Program Notes
Guest speaker: Dr. Timothy Leary
[NOTE: All quotations are by Dr. Timothy Leary.]
“For as long as I can remember I have been influenced by a role model who has guided me through my navigation of this amazing life. I am a great follower of Socrates.”
“Corrupting the minds of the young is a difficult job, god knows it’s ill-paid, somebody has to do it.”
“I do feel this is a wonderful time for change-agents to be alive.”
“I ended up growing up thinking that everybody was like me, and that is, obviously, a mistake.”
“As soon as you belong to a system where you’re not known individually, and where you don’t know, individually, the other people, you are by definition depersonalizing yourself, a robot cog of the Big Machine.”
“This [1946] was the peak of the industrial age, and the aim of psychology was to help people be ‘adjusted’. Remember? If you were well-adjusted that was it. And the worst thing you could say was someone was maladjusted, which means they were thinking for themselves.
“I see Ram Das two or three times a year. He comes by my house and we split a bottle of wine or a six-pack and have a joint or two.”
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Transcript
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Greetings from cyberdelic space.
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This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
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So, after getting the previous two podcasts out in less than a week apart,
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you maybe thought that I was going to be more efficient at getting these programs out earlier in the week.
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And to tell the truth, I thought so myself.
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But for some reason, I just can’t seem to get going these days.
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Probably because of the heat heat and I don’t do
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too well when it’s hot. At least that’s what I’m telling myself. Actually I was thinking about
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going on a reduced schedule for part of the summer so I can get more work done on my new book but
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so far not much has been accomplished on any front. As my dear departed mother sometimes said, my get up and go has
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got up and went.
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But then three of our fellow
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slaughters have prompted me to
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get back into the saddle again and get
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this podcast out. And they did
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so by sending in three very generous
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donations. Now that
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all of our expenses are covered
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for the next 45 days or so,
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I guess I’d better do my part.
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So a big thank you goes out to Albert S., Nustabox, and my fellow grandfather from the
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UK, Robert O. Thank you guys for helping out with the expenses of keeping these podcasts
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coming everybody’s way almost every week. And this week, as I promised in the last podcast,
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I’m going to play another one of Dr. Timothy Leary’s talks.
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This time I’m going to play one of the talks that he gave nearer to the end of his life.
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Now, I don’t know the exact date of this talk,
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but in it he mentions that he was 71 years old at the time,
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and that would place it sometime late in 1991 or in 1992.
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And one of the things that caught my eye and caused me to select this particular talk is
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that it was given to a group in Orange County, California that goes by the name The Inside
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Edge.
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Now, you may have heard about them.
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In fact, in March of 2001, I gave a presentation there myself.
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And so I have a little idea of the venue, particularly the time of day that these talks are given,
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which is quite early in the morning.
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If memory serves me correctly, they gather about 6.30 a.m., and the talk begins about an hour later.
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And the audience, by the way, is composed of some of the brightest movers and shakers in the L.A. area.
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And so it was a pleasant surprise for me to hear the good Dr. Leary giving his presentation
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in exactly the same laughing, jocular way as we’ve heard him in the past.
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As several of our fellow salonners have pointed out to me,
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it sometimes seems that Tim Leary has maybe ingested something
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before giving one of his talks.
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But this time, due primarily to the early morning hour,
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I seriously doubt if he’d taken any drug other than caffeine,
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which I found to be in copious supply at the Inside Edge morning gatherings.
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No surprise there, huh?
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Now, let’s try to imagine that it’s very early in the morning.
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Dawn is just breaking, yawns are everywhere, and sleep is still in our eyes.
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And then Dr. Timothy Leary begins to speak.
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Well, it’s a pleasure to be here.
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I really do feel quite at home.
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pleasure to be here. I really do feel quite at home as I listen to this group sharing your goals and your experiences and sharing the attitude. I would not call this a down, I thank you for that.
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I feel that we have very much in common.
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I feel that there’s very much we share.
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I’m not sure exactly what I can say this morning that you don’t really know already, although there are little perspectives and facets and twists and new curlicues on the great spiral of evolution
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that keep us entertained.
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People ask me if I have changed in the last 30 years.
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Well, just to keep up with the rapid flow of events,
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you have to run as fast as you can.
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So that the question of change is something
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that’s just part of our place in time.
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One thing has not changed, though, for me,
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and that is my basic posture, attitude, goal, life plan.
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For as long as I can remember,
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I have been influenced by a role model
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that has guided me through my navigation of this amazing life.
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I’m a great follower of Socrates.
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I can remember when I was a young college student
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reading in one of these books of philosophy
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about this group of Greek people
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that would sit around in Athens
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instead of planning invasions of Persia or Rome or whatever,
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they had this kooky belief that the aim of life was to know thyself.
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You know, they swayed him. I’m not sure that’s the correct Greek pronunciation, but I know what the translation
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is. The goal of human life is to find out who you are and where you are going and get
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a little better at this navigational problem. Now, when you think about it that’s a very subversive
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motto
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I mean in this room
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it’s just the bumper sticker of the day
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or the week
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but back then the very notion
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that you had a self
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was about as subversive
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in the Persian Empire
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in the Babylonian Empire
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in the feudal empires
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there was no such concept
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of an individual
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who are you to have the nerve, the audacity,
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the impiety, the heretical presumption
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to think that you have a self
00:06:53 ►
that you could possibly know about?
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You’re a serf, you’re a slave,
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you’re a servant of God or whatever,
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of the king or the sultan.
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So the very notion that there was a self
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to nurture and to help grow and to learn was by definition explosive.
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The idea that you could pass this on to other people can get you a lot of trouble.
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You know, Socrates paid, called the hemlock solution,
00:07:34 ►
for his audacity in urging young people to develop their minds, think for themselves.
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Corrupting the minds of young is a difficult job. God knows it’s ill-paid.
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Somebody has to do it.
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And I have been a faithful practitioner of the Socratic.
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And by the way, as much as I think I oppose the federal government of the United States
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as much as anyone
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and yet on the other hand
00:08:08 ►
I think I share with most of you
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perhaps all of you
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the gratitude that this country
00:08:14 ►
this land of North America
00:08:16 ►
has been a wonderful place
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for those of us who believe
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in the Socratic notions
00:08:20 ►
of individual divinity and so forth
00:08:22 ►
to be alive and growing
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because I could certainly not have practiced my career
00:08:27 ►
as I have in the last 40 years in any other place.
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I would have ended up in Siberia or barbecued like Bruno.
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In spite of the fact that I am extremely critical,
00:08:39 ►
I yield to no one in my criticism of Washington, B.C.
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I do feel this is a wonderful time
00:08:46 ►
for change agents to be alive.
00:08:51 ►
There’s something about Socrates
00:08:52 ►
that I think is worth mentioning.
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Not only did he give us the great bumper sticker,
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which, by the way, implies something else.
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It implies what we might call now inner potential or
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inner divinity. He’s saying if you want to find the greater powers, the higher
00:09:13 ►
authorities, God, no matter what name you want to call her, you start by
00:09:20 ►
looking within and that’s certainly looking within and developing your own mind and your own approach is the way to do it.
