Program Notes
Guest speakers: Nick Sand and Myron Stolaroff
[The following quotations are by Nick Sand.]
“This process of sharing through language our inherited ability to manipulate first stone tools, then concepts and symbols through language and printing, and then moving into the networking of electronic and virtually instantaneous world wide communication, are three quantum leaps of exponential increase in consciousness.”
“The continuity of these constructs through which we perceive the world is what we call tradition.”
“This leap across the gap into the unknown is unavoidable but it must be made. We have no choice. As we are moved to higher levels of evolution change will occur. The constructs and veils of our collective consciousness have to give way.”
“Purity of intention and purity of product go hand-in-hand to produce a transcendent trip.”
“For the chemist also, the mere intention toward purity is transformative. A path unto itself. This is Alchemy!”
“It is time to become conscious, and existence has given us this valuable tool, LSD, to start this process. I pray that we have the time and courage to make this next leap in evolution. I believe that LSD is one of the gifts given to us by Spirit to do this.”
“I think that the psychedelics are the midwives of change. They help the change occur.”
[The following quotations are by Myron Stolaroff.]
“Having been working with this for a number of years, and observing a lot of experiences, I’m convinced that what LSD does is simply to open the door to your unconscious.”
“As one who has abused LSD by trying to overcome difficulties with repeated experiences, I have found that a good meditation practice is an excellent way to keep the gains from experiences alive. … Deepening meditation practice deepens your LSD experience, and having more profound LSD experiences yields instant gains in deepening meditation practice.”
“When we use LSD appropriately, it can provide a direct, crystal-clear path to the height of spiritual ecstasy. It can provide the direct experience of the godhead, and our government makes this valuable tool illegal.”
Hofmann’s Potion – Video Documentary Part 1 of 6
The Discovery of Love: A Psychedelic Experience with LSD-25
by Malden Grange Bishop
(Dodd, Mead & Company: New York, 1963)
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from cyberdelic space.
00:00:20 ►
This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon.
00:00:45 ►
Cyberdelic Space website to see if my friend John Graham has his video stream online, but it wasn’t there yet.
00:00:52 ►
And in case you missed this in the past, what John does is to place a video camera on the top of the radio tower at center camp and set it to constantly pan across the playa. And for an audio
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feed, he uses one of the walkie-talkie radio channels that people on the playa use.
00:01:06 ►
And while it isn’t anywhere close to the experience of actually being there,
00:01:11 ►
it does bring back enough memories to help you get over the fact that you’re not there this year.
00:01:17 ►
According to one of the posts on the Psychedelic Salon Forum over at thegrowreport.com,
00:01:23 ►
some of our fellow salonners are planning on meeting at the art installation titled
00:01:28 ►
McLightenment, which is on the way to the man from Center Camp.
00:01:33 ►
I believe they are going to meet there at 4 p.m. Pacific time this Friday, and that
00:01:39 ►
would be the 29th of August 2008 for those of you who are listening to this podcast sometime
00:01:44 ►
after the week that I post it.
00:01:47 ►
So I’ll be looking through John Graham’s camera at that time to see if I can find our little group when the camera pans their way.
00:01:55 ►
And for what it’s worth, yes, I definitely plan on attending next year, if at all possible.
00:02:02 ►
By the way, I don’t want you to think that Burning Man is the only happening event of the summer.
00:02:08 ►
I’ve already begun receiving reports from fellow salonners who attended the Boom Fest in Portugal,
00:02:13 ►
which I’m told is another great festival, as is Vortex in South Africa and many, many others all over the world.
00:02:21 ►
So you don’t have to live close to Nevada, where Burning Man takes place, if you want
00:02:25 ►
to attend a great party and meet some like-minded people.
00:02:29 ►
And my guess is that there are small underground gatherings like these, even in China and other
00:02:35 ►
places that are still pretty tightly buttoned down.
00:02:38 ►
But for this year, my only festival is going to be here in the psychedelic salon with you.
00:02:44 ►
And to be honest, that is more than most people ever get to look forward to each week.
00:02:50 ►
Now, one of the reasons these podcasts can keep finding their way to you every week is in part due to the generosity of some of our fellow salonners.
00:02:59 ►
For example, this week we received donations from Andy H., Jeff W., and Colin F.
00:03:05 ►
And I know that I say this every week, but Andy, Jeff, and Colin, I couldn’t do this without you.
