134 - Sex and Social Control, Tantra and Liberation

Program Notes

Guest speaker: Daniel Pinchbeck

[NOTE: The following quotes are by Daniel Pinchbeck at the Playalogue he led on August 29, 2007 at the Burning Man Festival. This Playalogue was held in the big yurt at the PodCluster in Black Rock City.]

“I think there is a lot of evidence that suggests we’re in this kind of very critical sort of evolutionary window for the human species.”

“I really do feel that one of the critical things that is happening at Burning Man is a kind of conscious and subconscious interrogation of gender and sexuality.”

“What we have to consider is that if sexuality is this infinite spectrum, and everybody is highly unique in their sexuality, then to just have a social construct of monogamy is going to lead to a lot of anger, and frustration, and hostility.”

“In a lot of non-Western tribal cultures there is a kind of like a basic happiness that people have. Our culture is all about the pursuit of happiness, but at the core there’s a basic, kind of, general sense of insatiability and unhappiness.”

“I don’t think that the nuclear family is the natural model, or good model, for raising a child. I think, actually, the tribal community is the proper model.”

“And I think one question is really like is there a fixed human nature. And if there isn’t a fixed human nature, which I think is quite possible, then we can kind of reconfigure relationship patterns, relationship models, in almost any way.”

Transcript

00:00:00 ►

Greetings from cyberdelic space.

00:00:19 ►

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

00:00:24 ►

So, how are you doing today?

00:00:26 ►

Or as Terrence McKenna often said, how are we doing in the here and now?

00:00:32 ►

How are we doing in the here and now?

00:00:36 ►

Well, personally, I’m doing great, and I hope the same is true for you.

00:00:40 ►

Even though the climate here in Southern California is always very mild, we still can notice the subtle change when spring begins to take over from winter.

00:00:51 ►

And although I see that it’s still winter in much of the U.S. and Europe, and I guess you Aussies down under are now experiencing the first tinges of autumn, which is actually my favorite season.

00:01:04 ►

But I digress. Let’s get on with the show, as the saying goes.

00:01:08 ►

And today we’ve got a fascinating conversation to listen to.

00:01:12 ►

It’s one of the plilogues that we produced at last year’s Burning Man Festival.

00:01:17 ►

But first I want to thank Joseph S. for his generous donation to the salon.

00:01:21 ►

I really appreciate that, Joseph. Thanks a lot.

00:01:26 ►

donation to the salon. I really appreciate that, Joseph. Thanks a lot. And I also want to thank Tame, Pope Natas, Fomit, G…Metoth, Ozone77, Heynani, and X…for writing reviews of the salon

00:01:39 ►

on iTunes. I hadn’t known about that feature until I heard Dope Fiend talking about it on his podcast

00:01:45 ►

the other day. And so I took a look and found out that some of our fellow salonners have taken a few

00:01:51 ►

minutes to give us a nice plug on iTunes. And I really appreciate that kind of help with the

00:01:57 ►

salon also. You know, it may not seem like much to write a couple of sentences on iTunes, but over time, all of your recommendations

00:02:06 ►

obviously will add up and maybe be of help somehow to get the attention of somebody out

00:02:11 ►

there at the end of the line who can maybe use a little Terrence McKenna now and then.

00:02:17 ►

So thank you all, both donors of money and donors of time.

00:02:21 ►

I really appreciate you all helping us out.

00:02:26 ►

money and donors of time. I really appreciate you all helping us out. Now, as for today’s podcast,

00:02:35 ►

so far I’ve podcast the 2007 Plylogs by Bruce Dahmer, Seabrook Leaf, Eric Davis, and Alicia Danforth. And by the way, it’s John Hanna who we have to thank for sending me the recordings of

00:02:41 ►

most of them. As you already know, for the fifth year in a row, we had a few slight difficulties Thank you. led by Daniel Pinchbeck on a hot Wednesday afternoon at the 2007 Burning Man Festival.

00:03:07 ►

Having grown up in a conservative, prudish Irish Catholic household in the 40s and 50s,

00:03:12 ►

I have to admit to being a bit uncomfortable at the topic my friend Daniel chose for his

00:03:18 ►

plialogue.

00:03:19 ►

As you already know, that title is a plialogue about sex and social control tantra and liberation

00:03:27 ►

and for me most discussions about sex are like having that 800 pound gorilla

00:03:32 ►

in the room but as I think you’ll see we actually wound up having a very

00:03:37 ►

wide-ranging discussion about some of the most basic issues of what it means

00:03:41 ►

to be human it was really a an interesting morphing of ideas across some topics that you wouldn’t think would come up,

00:03:49 ►

considering the original topic of this plialogue,

00:03:52 ►

including some interesting observations about the Burning Man experience itself.

00:03:57 ►

So if you’ve ever wondered what it would be like to sit down and have a conversation with Daniel Pinchbeck,

00:04:03 ►

well, this is probably about what

00:04:05 ►

it would be like, even if it was just the two of you. Daniel is not only quite brilliant

00:04:09 ►

and one of the best red people I know, he is also very approachable and he knows how

00:04:14 ►

to let his hair down and have a good time as well. So now, why don’t we just join him

00:04:19 ►

in the big yurt at the Pod Cluster at Black Rock City.

00:04:21 ►

at the Pod Cluster at Black Rock City.

00:04:29 ►

Right now I’d like to introduce my friend Daniel Pinchbeck.

00:04:35 ►

Daniel has been a huge supporter of the Planque Norte efforts here on the Playa.

00:04:38 ►

He started with us in the beginning, and he’s been here every year, and he’s really added a whole huge dimension to the Planque Norte experience on the Playa Log.

00:04:44 ►

Daniel and I first met in the real Planque,

00:04:47 ►

and we seem to meet every year in the Burning Man Center Camp early in the morning

00:04:52 ►

when I’m getting up for my cup of coffee and Daniel’s coming in from his night on the playa.

00:04:56 ►

So we cross paths here quite a bit.

00:04:59 ►

So please help me welcome Daniel Pinchbeck.

00:05:02 ►

Daniel?

00:05:02 ►

Daniel?

00:05:08 ►

Okay, hello. Hi.

00:05:11 ►

So, yeah, I’m really happy to have more of like a forum or discussion on this area

00:05:16 ►

because I definitely in no way feel like an expert and wouldn’t pretend to be so.

00:05:21 ►

I mean, I sort of have my own questions that I keep asking and thinking through.

00:05:25 ►

And definitely, like, the Burning Man experience has been, like, a whole part of my own process

00:05:31 ►

for sort of thinking about the sort of sexuality, the evolution of consciousness, of relationships,

00:05:38 ►

love relationships, male-female relationships.

00:05:42 ►

And I actually sort of had a kind of

00:05:45 ►

breakthrough in terms of

00:05:47 ►

I was in a monogamous relationship that wasn’t happy

00:05:50 ►

and sort of ended that and then sort of

00:05:52 ►

went through a period of, well I was at Burning Man

00:05:54 ►

one year, returned back to

00:05:56 ►

home and sort of ended a monogamous relationship

00:05:58 ►

and just felt like

00:05:59 ►

it seemed like there were other potential models

00:06:02 ►

of relationship that were kind of

00:06:03 ►

indicated by the spirit of this place.

00:06:09 ►

And basically since then, I’ve personally sort of continually tried to formulate

00:06:15 ►

what other kind of models could be

00:06:18 ►

and how they could sort of come into being in a different way.

00:06:23 ►

And I have to say, I give it like a, you know, pretty much of a failure.

00:06:28 ►

But, you know, I think a lot of people are in that same failure process.

00:06:31 ►

So, you know, I think that’s interesting, too.

00:06:33 ►

So, you know, and I guess when I, you know, in my book, 2012, I was looking at this time as a kind of fulfillment, potentially.

00:06:44 ►

I mean, the last speaker said that he doesn’t believe in 2012.

00:06:47 ►

I actually don’t believe in 2012 either.

00:06:50 ►

And for me, when somebody says that, it’s like it’s kind of ignorant

00:06:52 ►

because to me it’s not a belief.

00:06:54 ►

Belief is something that we should probably get behind in certain respects.

00:06:57 ►

But it’s about using our discriminatory skills and intellect

00:07:01 ►

to kind of look at the evidence on many levels.

00:07:04 ►

And I think if you spend the time to do that,

00:07:05 ►

and hopefully my last book helps people do that,

00:07:07 ►

I think there’s a lot of evidence that suggests that we’re

00:07:10 ►

in this kind of very critical

00:07:12 ►

sort of evolutionary window for the human

00:07:14 ►

species. And that’s

00:07:16 ►

happening on a lot of levels.

00:07:17 ►

And all the levels are interrelated,

00:07:20 ►

let’s say, whether it’s what’s happening

00:07:22 ►

on the biospheric level,

00:07:24 ►

the ecological level, the technological level, whether it’s what’s happening on the biospheric level, the ecological level,

00:07:25 ►

the technological level, and the psychic level.

00:07:28 ►

And I think one very crucial and critical piece of that is the potential for an evolution

00:07:33 ►

in gender relations and in how people think about sexual energy, work with sexual energy,

00:07:40 ►

use sexual energy.

00:07:42 ►

So I remember when I was here and I was going through this whole crisis, I really thought

00:07:45 ►

a lot about the Kali Yuga, which is, according to the Hindus, we’re in the age of Kali, who’s

00:07:51 ►

the kind of negative manifestation of Shakti.

00:07:56 ►

And Shakti is the deity that represents sexual energy, feminine energy, the energy that’s

00:08:03 ►

in all manifestation.

00:08:05 ►

And her counterpart is Shiva, who represents kind of pure consciousness.

00:08:08 ►

So the idea in Hinduism is that the union of Shiva and Shakti

00:08:11 ►

kind of maintain the universe.

00:08:15 ►

And I guess it was this book on the demons of the flesh.

00:08:21 ►

It was on kind of like sex magic.

00:08:24 ►

It was kind of a dark book by this guy,

00:08:27 ►

by Nicholas and Xenia Shrek.

00:08:28 ►

But they talked about how the Kali Yuga,

00:08:34 ►

we tend to see it as we’re in this dominator patriarchal culture

00:08:38 ►

and the male energy has,

00:08:41 ►

the male force has kind of overtaken the feminine principle.

00:08:44 ►

And I think that’s totally true on one level.

00:08:47 ►

Then on another level, it’s this idea that there’s somehow, there’s this Kali energy

00:08:51 ►

that is the kind of negative aspect or manifestation of the Shakti energy current,

00:08:58 ►

which has also been, you know, has lost our capacity to control it.

00:09:03 ►

So it’s creating negative repercussions

00:09:05 ►

and negative manifestations.

00:09:07 ►

And I really do feel that one of the critical things

00:09:11 ►

that’s happening at Burning Man

00:09:12 ►

is a kind of conscious and subconscious

00:09:16 ►

interrogation of gender and sexuality.

00:09:23 ►

So I’ll keep yapping for a while

00:09:25 ►

and if anybody wants to,

00:09:26 ►

you know,

00:09:27 ►

has a burning comment to make,

00:09:29 ►

like raise their hand

00:09:29 ►

or go to the mic

00:09:30 ►

or whatever.

00:09:31 ►

Okay,

00:09:32 ►

so,

00:09:32 ►

so yeah,

00:09:33 ►

so basically,

00:09:35 ►

so we’re coming,

00:09:37 ►

perhaps coming to the end

00:09:39 ►

of the Kali Yuga

00:09:39 ►

and there could be a shift

00:09:41 ►

into,

00:09:42 ►

you know,

00:09:42 ►

from the Hindus,

00:09:42 ►

it’s a cycle.

00:09:43 ►

So it would go into

00:09:44 ►

a golden age, which would be, among other cycle, so it would go into a golden age,

00:09:45 ►

which would be, among other things,

00:09:47 ►

a rebalancing.

00:09:48 ►

And you really see this

00:09:48 ►

if you look at a lot of different

00:09:50 ►

cultural archetypes,

00:09:52 ►

whether it’s alchemy,

00:09:54 ►

they talk about the integration

00:09:55 ►

of masculine and feminine

00:09:56 ►

to create the divine hermaphrodite.

00:09:59 ►

Or in the Judaism Kabbalah,

00:10:02 ►

they talk about the return of the Shekinah,

00:10:04 ►

which is the feminine aspect of divinity,

00:10:07 ►

which is something that returns at the end of time.

00:10:14 ►

And one thing about, there’s kind of this westernized tantra,

00:10:18 ►

and it’s sort of an interesting correlate to the westernized shamanism,

00:10:22 ►

or the modernized version of shamanism.

00:10:23 ►

So in a sense, shamanism or the modernized version of shamanism. So in a sense,

00:10:26 ►

shamanism encompasses a lot of practices,

00:10:29 ►

but I think the way we’ve come to think of it now

00:10:31 ►

in this culture

00:10:32 ►

is that the psychedelic experience

00:10:33 ►

is somehow at the core of shamanism.

00:10:36 ►

I mean, people do the drumming,

00:10:37 ►

and there’s a lot of different practices,

00:10:40 ►

but somehow the psychedelic experience

00:10:42 ►

has become the core

00:10:43 ►

of our understanding of shamanism, I think.

00:10:47 ►

And by the way, everything I’m saying here is just like my perspective and other people may have different perspectives.

00:10:53 ►

But so I think with tantra, you know, there’s a there’s a kind of Western tantra.

00:10:58 ►

There are tantric practitioners who haven’t gone through like Indian or Hindu training who, who are sort of trying to work with sexual energy

00:11:05 ►

in a more sophisticated way.

00:11:07 ►

I mean, I would say most of them are women

00:11:09 ►

who end up doing a lot of work with men

00:11:12 ►

who have a very kind of low frequency

00:11:15 ►

in terms of their use of sexual energy.

00:11:18 ►

So, and just in the way that Tantra in the East

00:11:20 ►

encompasses like a huge body of knowledge and practices, shamanism encompasses a huge body of knowledge and practices.

00:11:28 ►

Shamanism encompasses a huge body of practices. Somehow in our Western

00:11:29 ►

context, the sexual

00:11:32 ►

aspect seems to be the one that we’ve kind of

00:11:33 ►

focused on as the core.

00:11:36 ►

And I guess I would think that that has to do

00:11:37 ►

if the idea of tantra is

00:11:40 ►

really moving towards

00:11:42 ►

non-dual awareness.

00:11:44 ►

So you kind of reach a point where you get past the subject-object distinction,

00:11:50 ►

the self and other distinction,

00:11:51 ►

that that intimate relationship of sexuality

00:11:55 ►

is where we have a big imbalance

00:11:58 ►

and also where there’s that huge potential

00:12:01 ►

for attaining that kind of non-dual insight.

00:12:03 ►

that there’s that huge potential for attaining that kind of non-dual insight.