00:09:32 ►
And I think that we can’t repeat that slogan over and over again.
00:09:37 ►
I have been shocked, as I’m sure many of you have been in the last few years, to see, particularly after the 60s and 70s, this extraordinary
00:09:45 ►
return to barbaric superstition and fundamentalist religion.
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This notion that there’s one God, and that one God is our God, and of course he’s a male,
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and he happens to be a pretty pissed-off male.
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All the people out there that don’t agree with him are definitely…
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I have been shocked.
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You know, when you think of what happened in the 1960s and 70s,
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now we look back and say, oh, well, it was just another renaissance.
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It’s been happening over and over again.
00:10:32 ►
Time after time, the repression, the totalitarian systems,
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the authoritarian structures get so strong that there’s a, I wouldn’t call it an explosion because that’s too violent.
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There’s a sudden blossoming of humanism, of the ideas of individuality,
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of the ideas of creativity.
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It happened in the Italian Renaissance.
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It happened at certain periods, I think, in early American history.
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And we went through this.
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I have always suffered from two problems, myopia and just plain short-sightedness and narrow vision, I tended up growing up
00:11:13 ►
thinking that everybody was like me.
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And that is, you know, obviously a mistake.
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No matter who you are,
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we tend to believe that everyone’s going to be like you.
00:11:27 ►
If you like to go around and shoot buffalo,
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you think that everyone else wants to shoot buffalo.
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In my case, I thought that everyone would want to devote their lives to
00:11:34 ►
personal freedom and inner potential and sharing,
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you know, you know what I’m thinking about.
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And, you know, in the 60s,
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even the Catholic Church began to change.
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I had my first few years
00:11:53 ►
exposed to Catholic teachings,
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and I thought that was pretty kind of funny,
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you know, the Immaculate Conception.
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I could never figure that one out,
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but I won’t go into that.
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But in the 1960s,
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it’s extraordinary,
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you know,
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the Catholic Church in this country
00:12:14 ►
became a liberal organization.
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Remember the Berrigans
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and the South American Catholic leaders
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and the nuns.
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How about the nuns?
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The Catholic nuns?
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In the 60s and 70s?
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I couldn’t believe it.
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And then now,
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in the 1990s,
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can you believe the Pope?
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I mean,
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by the way,
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I must warn you, it’s my job, but I have to make fun of every organized religion political party.
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That’s my job.
00:12:58 ►
And I’m very ecumenical here and very tolerant
00:13:05 ►
in my intolerance of authority.
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If there’s any organized religion
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or a political party
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I have not been irreverent towards,
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call it to my attention
00:13:18 ►
and I’ll think of something.
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So I’ve made two points about Socrates.
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Number one, of course, it’s not just Socrates.
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Socrates and that group in Athens got it from,
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they got it from the banks of the Ganges,
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they got it from Buddhism, they got it, you know,
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these are the oldest and deepest motives of human life.
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They basically go back, I suppose, to the pagan religions with many gods
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and most of them, of course, feminine gods.
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So that it wasn’t that Socrates invented this, but Socrates kind of organized it.
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And Socrates not only came up with this notion of individuality,
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of inner potential, inner divinity,
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kind of a distrust of authority,
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but also some very interesting mythological, psychological,
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you know, nuts and bolts methods.
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If you think about the Socratic method,
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it was not just the goal, the method was this.
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Socrates never taught, never wrote a book in a room full of authors.
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I know this sounds eccentric.
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But his basic technique was kind of ask questions and make little funny observations designed to get us thinking, to get you thinking.
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He was not giving you the Ten Commandments,
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number one,
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I’m the only God,
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and you just blah, blah, blah,
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and all that.
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I’ve always been amused
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by the Ninth Commandment.
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Thou shalt not covet
00:14:56 ►
thy neighbor’s wife.
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I mean, don’t think about that
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too long, are you?
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Sorry about the husband, I guess.
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I don’t know.
00:15:10 ►
The method that Socrates used was
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get small groups of people together,
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get small groups of people together,
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aimed at, designed at,
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goal for, geared for,
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pursuing the basic questions,
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where are we going,
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how can we get there better, and so forth.
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Small groups of people dealing with the deepest problems
00:15:43 ►
of inner potential
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in a nice comfortable place
00:15:47 ►
he helps to have stimulants around
00:15:51 ►
he used to lie around drinking wine
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apparently it was very powerful wine
00:15:57 ►
or in this case sitting around with stimulants like caffeine
00:16:01 ►
whatever but the idea is there that it’s a small group of people with stimulants like caffeine, whatever.
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But the idea is there that it’s a small group of people.
00:16:10 ►
And, of course, the key to all of this,
00:16:13 ►
these notions of inner potential, inner divinity, know thyself,
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is the notion that you can’t get too involved in
00:16:23 ►
or caught up in or co-opted by a big system.
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As soon as you belong to a system where you’re not known individually
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and where you don’t know individually the other people,
00:16:34 ►
you’re by definition depersonalizing yourself and making yourself a robot cog of the big machine.
00:16:39 ►
And that’s why it’s so intuitively ingenious and natural and effective of this group.
00:16:46 ►
The first thing you do is you introduce everybody.
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You get to know each other.
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And I’m sure if you come to three or four of these meetings,
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you arrive at the position which is the affirmation of our individuality
00:16:57 ►
that we actually recognize each other and like to see each other.
00:17:04 ►
So, goal, know yourself,
00:17:07 ►
methods, small groups,
00:17:09 ►
know leader,
00:17:10 ►
know commandments,
00:17:14 ►
being, in a sense,
00:17:15 ►
is the basic scientific method
00:17:16 ►
of continually exploring.
00:17:18 ►
Another thing,
00:17:19 ►
many different points of view.
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Triton would have his point of view
00:17:23 ►
and Plato would have his point of view.
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Let everybody speak. That’s quantum physics, of view. Plato would have his point of view and Plato would have his point of view. Let everybody speak.
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That’s quantum physics, of course.
00:17:28 ►
You set up a field of interactive elements
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and there’s no one truth.
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The truth is the,
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what’s up there is the interaction,
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the intersection,
00:17:38 ►
the interplay between
00:17:39 ►
the different points of view.
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And who cares if you’re behind her
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because that’s part of the
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she was there before in other words the thing keeps moving around with quick
00:17:52 ►
feedback that you don’t have to wait for six weeks and to take a six weeks
00:17:57 ►
examination or that sort of stuff that you saw immediately the interaction, the bi-play. These techniques, by the way, have guided my life.
00:18:11 ►
I became a graduate student at…
00:18:15 ►
I’m going to go off in a little digression here on my training.
