149 - The Heavens

Program Notes §

Guest speakers: Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham

“The Gaia Hypothesis of James Lovelock [and Lynn Margulis] puts forward a scientific view of the living Earth, which in one respect is modern, empherical, scientific, in another respect re-awakens an ancient archetype, which in fact is so clearly suggested by the very name of the hypothesis, Gaia, the Greek name for Mother Earth.” –Rupert Sheldrake

[Speaking of the past:] “So there’s a kind of resurgence of the sense of freedom and spontaneity in nature. From nature being bound into a rigid, deterministic model, freedom, spontaneity and openness are emerging once again. It’s now recognized the future is open, not determined by the past. And this is true in many realms, the astronomical realm, the human realm, the meteorological realm in many ways.” –Rupert Sheldrake

“The basic idea I’m proposing is that the so-called ‘Laws of Nature’ may be more like habits. They may depend on what’s happened before and on how often it’s happened. So there may be a cumulative memory in nature, largely unconscious, which gives rise to habits and things, which accounts for the stability of nature as we know it. But this is not all governed by eternal laws that were there at the Big Bang.” –Rupert Sheldrake

“The English couldn’t bear this void for long, caused by the suppression of pilgrimage [by the Protestant Reformation], and within a few generations had invented tourism, which is best seen as a form of secularized pilgrimage.” –Rupert Sheldrake

“I think a great move forward would happen when astronomy and astrology link up once again.” –Rupert Sheldrake

“If the Sun has a kind of consciousness, then what about the entire galaxy, with this mysterious center?” –Rupert Sheldrake

“What we call the imagination is actually the universal library of what is real, that you couldn’t imagine it if it weren’t real, somewhere, sometime. And that to me is very empowering because that’s the truth that you learn at the center of the psychedelic experience that’s so mind boggling that you can’t really return with it, that it’s real.” –Terence McKenna

“Now it’s time to realize that trying to reason upward from the laws of atomic physics to organism is not going to work. That there are … emergent properties at every level.” –Terence McKenna

Galaxy Map Hints at Fractal Universe

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148 - Grand Rounds_ Psychedelic Psychotherapy

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150 - UFOs

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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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But I’m not the only one involved in producing these podcasts for you.

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I’ve had a lot of help from quite a few generous donors who are helping to offset the expenses of producing and publishing these podcasts.

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And this week, I want to thank John A., Deborah A., and longtime listener and frequent contributor, Paul D.

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I want to thank you for sending some money our way.

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So, John, Deborah, and Paul, hey, thanks again.

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Your generosity is greatly appreciated.

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As promised, today I’m going to pick up on the trilogues between Terrence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake

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that took place

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sometime in 1992, and if I’m not mistaken, they were held at Esalen Institute on the California

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coast. And I didn’t think I’d ever say this, but by the end of today’s trilogue, Terrence McKenna

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comes away sounding like the conservative one of the three. Well, first of all, I guess I should warn you, and particularly any new listeners to

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the salon, that not only is today’s podcast overly long, there are a couple of points

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in this trialogue that even get way too esoteric for me.

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And the reason I’m mentioning this is that I don’t want to scare you away from future

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programs that will be a little bit more down to earth.

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Of course, that said, I also have a hunch that parts of this conversation may really resonate with you.

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And I have to admit that until now, I haven’t been all that keen on some of Rupert’s ideas,

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maybe because he was too grounded in reality or something like that, I don’t know.

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But in this trialogue, he really hits me close to home when he states that he believes that our sun is alive

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and has a mind of some kind associated with it.

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You see, I felt like this was true for quite a few years now.

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In fact, a couple of years ago, I was even into solar gazing

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and gained some amazing intuitions about the sun.

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But that’s another story for another day.

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Anyway, I too have felt some sort of living kinship with the sun.

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Enough about my strange belief system.

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Let’s join Rupert Sheldrake as he is setting up today’s trialogue by putting into context what he means when he invokes as the topic of discussion, the heavens.

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This evening, the subject we’re going to be discussing is the heavens.

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The context for this discussion is what I’d like to sketch now

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in the past in all traditional cultures people have assumed

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taken it for granted that we live in a living world

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not only is the earth Gaia mother earth a living organism

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but also the entire heavens are alive,

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pervaded with gods, angels, spirits, and celestial beings of every kind.

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The ancient Greeks shared this traditional view,

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and it pervaded their view of the universe.

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The whole universe was alive for them. The whole universe

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was like a great organism with a body, a soul, and spirit. And the soul of the entire universe

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was called the world soul, the anima mundi in Latin, anima being the Latin word for soul.

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in Latin, anima being the Latin word for soul, the soul of the world, not just the earth but the whole cosmos.

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This was the view that persisted through the Middle Ages and through the Renaissance,

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but it was a view that was shattered by the mechanistic revolution of the 17th century, when the universe simply became a great mechanical system consisting of matter in motion,

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with no spirit and no soul.

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So the heavens became a great mechanical system,

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and the earth just became a misty ball of rock

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hurtling around the sun in accordance with Newton’s laws of motion.

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We’re now undergoing a process whereby we’re coming to see nature as alive again.

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And this is the theme of my book, The Rebirth of Nature.

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the aspect of this process that most people are most familiar with is the recovery of the sense of the earth as a living organism

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the Gaia hypothesis of James Lovelock

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puts forward a scientific view of the living earth

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which in one respect is modern empirical scientific

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in another respect

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reawakens an ancient archetype

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which in fact is so clearly suggested

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by the very name of the hypothesis

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Gaia, the Greek name for Mother Earth

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so for many people in the green movement

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and the ecological movement

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the idea of the earth as a living organism

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has become a powerful image

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and one which is already beginning to shape

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the way people think about our relationship

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to the world in which we live

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this earth, this planet

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but this is part of a much wider move in science which I

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describe in detail in the rebirth of nature. I’m not going to go into that now

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except to summarize some of the essential features. The mechanistic

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worldview is being transcended by science itself. It’s still the dominant model within biology and

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medicine which are like living fossils of an earlier mode of thought. But in the

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physical sciences in many respects we’ve gone beyond old-style mechanism. The

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mechanistic worldview as originally formulated was entirely deterministic.

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Everything was supposed to happen in a completely fixed way.

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Everything was fixed in advance.

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There was no freedom or spontaneity in nature.

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People couldn’t predict it in detail, but that was regarded as simply a limitation of scientific knowledge and technique.

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knowledge and technique. However, this deterministic view has now softened and, in fact, been abandoned in most aspects of nature are in fact chaotic in the

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sense that they’re not rigidly predictable they can be modeled in terms of chaotic dynamics well

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at least some of them can be but the old idea of Newtonian determinism has been abandoned the

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weather’s not like that the breaking of waves is not like that, the breaking of waves is not like that,

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the way our brains work is not like that. At every level of nature there’s a non-Newtonian

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quality which has now been recognized. Another way in which this has been

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expressed is through Prigogine’s idea of non-equilibrium thermodynamics, where far from equilibrium, small fluctuations can be amplified to give pattern and order.

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So there’s a kind of resurgence of the sense of freedom and spontaneity in nature.

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From nature being bound into a rigid deterministic model,

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a freedom of spontaneity and an openness are emerging once again it’s now recognized the future is open not determined by the past

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and this is true in many realms the astronomical realm the human realm the meteorological realm

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in many ways then the the mechanistic view said the world was a machine

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created by God, conceived of as a divine machine maker

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and the machinery had no creativity within it.

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All that machines can do, at least machines of the old kind, is go wrong

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and God had to intervene from time to time in newton’s

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model to wind up the machinery again laplace at the beginning of the 19th century perfected the

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equations of celestial mechanics and got rid of the need for this kind of maintenance man god

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and so and in fact got rid of the idea of God altogether by assuming that it was an eternal perpetual motion machine

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no need for a creator, no need for a maintenance crew

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everything just went on by itself forever

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however with the development of thermodynamics in the 19th century

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perpetual motion machines were outlawed

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and it was then thought that the universe was gradually running out of steam

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through an accumulation of entropy.

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And so there was the idea of a devolving cosmos.

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But certainly not one that was creative.

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The universe had either always been the way it was,

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or it was created in the beginning by God.

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There was no creativity in nature, no freedom, spontaneity, creativity. With Darwin’s

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theory of evolution, creativity came back in the biological realm. It was recognised

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in the development of animals and plants over the millennia, over millions of years, over billions of years. Creativity was recognised in biology,

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but not in the rest of nature.

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The cosmologists held firm to a mechanistic universe.

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It wasn’t until the 1960s with the cosmological revolution,

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the Big Bang theory,

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that the entire universe was conceived of in evolutionary terms. We now have a model of

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the cosmos starting small with a big bang, which is a bit like the ancient myths of the creation

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of all things through the hatching or cracking of the cosmic egg. And since then, the universe has

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been growing, and as it grows, forming ever more complex structures and patterns within itself.

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growing and as it grows forming ever more complex structures and patterns within itself.

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In other words, it’s far more like a developing organism or a growing embryo than it is like any machinery with which we’re familiar. We’ve now effectively got a model of the cosmos

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as a developing organism. And since we now have this radically evolutionary view, which puts creativity throughout the entire developmental process of the cosmos,

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it becomes possible to challenge another of the great assumptions of mechanistic science,

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namely the idea that everything is governed by eternal laws.

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This is the basis of my own work on memory in nature,

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my hypothesis of morphic resonance or formative causation.

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This is discussed in detail in my books, A New Science of Life and The Presence of the Past.

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The basic idea I’m proposing is that the so-called laws of nature may be more like habits.

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They may depend on what’s happened before and on how often it’s happened.

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So there may be a cumulative memory in nature

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largely unconscious

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which gives rise to habits and things

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that accounts for the stability of nature as we know it

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but this is not all governed by eternal laws

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that were all there at the moment of the Big Bang

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I don’t think there was a kind of cosmic Napoleonic code in place at the moment of the big bang i don’t think there was a kind of cosmic napoleonic code

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in place at that moment of origin habits have grown up creativity has given rise to myriads

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of new forms and possibilities only some of which survive and through a natural selection process

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the surviving ones the ones that are repeated become increasingly habitual

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well that’s the view that I’ve suggested.

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It’s controversial within biology and the other sciences, needless to say.

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It leads to many predictions.

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The idea, for example, of a collective memory within each biological species.

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The best-known example being that if you train rats to learn a new trick in one place,

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rats all around the world should learn the same trick quicker,

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just because the rats have learned it here, for example.

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The more that learn it, the quicker it should get everywhere else.

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So an eternal memory, a collective memory,

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based on the process of morphic resonance, the influence of like upon like,

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similar things resonate across time

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and this is the basis of the memory process in nature well this gives a

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sense of the cosmos as a living organism once again the earth is alive a living

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cosmos and gives a new sense of the life of animals and plants.

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According to mechanistic science, animals and plants are just machines, and so are we, except for the presence of some mysterious rational mind located inside the brain,

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which interacts in a mysterious way with the machinery of the nervous system.

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That is the current view still within our culture,

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and it’s totally different from the traditional view that all Europeans had until the scientific revolution.

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When the whole universe was alive, the earth was alive, animals and plants had souls.

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The very word animal in English comes from the Latin word anima, soul.

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Plants too were believed to have souls in the Middle Ages and this was the

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official teaching of the Roman church. The cosmos was a living organism peopled by innumerable

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spirits. So this sense of deanimation, the deanimation of nature happened through science.