00:12:12 ►

So when I was sort of going through my own kind of freak out and breakdown around monogamy and sexuality in our culture, you know, I began to read a lot about it and think a lot

00:12:17 ►

about it.

00:12:17 ►

And then there was that movie about Alfred Kinsey and the Kinsey Report.

00:12:21 ►

You know, I thought that was a really interesting movie.

00:12:22 ►

And then I read some more about it.

00:12:24 ►

But basically, when they did these studies

00:12:26 ►

in the 1950s, they were very scandalous.

00:12:28 ►

They found that

00:12:29 ►

Kinsey, I guess he’d studied

00:12:31 ►

the gall moth first and he discovered

00:12:34 ►

that this moth had this infinite variety

00:12:36 ►

of behavior. Then he started studying

00:12:37 ►

human sexuality and he discovered that

00:12:39 ►

human sexuality also had this almost

00:12:41 ►

infinite

00:12:42 ►

uniqueness. That there was an infinite variety of sexual behavior.

00:12:48 ►

And then, you know, I would say a large proportion of people

00:12:51 ►

who he was, you know, looking at in these surveys,

00:12:55 ►

you know, had had non-ordinary, non-monogamous sexual experiences

00:13:00 ►

and it often hid those from their partners, you know.

00:13:03 ►

So, you know, so I think like what we have to consider is that if sexuality is this kind of infinite spectrum

00:13:09 ►

and everybody is highly unique in their sexuality,

00:13:13 ►

then to just have a social construct of monogamy

00:13:16 ►

is going to lead to a lot of anger and frustration and hostility.

00:13:23 ►

For some people, monogamy is probably their natural state.

00:13:30 ►

But I think that we really are going to need, if we want to go forward as a species, really,

00:13:36 ►

we’re really going to have to think about different models of relationship pattern and

00:13:40 ►

different ways of making more conscious use of sexual energy for purposes

00:13:46 ►

of consciousness transformation, spiritual elevation.

00:13:51 ►

So I began to look at other possible models.

00:13:53 ►

I mean, if you look at a lot of indigenous cultures, tribal cultures, there’s a huge

00:13:56 ►

range of organizations of relationship patterns.

00:14:00 ►

So like I’m reading this book, Society Against the State, which so highly recommend this

00:14:04 ►

book by Pierre Klaus, but he talks about the Guiaqui Society Against the State, which I so highly recommend this book by Pierre Klaus.

00:14:05 ►

But he talks about the Guiaqui Indians in the Amazon.

00:14:08 ►

And they had a polyandry model.

00:14:10 ►

So the women would have two or three husbands.

00:14:13 ►

And that was partially just because there was a preponderance of women to men.

00:14:17 ►

But it worked, and they had a huge social cohesion.

00:14:21 ►

The aboriginals had very different

00:14:25 ►

kind of models

00:14:27 ►

of sexual relating

00:14:28 ►

in the aboriginal culture

00:14:30 ►

there was initiation for men and women

00:14:33 ►

but men

00:14:35 ►

were really especially

00:14:36 ►

it was sort of thought that women were kind of naturally

00:14:39 ►

initiated

00:14:39 ►

by menstruation

00:14:42 ►

by fertility, by pregnancy

00:14:44 ►

by their kind of connection to the earth.

00:14:47 ►

But men had to really be culturally initiated.

00:14:50 ►

They had to go through a really long process.

00:14:53 ►

It could be a five- to ten-year process

00:14:54 ►

of really difficult experiences, painful experiences, walkabouts.

00:14:59 ►

And without that initiation,

00:15:01 ►

they were not considered to be fully human or certainly fully adult,

00:15:03 ►

and they couldn’t be married.

00:15:05 ►

So while those men were young, they would tend to be paired up with older women who were single,

00:15:13 ►

you know, who were widows or whatever.

00:15:14 ►

And in that culture, older women, you know, were seen as maintaining their sexual attractiveness.

00:15:21 ►

So, yes, so I thought that was pretty interesting.

00:15:24 ►

So, yes, so that was pretty interesting.

00:15:31 ►

And another, I mean, you know, things can be very different than our model of things.

00:15:38 ►

I mean, apparently in the aboriginal cultures, when women lost their, you know, when women reached puberty,

00:15:45 ►

there would be an experience where they would be taken by a group of men from the tribe who would have sex with the woman successively.

00:15:50 ►

And that was actually seen as something to be looked forward to and a kind of initiatory experience for the woman.

00:15:53 ►

And I think that’s very interesting culturally

00:15:56 ►

because it probably broke a lot of the negative and possessive energy

00:16:01 ►

that develops around sexuality and attraction.

00:16:01 ►

kind of a negative and possessive energy that develops around sexuality and attraction.

00:16:07 ►

So then I was thinking about, like,

00:16:10 ►

I mean, I’ve been just sort of stewing on this stuff for a while, basically.

00:16:14 ►

You know, that a lot of non-Western and tribal cultures,

00:16:19 ►

there’s a kind of, like, basic happiness that people have.

00:16:22 ►

You know, I mean, our culture is all about the pursuit of happiness,

00:16:24 ►

but at the core, there’s a basic kind that people have. Our culture is all about the pursuit of happiness, but at the core there’s a basic kind of general sense

00:16:27 ►

of kind of insatiability and unhappiness.

00:16:31 ►

And so why is that at its core?

00:16:34 ►

And in this book by Robert Lawler called Earth Honoring,

00:16:37 ►

he talks about how in tribal and indigenous cultures,

00:16:42 ►

when a baby is born, it basically is never separated from the mother’s body

00:16:46 ►

for the first years of life.

00:16:48 ►

So there’s always this kind of intimate touch

00:16:50 ►

connection. And in our culture, the first thing

00:16:52 ►

we do is we separate babies

00:16:54 ►

from the mother and put them in these

00:16:56 ►

nursing wards where they don’t even get

00:16:58 ►

nursed.

00:17:00 ►

Robert Lawler, it’s called Earth

00:17:02 ►

Honoring.

00:17:04 ►

And so it may be that the lack of continual

00:17:10 ►

kind of intimate touch in early childhood

00:17:12 ►

then leads to insatiability,

00:17:16 ►

so that happiness becomes this kind of

00:17:20 ►

very difficult and distant and unreachable goal

00:17:23 ►

rather than something that’s just a basic quality in the human.

00:17:29 ►

And then I think also you can look at

00:17:31 ►

how different forms of sexual repression…

00:17:36 ►

You want to… Go ahead.

00:17:37 ►

Yeah, okay. Hi.

00:17:40 ►

So what you said made me think of something…

00:17:42 ►

I think if you think about what an abandonment problem is,

00:17:46 ►

you know, you’re sort of like the psychological structure of

00:17:49 ►

if a child feels abandoned and it stays imprinted in them,

00:17:52 ►

they feel like there’s something that’s, they feel like it’s not there,

00:17:55 ►

and so you might want to test to see if it is.

00:17:57 ►

You want to prove that it is.

00:17:59 ►

The experiences that I’ve had where I felt abandoned,

00:18:01 ►

I wanted to prove that notion wrong.

00:18:03 ►

And so I would find myself sort of like testing it, wanting to see for myself, what is the real situation?

00:18:10 ►

Is she there? Is she there for me?

00:18:12 ►

And by testing it, I ended up making it impossible for her to be there in a sense.

00:18:18 ►

So you end up having a self-fulfilling prophecy.

00:18:20 ►

And sometimes I think about the modern period in terms of scientific materialism

00:18:25 ►

as a cultural abandonment problem

00:18:27 ►

and that the testing for God and nature

00:18:30 ►

is actually destroying the possibility of it being there

00:18:33 ►

so I’m interested, it sounds like you were about to say

00:18:36 ►

different ways that maybe through the birth process

00:18:40 ►

that we could resolve that from different dimensions

00:18:43 ►

the birth process is one aspect.

00:18:45 ►

I also think, like having, as I said, the thought that I’ve managed to give this, I

00:18:50 ►

don’t think that the nuclear family is the natural model or a good model for raising

00:18:53 ►

a child.

00:18:54 ►

I think actually the tribal community is the proper model.

00:18:58 ►

And so that’s just a problem.

00:19:00 ►

So you have abandonment, like, you know, my mother worked, you know, my dad, they got

00:19:03 ►

split up.

00:19:04 ►

My dad was sort of unavailable because he was doing his painting.

00:19:06 ►

I mean, you know, you have these endemic problems because of this artificial nuclear family structure.

00:19:11 ►

And if you go to, you know, tribal cultures, you know, the kids are always around the adults.

00:19:16 ►

You know, they have special, I mean, I was in West Africa with the Bwidi, and, you know, different women would nurse the babies, you know.

00:19:23 ►

So there was always that availability of contact

00:19:27 ►

and always this kind of trust scenario.

00:19:29 ►

So a lot of the problems we’ve created

00:19:32 ►

are created by this artificial nuclear family structure,

00:19:35 ►

which developed out of our whole civilizational shtick,

00:19:39 ►

our agriculture and industry

00:19:42 ►

and how we then compartmentalized families in these little buildings and apartments.

00:19:48 ►

Then we have this kind of monogamy family structure is now kind of instituted in our laws and our tax codes and our architecture.

00:19:56 ►

So, you know, it really requires a whole systemic shift to move to what I would think would be a more natural way.

00:20:03 ►

Could I just add something to the tribal family?

00:20:05 ►

Sure.

00:20:06 ►

I’ve gone down to work with the Shipibos in the Amazon,

00:20:10 ►

and typically the women can have babies when they’re around 14.

00:20:15 ►

And once they have the babies,

00:20:18 ►

they are passed around to everybody from brothers and sisters,

00:20:21 ►

and it’s not the nuclear, so they’re taken care of by everybody.

00:20:24 ►

So you can see the kid with, like, a big sister, 10 minutes later, Uncle Jose’s not the nuclear, so they’re taken care of by everybody. So you can see the kid with a big sister,

00:20:26 ►

ten minutes later, Uncle Jose’s got him or whatever,

00:20:30 ►

five minutes later, somebody else has him.

00:20:32 ►

And I notice that those kids,

00:20:34 ►

you don’t see any nastiness among them.

00:20:36 ►

I come back here and I see some of these spoiled little shits,

00:20:39 ►

excuse me, and they’re nasty to each other,

00:20:41 ►

and they’re mean, and there’s all this competition for attention

00:20:43 ►

and all this sibling rivalry.

00:20:46 ►

In the tribal situation, they don’t have that. it’s all spread around, everybody’s sharing the love

00:20:49 ►

I’m an only parent

00:20:52 ►

not just a single parent but an only parent

00:20:54 ►

and my son has that hole

00:20:58 ►

he feels abandoned by his father

00:20:59 ►

and he is mean and nasty

00:21:03 ►

even though I’ve tried really hard to raise him in a good way.

00:21:05 ►

And I hear so many people talking about it takes a village to raise a child.

00:21:10 ►

And here we are having this conversation.

00:21:11 ►

And I’ve had this conversation with so many people.

00:21:14 ►

But honestly, from experience, I’m still waiting for my tribe, these people who call themselves my tribe,

00:21:25 ►

these people who call themselves my tribe to actually step up and ask if they can spend time with my child or offer some kind of um remedy that’s going to help him fill that abandonment

00:21:33 ►

hole besides just looking at me and saying your kid’s got problems you know and i can’t deal with

00:21:38 ►

your child and these are these are everybody sitting here i mean not necessarily but but i

00:21:43 ►

have a lot of friends i know a lot of people, and everybody I know is here.

00:21:47 ►

And I’m still not getting that.

00:21:49 ►

I’m not experiencing it.

00:21:50 ►

And it’s hard for me.

00:21:52 ►

It’s a huge disconnect.

00:21:53 ►

Yeah, well, I think you just have to recognize that this is an awkward and transitional period.

00:21:59 ►

And so we have a kind of like neo-tribal culture that’s created a lot of like tropes and kind of cultural imagery.

00:22:04 ►

But it doesn’t necessarily

00:22:05 ►

mean people have gone back to the

00:22:07 ►

tribal pattern. They’re still holding on

00:22:09 ►

to a lot of possessiveness, a lot of

00:22:11 ►

you know, like a lot of the

00:22:12 ►

sort of psychological structure

00:22:15 ►

that’s been constructed by

00:22:17 ►

the dominator culture

00:22:19 ►

of modern capitalism. You know, so it’s

00:22:22 ►

a transitional process and it’s probably only

00:22:23 ►

which I think is going to happen

00:22:25 ►

as the mainstream structures melt down,

00:22:28 ►

continue to melt down,

00:22:30 ►

that those tribal kind of families

00:22:32 ►

are going to have to learn

00:22:32 ►

how to work together again.

00:22:35 ►

The other thing I was going to make a note of

00:22:38 ►

was in my book I talked about,

00:22:40 ►

so I think we can see

00:22:41 ►

that this imbalance

00:22:43 ►

between the masculine and feminine

00:22:44 ►

has really been developing through civilization. Once again, if you look at the Mayan calendar,

00:22:49 ►

the long count is like a 5,125 year count. So it started around 3,100 BC, which is when

00:22:56 ►

we went from tribal cultures that worshiped the great mother and that followed the lunar cycles

00:23:02 ►

to solar cultures that created an abstract model of time,

00:23:08 ►

dividing the air into a circle,

00:23:09 ►

that had a dominator relationship, a priest class,

00:23:11 ►

and went from the Great Mother to the dominator father,

00:23:15 ►

patriarchal father, you know, kind of God.

00:23:17 ►

So along with that, we’ve inherited all of this really difficult baggage

00:23:21 ►

to kind of unwind and deal with.

00:23:23 ►

And then if you look at the beginning of the modern scientific project,

00:23:26 ►

I mean, Francis Bacon said, and I think it’s

00:23:27 ►

an incredibly telling remark,

00:23:29 ►

we must torture nature until she

00:23:31 ►

reveals her secrets.

00:23:33 ►

So that’s kind of like the energy

00:23:36 ►

of the modern scientific project

00:23:37 ►

is coming out of that

00:23:39 ►

really sadistic,

00:23:43 ►

anguished,

00:23:44 ►

masculine energy, in a way.

00:23:49 ►

I’m wondering if you’ve thought of things in terms of oxytocin is a female hormone that’s secreted also by men,

00:24:00 ►

but also a lot by women.

00:24:03 ►

When the baby is first born born that contact between baby and mother

00:24:07 ►

that secretes oxytocin love makes oxytocin go off in the brain helping people empathy those are all

00:24:17 ►

oxytocin centered that’s a hormone our society has worked on an adrenergic or a dopaminergic level,

00:24:29 ►

fight or flight or reward for pushing the button or for making the money.

00:24:36 ►

Have you ever considered that aspect of it?

00:24:43 ►

Oxytocin is the female force in a biological manifestation of it.

00:24:45 ►

I haven’t really.

00:24:46 ►

I mean, but that sounds interesting.