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Not because it gives me
00:18:25 ►
that much narcissistic pleasure
00:18:26 ►
because I think that you’re all
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we’re all in the same business
00:18:28 ►
and you might learn from
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some of the situations
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I’ve been through
00:18:32 ►
by the way
00:18:33 ►
who’s writing the book
00:18:34 ►
on
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disgracefulness
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oh I want to we have got to talk
00:18:53 ►
okay
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you know
00:19:01 ►
when I was
00:19:02 ►
when I was a middle-aged person
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they used to say we middle-aged people used to say,
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well, youth is wasted.
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How old are you?
00:19:09 ►
00:19:10 ►
I’m 74.
00:19:11 ►
74?
00:19:12 ►
I like younger men, though.
00:19:14 ►
Oh, right. It’s only 8.30.
00:19:35 ►
Wait till we get warmed up.
00:19:41 ►
I would say…
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You’re reading me here.
00:19:46 ►
There’s a saying, youth is wasted on the young.
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Because of…
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With our middle-aged knowledge, if we only, you know, like that.
00:19:54 ►
But I believe maybe you’ll…
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You’ll check me out on that.
00:19:58 ►
I think that…
00:19:59 ►
Senility is wasted on the old.
00:20:04 ►
Really.
00:20:06 ►
You agree, yeah.
00:20:08 ►
I mean, they’ve given senility a bad rap.
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There are a lot of upsides to getting older.
00:20:18 ►
It’s true that we have some of the typical psychedelic symptoms
00:20:22 ►
as a short-term memory loss.
00:20:27 ►
Yeah.
00:20:29 ►
I mean, that is very, I mean, that’s wonderful.
00:20:42 ►
See, the point is made here.
00:20:42 ►
I mean, that’s wonderful.
00:20:44 ►
See, the point is made here.
00:20:50 ►
If you understand about computers and computer files,
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you’ll understand the problem here.
00:20:55 ►
I started using a computer about 10 years ago, and I’ve got a file that’s March 1981.
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It’s in April 81.
00:21:00 ►
But I’ve also got files of March 82, 83.
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In other words, I got so many files.
00:21:07 ►
And also, I’ve met so many people.
00:21:09 ►
And also, I’ve met so many interesting people.
00:21:13 ►
That just clogs up the…
00:21:16 ►
It’s just a question of clerical confusion.
00:21:22 ►
And also, you see so many things also I think
00:21:25 ►
the older you get
00:21:27 ►
if you keep
00:21:27 ►
whatever
00:21:28 ►
you know
00:21:28 ►
keep your head
00:21:30 ►
above water
00:21:31 ►
or whatever
00:21:31 ►
you see so many
00:21:33 ►
things
00:21:34 ►
and everything’s
00:21:35 ►
connected to
00:21:36 ►
everything else
00:21:36 ►
right
00:21:37 ►
so
00:21:38 ►
you know
00:21:39 ►
some idea here
00:21:41 ►
and immediately
00:21:41 ►
I’ll see
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it’s hard for me
00:21:43 ►
to write one paragraph
00:21:44 ►
because after every sentence
00:21:46 ►
it can go so many different ways
00:21:48 ►
that’s why we need different types
00:21:50 ►
we need like, boy, look, he’s organizing
00:21:52 ►
all right, all right
00:21:55 ►
en français?
00:21:57 ►
no, you’re French, okay
00:21:58 ►
yeah, all right
00:22:00 ►
very often, for example, I’ll be down in my study,
00:22:06 ►
and I’ll have something very important to have to do in the living room,
00:22:11 ►
and I’ll walk 30 feet to the living room,
00:22:14 ►
and by the time I’ve got there,
00:22:16 ►
I’ve forgotten what I was going for,
00:22:19 ►
but I will have recapitulated the history of the human species
00:22:24 ►
from the amoeba to Dan Quayle, right?
00:22:36 ►
Well, I forget what I was talking about.
00:22:46 ►
I know. Okay, very good.
00:22:48 ►
Okay, yeah.
00:22:48 ►
Your energy, too.
00:22:49 ►
Okay, right.
00:22:50 ►
Listen, we should take this on the road, you know.
00:22:57 ►
I know.
00:23:00 ►
Okay, right.
00:23:04 ►
Oh, I was going to say, yeah.
00:23:07 ►
I went to, in 1946, I became a graduate student in psychology.
00:23:13 ►
And in those days, you young people don’t realize what we went through.
00:23:19 ►
See, this was the peak of the industrial age.
00:23:22 ►
And the aim of psychology was to help people be adjusted.
00:23:30 ►
Remember? And if you were well adjusted, that was it. And the worst thing you could say
00:23:36 ►
was someone was maladjusted, which means they were thinking for themselves.
00:23:48 ►
I remember, I don’t know if you probably,
00:23:50 ►
none of you in this room can remember that,
00:23:53 ►
but there was a personality test called the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory.
00:23:56 ►
And it was 50, 500 or so questions you answered.
00:23:59 ►
Yes, no.
00:24:00 ►
Are your bowel movements tarry and black?
00:24:02 ►
Yes, no.
00:24:03 ►
Do you sometimes think you’re a special agent of God?
00:24:06 ►
Damn right.
00:24:13 ►
Do you sometimes have strange and unusual thoughts?
00:24:19 ►
Yeah, of course, yeah.
00:24:24 ►
Do you sometimes obey rules of authority?
00:24:27 ►
Yeah, yeah, sure.
00:24:28 ►
So I took this test,
00:24:31 ►
and when I got there,
00:24:31 ►
I scored the test myself,
00:24:32 ►
and I looked at it.
00:24:35 ►
Oh, shit.
00:24:37 ►
Because I got the highest scores,
00:24:39 ►
almost the highest score possible,
00:24:40 ►
on something called psychopathic deviate.
00:24:48 ►
Not to mention schizophrenia and femininity was up a little too much too I mean really yeah
00:24:55 ►
so I really hid it and I actually faked it and brought all these things down a
00:25:00 ►
bit as a friend of mine many of you probably know his name but Professor
00:25:04 ►
Frank Barron was one of the great writers on
00:25:07 ►
creativity. An Irishman and we were having some beers one night and I said,
00:25:12 ►
Frank, listen, I don’t know whether I should go on as I feel like a
00:25:16 ►
fraud and a criminal here.
00:25:19 ►
Because I don’t know if I should be allowed to be exposed to other people with the
00:25:24 ►
record I got here.
00:25:25 ►
I pulled out this thing I showed to him.
00:25:27 ►
And he looked at me and said, wimp.
00:25:31 ►
That psychopathic deviant, of course, meant that you thought for yourself and you didn’t always obey, blah, blah.
00:25:38 ►
Anyway, my Ph.D. thesis, looking back on it now, was totally Socratic.
00:25:49 ►
I realized that it was not a good idea to have a doctor treating a patient,
00:25:54 ►
and the patient would come, and the psychologist would diagnose,
00:25:58 ►
and the social worker would analyze, and then a diagnosis would be given,
00:26:02 ►
and the patient would be either hospitalized or put on a couch.
00:26:06 ►
Any set of circumstances and rituals
00:26:10 ►
designed to make you feel impotent
00:26:12 ►
and small and helpless,
00:26:14 ►
it’s this psychiatric process.
