Program Notes
Guest speakers: Terence McKenna and Matt Pallamary
NEW! … Two of Matt Pallamary’s books are now available on Kindle:
Spirit Matters … Kindle Edition
Land Without Evil …
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:20 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
00:00:25 ►
And in case you’re wondering, because of what I said in my last podcast, well, I’ve never felt better.
00:00:31 ►
It’s truly amazing what a few days away from this land can do for you.
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Well, there’s a lot I want to cover here in the salon today, so I’ll just kind of jump right in.
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To begin with, today’s podcast is being brought to you
00:00:45 ►
thanks to a generous donation by Jared F.
00:00:49 ►
And by the way, Jared, I really like your email handle too.
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So thanks to Jared and to all of the other donors
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who have helped out with some of the expenses involved with producing these podcasts.
00:01:02 ►
And I don’t want to forget to thank all of you
00:01:04 ►
who are promoting the Psychedelic Salon
00:01:06 ►
on your websites and pages on some of the various social networks around the net.
00:01:11 ►
You old-timers remember, I’m sure, that one of Terrence McKenna’s mantras was,
00:01:16 ►
Find the Others.
00:01:17 ►
And from what I’m hearing from some of you, that’s really starting to take place
00:01:22 ►
in some strange and synchronistic ways.
00:01:25 ►
Now, for our program today, we’re going to hear from two people. that’s really starting to take place in some strange and synchronistic ways.
00:01:29 ►
Now, for our program today, we’re going to hear from two people.
00:01:33 ►
The first being our old friend, the Bard McKenna.
00:01:38 ►
Since I’ve received so much McKenna material from so many people,
00:01:41 ►
and since my filing system is essentially non-existent,
00:01:46 ►
I’m not sure where this talk came from or when it was recorded.
00:01:51 ►
The best I can figure out is that it was given sometime in the early 1990s.
00:01:58 ►
And the second thing I’m going to play for you today is a conversation that Matt Palomary and I had a few days ago.
00:02:04 ►
And I’ll introduce that after we hear the following short talk about shamanism by Terence McKenna.
00:02:07 ►
It’s only about 18 minutes long,
00:02:09 ►
but I think you’ll hear a couple of ideas from Terence that we haven’t heard here in the salon before.
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So now, here’s Terence.
00:02:19 ►
Well, in 15 minutes, to try and say something about shamanism and hallucinogens,
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we’re just going to touch the surface.
00:02:29 ►
And I figure the simplest way to do this is just to sort of unload on you how I see these things.
00:02:38 ►
Shamanism is not some obscure concern of cultural anthropologists.
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some obscure concern of cultural anthropologists. Shamanism is how religion was practiced for its first million years, up until about 12,000 years ago. There was no other form of religion
00:02:56 ►
on this planet. That was how people attained some kind of access to the sacred.
00:03:06 ►
And so shamanism then becomes about technique.
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And if any of you are students of the literature of shamanism,
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you probably know that one of the great overviews of shamanism
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is contained in Merciliad’s book, Shamanism, the Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy.
00:03:30 ►
The Archaic Techniques of Ecstasy. It is a kind of pre-rational science, a kind of methodology for attaining a certain kind of experience.
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And then the question becomes, what experience and what’s so great about it? Well, the experience that is attained, if we can attempt to rise to some kind of
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cosmic overview so that we are not dealing with the experience in the context of what
00:04:14 ►
the Mazatecs say or the Wetoto or some other tribal people, but when we attempt to pool all of this descriptive data,
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then what is the experience that the shaman is having that is making him or her an exemplar in their own society
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and in a sense almost superhuman?
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Well, if you analyze thousands and thousands of these shamanic experiences,
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both drug, both plant-induced and non-plant-induced,
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the overwhelming connecting thread is boundary dissolution.
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This is what the experience is that we are all seeking,
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This is what the experience is that we are all seeking, that we call terrifying, wonderful, desirable, horrible.
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But what it is, is it’s the experience of having the roof fall in and the floor fall out all at once.
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Boundary dissolution.
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Why should that be so important, so wonderful? Because it acts psychologically in the human being like a birth experience.
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The world is made new.
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Everything is seen through newly opened eyes.
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through newly opened eyes.
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Now there are many techniques of shamanism for attaining this state.
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Celibacy, withholding food,
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ordeals, flagellation, mutilation.
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This doesn’t sound like a program for a lot of fun, does it?
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And then, hallucinogenic plan.
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Now, it’s a question which always emerges at these conferences.
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All of you people are talking about drugs and plant substances.
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Isn’t there another way to do this? Isn’t this what the great yogic systems,
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the great tantric systems of thought
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have opened up for us
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without the self-polluting act
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of ingesting a plant into our bodies
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and polluting our precious bodily essences?
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The answer is no.
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No. No.
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And the further answer is
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the reason the universe is constructed this way
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is that so you will be forced
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to humble yourself into the admission
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that you can’t do it alone.
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Why should you be able to do it alone?
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Where is it writ in adamantine that Joe Blow should be able to walk directly into the antechamber of the Most High
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simply because he or she wants to?
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Nowhere.
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The sine qua non, fancy Latin for you can’t get along without it,
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you can’t get along without it.
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The sine qua non for attaining a psychedelic experience is humbling yourself to the point where you admit
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that you must submit to the experience of the plant or the drug.
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This act of surrender is the major technical function
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you will be called upon to perform during the psychedelic trip.
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You just keep saying, take me, I’m yours, take me, I’m yours, and it will do the rest.
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Well, this is much too much to get into in 15 minutes,
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but why the tension between boundary and boundary dissolution? Why the tension
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between the closed personal world of reinforced neurotic constructs that we call ordinary
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psychological health? Why the tension between that and this vastly expanded and open state
00:08:29 ►
of being where life, Tao, seems to flow through us? Well, the tension between these states
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has to do, I think, with the fact that there is a blind spot in the human mind.
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We do not like to have called to our attention the animate and caring nature of the universe,
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because the universe is something that we have had to fight our way through to get to our present position.
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I mean, how many reindeer bit the dust that we could sit here
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this morning how many forests were cleared you see we have a long history of resistance and
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conquest to nature and when we experience theissolving qualities of the hallucinogen,
00:09:26 ►
we learn what Pogo learned.
00:09:29 ►
We have met the enemy, and he is us.
00:09:34 ►
And closing that loop then creates a dimension of moral responsibility.
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And this is why the shaman is a special person, because the shaman has somehow
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closed the loop of moral responsibility, and in so doing, becomes tremendously authentic
00:09:56 ►
to the people in the society that is constellated around the shaman. The shaman basically is an exemplar,
00:10:07 ►
a model for how to be,
00:10:10 ►
not simply how to be in the psychedelic or the trance state,
00:10:15 ►
but how to be in the act of wooing,
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how to be in the act of hunting,
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child rearing, so forth.
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It’s a kind of exemplar that bursts through cultural conditioning.
00:10:30 ►
Cultural conditioning is like bad software.
00:10:35 ►
It’s over and over, it’s diddled with and rewritten
00:10:39 ►
so that it can just run on the next attempt.
00:10:43 ►
But there is cultural hardware,
00:10:47 ►
and it’s that cultural hardware,
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otherwise known as authentic being,
00:10:51 ►
that we are propelled toward
00:10:54 ►
by the example of the shaman
00:10:56 ►
and the techniques of the shaman.
00:11:00 ►
You know, if someone tells you
00:11:02 ►
that vast spiritual riches await you,
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if you will but give up sex, interesting food, and your own thoughts for 10 or 15 years
00:11:13 ►
and follow along with them, then something will be attained.
00:11:17 ►
This is no challenge to most of us because we have our lives to lead,
00:11:23 ►
mortgages to pay, children to feed, car payments.
00:11:27 ►
But if someone tells you, eat this plant and you will come into your birthright, that’s
00:11:35 ►
a real existential challenge. The excuse that it’s difficult or unattainable has been removed.
00:11:47 ►
it’s difficult or unattainable has been removed. There can no longer be shilly-shallying around that issue. Shamanism, therefore, is a call to authenticity. Well, then the last point
00:11:56 ►
that I want to make, this authenticity is generally presented and has generally been presented throughout the evolution of the psychedelic movement in the United States
00:12:10 ►
as a kind of personal integrity, a kind of psychological health,
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as though you had confronted all your demons and slain them and you are now balanced or individuated or whole or something like that.
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That’s true.
00:12:29 ►
That is the first stage of the shamanic integration.
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But that is not the goal of the shamanic integration.
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Otherwise, it just becomes a kind of chemically-assisted psychotherapy.
00:12:47 ►
The goal is then, having attained that balance, that wisdom, that connection,
00:12:55 ►
to then rise up to a level of universal meaning.
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In other words, to break through the machinery of cultural conditioning
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in the same way that the shaman does,
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and to attempt to discover something authentic,
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something authentic outside the self-generated language cloud.
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And to my mind, what this authentic thing is,
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is…
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It’s hard to know how to put it,
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but it’s the animate quality
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that resides within the psychedelic experience.
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That the universal mind is alive, is sentient, is perceiving,
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is there to meet you when you come through from the other side.
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So we’re not talking about psychedelics as a spotlight
00:13:58 ►
to be turned on to reveal the detritus of our own personal unconscious.