00:24:53 ►

Yeah, my question was on transience. So how do you see the culture pushing forward

00:24:56 ►

when in ancient times nobody traveled really?

00:25:01 ►

You were in an area for an extended period of time.

00:25:04 ►

Do you view that

00:25:05 ►

going forward, in order to achieve the tribal structure, in order to correctly grow people,

00:25:12 ►

that we’re going to have to jettison the freedom of living someplace a year, moving around

00:25:19 ►

the world for five more years? Can you simultaneously have the security

00:25:25 ►

with who your kids are with

00:25:29 ►

if all those people are new?

00:25:32 ►

I don’t have an answer to that.

00:25:34 ►

I mean, it looks possible

00:25:35 ►

that we’re going to definitely lose

00:25:37 ►

some of our kind of planetary mobility

00:25:39 ►

in the near term

00:25:40 ►

as the peak oil thing grows

00:25:42 ►

and the controls keep tightening

00:25:44 ►

on the system

00:25:45 ►

as it melts down.

00:25:46 ►

I’m going to talk a little bit about, I’m doing a talk on Friday at Entheon Village

00:25:50 ►

at 3.30, which is about my next book project.

00:25:53 ►

I think that we have this potential to move towards, almost like we’re in a revolutionary

00:25:58 ►

situation right now on the planet.

00:26:00 ►

If you look at, for instance, the economic crisis that’s unfolding, just like the man melted down on Monday night and the moon was revealed as this kind of little orb in the sky, not this flash projection, a lot of our structures are being unveiled and revealed to us right now.

00:26:21 ►

And they’re also in the process of kind of melting down and reconfiguring.

00:26:25 ►

So I think it’s a very critical time.

00:26:27 ►

So I don’t know what’s going to be configured out of it,

00:26:30 ►

but I think there’s a potential that is very positive,

00:26:34 ►

that we could create a kind of planetary direct democracy

00:26:38 ►

using the Internet.

00:26:41 ►

It feels like something is pushing in that direction.

00:26:43 ►

And there are theorists who support that project

00:26:47 ►

and yeah

00:26:51 ►

hold on a second, Dan

00:26:52 ►

this isn’t so much a question but just agreement

00:26:55 ►

there’s two things that you mentioned

00:26:56 ►

we’re talking about the idea of going back to tribal models

00:26:59 ►

because they don’t seem to have certain flaws

00:27:01 ►

that we’re experiencing now during our cultural epoch

00:27:04 ►

but you mentioned before the problems with your friends not actually fulfilling what

00:27:09 ►

they could be doing and just talking about it.

00:27:12 ►

And it seems that there is something constituted in the self, the individuated self.

00:27:16 ►

And you talked about transience and the sort of like technology and transportation.

00:27:20 ►

I think that these are the challenges that we have to deal with in retrieving the tribal

00:27:24 ►

models. We have to work with them. I don’t know, that’s why there is no answer,

00:27:28 ►

but we have to find that answer because we are

00:27:32 ►

individuated for a reason. It gives us a certain freedom and so it becomes up to

00:27:36 ►

the individual to let go of their projections and their insecurities in order to deal with these

00:27:40 ►

earlier models because it’s not the same as it would have been for the people in the tribal cultures.

00:27:44 ►

This is a totally different self that we have now

00:27:46 ►

and so it’s a new challenge I think

00:27:48 ►

yeah

00:27:49 ►

and I think like one question is really like

00:27:52 ►

is there such a thing as a fixed human nature

00:27:54 ►

you know and if there isn’t a fixed human nature

00:27:57 ►

which I think is quite possible

00:27:58 ►

then we can kind of reconfigure

00:28:00 ►

relationship patterns, relationship models

00:28:03 ►

in almost any way

00:28:04 ►

you know, Any way that

00:28:06 ►

works best for the

00:28:07 ►

largest number of people.

00:28:09 ►

And one term that I’ve begun to prefer

00:28:12 ►

to polyamory is the

00:28:14 ►

idea of transparent relating.

00:28:16 ►

So I think that the only way that

00:28:18 ►

you can actually, like,

00:28:20 ►

to go outside of

00:28:22 ►

the monogamy construct, or what is

00:28:24 ►

often the false monogamy construct, the kind of two- or three-year monogamous relationship, the next monogamous relationship would require a very deep transparency and a willingness to not – I think there’s a boundary between confessional honesty and truth.

00:28:42 ►

and truth.

00:28:44 ►

Confessional honesty is too much.

00:28:46 ►

It’s kind of dull almost.

00:28:48 ►

It’s also kind of just almost like inflicting suffering

00:28:50 ►

on another person.

00:28:51 ►

But if you can find a way

00:28:54 ►

to communicate that is

00:28:55 ►

transparent and truthful,

00:28:58 ►

I think that’s the best you can do.

00:29:02 ►

Are there people here

00:29:04 ►

who’ve had

00:29:05 ►

tantric experiences or have

00:29:07 ►

a particular sense of what

00:29:09 ►

tantra means to them especially in the

00:29:11 ►

sexual arena

00:29:12 ►

did you want to say something or no

00:29:15 ►

to me it’s

00:29:17 ►

it means it’s not about orgasm

00:29:20 ►

it’s about love and the experience

00:29:22 ►

and not about climax but about

00:29:24 ►

maintaining level and working towards that.

00:29:29 ►

That’s what tantra means to me.

00:29:30 ►

But it’s kind of an amorphous thing.

00:29:32 ►

What does shamanism mean?

00:29:34 ►

You know, you’ll ask 50 people, you’ll get 50 different answers.

00:29:37 ►

But that’s what I, that’s…

00:29:38 ►

So you’re thinking more on a technical level.

00:29:40 ►

It’s about the practice of, for the masculine, it’s restraining orgasm and sort

00:29:46 ►

of using, not fixating on orgasm. I just would like to share a definition of shamanism that

00:30:00 ►

I heard years ago. Anybody’s ever known a gentleman by the name of Christian Reich from

00:30:03 ►

Germany? He’s a mad genius.

00:30:06 ►

And Christian said that they asked all these shamans

00:30:09 ►

all around the world for the most succinct definition

00:30:11 ►

of shamanism they could find,

00:30:13 ►

and the one that came out on top was unconditional love.

00:30:16 ►

I think that there’s a real problem

00:30:18 ►

with how we think about shamanism,

00:30:19 ►

because if you look at indigenous cultures,

00:30:22 ►

we’re looking for new age heroes.

00:30:25 ►

So we’ve taken the shaman, we made the shaman into a new age hero.

00:30:28 ►

And shamans in indigenous cultures are ambivalent figures.

00:30:32 ►

They’re boundary figures.

00:30:34 ►

They’re often on the outskirts of town.

00:30:36 ►

Their hut is turned away or their teepee is turned away from the other village,

00:30:41 ►

members of the village.

00:30:42 ►

There’s a lot of fear attached to traditional shamanism.

00:30:45 ►

To me, that’s just like a whitewash,

00:30:46 ►

like a kind of invented modernist reinvention of what shamanism is.

00:30:51 ►

I mean, shamans are people who work with dark energies

00:30:54 ►

and light spiritual energies for purposes of transformation,

00:30:58 ►

for healing, to bring information to the tribal group.

00:31:01 ►

I would not say unconditional love is enough of a definition.

00:31:05 ►

Well, that’s just

00:31:05 ►

what he had said,

00:31:06 ►

but they do serve

00:31:07 ►

regardless of their working forces.

00:31:09 ►

And sometimes they kill.

00:31:10 ►

Sometimes they hurt.

00:31:11 ►

I mean, sometimes

00:31:11 ►

they use sorcery

00:31:12 ►

to shoot magic darts

00:31:13 ►

at each other.

00:31:14 ►

That’s true

00:31:15 ►

in Amazonian shamanism.

00:31:16 ►

Which is, you know,

00:31:17 ►

our kind of construct

00:31:18 ►

of shamanism is,

00:31:19 ►

I mean, it’s a Siberian word,

00:31:22 ►

but I would say

00:31:22 ►

that the Amazonian shamanism

00:31:23 ►

is like the purest form

00:31:24 ►

that we think about. Well, for me, shamanism is like the purest form that we

00:31:25 ►

think about.

00:31:26 ►

Well, for me, shamanism is the basis of all religion, back to prehistoric times.

00:31:31 ►

So, yeah, I’m grateful for the plialogue model, that idea of keeping an open conversation,

00:31:38 ►

and I’ve been really inspired by what’s been going on.

00:31:41 ►

There seems to be a need for a co-creatcreative journey and acknowledgement of a co-creation,

00:31:48 ►

which this camp is a model of that. And a lot of the emergence is what that is. And I think that’s

00:31:53 ►

what keeps happening, that we look to the past and we’re trying to say, this is what we want,

00:31:57 ►

or we want to all be shamans, or we want to all practice tantra or whatever it is. And

00:32:01 ►

there’s a way to integrate that in. And so I think what you’re serving with

00:32:05 ►

is bringing a cohesion.

00:32:08 ►

But it isn’t the answer of saying

00:32:09 ►

this is it from the past and bringing it in now.

00:32:12 ►

It’s a way of bringing those things through.

00:32:14 ►

And also, just as a model of understanding tantra,

00:32:17 ►

for me, it has to do with,

00:32:19 ►

kind of like what you said,

00:32:20 ►

is a way of building plateaus rather than climaxing.

00:32:23 ►

So the idea is building the energy.

00:32:25 ►

That’s not the masculine side.

00:32:26 ►

The feminine side is actually supposed to be

00:32:27 ►

like a deepening and lengthening of orgasm.

00:32:29 ►

Just as I understand the technical.

00:32:31 ►

Well, you’re speaking about technical,

00:32:32 ►

and I’m not actually.

00:32:33 ►

Yeah, that’s what I mean.

00:32:34 ►

I’m speaking about metaphorically or culturally

00:32:37 ►

that we create on a basis of plateau rather than climax.

00:32:41 ►

And at Burning Man, you could see it both ways

00:32:43 ►

because different people are running the energy

00:32:44 ►

in different ways.

00:32:45 ►

So I sort of started to have a little bit of a breakthrough around that,

00:32:48 ►

around climax focus and plateau focus.

00:32:51 ►

But yeah, I know what you’re talking about, the feminine too.

00:32:53 ►

So thank you for creating this forum, and please, everyone, jump in.

00:32:58 ►

Yeah, especially, I don’t know, have any women even spoken?

00:33:00 ►

I’m all embarrassed.

00:33:02 ►

I’m just yapping about this stuff.

00:33:03 ►

Nobody wants to talk to me.

00:33:04 ►

It’s so sad.

00:33:08 ►

For me,

00:33:09 ►

my tantric experiences

00:33:11 ►

have been a mutual

00:33:13 ►

conscious connection

00:33:15 ►

in samadhi.

00:33:18 ►

Okay, cool.

00:33:19 ►

It’s just interesting to me when you go around the Burning Man

00:33:21 ►

camps and I feel in a way

00:33:23 ►

there’s a kind of

00:33:24 ►

a certain kind of like a certain

00:33:28 ►

kind of like fraudulence or something.

00:33:29 ►

I was just walking to get here or biking to get here

00:33:32 ►

and there was camps like the G-Spot camp

00:33:34 ►

and the Perineum camp.

00:33:36 ►

But when you go to the camps

00:33:38 ►

it’s like the same old, oh here’s your

00:33:39 ►

alcoholic beverage and there’s some loud

00:33:42 ►

pounding disco music.

00:33:43 ►

So I feel there’s like this, the camps are

00:33:45 ►

projecting this concept of some like deep

00:33:48 ►

exploration of

00:33:49 ►

uncomfortable

00:33:50 ►

sexuality depths

00:33:53 ►

but then it really doesn’t take place.

00:33:56 ►

Maybe it takes place somewhere here, I just haven’t found those

00:33:58 ►

camps, I don’t know, or I haven’t really looked.

00:34:01 ►

I wonder

00:34:02 ►

what other people feel about Burning Man in relationship

00:34:04 ►

to their own kind of relationship patterns and concepts of sexuality and so on.

00:34:10 ►

Yeah, I would say actually it’s interesting that you just mentioned that because I have a great partner and we’ve been exploring tantra.

00:34:16 ►

And I do think it’s really about also like loving with all the feelings that are there and loving with whatever comes up instead of just like being sexy and we were talking a lot before coming out to the burn of like how do we make the burn

00:34:30 ►

an extension of what we’re already doing instead of this sort of departure from it or just party

00:34:35 ►

or you know because there is that like there’s this intense intention to come out here and have

00:34:41 ►

conscious opening experiences and then there’s this sort of like,

00:34:45 ►

ah, have a beer.

00:34:47 ►

And I always struggle between those two

00:34:49 ►

because part of you wants to just kind of let go

00:34:51 ►

and open and go on the ride.

00:34:53 ►

And another part is like,

00:34:54 ►

we’ve all come together,

00:34:55 ►

these incredible conscious thinkers

00:34:57 ►

and planners and visionaries.

00:34:59 ►

And so let’s stay somewhat lucid to create that

00:35:03 ►

instead of like running into each other on bikes, drunk.

00:35:07 ►

So I think there is that.

00:35:09 ►

There’s sort of that struggle between the two.

00:35:12 ►

And it is a transitional time, as you said.

00:35:14 ►

So it’s not easy, necessarily.

00:35:18 ►

And I feel there’s a change.

00:35:19 ►

How many people here have been coming to Burning Man for five years or more?

00:35:22 ►

Do people feel there’s some kind of change in the gender dynamics?

00:35:26 ►

It feels like it’s gotten softened

00:35:28 ►

a little bit somehow, or it’s evolved a little bit.

00:35:31 ►

Anybody want to speak to that?

00:35:32 ►

I changed.

00:35:34 ►

Maybe that’s what happened to me, too.

00:35:35 ►

How did you change? Do you want to take the mic or give him some mic?

00:35:41 ►

Go ahead, Lach.

00:35:42 ►

Go ahead.

00:35:45 ►

I’ve noticed that Burning Man has become a softer, more open, more conscious model.

00:35:52 ►

And I think it’s developmental in my view.

00:35:55 ►

Liberation is more of a continuum.

00:35:58 ►

So I would describe Tantra for me as more about liberation.

00:36:02 ►

And that just goes across the board.

00:36:04 ►

So here, for some people, liberation is having a camp that’s called the G-Spot tantra for me is more about liberation and that just goes across the boards so here

00:36:05 ►

for some people

00:36:06 ►

liberation is

00:36:07 ►

having a camp

00:36:08 ►

that’s called the G-spot

00:36:09 ►

and sitting there

00:36:09 ►

with a beer

00:36:10 ►

and for other people

00:36:11 ►

it’s coming together

00:36:12 ►

with your pod of people

00:36:14 ►

and having the most

00:36:15 ►

outrageous interactions

00:36:16 ►

and conversations

00:36:17 ►

and raising the energy

00:36:18 ►

00:36:19 ►

yeah

00:36:19 ►

but what is liberation?