00:26:18 ►
So there was something called group.
00:26:22 ►
Group stuff was in the air.
00:26:23 ►
It came actually from British Air Force studies of pilots and crews,
00:26:29 ►
group, group, group, group, group, group, group dynamics.
00:26:31 ►
So I went to the head of the Palo Alto Veterans Hospital and said,
00:26:34 ►
listen, I want to do my PhD thesis on group therapy.
00:26:40 ►
And he looked at me as though I had proposed a thesis on cannibalism.
00:26:48 ►
He said, group therapy?
00:26:50 ►
Why, that is immoral.
00:26:52 ►
It’s illegal.
00:26:53 ►
You can’t have patients treating patients.
00:26:57 ►
Would you do that with surgical patients?
00:27:00 ►
Why, they’ll infect each other with their own diseases.
00:27:04 ►
They’ll corrupt each other with their own diseases. They’ll corrupt each other with their own problems.
00:27:07 ►
The paranoid will get all sorts of new ideas from the obsessive-compulsive.
00:27:17 ►
Anyway, I did do the thesis.
00:27:18 ►
It was done in counseling in a Unitarian church.
00:27:20 ►
The Unitarians were always very helpful in those days, probably still are.
00:27:23 ►
And then we also tried other techniques. One thing that always bothered me, and I might say the
00:27:32 ►
two things that I politically throw out here that I’ve picked over the years, one is that
00:27:41 ►
the cause of a lot of problems that human beings have,
00:27:45 ►
both collectively and individually, is secrecy.
00:27:49 ►
And any time you have secrets, you are in trouble.
00:27:54 ►
I mean, it’s called cover-up, and of course, all politics is secrecy.
00:27:59 ►
And that’s what led to Watergate, that’s what led to the Ransk,
00:28:02 ►
and this and that, not to mention,
00:28:07 ►
at any time in your personal situation,
00:28:10 ►
if you’re keeping secrets,
00:28:12 ►
that erodes.
00:28:13 ►
Obviously, it basically erodes
00:28:15 ►
the relationship you have with other people.
00:28:18 ►
I learned this back in the 60s and 70s
00:28:20 ►
when I was a little unpopular with the FBI
00:28:21 ►
and they would find this strange-looking telephone
00:28:26 ►
man would come to our place and start fixing the telephone.
00:28:35 ►
And I thought about it and I said, good.
00:28:38 ►
I hope the FBI is listening to everything we say.
00:28:40 ►
It’ll be good for them. And I never, although I did five, four and a half years
00:28:47 ►
in prison and two years in exile and two years in parole and blah, blah, blah, I never made
00:28:52 ►
any bones about my crimes. I said that, yes, I like to smoke marijuana now and then. And
00:28:59 ►
my other crime, the real crime was, I never was found possessing marijuana.
00:29:07 ►
It was always someone, in one case it was my wife, in another case it was, well, they planted my car, but in any case.
00:29:14 ►
But the real crime they had me for was escape.
00:29:23 ►
Now, what can be more public than that crime?
00:29:27 ►
When I was being tried, it was kind of hard to prove I hadn’t escaped.
00:29:31 ►
There was a bug check and I wasn’t there.
00:29:35 ►
The point I’m making is that secrecy is…
00:29:39 ►
You know this. I’m sure this… I’m preaching to the choir here, but…
00:29:43 ►
There’s such an enormous self-confidence you have if you have no secrets, nothing to hide, you know. And the second
00:29:52 ►
generalization, I should stop here in a minute, but to throw out is that after many years
00:29:57 ►
of observing the political situation, I’m convinced that the real basic problem of politics and group relations and whatever you, any kind of human relations,
00:30:11 ►
is the oppression of women by men.
00:30:15 ►
Because you get to racism, and that’s terrible, but still, the black woman is, you know, the male female works there. No matter how you get up to the White House,
00:30:27 ►
the old wasp there is George Bush and Barbara,
00:30:30 ►
but who’s carrying the sneakers? Barbara.
00:30:32 ►
So that underlying, and of course,
00:30:37 ►
that is, that’s the,
00:30:40 ►
that’s the, in a way,
00:30:43 ►
the most complicated, on the other hand, it’s the simplest. I way, it’s the most complicated.
00:30:45 ►
On the other hand, it’s the simplest.
00:30:47 ►
I mean, if you want to start practicing politics, let’s go to work on that.
00:30:52 ►
And I’ll throw in a little observation here.
00:30:57 ►
I’m very, you know and I know that things are happening in the world today
00:31:03 ►
that are shocking, scandalous, unbelievable.
00:31:06 ►
The cruelty, the return to superstitious religion,
00:31:10 ►
you know, in Belfast and in Armenia and in Croatia and on and on,
00:31:15 ►
religion, religion, religion, religion, fighting, fighting.
00:31:18 ►
And there are many good things happening.
00:31:20 ►
There is a younger generation which is communicating through electronics
00:31:24 ►
and through music and through electronics and through
00:31:25 ►
music and through dress and through
00:31:27 ►
and there is, in this
00:31:29 ►
newer generation, I call them the new breed,
00:31:31 ►
it’s global, it’s international,
00:31:33 ►
the robes
00:31:35 ►
and there are the suits and the boots
00:31:37 ►
and then the new breed who
00:31:39 ►
they wear exactly what they damn
00:31:41 ►
please, but there’s an attitude
00:31:43 ►
and there’s a lot being said in the paper today about Japan.
00:31:48 ►
I’ve been to Japan five times in the last two and a half years.
00:31:51 ►
And I’m the contributing editor to three underground Japanese youth magazines.
00:32:00 ►
But by underground, these are the slickest, most graphic jammed, hot, you can’t believe,
00:32:07 ►
this is no throwaway paper pulp, black stuff.
00:32:11 ►
So one of the great things that I learned just recently in the last year about Japan,
00:32:19 ►
you know, the problem about the Japanese are too much respect for authority and bowing and all that.
00:32:28 ►
There are two things that happened which are extremely heartening. Ten years ago, the percentage
00:32:35 ►
of Japanese young men, college students who majored in engineering, got on the Mitsubishi
00:32:42 ►
ladder and they went out of that, And they were taught exactly what percentage to bow to each person they dealt with.
00:32:49 ►
Present time, I think it’s about 17% of the British college students are in engineering.
00:32:55 ►
They don’t want to work on Mitsubishi’s farm no more.
00:32:59 ►
They don’t want to climb on that situation.
00:33:01 ►
They want to go into foreign travel.
00:33:03 ►
They want to go into, you know.
00:33:06 ►
What that means.
00:33:13 ►
Obviously, by the way, in the last 10 years, the Japanese industrial empire has multiplied 10 times so that suddenly they think to line up and beg for a job. The companies are coming begging young Japanese students to come and work for them.
00:33:23 ►
Now, that’s a profound
00:33:25 ►
cultural revolution
00:33:27 ►
more important,
00:33:28 ►
I think,
00:33:28 ►
than Marx.