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The cosmos just became matter in motion. Animals and plants became just machines. The soul was withdrawn from the whole of nature and from the whole of our

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bodies until all that was left was the rational mind inside the brain. Everything else in the

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world was inanimate, mechanical, lacking any meaning, sense or purpose of its own. The only

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beings in the universe, or at least on this earth, with true purpose were human own. The only beings in the universe, or at least on this earth,

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with true purpose were human beings.

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The only ends or goals that mattered were human goals or human ends.

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The only values were human values.

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Nature had no value in itself.

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This is the underlying philosophy

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that’s given rise to the ecological crisis.

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Well, a recovery of the sense of the life of nature, which is going on for a

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variety of reasons in a variety of ways through the archaic revival, the revival of animistic

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modes of thought. Well, we’re talking now about the revival of animism, a new animism, a new sense

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of the life of nature. The archaic revival and the shamanic revival is part

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of this. The Gaia hypothesis is another part. Deep ecology and the ecology movement in general

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is another part. I’m suggesting that science itself is pointing us in this direction,

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a recovery of the sense of the life of nature. And this, this I think is happening now all around us

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but there’s a further step

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which I think we need to take

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that’s not only to see the natural world as alive

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but to see it as sacred

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in the past the heavens were sacred

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and so was the earth

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and especially the sacred places on the earth

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which were the focuses of power

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power points

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which were recognised in every land by every culture

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by American Indians in America

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by Europeans both pre-Christian and Christian within Europe

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and these were by Australian Aborigines

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by Africans

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by Jews in the Holy Land

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the sacred places of the Holy Land,

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which we still, of course, call the Holy Land.

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This sense of the sacredness of the land and the earth was found in all cultures.

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And in all cultures there was a way in which people related to it through journeying to places of power through pilgrimage.

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Pilgrimage was suppressed for the first time in human history by the

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Protestant reformers in Northern Europe at the Reformation, creating a void, a desacralization

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of nature, a loss of the sense of the sacred out there. The sense of the sacred became

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focused entirely on man. The only sacred thing was man and most men were sinners and most women too, perhaps even more so.

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So, but only the drama of religion was the drama of fall and redemption played out between man and God.

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Nature had nothing to do with it except as a kind of backdrop or as a means of people enriching themselves,

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becoming prosperous as a sign of God’s grace and providence

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well

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the English couldn’t bear

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this void for long caused by

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the suppression of pilgrimage and within a few

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generations had invented tourism

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which is best

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seen as a form of secularised

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pilgrimage

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and I’ve suggested in the rebirth of nature

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and something that’s going on anyway is a recovery of the sense of pilgrimage, a paradigm

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shift from tourism back to pilgrimage. I think this can go a long way to helping to resacralise

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the earth. Another way in which the natural world was sacralized was through seasonal festivals

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through which the whole community, not just individuals, but the community participated in

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festivals that marked the changing seasons of the year. The solstices, the equinoxes,

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the festivals associated with them, which we in the Christian world have inherited from their pagan roots

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through festivals like Christmas and Easter.

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And of course the Jewish religion is pervaded by a sense of festivals and sacred time.

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And these again were inherited from the Canaanites, the inhabitants of Palestine, when the Jews moved in.

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They took over the old sacred festivals.

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So seasonal festivals and pilgrimage are ways in which we can help to re-sacralize the earth.

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And these are movements already to some extent underway

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and probably many people here are aware of a need to recover a sense of the sacred in the earth.

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Many people here are aware of a need to recover a sense of the sacred in the earth.

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What I want to move on to now is, although that’s only just begun, it’s got a lot further to go,

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there’s a sense in which this idea is established.

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However, re-sacralizing the heavens is what I want to talk about this evening,

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and that involves going considerably further than anyone I know has yet gone. It’s one thing to recover a sense of the life of the earth and we are doing that to varying

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degrees. The awareness of the ecological crisis, tropical rainforest being cut in British Columbia,

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this kind of thing is well known, widely lamented, and many people, including myself,

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feel moved to various forms of activism in trying to do something about it.

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But when we come to the heavens, we’re still in a state of great ignorance.

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The vast majority of modern people know almost nothing about the heavens.

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I mean, of course course lots of people have

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books showing pictures of the earth from space or children are given books about space travel

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fantasies my own children i’m sad to say learn more about the heavens from the idea of sitting

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inside spaceships and pressing buttons than from actually looking at the sky and this is the way that children are raised now the actual sky is something of which

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most people are abysmally ignorant in most traditional cultures most people

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could tell the stars Mariners had to know them Shepherds knew the sky

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ordinary people knew the basic constellations in the sky could pick them out

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and knew the pattern of change of the stars the Egyptians for example had special ceremonies

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at the rising of Sirius when Sirius came into the sky it was there for a certain season of the year

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and then it went invisible again and so this awareness of, of the phases of the moon,

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of the general movements and positions of the planets,

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is widespread in traditional cultures.

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And of course the information is there in our culture,

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but it’s hard to find someone who actually knows it,

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who can point to the constellations in the sky.

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So first of all, we have a general ignorance of the skies. Secondly,

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the skies are now regarded from a scientific point of view as just matter, and that’s the

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domain of astronomy. But oddly enough, astronomers don’t know that much about the sky as you actually

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experience it. They’ve got a lot of equations about the life cycle of stars, about the nature of pulsars

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and other strange mysteries in the

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heavens.

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But very

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few know about them. I was having

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dinner a couple of years ago with

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the professor of astronomy at Cambridge

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whose wife is the godmother

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of one of my sons.

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And he’s head of the

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Institute of astronomy there

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we went out after dinner it was a beautiful scarlet starlit night there

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was a particularly bright star there and I said what’s that one Martin and oh I

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haven’t a clue don’t ask me he said I don’t know what these stars constellations are

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he really didn’t know because he learned astronomy

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from books, from computer models

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not from looking at the sky

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and Steve Rook who’s here

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this evening

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who’s here with us in this workshop

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who’s worked with astronomers

00:22:58 ► §

in Arizona

00:22:59 ► §

at some big observatory there

00:23:02 ► §

told me that

00:23:05 ► §

going in there and they’re looking in this

00:23:07 ► §

telescope, they’re focused on a particular star

00:23:09 ► §

if you ask them what constellation

00:23:10 ► §

is this in, they don’t know

00:23:12 ► §

they’d punch in the computer to get to that star

00:23:15 ► §

they don’t know the bigger picture

00:23:17 ► §

they’re not seeing the wood for the trees

00:23:19 ► §

and

00:23:21 ► §

Steve said that

00:23:23 ► §

to find out you had to go outside

00:23:24 ► §

look to see which way the telescope was pointed through the dome and Steve said that to find out you had to go outside,

00:23:28 ► §

look to see which way the telescope was pointed through the dome,

00:23:31 ► §

and work out which constellation it was in.

00:23:40 ► §

So astronomers are not really leading us in a true knowledge of the heavens as we experience them.

00:23:44 ► §

Amateur astronomers are probably the only people who still keep alive the sense of observation and relationship to the heavens

00:23:48 ► §

astrologers have retained a sense of the heavens as meaningful

00:23:55 ► §

and having a relation, an organic meaningful relationship between the heavens and the earth

00:24:00 ► §

this was part of the old cosmology that everybody shared

00:24:03 ► §

but since the scientific revolution,

00:24:06 ► §

these astrologers have continued with that sense of meaning,

00:24:12 ► §

which is very valuable,

00:24:14 ► §

but it’s become completely detached from the actual heavens.

00:24:18 ► §

So it’s no use asking your average astrologer,

00:24:20 ► §

if you see a bright star in the sky or a planet, what’s that?

00:24:24 ► §

Because most of them don’t look at the sky or a planet what’s that because

00:24:25 ► §

most of them don’t look at the sky any more than anyone else does it’s all done

00:24:28 ► §

from computer programs and books so that’s become detached from astronomy I

00:24:34 ► §

think a great move forward would happen when astronomy and astrology link up

00:24:39 ► §

again I was particularly struck in 1987 there was a massive supernova in the southern hemisphere

00:24:46 ► §

the biggest supernova since 1604

00:24:49 ► §

an exploding star in the skies which Galileo and Kepler saw

00:24:55 ► §

and which played a major part in the scientific revolution

00:24:57 ► §

all through history these supernovas, exploding stars in the sky

00:25:02 ► §

have been regarded as major omens of the greatest importance.

00:25:07 ► §

Here was the biggest one since 1604.

00:25:11 ► §

Now, I asked my astrologer friends, you know, well, what do you make of this?

00:25:16 ► §

Well, the answer is they didn’t make anything whatever of it, because it wasn’t in the ephemeris.

00:25:20 ► §

It wasn’t in their Macintosh computer program.

00:25:23 ► §

It was just ignored.

00:25:25 ► §

The astronomers took the great interest in it, but saw no meaning in it.

00:25:31 ► §

So that’s the state we’re in today.

00:25:34 ► §

And I think that a lot of good will come from recovering a sense of the life of the heavens.

00:25:42 ► §

And I’m just going to say a little bit more about that to try and make it clearer what I mean.

00:25:50 ► §

Well, we know that Gaia is a living planet.

00:25:53 ► §

I think we also have to take seriously the idea that the sun is alive.

00:25:59 ► §

I think myself that the sun is conscious or has a mind associated with it.

00:26:06 ► §

And if one wants a scientific rationale for thinking this,

00:26:10 ► §

one comes ready to hand through the discoveries of modern solar physics.

00:26:16 ► §

It’s now known that the Sun has a complex system of magnetic fields.

00:26:22 ► §

It reverses its polarity every 11 years associated with the sunspot cycle

00:26:27 ► §

and with this underlying rhythm of magnetic polar reversal there are a whole series of resonant and

00:26:34 ► §

harmonic patterns of magnetic and electromagnetic change global patterns over the surface of the sun

00:26:40 ► §

of a kind of fractal nature patterns within patterns highly turbulent highly chaotic um

00:26:46 ► §

showing extremely varied highly subtle sensitive changing electromagnetic patterns the whole time

00:26:54 ► §

now if we believe that the electromagnetic patterns within our brains are the interface

00:27:01 ► §

between mind and the nervous system which is what most people do think, a reasonable hypothesis,

00:27:07 ► §

then here we have a possible interface with the physical behaviour of the sun

00:27:13 ► §

through these complex electromagnetic patterns

00:27:16 ► §

that go far beyond anything our brains can do.

00:27:20 ► §

So it’s perfectly possible, if you want to stay within the present scientific imagination of thinking how the sun could have a mind which interfaces with the activity that we can actually observe, the electromagnetic patterns that go throughout the whole sun.

00:27:41 ► §

of course, is an organism.

00:27:42 ► §

It’s not just the sun.

00:27:44 ► §

The entire system around it, the planets,

00:27:48 ► §

and the sun constitute an entire system,

00:27:50 ► §

which we call the solar system.

00:27:54 ► §

And this is largely what astrology has concerned itself with.

00:28:00 ► §

But we also recognize now that the sun is part of a galaxy.

00:28:02 ► §

The Milky Way is part of our galaxy. All the stars we see in the sky are within

00:28:05 ► §

our own galaxy with the naked eye we can see one or two other galaxies the

00:28:12 ► §

Andromeda nebula is the main one but that’s all we can see with the naked eye

00:28:17 ► §

where all the stars we see are within this galaxy and this galaxy like other

00:28:23 ► §

galaxies has a galactic center and galactic centers often have things

00:28:27 ► §

called quasars in them which may be gigantic black holes as a kind of nucleus to the whole galaxy

00:28:33 ► §

and galaxies have structures and we can think of them as organisms too and they seem to come in

00:28:39 ► §

clusters called galactic clusters and those come in clusters. So if we think of each of these as an organism,

00:28:47 ► §

we have vast organisms of which our Earth is a tiny part,

00:28:51 ► §

a tiny part of the solar system, which is part of a vastly greater organism.