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And I sincerely appreciate your help, and more importantly, I thank you for stopping by each week and joining us all here in the salon.
00:03:20 ►
It’s good to have you with us.
00:03:22 ►
Well, this week I thought I’d bring back two good friends of mine
00:03:26 ►
who we haven’t heard from for a while,
00:03:28 ►
Nick Sand and Myron Stolaroff.
00:03:31 ►
And when I say bring them back,
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what I mean is I’m going to bring their words back
00:03:35 ►
from a little over five years ago.
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The occasion was John Hanna’s Mind States Conference
00:03:40 ►
that was held at the International House in Berkeley, California
00:03:44 ►
near the end
00:03:45 ►
of May in 2003.
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Before I describe the scene in which these talks took place, I want to say just a few
00:03:52 ►
words about Nick Sand.
00:03:54 ►
Some of my friends like to call him Saint Nick, and I’m here to second that.
00:03:59 ►
Should you ever have the pleasure of meeting Nick, my guess is that you’ll come away with
00:04:03 ►
the impression that this is one of the kindest, most gentle, and enlightened beings that you’ve ever encountered.
00:04:09 ►
I say that because that’s how I feel about Nick. However, I’ve mentioned this to Usha
00:04:15 ►
before, and as one would suspect, since she and Nick have a very long history together,
00:04:20 ►
well, Usha tells me that St. Nick still has his feet in the clay every once in a while.
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And when she said that, I noticed that Nick only smiled and didn’t say anything,
00:04:30 ►
but that impish smile of his spoke volumes.
00:04:34 ►
Right now, I’ll just say one more thing about Nick that more or less sets his image in my mind,
00:04:39 ►
and that image is of his smile and infectious laughter.
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Maybe someday I’ll get Nick to tell a few of his stories for the salon,
00:04:48 ►
but all of the ones I’m thinking about right now are extremely funny.
00:04:53 ►
Nick’s sense of humor is right up there with Sasha’s,
00:04:56 ►
although it isn’t quite as corny as Sasha can get sometimes.
00:05:00 ►
A couple of years ago, when I was in the early stages of writing the novel that I plan on publishing this November,
00:05:07 ►
I asked Nick if there was anything essential that I should be sure to include in the story I was writing,
00:05:12 ►
which is very psychedelic, by the way.
00:05:15 ►
And his answer was,
00:05:17 ►
The most important thing you can do is be sure that there are a lot of funny scenes.
00:05:22 ►
It’s got to be funny if you’re writing about the psychedelic community,
00:05:25 ►
because on the whole, we’re a very funny lot.
00:05:28 ►
Or something like that.
00:05:30 ►
But today we’re going to hear from the serious side of Nick Sand.
00:05:34 ►
What I’m about to play are two of the short presentations
00:05:37 ►
that were made by what was labeled the LSD panel.
00:05:41 ►
In addition to Nick and Myron Stolaroff,
00:05:44 ►
the panel included Earth and Fire Arrowood, Stan Groff,
00:05:48 ►
Ralph Metzner, and Dave Nichols. And if you don’t recognize all of those
00:05:52 ►
names, just Google them, and you’ll see what a powerful panel this was.
00:05:57 ►
And for more about Myron and Nick, you can click
00:06:00 ►
their names in the Categories section of our Notes from the Psychedelic Salon blog,
00:06:04 ►
where you’ll find a few of their longer talks that I’ve already their names in the categories section of our Notes from the Psychedelic Salon blog, where
00:06:05 ►
you’ll find a few of their longer talks that I’ve already played here in the salon.
00:06:10 ►
Each person on the panel that day gave a 10 to 15 minute presentation, and those were
00:06:16 ►
followed by a group question and answer session.
00:06:19 ►
Today I’m going to play Nick and Myron’s presentations along with part of the Q&A session.
00:06:26 ►
going to play Nick and Myron’s presentations along with part of the Q&A session. So let’s begin with Susan Blackmore’s introduction of Nick and I’ll let it flow from there.
00:06:33 ►
Our next speaker is Nicholas Sand, who claims to be an unauthorized chemist and has been
00:06:39 ►
a prisoner of the war on drugs. He’s currently writing a book called Psychedelic Secrets.
00:06:43 ►
So please welcome Nicholas Sand.