00:33:30 ►
But more important
00:33:31 ►
than that is
00:33:31 ►
a change
00:33:32 ►
in the attitude
00:33:33 ►
of young Japanese women.
00:33:37 ►
Because,
00:33:38 ►
yeah,
00:33:39 ►
you probably know about it,
00:33:40 ►
yeah,
00:33:41 ►
it is thrilling
00:33:41 ►
to go out
00:33:42 ►
and see these young
00:33:43 ►
Japanese women
00:33:44 ►
and they’re
00:33:46 ►
criticized
00:33:47 ►
they’re called
00:33:48 ►
yuppies
00:33:49 ►
because
00:33:50 ►
they want to
00:33:52 ►
dress
00:33:52 ►
they’re very
00:33:53 ►
trendy
00:33:53 ►
they like to
00:33:53 ►
they’re changing
00:33:55 ►
all the time
00:33:55 ►
like that
00:33:56 ►
and basically
00:33:57 ►
they want to
00:33:57 ►
make their own
00:33:58 ►
decisions
00:33:58 ►
and they’re not
00:33:59 ►
going to
00:33:59 ►
go around
00:34:00 ►
in kimonos
00:34:00 ►
bowing and
00:34:02 ►
scraping for
00:34:02 ►
their husband
00:34:03 ►
and again these are
00:34:06 ►
almost genetically historical inevitabilities.
00:34:10 ►
It’s because of the boom in Japanese industry.
00:34:14 ►
They need intelligent people to work for them.
00:34:16 ►
And who do they need?
00:34:17 ►
They need women.
00:34:18 ►
And therefore, they can’t expect the women
00:34:22 ►
to be in kimonos and all that.
00:34:24 ►
So I find these very, two very
00:34:27 ►
encouraging developments. Yeah, that. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. Thanks a lot.
00:35:25 ►
If we can get the roving mic, we’ll have some questions and answers.
00:35:29 ►
Yeah.
00:35:30 ►
Hi.
00:35:35 ►
Do you keep in touch with your buddy Ram Dass who’s going to be talking close by here
00:35:38 ►
on Judaism and spirituality coming up in a few weeks?
00:35:41 ►
You still hear that last bit?
00:35:42 ►
Yeah.
00:35:42 ►
What was that last thing you said?
00:35:44 ►
I know about Ram Dass. Oh, he’s going to be talking in a few weeks. You still hear that last thing? Yeah. What was that last thing you said? I know about Ram Dass,
00:35:45 ►
but then what?
00:35:45 ►
Oh, he’s going to be talking
00:35:46 ►
in a few weeks
00:35:47 ►
on Judaism and spirituality.
00:35:49 ►
Where?
00:35:50 ►
Up at the University of Judaism
00:35:52 ►
on Mulholland Drive.
00:35:53 ►
Oh, good.
00:35:54 ►
On a Sunday.
00:35:55 ►
Baba Ram Dass Richard
00:35:56 ►
is going to be speaking
00:35:57 ►
at the University of Judaism.
00:35:58 ►
I know where that is,
00:35:59 ►
up at Mulholland Drive.
00:36:00 ►
Yeah.
00:36:01 ►
To answer your question,
00:36:04 ►
I see Ram Dass two or three times a year.
00:36:07 ►
He comes by my house
00:36:09 ►
and we have a split bottle of wine
00:36:12 ►
or a six-pack and have a joint or two.
00:36:28 ►
By the way, like it or not, it’s our duty.
00:36:37 ►
I am extremely proud of him.
00:36:41 ►
We went in many different directions because, as we all are, we’re very different people.
00:36:45 ►
I’m a troublemaker, by definition.
00:36:46 ►
I just want to get people like that.
00:36:49 ►
And Richard Ram Dass is a he’s a very
00:36:51 ►
he makes for peace
00:36:53 ►
and he just can
00:36:54 ►
he exudes a wonderful sense of
00:36:58 ►
warmth, intelligence
00:37:00 ►
warmth,
00:37:01 ►
with an incredibly amusing
00:37:03 ►
Jewish sense of humor.
00:37:06 ►
He calls himself now a Hin-Jew and he’s devoted as you know to
00:37:15 ►
programs of compassion and healing and helping with the blind and with prisons
00:37:20 ►
and with AIDS and I sometimes say you’re going to run out of diseases,
00:37:28 ►
but he’s doing well, and I certainly urge anyone who has never been in his presence or even have
00:37:32 ►
to go to the University of Judaism.
00:37:35 ►
You’ll get a buzz.
00:37:41 ►
Dr. Leary, I wanted to first say thank you to you that I have been following your career
00:37:46 ►
and your thoughts for 25 years, and thank you for saying whatever you’ve said all those years, first of all.
00:37:53 ►
Thank you.
00:37:54 ►
Why do you think that women have let themselves be kept down?
00:37:59 ►
My example is that most women wear very pointy shoes.
00:38:03 ►
As a person who helps people change
00:38:05 ►
their feet, people come to me with crippled feet and I say, stop wearing high heels. They
00:38:11 ►
won’t.
00:38:12 ►
Dr. That’s the foot binding problem.
00:38:14 ►
Dr. Why do we still do this?
00:38:16 ►
Dr. Well, you and I know why. Because in the early cave days, the men were tougher
00:38:21 ►
and stronger and beat the shit out of them. That’s why. And it still comes down to that.
00:38:26 ►
Those two cases,
00:38:27 ►
the Kennedy case
00:38:28 ►
and the Hill case,
00:38:30 ►
showed us
00:38:30 ►
that a male
00:38:32 ►
who is either socially superior
00:38:34 ►
to the woman
00:38:35 ►
or physically superior
00:38:37 ►
late night,
00:38:38 ►
we’re going to tackle whom
00:38:39 ►
on the lawn,
00:38:42 ►
it’s his word against hers.
00:38:44 ►
And it’s social power and physical power.
00:38:49 ►
How about vanity on the part of the woman?
00:38:53 ►
Vanity on the part of the woman? Well, I think it’s a pretty good thing. What about it?
00:39:03 ►
I don’t know what you mean, but…
00:39:04 ►
In regards to the, but… Huh?
00:39:08 ►
Oh, that vanity.
00:39:11 ►
Oh, yeah.
00:39:14 ►
Well, we can’t, obviously.
00:39:15 ►
We’re going to get in here.
00:39:16 ►
Basically, I belong to the…
00:39:19 ►
Yeah, I see no reason why
00:39:21 ►
women shouldn’t dress up
00:39:23 ►
and bootjangles, bangles,
00:39:25 ►
God knows anything, you can make yourself feel better, do it.
00:39:28 ►
But I also feel the same about men, too.
00:39:33 ►
If you’ve got a great body and you want to strip down a little bikini,
00:39:38 ►
go for it, Joe.
00:39:40 ►
Or Josie, I mean, consenting adults, anyway, yes.
00:39:46 ►
Dr. Lurie, thank you very much today.
00:39:48 ►
It was wonderful.