00:28:56 ► §

And if the sun has a kind of consciousness,

00:28:58 ► §

then what about the entire galaxy with this mysterious center?

00:29:03 ► §

They all seem to have these cores

00:29:05 ► §

that relate to the rest of the galaxy in little understood ways what about

00:29:11 ► §

galactic clusters and what about the cosmos as a whole we have levels of

00:29:16 ► §

potential consciousness or awareness or mental activity vastly beyond anything

00:29:21 ► §

we experience ourselves of ever more inclusive natures.

00:29:27 ► §

When we turn to ancient traditions, we find that this has always been the general belief.

00:29:32 ► §

The entire cosmos is believed to be animate.

00:29:35 ► §

God has been seen as residing in the sky, beyond the sky, but also in the sky,

00:29:41 ► §

our Father who art in heaven.

00:29:44 ► §

Now, of course course most modern people including

00:29:46 ► §

most modern christians when they hear those words our father who art in heaven immediately respond

00:29:53 ► §

oh well of course that doesn’t mean the actual sky oh no no no it means a state of mind a metaphor

00:29:58 ► §

a state of being but certainly not the actual sky but what i’d like to entertain is the view that it does mean the sky

00:30:06 ► §

that our father

00:30:07 ► §

if we have the idea of a father God

00:30:09 ► §

then he is in heaven

00:30:11 ► §

if God is omnipresent

00:30:12 ► §

then he must be present throughout the heavens

00:30:14 ► §

and since the heavens

00:30:17 ► §

are vastly greater than the earth

00:30:19 ► §

about 99.99 recurring percent

00:30:22 ► §

of the divine presence

00:30:23 ► §

must be in the sky

00:30:24 ► §

rather than on the earth

00:30:25 ► §

now if we take the same crudely quantitative approach we arrive at the same conclusions

00:30:34 ► §

about the celestial goddess because of course the heavens can also be seen as the abode or the being

00:30:40 ► §

of the goddess um the in the e the Egyptian mythology the sky was the

00:30:46 ► §

abode of Nut, the sky goddess

00:30:48 ► §

who was the womb of the heavens

00:30:49 ► §

who gave birth to the sun and the moon and the stars

00:30:52 ► §

she was the space

00:30:54 ► §

of the night skies, the womb

00:30:56 ► §

from which these things come forth

00:30:57 ► §

and that was the image also

00:31:00 ► §

of Astarte and it’s been

00:31:02 ► §

assimilated into Christianity through the image

00:31:04 ► §

of Mary, mother of God as Queen of Heaven portrayed as in images of Our Lady of

00:31:10 ► §

Guadalupe as wearing a blue robe the sky blue robe studded with stars so this is

00:31:18 ► §

also a Christian image of the goddess and the image of Mary as mother of God

00:31:23 ► §

you see in has this idea of this primordial womb of space or the sky from which all things come.

00:31:32 ► §

The angels were believed to be celestial hierarchies of beings.

00:31:37 ► §

In Christian, Jewish and Islamic belief, there are nine hierarchies of angels,

00:31:42 ► §

perhaps corresponding to super clusters of galaxies

00:31:46 ► §

galaxies, solar systems and so on

00:31:49 ► §

and the planets and the stars

00:31:51 ► §

were believed to be the abode of intelligences

00:31:54 ► §

even our English names for the planets

00:31:57 ► §

are the Latin names of the gods and goddesses

00:32:00 ► §

Venus, Mercury, Mars and so on

00:32:03 ► §

we still preserve those days.

00:32:05 ► §

We name the days of our week after them.

00:32:08 ► §

Monday, Moon Day, Sunday, Sunday.

00:32:10 ► §

Friday, Freya’s Day in English, corresponding to Venus’s day.

00:32:14 ► §

It’s the goddess day.

00:32:17 ► §

Freya’s the northern equivalent of Venus.

00:32:21 ► §

So there was this sense of all these angelic beings associated with the stars

00:32:26 ► §

in the 16th century there was a revival of ancient star magic

00:32:31 ► §

this is something I know Ralph has studied and I hope we can take up

00:32:35 ► §

John Dee and others connected with particular stars

00:32:40 ► §

and invoked the spirit of that star to connect with that intelligence

00:32:44 ► §

asking for its guidance, help or inspiration and invoked the spirit of that star to connect with that intelligence,

00:32:47 ► §

asking for its guidance, help or inspiration.

00:32:53 ► §

So there’s an attempt actually to contact these beings, these intelligences,

00:32:55 ► §

and communicate with them.

00:33:00 ► §

Well, since the heavens have been secularized and have become the domain of physical astronomy alone,

00:33:08 ► §

then the idea that they’re peopled has never died there’s still a search for extraterrestrial intelligence at present I think

00:33:14 ► §

rather narrowly conceived you know beam out the decimal points of pi and beings on other planets

00:33:21 ► §

will pick it up and realize that we’re intelligent because we know about these kinds of mathematical formulae.

00:33:28 ► §

That’s the general kind of approach.

00:33:30 ► §

And meanwhile, the idea of the beings within the heavens,

00:33:33 ► §

this idea of the heavens as the abode of many kinds of beings,

00:33:37 ► §

has been left to the rather banal imaginations of science fiction writers.

00:33:41 ► §

It still lives on, but no longer in the form of angels,

00:33:44 ► §

but in the fantasies of science fiction writers. It still lives on, but no longer in the form of angels, but in the fantasies of science fiction.

00:33:48 ► §

Well, I want to raise the possibility

00:33:52 ► §

that we can indeed, once again, link with the living heavens.

00:33:59 ► §

We have, first of all, to recognize

00:34:01 ► §

there’s a kind of life in the heavens beyond that,

00:34:03 ► §

well, maybe as well as that, there may be other technological civilizations like ours

00:34:08 ► §

that think like we do and may indeed be beaming out the formula for pi through radio waves.

00:34:15 ► §

Maybe one day we’ll pick it up.

00:34:17 ► §

But I think these would be the least interesting civilizations to contact, in a way.

00:34:22 ► §

They’d be far too like ourselves.

00:34:27 ► §

I think that if we are to contact beings on other planets that the way we’re going to do it is not through hardware not through the

00:34:33 ► §

NASA approach not through a spacecraft that are going to take many many years thousands of years

00:34:40 ► §

to reach other stellar systems and and billions of years or many millions to reach

00:34:48 ► §

other galaxies. To have astronauts on them who are drugged or go into a kind of state of hibernation

00:34:53 ► §

and wake up, these are all far too clumsy. They won’t work. If we’re going to make contact, it has

00:35:00 ► §

to be through some kind of mental relationship. Now, I think morphic resonance is not limited by distance.

00:35:07 ► §

Morphic resonance works on the basis of similarity

00:35:09 ► §

and provides a possible basis for a kind of resonant mental communication

00:35:14 ► §

with beings on other planets or other solar systems.

00:35:19 ► §

There could be a kind of commerce, a kind of communication between us and other beings,

00:35:24 ► §

which doesn’t involve billion

00:35:26 ► §

dollar budgets or multi-billion

00:35:28 ► §

dollar budgets, enormous

00:35:30 ► §

expenditure on hardware and so

00:35:32 ► §

on, but relies on a completely different

00:35:34 ► §

approach, not one at present

00:35:36 ► §

taken very seriously

00:35:37 ► §

if considered at all by the astronomical

00:35:40 ► §

community, but one

00:35:42 ► §

which I propose we might consider

00:35:44 ► §

here this evening.

00:36:02 ► §

Ralph

00:36:03 ► §

Ralph what was John Dee trying to do

00:36:10 ► §

perhaps that’s a historical fact

00:36:12 ► §

maybe fill us in on

00:36:13 ► §

yes

00:36:16 ► §

well

00:36:17 ► §

the

00:36:20 ► §

star magic idea

00:36:23 ► §

in Elizabethan England

00:36:24 ► §

preceded the nucleation of science as we know it

00:36:30 ► §

and represented a transmission from the ancient world with a lot of changes, simplifications and additions and so on.

00:36:42 ► §

and additions and so on.

00:36:49 ► §

But the central idea of it, I would think,

00:36:53 ► §

is the ancient idea of the great chain of being.

00:36:58 ► §

And that’s, I think, an idea which is represented in your view that you just described.

00:37:02 ► §

And a view that, as soon as I describe it,

00:37:06 ► §

I think everybody here

00:37:07 ► §

will have a certain amount of trouble with it.

00:37:10 ► §

Let me see.

00:37:13 ► §

The ancient model

00:37:16 ► §

of the universe

00:37:18 ► §

with the angels in it

00:37:20 ► §

and everything came down to us

00:37:22 ► §

from Pseudo-Dionysius.

00:37:24 ► §

This was some kind of encapsulation of ancient wisdom that they liked to do in Alexandria

00:37:31 ► §

and like wrap up a package and send it into the future.

00:37:34 ► §

And this one actually reached us through the world of Islam.

00:37:40 ► §

And there were these concentric spheres with, I think that there are nine, ten or eleven, depending on the view, whether the human mind, the lowest, scummiest part, might or might not be distinguished from the time of Copernicus, and even for us, of course, when we sit in our hot tub and look at the sky,

00:38:08 ► §

of course, we are in the center, and the earth is a sphere around us.

00:38:13 ► §

And outside the ninth, tenth, or eleventh sphere was nothing.

00:38:18 ► §

The top sphere was the unmoving sphere of God,

00:38:22 ► §

and the other spheres of the planets and the sun and the moon

00:38:26 ► §

of course

00:38:28 ► §

intermediated in a kind of

00:38:29 ► §

a transmission that morphic

00:38:31 ► §

resonance over such a long distance

00:38:34 ► §

all the way from God

00:38:35 ► §

to us would be

00:38:37 ► §

too difficult without some midway

00:38:39 ► §

stations and there were these radio

00:38:41 ► §

amplifiers along the way which are these

00:38:43 ► §

other spheres.

00:38:53 ► §

So the whole motive for this model is the great chain of being,

00:39:01 ► §

the transmission of God’s will, as it were, from the unmoving sphere of God to us.

00:39:07 ► §

And I see here is a book on Giordano Bruno.

00:39:08 ► §

He’s just sitting here in front of me.

00:39:19 ► §

So I want to remind you why Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake on Easter Sunday in the year 1600 in Rome.

00:39:36 ► §

And that was because, besides his many heresies, very interesting to us, for example, his theory of comets, which is a chaotic cosmic phenomenon, probably as important as supernovae in the history of consciousness.

00:39:45 ► §

That’s not why they the infinity of the universe.

00:39:49 ► §

That is, that the stars were not, you know, there were the planetary spheres.

00:39:52 ► §

All the stars that we see occupied one sphere.

00:39:54 ► §

That’s the celestial sphere.

00:39:57 ► §

And the sphere of God is the one outside that.

00:40:06 ► §

So, Giordano Bruno believed the stars were not on one sphere, but outside this sphere of Jupiter,

00:40:10 ► §

that they filled space.

00:40:13 ► §

And the reason that the Church objected to this was that it left no space for God.

00:40:16 ► §

Our Father in Heaven had no place to go,

00:40:19 ► §

and that was very threatening to the entire system.