00:14:05 ►
It is not a spotlight it is not shining from behind you it is shining ahead of you it is
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actually that the same organizational principles which called us forth into
00:14:20 ►
self-reflection have called forth self-reflection out of the planet itself.
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And the problem then is for us to suspect this, act on our suspicion,
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and be good detectives and track down the spirit in its lair.
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And this is what shamans are doing.
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They are hunters of spirit.
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Now, anthropology tends to want to,
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well, place in a museum diorama is too harsh a phrase,
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but wants to freeze these things in context
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so they become artifacts.
00:15:07 ►
So then we say, well, how do the Witoto think about the shaman?
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And I’ve even seen papers,
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what do the Witoto think of the shaman in winter?
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What do the Witoto think of the shaman in summer?
00:15:20 ►
Well, not only is this a stupid question on the face of it,
00:15:24 ►
but since they don’t have winter and summer, it’s a stupid question beneath the surface. Shamanism does not exist in the same way that other culture-bound institutions exist for us to catalog and reflect on. Rather, this is a case where we played the role of the prodigal son, the descent into
00:15:49 ►
physis, the descent into matter. For 15,000 years, we have wandered to a desert, and we are now very
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well adapted to the deserts of rationalism, materialism, state politics, patriarchy, so forth and so on.
00:16:10 ►
But there is no food in a desert.
00:16:14 ►
Eventually, there has to be a promised land.
00:16:20 ►
And I believe that many people in this room know that personally,
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that promised land is the psychedelic experience.
00:16:30 ►
The larger challenge, and it is a larger challenge, it’s easy to fix your own mind,
00:16:35 ►
the larger challenge is to somehow make this private doorway a public option.
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make this private doorway a public option,
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empower ourselves to speak of this in such a way that it cannot be put down,
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it cannot be rolled over, it cannot be pigeonholed,
00:17:01 ►
it cannot be handed over to a clique of experts, but rather it has to be confronted
00:17:05 ►
as the authentic thing which we lost so long ago
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that we no longer have any image of the thing lost.
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We simply have an ache,
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an ache that cannot be gotten rid of.
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The solution to this is a re-empowering
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of the shamanic meme,
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a taking of the idea of shamanism,
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pouring it into the best
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our own self-exploration
00:17:36 ►
has given to us,
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which to my mind means
00:17:39 ►
art, psychotherapy, and art.
00:17:44 ►
And to try to empower these institutions
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to give back our authenticity that was lost.
00:17:55 ►
The cultures that possess shamanism
00:17:57 ►
function the entire culture as a shamanic model
00:18:02 ►
for those of us who wander in the prodigal’s desert of materialism.
00:18:08 ►
And through the work of people like Gordon Wasson and Richard Evans Schultes and in the
00:18:13 ►
19th century Richard Spruce, the tools have been cataloged, the magical plants.
00:18:19 ►
And I don’t believe that shamanism without hallucinogens is authentic shamanism or comfortable shamanism.
00:18:28 ►
Now this is a great debate in anthropology.
00:18:32 ►
Merciliad on one side saying, when shamanism turns to narcotics, it has entered a decadent and final phase.
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The very use of the word narcotics betrays such a botanical naivete
00:18:48 ►
that you know you’re not going to be happy with what follows.
00:18:56 ►
Lawson, on the other hand, said,
00:18:59 ►
A shamanism that does not resort to hallucinogenic plants
00:19:04 ►
is a shamanism that has lost its roots.
00:19:07 ►
A shamanism that relies on ordeals, pathological personalities, and withholding of food
00:19:15 ►
is a shamanism that has lost a sense of its techniques and its efficacy.
00:19:21 ►
and its efficacy.
00:19:25 ►
So the last thought I would like to leave with you is,
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and I hope I’m preaching to the converted,
00:19:33 ►
but if there’s a single person in this room who doesn’t know what I’m about to say,
00:19:36 ►
then it’s worth repeating,
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and that is, we are not bullshitting you.
00:19:41 ►
This is not yoga.
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This is not NLP, not to knock those things. This is
00:19:50 ►
real. It is so real that you can take the most hardened, rational, reductionist asshole
00:19:58 ►
and drop him into that environment and he will meet his maker.
00:20:06 ►
It dissolves you into a confrontation with authentic being.
00:20:17 ►
And this is what we are starving for.
00:20:20 ►
This is how we’ve gotten into the messes and mess that we’re in.
00:20:25 ►
Take seriously the techniques of shamanism.
00:20:29 ►
Study the plants.
00:20:31 ►
Make real choices.
00:20:34 ►
And then don’t diddle the dose.
00:20:37 ►
Once you’ve done your homework, go for it.
00:20:58 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,
00:21:02 ►
where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
00:21:07 ►
Don’t diddle the dose.
00:21:11 ►
There’s really not much you can add to that truism.
00:21:14 ►
Jonathan Ott’s way of saying that is,
00:21:16 ►
beware the dreaded underdose.
00:21:20 ►
And while those statements may seem funny on the surface,
00:21:23 ►
if you have a lot of experience with these sacred medicines,
00:21:26 ►
you know how serious those two statements really are.
00:21:41 ►
You know, whenever I think of Terrence and Jonathan Ott at the same time, one other character also comes to mind, and that’s Christiane Roche, who you can hear in podcasts number 10 and number 12 here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:21:46 ►
They each had their special areas of expertise, and Christian’s is shamanism.
00:21:52 ►
In my humble opinion, Christian is without any doubt the world’s current leading researcher,
00:21:59 ►
teacher, and thinker about shamanism. I remember one night in Palenque when a bunch of us were sitting on someone’s porch talking long into the night, and somebody asked Christian how many great shamans he had
00:22:06 ►
met in his life and his reply really took us all by surprise he said if I remember correctly
00:22:14 ►
that he had only known two people who he would call fully realized shamans and then he went on
00:22:21 ►
to define what he meant by that now I, I may have this wrong, and perhaps someone who talks with Christian at a conference someday can ask that question again and let us know what he has to say.
00:22:32 ►
But no matter what the specifics are, I’m positive that he thought that such people are very rare indeed.
00:22:39 ►
Now, the person you’re about to hear from right now, Matt Palomary, has sometimes been mistakenly called an urban shaman.
00:22:47 ►
And even by me, I must admit, and I’m sorry for that, Matteo.
00:22:51 ►
But he is always very quick to set the record straight.
00:22:56 ►
Matt, or Matteo, as his friends often call him, is a longtime student of shamanism, but he is not a shaman.
00:23:05 ►
long-time student of shamanism, but he is not a shaman. I personally believe, however,
00:23:12 ►
even though he hasn’t been calling himself a healer or a kuhandero, I personally believe that he’s certainly on that level today. Now, you’ve heard from Mateo before in podcasts
00:23:17 ►
number 80 and 89, but today I’ll be talking with him about his new book, a very rich and personal memoir titled Spirit Matters.
00:23:27 ►
Several months ago, I read it in manuscript form, and I’m currently rereading it now that
00:23:33 ►
the book is actually in print.
00:23:35 ►
And I’m here to tell you that it reads like a hair-raising novel.
00:23:39 ►
Matt’s life has truly been an adventure.
00:23:42 ►
And for anyone who is trying to bootstrap himself or herself up from a difficult childhood,
00:23:48 ►
well, Mateo’s story can be a true inspiration,
00:23:52 ►
because it shows that, without a doubt, spirit truly does matter.
00:23:58 ►
In fact, it may ultimately be the only thing that matters.
00:24:01 ►
So, please join Matt, Pal, Mary, and me as we have a little chat
00:24:06 ►
here in the Psychedelic Salon. So here we are on a beautiful sunny day in Southern California
00:24:16 ►
overlooking the Pacific Ocean, sitting here in the Psychedelic Salon after having survived a
00:24:22 ►
few more adventures in the mountains and I’m here to
00:24:26 ►
talk with my dear friend Matteo Palomari about his new book Spirit Matters and what I find really
00:24:33 ►
unique about this book is that you know you’ve been writing for I guess probably 25 years or
00:24:39 ►
more and teaching writing and as far as I know this is your first what’s the first non-fiction
00:24:44 ►
work I’ve read that you’ve done,
00:24:46 ►
and you’ve probably done other non-fiction,
00:24:48 ►
but this is the first one.
00:24:50 ►
It’s a memoir.
00:24:52 ►
So what prompted that decision?
00:24:54 ►
How did you get from Land Without Evil,
00:24:57 ►
which I think is one of the most brilliant novels about shamanism I’ve read,
00:25:02 ►
into a reality-based mode.
00:25:07 ►
Well, thank you.
00:25:08 ►
And I didn’t pay him to say those things.
00:25:10 ►
I really appreciate that.
00:25:12 ►
I began, I’ve been researching shamanism all my life.
00:25:17 ►
I was into lots of things when I was younger.
00:25:21 ►
And then I read Carlos Castaneda books when I was 18, which made a big impression.
00:25:28 ►
And I began researching shamanism.
00:25:30 ►
And I went through a phase in my life where I did lots of altered states research as a very young man.
00:25:41 ►
I won’t get into all that because it’s in the book.
00:25:43 ►
But I was researching and researching
00:25:46 ►
and I took off.
00:25:47 ►
I finally got to the point
00:25:48 ►
where I took 13 years of my life off
00:25:51 ►
and didn’t do anything at all.