00:39:49 ►
I’d like to ask you,
00:39:50 ►
if you had it all to do over again,
00:39:52 ►
what would you do more of?
00:39:58 ►
I certainly would have fucked more. I mean, made delicate, powerful, sensual, erotic love more.
00:40:30 ►
Dr. Leary, you spoke very critically against religions, which I tend to agree with.
00:40:30 ►
Organized religions.
00:40:31 ►
Organized religions.
00:40:37 ►
However, there’s one religion called the Baha’i faith, and I think they have a more enlightened approach. And I’d like your commentary on that particular group.
00:40:41 ►
Well, the fact that they never tried to proselytize me or push me around i’m in favor
00:40:45 ►
of them already this is baha’i everything i’ve heard about that uh it makes me feel uh
00:40:53 ►
yes i’ve never heard any example of them persecuted they’ve been persecuted right yes so yeah
00:40:58 ►
um and what do we mean by words like religion i remember i go to a lot of these new age
00:41:03 ►
conferences which are interesting.
00:41:07 ►
It’s there, you get people coming together,
00:41:10 ►
you know, the different things they’re selling, and it’s private enterprise in the best sense of the word,
00:41:14 ►
and massages and different stuff.
00:41:16 ►
And I was being interviewed by a television reporter,
00:41:19 ►
and he says, well, do you call this religion?
00:41:23 ►
I said, well, I don’t know, but you know,
00:41:24 ►
is that spiritual?
00:41:25 ►
And he said, it’s so disorganized.
00:41:29 ►
And I said, yeah.
00:41:33 ►
Yeah.
00:41:35 ►
The idea of organized religion,
00:41:37 ►
a bunch of men somehow get together
00:41:39 ►
and decide they’re going to legislate
00:41:40 ►
a 15 billion year evolutionary process.
00:41:43 ►
Anyway.
00:41:45 ►
Yes.
00:41:45 ►
Hi, Timothy.
00:41:46 ►
Oh, I’m going to ask the psychedelic question.
00:41:50 ►
You know, after all these years
00:41:52 ►
and all this experience,
00:41:53 ►
there, I mean, beyond the veil,
00:41:56 ►
there’s a world out there,
00:41:58 ►
psychedelic world,
00:41:59 ►
ayahuasca, mushrooms, acid, you name it.
00:42:03 ►
Question is, after all your exploration
00:42:06 ►
and your wisdom
00:42:07 ►
with reference to it
00:42:08 ►
could you make some comment
00:42:09 ►
about
00:42:09 ►
what’s really
00:42:11 ►
behind that veil
00:42:12 ►
what is it
00:42:14 ►
out there
00:42:15 ►
because
00:42:15 ►
it just seems
00:42:16 ►
so real
00:42:18 ►
so powerful
00:42:19 ►
so something
00:42:21 ►
what is it
00:42:22 ►
that’s behind that veil
00:42:23 ►
well of course
00:42:25 ►
it’s not just out there
00:42:26 ►
it’s in there
00:42:26 ►
but we won’t
00:42:27 ►
you know we agree on that
00:42:29 ►
yeah
00:42:29 ►
yeah
00:42:30 ►
well I should have mentioned this
00:42:34 ►
I forgot it
00:42:35 ►
but
00:42:37 ►
I should write it down right
00:42:42 ►
with my zip code and phone number I should write it down, right?
00:42:46 ►
With my zip code and phone number.
00:42:50 ►
Credit card, too, yeah.
00:42:53 ►
The brain.
00:42:56 ►
The 21st century, I think, is going to be the century of the brain.
00:42:58 ►
The brain is the taboo organ.
00:43:04 ►
We simply have been, for many reasons, unable to understand the brain. And basically the people that teach and educate
00:43:07 ►
don’t want us to understand the power of the brain. The brain mottos 100 billion neurons,
00:43:12 ►
and each neuron has the processing capacity of a big computer. Those are all carrying
00:43:16 ►
around behind our foreheads more information, wisdom, engineering possibilities than in
00:43:22 ►
all of the universities and computers in the world.
00:43:26 ►
And the wonderful thing about this concept of the brain is it’s totally egalitarian.
00:43:33 ►
In other words, the dying child in Calcutta, the little kid in Africa,
00:43:37 ►
or the deprived spoiled kid in Beverly Hills,
00:43:44 ►
they’ve all got the same brain that Einstein had
00:43:47 ►
the same equipment
00:43:48 ►
it’s all in the software and the programming
00:43:50 ►
and we all know about that
00:43:52 ►
this is such a shockingly depressing thought
00:43:56 ►
on the one hand
00:43:57 ►
and so optimistic on the other hand
00:43:59 ►
now there are two
00:44:01 ►
I have spent the last 20 or 30 years or more studying certain aspects of the brain.
00:44:10 ►
I find it useful to use—it’s a corny division and it’s anatomically not correct—but the
00:44:17 ►
notion of left brain and right brain.
00:44:19 ►
Of course, the left brain is not really the whole left brain.
00:44:23 ►
The left brain using—and also I feel this, I think I’ve implied it—you can’t really
00:44:27 ►
understand the brain unless you understand something about how computers store information,
00:44:32 ►
file information, or format files, open files, how you get trapped in word processing, fixing
00:44:36 ►
the can’t-get-out, you know.
00:44:38 ►
So there’s a lot to learn about mental processing and left brain activities, if you understand
00:44:45 ►
something about computing.
00:44:51 ►
The left brain, we are told, has to do with linear thinking, ordinal stuff, Euclidean,
00:45:01 ►
Newtonian.
00:45:02 ►
In terms of Marsh-McMillan, it’s figure as opposed to ground.
00:45:06 ►
You pull up all this jumble in this room.
00:45:08 ►
We pick out one thing, the microphone, and that
00:45:09 ►
becomes the figure. That’s the left
00:45:12 ►
brain. The left brain, by the way, is
00:45:13 ►
probably mainly localized
00:45:16 ►
in the eyeball. So much goes
00:45:18 ►
on in the eyeball.
00:45:20 ►
Really, the DOS systems,
00:45:22 ►
the CPUs, a lot
00:45:24 ►
of them are in the eyes.
00:45:25 ►
The decisions are made in your eyeballs.
00:45:27 ►
It’s like, what’s going to get in the left brain,
00:45:29 ►
what’s going to be district carded, and so forth.
00:45:31 ►
The very notion, you see, of illumination,
00:45:35 ►
vision, introspection, perception.
00:45:38 ►
I mean, all the metaphors have been there
00:45:40 ►
for thousands of years glorifying the power of the eye.
00:45:44 ►
I’m talking about your question, I think, about what glorifying the power of the eye. I’m talking about your
00:45:45 ►
question, I think, about what’s in the inside of the veil. My research for years before
00:45:52 ►
I got into psychedelics was an attempt to dimensionalize and to get better left brain
00:45:58 ►
functioning. Because we categorize and use words instead of dimensionalizing. Anyway,
00:46:02 ►
so there’s the left brain.