00:40:22 ► §

So as you’ve presented, I’m seeing this cosmology

00:40:29 ► §

or an opportunity for us to construct a new cosmology of our own,

00:40:34 ► §

that this is upset if we don’t have our god in heaven

00:40:38 ► §

or our goddess in heaven to occupy the upper sphere.

00:40:44 ► §

Because what are the the purpose

00:40:45 ► §

of all these spheres what is the purpose of the angels the choir the nine choirs

00:40:50 ► §

of angels the potentialities the Dominions the cherubs and the seraphs so

00:40:56 ► §

I think that the idea of one God can’t be resurrected,

00:41:06 ► §

that it’s a casualty,

00:41:09 ► §

that a religion of the future would have to have

00:41:13 ► §

a whole pantheon of gods, goddesses, and so on,

00:41:15 ► §

and this could include the living and sacred sun, moon,

00:41:21 ► §

the planets, the Milky Way, the quasars in its center,

00:41:26 ► §

the nearby galaxies, the clusters of galaxies, and so on.

00:41:32 ► §

But the geocentric picture has to be abandoned.

00:41:37 ► §

So it comes down to this question.

00:41:40 ► §

What is the purpose of SETI?

00:41:45 ► §

Do you think that because for 25,000 years of our evolution,

00:41:54 ► §

the evolution of our habits,

00:41:56 ► §

that certain phantasmic mythical figures

00:42:00 ► §

have been projected on the constellations of the sky,

00:42:04 ► §

mythical figures have been projected on the constellations of the sky,

00:42:09 ► §

that that’s our sacred heritage,

00:42:12 ► §

and because of these creodes in the morphic field,

00:42:14 ► §

we can somehow make use of them,

00:42:17 ► §

try to have a conversation with them or something, or is it that we have to rediscover our own cosmology in SETI

00:42:27 ► §

where we try to find out what are the real intelligences in the sky

00:42:31 ► §

and the heavenly realms by conversing with them?

00:42:35 ► §

SETI in parenthesis means search for…

00:42:40 ► §

SETI is an abbreviation for…

00:42:42 ► §

Search for extraterrestrial intelligence, is that it?

00:42:46 ► §

That’s right, yes, yes, SETI is extraterrestrial and we’ve certainly given up any hope of finding terrestrial intelligence,

00:42:55 ► §

although corn circles are promising.

00:43:07 ► §

so anyway that’s a general response and I just want to put in a word for angels here

00:43:12 ► §

and then I’ll turn it over to Terence

00:43:14 ► §

that I think personally the settee is of interest

00:43:22 ► §

because of our own journeys

00:43:25 ► §

where we depart the body,

00:43:29 ► §

then we also have left sometimes Earth far behind,

00:43:34 ► §

reaching this realm so difficult to name,

00:43:40 ► §

the transcendent other, the Logos, and so on,

00:43:43 ► §

but a realm well-traveled by our forebears,

00:43:48 ► §

superb, brave travelers of the past

00:43:53 ► §

who’ve left all kinds of written records of their journeys.

00:43:58 ► §

On these journeys of ours,

00:43:59 ► §

we do have the experience of meeting extraterrestrial intelligence

00:44:06 ► §

and conversing and learning and being taught.

00:44:08 ► §

Indeed, our whole hope for the future, little as that may seem now,

00:44:15 ► §

is based somehow on these travels,

00:44:18 ► §

on the conviction that we have had Gnostic experience,

00:44:24 ► §

direct experience of extraterrestrial intelligence.

00:44:28 ► §

This is our interest,

00:44:30 ► §

not because we need to search and find,

00:44:33 ► §

but because we have searched and have found,

00:44:36 ► §

and what do we make of this experience?

00:44:40 ► §

So I think the relationship between the,

00:44:44 ► §

as above, as below, this is the idea, the relationship

00:44:48 ► §

between the experience of our own journeys and the evidence of our eyes in looking at

00:44:56 ► §

the sky, the inner and the outer, what is the relationship?

00:44:59 ► §

That is the program of the setting in our perspective.

00:45:07 ► §

And I think this overall idea of the great chain of being

00:45:16 ► §

can actually be salvaged in our cosmology

00:45:19 ► §

without reference to our Father God in heaven or any… See, the ideas of gods and goddesses, angels and so on,

00:45:30 ► §

is not exactly the right verbal equipment to describe our experience.

00:45:37 ► §

That’s what I think.

00:45:38 ► §

But extraterrestrial intelligence, that’s better.

00:45:41 ► §

I mean, there may be a physical location in space and time,

00:45:44 ► §

somewhere in the

00:45:45 ► §

universe, for this intelligence, and there may not. There may be no correlation as above

00:45:54 ► §

so below. Nevertheless, it’s the conversation with the intelligence which is most important to us, not the identification with the physical matter, energy, and morphic

00:46:07 ► §

fields of these.

00:46:10 ► §

I’m not sure if I could connect an intelligent being I’ve encountered in out-of-the-body

00:46:20 ► §

travel with the Milky Way or the planet Jupiter.

00:46:25 ► §

It makes sense to me when you say you believe that they’re intelligent beings.

00:46:31 ► §

I can imagine the sunspots running across the face of the sun in this furious speed

00:46:39 ► §

as a kind of a cephalopod communication between one sun and another.

00:46:46 ► §

I presume they can see each other.

00:46:48 ► §

Saturn is having a conversation with the sun that goes like this.

00:46:53 ► §

Saturn’s got his rings, waves them like that.

00:46:56 ► §

And then the sun blinks, you know, and sends a sunspot whirling across

00:47:00 ► §

and has like a semaphoric conversation.

00:47:03 ► §

And in this way way the order of

00:47:06 ► §

the universe is maintained by

00:47:08 ► §

discourse, by consensus, by

00:47:10 ► §

voting and committee and

00:47:11 ► §

so on. If this is so

00:47:14 ► §

laughter

00:47:15 ► §

whether

00:47:17 ► §

there’s a correlation

00:47:19 ► §

between this

00:47:21 ► §

intelligence which is associated

00:47:24 ► §

with the universe,

00:47:26 ► §

the cosmic structures like galaxies,

00:47:29 ► §

and the space of our inner experience,

00:47:32 ► §

this possible correlation is an interesting question.

00:47:37 ► §

So I wonder, since, you know, in your travels,

00:47:42 ► §

does this make sense to you, Terrence,

00:47:45 ► §

on the basis of direct Gnostic experience?

00:47:48 ► §

You mean that we…

00:47:49 ► §

Have we traveled in the universe or without it?

00:47:54 ► §

So are you saying, does it seem reasonable to connect up the entities

00:47:59 ► §

in the psychedelic experience to particular places in space and time. Yeah, does Rupert’s question pertain to direct experience we’ve already had

00:48:11 ► §

or is SETI something we have yet to begin to make contact with these galactic intelligences?

00:48:19 ► §

So the Milky Way would be a good friend to make.

00:48:24 ► §

Well, we’ve had this discussion before. I’ve always,

00:48:27 ► §

it’s hard for me, I can imagine that the sun is intelligent and an organism, but only if I imagine

00:48:38 ► §

it exists on that scale in some way that’s fairly hard to relate to. In other words, it’s like the Pacific

00:48:45 ► §

Ocean. I can imagine it to be intelligent, but I would imagine that its

00:48:52 ► §

intelligence is of such a nature that it and I probably don’t have too much to do

00:48:57 ► §

with each other. Meanwhile, out in the universe, these entities exist which we do contact in

00:49:10 ► §

the psychedelic experience I I’ve always sort of imagined well I’m never sure I

00:49:21 ► §

mean are they creatures of other levels or simply other places?

00:49:27 ► §

And then if other places,

00:49:31 ► §

they seem to be places so far away

00:49:33 ► §

that the laws of physics are different.

00:49:36 ► §

So it’s not just like the difference

00:49:38 ► §

between Chicago and Memphis.

00:49:40 ► §

It’s like the difference between Chicago and Oz.

00:49:44 ► §

You know, there’s an ontological thing going on of incommiserability.

00:49:52 ► §

Sometimes I think that perhaps, you know,

00:49:57 ► §

we’ve talked about how the morphogenetic field is a necessary hypothesis but hard to detect the way you can detect an

00:50:09 ► §

electromagnetic field well then the creative response to that is to say well

00:50:16 ► §

perhaps the imagination is the detection of the morphogenetic field that the

00:50:22 ► §

imagination is somehow that the mind, the brain-mind

00:50:26 ► §

system is a quantum mechanically delicate enough chemical system that

00:50:32 ► §

incoming input from the morphogenetic field can push these

00:50:37 ► §

cascades of chemical activity one way or another and that in the act of daydreaming or psychedelic tripping or something

00:50:45 ► §

you’re actually scanning the morphogenetic field. Well in that case it means that what we call the

00:50:53 ► §

imagination is actually the universal library of what is real that you couldn’t imagine it if it weren’t real somewhere, sometime.

00:51:05 ► §

And that to me is very empowering

00:51:09 ► §

because I think that’s the truth that you learn

00:51:14 ► §

at the center of the psychedelic experience

00:51:16 ► §

that’s so mind-boggling that you can’t really return to it with it,

00:51:21 ► §

that it’s real.

00:51:24 ► §

to it, with it, that it’s real. And if thinking about the heavens in this way

00:51:30 ► §

as organic, integrated, and animate

00:51:35 ► §

makes that more probable, then I’m all for it.

00:51:42 ► §

I think Rupert, you and I, and perhaps to some degree, Ralph,

00:51:46 ► §

come out of the influence of the school called Organismic Philosophy

00:51:53 ► §

that Alfred North Whitehead and Joseph Needham and L.L. White put forth.

00:52:01 ► §

Clearly, the reason that organism, you know, Rupert made the very eloquent case for

00:52:08 ► §

organismic organization at every level. Clearly the reason that’s been unwelcome in science

00:52:14 ► §

is because it raises questions about the signal systems which hold these organisms together.

00:52:22 ► §

And that is pointing back toward a theme that I know

00:52:26 ► §

is dear to Rupert he touched on it this evening which is the systematic

00:52:32 ► §

elimination of spirit from any explanation of what nature is I mean a machine communicates mechanical force through direct contact

00:52:50 ► §

basically. An organism operates through chemical systems of diffusion or color

00:52:59 ► §

signal or even language in some cases. So it’s these higher order forms of function, if called down

00:53:09 ► §

to explain large chunks of nature, that begin to look like a re-infusion of spirit into nature.

00:53:18 ► §

Strangely enough, this is of course exactly what we need, but orthodoxy is fighting it you know tooth

00:53:27 ► §

and nail this is because it’s still reacting to the 19th century battle

00:53:33 ► §

where deism had such power that it appeared potentially capable of

00:53:39 ► §

frustrating Darwinian rationalism but that battle was won long ago. Now it’s time to realize that

00:53:48 ► §

trying to reason upward from the laws of atomic physics to organisms is not going to work.

00:53:58 ► §

That there are what David Bohm and other people, I suppose, called emergent properties at every level.

00:54:06 ► §

There’s nothing magical about that concept.

00:54:10 ► §

I mean, think of one molecule of water.

00:54:14 ► §

It’s absurd to call it wet.

00:54:17 ► §

You know, wetness is something that you have when you have millions of molecules of water.

00:54:23 ► §

It’s an emergent property that comes out of millions of molecules of water. It’s an emergent property

00:54:25 ► §

that comes out of millions of molecules of water.

