:01:10 ► §

and I upheld that for you.

01:01:12 ► §

I certainly hope so, too.

01:01:14 ► §

But this is why I called it a red herring,

01:01:16 ► §

because religion is protection here.

01:01:22 ► §

There have been many, many cases of self-appointed religionists, evangelists, who have hypnotized and have fooled their so-called

01:01:25 ► §

congregations. And let it be known here and now that LSD and any other psychedelic drug,

01:01:33 ► §

as far as I am concerned, is unhealthy, it’s dangerous, and its use should be restricted

01:01:41 ► §

to scientific experiments controlled by men who are chemically familiar with the drugs

01:01:47 ► §

or what have you.

01:01:48 ► §

Thank you so much.

01:02:00 ► §

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,

01:02:03 ► §

where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.

01:02:09 ► §

I have to admit that I really got a good laugh from Mr. Cooper.

01:02:13 ► §

That Long Island minister, whose main complaint about LSD, it seemed, was that people got personal pleasure and enjoyment from using it.

01:02:21 ► §

I can only imagine what a bunch of screwed up sad sacks his parishioners were.

01:02:26 ► §

I just hope that sick-minded preachers like him are on the wane, because they can certainly

01:02:32 ► §

do a lot of damage to a young mind before a person is independent enough to think for

01:02:37 ► §

themselves. Today, these religious fascists are much more slick in their presentations,

01:02:42 ► §

but in my humble opinion, they are no different

01:02:45 ► §

from the small-minded Mr. Cooper.

01:02:48 ► §

And then there was that woman who asked if perhaps young people were searching for something.

01:02:53 ► §

Well, duh, of course they were, and they still are.

01:02:57 ► §

That’s what we do when we’re young, and if we’re lucky, we’re still doing it in our old age.

01:03:03 ► §

Living here in California, I seldom come into contact with people with such provincial minds.

01:03:08 ► §

But from what some of our fellow salonners tell me, that kind of boxed-in thinking still prevails in much of the U.S.

01:03:16 ► §

As my dear departed mother once said, everything’s changed, but nothing’s different.

01:03:23 ► §

Hopefully, that’s what we’re doing here in the psychedelic salon, trying to build a different civilization.

01:03:30 ► §

You know, it struck me a few days ago how far consciousness, particularly psychedelic consciousness, has come in the past 40 years or so.

01:03:39 ► §

In the three podcasts before today’s, we heard Dr. Leary in 1965, Terrence McKenna in 1995, and Eric Davis in 2007.

01:03:50 ► §

From the email and comments I’ve received, many of our fellow salonners rate Eric as their favorite psychedelic commentator, and I have no quarrel with that.

01:04:00 ► §

What I’d like to point out, however, is that each one of these thinkers was able to

01:04:05 ► §

build on those who came before them. For Tim Leary, it was Aldous Huxley. For Terrence, it was Leary,

01:04:12 ► §

Ram Dass, and dozens of other elders who preceded him. And Eric can now draw upon them all, as can

01:04:18 ► §

you. And as dervish Mad Whirler said last week, now it’s up to us to carry the torch onward.

01:04:24 ► §

As Dervish Mad Whirler said last week, now it’s up to us to carry the torch onward.

01:04:34 ► §

Right now, I know there are a lot of our fellow salonners who are still in school and are still not clear about what path to follow as a career.

01:04:40 ► §

And I know that many of you would like to somehow be involved in professional psychedelic research.

01:04:48 ► §

So the next time we get together, I’m going to play another one of the pliologues that we held at last year’s Burning Man Festival.

01:04:56 ► §

And that may at least prove to you that if your will to do so is strong enough, the way can open up for you.

01:05:05 ► §

At least that’s how it worked out for Alicia Danforth, who in just a few short years has progressed from being a part-time unpaid volunteer to the point where she now gives talks at workshops and seminars from California to Switzerland.

01:05:12 ► §

And Alicia will be speaking about building a model for sustainable psychedelic therapy.

01:05:17 ► §

The reason I’m mentioning this right now is to further make my point about how far we have actually come since that dark night in 1966

01:05:27 ► §

when Dr. Leary took so much heat from people for promoting psychedelic research. We may not have

01:05:34 ► §

come very far by some measures, but as the wonderful Chinese say, a journey of a thousand

01:05:40 ► §

miles begins with the first step. And now may be the right time for you to be

01:05:46 ► §

thinking about your next step on this psychedelic journey. Which brings me to something I’ve been

01:05:51 ► §

thinking about for quite a while now, but to be honest, I still don’t know how to put it into

01:05:56 ► §

words. So this will only be a poor attempt to verbalize a few of my thoughts about what I’m trying to do with these podcasts.