00:25:53 ►
I wouldn’t take aspirin if I had a headache.
00:25:56 ►
Coffee, nothing.
00:25:58 ►
And I was a vegetarian for 23 years.
00:26:01 ►
And through all my research,
00:26:02 ►
I got connected to
00:26:06 ►
a gentleman by the name of Terence McKenna
00:26:09 ►
who really opened my eyes to some things
00:26:12 ►
about the plants
00:26:13 ►
so I was writing novels, I’ve written I think nine novels
00:26:18 ►
published two of them
00:26:20 ►
and I was writing a novel about shape shifting
00:26:23 ►
and I was researching the lycanthropy mythos.
00:26:28 ►
And lycanthropy, for those of you who don’t know, is basically the werewolf mythos, which
00:26:31 ►
gets into shape-shifting. And I discovered through my research at university libraries
00:26:38 ►
that there’s a lot of shape-shifting, particularly in South America, tied in with visionary plants.
00:26:46 ►
So I did some extensive research on visionary plants.
00:26:51 ►
And I wrote a novel about a guy who became a shape-shifter.
00:26:55 ►
And I almost got it published.
00:26:57 ►
But it didn’t happen for whatever reasons.
00:27:00 ►
But I was really drawn into the plants and the things that they could bring. So I first
00:27:08 ►
read about ayahuasca, I believe it was 1990. And I knew quite a bit about it because I read
00:27:14 ►
everything I could get on it at the time, which wasn’t very much. This was at University Library,
00:27:20 ►
UC California, actually. And I was on a mission to find it.
00:27:27 ►
And it took me just about 10 years.
00:27:30 ►
And I found it.
00:27:32 ►
So I got myself somehow invited to spend time with a shaman from Peru.
00:27:42 ►
And got to experience it firsthand.
00:27:46 ►
And it really changed my life incredibly.
00:27:51 ►
And so I started to pursue it more and more and more.
00:27:53 ►
And at this point in time, I’ve been working with it for nine years.
00:28:00 ►
I’ve been to the jungle like 10 times doing extended plant diets
00:28:05 ►
and there was a period there a few years back
00:28:08 ►
where I was doing it roughly 30 times a year
00:28:11 ►
and what was happening was
00:28:15 ►
as my life was unfolding and developing
00:28:16 ►
and going down this path
00:28:18 ►
is that my life started getting weirder
00:28:20 ►
than anything that I could write about
00:28:22 ►
and then I suddenly realized that it wasn’t so sudden I guess but my life was weirder than anything that I could write about. And then I suddenly realized that, it wasn’t so
00:28:25 ►
sudden, I guess, but my life was weirder than anything I could think up and imagine. And I also
00:28:31 ►
figured out that a lot of the things in my life that I thought were like normal, like I thought
00:28:35 ►
everybody grows up like this, I found out it was actually quite unusual. So I got pushed by a lot of people to really record my experiences
00:28:45 ►
and through all that things evolved
00:28:49 ►
and the book came out of it
00:28:51 ►
and it’s been really wonderful so far
00:28:55 ►
I can attest to the fact that your life
00:29:01 ►
is quite unusual, in fact of course I read the manuscript a number of months ago,
00:29:06 ►
and I’m on my second read of the book now.
00:29:09 ►
And to be honest, I’m amazed that you’re both alive and not in jail, quite frankly.
00:29:16 ►
I mean, it starts out where you’re growing up in a concrete Irish Catholic ghetto.
00:29:22 ►
And some of the experiences were, to me, just totally horrific
00:29:28 ►
because I grew up in sort of an Ozzie and Harriet kind of environment
00:29:32 ►
and didn’t grow up on the street.
00:29:34 ►
And I hope that some of our friends here in the salon,
00:29:41 ►
particularly young people who might be having a difficult time of it, whether
00:29:46 ►
they’re in an inner city situation or in a deeply conservative religious family or whatever.
00:29:55 ►
We all have our own difficulties going through life, but I think there’s a lot of inspiration
00:30:02 ►
here for people to see that spirit really does matter.
00:30:07 ►
I don’t think we’ve mentioned the title of the book is Spirit Matters.
00:30:11 ►
And for somebody who can go from being a small child and have his father try to burn the house down around him
00:30:19 ►
and still be somewhat sane, and I use that word loosely.
00:30:24 ►
Thank you.
00:30:29 ►
You know, it’s an amazing, amazing story. Actually,
00:30:34 ►
it’s a page-turner. If I didn’t know it was non-fiction, I would think it’s one of your better novels. It’s got to have been pretty painful. How did going through all those old
00:30:40 ►
memories affect you? It was fascinating because part of the journey with ayahuasca and
00:30:46 ►
plants is figuring out who you are and why are you here. So as part of my process
00:30:54 ►
working and going through my life, it was fascinating because I remembered things a
00:31:01 ►
certain way. And then you recall the the memory and then you suddenly realize that
00:31:06 ►
you really find out
00:31:08 ►
kind of full of shit
00:31:10 ►
because you know you have a
00:31:12 ►
memory you get in a fight when you’re 16 and you
00:31:14 ►
think oh I took on a gang of 20 guys or something
00:31:16 ►
and you realize well gosh
00:31:18 ►
you know now you’re an adult well okay it wasn’t
00:31:20 ►
it was really two guys not 20 you know
00:31:22 ►
as a kid you tend to exaggerate and
00:31:25 ►
blow things out of proportion so you made me think of a couple of things when you were asking
00:31:31 ►
this question when you were talking um one of the things i want to mention is that um
00:31:35 ►
i make a joke with my wife you know why do you do this and why do you do that
00:31:39 ►
and if i perform like i drum and sing and always say, it’s all for you, baby.
00:31:50 ►
So this is all for you, you guys out there, you guys and gals.
00:31:54 ►
And I mean a few things by that.
00:31:59 ►
One of the things I mean is that I’ve gone through some really dark places.
00:32:03 ►
And I’ve done that so other people won’t have to do that.
00:32:09 ►
People were telling me for the first few years I was going to the jungle,
00:32:10 ►
you’re going there for us, you’re going there for us,
00:32:13 ►
and I didn’t quite get it, but now I got it.
00:32:19 ►
So one of the underlying themes of spirit matters is that it’s a map,
00:32:23 ►
and it’s a guide, and I’m way out on point.
00:32:27 ►
The whole thing about am I sane or not,
00:32:28 ►
that’s right, it depends on who you ask.
00:32:31 ►
But I’m on point,
00:32:33 ►
and I’ve had a lot of experiences and some very hard things I’ve gone through,
00:32:36 ►
and people tend to live vicariously through me.
00:32:39 ►
And I’m hoping that everyone who reads the book
00:32:41 ►
can live vicariously through me
00:32:42 ►
and avoid, actually probably literally avoid the bullets at a few points so they won’t have to go through
00:32:49 ►
it.
00:32:50 ►
So, you know, altered states of consciousness are fascinating and they’re part of life
00:32:56 ►
and they’re part of experience and they’re here for a reason.
00:32:59 ►
So there are some substances which, in my humble opinion, are not good for you.
00:33:04 ►
You know, and I’m just kind of paraphrasing here, but crystal meth,
00:33:08 ►
crack cocaine, heroin, I mean, obviously
00:33:10 ►
don’t get you to a good place. You take something like
00:33:16 ►
LSD or mushrooms or ayahuasca, and if you take
00:33:20 ►
those with the proper respect,
00:33:23 ►
and you put a good intention behind them.
00:33:28 ►
They’re really wonderful tools.
00:33:30 ►
They’re psycho-spiritual tools.
00:33:32 ►
When I go to the jungle, I tell people I’m going to church and I’m going to listen to mom
00:33:37 ►
because mom’s going to give me some lessons.
00:33:39 ►
So anything has the potential for abuse.
00:33:44 ►
And one of the important things about doing these medicines,
00:33:47 ►
particularly ayahuasca, and I’m rephrasing this,
00:33:49 ►
repeating myself, but it’s the intention that you put behind it.
00:33:54 ►
So I’ve learned these things
00:33:56 ►
and I’ve gone through these passages
00:33:57 ►
and I like to think that what’s taking me
00:34:01 ►
50 plus years to learn and barely make,
00:34:04 ►
somebody who may be in their
00:34:06 ►
20s can read it and go, okay, I got the memo. So they can avoid all that. And then they can
00:34:13 ►
jump ahead much quicker. So somebody could be, for argument’s sake, they could be 24 and maybe
00:34:20 ►
be close to where I am in their advancement and not have to do all the things that I’ve done.
00:34:24 ►
be close to where I am in their advancement and not have to do all the things that I’ve done.
00:34:25 ►
That’s a really good point.
00:34:27 ►
Of course, that’s one of the reasons we read and listen to stories so that we don’t have
00:34:31 ►
to go through some of these things.
00:34:34 ►
I know some of the stories, and I don’t know if everybody in the salon knows this, but
00:34:38 ►
I used to be a lawyer.
00:34:39 ►
Well, I guess I still am.
00:34:40 ►
I still have my license to lie, at least in the state of Texas.
00:34:40 ►
I guess I still am.
00:34:44 ►
I still have my license to lie, at least in the state of Texas.