00:46:08 ►
And what’s called the right brain is where there’s no figure,
00:46:09 ►
there’s no order,
00:46:10 ►
there’s no one, two, three,
00:46:12 ►
there’s no ABC,
00:46:14 ►
there’s no Euclidean,
00:46:15 ►
it’s all a jumble,
00:46:16 ►
it’s a mismatch of
00:46:17 ►
a hundred billion
00:46:18 ►
multimedia graphic programs
00:46:21 ►
going brrrr,
00:46:21 ►
and the walls breathe too,
00:46:24 ►
you know what I’m talking about
00:46:25 ►
now for thousands of years
00:46:32 ►
people have known
00:46:33 ►
that there is this inner thing
00:46:34 ►
there’s a veil
00:46:35 ►
Huxley talked about
00:46:36 ►
the drawers of perception
00:46:36 ►
goes back to Blake
00:46:37 ►
they’ve known that
00:46:38 ►
for the Hindu
00:46:40 ►
and the Buddhist
00:46:41 ►
they all said
00:46:42 ►
yes there’s a whole thing within
00:46:43 ►
you can get it
00:46:43 ►
meditation
00:46:44 ►
and Tibetan book of the dead yes we now said, yes, there’s a whole thing within, you can get it, meditation and Tibetan Book of the Dead, yes.
00:46:46 ►
We now call that right brain.
00:46:48 ►
It’s immersive stuff.
00:46:50 ►
Starting 1960,
00:46:52 ►
I’ve been involved in
00:46:53 ►
right brain research,
00:46:54 ►
because that’s what psych…
00:46:55 ►
See, there are two kinds of drugs.
00:46:57 ►
There are Republican drugs
00:46:58 ►
and Democrat drugs.
00:47:02 ►
Republican drugs are
00:47:03 ►
left brain drugs.
00:47:04 ►
They get you
00:47:05 ►
order
00:47:06 ►
one two three
00:47:07 ►
number one
00:47:08 ►
if you want to
00:47:09 ►
start a war
00:47:10 ►
or loot and rape
00:47:11 ►
a savings loans
00:47:12 ►
situation
00:47:13 ►
definitely you don’t
00:47:14 ►
want to have
00:47:14 ►
right brain drugs
00:47:15 ►
because you
00:47:15 ►
can’t confuse
00:47:16 ►
the stockholders
00:47:17 ►
from the
00:47:18 ►
like that
00:47:19 ►
so
00:47:22 ►
by the way
00:47:23 ►
I don’t mean that
00:47:23 ►
there are a lot of
00:47:24 ►
wonderful Republicans out there.
00:47:25 ►
I know that.
00:47:28 ►
So, to answer your question,
00:47:32 ►
what you’re talking about is right brain immersive experience
00:47:36 ►
where suddenly there’s no figure in ground.
00:47:40 ►
The microphone suddenly merges into a sea of faces
00:47:43 ►
and the whole thing is moving and being inundated.
00:47:46 ►
That’s right brain stuff.
00:47:48 ►
And I’m trying to give you an updated scientific answer to your question.
00:47:54 ►
I think there’s going to be a breakthrough in our understanding of neurological functioning.
00:47:58 ►
I’m writing a book now called The Manual for the Care and Operation of the Human Brain.
00:48:05 ►
Want to help me on that?
00:48:06 ►
okay chapter in our book, huh?
00:48:11 ►
okay
00:48:12 ►
I think
00:48:13 ►
one more question
00:48:15 ►
okay
00:48:15 ►
we have one
00:48:20 ►
it’s time to go, I know, isn’t it?
00:48:22 ►
We have one. It’s time to go, I know, isn’t it?
00:48:32 ►
It’s interesting. I didn’t know you did most of your research on right brain,
00:48:36 ►
but I was going to ask you, why do I always feel better when I feel like I’m in my right brain?
00:48:39 ►
As opposed to my left brain.
00:48:45 ►
I mean, when I’m in an imaginative, creative state and I’m just off in total imagination land creating,
00:48:47 ►
why do I feel the best?
00:48:54 ►
Well, see, it’s the left brain that focuses on trouble.
00:48:57 ►
If you’re out there floating around in the jungle and here comes an unfriendly lion,
00:49:01 ►
the lion is kind of camouflaged and part of the whole thing,
00:49:04 ►
but you better
00:49:05 ►
focus on that lion, or that salesperson, or that… You’ve got to focus. So all the worry,
00:49:13 ►
all the concern, all the thought, most of the trouble comes from the left brain. In
00:49:19 ►
the 1950s, something wonderful happened. They developed left-brain tranquilizing drugs.
00:49:25 ►
See Valium and Miltown and all that stuff.
00:49:27 ►
Those are left-brain drugs that quiet down the left brain.
00:49:32 ►
You know, I’ve got all these troubles.
00:49:33 ►
I’ve got a lion here and a tiger there, and there’s my boss there, and there’s the banker
00:49:36 ►
there, and all that stuff.
00:49:38 ►
Take a Valium.
00:49:39 ►
Of course, the extreme of that are the narcotics where you get so far that you don’t even care anymore at all.
00:49:50 ►
That’s all to keep the left brain.
00:49:52 ►
Heroin is a device to quiet down the left brain.
00:49:58 ►
And, matter of fact, indeed, opium can kind of sweep you into, they say, right brain stuff.
00:50:03 ►
But basically, heroin and downers
00:50:05 ►
just quiet down
00:50:07 ►
the busy
00:50:07 ►
Richard Alpert
00:50:08 ►
has said it many times
00:50:09 ►
he said
00:50:10 ►
my mind is a crazed
00:50:11 ►
drunken monkey
00:50:12 ►
I want to quiet down
00:50:13 ►
with meditation
00:50:13 ►
so
00:50:20 ►
you feel better
00:50:24 ►
if you can quiet down your left brain you can do it with
00:50:27 ►
tranquilizers or downers or if you take right brain substances but how many of
00:50:36 ►
you know Terence McKenna huh he’s a shame and wonderful yeah he I recommend
00:50:41 ►
him yeah he’s written about right brainbrained vegetables. There’s a whole…
00:50:45 ►
When I talk to you about democratic drugs,
00:50:47 ►
I’m talking about right-brained drugs.
00:50:49 ►
You know, the Democrats are simply too wimpish,
00:50:52 ►
and they see everything,
00:50:53 ►
they love everybody and all that.
00:50:57 ►
You feel better with right-brained,
00:51:00 ►
because, again, the figure disappears,
00:51:02 ►
and everything is kind of a wonderful, immersive,
00:51:05 ►
all is one,
00:51:07 ►
except something can jump at you,
00:51:08 ►
and I can see this microphone is suddenly,
00:51:11 ►
you know, the muzzle of a gun.