00:36:22 ►

well

00:36:22 ►

that’s a continuum

00:36:23 ►

it’s just opening to more openings, I think.

00:36:26 ►

I think that, like somebody said to me recently,

00:36:28 ►

freedom or liberation without discipline is just license.

00:36:33 ►

So I feel there’s something to that.

00:36:38 ►

Actually, one of the things that led me to start this whole thing

00:36:41 ►

was Morgan Brent, who’s a really interesting ethnobotanist and

00:36:47 ►

so on. He was talking about how the whole concept of sex, drugs, and rock and roll is

00:36:55 ►

a kind of a social mechanism to kind of take our natural vitalizing instincts and impulses

00:37:03 ►

and kind of distort and degrade them. And

00:37:07 ►

he suggests that the natural evolution would be from drugs to plant teachers, from rock

00:37:13 ►

and roll to music that people create in their own communities, devotional music, and from

00:37:20 ►

sex to tantra. So using sex rather than you know, using sex as rather than getting off,

00:37:26 ►

you know, getting in, you know,

00:37:28 ►

like becoming, using it to go deeper

00:37:30 ►

into consciousness, you know.

00:37:31 ►

Yeah, I agree with that.

00:37:33 ►

Developmental process.

00:37:34 ►

Developmental process, yeah.

00:37:38 ►

So I had commented earlier on, you know,

00:37:41 ►

the Burning Man experience changing for me.

00:37:43 ►

And I think that in large part,

00:37:45 ►

you know, Burning Man is sort of whatever you bring to it or whatever you make of it, at least

00:37:49 ►

for me. And, you know, I know that I’ve gone the entire transition from, you know, getting ready

00:37:58 ►

to party real hard tonight, which what I, you know, what I would have done six years ago or

00:38:02 ►

something like that to, you know, attending this lecture and getting up at sunrise and eating healthy

00:38:08 ►

and just really focusing in a very lucid and sober way

00:38:12 ►

on exactly what it is that I want to accomplish here

00:38:15 ►

and the kind of people that I want to meet and sort of what I want to do.

00:38:19 ►

And that sort of evolves into what tantra is for me,

00:38:23 ►

which is just sort of that recognition of our

00:38:25 ►

separation from unity into this

00:38:28 ►

duality and

00:38:29 ►

bringing that back together

00:38:32 ►

in a very physical

00:38:33 ►

you know material

00:38:36 ►

kind of way

00:38:36 ►

this is my first burn

00:38:44 ►

yay but I came with a lot of stories. I’ve known people for 10

00:38:52 ►

years who’ve been coming and I’ve heard everything. And I expected a lot more debauchery. I’ve

00:39:00 ►

heard about, it’s all about sex and drugs, and it’s just this huge off-your-face orgy and some art.

00:39:10 ►

But I’ve been looking through the program, and I was expecting to see all kinds of like,

00:39:17 ►

you know, find your G-spot workshop and, you know, kind of link his workshop and all this stuff and um you know i heard about

00:39:25 ►

the tequila clit shoots and you know all this stuff but this isn’t what i’m finding this isn’t

00:39:32 ►

what i’m experiencing at all i’m finding yoga and conversations and practicalities and environmental awareness, and cooperative effort, and people really creating a community

00:39:51 ►

where anything goes, and in that there is the liberation and the freedom where people

00:39:56 ►

can make choices to be above or below.

00:40:01 ►

And to me, we have to embrace both aspects the the most debauched to the most

00:40:06 ►

you know illumined revealed ecstatic mystical experience and um and to bring it to tantra

00:40:14 ►

that’s really what it is also is as she said bringing in the whole picture you know the or the awareness of all of it into the one experience of the moment, of the present.

00:40:29 ►

And that’s what I’ve been experiencing here, and it’s been blowing my mind.

00:40:38 ►

And this is my 13th year at Burning Man.

00:40:41 ►

13th year at Burning Man.

00:40:46 ►

And it’s definitely gone from more of a, I think it used to have more of a sarcastic flavor, in fact,

00:40:50 ►

to everything that would go on.

00:40:54 ►

But in the past few years, it’s interesting to see that, you know,

00:40:59 ►

through, for example, efforts of people like John Hanna and Lorenzo here,

00:41:03 ►

and there’s been more meetings of the minds and, I guess you could say, evolved consciousness.

00:41:12 ►

And one thing about coming to Burning Man is you are in contact with so many progressive

00:41:21 ►

or spiritual or new ways to look into your mind or culture.

00:41:28 ►

When you come here and there is so much,

00:41:32 ►

I was thinking maybe it’s time for a new type of Burning Man festival

00:41:37 ►

because, as people are saying,

00:41:39 ►

if you want to have some kind of circle uh ritual that you’re doing with some people it’s kind of

00:41:45 ►

hard to do that when there’s you know a truck with a 30 000 ton sound system you know crisscrossing

00:41:51 ►

the path all the time so you know maybe uh it’s getting to be time for uh a kind of a burning man

00:41:57 ►

environment where it’s more about a gentler uh for people. So that’s…

00:42:05 ►

I mean, there are lots of other festivals, too, going on.

00:42:07 ►

Yeah, I just…

00:42:08 ►

I mean, I’m sort of interested, like…

00:42:09 ►

I mean, I know Burning Man is fascinating,

00:42:10 ►

but for me, my greater interest is always,

00:42:13 ►

as with the psychedelic experience,

00:42:15 ►

how do you take the, you know, visions or illuminations

00:42:18 ►

back into mainstream culture

00:42:20 ►

and transform, you know, the larger society

00:42:23 ►

or your own community or your own life.

00:42:26 ►

Let me see.

00:42:31 ►

Yeah, there’s a Wilhelm Reich quote.

00:42:35 ►

How many people here have read Wilhelm Reich, some of his stuff?

00:42:38 ►

He’s pretty cool.

00:42:39 ►

I think they have one of his devices in the energy pavilion under the man

00:42:43 ►

that nobody quite knows what it does, but maybe it does something.

00:42:48 ►

But he had a quote,

00:42:49 ►

sexually awakened women, affirmed and recognized as such,

00:42:53 ►

would mean the complete collapse of the patriarchy.

00:42:57 ►

Now, I actually don’t think that’s true, and I did think it was true,

00:43:00 ►

but then I had it up and I was talking about it on my discussion board

00:43:02 ►

and somebody said, no, it’s not sexually awakened or emancipated

00:43:06 ►

it’s sexually and spiritually awakened

00:43:08 ►

and I think there has been in our culture

00:43:11 ►

a huge sexual awakening but it doesn’t necessarily

00:43:14 ►

lead to a higher social state

00:43:18 ►

but I do feel that

00:43:20 ►

in the situation that we’re in right now

00:43:25 ►

that it’s sort of But I do feel that in the situation that we’re in right now,

00:43:27 ►

that it’s sort of up,

00:43:32 ►

the men have kind of a role of kind of opening a space

00:43:34 ►

for a fuller expression of female sexuality.

00:43:38 ►

Does that resonate with people at all?

00:43:42 ►

What’s that?

00:43:43 ►

Not only sexuality, though. Yeah, creativity also. I mean, another way I look at the situation that we’re

00:43:49 ►

in right now is that, or, you know, it keeps changing a little bit, but especially a year

00:43:52 ►

or so ago, I was thinking about this a lot, that it seems like men, you know, their primary

00:43:58 ►

blockage is their, you know, second chakra, like the sexuality, you know, because of these,

00:44:04 ►

you know, dysfunctional patterns that, you know, that we’ve created. And, you sexuality, because of these dysfunctional patterns that we’ve created.

00:44:07 ►

It’s also really hard for us to imagine what it would be like to be in a culture that had

00:44:13 ►

a positive vision of sexuality from top to bottom, where it wasn’t like this… I mean,

00:44:19 ►

as Lenny Bruce talked about, why was the word fuck a curse? It should be like, oh, it’s great, you want to fuck.

00:44:26 ►

But anyway,

00:44:28 ►

I had a comment.

00:44:31 ►

What was my comment before that?

00:44:35 ►

Male responsibility.

00:44:38 ►

You were talking about the male second chakra.

00:44:40 ►

Male second chakra.

00:44:41 ►

And I think women have fifth chakra issues.

00:44:43 ►

Communication. Because all the systems have been set up by this patriarchal system

00:44:47 ►

so a lot of women are looking

00:44:49 ►

for their full creative expression

00:44:52 ►

and it’s still blocked

00:44:54 ►

because the artistic system

00:44:56 ►

or the literary system

00:44:57 ►

are kind of expressions

00:44:59 ►

of some kind of masculine

00:45:01 ►

structure

00:45:02 ►

so it seems like a lot of the women I know

00:45:05 ►

who are part of these communities,

00:45:06 ►

it’s like their creative activity

00:45:08 ►

almost falls to the side or outside

00:45:11 ►

of the kind of structures that are in place

00:45:16 ►

for people to get acknowledgement

00:45:19 ►

and have careers and so on.

00:45:22 ►

Okay, this is exactly what I wanted to,

00:45:26 ►

if we get maybe an answer from or some discussion on coming here.

00:45:28 ►

I remember now.

00:45:30 ►

So as a man, I can, experimenting with these non-monogamous relationships,

00:45:35 ►

I know what the problems have been,

00:45:36 ►

and I know what efforts I’ve done to deal with that.

00:45:40 ►

And what I’m curious about, I would love a woman’s perspective on this,

00:45:43 ►

on what is the woman’s role in terms of opening up this space because concretely this is what

00:45:49 ►

I’ve experienced. I dealt with, you know, you have possession issues and ultimately

00:45:54 ►

and they manifest through images of sexuality oftentimes but really I think it’s about intimacy

00:45:59 ►

which is space, you know, and trust, you know, it’s a connection between people. So I found

00:46:04 ►

that I’ve gotten to the point

00:46:05 ►

where I have no problem with sexual situations.

00:46:07 ►

I mean, I really take seriously Rilke’s notion

00:46:10 ►

of you have to stand guard over the solitude of another,

00:46:12 ►

even in a relationship.

00:46:14 ►

So instead of pulling them and pushing them,

00:46:17 ►

just let them be.

00:46:18 ►

And I’ve gotten to the point, I feel,

00:46:20 ►

where I can actually do that.

00:46:21 ►

But the one thing I can’t do is,

00:46:25 ►

despite all that,

00:46:26 ►

if she comes to me and she’s afraid

00:46:28 ►

that what she did or didn’t do is going to hurt me,

00:46:31 ►

then her fear becomes a lie somehow.

00:46:34 ►

And that breaches the intimacy.

00:46:36 ►

And one thing I can’t take is when it’s not truthful.

00:46:41 ►

As long as it can be truthful.

00:46:42 ►

And you mentioned earlier transparency,

00:46:44 ►

the confessional honesty versus truth.

00:46:46 ►

To me, it seems like the woman,

00:46:48 ►

and this is just an idea,

00:46:49 ►

I would love a woman’s perspective,

00:46:50 ►

the woman has to find a way

00:46:52 ►

to be comfortable with that truth,

00:46:54 ►

comfortable with herself

00:46:55 ►

as this non-monogamous being,

00:46:57 ►

because biologically speaking even,

00:46:59 ►

it’s not, you know,

00:47:00 ►

the psychological constellation of a woman

00:47:02 ►

is not exactly non-monogamous.

00:47:06 ►

Does that make sense?

00:47:08 ►

What’s the woman’s challenge?

00:47:09 ►

What you find in studies of animal species and human sexuality is that women do cheat.

00:47:19 ►

They’re just much better at it than men.

00:47:21 ►

They don’t get caught.

00:47:22 ►

Whereas men blunder and get caught, women tend to do it effectively. But is that good enough? No, it’s not good enough.

00:47:30 ►

But more specifically, there’s a specific, biologically, during the menstruation, there

00:47:35 ►

can be a tendency to be monogamous in a relationship with a guy that will take care of the child,

00:47:40 ►

but then to cheat on him and lie about it with a guy who’s an alpha

00:47:45 ►

male, because the alpha male genes will generate more alpha males.

00:47:48 ►

So in terms of evolutionary psychology, that’s the understanding from a sociobiological perspective.

00:47:54 ►

And to me, if that’s the way the female psyche is constituted from a biological perspective,

00:47:59 ►

then that means that what would be overcome would have to be that tendency to cheat and

00:48:03 ►

then lie about it.

00:48:04 ►

what would be overcome would have to be that tendency to cheat and then lie about it.

00:48:11 ►

Yeah, I mean, I think also, once again, like I said, the Gayaki Indians had polyandry as a model.

00:48:15 ►

So obviously other civilizations have constructed other models.

00:48:21 ►

And I think a lot of it in tribal cultures is that there’s a basis of trust between the women.

00:48:24 ►

Like basically in tribal cultures, the women are like together,

00:48:26 ►

you know, they’re gathering,

00:48:27 ►

taking care of the kids.

00:48:28 ►

The men are going out on these initiatory walkabouts

00:48:30 ►

and, you know, and hunting and so on.

00:48:34 ►

So that the women

00:48:35 ►

have this strong base of trust.

00:48:37 ►

And I feel like if you look at

00:48:38 ►

like the modern culture,

00:48:39 ►

I’m in New York,

00:48:40 ►

you know, sex in the city,

00:48:41 ►

you know, there’s a kind

00:48:42 ►

of undercutting,

00:48:44 ►

you know, nastiness to the tone around

00:48:49 ►

a lot of female-to-female relationships. And if there’s going to be an evolution in practice

00:48:54 ►

in terms of relationships, women have to address that. Just as men have to address their dominator

00:49:01 ►

mentality and all of the negative aspects of the patriarchy.

00:49:07 ►

There’s shadow elements that women have to address

00:49:10 ►

that are just as profound.

00:49:15 ►

I’m struck by the fact that

00:49:17 ►

I don’t necessarily think monogamy is natural.

00:49:20 ►

I think naturally, yes, we all want to.

00:49:22 ►

You’re always like, oh, look at that, look at that.

00:49:25 ►

But I do think there’s something profound about monogamy for what it requires of two people to kind of go on that path

00:49:31 ►

and be with those crushes as they come up or all that noise and potentially a nontraditional monogamous model as well.

00:49:40 ►

But do you believe in that?

00:49:42 ►

Like there is a value to that?

00:49:44 ►

Are you saying sort of there’s all different kinds of models? I think that for some Like there is a value to that. Are you saying sort of there’s all different kinds of models?

00:49:47 ►

I think that for some people there’s a value to that.

00:49:49 ►

I don’t know what the percentage is.

00:49:51 ►

We could ask the room.

00:49:52 ►

How many people feel that a monogamous relationship

00:49:55 ►

is their preferred model of relationship?