00:34:52 ►
But there is a lot of talk about basically illegal activities.
00:34:54 ►
And I’m not talking about just taking some sacred medicines. I’m talking about hardcore criminal activity before they force you into the service.
00:35:01 ►
And I don’t want to give away too much of the book because it is an exciting read and a lot of fun.
00:35:06 ►
And, you know, every page has an adventure on it.
00:35:10 ►
I know that when I got about midway through the book, there was a little breathing point in your life.
00:35:16 ►
And I thought, oh, boy, I can really relax a little bit.
00:35:19 ►
The tension was building up.
00:35:20 ►
And I realized you’re only about 28 years old at that point.
00:35:23 ►
And I thought, oh, no, I’ve got a lot more to go.
00:35:26 ►
But, you know, all of the stories, you’ve been very frank, very open about it.
00:35:31 ►
And being a lawyer, I’m well aware that all the statutes of limitations have passed,
00:35:36 ►
so you’re not exposing yourself to anything there.
00:35:39 ►
But what do you think about perhaps people that might pick this up and see where you come from
00:35:48 ►
and maybe discount the whole story just because it was a pretty rough beginning for you?
00:35:54 ►
Well, for one thing, it’s their loss.
00:35:57 ►
I agree with that.
00:35:59 ►
But, you know, it’s good you made me think of something else.
00:36:01 ►
And part of this whole process, particularly working with ayahuasca, there’s a term that Carl Jung coined. It’s called individuation. And essentially,
00:36:14 ►
we are a cast of thousands. Whether it’s, you know, okay, I’m hungry, I’m horny, I’m
00:36:21 ►
pissed, I’m going to kill you, I love you. It’s all these different aspects of ourselves.
00:36:22 ►
I’m hungry, I’m horny, I’m pissed, I’m going to kill you, I love you.
00:36:24 ►
It’s all these different aspects of ourselves.
00:36:32 ►
And when you get into psychological things and traumas, we tend to get somewhat splintered.
00:36:41 ►
The worst extreme cases are multiple personalities, which are pretty much, I think, 100% all brought about by molestation.
00:36:46 ►
And what happens at a young age when you go through a horrible experience like that?
00:36:48 ►
Now, you’re talking about in addition to just like,
00:36:50 ►
not just sexual molestation, but mental… I think they’re all sexual.
00:36:52 ►
Oh, really?
00:36:53 ►
Yeah.
00:36:53 ►
All the cases I’ve studied have been.
00:36:55 ►
There may be other cases.
00:36:58 ►
And, you know, you can get into schizophrenia
00:37:00 ►
and all kinds of weird things.
00:37:01 ►
But primarily, multiple personality,
00:37:04 ►
which has always fascinated me,
00:37:06 ►
always gets into a molestation thing.
00:37:10 ►
And what happens is that the personality is under such traumatic stress
00:37:15 ►
that it basically breaks and reforms into something new in order to deal with it
00:37:20 ►
because it can’t deal with it.
00:37:23 ►
So when you go through this process
00:37:25 ►
and continue at it,
00:37:26 ►
you begin to look for
00:37:29 ►
the lost parts of yourself
00:37:30 ►
and basically bring them home.
00:37:33 ►
And the more you bring them home,
00:37:35 ►
the more whole you become.
00:37:37 ►
And the more whole you become,
00:37:37 ►
the more aware you become
00:37:38 ►
and the more you are in the moment
00:37:39 ►
and the more you can deal with things.
00:37:42 ►
So I’ve been really stepping up the pace
00:37:45 ►
with this thing and this process.
00:37:47 ►
And one of the things I’ve learned,
00:37:49 ►
I have a very wonderful, wonderful personal coach
00:37:52 ►
who is working with me.
00:37:53 ►
And I work with her and with the medicines
00:37:55 ►
and working together with them.
00:37:57 ►
And she calls things secrets.
00:38:01 ►
We all have our secrets.
00:38:04 ►
And we all have our shadows,
00:38:05 ►
which ties in with the…
00:38:07 ►
Which Anne Shulgin talks about quite a bit.
00:38:09 ►
Yes, in fact, Anne Shulgin,
00:38:10 ►
she inspired me quite a bit.
00:38:12 ►
And she has some responsibility
00:38:16 ►
for me writing this book
00:38:17 ►
because she encouraged me
00:38:18 ►
to write about some of my experiences.
00:38:21 ►
So in this shadow work,
00:38:23 ►
in the secrets secrets so to speak
00:38:26 ►
if you’re an asshole
00:38:27 ►
you don’t know it
00:38:29 ►
I hope that’s okay to say on the podcast
00:38:31 ►
the FCC is not here right
00:38:32 ►
you don’t know it
00:38:33 ►
you don’t realize it
00:38:34 ►
because what you do
00:38:36 ►
when you’re being that
00:38:38 ►
is you project it onto
00:38:39 ►
everybody outside of you
00:38:40 ►
and you make them
00:38:41 ►
so you don’t have to look at yourself
00:38:43 ►
so the key is to
00:38:45 ►
find your secrets
00:38:46 ►
and to reveal them
00:38:49 ►
so you can deal with them properly.
00:38:53 ►
I consider myself to be blessed because
00:38:55 ►
I was never molested or any of that weird sexual
00:38:57 ►
shit, thank God.
00:38:59 ►
But anybody who has, and this has happened
00:39:01 ►
to other members of my family,
00:39:04 ►
when you’re a kid and you’re molested and something horrible like that happens, you’re helpless.
00:39:11 ►
And then you get all the shame and the guilt and the judgments from society that goes with it,
00:39:15 ►
which are really a load of crap because you are helpless and you’re innocent.
00:39:19 ►
So people need to realize that on one level it’s not their fault and it’s really nothing to be ashamed of.
00:39:26 ►
The thing is to do is to realize it, face it and deal with it and move on with it.
00:39:30 ►
So the process of writing the book was part of that process of rediscovering myself or selves,
00:39:37 ►
bringing all my selves with a small s home,
00:39:41 ►
with the self with a capital S being in charge, being in charge, being daddy’s home, basically,
00:39:48 ►
and taking charge.
00:39:49 ►
And one of the fascinating things that happened to me, primarily with the ayahuasca, is that
00:39:53 ►
my feminine side was non-existent.
00:39:57 ►
I am, and Lorenzo can attest to this, I’m the original hard ass.
00:40:02 ►
And I went through 30 years of my life never crying.
00:40:05 ►
And it wasn’t like, I’m not going to cry.
00:40:07 ►
There was just nothing there.
00:40:09 ►
And when I started working with the ayahuasca,
00:40:13 ►
my femininity, my repressed femininity,
00:40:16 ►
which is what’s wrong with our society, by the way,
00:40:18 ►
started coming to the surface.
00:40:21 ►
And I had a couple of years where one thing or another
00:40:24 ►
just sent me bawling. Like, you know, I had a couple of years where one thing or another just sent me bawling. Like, you
00:40:27 ►
know, I had a really incredible moment. My mother called me one morning for my birthday. And she
00:40:32 ►
calls me, I pick up the phone and she goes, oh, by the way, my mom was very cool. And she calls me,
00:40:38 ►
she says, happy birthday, honey. And I just started bawling and blubbering. I’m like,
00:40:43 ►
she’s like, oh, honey, what’s wrong?
00:40:45 ►
What’s wrong? And I’m like, she’s like, what’s wrong? What’s wrong? And I’m going,
00:40:50 ►
she goes, is this those plants and stuff you’re working with in the jungle? And I go,
00:40:55 ►
she goes, okay, honey, you know, have a good cry, you know, and I got through it.
00:41:00 ►
So I went through this for a couple of years and amazing thing happened.
00:41:03 ►
So I went through this for a couple of years and an amazing thing happened.
00:41:07 ►
My intuition started really rising up.
00:41:13 ►
So my point here is that when I started integrating my repressed femininity and bringing it home,
00:41:16 ►
because it was basically abandoned and sent out to lunch or to another planet or whatever,
00:41:20 ►
when I started integrating it in myself, that part of me, the intuitive side of me,
00:41:21 ►
really, really started to rise up.
00:41:26 ►
And now it’s beginning to the point where there’s been a lot of telepathic experiences and other things.
00:41:29 ►
So no matter where you’ve been in your life,
00:41:31 ►
no matter what you’ve done,
00:41:33 ►
there’s nothing to be ashamed of.
00:41:36 ►
And some people were uncomfortable
00:41:38 ►
about what I’ve written.
00:41:40 ►
And it comes down to this.
00:41:42 ►
I’m not ashamed of where I came from.
00:41:43 ►
I’m not ashamed of who I’ve been or where I’ve been.
00:41:45 ►
I’ve learned.
00:41:47 ►
The most important thing is, what am I now?
00:41:49 ►
And what am I becoming?
00:41:52 ►
Good point.
00:41:53 ►
Yeah.
00:41:54 ►
You know, as you’re laying this out just now,
00:41:57 ►
I remembered our spiritual mentor who, a year or so ago, told me,
00:42:02 ►
he said, well, you can’t change the past,
00:42:04 ►
but you can change the way you think about it.
00:42:06 ►
But in your case,
00:42:08 ►
thinking about it actually changed the past
00:42:10 ►
because instead of 20 guys, there were two guys.
00:42:12 ►
And so for you, the past really has changed.