00:54:29 ► §

And at every level in the evolution of physical complexity,

00:54:35 ► §

complexity itself has permitted the emergence of new properties

00:54:40 ► §

with the iridescence of mind and culture

00:54:45 ► §

emerging finally at the top of this pyramid.

00:54:53 ► §

I don’t know.

00:54:54 ► §

I think it’s interesting the way the culture

00:54:56 ► §

has changed its attitude toward the heavens.

00:55:02 ► §

I mean, a revolution in our thinking that is fairly fundamental is that no one

00:55:10 ► §

at this point, I think, believes in the human conquest of space. This has gone from a national

00:55:20 ► §

commitment in the 60s to the chicest thing you could be into in the 70s on a par with virtual reality and MDMA today,

00:55:32 ► §

to, it isn’t mentioned, not by freaks like us, not by presidential candidates, not by right-wingers, left-wingers, middle-of-the-roaders, or anybody else.

00:55:42 ► §

It’s all over.

00:55:44 ► §

left-wingers, middle-of-the-roaders, or anybody else. It’s all over. The heavy lift

00:55:53 ► §

launch capacity that resided in the Soviet military industrial complex has been allowed to drift into

00:56:00 ► §

obsolescence. They held the keys to reaching near-earth orbit, and it’s slipping away.

00:56:03 ► §

So, I appreciate your attempt to animate the cosmos because apparently we’re

00:56:08 ► §

turning into the worm dimension. We’re turning away from all that. It has become like so much much a part of a past era of grandeur and glory seeming not to be repeated.

00:56:29 ► §

We held a virtual reality conference here a year and a half ago and Howard

00:56:34 ► §

Rheingold had a revelation in the middle of the night down on the platform in front of the

00:56:38 ► §

big house when he said, my god, now I understand what virtual reality is for.

00:56:45 ► §

It’s to keep us from ever leaving the earth.

00:56:48 ► §

And it bears consideration.

00:56:53 ► §

Your talk made me think of Olaf Stapleton’s,

00:56:56 ► §

The Star Maker, which is a wonderfully eloquent statement

00:57:02 ► §

of an animate cosmos, which if you’ve not read it

00:57:05 ► §

it’s a very up book

00:57:08 ► §

it seems to me in terms of what you said

00:57:15 ► §

in terms of communication with other planets

00:57:18 ► §

probably the SETI program now

00:57:22 ► §

which is based on radio telescopes

00:57:24 ► §

heavy technology and stuff may be worth doing SETI program now, which is based on radio telescopes,

00:57:26 ► §

heavy technology and stuff,

00:57:29 ► §

is maybe worth doing,

00:57:31 ► §

but I myself don’t think it will get very far.

00:57:33 ► §

If we take this other approach,

00:57:35 ► §

possibly involving psychedelics,

00:57:37 ► §

there seem to be three points here.

00:57:40 ► §

Firstly, are we trying to communicate with beings of our own kind of level,

00:57:44 ► §

i.e. biological type organisms on

00:57:46 ► §

planets somewhere else in the universe that would be a kind of peer conversation and it may be that

00:57:54 ► §

psychedelics would help that it may be that shamanic journeyings into the heavens which are

00:57:59 ► §

a long part of a very long tradition it may have gone on for hundreds of thousands of years

00:58:03 ► §

those may have been contacting beings of that kind of a similar long tradition, it may have gone on for hundreds of thousands of years those may have been contacting beings of that kind

00:58:06 ► §

of a similar order to ourselves

00:58:07 ► §

then there’s this thing that you rather dismiss

00:58:11 ► §

the communication with a higher kind of mind or intelligence

00:58:14 ► §

the Pacific Ocean, the Sun, the solar system, the galaxy

00:58:18 ► §

I think you dismissed it too soon

00:58:21 ► §

because in a sense the idea that our minds are very much smaller parts of a very much larger mental system, incomprehensible to us because it’s so much larger than our own, so much more inclusive and working on a different time scale and order of magnitude.

00:58:46 ► §

This is of course a very traditional idea that our intelligence is lower in the scale than much higher ones.

00:58:54 ► §

But we can communicate with these higher levels of intelligence through prayer, through mystical insight or intuition.

00:58:58 ► §

We don’t have to stay at our own level.

00:58:59 ► §

There are these possibilities.

00:59:05 ► §

Most mystical insights are about contacting higher levels of being or higher levels of intelligence.

00:59:10 ► §

And most forms of mysticism today are extremely fuzzy because people, as soon as you get beyond the human level, we lack maps.

00:59:15 ► §

I mean, is it a sense of connection with a particular place?

00:59:18 ► §

You know, the earth of the California coast and the sea,

00:59:23 ► §

the locality

00:59:25 ► §

extending maybe 20 or 30

00:59:26 ► §

miles around us

00:59:27 ► §

a sense of absorption into the nature of that place

00:59:30 ► §

or the whole planet earth

00:59:32 ► §

or the solar system

00:59:33 ► §

or the galaxy, or the cluster of galaxies

00:59:36 ► §

or the cosmos

00:59:37 ► §

or God who may be a spirit

00:59:39 ► §

pervading the entire cosmos

00:59:41 ► §

the unifying spirit of everything

00:59:43 ► §

most people don’t quite know where one leaves off and the next begins.

00:59:48 ► §

All they know is that it’s bigger than them.

00:59:50 ► §

And it may be that we’re not…

00:59:53 ► §

In the past, people may have had a better sense of just how far they were going.

00:59:56 ► §

I think these doctrines of hierarchies of angels

00:59:59 ► §

was an attempt to recognise that there are many different levels of intelligence or mind beyond our own.

01:00:08 ► §

So, and there’s a third point, which is that in order to contact beings,

01:00:16 ► §

possibly with the help of psychedelics, possibly in meditative or altered states of consciousness,

01:00:22 ► §

induced through chanting, or possibly by a combination

01:00:26 ► §

of all known means

01:00:27 ► §

all these together

01:00:30 ► §

to do it in a darkened room

01:00:33 ► §

with one’s eyes closed

01:00:35 ► §

is one way

01:00:37 ► §

but then that’s rather random

01:00:39 ► §

there may be much more directional ways of doing it

01:00:42 ► §

if for example

01:00:43 ► §

we follow the ancient law about the benefits of stars

01:00:47 ► §

and take the idea that the star Regulus, for example,

01:00:49 ► §

is considered a star of good omen, a good one,

01:00:52 ► §

we have a stellarator, a tube or a telescope fixed on Regulus.

01:00:57 ► §

We then go into this altered state having invoked Regulus

01:01:01 ► §

and made appropriate prayers and preparations,

01:01:04 ► §

and then go into this state

01:01:05 ► §

connected by our eyes

01:01:07 ► §

in the most direct way we can be through the light

01:01:09 ► §

coming from that to that star

01:01:11 ► §

and go into that star

01:01:13 ► §

and its associated solar

01:01:15 ► §

system this would be a form of

01:01:17 ► §

directed mind travel

01:01:19 ► §

that would go beyond possible random

01:01:22 ► §

journeyings that occur with closed eyes

01:01:24 ► §

in darkened rooms.

01:01:25 ► §

And it may be that very few people have actually started.

01:01:28 ► §

There may be some, I don’t know anyone who’s doing this,

01:01:30 ► §

but this seems to me a new frontier of space exploration

01:01:34 ► §

that can be done on a very low budget.

01:01:39 ► §

And it would open up a great range of possibilities

01:01:44 ► §

because it may be that some stars out there

01:01:47 ► §

do have beings with whom we’d link through

01:01:50 ► §

for example DMT or psilocybin type experiences

01:01:54 ► §

might resonate

01:01:55 ► §

I would say by morphic resonance

01:01:57 ► §

you could say by telepathy

01:01:58 ► §

you could say by some kind of affinity

01:02:00 ► §

doesn’t matter about the terminology

01:02:02 ► §

with beings either with that star itself

01:02:06 ► §

or with beings on planets

01:02:08 ► §

within that solar system

01:02:09 ► §

and a channel of communication might

01:02:12 ► §

be opened

01:02:12 ► §

then there are stars that

01:02:15 ► §

only the bravest would dare to

01:02:17 ► §

look into, such as Algol

01:02:20 ► §

a variable star

01:02:21 ► §

of ill repute in the ancient world

01:02:23 ► §

believed to be an evil star we now know that it’s

01:02:26 ► §

variability is changing intensity

01:02:28 ► §

every two or three days it gets brighter

01:02:30 ► §

and darker is owing to the fact

01:02:32 ► §

it’s part of a binary star

01:02:34 ► §

system probably revolving

01:02:36 ► §

rapidly around or in association

01:02:38 ► §

with a black hole or at least some

01:02:40 ► §

other non-visible body

01:02:42 ► §

it might be that

01:02:44 ► §

communicating with alcoholol would have…

01:02:47 ► §

one would enter into a kind of dualistic, a yin-yang type stellar system

01:02:52 ► §

that might have a very peculiar quality of consciousness to communicate.

01:02:56 ► §

Well, do you know anyone who’s actually consciously undertaken this mode of space exploration?

01:03:02 ► §

No, but I think it’s a wonderful idea. I can envision enormous,

01:03:08 ► §

you know, why use a stenerator? Why not use the Keck telescope and just punch up alcohol on the

01:03:15 ► §

screen and then smoke DMT and sort of put your hand on the radio as they used to say?

01:03:33 ► §

on the radio as they used to say. Hey, it could work. Don’t doubt it for a moment. Well, I do know somebody who undertook a program something like this. It was me, actually.

01:03:47 ► §

My project involved my technical

01:03:49 ► §

equipment that made this possible

01:03:52 ► §

that empowered me to

01:03:53 ► §

travel to the stars,

01:03:55 ► §

my destination,

01:03:57 ► §

was my hot tub.

01:03:59 ► §

This is an instrument that makes it

01:04:01 ► §

comfortable to sit outdoors for a long time

01:04:03 ► §

watching the sky.

01:04:05 ► §

I explored primarily the polar constellations and the Milky Way.

01:04:10 ► §

And some kind of conversation with the Milky Way is possible.

01:04:15 ► §

And also with the zodiac and the zodiacal constellations,

01:04:21 ► §

but particularly the lunar constellations, the polar constellations,

01:04:25 ► §

they have a lot to say about the

01:04:27 ► §

morphic field.

01:04:30 ► §

But

01:04:30 ► §

I forgot to

01:04:34 ► §

answer your question about

01:04:35 ► §

John Dee and his

01:04:37 ► §

conversations with angels, and maybe now

01:04:39 ► §

I see that might be

01:04:41 ► §

appropriate here.

01:04:44 ► §

Because mathematics was interpreted by him as being a healing art

01:04:53 ► §

in which the stellar influences would be used for healing.

01:04:59 ► §

He had in mind particularly human diseases.

01:05:03 ► §

But in light of our current circle of speculation, we could also apply this on a larger scale

01:05:10 ► §

where we feel that our future and the biosphere’s future is threatened somehow by the human

01:05:17 ► §

infection.

01:05:18 ► §

We might reach out here for a more radical solution to the problem, following the ideas

01:05:24 ► §

of John Dee.

01:05:25 ► §

So this is sort of how he did it, traditional means.

01:05:30 ► §

There are the nine celestial spheres,

01:05:34 ► §

and there are the nine choirs of angels,

01:05:37 ► §

and they’re associated each with one sphere,

01:05:42 ► §

although they can travel plus or minus one sphere.