00:50:00 ►

And how many people don’t?

00:50:04 ►

Okay.

00:50:05 ►

My guess is as social conditioning was to be stripped away,

00:50:09 ►

that proportion that we just saw would change,

00:50:11 ►

and more people would be on the non-monogamous model,

00:50:14 ►

if it was something that was inscribed in the culture.

00:50:16 ►

Because now we have all of these cultural artifacts

00:50:18 ►

have been bombarding us on so many levels,

00:50:23 ►

and the social constructs.

00:50:24 ►

It’s like, we don’t really know what we are.

00:50:28 ►

We just don’t know what we are.

00:50:30 ►

Sometimes we don’t even know how to figure that out.

00:50:33 ►

Well, and there was, I took a class in college called The Biology of Human Sex,

00:50:37 ►

and it looked at gay and lesbian relationships as a way of looking at the gender’s biological drive.

00:50:44 ►

So with a male gender,

00:50:45 ►

the drive is to spread seed

00:50:47 ►

because that’s biologically advantageous,

00:50:49 ►

whereas with women,

00:50:50 ►

with a 10-month gestation period,

00:50:52 ►

it doesn’t matter how many people they sleep with,

00:50:54 ►

they need a protector.

00:50:56 ►

So women, if you look at lesbian relationships,

00:50:58 ►

tend to kind of close in together

00:51:00 ►

and gay males tend to sort of be more,

00:51:03 ►

you know, in general.

00:51:04 ►

Yeah, I just, you know, I’m personally cautious about taking anything too quickly from biology

00:51:11 ►

and saying this sets what is actually going to be like the construct for humanity going

00:51:16 ►

forward, because I feel like the nature of consciousness is to overcome even biological

00:51:23 ►

conditioning, you know, to create something that is, you know, better.

00:51:29 ►

And that, to me, is a work in progress.

00:51:32 ►

Absolutely, yeah.

00:51:35 ►

So I’m one who raised my hand for monogamous.

00:51:39 ►

I prefer a monogamous relationship

00:51:41 ►

because I’ve gone through it all.

00:51:43 ►

I’ve tried out so many different kinds

00:51:46 ►

of relationships just to try it on.

00:51:48 ►

It was a monogamous relationship

00:51:50 ►

that made me think,

00:51:51 ►

what am I doing?

00:51:52 ►

Why am I doing this?

00:51:53 ►

This is ridiculous.

00:51:54 ►

We’re not,

00:51:54 ►

this isn’t how we’re meant to be as humans.

00:51:56 ►

And so I opened up to years of exploration

00:52:00 ►

and checking things out

00:52:01 ►

and trying things out

00:52:02 ►

and coming full circle back

00:52:03 ►

to understanding for me,

00:52:06 ►

I value a monogamous relationship with, of course, freedom.

00:52:10 ►

It’s not like I own that person and that person owns me.

00:52:12 ►

I’m still autonomous. He’s still autonomous.

00:52:15 ►

We can make whatever choices we want to make,

00:52:17 ►

but we value our intimacy together

00:52:21 ►

without bringing in or taking out a lot of different energies.

00:52:26 ►

It’s just keeping it kind of like between us. And I’ve come to that through experience,

00:52:31 ►

through, through trying it out and seeing how these different ways of being felt for me.

00:52:36 ►

And then it was a polyamorous relationship with a man who lied, and lied you know it can’t come back to biology as our

00:52:48 ►

friend shared because he i was like you do your thing you’re free i don’t i don’t have anything

00:52:53 ►

to say about it and i felt i felt it you’re with somebody no no i’m not and then it comes out and

00:53:00 ►

then i’m like well what’s the point you there’s people, whether you’re monogamous or polyamorous,

00:53:06 ►

it really comes down to respect and trust

00:53:09 ►

and appreciation and value

00:53:11 ►

and what’s real in the connection.

00:53:14 ►

Yeah, I mean, I think that’s like the hard work

00:53:15 ►

that has to be done

00:53:17 ►

is to reach that level of truthfulness

00:53:20 ►

or truthiness, as Colbert would say.

00:53:23 ►

And most people are just not there yet.

00:53:25 ►

You know, they’re not evolved to the point where, you know, they can,

00:53:28 ►

because you have to, if you’re going to be truthful, you’re going to get shit.

00:53:32 ►

You know, you’re going to sacrifice.

00:53:33 ►

You know, people are, some people are not going to want to be with you in that thing.

00:53:36 ►

You know, you’re going to desire somebody, you’re going to tell them the truth,

00:53:38 ►

and they’re going to be like, eh, you know, I don’t want to deal with that.

00:53:41 ►

You know, but I think if enough people can stand their ground

00:53:45 ►

and be courageous about who they are,

00:53:48 ►

then the whole thing starts to shift in frequency.

00:53:51 ►

I could be wrong.

00:53:53 ►

I have a question about this,

00:53:55 ►

and it might be kind of difficult for me to articulate this

00:53:57 ►

because this is a very confusing topic, but I’m going to try.

00:54:00 ►

Two points.

00:54:02 ►

One being, I think I’ve seen the documentary about that Amazonian tribe,

00:54:06 ►

and I believe that the documentary,

00:54:08 ►

maybe being Western-influenced,

00:54:10 ►

sort of focused in on one male

00:54:12 ►

who refused to participate in the polyamorous activities.

00:54:16 ►

And they said that, number one,

00:54:19 ►

I think it was because he was jealous,

00:54:20 ►

so jealousy might be an issue,

00:54:22 ►

and that’s probably something that we should talk about.

00:54:30 ►

But two, that he became the tribe shaman. And so I was sort of wondering, going back to what you were saying earlier about the distinction between tantra and shamanism, like, I don’t know, what,

00:54:37 ►

what, I guess for me personally, it’s sort of, it’s sort of difficult to negotiate the idea of sexuality vis-a-vis having some sort of spiritual experience

00:54:52 ►

and wondering if the two aren’t diametrically opposed somehow or mutually exclusive.

00:54:57 ►

So I was just wondering if maybe as artists and writers you might be able to talk about that.

00:55:02 ►

I think also there’s a lot of stuff there, which other people can

00:55:06 ►

answer, too. But, I mean, some of the most transcendent experiences that I’ve had have

00:55:11 ►

been sexual, and some of them involve sexuality and psychedelics, you know. I also don’t like

00:55:16 ►

the word spiritual so much anymore, because I feel like there’s, and I heard it in the

00:55:20 ►

last guy’s talk, it creates this artificial dualism between spiritual and material.

00:55:25 ►

And actually, if you think about indigenous cultures,

00:55:28 ►

Alan Watts pointed out

00:55:30 ►

that they were actually much more materialist

00:55:32 ►

than Western culture.

00:55:33 ►

We think of ourselves as being materialist,

00:55:35 ►

but actually what our culture does

00:55:37 ►

is we impose kind of abstract grids over reality,

00:55:40 ►

like models,

00:55:41 ►

and then we make buildings in rows or in streets,

00:55:44 ►

whereas the

00:55:45 ►

indigenous cultures were super attentive to this plant, that rock, that river. So in actuality,

00:55:53 ►

they were more deeply material, and the spiritual and the material could not be separated or

00:55:58 ►

cut apart in that kind of thing. So I think there’s a, so I think there’s a lot of trouble, problems. As soon as we talk about spirituality, we’ve like, we’ve alienated ourselves from something in

00:56:08 ►

a way. Jealousy is obviously a huge thing here. And so, you know, one question is like,

00:56:15 ►

is pain a bad thing? You know, I mean, there’s a really interesting book called Pain, Sex

00:56:20 ►

and Time by this guy, Gerald Hurd. And he looked at the human capacity for,

00:56:28 ►

the kind of sexual appetite of the human species and our capacity for suffering

00:56:30 ►

are completely beyond our needs purely as a species.

00:56:34 ►

And for him, that suggested to him

00:56:36 ►

that there was a kind of extra evolutionary energy

00:56:39 ►

in those aspects of the human nervous system

00:56:42 ►

that could lead to a kind of a psychic evolution.

00:56:47 ►

So, for instance, potentially on a very high level,

00:56:51 ►

like working through jealousy and finding non-attachment from jealousy

00:56:54 ►

could be a very profound consciousness experience to make that shift.

00:57:04 ►

And it’s not going to be an easy thing to do.

00:57:06 ►

It’s a very deeply ingrained

00:57:08 ►

aspect of our psyche.

00:57:13 ►

Well, to sort of bring

00:57:14 ►

tantra and non-monogamy

00:57:16 ►

together a little bit, I’m very new

00:57:18 ►

to tantric practice. One of the things

00:57:20 ►

to me that it seems like it’s

00:57:22 ►

a powerful way to

00:57:24 ►

sort of for souls to come together

00:57:27 ►

and make love as opposed to just an ego-based kind of two individuals. It’s like somehow

00:57:34 ►

you’re getting kind of beyond that self and it’s embodying masculine energy, feminine

00:57:39 ►

energy, kind of in a more general sphere. I have had experience with polyamorous relationships as well.

00:57:46 ►

One of the things that keeps me interested in that

00:57:48 ►

is the fact that it seems like a doorway to

00:57:51 ►

having those soul meetings on a scale

00:57:57 ►

that goes beyond just one partner for the rest of your life or something.

00:58:01 ►

But I kind of wonder how those things might come together

00:58:05 ►

in terms of the sort of spiritual awakening

00:58:08 ►

or as tantric practice maybe becomes more widespread,

00:58:12 ►

I don’t know how that fits in with…

00:58:15 ►

One aspect of traditional tantra, apparently, in the East

00:58:20 ►

is that somebody’s tantric partner

00:58:23 ►

would not be their main relationship partner.

00:58:26 ►

It wasn’t seen as possible generally for those two types of relationships

00:58:30 ►

to be with the same person.

00:58:34 ►

I also got interested, once again, in that Robert Lawler book,

00:58:38 ►

Earth Honoring, which is about a new model for male sexuality.

00:58:41 ►

He talks about that.

00:58:43 ►

It’s about male sexuality, but he talks about there’s, in his perspective, kind of a natural

00:58:50 ►

rhythm in masculine sexuality. So that in your, like, 20s, you know, you desire, like, that

00:58:54 ►

romantic relationship. But then when you get older, maybe you desire what he talks about as

00:58:59 ►

more like a ritualized sexual experiences, which, you know, in other cultures, traditional cultures,

00:59:05 ►

would be satisfied

00:59:06 ►

through temple priestesses

00:59:07 ►

and so on.

00:59:08 ►

So we don’t have that.

00:59:09 ►

So that leads men

00:59:10 ►

to leave their wives.

00:59:12 ►

They’re in search of this.

00:59:13 ►

They don’t even know what it is.

00:59:14 ►

And it’s not just

00:59:15 ►

another relationship.

00:59:16 ►

It’s actually a kind of

00:59:17 ►

sacralized experience

00:59:19 ►

of sexuality

00:59:20 ►

in a kind of ritual context.

00:59:22 ►

I thought it was interesting.

00:59:26 ►

Okay. So I’m feeling,

00:59:28 ►

I’m feeling a thread around consciousness within that

00:59:31 ►

and conscious behavior

00:59:33 ►

and then the relationship of conscious behavior with honesty

00:59:37 ►

and then so consciousness in relation to being honest with others

00:59:41 ►

but also consciousness and being honest with self.

00:59:44 ►

So, and that in the model of creating at the level of community. in relation to being honest with others, but also consciousness and being honest with self.

00:59:48 ►

And that in the model of creating at the level of community.

00:59:52 ►

So in a way, to create a foundation for that type of evolution,

00:59:55 ►

you need partners or allies that are pretty close to you in that way.

01:00:01 ►

So I think that might be part of the reason that we’re still figuring out how to create what would be a new expression of that.

01:00:04 ►

So part of where, in a sense, what I see working or effective about holding to a monogamy in a tantric practice

01:00:11 ►

is the aspect of working with someone and creating a sacred, safe space to work in

01:00:15 ►

where you’re cultivating an awareness of each other and a knowledge of each other on that journey.

01:00:19 ►

And that’s an aspect of evolution and self-evolution because we didn’t start out in a culture where it already existed.

01:00:26 ►

So as we’re creating something,

01:00:28 ►

in a sense, generationally, it might evolve.

01:00:32 ►

But at this point, I feel like we’re creating it right now.

01:00:35 ►

So in that sense of radical honesty

01:00:37 ►

and radical behavior, radical expression,

01:00:41 ►

that feels like this is the field for that creation.

01:00:44 ►

And it’s non-dual.

01:00:45 ►

I think the aspect of becoming non-dual

01:00:48 ►

is a paradoxical hinge point

01:00:51 ►

where we are not separate from each other

01:00:53 ►

and then we’re experiencing that separateness

01:00:55 ►

or we’re not separate from all that is

01:00:58 ►

in that sense.

01:01:03 ►

I just briefly wanted to share a little fantasy that I have.

01:01:08 ►

I came to the Burning Man community shortly after a brief marriage to a man ended,

01:01:13 ►

and it was a period of great self-exploration and expansion,

01:01:18 ►

and I was a bit taken aback when I came into this community

01:01:22 ►

because I found I was being sexually approached by women more than men,

01:01:25 ►

and it precipitated some real deep self-doubts.

01:01:29 ►

I’m strongly identified as a heterosexual, monogamous woman,

01:01:35 ►

but I really felt as if I was not interesting enough for this community.

01:01:40 ►

I was not open-minded enough.

01:01:43 ►

I didn’t have a healthy curiosity, but eventually,

01:01:46 ►

maybe one of the gifts of middle age was accepting, no, I really am a heterosexual, monogamous

01:01:52 ►

woman, and that’s fine. And addressing what we were talking about earlier, in the four

01:01:58 ►

years I’ve been a part of this community, I seem to sense more of a free-to-be-you-and-me

01:02:03 ►

kind of atmosphere.

01:02:04 ►

My mother edited that book, actually.

01:02:06 ►

Right on.

01:02:08 ►

And the fantasy I wanted to share about the age when I was becoming aware of what homosexuality was,

01:02:15 ►

it was introduced to me as the men who wear their earring in whichever ear.

01:02:19 ►

And I’m hoping as we evolve as a tribal community,

01:02:23 ►

we may develop ways to sort of signal who we are and what we want more clearly

01:02:28 ►

so that some of that ambiguity is resolved.

01:02:32 ►

And you can just be who you are,

01:02:34 ►

and maybe others who share similar preferences will be more recognizable to you.

01:02:42 ►

Hi. I’m very grateful that you’re here

01:02:46 ►

and you’re answering these things

01:02:47 ►

but I have a question

01:02:49 ►

when I come out to Burning Man

01:02:52 ►

I bring with me certain things

01:02:54 ►

and I’m looking for a journey

01:02:56 ►

and my particular journey is to

01:02:58 ►

continue to grow with

01:03:00 ►

enlightenment and spirituality

01:03:01 ►

absorb it in me

01:03:03 ►

there was a little conversation earlier.