00:42:15 ►
And the other thing that came to mind
00:42:17 ►
as you were talking was
00:42:19 ►
what one of our friends recently just channeled this song
00:42:22 ►
from his deceased brother where he said,
00:42:25 ►
Be the one you want to be with, be the one they want to be with.
00:42:29 ►
So you have certainly made a lot of strides because I can guarantee after reading your book,
00:42:37 ►
about the first 35 years of your life, you weren’t the one I want to be with.
00:42:42 ►
You did a lot of other people.
00:42:48 ►
life you weren’t the one i want to be you did a lot of other people you know you said in in 1990 you started really getting serious about trying to get a hold of all the information about ayahuasca
00:42:53 ►
that you could find and uh you know it’s it’s uh the more you learn about it the more intimidating
00:43:01 ►
it gets at least from my standpoint and and even in my case, the more experience I have.
00:43:07 ►
I know at the end of last week as we were beginning our final ceremony,
00:43:14 ►
well, it was all I could do to go up front and take a sip of the tea.
00:43:19 ►
And I was saying to myself, you know, what are you doing?
00:43:25 ►
Why are you doing this?
00:43:27 ►
And, in fact, I realized that possibly one of the main reasons I’ve been sick for the six weeks going into it
00:43:35 ►
is I was looking for an excuse to get out.
00:43:36 ►
I was trying to find a way to not go, and so I went sick,
00:43:40 ►
and now I’m feeling better than I’ve ever felt, at least for many, many years.
00:43:46 ►
So I can’t answer the question for myself, but can you answer that question?
00:43:52 ►
What made you go to the jungle to drink this strange brew in the first place?
00:43:55 ►
And more importantly, what keeps you going back?
00:43:59 ►
Well, one of my mottos throughout my life has been, I want to try everything at least once.
00:44:09 ►
But I have to modify that because there’s some things I don’t want to try.
00:44:14 ►
I don’t want to try getting gang raped.
00:44:16 ►
That’s okay.
00:44:18 ►
Somebody else can deal with that.
00:44:19 ►
That’s not for me.
00:44:21 ►
But on this path, and this path is not for everybody. And that’s one of the reasons I say I go for other people. I do it for me. But on this path, and this path is not for everybody.
00:44:25 ►
And that’s one of the reasons I say
00:44:27 ►
I go for other people
00:44:27 ►
and I do it for you.
00:44:30 ►
One of the things about it
00:44:32 ►
is that you go through different levels
00:44:33 ►
in the teaching.
00:44:35 ►
Now, I think I’ve said this before
00:44:37 ►
on the podcast,
00:44:38 ►
but certain substances,
00:44:40 ►
for argument’s sake,
00:44:42 ►
and this is my humble opinion,
00:44:44 ►
takes things like, say, MDMA and LSD.
00:44:48 ►
In my humble opinion, they don’t have any consciousness inherent in them.
00:44:52 ►
They’re amplifiers.
00:44:54 ►
LSD amplifies lots of things inside of you and amplifies your perceptions.
00:44:58 ►
MDMA is what they call an empathogen, I believe.
00:45:01 ►
So it can be emotional and, you know, heart-opening.
00:45:07 ►
But they don’t have an inherent intelligence. Ayahuasca and mushrooms do. And there is a method to the madness. And
00:45:14 ►
it’s been a common experience to see things happening. When I’m getting within a few days
00:45:18 ►
of doing some ayahuasca work, things start happening that are a bit out of the ordinary in my life.
00:45:26 ►
So I’ve gone through different levels,
00:45:29 ►
whether it gets, there’s a landscape.
00:45:34 ►
There’s a DMT landscape,
00:45:37 ►
which I’ve spent a lot of time traveling in.
00:45:39 ►
And, you know, there’s like the crystal castles
00:45:44 ►
and other things that are inherent in it.
00:45:47 ►
So I found that as I’ve gone through different levels
00:45:49 ►
where I can get to a point
00:45:50 ►
where I don’t seem like everything,
00:45:53 ►
it seems like I’ve seen it all
00:45:54 ►
and things aren’t going to really change
00:45:55 ►
and, well, okay, maybe I won’t do this anymore.
00:45:58 ►
But then I wait because I see it
00:46:01 ►
and then all of a sudden I shift to a whole new level
00:46:02 ►
and it starts teaching me something on another level.
00:46:05 ►
And it takes you
00:46:06 ►
through different tests
00:46:08 ►
to see if you’re ready
00:46:10 ►
for certain things.
00:46:12 ►
And then I can go through an experience and then suddenly
00:46:14 ►
that experience will connect with an experience
00:46:16 ►
I had five years ago.
00:46:17 ►
And it’ll make sense.
00:46:19 ►
And it gets into the thing about
00:46:20 ►
time travel.
00:46:23 ►
That’s what I call it now.
00:46:24 ►
Because think about this. If I remember
00:46:26 ►
being in a gang fight, it was two guys and I said it was 20. Well, that’s the content
00:46:33 ►
of that experience. Content, that’s what is within it. But when I’m further up the road
00:46:38 ►
and I go back on it, I’m looking at it in context, which is the bigger picture. So when
00:46:44 ►
I realized that I was in an argument,
00:46:46 ►
I got in an argument with this guy
00:46:47 ►
and I got in a fight, right?
00:46:49 ►
And he was an idiot.
00:46:51 ►
And then I find out 20 years later
00:46:53 ►
that I was an idiot too, right?
00:46:55 ►
And that’s why I ended up in a fight in the first place.
00:46:58 ►
Then I think, oh gosh, it’s not.
00:47:02 ►
I was responsible for part of that.
00:47:04 ►
I have to take responsibility for my part in it.
00:47:06 ►
So then the whole experience changes
00:47:08 ►
because what I thought of as the past changes
00:47:11 ►
and I realized that, well, guess what?
00:47:12 ►
There were two assholes there instead of one, right?
00:47:15 ►
So I’ve changed the past, which changes me now.
00:47:19 ►
That’s what we do.
00:47:21 ►
So it’s been this progression of teaching and learning and learning how
00:47:26 ►
to heal myself and others. One of the definitions of shamanism, I think there’s even a book
00:47:32 ►
with the title, shamans are called the wounded healers. And you learn to heal others by learning
00:47:38 ►
to heal yourself. So some of the hellish experiences I’ve gone through, I’ve had people come to
00:47:44 ►
me for a healing,
00:47:46 ►
and they’re going through the exact same experience,
00:47:47 ►
and I’m totally with them,
00:47:48 ►
because I know,
00:47:50 ►
and it gives me the ability to heal them,
00:47:52 ►
because I understand the dynamics,
00:47:54 ►
because it’s a path I’ve already passed over,
00:47:58 ►
so the jungle is really truly,
00:48:00 ►
it’s just an amazing place, to submerse yourself in nature,
00:48:02 ►
no cell phones,
00:48:04 ►
no electricity, no electromagnetic phones, no electricity,
00:48:06 ►
no electromagnetic pollution in the air, and you’re just surrounded by nature,
00:48:12 ►
trees and plants and, you know, birds and animals and jaguars and, you know,
00:48:17 ►
lions and tigers and bears, oh my.
00:48:20 ►
Not really in the jungle down there, but, you know.
00:48:23 ►
And aren’t you pretty much isolated the whole time?
00:48:26 ►
Yes.
00:48:26 ►
Very solitary during the day?
00:48:28 ►
Yes.
00:48:29 ►
The main group I’ve gone down with for nine years
00:48:32 ►
goes to a camp that’s in virgin jungle that the shaman has.
00:48:38 ►
And it’s a, okay, it’s a tributary of a tributary of a tributary of the Amazon.
00:48:44 ►
Might even be one more tributary of a tributary of a tributary of the Amazon. Might even be one more tributary there.
00:48:46 ►
But anyway, we stay in our own open-air huts called Tombos.
00:48:51 ►
And you spend most of the time there alone.
00:48:56 ►
And they bring you your food twice a day.
00:48:58 ►
And I think I’ve talked about this before.
00:49:00 ►
It’s a very restricted diet, so I won’t get into those details.
00:49:02 ►
Listen to the other podcasts, whatever it is.
00:49:05 ►
You’ll find me on there on Matrix Masters.
00:49:09 ►
But you spend most of the time alone.
00:49:11 ►
And for me, I’m a bit of an extremist.
00:49:14 ►
So the whole line of the Tombows, I have.
00:49:17 ►
It’s mine.
00:49:17 ►
It’s reserved.
00:49:18 ►
It’s mine.
00:49:18 ►
I have the very last one.
00:49:20 ►
So there’s nothing but jungle on the other side of me.
00:49:24 ►
And I wouldn’t have it any other
00:49:25 ►
way.
00:49:26 ►
So, you spend most of the time alone there and then you meet roughly every other night
00:49:31 ►
for an ayahuasca session and you work with other plants.
00:49:35 ►
But you spend your time alone just surrounded by all the noise.
00:49:38 ►
Jungle is noisy, very noisy.
00:49:42 ►
There’s animals and bugs and I’ve had a jaguar a few times down below my tombo. I got him
00:49:47 ►
on tape. It’s a very, very noisy place, but you get into it. You see, in shamanism, in
00:49:55 ►
life, everything is energy. If you’re around a bunch of cell phones and automobiles and
00:50:03 ►
all this stuff, there’s all this unnatural energy
00:50:05 ►
that’s in the air.