00:06:51 ►
Hi, everyone. It’s very nice to be here. It’s so thrilling to be with this tribe here of people, new consciousness. It’s been a long time hiding away and to be here is
00:07:10 ►
just so reinforcing with all these loving and brilliant people and thank you for the
00:07:16 ►
opportunity to be here. I asked Ram Dass to come. He was thrilled to come. Unfortunately
00:07:22 ►
he’s a star of his own show at Sun Valley,
00:07:25 ►
so he couldn’t come. But he sends his love and his blessings to you all.
00:07:33 ►
Time out of mind, mankind developed and moved through the eons at a slow and even pace.
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Technological advances were measured in increments, such as a tool advancing from a rock with one sharp face to being superseded by multiple flakes being taken from stone to make a finer tool such as an arrowhead or an obsidian knife.
00:07:59 ►
These seemingly small changes actually took millions of years. As these changes came to pass, language and culture also developed,
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each one acting as a vehicle in the evolution of consciousness.
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We all stand on the shoulders of those who have come before,
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and as we develop the ability to communicate through language,
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both spoken and written, we increase the capacity
00:08:26 ►
for sharing.
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These advancements act both vertically through our descendants and horizontally by sharing
00:08:32 ►
our techniques with others and advancing our common consciousness by receiving the
00:08:38 ►
enriching feedback of others.
00:08:41 ►
This process of sharing through language our inherited ability to manipulate first stone
00:08:46 ►
tools, then concepts and symbols through language and printing, and then moving into the networking
00:08:52 ►
of electronic and virtually instantaneous worldwide communication are three quantum leaps
00:08:58 ►
of exponential increase in consciousness. Because of this consciousness, the spirit of each one of us
00:09:06 ►
looks out on an ever-shrinking world and cosmos with less fear and misunderstanding.
00:09:12 ►
We are able to do this because we share concepts and tools that allow us to manipulate our
00:09:17 ►
environment. As we do this, we can enable ourselves to develop from frightened reflexive creatures hiding in our caves into
00:09:26 ►
beings who can share one world and one spirit of our species mind reflection. It is this reflection
00:09:33 ►
that we call God when we look outward and soul when we look inward. This spirit of life which
00:09:40 ►
inspires us to love and create is actually the only thing of real and lasting significance.
00:09:46 ►
I will use the word spirit to avoid the problem of corporate copyright infringement.
00:09:56 ►
The interplay of spirit and human accomplishments expresses itself through these interpretive constructs of language and concept.
00:10:04 ►
expresses itself through these interpretive constructs of language and concept.
00:10:10 ►
The continuity of these constructs through which we perceive the world is what we call tradition.
00:10:16 ►
Tradition is the stabilizing force of these patterns through time.
00:10:23 ►
As we move on through time, these traditions which give meaning and stability to life and culture, must change, as superseding constructs and concepts force the antiquated and limiting constructs
00:10:29 ►
to give way to more inclusive ways of looking at things.
00:10:33 ►
And this is the problem, because we form emotional attachments
00:10:37 ►
to the constructs of traditional ways of looking at the universe in which we find ourselves.
00:10:43 ►
It is the breakdown of the constructs we use to create our
00:10:47 ►
sense of reality and the reformation of these constructs into workable and sustainable life
00:10:52 ►
patterns that is the real challenge. We find comfort in the traditional patterns to which
00:10:58 ►
we have become accustomed. When we have to drop these traditional ways as we struggle through the gap time before reformation that we find ourselves alone and afraid in a world we never made.
00:11:11 ►
This leap across the gap into the unknown is unavoidable but it must be made.
00:11:17 ►
We have no choice as we are moved to higher levels of evolution.
00:11:22 ►
Change will occur.
00:11:23 ►
The constructs and veils of our collective consciousness have to give way.
00:11:29 ►
How to deal with this becomes a particular problem
00:11:32 ►
when we find ourselves, as now, in a period of ever-increasing rate of change.
00:11:39 ►
The breaking of the traditional ways of looking at things causes momentary pain.
00:11:44 ►
This leaves us with two choices. mask the pain or transcend it.
00:11:50 ►
It is the mind which mediates all this on the level of tradition that stabilizes on the one hand
00:11:56 ►
and the creation of new forms that inspires the human spirit on the other.
00:12:01 ►
These traditions must change because change occurs.