01:06:06 ► §

As you know, almost all of the guest speakers we’ve heard here in the salon mentioned the

01:06:11 ► §

phrase consciousness expansion, and that’s great.

01:06:15 ► §

Expanding my level of awareness about existence is something that goes to the core of my being.

01:06:21 ► §

And yet, when you spend a little time thinking about it, what’s the purpose of

01:06:26 ► §

expanding our consciousness if we don’t want to come back and do something about it? And of course,

01:06:32 ► §

without exception, our speakers make that point as well. I want to be very careful here to make

01:06:38 ► §

sure that no one thinks that something I want to do is to create a large community around the psychedelic salon.

01:06:47 ► §

The truth is, I’m not much of a group person.

01:06:50 ► §

In fact, being alone is something I cherish highly.

01:06:55 ► §

So I don’t want this to become some kind of big psychedelic club or something.

01:07:03 ► §

My objective, my ultimate objective, I guess, can actually be summed up in the phrase that Timothy Leary made famous in the 60s, and that is, think for yourself

01:07:05 ► §

and question authority.

01:07:08 ► §

You see, it is you, a living, breathing, thinking individual, that I’m hoping will find an idea

01:07:16 ► §

or two here, and you can take that with you into your everyday life.

01:07:20 ► §

Because you, and you alone, will ultimately determine your fate, your destiny. www.thebiblecommentary.com I know that there are a lot of downloads of these podcasts from various places in the Middle East, China, even parts of Africa.

01:07:47 ► §

And there are also a fair number of downloads to the.mil networks.

01:07:53 ► §

And having been in the military myself, I know how lonely it can be when you’re a psychedelic thinker,

01:07:59 ► §

but you’re surrounded by a group of poorly educated people who have some rather bad habits when it

01:08:05 ► §

comes to the way they think. But the majority of our fellow salonners seem to

01:08:10 ► §

live in densely populated urban areas in the West and while living in a suburb of

01:08:15 ► §

Berlin or Chicago sure beats living in Baghdad right now, it can also be a

01:08:21 ► §

living hell if you’re surrounded by people who don’t understand where you’re coming from.

01:08:26 ► §

Last night, my wife and I watched a film that has made a deep impact on me.

01:08:31 ► §

It’s titled Freedom Writers.

01:08:34 ► §

That’s W-R-I-T-E-R-S. Freedom Writers, not writers.

01:08:38 ► §

And it’s about a group of young adults at a high school in Long Beach, California in the 1990s,

01:08:44 ► §

during a time when that school was being forcibly integrated by busing. group of young adults at a high school in Long Beach, California in the 1990s, during

01:08:45 ► §

a time when that school was being forcibly integrated by busing. At the time, the students

01:08:52 ► §

self-segregated into ethnic groups consisting primarily of Asians, Latinos, blacks, and

01:08:58 ► §

Caucasians. And at first, they were in a perpetual state of war with one another. This was just

01:09:04 ► §

after the L.A. riots that were sparked by the Rodney King verdict.

01:09:08 ► §

And in the year after those riots, there were over a hundred murders,

01:09:13 ► §

senseless gang murders of young people in that town.

01:09:17 ► §

Now, these poor kids literally lived under the fear of being killed

01:09:20 ► §

every time they stepped out of their doors.

01:09:23 ► §

And I don’t think that the movie’s portrayal was overblown

01:09:27 ► §

because I lived in that area, about three blocks from that school actually,

01:09:32 ► §

for a year and a half when my wife was Dr. Grobe’s research assistant

01:09:36 ► §

on his psilocybin research study.