00:50:07 ►
And even to the point
00:50:08 ►
of the energy of sort of,
00:50:09 ►
even, you know,
00:50:11 ►
for lack of better words,
00:50:11 ►
physical pollution,
00:50:12 ►
like air pollution
00:50:13 ►
and water pollution and all that.
00:50:15 ►
You go to the jungle
00:50:16 ►
and you go on a cleansing diet
00:50:17 ►
and you immerse yourself
00:50:17 ►
into the vibration of nature,
00:50:19 ►
which is a vibration of Mother Earth,
00:50:20 ►
which is very pure.
00:50:22 ►
And you’re by yourself.
00:50:24 ►
And if you have issues,
00:50:26 ►
if you’re being an idiot,
00:50:28 ►
you can’t project it on anybody but yourself.
00:50:32 ►
So you’re forced to be with yourself.
00:50:34 ►
And you can’t run and you can’t hide.
00:50:37 ►
You’ve got to deal with it.
00:50:39 ►
So it’s always been, for me,
00:50:41 ►
very, very energizing.
00:50:43 ►
And each time, Lorenzo, you remember the very first time I went,
00:50:48 ►
our facilitator looked at Lorenzo and kind of gave him a funny smile
00:50:53 ►
and basically said, say goodbye to Matt because he ain’t coming back.
00:50:59 ►
Sure enough, I came back Mateo, and it’s ongoing.
00:51:05 ►
You know that while we’re talking about the experience in the jungle,
00:51:09 ►
and we did cover this in a couple other podcasts,
00:51:13 ►
but just a brief word because we use the word diet, I think, in two different ways.
00:51:19 ►
There’s the diet in preparation for the experience,
00:51:22 ►
and then you’ve been using the word plant diet and just so that those that were just joining us for one of the first
00:51:29 ►
times here in the salon know that when you go to the jungle experience there’s
00:51:34 ►
essentially five nights of ayahuasca and the every other night in the alternative
00:51:39 ►
days you use different plants you want to just say a little bit about that
00:51:44 ►
that’s what you I assume are calling the plant diet.
00:51:46 ►
Yeah.
00:51:47 ►
In the diet, in Spanish, it’s the dieta.
00:51:51 ►
And the jungle in Spanish in Peru is la selva.
00:51:55 ►
So it’s the dieta en la selva.
00:51:57 ►
And it’s a diet in many ways
00:52:01 ►
because the fact that you’re removing yourself
00:52:03 ►
from civilization and commerce is one level of dieting.
00:52:07 ►
And then I’ll just touch
00:52:07 ►
on the diet briefly here.
00:52:09 ►
It’s basically,
00:52:11 ►
okay,
00:52:12 ►
no soap,
00:52:13 ►
no shampoo,
00:52:14 ►
no scents of any kind,
00:52:15 ►
no mosquito repellent,
00:52:15 ►
nothing.
00:52:17 ►
And then you basically get
00:52:18 ►
oatmeal,
00:52:20 ►
quinoa,
00:52:21 ►
which is a protein-rich grain
00:52:22 ►
that the Incas used from Peru,
00:52:24 ►
rice, plantain oils, which is a protein-rich grain that the Incas used from Peru, rice,
00:52:26 ►
plantainos, which are baked or boiled bananas
00:52:28 ►
that taste like cardboard and get gagged trying to get them down.
00:52:31 ►
There’s no salt.
00:52:33 ►
There’s no fruit. There’s no vegetables.
00:52:34 ►
And then every two or three days you get a piece of chicken or fish.
00:52:37 ►
Now all the grains are prepared
00:52:38 ►
just with water.
00:52:40 ►
And the chicken and the fish is basically
00:52:42 ►
just cooked on fire.
00:52:44 ►
And that’s it. And no salt, you know, for 10 days.
00:52:48 ►
And then there’s a plant called wayusa, which is very sweet.
00:52:52 ►
The closest I could describe it is eucalyptus, but it’s not eucalyptus,
00:52:55 ►
and every morning they bring you the crushed leaves of that,
00:52:58 ►
and you take a plant bath.
00:53:00 ►
And then you’re taking all these grains and stuff,
00:53:02 ►
and you’re drinking these plants, concoctions,
00:53:05 ►
and you’re cleaning yourself out on all levels.
00:53:09 ►
And the jungle is tropical, it’s humid, so you’re sweating.
00:53:12 ►
So you do all these things, and they bring the food to you.
00:53:17 ►
And then, in conjunction with the ayahuasca,
00:53:19 ►
you’ll get another plant that you drink every day.
00:53:22 ►
So you’ll get basically, it’s like a half-gallon pitcher
00:53:27 ►
of a particular plant that you’re working with.
00:53:30 ►
And these plants all work with the ayahuasca.
00:53:33 ►
They say ayahuasca is the mother of the plants.
00:53:36 ►
And then these other plants,
00:53:37 ►
and in the Peruvian shamanic tradition,
00:53:41 ►
these plants, each one is a spirit.
00:53:43 ►
And these are the spirits of the jungle.
00:53:45 ►
So you take this same plant every day, every day, every day,
00:53:48 ►
and then you take ayahuasca every other day.
00:53:51 ►
And it brings you through psychological and physical challenges.
00:53:57 ►
Sometimes they’re not as challenging.
00:53:58 ►
Sometimes they’re really hard.
00:54:01 ►
But you go through these ordeals.
00:54:04 ►
And during this time, you’re there, which is basically
00:54:07 ►
10 days. There are longer ones, but 10 days is really long.
00:54:12 ►
Enough.
00:54:13 ►
Enough. But you go through these experiences. And what happens is your whole cycle of life
00:54:21 ►
gets turned on its head. You can be up all night and sleep all day.
00:54:26 ►
And the boundaries between waking and dreaming blur. And you have amazing dreams. You know,
00:54:34 ►
I’ve had dreams that were more real than real. I won’t get into you gotta buy the book for that.
00:54:40 ►
But you change through this whole psychological thing and you’re immersed in the jungle, in this dieta.
00:54:46 ►
So the dieta is keeping you to yourself away from everything else
00:54:50 ►
in order to go through a period of self-exploration or physical.
00:54:55 ►
Some of them are just for strengthening the body,
00:54:58 ►
different parts of the body.
00:54:59 ►
Some of them for different psycho-spiritual experiences.
00:55:04 ►
And you do it for 10 days.
00:55:06 ►
And then at the end
00:55:08 ►
of the 10 days,
00:55:09 ►
the first thing you do is you take a pinch
00:55:12 ►
of salt.
00:55:13 ►
And they call that pinch of salt
00:55:16 ►
the gateway back to
00:55:17 ►
this reality.
00:55:19 ►
Interestingly enough, to give a plug for the
00:55:21 ►
antigen review here,
00:55:24 ►
I was doing these yetis now, like I say, for nine years,
00:55:28 ►
and I read a wonderful article some years back in the Antigen Review,
00:55:32 ►
and they talked about a study that they did with rats.
00:55:35 ►
And they deprived them of salt for a period of time,
00:55:38 ►
and then they gave them salt,
00:55:40 ►
and it stimulated neuronal growth in the brain.
00:55:44 ►
So it is a known fact that ayahuasca basically rewires your brain.
00:55:50 ►
So you think about these indigenous people that go back since before dirt,
00:55:54 ►
I mean millennia, it’s prehistoric, right?
00:55:56 ►
And somehow they figured out the knowledge of doing these plant diets
00:55:59 ►
and working on yourself with plants like ayahuasca,
00:56:02 ►
and then taking it and really sort of kicking
00:56:06 ►
it into second gear and enhancing it with the whole salt part of it. It’s fascinating
00:56:11 ►
when you think about it because the neurochemistry these guys know is just mind-boggling, mind-boggling.
00:56:19 ►
So it’s really something that I feel incredibly, incredibly blessed and privileged to be able to experience.
00:56:27 ►
Blessed to be part of that.
00:56:30 ►
And blessed to learn this knowledge that is really disappearing.
00:56:35 ►
You know, with all the rape of Mother Earth, for lack of better words, the abuse.
00:56:40 ►
These wonderful plant spirits who have done so much for me.
00:56:42 ►
these wonderful plant spirits who have done so much for me.
00:56:44 ►
And the other thing I want to mention briefly is that
00:56:46 ►
when you do these different plants,
00:56:49 ►
these spirits,
00:56:50 ►
and you take them into your body
00:56:51 ►
for that period of time
00:56:52 ►
and you work with them for all that time,
00:56:54 ►
they’re always with you
00:56:55 ►
forever after that.
00:56:58 ►
And you can sometimes call on them.
00:56:59 ►
When the shaman, the ayahuasquero,
00:57:03 ►
singing the icaros,
00:57:04 ►
he’s singing to the spirits of the plants and the animals.
00:57:06 ►
And you can call in their energies
00:57:07 ►
to come and help you in healing.
00:57:09 ►
You flatter them.
00:57:13 ►
There’s an expression called
00:57:15 ►
whistling through the forest.
00:57:18 ►
And somebody who’s unaware
00:57:20 ►
can walk into the jungle
00:57:21 ►
and just see a bunch of plants.