01:03:05 ►

You’ve asked many good questions,

01:03:06 ►

and one of them talked about bringing alcohol out here.

01:03:11 ►

And I think one of the things I’m interested in doing is to, at night,

01:03:17 ►

have a good time, light myself up, dance,

01:03:19 ►

and have a few sips on a cocktail or something like that.

01:03:23 ►

And I find that the two things from all of my research and understanding

01:03:28 ►

is that it’s very difficult to connect spiritually when you’re connecting with alcohol.

01:03:34 ►

And I have one, and I want to ask.

01:03:36 ►

Which is funny because if you think about it, another name for alcohol is spirits.

01:03:39 ►

Right.

01:03:40 ►

And in a sense, it can take you to certain places, of course.

01:03:44 ►

But one thing that I found and I wanted to say to you is that even if you are going to have that beer or something else like that,

01:03:51 ►

absorb it like all food that you take on the plier or wherever else, and it’s a blessing.

01:03:56 ►

It’s like eating a peach when it’s warm. It’s a gift.

01:04:01 ►

And also the tantric path is like you don’t avoid anything.

01:04:07 ►

You take it all.

01:04:08 ►

And the idea is to use the sensory realm to go through it

01:04:12 ►

so that it doesn’t even sort of haunt you anymore.

01:04:16 ►

And there’s this occultist, Julius Evola, who is kind of weird a little bit.

01:04:22 ►

He’s an Italian baron kind of associated with fascism a little bit.

01:04:25 ►

But he’s still pretty interesting

01:04:26 ►

and a little nasty.

01:04:27 ►

But he talks about,

01:04:28 ►

he has a book on tantra and sexuality.

01:04:30 ►

He talks about how,

01:04:31 ►

you know, for his perspective,

01:04:32 ►

the purpose of tantra

01:04:33 ►

is not to kind of empower

01:04:35 ►

or intensify human nature.

01:04:37 ►

It’s actually to cauterize it,

01:04:39 ►

you know, so that you can actually

01:04:40 ►

go beyond human nature.

01:04:43 ►

Thank you.

01:04:48 ►

Thanks, Daniel, for answering these questions

01:04:50 ►

and for everyone for having this conversation.

01:04:53 ►

My question is related to the idea of evolution,

01:04:57 ►

which I guess I’m taking it as a metaphor in your writing

01:05:01 ►

because essentially the way that I see it

01:05:04 ►

is that evolution in the

01:05:06 ►

natural world is an almost purely random and unplanned phenomenon where there’s a changing

01:05:15 ►

environment and then a sort of random sequence of mutations and then selection.

01:05:21 ►

and then selection.

01:05:26 ►

What I think you’re talking about doing is much more about us consciously planning

01:05:30 ►

where we want to go.

01:05:33 ►

And so, with that said,

01:05:36 ►

I’m curious why the word seems to appeal to you

01:05:40 ►

or why you use that word.

01:05:44 ►

It’s interesting. Yeah, well, I guess, appeal to you or why you use that word?

01:05:46 ►

It’s interesting. Yeah, well, I guess, I mean, some of the theorists

01:05:49 ►

that I used in 2012 use it, like Rudolf Steiner

01:05:53 ►

and Teller de Chardin, basically that there’s a,

01:05:56 ►

you know, Arguelles, that we’ve had this physical evolution

01:06:00 ►

to a certain point, and now that the evolution

01:06:03 ►

has moved from the physical to the psychic realm

01:06:05 ►

and so that’s where evolution is now taking place

01:06:08 ►

and where it was the biosphere

01:06:10 ►

it’s now the newosphere

01:06:12 ►

so that we’re evolving on another level

01:06:17 ►

which is the psychic consciousness level

01:06:19 ►

Has that happened before?

01:06:22 ►

Can we look at historical precedents for such a thing?

01:06:25 ►

I mean, that was the point in the book that was most difficult.

01:06:28 ►

The movement of physical evolution seems to be one of, I guess, punctuated equilibrium.

01:06:33 ►

Like there’s like, you know, development sort of reaches a certain level, kind of plateau.

01:06:38 ►

And then there’s this like jump into a much higher level of complexity and higher level of consciousness and awareness. So Noam Chomsky talked about how you can never,

01:06:46 ►

you can’t see that kind of linear progression

01:06:49 ►

from animal communication to human speech.

01:06:51 ►

It was like this whole new system

01:06:53 ►

suddenly appeared in the brain.

01:06:55 ►

So it had to have been like a sort of leapfrog.

01:06:58 ►

And it seems to me that the way,

01:07:01 ►

my hypothesis when I look at

01:07:03 ►

where we’re at as a species,

01:07:05 ►

is that we’re on the verge of another such quantum leap into a different order,

01:07:12 ►

which may even involve a different mental structure, different physical structures in the brain.

01:07:17 ►

Who knows?

01:07:17 ►

It’s like, who knows how that happens?

01:07:20 ►

I mean, it may be that genetics and consciousness are more linked than we know at this point.

01:07:26 ►

And I’m sorry to hog the mic in this way,

01:07:28 ►

but another question that occurred to me from reading the book was,

01:07:33 ►

was this something that you imagined happening in a few people

01:07:36 ►

and then spreading or happening to a larger number of people more suddenly?

01:07:41 ►

It seems like a big difference between those two things.

01:07:44 ►

Well, I really like this idea of, like,

01:07:46 ►

morphinogenic fields and, you know,

01:07:48 ►

morphic resonance, the Rupert Sheldrake ideas.

01:07:51 ►

You know, so Rupert Sheldrake talks about how, like,

01:07:53 ►

we have this idea that the laws of the universe are laws.

01:07:57 ►

You know, they’re immutable and permanent.

01:07:59 ►

But actually that concept of physical laws

01:08:01 ►

was developed, you know, in the 17th century by science based on their

01:08:07 ►

Christian conditioning, that there was this immutable God in heaven who knew everything.

01:08:12 ►

So Sheldrake posits rather than laws, there might be more like habits or patterns.

01:08:18 ►

So like a crystal forms for the first time, that creates like a new morphinogenic field

01:08:22 ►

for crystals forming.

01:08:24 ►

And then it becomes more and more commonplace when those combination,

01:08:27 ►

that sort of combination appears, crystals form.

01:08:30 ►

And then he talks about how that could also be true for thought forms, you know, or like so.

01:08:34 ►

So, you know, often you’ll see there’s like a same scientific breakthrough will happen,

01:08:38 ►

you know, almost simultaneously in a few places on the planet.

01:08:41 ►

It’s like that morphinogenic field has just opened for new possibility.

01:08:46 ►

And so that might be,

01:08:47 ►

if we’re in this area

01:08:48 ►

where there’s increasing novelty,

01:08:51 ►

increasing creativity,

01:08:53 ►

it may be that new habitual patterns

01:08:56 ►

are being formed,

01:08:58 ►

like new kind of psychic fields of possibility,

01:09:01 ►

which could then become really widespread

01:09:04 ►

really quickly.

01:09:05 ►

Like democracy was an idea that occurred to somebody, you know, or a couple people.

01:09:09 ►

You know, then they figured out how to transmit it, and then it became, you know, a huge phenomenon.

01:09:20 ►

We have time for maybe three or four more comments and all.

01:09:23 ►

We’re going a little over, which is great.

01:09:25 ►

I do have to get the sound crew out in time so they can get ready for tonight,

01:09:29 ►

and I’m part of the sound crew.

01:09:32 ►

But, yeah, we have time for three or four more.

01:09:34 ►

I want everybody to have a chance to talk that hasn’t had a chance yet.

01:09:37 ►

You mentioned that you were moving towards an idea of, was it transparent communication?

01:09:42 ►

Yeah, transparent relating.

01:09:43 ►

Relating, rather than the kind of honesty that might just hurt people.

01:09:48 ►

Say that again?

01:09:48 ►

Rather than, I thought you said,

01:09:50 ►

the kind of honesty that might just hurt people.

01:09:52 ►

And I was just wondering if you could expand on that.

01:09:54 ►

What is the difference?

01:09:56 ►

When is honesty not honesty?

01:10:00 ►

What’s good honesty and what’s bad honesty?

01:10:02 ►

Well, I was talking about transparent relating

01:10:03 ►

compared to monogamy or polyamory

01:10:07 ►

or any gami or ori or whatever

01:10:09 ►

that you know

01:10:10 ►

that might just be

01:10:12 ►

it’s just like giving another way of thinking about it

01:10:14 ►

you know I don’t I can’t

01:10:15 ►

sometimes it helps to kind of have like a language switch

01:10:18 ►

and for me transparent relating is

01:10:20 ►

it’s kind of like what the woman in white was saying

01:10:22 ►

like you know if there was a way to signal

01:10:24 ►

like who you are and how you are

01:10:26 ►

and make it really clear,

01:10:29 ►

rather than it being this kind of…

01:10:32 ►

the kind of mechanisms that we now have

01:10:35 ►

which lead into a lot of deception

01:10:37 ►

and people concealing their own feelings from themselves

01:10:41 ►

and then from others,

01:10:42 ►

and those manifesting as channeled aggression and

01:10:45 ►

so on.

01:10:47 ►

So the more you know yourself and the more

01:10:50 ►

you’re willing to be transparent,

01:10:52 ►

I think the better that you

01:10:54 ►

can do for yourself and others.

01:10:56 ►

Is being transparent

01:10:58 ►

setting parameters of respect

01:10:59 ►

and then not letting on every single

01:11:02 ►

detail?

01:11:03 ►

Being transparent is

01:11:04 ►

as much as possible being willing to just and then not letting on every single detail? Being transparent is, you know,

01:11:06 ►

as much as possible being willing to just be where you are,

01:11:11 ►

you know, about sexuality or relationships,

01:11:14 ►

as we’re discussing.

01:11:17 ►

You know, like, I mean, for a while I was experimenting

01:11:21 ►

in New York disastrously.

01:11:24 ►

Whenever I went on a date with somebody

01:11:26 ►

I’d be like, look, I think you’re awesome

01:11:27 ►

I’d love to hang out

01:11:28 ►

I just really don’t think that I’m monogamous

01:11:31 ►

at least right now

01:11:33 ►

and almost every time the door would slam shut

01:11:36 ►

at that point

01:11:36 ►

because New York still has that kind of rigid

01:11:38 ►

attitude around sexuality

01:11:41 ►

and I’m still glad that I did that

01:11:43 ►

I ultimately began to moderate a little bit, you know, but, but, but, you know, in a way, like, yeah, just

01:11:50 ►

like that, you know, just like, be who be exactly who you are. And you’ll find eventually

01:11:54 ►

you’ll have to find people who are part of your tribe on that level, you know, or you’ll

01:11:59 ►

just be alone and you’ll get used to that.

01:12:08 ►

And then I actually had a date with an astrologer and I hadn’t really talked to her about this stuff.

01:12:11 ►

She wanted to know my birth date and where I was from

01:12:13 ►

and so we sit down for a drink and she’s like,

01:12:16 ►

look, I really like you, but we’re just not going to date.

01:12:18 ►

I did your chart and you were just not monogamous.

01:12:35 ►

Aloha. This is my first burn and I’m so humbled and thankful for all of you being you. And just recently, I was a part of this community and for a few years with all these beautiful people and in Hawaii and they evolved

01:12:46 ►

into this polyamorous group and um my husband and I had explored that separately when we were younger

01:12:55 ►

and um we really loved all these people and they kept putting all this pressure on us to join them and they would tell us that we had some sort

01:13:09 ►

of sexual blocks and insecurities and why couldn’t we get to that and all of these things

01:13:16 ►

that were really, really challenging.

01:13:48 ►

And it brought me to this awareness that for me, and maybe I’m not really educated in tantra, but my concept of my evolution with tantra is getting to a place within myself where I don’t need to have sex with someone that my ecstatic energy in their ecstatic energy in the now are are there and so it’s really beautiful And I try to convey that to them. And I…

01:14:08 ►

Okay, that’s fine.

01:14:13 ►

What?

01:14:13 ►

That’s fine.

01:14:14 ►

Yeah, I…

01:14:15 ►

No, no, no.

01:14:16 ►

I don’t think anybody would disagree.

01:14:18 ►

Like, you know, I mean, you know.

01:14:21 ►

But I guess I’m just a little confused about Tantra and this evolution of Tantra.

01:14:29 ►

And is that like a concept that’s a current paradigm?

01:14:38 ►

Or is this just my reality?

01:14:40 ►

Well, I mean, it could be.

01:14:41 ►

Tantric practice could just be like sitting across from somebody

01:14:45 ►

staring into their eyes with your hand

01:14:47 ►

on their heart or whatever

01:14:49 ►

and just breathing together

01:14:50 ►

it doesn’t have to be sexual

01:14:53 ►

it’s just like it seems that

01:14:55 ►

just as the way shamanism tends

01:14:57 ►

towards the psychedelic experience

01:14:59 ►

our western kind of concept

01:15:02 ►

of tantra would tend towards

01:15:03 ►

an intimate sexual experience.

01:15:06 ►

But I could be wrong.

01:15:08 ►

Okay.

01:15:10 ►

It’s a good thing that the man got burned

01:15:13 ►

because we’ve been turning in circles.

01:15:16 ►

And I think what Jose Agüez is saying

01:15:19 ►

about the end of time,

01:15:24 ►

it’s the end of that time

01:15:25 ►

of just turning in circle

01:15:27 ►

and not knowing what we’re doing

01:15:29 ►

or where we’re going

01:15:30 ►

and running after happiness.

01:15:34 ►

And it’s a shift in consciousness.

01:15:36 ►

So we all use the word consciousness.

01:15:40 ►

And ayahuasca helped me understand

01:15:42 ►

the shift in consciousness.

01:15:45 ►

It’s like, let’s say a person that is blind,

01:15:49 ►

and you describe to him this beautiful scenery, sunset, but he’s blind.

01:15:56 ►

So you can describe and describe and describe.

01:15:59 ►

So a shift in consciousness is like opening this new window,

01:16:07 ►

going to this other dimension.

01:16:09 ►

And we’re almost there. And psychedelic is a way to just access for a short time on that side.

01:16:17 ►

Most of the people here maybe don’t understand.

01:16:20 ►

They’re just, ah, ooh.

01:16:23 ►

But it’s there and it’s real and i did not agree with the first

01:16:30 ►

talk we had with john hannah john hannah is his name because he said no that he didn’t believe

01:16:37 ►

that but i do believe it because i’ve been there i like died in ayahuasca and um and i had that like that epiphany and i contacted these

01:16:48 ►

multi-dimensions and i know they are here now it’s just a shift in consciousness so consciousness is

01:16:56 ►

like if i tell you think about a lemon then you can see the yellow color and the flavor and the

01:17:02 ►

smell and all that and your consciousness is there at that moment

01:17:05 ►

because you’re thinking

01:17:06 ►

about a lemon

01:17:07 ►

but if you can shift

01:17:09 ►

your consciousness

01:17:09 ►

to another dimension

01:17:11 ►

then you can be there also

01:17:13 ►

you have the power

01:17:14 ►

to do it

01:17:15 ►

so that’s what I wanted to say

01:17:17 ►

should we stop?