01:05:45 ► §

The more powerful ones can travel a little farther,

01:05:48 ► §

but through their cooperative activity they can pass messages

01:05:52 ► §

up and down, and the disease is called by

01:05:56 ► §

imperfect resonance with these forces. In the lowest

01:06:00 ► §

choir of angels, which are just called angels,

01:06:04 ► §

they are particularly the messengers between the gods and the in the lowest choir of angels, which are just called angels.

01:06:10 ► §

They are particularly the messengers between the gods and the other spheres and people.

01:06:15 ► §

And individual people have individual angel guardians and so on.

01:06:23 ► §

So, I mean, this was the accepted worldview of everybody in the time of John Dee, and he was a major expert of this view.

01:06:27 ► §

But his intention was, like ours,

01:06:30 ► §

to get in contact with these intelligences

01:06:34 ► §

as seen through the worldview of his time,

01:06:37 ► §

the Elizabethan worldview,

01:06:38 ► §

just as we’re trying to do it in what’s our worldview.

01:06:42 ► §

Well, anyway.

01:06:43 ► §

Hollywood science fiction.

01:06:46 ► §

So through the aid of his pal

01:06:47 ► §

Ed, over a period of

01:06:50 ► §

eight years, explicit

01:06:52 ► §

conversations in ordinary

01:06:53 ► §

language took place

01:06:55 ► §

with the aid

01:06:58 ► §

of the show stone

01:06:59 ► §

and the language

01:07:02 ► §

they spoke was not an earth

01:07:03 ► §

language.

01:07:06 ► §

This was sort of the program that I had in mind in my experiment,

01:07:10 ► §

but I don’t have a pal, Ed,

01:07:13 ► §

who can manipulate this stone around a board

01:07:15 ► §

with letters of a mysterious alphabet and so on.

01:07:18 ► §

So I was looking for, following your idea,

01:07:22 ► §

for guidance in a visual form,

01:07:27 ► §

a vision, in fact, of my own of the sort that we are familiar with having,

01:07:32 ► §

of the kind that I have struggled with machinery to reproduce.

01:07:39 ► §

And as you see, I have not received a solution of our problems,

01:07:45 ► §

but I do think this is a program that an individual can pursue,

01:07:51 ► §

even without psychedelics,

01:07:54 ► §

but it requires a considerable commitment of time.

01:08:00 ► §

And I think that my experiments would have been enormously assisted by a computer-controlled stellarator.

01:08:07 ► §

I do not think the Keck telescope would help.

01:08:10 ► §

It’s too indirect because we have in mind,

01:08:14 ► §

I don’t know if this has come out in our recent trial arms,

01:08:18 ► §

but we’ve had in mind photons, the electromagnetic field,

01:08:24 ► §

as one aid in the materialization, as it were,

01:08:27 ► §

the communication of the morphic resonance, actually,

01:08:30 ► §

to our minds and individual soul.

01:08:34 ► §

So, the indirectness of the Keck telescope is such that,

01:08:40 ► §

first of all, there’s the segmented pseudo-parabolic mirror,

01:08:44 ► §

and that focuses the photons eventually on a CCD.

01:08:49 ► §

This is a photosensitive plate.

01:08:52 ► §

And finally the astronomer actually sits away downtown

01:08:56 ► §

in this way with the cafes around and so on

01:08:59 ► §

looking at a video screen.

01:09:02 ► §

So I think that the indirectness would defeat the program.

01:09:07 ► §

Better to have a stellarator, which is a telescope without glass,

01:09:10 ► §

an empty tube, basically.

01:09:12 ► §

But if you wanted to study, to communicate a particular star,

01:09:19 ► §

then it would be nice to have this tube pointed at it,

01:09:22 ► §

maybe a fairly large tube,

01:09:23 ► §

so it just indicates what circle of sky,

01:09:26 ► §

where that is,

01:09:27 ► §

so that you could focus on it for a long period of time.

01:09:31 ► §

This is easy to do with the polar constellations,

01:09:34 ► §

however, any favorite one,

01:09:36 ► §

Beta Cassiopeia, for example,

01:09:38 ► §

is a star that everyone knows,

01:09:41 ► §

and not only now, but in earlier times,

01:09:44 ► §

when the pole was actually located in

01:09:47 ► §

the faraway galaxies, another location in the polar…

01:09:52 ► §

The polar constellations have always been polar constellations, so for a million years

01:09:58 ► §

we’ve been looking at Beto Cassiopeia and so on.

01:10:02 ► §

So I’ll recommend this to you and you and anyone else has a program

01:10:07 ► §

even without a hot tub you can use a sleeping bag but of course you don’t want to fall asleep during

01:10:15 ► §

just before an important communication is transmitted so you have to keep awake. I mean

01:10:24 ► §

we can start near a home with the sun of course

01:10:26 ► §

and it’s hard to look at the sun in midday

01:10:28 ► §

but in sunset for example

01:10:30 ► §

there was a wonderful one this evening

01:10:31 ► §

over the sea

01:10:33 ► §

at sunrise and sunset

01:10:36 ► §

in many traditions people have communicated with the sun

01:10:39 ► §

and our own civilization is based to a degree

01:10:42 ► §

to an extraordinary degree

01:10:44 ► §

on what’s often jocularly referred to as sun worship,

01:10:48 ► §

as millions of the urban rich and middle class, even working classes,

01:10:53 ► §

spend their entire winter fantasizing about which beach they’re going to go to for the summer.

01:10:59 ► §

In England, since it’s usually rainy, people like going to Spain,

01:11:04 ► §

the Costa del Sol and that kind of thing.

01:11:07 ► §

And lying around on beaches in the sun.

01:11:09 ► §

I mean, it’s referred to as sun worship, but we should perhaps take that a bit more seriously.

01:11:13 ► §

The way in which people like to be in the sun, it’s now known to be dangerous, bad for the skin and so on.

01:11:20 ► §

It doesn’t stop people.

01:11:22 ► §

That’s relatively recent. In the 19thth century very few people lay in the sun

01:11:26 ► §

so there’s a curious

01:11:27 ► §

movement of our whole civilization

01:11:29 ► §

towards this new relationship

01:11:31 ► §

to the sun

01:11:32 ► §

through lying in it

01:11:35 ► §

in India it’s a traditional

01:11:37 ► §

part of the daily ritual

01:11:39 ► §

of Indians to

01:11:41 ► §

greet the sun as it rises in the morning

01:11:44 ► §

the Surya Namaskar a yogic practice a prostration to the sun as it rises in the morning, the Surya Namaskar, a yogic practice,

01:11:47 ► §

a prostration to the sun,

01:11:49 ► §

which I actually, I’ve done it myself every day

01:11:51 ► §

for maybe 15 years,

01:11:54 ► §

is, I don’t always get up and do it at dawn,

01:11:58 ► §

pointing to the sun,

01:11:59 ► §

but it’s a greeting of the sun in the morning

01:12:03 ► §

that forms a conscious relationship to it.

01:12:06 ► §

And this conscious awareness of the sun is probably,

01:12:11 ► §

well, and of the moon for that matter,

01:12:12 ► §

the sun is more important in this respect.

01:12:15 ► §

It’s something we can start with.

01:12:18 ► §

Well, I think maybe we should reconsider the moon.

01:12:22 ► §

Since it’s hard to have visual contact with the sun

01:12:27 ► §

unless you get special glasses,

01:12:28 ► §

which is a possibility.

01:12:29 ► §

We could have, instead of a stellarator,

01:12:33 ► §

just these dark lenses.

01:12:36 ► §

The moon, however, is quite interesting.

01:12:38 ► §

It has its own sphere, of course, the lunar sphere.

01:12:42 ► §

And among the nine spheres,

01:12:44 ► §

the lunar sphere is somehow the most important

01:12:46 ► §

one. It’s the membrane

01:12:47 ► §

for our kind of life.

01:12:50 ► §

Everything inside

01:12:51 ► §

the lunar sphere

01:12:53 ► §

decays and dies.

01:12:56 ► §

And everything outside the lunar

01:12:58 ► §

sphere is eternal.

01:13:00 ► §

So

01:13:00 ► §

the moon was somehow

01:13:03 ► §

always seen as the boundary of mortal life.

01:13:09 ► §

Furthermore, it is visible at night and you can look at it, and everyone loves to look at it.

01:13:16 ► §

And you do get some kind of powerful, well, I used to say that consciousness evolved by starlight.

01:13:27 ► §

And probably love and the emotional structure of the human and mammalian system has evolved by moonlight.

01:13:38 ► §

So it’s very good for us to study the moon.

01:13:41 ► §

The problem in learning to communicate with the moon is that it moves so rapidly.

01:13:46 ► §

It changes its phases.

01:13:48 ► §

So if you have the habit, for example,

01:13:50 ► §

to observe in the evening,

01:13:52 ► §

or you always do your observation in the morning,

01:13:55 ► §

then there’s only a few days a month

01:13:57 ► §

when you can actually do it,

01:13:59 ► §

to communicate with the moon.

01:14:01 ► §

And that makes it difficult,

01:14:02 ► §

because after the lapse of almost a month,

01:14:04 ► §

when you start again, and then you’ve sort of forgotten nevertheless the moon has

01:14:09 ► §

definite possibilities and it might be the strongest experience our likeliest possibility

01:14:16 ► §

of actually having a conversation and renewing our contact with the living and intelligent

01:14:22 ► §

world the universe would be through the moon.

01:14:28 ► §

I don’t myself expect the moon to have a great deal of intelligence or life.

01:14:34 ► §

I mean, it’s the most in that heavenly body we know, I think.

01:14:37 ► §

I mean, Venus is a turbulent system with plenty of scope for chaotic perturbations and shifting systems of order

01:14:45 ► §

Jupiter has this extraordinary

01:14:48 ► §

vertical system on it

01:14:49 ► §

this fluid flow system

01:14:51 ► §

incredibly dynamical kind

01:14:53 ► §

Saturn has these delicately

01:14:56 ► §

poised and no doubt oscillatory rings

01:14:58 ► §

and many of them have very

01:15:00 ► §

sensitive like membranes

01:15:02 ► §

which could pick up fleeting

01:15:03 ► §

changes and so on which could pick up fleeting changes and so on, which

01:15:05 ► §

could be interfaces between the physical and the mental realm. The moon seems rather lacking

01:15:11 ► §

in that respect.

01:15:12 ► §

Okay, maybe the moon is dumb. I’m not willing to concede that, but I see that some people

01:15:22 ► §

would rather put their money on a different number.

01:15:26 ► §

So let me still recommend some alternative to the sun,

01:15:30 ► §

and perhaps one of the brighter planets.

01:15:34 ► §

Jupiter is probably the one that most people are familiar with.

01:15:39 ► §

Jupiter and Saturn are visible in the sky almost like stars.

01:15:44 ► §

They stay in the same position for

01:15:46 ► §

a long time, so it’s easy to find them without a computer-controlled stellarator and to watch

01:15:55 ► §

them. I mean, they’re simply the brightest things around. So what about that, contacting

01:16:00 ► §

Jupiter or Saturn? What do you think, Terrence, some botanical trips should be devoted to this form of SETI?

01:16:08 ► §

Well, I observed someone once who claimed that somewhere out between Mars and Jupiter

01:16:17 ► §

is an invisible topological twist yet to be discovered by science.

01:16:27 ► §

A new twist.

01:16:28 ► §

Yes, a new twist.

01:16:29 ► §

And that Jupiter actually is the Earth in some peculiar…

01:16:36 ► §

Twisted reflection.