00:12:05 ►
Letting go of traditions to move more deeply into spirit as we let go, swinging from one branch and floating through space momentarily before we grasp with the other, can only happen through moments of surrender, of letting go into the vastness.
00:12:27 ►
moments of surrender, of letting go into the vastness. The terror of this situation can be alleviated through anesthesia and the use of mind-numbing agencies, or we can use some magical
00:12:33 ►
feather to carry us across the gap to a new grip on things. It is this last process that gives
00:12:39 ►
relevance to the rise in the use of psychedelic sacraments to help us navigate the traditional and sometimes
00:12:46 ►
conflicting programs which rob us of the energy necessary in this terrifying and glorious
00:12:52 ►
increase in the rate of change. Through the proper and intelligent use of entheogens,
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we are able to navigate over the landscape of these labyrinthine conditioned constructs and edit out the unnecessary
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and enervating conflicts hidden by the walls constructed by the mind and use the released
00:13:12 ►
overflow of energy to find the magical thread of spirit which weaves and integrates us through
00:13:18 ►
love.
00:13:20 ►
Let me give you an example to make this a little clearer. During the 1700s and 1800s, European expansion into the Americas, both through the conquering of indigenous lands and the imposition of European religion and culture, caused a traumatic change in the ability of the surviving tribes to express themselves in their traditional ways.
00:13:46 ►
tribes to express themselves in their traditional ways. There was extensive alcoholism and cultural breakdown as the western tribes were forced off their lands into reservations and forbidden to
00:13:52 ►
follow their traditional religions or even speak their native tongues. Around the year 1900,
00:14:00 ►
these plains tribes discovered the use of peyote, which contains mesclun, one of the true psychedelics.
00:14:07 ►
The creation of the Native American church, which uses peyote to come to terms with conflicting operating systems
00:14:14 ►
of the native religions and Christianity, spread very rapidly all through the West from Canada to Mexico.
00:14:23 ►
Formerly, there were only two tribes, the Huichol and the Tarahumari, who used peyote
00:14:28 ►
traditionally.
00:14:30 ►
When anthropologists studied the new rituals, they found that these people had symbolically
00:14:35 ►
combined the elements of both religions.
00:14:38 ►
When given psychological tests, the members of the peyote church were found to have the highest profile of
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psychological integration
00:14:47 ►
except for the peoples far to the
00:14:50 ►
north, who had been almost
00:14:51 ►
untouched by the European invasion.
00:14:54 ►
In this example,
00:14:56 ►
we can see how the ritual journey
00:14:57 ►
that used the symbols of the two religions
00:15:00 ►
had been transcended into a
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more universal vision.
00:15:03 ►
This enabled the cruelly subjected tribes
00:15:06 ►
to come to a higher understanding of the two traditions,
00:15:09 ►
one historical and native, and the other externally imposed.
00:15:14 ►
They used the peyote sacrament
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to see above the trap of irrelevant forms
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and find the thread of spirit which flows through it all.
00:15:24 ►
For myself personally, I grew up in a scientific community.
00:15:28 ►
My father, an atomic scientist, was a chemist who worked in the Manhattan Project and the Chicago Project.
00:15:36 ►
Both of these endeavors were crucial to the development of the first atomic bombs.
00:15:41 ►
Ironically, these brilliant men were peaceful, gentle scientists who were always
00:15:46 ►
ready to explain any question I had. I remember going through an old box of books during my
00:15:53 ►
teenage years and finding a book entitled Atomic Energy for Military Purposes by Smythe.
00:16:00 ►
Inside the cover was a note to my father which said,
00:16:03 ►
To Clarence, may we find the intelligence one day
00:16:07 ►
to find a peaceful use for this force
00:16:09 ►
in this book naively published
00:16:13 ►
for all to read in the libraries were all the procedures
00:16:16 ►
for refining uranium and building an atomic bomb
00:16:19 ►
after many years this book was surreptitiously removed
00:16:23 ►
from the library shelves but the cat was out of the bag.
00:16:27 ►
Nevertheless, people were persecuted for entirely political reasons later on for the information released in this book.
00:16:36 ►
My father included.