01:17:23 ►

okay cool

01:17:24 ►

that was fun I hope did everybody enjoy that? that was interesting thank you so much Should we stop? Okay, cool.

01:17:25 ►

That was fun.

01:17:27 ►

Did everybody enjoy that?

01:17:27 ►

That was interesting.

01:17:33 ►

Thank you so much, Daniel, for taking time out of your Burning Man experience to share with us.

01:17:38 ►

So please come to this talk on Friday if you want to, Entheon Village, 3.30.

01:17:41 ►

I think it’s going to be interesting.

01:17:42 ►

Okay, thanks.

01:17:42 ►

Bye.

01:17:47 ►

And you can hear a lot more of Daniel on the Psychedelic Salon podcast, too.

01:17:49 ►

So he’s been with us since the beginning.

01:17:50 ►

Thanks again, Daniel.

01:17:55 ►

You’re listening to the Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.

01:18:01 ►

And that lovely voice you just heard was none other than the famous Black Beauty,

01:18:06 ►

or Bebe as her friends call her.

01:18:09 ►

And you can catch her monthly podcast from Bebe’s Bungalow

01:18:12 ►

at the end of each month on the Cannabis Podcast Network over at dopefiend.co.uk.

01:18:19 ►

And while I’m thinking of it, if you want to meet some people like the ones who participated in the Plyologs,

01:18:24 ►

I’m thinking of it, if you want to meet some people like the ones who participated in the Plyologs, you can do just that and probably a lot more at the upcoming Dope Stock Gathering

01:18:30 ►

in Amsterdam. I’ll put the link to the details along with the notes to this podcast, but

01:18:35 ►

if you go to dopefiend. In the past, you’ve heard me and many of our guests say how we ultimately met most of our friends at conferences.

01:19:08 ►

And while the recent extravaganza in Basel with around 1,500 people there would have been a good connecting point,

01:19:16 ►

the problem was that in addition to your travel expenses, the cost of admission was quite high.

01:19:22 ►

And like most reports I’ve read about the conference,

01:19:29 ►

what they say is that the best feature seemed to be the new friends that were made.

01:19:32 ►

Well, there’s no entrance fee for Dope Stock,

01:19:39 ►

where the entire focus is on having great fun and good conversation with your new best friends.

01:19:43 ►

Even though I’ve never met BB, Dope Fiend, Max Freakout, Lefty, or any of the other podcasters on their network,

01:19:46 ►

I feel as if I’ve been friends with them all of my life.

01:19:49 ►

And my hunch is that anyone who shows up in Amsterdam on the 20th of April this year

01:19:54 ►

is going to wind up forging some lifelong friendships of their own.

01:19:59 ►

Now, it’s a little too far for me to travel myself,

01:20:02 ►

but if any of our fellow salonners can make it to Dope Stock, I know you won’t be disappointed.

01:20:08 ►

Now, getting back to today’s podcast, at the end, Daniel mentioned another talk that he was planning on giving in a couple of days there at Burning Man.

01:20:16 ►

But as it turned out, so I’m told, Daniel’s 3.30 Friday talk really turned into a wing doozy as that massive whiteout that came through just then.

01:20:27 ►

You know, it was on the same day and the same time that blew the top out of our yurt.

01:20:32 ►

And I hear it really did a job on the big dome over in Theon Village where Daniel was speaking.

01:20:38 ►

But since I wasn’t there, you’ll have to ask somebody who was there to give you the details.

01:20:42 ►

But from what I hear, it must

01:20:45 ►

have been really exciting.

01:20:47 ►

So, now do you see what I mean about a wide-ranging discussion?

01:20:51 ►

Considering that this discussion was billed as a pliologue about sex and social control,

01:20:57 ►

Tantra and liberation, and it began with Daniel saying, and I quote, I think there is a lot

01:21:04 ►

of evidence that suggests we’re in this kind of very critical sort of evolutionary window for the human species.

01:21:11 ►

And then an hour later, we ended more or less with a testimonial to the spiritual power of ayahuasca.

01:21:17 ►

And of course, there was also a lot of frank discussion about human sexual relations.

01:21:22 ►

frank discussion about human sexual relations.

01:21:28 ►

But all in all, while it may not be your usual street corner conversation in Middletown, USA,

01:21:32 ►

it’s probably about par for the course in Black Rock City.

01:21:36 ►

Now, one thing I want to be sure that we don’t lose sight of, however,

01:21:40 ►

is a statement one young woman made early in this plialogue when she described herself as an only parent

01:21:44 ►

and that her close friends her tribe

01:21:46 ►

still hadn’t stepped up and offered to become involved in helping her raise her son and i wish

01:21:53 ►

there had been more time to continue that line of thought because i think it goes to the core of

01:21:59 ►

what we’re all dreaming of and longing for here which is some kind of a close community, both in physical locality

01:22:05 ►

and in state of consciousness.

01:22:08 ►

You know, our clan, our tribe, the ones who are always there for us when we need them.

01:22:14 ►

And so I’ve been thinking a lot lately about what we can do about what that young mother

01:22:18 ►

said, and I still haven’t come up with anything more than the fact that the one thing I can do on my own

01:22:25 ►

is to simply be more aware of situations like that among my own circle of friends.

01:22:31 ►

I can still remember that a couple of years after my father died in 1975,

01:22:36 ►

that my mother mentioned that most of their close friends had more or less stopped calling

01:22:41 ►

and stopped dropping by for a visit.

01:22:44 ►

You know, it was a very similar situation to that which occurs when somebody gets divorced.

01:22:49 ►

It seems that for some reason many of the friends choose sides

01:22:53 ►

and drop their relationship with one or the other of the former partners.

01:22:57 ►

You know, there are really a lot of lonely people in the world

01:23:01 ►

and many of them are living in the middle of a family that doesn’t understand their angst, their personal unhappiness.

01:23:08 ►

My guess is that we probably all have friends in that situation, but how often do we really

01:23:14 ►

reach out to them?

01:23:16 ►

And mainly maybe because we’re in a similar state of affairs.

01:23:20 ►

Well, I’m just rambling now, but I think you get my drift.

01:23:23 ►

Well, I’m just rambling now, but I think you get my drift.

01:23:29 ►

Now, there’s one last thing I want to do to sort of close Daniel’s plialogue, and that is to give you a brief idea of one of the conversations that took place

01:23:34 ►

after Daniel finished the formal part of his plialogue.

01:23:39 ►

If you remember, there was a point at which Daniel and Matt Palomary

01:23:43 ►

got into a small discussion

01:23:45 ►

about one aspect of the definition of shamanism.

01:23:49 ►

And in order to keep the pliologue more on track, we had to cut this part of the conversation short.

01:23:55 ►

But afterwards, Matt and Daniel got together and discovered that they really were much closer

01:24:00 ►

to being on the same page than they realized at the time,

01:24:04 ►

and mainly because I more or less cut Mateo off at the time.

01:24:07 ►

So he didn’t have a chance to really explain in more detail what he means when he uses the word shamanism.

01:24:14 ►

And so to give him the opportunity to more fully explain what he meant

01:24:18 ►

and what he and Daniel discussed afterwards,

01:24:21 ►

I asked him to stop by the salon and finish his thought.

01:24:30 ►

So here’s Matt Palomary to add his two cents or two more cents about shamanism.

01:24:37 ►

I’d like to elaborate on the discussion we had about shamanism.

01:24:43 ►

And what I really want to do is elaborate on the definition of shamanism, because I think the point was missed in that exchange that we had.

01:24:47 ►

I want to start by saying that the definition of shamanism as unconditional love

01:24:51 ►

came from Christian Reich, who is quite the expert,

01:24:55 ►

and he got that from talking to shamans,

01:24:57 ►

and I do happen to be pretty much in agreement with it.

01:25:02 ►

When Daniel had mentioned that, he said, we have a problem with how we think about shamanism

01:25:07 ►

because we’re looking for a new age hero, well, I don’t agree with that at all. I believe that’s

01:25:12 ►

really a shallow definition and I think it misses the point completely. I’ve been studying shamanism

01:25:18 ►

for all of my life, very intensely for 35 years. And I’ve studied it from every angle and experienced it from every

01:25:26 ►

angle I can imagine. And the reason I was drawn to shamanism is because it goes back

01:25:31 ►

to the roots. It goes back to the beginning. I was studying shamanism before anybody had

01:25:37 ►

even heard of the New Age. So shamanism has its roots in antiquity. It’s the world’s first religion.

01:25:47 ►

Every religion in the world came from it.

01:25:49 ►

Shamans were the first priests.

01:25:50 ►

They were the first teachers.

01:25:52 ►

They were the first performing artists.

01:25:55 ►

They were the first visionaries.

01:25:57 ►

They were the first healers.

01:25:59 ►

The first doctors.

01:26:01 ►

This goes back to the beginning.

01:26:05 ►

This goes back to cavemen walking out and looking up at the sun and being in awe of creation,

01:26:09 ►

which is, I think, quite reinforced by Graham Hancock’s wonderful book, Supernatural.

01:26:14 ►

I think that really, that doesn’t miss the point.

01:26:17 ►

That makes the point.

01:26:18 ►

So, no, I don’t believe that we’re looking for a New Age hero

01:26:22 ►

and that it’s a whitewash.

01:26:24 ►

I mean,

01:26:25 ►

I suppose some people are, and I suppose maybe a lot of the people that Daniel has come in

01:26:29 ►

contact with may have that viewpoint, but that really does miss the point. There was

01:26:38 ►

also mention of shamans work with dark energies and light spiritual energies. Well, ultimately,

01:26:46 ►

all is energy. From a sh Well, ultimately, all is energy.

01:26:48 ►

From a shamanic perspective, everything is energy and all is spirit, and spirit is energy.

01:26:52 ►

And a shaman, a real shaman, a true shaman,

01:26:54 ►

an accomplished shaman, has to know all of the energies.

01:26:58 ►

You have to experience the light and the darkness

01:27:00 ►

so when you are confronted with the darkness,

01:27:02 ►

you know how to deal with it because you’ve been there.

01:27:04 ►

the darkness so when you are confronted with the darkness you know how to deal with it because you’ve been there what shamans really are are adepts at mastering energy a true shaman is

01:27:12 ►

someone who masters energy and in mastering energy they are on a path to power and the important

01:27:19 ►

thing about power is that there is always a price to pay for power.

01:27:27 ►

So, yeah,

01:27:28 ►

I’ve had dealings with

01:27:30 ►

dark shamans, quote unquote,

01:27:32 ►

in the Amazon. Personal,

01:27:34 ►

face-to-face.

01:27:38 ►

I don’t know if I’d go so far as to call it

01:27:40 ►

a bit of a confrontation,

01:27:42 ►

but not up front.

01:27:47 ►

But, here is the thing if it’s a quote unquote dark shaman

01:27:51 ►

and they’re dealing with dark energies

01:27:53 ►

and trying to kill people

01:27:56 ►

and send poison darts

01:27:57 ►

and all of that stuff

01:27:58 ►

they’re going to pay

01:28:00 ►

so they’re not really fully aware

01:28:04 ►

and people get caught up with a lot of shamans i’ve

01:28:08 ►

worked with shamans uh and done medicine work with shamans from uh primitive tribes and people

01:28:16 ►

go and say oh they’re the shamans and they they they everything they say is right and this and

01:28:21 ►

that what they don’t realize is that these shamans come from a primitive culture.

01:28:26 ►

And a lot of their beliefs are still primitive.

01:28:29 ►

And a lot of them are superstitious and superstitions.

01:28:32 ►

And there’s egos and there’s petty jealousies.

01:28:35 ►

I was very disappointed with some of the petty jealousies that I got caught up in among some of them.

01:28:41 ►

Which is very disappointing because you would think, oh, there’s a shaman, they’re supposed to know all.

01:28:45 ►

Well, no, that’s not the case.

01:28:47 ►

There are people who can learn shamanic techniques.

01:28:50 ►

They can even learn to do some things and manifest power in particular ways

01:28:54 ►

and still not have integrity.

01:28:57 ►

So the key to a real true shaman is integrity

01:29:00 ►

because integrity goes hand in hand with power.

01:29:04 ►

And if you don’t have integrity with power, you are going to pay.

01:29:10 ►

Trust me, I’ve seen it happen.

01:29:12 ►

And Lorenzo has seen it happen with someone that we’ve known who put themselves out as a shaman,

01:29:19 ►

and they didn’t have integrity.

01:29:22 ►

Because it’s very important, if you’re doing true shamanic work, a true shaman,

01:29:26 ►

if somebody comes to them, they’re exposing themselves.

01:29:30 ►

They’re being vulnerable with this person.

01:29:32 ►

And a true shaman needs to respect that vulnerability and have integrity.

01:29:36 ►

And not only respect it, but protect it.

01:29:39 ►

When you work with shamans in the Amazon,

01:29:41 ►

and you work with ones who really know what they’re doing,

01:29:43 ►

and you create a circle, which is a very powerful shamanic form, you basically create an energetic

01:29:50 ►

container where people can work out their demons or their traumas within it in a safe

01:29:56 ►

manner, where then it won’t get hurt and won’t get caught up with some crazy, who knows,

01:30:02 ►

demonic, this kind of entity or whatever the heck, bad,

01:30:05 ►

dark energy that can come in.

01:30:06 ►

You’re protected in that way.

01:30:08 ►

That is true shamanism.

01:30:10 ►

Anyone or anybody who says they are a shaman and they’re not in integrity are not a true

01:30:19 ►

shaman.

01:30:20 ►

I’m sorry.

01:30:21 ►

That’s the way it goes.

01:30:22 ►

And this isn’t even a moralistic standpoint, a moralistic view.

01:30:26 ►

It has to do with power and integrity.

01:30:29 ►

If you’re going to handle power,

01:30:32 ►

if you’re going to have the responsibility

01:30:34 ►

of handling the tremendous power

01:30:36 ►

that is at our disposal as human beings

01:30:39 ►

in becoming cosmic citizens,

01:30:43 ►

we better have our shit together

01:30:44 ►

because it will destroy us.

01:30:47 ►

It’ll take us to places

01:30:48 ►

you don’t even want to begin to think about.

01:30:50 ►

In fact, they’re unimaginably dark places.

01:30:53 ►

So you have to have the integrity

01:30:55 ►

to be responsible

01:30:56 ►

to handle the responsibility of the power

01:30:58 ►

because we’re all becoming creators

01:31:01 ►

if we’re becoming into awareness.