00:57:22 ►
And on one level, they all look the same.
00:57:30 ►
But there are spirits and forces that are hidden there and they can kill you some are very deadly they can harm you they can heal you and when you go into the jungle
00:57:36 ►
and you do this thing of called sort of whistling through the forest you’re basically saying i know
00:57:43 ►
you’re there i respect you and i’m asking you you know if you’re basically saying, I know you’re there. I respect you.
00:57:45 ►
And I’m asking you, you know, if you can help me. So basically, when you’re singing them,
00:57:49 ►
you’re flattering them. You know, oh, you beautiful babe. You know, if you see a babe,
00:57:56 ►
you know, if you’re a guy, I’ll just go say a guy for the example. It applies across the board,
00:58:00 ►
no matter what your sexual orientation is or whatever. But let’s say you see a girl and you’re, hey, you’re a sweetheart
00:58:06 ►
and I’m going to bring you flowers and perfume and chocolate, right?
00:58:09 ►
Well, you’re singing to these plants and these spirits
00:58:11 ►
and telling them how beautiful they are and how much you honor and respect them.
00:58:14 ►
And part of you is also saying, please don’t hurt me too much.
00:58:18 ►
You know what I mean?
00:58:19 ►
But you flatter them and ask them to come when you sing to them.
00:58:22 ►
And they come and deliver and do healing
00:58:24 ►
and open you up in lots of really wonderful and magical ways.
00:58:29 ►
Well, before we close,
00:58:30 ►
I want to make sure everybody knows how to find you
00:58:34 ►
and get a copy of your book,
00:58:36 ►
which I think is very inspirational myself.
00:58:39 ►
One last question.
00:58:40 ►
I’d like to see if we can make a little distinction
00:58:43 ►
between a couple words,
00:58:47 ►
curandero, healer, ayahuasquero, and shaman.
00:58:50 ►
I know you go out of your way to make sure that people don’t call you a shaman.
00:58:54 ►
You’re a student of shamanism.
00:58:55 ►
And there’s a fine distinction between some of those,
00:58:57 ►
but if you’d maybe just touch on that a little bit, I think it would be good.
00:59:01 ►
Sure.
00:59:02 ►
Well, a curandero is a healer.
00:59:05 ►
And, you know, it’s in Spanish,
00:59:07 ►
the course you are,
00:59:09 ►
says it’s a person who cures.
00:59:11 ►
And if they’re feminine, it’s corandera.
00:59:14 ►
Also, in more sort of, you know,
00:59:16 ►
Mexican Spanish is brujo and bruja.
00:59:18 ►
But that’s more sort of inclined toward
00:59:21 ►
calling them sorcerers.
00:59:24 ►
And sorcerer doesn’t always have
00:59:26 ►
a negative connotation
00:59:27 ►
as people put on it.
00:59:30 ►
An ayahuasquero is a person
00:59:32 ►
who specifically works with ayahuasca.
00:59:34 ►
I worked with some amazing people
00:59:36 ►
down there who weren’t ayahuasqueros,
00:59:38 ►
but who were coranderos.
00:59:41 ►
And they would say,
00:59:42 ►
one of them is really old-timer,
00:59:43 ►
he was amazing, Guillermo, says, I am a plant man.
00:59:47 ►
My father was a plant man. My father’s father was a plant man.
00:59:51 ►
And I basically come from a long line of plant men.
00:59:56 ►
I like to say that ultimately, if people were waking up, that everybody
00:59:59 ►
is a shaman. But a shaman could be,
01:00:03 ►
a shaman could do healing without even using any plants or substances,
01:00:07 ►
possibly. American Indian shamans used lots of different plants and things, but they were
01:00:12 ►
different. But it doesn’t matter because you’re using the spirits of nature to work with.
01:00:17 ►
Healers can be different things. Healers can be a massage therapist and a chiropractor
01:00:23 ►
or a healer. It doesn’t necessarily make them a shaman, although they could be applying shamanic techniques.
01:00:29 ►
But I’ve worked with some Shipibo Indians who were
01:00:32 ►
ayahuasqueros who were really experts at massage.
01:00:36 ►
So, you know, they’re corandera ayahuasca healers.
01:00:40 ►
But, you know, there are distinctions.
01:00:43 ►
I mean, some regular medical doctors can be healers,
01:00:47 ►
although some of them I wonder about.
01:00:50 ►
So, you know, I think it has to do with the energies that you work with
01:00:54 ►
in order to bring about the healing.
01:00:56 ►
And for me, in my experience and what I’ve learned,
01:01:00 ►
shamans are people who are masters of energy.
01:01:03 ►
And part of our purpose here on this planet is to
01:01:06 ►
learn how to handle energy in the proper way so that we can become responsible cosmic citizens
01:01:10 ►
because we’re dealing with great tremendous power and if you’re not impeccable and you don’t know
01:01:14 ►
what you’re doing you’re playing with more than fire so i hope that’s a good answer for well yeah
01:01:20 ►
and i didn’t didn’t plan it this way but basically what you’re saying in the end is spirit really does matter.
01:01:26 ►
Damn straight.
01:01:27 ►
And the title of your memoir, of course, is Spirit Matters.
01:01:31 ►
And there’ll be links with the program notes for this for people to be able to find it and find you.
01:01:36 ►
But let’s eliminate the middleman.
01:01:38 ►
How can they find you directly?
01:01:39 ►
For one thing, it’s available everywhere.
01:01:41 ►
But my publisher is Mystic Inc. Publishing.
01:01:47 ►
M-Y-S-T-I-C-I-N-K-P-U-B-L-I-S-H-I-N-G.com.
01:01:54 ►
MysticIncPublishing.com.
01:01:57 ►
The other thing I want to mention is MattPalamary.com.
01:02:00 ►
M-A-T-T-P as in Paul, A-L-L-A-M as in Mary, A-R-Y.
01:02:04 ►
M-A-T-T-P as in Paul, A-L-L-A-M as in Mary, A-R-Y.
01:02:10 ►
I have a section there on shamanism with some pictures and some essays and some things.
01:02:13 ►
And I get the biggest hits there.
01:02:19 ►
And I think it’s because of the podcasts I’m doing and people who are really interested in these ancient healing ways.
01:02:22 ►
Well, Kasuak, I appreciate you saying that.
01:02:26 ►
And for those of you who are wondering why I’m calling him Casuac, you need to buy the book.
01:02:28 ►
And you’ll find out.
01:02:32 ►
Thanks a lot for stopping by, and be well, my brother.
01:02:34 ►
Thank you, and thank you so much for having me.
01:02:35 ►
And thank you, everybody, for listening.
01:02:37 ►
Spirit really does matter.
01:02:47 ►
Well, I guess there’s not much more I can say right now about Mateo’s memoir, Spirit Matters,
01:02:50 ►
other than I am sure that you won’t be disappointed when you read it.
01:02:56 ►
On the program notes for today’s podcast, I’ll put links to both of Mateo’s websites, as well as to our own Amazon store, where you’ll have the opportunity to pick up a copy of a great book,
01:03:03 ►
and in the process, help put a little food on
01:03:07 ►
a starving writer’s table. Now before I get to a comment that one of our fellow salonners posted
01:03:13 ►
to the program notes for one of the recent Timothy Leary podcasts, I’d like to mention the fact that
01:03:19 ►
several of our elders are having some physical challenges these days. When I was discussing this fact with a friend recently, he said,
01:03:28 ►
What are we going to do a decade or so from now when all of the great elders have moved on?
01:03:34 ►
And my reply was to go and take a close look in the mirror.
01:03:38 ►
The time has arrived for each and every one of us to become our own elders.
01:03:42 ►
every one of us to become our own elders.
01:03:50 ►
On more than one occasion, you’ve heard Terrence McKenna advise us to avoid all gurus and people who claim to be spiritual superiors of ours.
01:03:54 ►
Look within, and I’m sure you’ll find all of your answers are already waiting for you,
01:03:59 ►
simply for you to clear away the chatter and noise of the default world first
01:04:04 ►
in order to hear them a little better.
01:04:07 ►
Be your own elder, no matter what your age,
01:04:11 ►
for you are most likely a very old soul already.
01:04:15 ►
Listen to your heart.
01:04:16 ►
It’s not going to lead you astray, but your head might,
01:04:20 ►
so maybe it’s time to pay more attention to your instincts
01:04:24 ►
and less attention to what other people are saying.
01:04:27 ►
Of course, there can also be some valuable input available from others, like our fellow salonner.
01:04:34 ►
I call him Dr. Purple.
01:04:37 ►
D.R. Purple is the way it appears on the website.
01:04:42 ►
Anyhow, D.R. Purple had this to say in the comment sections for the program notes to podcast number 127,
01:04:50 ►
which featured Timothy Leary’s talk titled, How to Use Your Head.
01:04:54 ►
Here’s a part of what Dr. Purple had to say.
01:04:58 ►
The negative side of Leary, or anyone else for that matter,
01:05:02 ►
usually tends to be those things which people don’t like about themselves
01:05:06 ►
or a bit of hypocrisy here or there.
01:05:10 ►
Toward the end, Leary embraced lots of things technological.
01:05:13 ►
He saw the spiritual side of cyberspace
01:05:16 ►
or mind space or wherever it is we are
01:05:18 ►
when we’re connected with each other through this medium.