01:16:37 ► §

A twisted reflection in another order of matter.

01:16:41 ► §

Well, that would be okay.

01:16:42 ► §

It’s hard to observe the Earth at night, and maybe Jupiter is, that this twist is there in order to facilitate…

01:16:49 ► §

Well, there’s plenty of exotic chemistry on Jupiter, and even, I think, the current thinking is that Europa is actually the most likely place in the solar system, other than the Earth, to to have life because Europa has very dense, deep oceans.

01:17:09 ► §

No, Europa has a moon.

01:17:10 ► §

It has to be as dumb as our moon.

01:17:12 ► §

Why would it be smarter than our moon?

01:17:13 ► §

No, it has oceans of liquid water

01:17:16 ► §

which in fact may be

01:17:18 ► §

that the entire thing is a drop of liquid water.

01:17:22 ► §

In other words, there may be no solid form.

01:17:24 ► §

Is supporting life a sign of liquid water in other words there may be no solid form is supporting life

01:17:27 ► §

a sign of planetary intelligence is that well there is a there is a school of thinking that

01:17:34 ► §

holds to that well then this earth is dumb because it spawned us but biological life is but one form

01:17:42 ► §

i mean if we’re talking about life as the kind the sun may have,

01:17:46 ► §

or the solar system, or the galaxy,

01:17:48 ► §

we don’t have to go straight to biological life.

01:17:50 ► §

That would be equivalent to the sort of similar level,

01:17:53 ► §

peer communication type system.

01:17:56 ► §

Yes, I mean, what you’re talking about when you’re talking about Jupiter

01:17:59 ► §

or something like that is superconducting life at high pressures.

01:18:03 ► §

No, we’re talking choirs of angels here.

01:18:05 ► §

We want to hear the song.

01:18:06 ► §

But I’m talking about the medium is Jovian, where something like Europa, it’s a more terrestrial

01:18:17 ► §

thing.

01:18:18 ► §

These other kinds of life, I dare say, live mostly in our fevered imaginations at this point I mean the

01:18:26 ► §

evidence for them is extraordinarily underwhelming but how many people have

01:18:33 ► §

looked I mean this is a good point well a person who’s going to disbelieve porn

01:18:38 ► §

circles is certainly not going to have a clever conversation with Madimi. No, Madimi is another thing.

01:18:47 ► §

Or you’d be impressed by Madimi.

01:18:48 ► §

I liked Madimi. I liked her act.

01:18:52 ► §

But from there to the thinking son is a long step,

01:18:57 ► §

although not an impossible one.

01:19:00 ► §

But I think the thing about the whole discussion about SETI is that the difficulty is to recognize extraterrestrial intelligence

01:19:14 ► §

or non-human intelligence.

01:19:17 ► §

I think it’s there on the sun, on Jupiter,

01:19:20 ► §

but the very nature of its non-humanness makes it either elusive or uninteresting or horrifying,

01:19:32 ► §

and that it’s probably a very narrow spectrum

01:19:36 ► §

that we would have the experience of an I-Thou relationship with.

01:19:44 ► §

I mean, we can decide here and now that, in fact,

01:19:46 ► §

the sun is alive and highly literate and so forth.

01:19:50 ► §

It doesn’t greatly change our experience

01:19:54 ► §

in the way that an extraterrestrial

01:19:59 ► §

with which we could at least exchange information with would be.

01:20:04 ► §

I mean, the creatures in the DMT place are pretty non-human.

01:20:09 ► §

They’re not made of matter.

01:20:11 ► §

They appear to be some kind of plastic energy.

01:20:16 ► §

Either they’re syntactical or, I don’t know, they’re not made of matter.

01:20:23 ► §

They are cognizable as individuals.

01:20:27 ► §

In other words, we can say there are many of them

01:20:30 ► §

and that they move through a kind of space.

01:20:35 ► §

I don’t know.

01:20:35 ► §

I think the recognition of intelligence, if it’s not like yours,

01:20:40 ► §

is going to be very difficult.

01:20:41 ► §

I mean, we can’t even have Croats and Serbs getting along together.

01:20:48 ► §

No, but you’ve already encountered intelligence.

01:20:51 ► §

Let’s say we call it the transcendent other for the moment.

01:20:55 ► §

Suppose it turned out that the transcendent other

01:20:57 ► §

was not in hyperdimensional space,

01:21:00 ► §

in other words, beyond space and time,

01:21:02 ► §

living on the other side of the eschaton,

01:21:04 ► §

but actually lived in a crater on the moon.

01:21:08 ► §

And that this became a personal conviction of yours

01:21:13 ► §

after performing the experiment suggested by Rupert,

01:21:17 ► §

that during your travels, you devote a certain amount of time

01:21:22 ► §

to peering through the stellarator at different heavenly bodies,

01:21:25 ► §

and suddenly you find out that you always meet these beings

01:21:28 ► §

and get this kind of experience and information when looking there,

01:21:32 ► §

and other, completely other, when looking there,

01:21:34 ► §

and that what you’re looking at, the vision actually,

01:21:37 ► §

and after a bunch of experiments you find out, yes, indeed, this is so.

01:21:40 ► §

I now think that the transcendent and other lives

01:21:45 ► §

on the moon.

01:21:47 ► §

And then this other

01:21:49 ► §

green and purple one is sort of

01:21:52 ► §

associated with Europa.

01:21:54 ► §

And then

01:21:55 ► §

that would not only be an interesting

01:21:57 ► §

discovery, but would completely change

01:22:00 ► §

your whole idea about

01:22:01 ► §

your shamanic

01:22:04 ► §

experience throughout your life.

01:22:05 ► §

No, I think that would be interesting.

01:22:07 ► §

So far, in terms of locating these things,

01:22:09 ► §

the only locators we’ve been able to find are drugs.

01:22:13 ► §

In other words, we say this creature lives

01:22:17 ► §

on the other side of 15 milligrams of psilocybin.

01:22:21 ► §

It does not live on the other side of 75 milliliters of ayahuasca. These

01:22:28 ► §

are not satisfying locators because we’re not used to thinking of a molecule standing

01:22:33 ► §

for a spatial temporal locus.

01:22:35 ► §

Well, morphic resonance gives us a mechanism to associate a given plant species

01:22:40 ► §

with a particular planet.

01:22:43 ► §

Well, morphic resonance, too, or the doctrine of signatures.

01:22:47 ► §

I mean, this is what…

01:22:48 ► §

Yes, ancient herbals did this.

01:22:49 ► §

The magic that Dee built on was the magic of Ficino and Campanella and these people.

01:22:57 ► §

Not only plants, but minerals, everything.

01:22:59 ► §

That’s right, and perfumes and musical notes and metals.

01:23:05 ► §

All that.

01:23:05 ► §

You would build up these attractor tableaus on the day of Venus, at the hour of Venus.

01:23:13 ► §

You would burn the incense of Venus, play the song of Venus, recite the poem of Venus,

01:23:19 ► §

wrapped in the garment of Venus, in the color of Venus,

01:23:27 ► §

wrapped in the garment of Venus, in the colour of Venus, and then something associated with Venus would in fact come to be.

01:23:30 ► §

I think this is a fascinating research project and it could be done for next to nothing.

01:23:37 ► §

It could be done by networks of people working, you know, sharing their results and so on. And I think that the

01:23:45 ► §

where it would really mesh with our whole civilization is when this

01:23:49 ► §

information through channeling from different stars and communicating in

01:23:54 ► §

this way can help to bring about a new synthesis of astrology and astronomy. I

01:23:59 ► §

mean astrology has a much bigger popular following than astronomy does. But it’s this tragic way it’s got disconnected from the actual heavens.

01:24:10 ► §

But the popular belief there’s a meaning in the heavens

01:24:13 ► §

and a connection between the heavens and the earth is very, very widespread.

01:24:17 ► §

So I think this ingredient of communication of extraterrestrial intelligence

01:24:22 ► §

and connections with Jupiter, Venus and so on

01:24:25 ► §

and the bringing together of astrology and astronomy

01:24:28 ► §

a very elementary starting point

01:24:31 ► §

would be something we thought of a couple of weeks ago

01:24:34 ► §

at Hollyhock Farm in British Columbia

01:24:36 ► §

the Esalen of the North

01:24:38 ► §

they have a wonderful naturalist there, George Sack

01:24:40 ► §

who gives talks at night on all the stars

01:24:43 ► §

pointing out the constellations, the heavens and so on

01:24:46 ► §

a weekend workshop of astronomy for astrologers

01:24:50 ► §

would be an elementary beginning

01:24:52 ► §

but I think that these elements could be brought together

01:24:57 ► §

this is a project for the future

01:25:00 ► §

I think it would have some relevance to

01:25:03 ► §

the problems we were talking about this afternoon if we’re looking for guidance in what happens in

01:25:08 ► §

earth on earth and we certainly need it then recognizing how we’re embedded

01:25:14 ► §

within the heavens within the solar system the galaxy the context in which

01:25:19 ► §

we live and the possibility of intelligences at our level below our

01:25:23 ► §

level and far above our level throughout the heavens that could play a role in guiding us could be an

01:25:30 ► §

important clue but this research project it has yet not even begun I mean the

01:25:39 ► §

only pioneer so far has been Ralph in his hot tub. Do you think we should now

01:25:45 ► §

open this up?

01:25:49 ► §

I’m not

01:25:50 ► §

sure that I understood what

01:25:52 ► §

Ralph said. Neither of you

01:25:54 ► §

seemed to have picked up on it. Did you say

01:25:56 ► §

you did communicate with

01:25:58 ► §

something

01:26:00 ► §

on

01:26:01 ► §

the story that you concentrated on

01:26:04 ► §

in your attempt?

01:26:05 ► §

Yes.

01:26:08 ► §

I’m not going to report

01:26:10 ► §

a conversation. I invested

01:26:12 ► §

a year, well

01:26:14 ► §

more actually, but for one year

01:26:15 ► §

practically every night I did

01:26:18 ► §

stare at these objects for

01:26:19 ► §

a long time and

01:26:22 ► §

simply make note of my

01:26:24 ► §

visual impressions.

01:26:26 ► §

And there’s nothing definite enough to tell you

01:26:31 ► §

I didn’t take a psychedelic during that period or something like that.

01:26:35 ► §

But I did have an intuitive feeling that supported Rupert’s program.

01:26:43 ► §

And I just recommend trying it yourself.

01:26:46 ► §

I won’t try to put it in words.

01:26:48 ► §

So it’s just sort of a feeling that you can’t express like many others?

01:26:51 ► §

Well, I think that if you followed a lot of ancient instructions,

01:26:55 ► §

such as Jill was suggesting,

01:26:57 ► §

with the invocation by name and sound,

01:27:01 ► §

wearing the clothes,

01:27:02 ► §

and John Dee did all of these things.

01:27:06 ► §

And the invocations are

01:27:08 ► §

recorded and there are many people

01:27:10 ► §

now practicing this

01:27:12 ► §

system of angel magic

01:27:14 ► §

in England and in the United States

01:27:16 ► §

where the invocations are written down

01:27:18 ► §

in John Dee’s notebooks

01:27:19 ► §

there’s the John Dee Society that publishes

01:27:22 ► §

this material for anybody who wants to try it

01:27:25 ► §

but do they do it while looking at

01:27:26 ► §

particular stars? Yes

01:27:28 ► §

yes

01:27:29 ► §

a typical group

01:27:32 ► §

doing an Enochian invocation does

01:27:34 ► §

have a so called astrologer

01:27:36 ► §

who keeps track

01:27:38 ► §

has the clock and keeps track of the

01:27:40 ► §

exact positions with the

01:27:42 ► §

ephemerides and

01:27:44 ► §

checks the position,

01:27:46 ► §

and they’re definitely communicating with stars.