01:09:39 ► §

We lived on the edge of one of the Caucasian areas

01:09:42 ► §

and so didn’t really experience any violence directly,

01:09:46 ► §

but we seldom ventured out of doors after dark. I can’t remember a weekend when we didn’t hear

01:09:51 ► §

gunfire during the night and the police helicopters with their spotlights quite often lit up the alley

01:09:57 ► §

behind our apartment building when they were in hot pursuit of somebody. And this was over a decade

01:10:03 ► §

after the time period of the movie. Things are much

01:10:06 ► §

better in Long Beach right now, but it still has a reputation as one of the toughest places in Los

01:10:11 ► §

Angeles County. So it wasn’t too hard for me to relate to the plight of these kids. I won’t go

01:10:18 ► §

into a great detail about this film because I hope you’ll see it for yourself. But it’s basically about an idealistic young woman who begins her teaching

01:10:27 ► §

career when parts of that school were little more than a battleground for at-risk

01:10:32 ► §

children. There’s absolutely no way I would have lasted

01:10:35 ► §

a week under the conditions this wonderful woman encountered, but she not

01:10:39 ► §

only persevered, she, well, I think she worked

01:10:43 ► §

a miracle by giving her students a better

01:10:46 ► §

way to see themselves and a much better way to relate to the world. If I didn’t know that

01:10:52 ► §

this movie was based on a true story, I wouldn’t be telling you about it because it’s almost

01:10:56 ► §

beyond belief what those kids were able to overcome. And it has given me more hope in

01:11:02 ► §

human nature than I’ve had for years. Which finally brings me to my point.

01:11:07 ► §

While I don’t hold the belief that everyone, or even most people for that matter,

01:11:12 ► §

should use our sacred medicines to enhance and guide their spiritual lives,

01:11:16 ► §

I do believe that those of us who choose this path,

01:11:20 ► §

whether it’s by actually using the medicines or simply by being a psychedelic thinker

01:11:24 ► §

who builds on the foundations left by our elders I do

01:11:28 ► §

believe that once you see the light if you have the courage to do so you can

01:11:33 ► §

make as big a difference in your little corner of the world as this marvelous

01:11:36 ► §

teacher did as my friend black beauty said just after dr. Leary’s talk just

01:11:42 ► §

now the psychedelic salon is a place where people

01:11:45 ► §

are changing their lives one thought at a time.

01:11:49 ► §

I don’t have any of the answers about life myself, nor for the most part do our guest

01:11:53 ► §

speakers.

01:11:54 ► §

All we are attempting to do here is to pass along a few ideas that we’ve had during the

01:11:59 ► §

course of our own personal adventures on this planet, in the hopes that you can grab a hold of a few of them

01:12:05 ► §

and build upon them in your own very unique way,

01:12:09 ► §

in a way that you and only you can do.

01:12:12 ► §

Each of us have not only unique talents,

01:12:15 ► §

we also have, each and every one of us,

01:12:18 ► §

a unique way of seeing this world.

01:12:20 ► §

And it’s my hope that you’ll always see it through the ultimate lens,

01:12:25 ► §

the one that Terence McKenna saw on his deathbed when he said,

01:12:28 ► §

It’s all about love.

01:12:31 ► §

Well, I guess that’s enough preaching for today.

01:12:33 ► §

Now, how about some news that’s come in from the net?

01:12:37 ► §

Frequently, I receive MySpace messages and requests to link up.

01:12:42 ► §

However, I’m afraid that I can no longer even get logged into our MySpace page.

01:12:47 ► §

As you know, MySpace deleted our page without any notice and won’t reply as to why they blacklisted me.

01:12:54 ► §

And so I’m simply done with them. So if you try to contact me that way, I’m afraid that I won’t even be able to read your messages anymore.

01:13:02 ► §

I won’t even be able to read your messages anymore.

01:13:08 ► §

But there still is the psychedelicsalon.org blog where you can post your questions in a comment section or post something on the forum over at thegirlreport.com

01:13:12 ► §

or you can try to squeak an email through all of my spam filters by sending a message to lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.

01:13:20 ► §

And there’s also our Planque Norte group at tribe.net, although I only get out there about once a month or so.

01:13:27 ► §

So there are a number of ways to communicate with me and our fellow salonners.

01:13:31 ► §

I’m sorry about the MySpace connection, but I’m afraid that one is just out of my control.

01:13:36 ► §

Another message that reached me comes from fellow salonner Ned, who said,

01:13:41 ► §

I wanted to let you know I used a soundbite from your Alex Gray interview on love,

01:13:46 ► §

art, and family. I do a podcast on creativity called Ned PR. You can check it out through

01:13:52 ► §

iTunes or at www.nedpr.org. I told all of my listeners to go to your website slash podcast

01:14:01 ► §

to check out more of what you have available. I would love it if

01:14:06 ► §

you wouldn’t mind checking out my podcast and sending some of your listeners my direction.

01:14:11 ► §

Well, first of all, thanks for letting me know about the Alex Gray soundbite, Ned.