00:16:38 ►
Perhaps for this reason, my father forbade me to follow in his footsteps,
00:16:43 ►
although I was very interested in chemistry
00:16:45 ►
and had some small aptitude in that direction
00:16:48 ►
little did I know that while all this was going on
00:16:52 ►
in one direction in the US
00:16:53 ►
that another brilliant chemist in Switzerland
00:16:56 ►
Albert Hoffman was inventing the antidote
00:16:59 ►
for the unwise use of nuclear energy
00:17:02 ►
LSD.
00:17:13 ►
My father was not just a city scientist.
00:17:17 ►
He was also a woodsman who taught me to love nature and live in harmony with it.
00:17:21 ►
My mother taught me only about one thing, love.
00:17:26 ►
She was pretty and mischievous and taught me how to cuddle. She also taught me how to wire and plumb and do all the maintenance necessary while growing up in an
00:17:31 ►
old farmhouse in the middle of Brooklyn, New York. She was always bringing in homeless people to cook
00:17:37 ►
them a meal and give them clothing. My mother was the envy of my friends because she allowed us to hold healing circles and take LSD in the attic where I had created a sacred space.
00:17:49 ►
Sometimes when we were making too much noise, she would come up in her bathrobe and her hair in curlers and plop herself down in the circle, much to the chagrin and dismay of my young friends.
00:18:00 ►
Then she would look at the most frightened of all of them and say with a mischievous glint,
00:18:04 ►
So, what’s wrong with your eyes?
00:18:10 ►
Knowing full well that we were all high on LSD.
00:18:14 ►
Then she would laugh and we’d all have a good chuckle.
00:18:19 ►
Although she never took LSD herself, she seemed to understand and appreciate what we were
00:18:24 ►
going through.
00:18:26 ►
As my interest in psychedelics deepened, I began to study anthropology and specialize in cultural revitalization movements,
00:18:34 ►
especially the peyote and mushroom cults.
00:18:37 ►
As the restrictions on the free sales of psychedelic chemicals hardened into severe laws,
00:18:43 ►
I began to use my intellectual inheritance to
00:18:46 ►
manufacture psychedelic sacraments. This allowed me to go deeper into the world of LSD.
00:18:52 ►
Eventually, I was taught the secrets of manufacturing high purity LSD by Owsley and
00:18:58 ►
Tim Scully. When LSD is made in high purity, a certain magic obtains for the person that journeys with preparation and intention.
00:19:09 ►
Purity of intention and purity of product go hand in hand to produce a transcendent trip.
00:19:15 ►
There are no guarantees which corridor will open for you, but the odds are better with intelligent choices.
00:19:22 ►
For the chemist also, the mere intention toward purity is transformative,
00:19:28 ►
a path unto itself.
00:19:30 ►
This is alchemy.
00:19:32 ►
So what is the genius of LSD?
00:19:34 ►
Is it only a magnifying intensifier?
00:19:37 ►
Is it only an accident of having a tiny dosage
00:19:40 ►
that made it convenient to manufacture and distribute?
00:19:44 ►
I don’t think so. When I began
00:19:48 ►
to navigate psychospace with LSD, I realized that before we were conscious, seemingly self-propelling
00:19:55 ►
beings, many tapes and corridors had been created in our minds and reflexes which were not of our
00:20:02 ►
own making. These patterns and tapes laid down in our consciousness are walled off from each other.
00:20:09 ►
I see it as a vast labyrinth with high walls sealing off the many directives created by our personal history.
00:20:17 ►
Many of these directives are contradictory.
00:20:21 ►
The coexistence of these contradictory programs is what we call inner
00:20:26 ►
conflict. This conflict causes us to constantly check ourselves while we are caught in the
00:20:33 ►
opposition of polarity. Another metaphor would be like a computer with many programs running
00:20:39 ►
simultaneously. The more programs that are running, the slower the computer functions.
00:20:45 ►
This is a problem then.
00:20:47 ►
With all the programs running that are demanded of our consciousness in this modern world,
00:20:52 ►
we have difficulty finding deep integration.
00:20:56 ►
To complicate matters, the programs are reinforced by fear.
00:21:00 ►
Fear separates. Love integrates.
00:21:03 ►
We find ourselves drawn to love and unity, but afraid to make the leap.
00:21:08 ►
What I found to be the genius of LSD is that it really gets you high.
00:21:13 ►
Higher than the programs, higher than the walls that mask and blind one to the energy-destroying presence of many contradictory but hidden programs.