00:51:15 ►
The point is that you’re in danger with right brain
00:51:18 ►
of having your left brain full in,
00:51:20 ►
but definitely,
00:51:21 ►
the aim, of course,
00:51:23 ►
is neither left brain versus right brain,
00:51:26 ►
be able to move any
00:51:26 ►
any
00:51:27 ►
any
00:51:27 ►
part of the brain
00:51:29 ►
you want to
00:51:29 ►
people ask me
00:51:31 ►
what’s your zodiac sign
00:51:32 ►
I say
00:51:32 ►
any fucking sign
00:51:33 ►
I want to be
00:51:34 ►
thank you
00:51:34 ►
good night You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,
00:51:52 ►
where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
00:51:58 ►
Wasn’t it interesting just now to hear Dr. Leary sometime around 1991 or 1992
00:52:05 ►
talking about the exact same thing that Aldous Huxley warned about in 1962,
00:52:12 ►
namely getting our population sedated to the point of not noticing
00:52:16 ►
or not complaining about our condition of servitude.
00:52:20 ►
So you see, the warnings have been there all along,
00:52:23 ►
but the voices of these prophets were drowned out by the corporate media.
00:52:28 ►
Fortunately, we now have the net and things hopefully are beginning to change.
00:52:33 ►
And the reason things are changing, my dear friend, is because of you.
00:52:38 ►
I really don’t think that you realize what a unique person you are.
00:52:43 ►
Every day I see people out and about who have earphones stuck in their ears,
00:52:48 ►
and my guess is that most of them are listening to music.
00:52:51 ►
And I do that myself, so I’m not putting down on listening to music.
00:52:55 ►
In fact, I think it’s even more important to listen to music than it is to listen to this or any other podcast.
00:53:02 ►
I don’t know about you, but without music in my life,
00:53:06 ►
I doubt if I’d made it this far.
00:53:09 ►
And yet, right now, you and I aren’t listening to music.
00:53:12 ►
We’ve just been listening to an ex-Harvard PhD
00:53:15 ►
talk about consciousness expansion and the evolution of human societies.
00:53:21 ►
Now, what’s wrong with us?
00:53:22 ►
Why aren’t we listening to something else right now? Well,
00:53:26 ►
the only answer I can come up with is that because you and I are a little different in how we think
00:53:32 ►
about life. Sure, we still enjoy all the joys and pleasures that our fellow humans do, but for some
00:53:40 ►
reason we have this vague feeling of discontent that causes us to push the envelope of consciousness just a little further.
00:53:48 ►
Something in us just won’t let us rest with the situation as it now is.
00:53:54 ►
You know the situation I’m talking about.
00:53:56 ►
The global population explosion, lack of resources, living unsustainably, wars.
00:54:02 ►
Let’s face it, the world’s a mess right now,
00:54:05 ►
and on the face of it, there doesn’t seem to be much that a single individual can do about it.
00:54:11 ►
And yet, here we are, thinking and talking about how we got into this pickle
00:54:15 ►
and how we’re going to work our way out.
00:54:18 ►
Maybe we’ll never do anything more than talk to our friends about these issues,
00:54:22 ►
but at least we’re aware of what’s going on, and at least we’re talking and thinking about the human predicament right
00:54:29 ►
now.
00:54:30 ►
It may not seem like much, but in my humble opinion, it certainly does set you apart from
00:54:35 ►
the crowd, and I’m honored to be here in the salon with you and all of our fellow salonners,
00:54:41 ►
evolutionaries who are manning the front lines of consciousness.
00:54:44 ►
our fellow salonners, evolutionaries who are manning the front lines of consciousness.
00:54:52 ►
Or maybe we just like to alter our consciousness every once in a while with a little brain candy like the talk we just heard.
00:54:54 ►
Who knows?
00:54:56 ►
Well, that’s enough philosophizing for now.
00:54:59 ►
Let’s see what some of our fellow salonners are saying.
00:55:02 ►
One note comes from Chris, whose email represents the sentiment
00:55:06 ►
and several others I’ve also received recently.
00:55:09 ►
And here’s part of what Chris had to say.
00:55:12 ►
I’ve found the path of using psychedelics
00:55:15 ►
for my own personal use quite a difficult path,
00:55:18 ►
even when I was living in the supposed
00:55:20 ►
heart of free expression in Australia,
00:55:23 ►
northern New South Wales.
00:55:24 ►
So having your podcast to listen to over the years supposed heart of free expression in Australia, northern New South Wales.
00:55:30 ►
So having your podcast to listen to over the years has kept my hunches about psychedelics’ usefulness,
00:55:37 ►
their ability to fundamentally touch core, and the way they reset my internal compass back to the me-you source.
00:55:44 ►
Chris, I might add, has been with us here in the salon from almost the very first podcast. And that fact alone tells me that I’m doing something right to keep you coming back for 145 programs.
00:55:51 ►
Just thinking about how loyal our fellow salonners are has raised my energy level significantly.
00:55:58 ►
Thank you all, not just for being here today, but for coming back every week.
00:56:03 ►
It’s good to have you here.
00:56:03 ►
for being here today, but for coming back every week.
00:56:04 ►
It’s good to have you here.
00:56:09 ►
And another great place that you’re going to find some of our fellow salonners is over at the forums at thegrowreport.com.
00:56:12 ►
Besides the Psychedelic Salon Forum,
00:56:15 ►
that is where you’re going to also find over 30 other forums,
00:56:19 ►
including several for travel in various places around the world.
00:56:23 ►
On the Salon Forum over there, there are now over 100 threads
00:56:26 ►
with a lot of very well thought out postings to them.
00:56:30 ►
I was going to mention a few of the topics,
00:56:32 ►
but every time I’ve gone there to make a few notes,
00:56:35 ►
I wind up spending several hours lurking around many of the forums
00:56:38 ►
and participating every once in a while,
00:56:41 ►
but mainly just reading all of the wonderful comments people are making
00:56:44 ►
about some of our favorite topics. So if you haven’t already been there, Thank you. a thread asking if anybody else lived in or near the Chicago area. And as a result of exchanging a few comments in that thread,
00:57:08 ►
we realized that we were both born in the same hospital,
00:57:12 ►
but quite a few years apart is my guess.
00:57:15 ►
Anyway, if you don’t have a little clan of your own to meet with nearby,
00:57:19 ►
give the forums a shot,
00:57:21 ►
or try the Saturday afternoon Skype chat with our friends over at dopefiend.co.uk.
00:57:27 ►
Who knows, you might meet your next best friend that way.
00:57:32 ►
Well, I’d better cut this off for now and post this podcast before I find another reason to procrastinate.
00:57:37 ►
But it was really good being with you again today.
00:57:40 ►
And since we heard Dr. Leary recommend Terrence McKenna in today’s podcast,
00:57:49 ►
I think that we should hear from the good bard himself next week.
00:57:54 ►
So I look forward to being with you then for a little more brain candy from dear Terrence.
00:58:07 ►
Until then, I’ll close by saying that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are available for your use under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Like 3.0 License.
00:58:08 ►
And if you have any questions about that,
00:58:10 ►
just click the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon web page.
00:58:14 ►
And that is also where you’ll find
00:58:16 ►
the program notes for this podcast.
00:58:19 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo
00:58:21 ►
signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
00:58:24 ►
Be well, my friends.