01:14:15 ► §

As you know, the Creative Commons copyright license I use for these podcasts doesn’t require

01:14:21 ► §

that you let me know about using parts of the podcast, but I really appreciate knowing when somebody does, just because it makes me feel good.

01:14:28 ► §

I took a quick look at the listing of Ned’s podcast, and he already has over a dozen episodes posted, so it looks like he’s going to keep going.

01:14:38 ► §

That’s my little plug here.

01:14:40 ► §

But I haven’t had a chance to listen to it myself yet simply because of my lack of time to do so.

01:14:46 ► §

I’m already several episodes behind listening to Psychonautica and The Dope Fiend at dopecast.co.uk,

01:14:53 ► §

but I have been able to keep up with Lefty’s Lounge and Bebe’s Bungalow,

01:14:57 ► §

both of which give me a big energy boost when I hear them.

01:15:01 ► §

The other program I try to stay current with is KMO’s C-Realm podcast,

01:15:06 ► §

which you can find at c-realmpodcast.podomatic.com, and there’s a link to that on our Psychedelic

01:15:13 ► §

Salon blog. He now has published about 80 podcasts, and they’re all worth your time

01:15:18 ► §

to listen to. But if you’re just getting started with the C-Realm, I’d suggest picking up with

01:15:23 ► §

program numbers 76 and 77, which have to do with our food supply.

01:15:28 ► §

Hopefully a lot of people will listen to those programs and then begin to take action based on them.

01:15:34 ► §

And for you Eric Davis fans, KMO is trying to line up an interview with Eric to build on what he had to say in his plialogue, which we podcast here in the salon last week.

01:15:44 ► §

The Sea Realm is one of my favorite podcasts, and I hope you’ll give it a listen. Thank you. and discuss topics of mutual interest, frequently focusing on psychedelic medicines.

01:16:08 ► §

If you’ve been listening to these podcasts for a while now,

01:16:14 ► §

you’ll remember several talks that I recorded at the now defunct but very important salon that Kathleen ran in Venice Beach for over seven years.

01:16:17 ► §

One of the things that gave her salon such longevity, I believe,

01:16:21 ► §

is that from the very beginning, she strictly followed the

01:16:25 ► §

guidelines set out by Ann and Sasha Shulgin when they were also conducting a monthly gathering.

01:16:30 ► §

These rules are really very simple, but in my humble opinion, without them, you won’t

01:16:36 ► §

be able to pull off anything of lasting value.

01:16:39 ► §

And here they are.

01:16:40 ► §

Number one, never, as in never never allow any talk before during or after

01:16:47 ► §

the gathering of how or where to find psychedelic medicines even though we

01:16:52 ► §

don’t agree with the current prohibition on using these important substances we

01:16:57 ► §

have to keep in mind that they remain illegal and carry very stiff penalties

01:17:01 ► §

for buying selling or possessing them so in the interest of all of us in this community, I urge you to always stick to that rule.

01:17:10 ► §

These salons are about free speech, but speech about what happens to our consciousness,

01:17:15 ► §

not about sources and supply.

01:17:17 ► §

And the only other rule obviously flows from that,

01:17:21 ► §

and that is never be under the influence of or use these substances when you’re

01:17:26 ► §

together in a salon format if you follow those two simple rules i think you’ll find that your salon

01:17:32 ► §

will grow into a very fulfilling project one last thing i want to mention before i go today is that

01:17:39 ► §

sometimes when fellow salonners post a comment on our blog, they’re held for moderation.

01:17:46 ► §

Now, I want to assure you that I’m not editing your content in any way.

01:17:49 ► §

What that’s all about is that I’ve set the comments to go to moderation whenever there are two or more links in the post.

01:17:57 ► §

And the reason for this is to keep the spammers away.

01:18:00 ► §

So far, mainly through the wonderful work of the Akismet plugin, over 14,000 spam messages

01:18:08 ► §

have been blocked. I’m sorry for the delay sometimes in getting your messages posted, but

01:18:13 ► §

as you can see, spam would make the blog comments almost worthless if I didn’t do that.

01:18:20 ► §

Well, I guess that’s it for today, and as always, I want to close by saying that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 3.0 license.

01:18:34 ► §

And if you have any questions about that, just click the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage, which you can find at www.psychedelicsalon.org.

01:18:46 ► §

And that’s also where you’ll find the program notes for these podcasts.

01:18:50 ► §

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

01:18:55 ► §

Be well, my friends. Into the light of the naked truth