00:21:27 ►
contradictory but hidden programs. When LSD is used intentionally, it enables you to see all the tracks laid down and explore each one intensely. It also allows you to see the many
00:21:33 ►
parallel and redundant programs as well as the contradictory ones. It allows you to see the
00:21:39 ►
underlying unity of all opposites in the magic play of existence.
00:21:45 ►
This allows you to edit these programs and recreate superior programs which give you
00:21:50 ►
the insight to shake loose the restrictions and conflicts programmed into each one of
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us by our parents, our religions, our early education, and by society as a whole.
00:22:03 ►
We have reached the carrying capacity of our planet,
00:22:07 ►
probably overreached it, and we need to see this in time. And it is our conflicted conditioning
00:22:12 ►
which supports the self-destructive cycle. We need all the help we can get to see through the veils,
00:22:18 ►
which until this time have helped our species to survive. It is time to become conscious,
00:22:26 ►
and existence has given us this valuable tool, LSD,
00:22:29 ►
to start this process.
00:22:32 ►
I pray that we have the time and courage
00:22:35 ►
to make this next leap in evolution.
00:22:38 ►
I believe that LSD is one of the gifts
00:22:40 ►
given to us by Spirit to do this.
00:22:44 ►
Thank you.
00:23:05 ►
Thank you very much.
00:23:08 ►
And now our last speaker of all is Marin Stolarov,
00:23:11 ►
one of the great elders of psychedelic research.
00:23:16 ►
Obviously, I don’t need to say any more.
00:23:18 ►
Over to you, Marin Stolarov.
00:23:21 ►
Thank you, thank you.
00:23:23 ►
It’s a real joy to be here, and I’m so grateful for John for putting this all together.
00:23:32 ►
I’m going to take a little bit of a look into the past of LSD in this manner.
00:23:40 ►
Albert Hoffman arranged with Sandoz Corporation to transfer to the Albert Hoffman Foundation here in America
00:23:48 ►
all the research papers he had accumulated over 40 years.
00:23:53 ►
This constituted 4,000 papers.
00:23:58 ►
And thanks to the generous financial contributions of Bob Wallace,
00:24:06 ►
for Rick Doblin,
00:24:14 ►
for Rick Doblin organizing things,
00:24:17 ►
and especially for these people here,
00:24:19 ►
earth and fire. Did a fabulous job of going through the whole collection, digitizing it, and putting it on the Internet.
00:24:53 ►
So all of this information is available, but we have to keep in mind that there were a lot of people doing a lot of different things in researching LSD.
00:24:58 ►
Some people like to work with fish, and some like to work with spiders. And then there were those, as you’ll see tonight, if you see Hoffman’s potion, at least one example of people who were determined to show that there was no use for LSD whatsoever.
00:25:12 ►
But there are only a small percentage of this group that did really important, worthwhile
00:25:19 ►
work.
00:25:20 ►
And one of my ambitions is to be able to go through the collection and select some of the better ones and point them out so people can recognize them.
00:25:32 ►
And as a matter of fact, this is pretty difficult because my computer will download a paper in about five to ten minutes each.
00:25:42 ►
in about five to ten minutes each.
00:25:45 ►
Whereas the good friend that I’m staying with here in Berkeley,
00:25:49 ►
his computer will do it in one-fiftieth of the time because he has a high-speed computer.
00:25:52 ►
So if anybody wants to volunteer and help make this search,
00:25:56 ►
I’d be very, very grateful.
00:26:01 ►
Early in the week, I was talking to Albert Hoffman.
00:26:05 ►
I told him I would be here and asked if he had some things that he would like me to say for him.
00:26:13 ►
And he said several things.
00:26:16 ►
Incidentally, are you hearing me okay?
00:26:21 ►
The first is that he’s looking to the next generation with high hopes.
00:26:28 ►
Now, since he’s 97 years old, that means that most of you here are the next generation.
00:26:34 ►
So keep that in mind.
00:26:42 ►
Dr. Hoffman is absolutely convinced that LSD has a very important future.
00:26:51 ►
Too important a medium by far to be neglected.
00:26:58 ►
It’s true that sometimes it’s difficult and sometimes even dangerous if not properly used.
00:27:06 ►
But used properly, he’s absolutely sure that new dimensions of consciousness
00:27:13 ►
and new levels of experience will be reached.