01:27:50 ► §

So what do they have to say?

01:27:52 ► §

Well, they…

01:27:55 ► §

You have to experience it.

01:28:01 ► §

Have you been to one of these 20 chapters?

01:28:03 ► §

Yes.

01:28:09 ► §

Yes, well, the experiences are extremely powerful people are possessed by the intelligences

01:28:13 ► §

act out, we’re not talking about some feeble

01:28:16 ► §

writing in a mysterious alphabet here

01:28:19 ► §

there are very powerful communications

01:28:21 ► §

including the waving of swords

01:28:23 ► §

and self protective

01:28:27 ► §

devices including trying to exit the room which is forbidden and it’s very

01:28:32 ► §

powerful so this is already going on then extensively

01:28:47 ► §

You mentioned the doctrine of signatures earlier. I didn’t understand the reference. Me? It was an idea in late medieval medicine that things that were similar could be used.

01:28:58 ► §

Well, but physical similarities indicated possible applications to disease. So in other words, if you have a plant

01:29:06 ► §

with leaves shaped like kidneys,

01:29:10 ► §

this would obviously cure kidney infection.

01:29:14 ► §

So it’s where you look in the physical world for,

01:29:18 ► §

it’s a way of, it’s an analogical form of thinking.

01:29:22 ► §

You look at the physical world

01:29:24 ► §

and you try to bring things together

01:29:26 ► §

that seem associated

01:29:28 ► §

and then you use this medicinally.

01:29:32 ► §

Do you see?

01:29:33 ► §

So that like…

01:29:34 ► §

Well, that ended it.

01:29:34 ► §

Then how does that relate to…

01:29:38 ► §

Well, this form of angel magic

01:29:41 ► §

that comes out of Ficino

01:29:43 ► §

and then is perfected in Campanella. It takes the idea that

01:29:48 ► §

you… it was basically decan magic. The zodiacal signs can be divided into thirds. This is now

01:29:59 ► §

obsolete, but these decans used to be very important. They ruled a third of each zodiacal sign and each decan had

01:30:10 ► §

associations to it and an image

01:30:13 ► §

so that a decan might be associated with the color black and large cats and

01:30:22 ► §

Certain fragrances, certain flowers. So then if you were going to invoke this decan,

01:30:30 ► §

you would know the hour of its rising and you would bring all these materials together and

01:30:36 ► §

then you would play music. Certain notes were sanctioned for this so that people like Michael Meyer, there’s actually alchemical music extant to be performed

01:30:47 ► §

at these invocations.

01:30:51 ► §

And through building up these sympathies and harmonies,

01:30:56 ► §

you would attempt to capture the power of this stellar entity.

01:31:04 ► §

this stellar entity. Usually you would pull it down into a talisman, something made of a certain metal with certain

01:31:16 ► §

letters and figures inscribed on it that could be worn around the neck.

01:31:21 ► §

Or sometimes you would pull the power down into a filter meaning p

01:31:25 ► §

filter with a p a liquid that you could take as a medicine or a apply on bed clothes or it

01:31:34 ► §

depended on what it was for this was very uh this was very strong that you see all of the magical

01:31:43 ► §

literature of the Middle Ages

01:31:45 ► §

was basically derived from a single work called Picatrix

01:31:49 ► §

that was not lost in the West.

01:31:53 ► §

All the other magical literature of late Roman Hellenism

01:31:57 ► §

existed for centuries only in monasteries in Syria.

01:32:02 ► §

It was lost to the West.

01:32:06 ► §

And then at the time of the Renaissance,

01:32:12 ► §

all these manuscripts were brought to Italy and translated,

01:32:18 ► §

and it created this huge flowering of magical thinking.

01:32:22 ► §

And this was the kind of magic they were talking about. It became, it took the

01:32:27 ► §

figure of the magician who was essentially previously imaged as an a haggish rural old

01:32:36 ► §

woman who had spells and strange material and turned the magician into the renaissance magus, the companion of princes,

01:32:46 ► §

the co-ruler of the state

01:32:49 ► §

in a scheme of magical sympathy and resonances.

01:32:53 ► §

Popes were in the cover of the Giordano Bruno

01:32:59 ► §

and the Hermetic tradition.

01:33:00 ► §

There’s a picture of the mosaic at Siena Cathedral

01:33:04 ► §

that shows Hermes Trismegistus co-equal

01:33:07 ► §

with Moses. So this is where the Renaissance thinking on

01:33:11 ► §

this was.

01:33:14 ► §

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

01:33:19 ► §

at a time.

01:33:23 ► §

So, what do you think about Rupert’s idea of directed mind travel, or better described

01:33:31 ► §

as psychonauts in space? I like the idea myself. During the period when I was solar gazing every

01:33:38 ► §

day, I often spent that time thinking about the sun as if it were a conscious entity,

01:33:45 ► §

time thinking about the sun as if it were a conscious entity, and I’ve often thought about the consciousness of stars.

01:33:48 ► §

Now, I realize that this is a little far out for some of our fellow salonners, particularly

01:33:54 ► §

for the newcomers to the salon, so I don’t often talk about some of these ideas, but

01:34:00 ► §

that doesn’t mean that they aren’t interesting to me.

01:34:03 ► §

So far, I haven’t come to any conclusions one way or the other,

01:34:07 ► §

but I’m definitely going to reread Star Maker again.

01:34:11 ► §

I think it was about 25 minutes or so into his rap

01:34:14 ► §

when Rupert was describing organic solar systems

01:34:18 ► §

in organic galaxies and organic superclusters and so on

01:34:22 ► §

that I was reminded of Olaf Stapleton’s magnificent novel, Star Maker.

01:34:28 ► §

And then a few minutes later, we heard Terence McKenna also comment about that book coming to mind.

01:34:33 ► §

And if you haven’t read it, I think it would be worth your time and trouble to track down a copy.

01:34:39 ► §

But on the whole, without trying to, Rupert does a great job of summing it up, at least in the abstract.

01:34:46 ► §

Interestingly, just yesterday I read a report about some new work that has been done

01:34:51 ► §

which suggests that the entire universe is fractal in nature.

01:34:56 ► §

Until recently, this was thought to be true up to and through, I guess, structures as large as the superclusters.

01:35:03 ► §

to and through, I guess, structures as large as the superclusters.

01:35:08 ► §

But the latest research seems to indicate that the fractal nature of things holds true at least out to the 200 million plus light-year range.

01:35:14 ► §

Now, why would I or anyone else care about this?

01:35:18 ► §

Well, I’m not sure to tell the truth,

01:35:20 ► §

but I do find it fascinating whenever some sacred corner of science is upended.

01:35:27 ► §

Here’s a little bit

01:35:28 ► §

about what this website article

01:35:30 ► §

said about the fractal universe, and

01:35:31 ► §

I’ll post a link to it in our program

01:35:34 ► §

notes. But this site said,

01:35:36 ► §

many cosmologists find

01:35:38 ► §

fault with their analysis,

01:35:40 ► §

talking about the analysis of the

01:35:41 ► §

fractal nature at the large

01:35:43 ► §

scale, largely because a fractal matter distribution out to such huge scales

01:35:49 ► §

undermines the standard model of cosmology.

01:35:53 ► §

According to the accepted story of cosmic evolution,

01:35:56 ► §

there simply hasn’t been enough time since the Big Bang nearly 14 billion years ago

01:36:01 ► §

for gravity to build up such large structures.

01:36:04 ► §

What’s more, the assumption that the distribution is homogeneous 14 billion years ago, for gravity to build up such large structures.

01:36:08 ► §

What’s more, the assumption that the distribution is homogeneous has allowed cosmologists to model the universe fairly simply,

01:36:13 ► §

using Einstein’s theory of general relativity,

01:36:16 ► §

which relates to the shape of space to the distribution of matter.

01:36:21 ► §

Modeling a fractal universe with general relativity is possible in theory

01:36:26 ► §

But in reality it would be devilishly complicated

01:36:29 ► §

That would leave cosmologists without a working model

01:36:32 ► §

Like acrobats without a net

01:36:35 ► §

Now what does all of this have to do with us here in the psychedelic salon?

01:36:40 ► §

Well, I don’t know, maybe nothing

01:36:42 ► §

But it’s interesting to think about these things every once in a while, don’t you think?

01:36:47 ► §

However, these past few days, I’ve had some other things to think about,

01:36:51 ► §

and thankfully I received an email from Janice, who is a fellow salonner currently living in Denmark,

01:36:58 ► §

and he let me know that Google was reporting that our notes from the Psychedelic Salon website wasn’t safe.

01:37:06 ► §

Well, it took a little digging, but I finally found some code that somehow had been slipped into our site

01:37:12 ► §

that Google and I both found offensive.

01:37:15 ► §

It appeared to be a tracker of some kind.

01:37:18 ► §

So I took down all of the external links and began rebuilding the site,

01:37:22 ► §

a project that isn’t quite finished yet,

01:37:25 ► §

but at least the problem has been solved

01:37:28 ► §

and Google is no longer reporting us to be a hazard.

01:37:32 ► §

And I do apologize to anyone who got freaked out by that.

01:37:36 ► §

Actually, I freaked out a little myself at first

01:37:39 ► §

when I saw Google saying bad things about us,

01:37:43 ► §

but now that I know what happened and possibly how it happened,

01:37:47 ► §

I’ll be checking several times every day to see that it doesn’t happen again.

01:37:51 ► §

Hopefully, we can move on to our next crisis now.

01:37:55 ► §

But thank you, Janice, for letting me know about this little problem.

01:37:59 ► §

I’d like to go on and pass along some of the thoughts and comments that are coming in by email

01:38:04 ► §

and through

01:38:05 ► §

our forum over at thegrowreport.com.

01:38:08 ► §

But this is already a little longer program than I normally like to do.

01:38:12 ► §

And the other reason I’m not going to get into some of these things is that my little

01:38:17 ► §

diversion with the hacker on our site has kept me away from the forum for a week.

01:38:21 ► §

And just now when I took a quick look to see if there’s a few comments i

01:38:25 ► §

could pass along i realized that it’s going to take several hours just to catch up on all the

01:38:30 ► §

great posts that our fellow salonners have made on the psychedelic salon forum and on top of that

01:38:36 ► §

every time i go to the grill report.com forums i also wind up spending a lot of time on the

01:38:42 ► §

forums for the sea realm the dope cast bb’s bungcast, Beebe’s Bungalow, Lefty’s Lounge, Max Freakout’s Psychonautica podcast.

01:38:49 ► §

All in all, Xandor and Mrs. Z have provided a terrific resource for our community on their Grow Report site.

01:38:57 ► §

And that’s only the tip of the iceberg because this is also the place where the medical marijuana growing community goes for cultivation help.

01:39:06 ► §

So I’m going to sign off for now, but maybe I’ll bump into you over on one of the forums in a few minutes.

01:39:12 ► §

However, before I go, I want to mention that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon

01:39:17 ► §

are available for your use under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial ShareLike 3.0 license.

01:39:23 ► §

And if you have any questions about that,

01:39:25 ► §

just click the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,

01:39:29 ► §

which you can find at psychedelicsalon.org.

01:39:32 ► §

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

01:39:36 ► §

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

01:39:41 ► §

Be well well my friends