01:31:03 ►

And if you’re going to be a creator,

01:31:05 ►

you have to be prepared to take responsibility for what you create,

01:31:08 ►

which is what most people try to avoid.

01:31:11 ►

So there was another comment about Amazonian shamanism

01:31:16 ►

being the purest form of shamanism.

01:31:19 ►

And I would have to disagree with that also

01:31:21 ►

because shamanism really is truly universal.

01:31:25 ►

Forgive me if I don’t get his name correct but i think it’s maladoma soma he’s an african shaman

01:31:31 ►

uh some really incredible stuff black elk frank fool’s crow american indian shamans

01:31:39 ►

you know there are inuit shamans in the northwest of the United States, these Krakutal shamans.

01:31:49 ►

In every culture, I don’t care where you go, you go back to the roots.

01:31:50 ►

It’s shamanism.

01:31:56 ►

People may get upset, but, you know, Buddha was a shaman.

01:31:58 ►

Jesus Christ was a shaman.

01:32:03 ►

You know, you think about Chris John’s comment about the definition of shamanism, unconditional love.

01:32:06 ►

Take a look at the examples that Jesus Christ and Buddha gave.

01:32:08 ►

And those are only a couple.

01:32:12 ►

I could go on forever going on with examples of people who have brought that into place.

01:32:17 ►

But the important point, and I want to reiterate this, is that shamanism is about mastering energy.

01:32:21 ►

And mastering energy is about cultivating power.

01:32:25 ►

But power not for the sake of power.

01:32:28 ►

Power for the sake of being responsible to do what is right.

01:32:33 ►

Because it all is ultimately backed by love.

01:32:37 ►

And love is what creation is all about.

01:32:40 ►

So that’s really the important thing.

01:32:44 ►

On one level

01:32:45 ►

dark energy, light energy

01:32:47 ►

there’s no difference

01:32:49 ►

there are just different qualities of energy

01:32:52 ►

I know many people who are on the path

01:32:55 ►

and they only want light experiences

01:32:58 ►

and I don’t want to go to the dark

01:32:59 ►

and then they run away

01:33:00 ►

well, they’re missing the point

01:33:01 ►

because you cannot have any light

01:33:05 ►

without the darkness.

01:33:08 ►

And the darkness and the light

01:33:10 ►

are complementary.

01:33:11 ►

And I won’t even go so far

01:33:13 ►

as to say there are two poles.

01:33:15 ►

There are just two ends of a spectrum

01:33:17 ►

that goes on infinitely.

01:33:20 ►

So there are degrees of light

01:33:21 ►

and there are degrees of darkness.

01:33:23 ►

And anybody who gets caught up in

01:33:25 ►

quote unquote dark shamanism

01:33:27 ►

in my humble opinion they’re not a shaman

01:33:30 ►

because they’ve missed the point

01:33:33 ►

because they don’t understand power

01:33:34 ►

because if they truly understood the power and the nature of it

01:33:37 ►

and the tremendous power of power

01:33:40 ►

then they wouldn’t be going down that dark path

01:33:43 ►

because they would have the awareness to know

01:33:45 ►

that there’s going to be a price to pay

01:33:46 ►

and it’s a cliche but

01:33:48 ►

there will be hell to pay, literally

01:33:50 ►

I’ve seen it and I’ve

01:33:53 ►

been close enough to it and been

01:33:55 ►

through enough dark places myself

01:33:56 ►

to know of what I speak

01:33:58 ►

so I’m hoping this

01:34:01 ►

really clears up

01:34:02 ►

truly

01:34:03 ►

what the definition of shamanism is

01:34:06 ►

it’s not

01:34:08 ►

new age hero, well

01:34:09 ►

that’s all, that’s whitewashed

01:34:12 ►

that really doesn’t make it, that misses the point

01:34:14 ►

totally

01:34:15 ►

it’s about becoming responsible

01:34:18 ►

for our power as creators

01:34:20 ►

so we can quit fighting each other

01:34:22 ►

on this planet and killing each other

01:34:24 ►

and doing all this dark egocentric stuff and become fully aware with integrity to become

01:34:32 ►

responsible cosmic citizens so we can go on to become the truly great creators

01:34:37 ►

that’s our our inheritance to become and to be

01:34:41 ►

to become, and to be.

01:34:49 ►

And so now I hope that that’s cleared up a little.

01:34:53 ►

Mainly I wanted to kind of tie up our thoughts about shamanism,

01:34:59 ►

particularly after we listened to Terence McKenna’s take on it in Podcast 132.

01:35:04 ►

But my guess is that this isn’t the last we’ll hear about the subject here in the salon.

01:35:09 ►

Now, let me get to a couple of messages from fellow salonners. The first message I want to comment on is from longtime salonner Rob, who says,

01:35:15 ►

Briefly, after the Brazil experience, I have at last seemed to have found a network of people in the UK

01:35:22 ►

who are like-minded, organized,

01:35:28 ►

and conducting ayahuasca ceremonies here and overseas.

01:35:32 ►

My second meeting with them will be at Glastonbury.

01:35:37 ►

The circle grows, the medicine is powerful, and the synchronicities intensify.

01:35:42 ►

Your good friend Matt Palomary’s advice and knowledge is part of our prep.

01:35:44 ►

You and your family will be in my thoughts.

01:35:45 ►

Thank you so much. Love and healing, Rob. Well, thanks for that, Rob. And since my family includes all of our fellow

01:35:51 ►

salonners here, I guess you’re going to have quite a large group of us spirits along with you on your

01:35:56 ►

next journey. And I’m sure that a great time will be had by us all. There was also this message from Felix who said,

01:36:06 ►

Lorenzo, I was wondering about Dr. Grove’s study.

01:36:08 ►

Is there any way we could just start a fund and have you donate it all at once?

01:36:13 ►

Anyway, maybe I’m being naive and not quite understanding the situation.

01:36:17 ►

It was an interesting format for this podcast, too,

01:36:20 ►

with that little bit of Terrence at the beginning.

01:36:22 ►

I do not agree with him, but I still find it amusing when he so bluntly dismisses yoga.

01:36:28 ►

Yeah, Terence did get a bit dismissive about yoga in that last talk of his,

01:36:33 ►

but on other occasions I’ve heard him give a much more positive view about it.

01:36:38 ►

And if you ever want to hear a psychedelic elder talk about the importance of a good yoga practice,

01:36:42 ►

a psychedelic elder talk about the importance of a good yoga practice,

01:36:44 ►

then take another listen to my

01:36:46 ►

friend Nick Sands’ talk from the

01:36:48 ►

2001 Mind States

01:36:50 ►

Conference. You can hear that talk

01:36:52 ►

in podcast number 37,

01:36:54 ►

Reflections on Imprisonment

01:36:56 ►

and Liberation as Aspects

01:36:58 ►

of Consciousness. I really can’t

01:37:00 ►

think of a more psychedelic person

01:37:02 ►

than Nick, and I also don’t

01:37:04 ►

know anyone more dedicated to yoga.

01:37:06 ►

So your point’s really well taken, Felix.

01:37:09 ►

And as for your suggestion of taking up small donations for Dr. Grobe,

01:37:13 ►

while it’s really a great thought, I’ve been told that the record-keeping required by all of the various bodies

01:37:19 ►

that think they need to regulate these things would soak up most of the funds.

01:37:24 ►

But I’m sure that many

01:37:25 ►

of our fellow salonners would love to send a few dollars to dr grove’s study however right now that

01:37:31 ►

just isn’t practical i’m afraid but thanks for the thought one more email message i want to mention

01:37:37 ►

comes from max who was one of the generous donors i mentioned in the last podcast. Here’s what he had to say. You know, I was only two months into discovering the salon and podcasting

01:37:49 ►

when I actually met you last fall at the CPAC conference in San Diego.

01:37:53 ►

I was the guy with the iPhone with your picture on it.

01:37:56 ►

Yeah, I remember you really well, Max.

01:37:59 ►

In fact, your iPhone was the first one I ever actually got to hold,

01:38:02 ►

and it really blew me away that right there on it

01:38:06 ►

was a picture that I used for these podcasts.

01:38:09 ►

You know, for a little minute there,

01:38:11 ►

I had sort of a psychedelic experience of my own,

01:38:13 ►

and on the natch, as Terrence says.

01:38:16 ►

Max goes on,

01:38:18 ►

One more thing.

01:38:19 ►

Now that I’ve finished most of the show’s archives,

01:38:22 ►

I have a better answer for something you asked.

01:38:25 ►

Back then, you asked me if there was too much McKenna on the show.

01:38:28 ►

So the obvious answer to that is, there’s no such thing as too much McKenna.

01:38:33 ►

At the same time, I’d cast my vote for more of the unusual, obscure speakers once in a while.

01:38:39 ►

Example, an early show with Zoe Seven.

01:38:41 ►

I knew a little bit of his work and sometimes wondered how weird he might be in real life. So hearing him talk was quite amazing. Yes, it helps a lot, Max.

01:38:57 ►

And your comment is actually one of the things that prompted me to play today’s play-a-log

01:39:03 ►

in order to add some more voices to the mix,

01:39:06 ►

even though some of them are anonymous.

01:39:09 ►

And I agree with you about not getting too much of Terrence McKenna.

01:39:13 ►

I’m still amazed at myself for how much I still look forward to hearing one of his talks,

01:39:18 ►

even those I’ve heard before.

01:39:20 ►

And I don’t think it’s because he died so young.

01:39:23 ►

Even when he was alive and still on the speaking circuit

01:39:26 ►

people would travel hundreds of miles just to hear him

01:39:29 ►

he truly was a bard

01:39:31 ►

well I guess that’s about it for today

01:39:34 ►

and as always I want to close by saying that

01:39:37 ►

this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon

01:39:40 ►

are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Like 3.0 license.

01:39:46 ►

And if you have any questions about that, just click the Creative Commons link

01:39:49 ►

at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage at psychedelicsalon.org,

01:39:55 ►

which is also where you’ll find the program notes for these podcasts.

01:39:58 ►

Oh, and one last thing.

01:40:01 ►

I’m going to try to get next week’s podcast out by this coming Sunday morning

01:40:05 ►

because I’ll be leaving on a little trip for the first part of the week.

01:40:08 ►

My wife and I are going to visit Bruce Dahmer and his wife, Galen Brandt,

01:40:12 ►

and do a little brainstorming about some possible ways that maybe we can one day bring some of these plilogues to a neighborhood near you.

01:40:21 ►

So stay connected for more information about that in future podcasts.

01:40:26 ►

But if I don’t make it out with a program

01:40:28 ►

by next Sunday, in the next few days

01:40:30 ►

at least, don’t worry if I’m a

01:40:32 ►

bit late next week. I may

01:40:34 ►

not get these programs out on the same day

01:40:36 ►

each week, like my more

01:40:38 ►

professional podcast friends KMO

01:40:40 ►

and the gang over at dopefiend.co.uk

01:40:42 ►

but I am committed

01:40:44 ►

to getting at least one out for every week of the year

01:40:47 ►

and maybe even a few more for good measure if things go as planned.

01:40:52 ►

Well, enough of my chatter for today.

01:40:55 ►

For now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

01:40:59 ►

Be well, my friends. you

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

134 - Sex and Social Control, Tantra and Liberation

Program Notes §

Previous Episode §

Next Episode §

Similar Episodes §

Transcript §

00:00:00 ► §

00:00:19 ► §

00:00:24 ► §

00:00:26 ► §

00:00:32 ► §

00:00:36 ► §

00:00:40 ► §

00:00:51 ► §

00:01:04 ► §

00:01:08 ► §

00:01:12 ► §

00:01:17 ► §

00:01:21 ► §

00:01:26 ► §

00:01:39 ► §

00:01:45 ► §

00:01:51 ► §

00:01:57 ► §

00:02:06 ► §

00:02:11 ► §

00:02:17 ► §

00:02:21 ► §

00:02:26 ► §

00:02:35 ► §

00:02:41 ► §

00:03:07 ► §

00:03:12 ► §

00:03:18 ► §

00:03:19 ► §

00:03:27 ► §

00:03:32 ► §

00:03:37 ► §

00:03:41 ► §

00:03:49 ► §

00:03:52 ► §

00:03:57 ► §

00:04:03 ► §

00:04:05 ► §

00:04:09 ► §

00:04:14 ► §

00:04:19 ► §

00:04:21 ► §

00:04:29 ► §

00:04:35 ► §

00:04:38 ► §

00:04:44 ► §

00:04:47 ► §

00:04:52 ► §

00:04:56 ► §

00:04:59 ► §

00:05:02 ► §

00:05:02 ► §

00:05:08 ► §

00:05:11 ► §

00:05:16 ► §

00:05:21 ► §

00:05:25 ► §

00:05:31 ► §

00:05:38 ► §

00:05:42 ► §

00:05:45 ► §

00:05:47 ► §

00:05:50 ► §

00:05:52 ► §

00:05:54 ► §

00:05:56 ► §

00:05:58 ► §

00:05:59 ► §

00:06:02 ► §

00:06:03 ► §

00:06:09 ► §

00:06:15 ► §

Program Notes

Previous Episode

Next Episode

Similar Episodes

Transcript

00:00:00 ►

00:00:19 ►

00:00:24 ►

00:00:26 ►

00:00:32 ►

00:00:36 ►

00:00:40 ►

00:00:51 ►

00:01:04 ►

00:01:08 ►

00:01:12 ►

00:01:17 ►

00:01:21 ►

00:01:26 ►

00:01:39 ►

00:01:45 ►

00:01:51 ►

00:01:57 ►

00:02:06 ►

00:02:11 ►

00:02:17 ►

00:02:21 ►

00:02:26 ►

00:02:35 ►

00:02:41 ►

00:03:07 ►

00:03:12 ►

00:03:18 ►

00:03:19 ►

00:03:27 ►

00:03:32 ►

00:03:37 ►

00:03:41 ►

00:03:49 ►

00:03:52 ►

00:03:57 ►

00:04:03 ►

00:04:05 ►

00:04:09 ►

00:04:14 ►

00:04:19 ►

00:04:21 ►

00:04:29 ►

00:04:35 ►

00:04:38 ►

00:04:44 ►

00:04:47 ►

00:04:52 ►

00:04:56 ►

00:04:59 ►

00:05:02 ►

00:05:02 ►

00:05:08 ►

00:05:11 ►

00:05:16 ►

00:05:21 ►

00:05:25 ►

00:05:31 ►

00:05:38 ►

00:05:42 ►

00:05:45 ►

00:05:47 ►

00:05:50 ►

00:05:52 ►

00:05:54 ►

00:05:56 ►

00:05:58 ►

00:05:59 ►

00:06:02 ►

00:06:03 ►

00:06:09 ►

00:06:15 ►

00:06:18 ►

00:06:23 ►

00:06:28 ►