01:05:22 ►
He was despised by normals and straight people in the same way the pastor of Barack Obama’s church,
01:05:29 ►
Reverend Wright, is vilified.
01:05:31 ►
Taken out of context and twisted so as to be misunderstood,
01:05:35 ►
Leary was constantly vilified.
01:05:37 ►
He embraced socialism and libertarian socialism
01:05:40 ►
and cooperative anarchism,
01:05:42 ►
so mainstream Republicans and Democrats
01:05:44 ►
would never fully understand his liberated mind. antisocialism and cooperative anarchism. So mainstream Republicans and Democrats would
01:05:45 ►
never fully understand his liberated mind. But at the deepest level, he was about individuals
01:05:51 ►
having the right to free thought and free expression. It wasn’t about what the government,
01:05:56 ►
your neighbor, or even your wife wanted. It was about what you chose, and it was you who
01:06:02 ►
were responsible for your own choices.
01:06:10 ►
I think that is right on target, Dr. Purple, and runs along the lines of what I was just saying about being your own elder.
01:06:12 ►
Dr. Purple goes on, I was introduced to Leary at a time when I was deeply anti-capitalist
01:06:18 ►
and the Leary I discovered in the early 80s was that of the late 60s and early 70s. The Leary I discovered
01:06:26 ►
in the late 80s was far more capitalist, mainstream, wired even, with more of a San Francisco
01:06:33 ►
live and let live while we prosper off selling neat stuff sensibility. Like all of us, he was
01:06:39 ►
a highly complex person. So what we see in appearances and through his late writings aren’t the real him that
01:06:46 ►
his friends knew and loved. In this way, I think Terrence McKenna is different and special. I think
01:06:53 ►
his public persona and his private one were somewhat uniquely the same. I don’t think most
01:06:59 ►
of us are willing to do this, nor do I think it’s a good idea. Look at the shit Leary went through.
01:07:27 ►
Thank you. my 1989 self. Wow, I digress. Hopefully you get my point. Leary is a good resource for some views on the psychedelic experience and how it can be enjoyed in a religious or spiritual context.
01:07:33 ►
I’d go further. In any area of intelligent inquiry, the psychedelic experience can yield fruit.
01:07:40 ►
Religious, spiritual, scientific, artistic, emotional, ecological, sexual, economic, or
01:07:46 ►
philosophical, etc.
01:07:49 ►
I think many of us can agree, Dr. Purple, and thank you and all of the other salonners
01:07:55 ►
who are adding your voices to our psychedelicsalon.org blog and to our forum over at thegrowreport.com.
01:08:03 ►
One last thing I want to cover today has to do with thinking for yourself
01:08:08 ►
and questioning what passes for authority in this bizarre comedy we’re currently living through.
01:08:14 ►
At about the same time as I received a message from David C.
01:08:18 ►
about a bogus salvia divinorum story,
01:08:22 ►
there was a front page story in our local newspaper
01:08:24 ►
about a
01:08:25 ►
marijuana research study that’s about to get underway here in San Diego.
01:08:30 ►
You probably noticed that I just now used the word marijuana instead of cannabis, which
01:08:36 ►
is the word I normally use to describe my most dependable ally.
01:08:41 ►
As you know, the word marijuana was used as a pejorative by Henry Anslinger and his band of goons when they launched the anti-human organization currently known as the DEA.
01:09:06 ►
looking for if you ever are inclined to volunteer for one of these new drug research studies that seem to be popping up with ever greater frequency lately. This particular study, according to its
01:09:13 ►
principal researchers, is designed to better understand what they are calling, right up front,
01:09:20 ►
marijuana addiction. And what do I find so offensive about this study, you ask?
01:09:25 ►
Well, to begin with, where is there evidence that cannabis is even addictive?
01:09:31 ►
Can it be habituating? Most certainly. But addictive? I think not.
01:09:37 ►
You can go to the medical dictionaries yourself and look up the definition of addiction,
01:09:41 ►
so I’m not going to waste your time on semantics right now.
01:09:45 ►
But I do want to focus on just one aspect of their definitions, and that goes something like this.
01:09:51 ►
Dependence on the subject considered addictive is at such a point that stopping is very difficult
01:09:58 ►
and causes severe physical and mental reactions from withdrawal. So let’s look at the withdrawal aspect for a moment.
01:10:08 ►
Years ago, when I first began participating in ayahuasca circles,
01:10:12 ►
I learned that the diet I was to follow in the week or so before the experience
01:10:16 ►
included the abstinence from cannabis and from coffee,
01:10:21 ►
which, of course, is the delivery mechanism for the drug caffeine.
01:10:25 ►
At the time, in addition to my two daily cups of coffee, which, of course, is the delivery mechanism for the drug caffeine. At the time, in addition to my two daily cups of coffee, I was a heavy user of cannabis.
01:10:32 ►
So I quit the two cold turkey.
01:10:34 ►
And I’m here to tell you that giving up cannabis didn’t even bring on a single hiccup.
01:10:39 ►
But caffeine withdrawal was something completely different.
01:10:43 ►
And for you scientists out there, yes, I have now experimented with going cold turkey on each of them separately
01:10:50 ►
after using only one of them regularly for several months.
01:10:54 ►
And each time, I had absolutely no withdrawal symptoms from discontinuing the use of cannabis.
01:11:01 ►
But when I cut off my coffee, I not only had severe headaches for days afterwards,
01:11:06 ►
I was also up for most nights with severe leg cramps. What I’m getting at here is the fact
01:11:12 ►
that this new study uses for its starting premise what I consider to be a completely bogus position,
01:11:18 ►
and that is that cannabis is addictive. I simply don’t buy it. But when you look at the credentials of one of the
01:11:26 ►
principal investigators, you see that she has built a long and lucrative career out of being an expert
01:11:32 ►
on addiction, which to me confirms that old saying that when the only tool you have is a hammer,
01:11:38 ►
then every problem looks like a nail. My second objection to this study is the source of its $4 million funding, the
01:11:46 ►
National Institute on Drug Abuse. Need I say more? We already know what their agenda is,
01:11:53 ►
and that’s to promote alcohol, caffeine, and cigarettes, and to denounce any drug that
01:11:57 ►
can’t be patented. And by the way, if you volunteer for this study, I hope you realize
01:12:03 ►
that you will most likely be required to turn over your complete history of drug use to someone whose salary is being paid by the National Institute on Drug Abuse.
01:12:14 ►
I don’t know about you, but that’s one database I’m not too wild about being a part of.
01:12:20 ►
So think long and hard before you jump into one of these research studies because they all aren’t created equal.
01:12:28 ►
Now to end on a more positive note, there is a study that I’ve been peripherally associated with since it began,
01:12:35 ►
and that is Dr. Charlie Grobe’s psilocybin research with patients who are fighting advanced stages of cancer.
01:12:42 ►
As you know, my wife was Dr. Grobe’s research assistant when he began the study.
01:12:48 ►
And last week, you heard from Alicia Danforth, who is now working with Dr. Grobe to complete the study.
01:12:54 ►
The good news is that they have now recruited the final two participants in this first stage research program.
01:13:01 ►
The bad news is that the study has completely run out of money.
01:13:04 ►
The bad news is that the study has completely run out of money.
01:13:14 ►
I was visiting with Dr. Grobe the other day, and he told me that he has now exhausted the last little pockets of funding that were allocated to the study and doesn’t have the money left to pay for the statisticians and other people required to complete his report to the FDA.
01:13:22 ►
In fact, my guess is that he’s even having to pay some of the final session expenses out of his own pocket.
01:13:28 ►
So I told him that I would put out a plea here in the salon to
01:13:31 ►
see if any of our fellow salonners know a philanthropist or two
01:13:36 ►
who could help him out. I do know that if we could handle
01:13:39 ►
the administration of it, we could probably collect enough 10
01:13:43 ►
donations here in the salon to help him complete the study.
01:13:48 ►
But unfortunately, the world of grants and psychedelic research
01:13:52 ►
still isn’t organized to handle a lot of small donations.
01:13:55 ►
So if you know of someone who could donate $5,000 or more in one
01:14:00 ►
chunk, well, please have them contact Dr. Grobe directly or
01:14:04 ►
let me know and i’ll put you in
01:14:05 ►
contact with him and you can find dr grove’s contact information on the website you’ll be
01:14:11 ►
sent to if you type www.canceranxietystudy.org that’s all one word canceranxietystudy.org
01:14:21 ►
into the address box on your browser.
01:14:27 ►
I realize that for almost all of us here in the salon,
01:14:32 ►
the sum of $5,000 is far more than our expendable income for the year.
01:14:35 ►
There aren’t many people in that league,
01:14:38 ►
but on the outside chance that you happen to know somebody who could help,
01:14:43 ►
I really would appreciate you passing this information along to Dr. Groh.
01:14:46 ►
Well, I guess that’s about it for today.
01:14:53 ►
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.
01:14:59 ►
And if you have any questions about that, just click the Creative Commons link
01:15:02 ►
at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage, which you can find at psychedelicsalon.org.
01:15:08 ►
And that’s also where you’re going to find the program notes for these podcasts.
01:15:13 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from
01:15:16 ►
Cyberdelic Space. Be well, my friends. Thank you.