00:27:18 ►
Consciousness is the true nature of man,
00:27:21 ►
and LSD is a powerful revealer of extended consciousness.
00:27:27 ►
He’s convinced that it would be insane to not use such a valuable tool.
00:27:33 ►
I’m sure a lot of you here agree.
00:27:37 ►
I’m going to make a brief summary of some of the characteristics of LSD.
00:27:43 ►
You probably all know this and heard it before,
00:27:46 ►
but I thought I would just review
00:27:48 ►
so that we’d all sort of be working on the same plane here.
00:27:56 ►
First of all, I’d like to report,
00:27:58 ►
and I can’t deny this because it’s in writing,
00:28:02 ►
but I’m on record as claiming that LSD
00:28:06 ►
is the most powerful learning tool that we have.
00:28:11 ►
But there are a lot of misunderstandings about it,
00:28:15 ►
particularly our government and the public at large.
00:28:22 ►
The DEA like to say that LSD is dangerous and toxic.
00:28:29 ►
And when I talk about it, I do admit that there’s one really powerful defect
00:28:37 ►
or one thing that makes it very uncomfortable,
00:28:43 ►
and that is in order to have a valuable experience, you have to be honest.
00:28:50 ►
I thought that might get more response.
00:29:00 ►
The general mistake is that a lot of people look at LSD in the same way you look at allopathic medicines,
00:29:07 ►
that you take LSD and it does something to you.
00:29:11 ►
And actually, I think it works in a totally different way.
00:29:16 ►
Having been working with this for a number of years and observing a lot of experiences,
00:29:22 ►
I’m convinced that what LSD does is simply open the door to your unconscious.
00:29:28 ►
Unfortunately, one of the areas you encounter there
00:29:32 ►
is the shadow, as defined by Carl Jung.
00:29:36 ►
The shadow material contains all the stuff
00:29:39 ►
that we really don’t want to know.
00:29:41 ►
A lot of it’s painful and hurtful,
00:29:44 ►
and so we have the ability with our powerful mind to repress this and keep it totally out of consciousness.
00:29:56 ►
So a lot of people, especially if they’re not properly prepared and don’t realize these potentials,
00:30:05 ►
can get into those places and they can be very uncomfortable.
00:30:11 ►
Another thing that I found personally is that the deeper that I’ve gone into my own psyche to clear things up,
00:30:20 ►
I find that I run into more heavily defended areas.
00:30:26 ►
So the deeper you go, the more powerful is the repression.
00:30:30 ►
And also that means it’s more painful to go through these areas.
00:30:34 ►
So I think a lot of people really stop exploring their own inner psyche
00:30:39 ►
because they don’t want to go into that deep shadow material.
00:30:44 ►
because they don’t want to go into that deep shadow material.
00:30:53 ►
On the other hand, if you realize that this is what you’re doing and you choose to do it,
00:30:57 ►
the release of shadow material is extremely rewarding.
00:31:02 ►
First of all, it takes a lot of energy to hold repressed material down. So as you release it, that energy becomes
00:31:06 ►
available again. There’s an opening in awareness. You see with greater clarity. Your intuition improves. Creativity improves.
00:31:27 ►
There’s increased well-being and joy.
00:31:30 ►
All of this from the release of this stuff that we’re holding down that serves us no purpose.
00:31:36 ►
If we continue in our exploration, we find that doors are open to profound levels of realization.
00:31:47 ►
We discover that we’re intimately connected to everything in the universe.
00:31:55 ►
And we find that we’re immersed in this life force,
00:32:00 ►
which is really inconceivable love.
00:32:04 ►
which is really inconceivable love.
00:32:16 ►
We can look at our creation and see the enormous beauty, the wonder, the aliveness everywhere.
00:32:25 ►
As one who’s abused LSD by trying to overcome difficulties with repeated experiences, I have found that a good meditation practice is an excellent way to keep the gains from experiences alive.
00:32:33 ►
Deepening meditation practice deepens your LSD experience, and having more profound LSD
00:32:40 ►
experiences yields instant gains in deepening meditation practice.
00:32:44 ►
LSD experiences yields instant gains in deepening meditation practice.
00:32:51 ►
Now, unfortunately, there’s a very tragic dilemma in our country.
00:32:56 ►
Our Constitution guarantees us freedom of religion.
00:33:01 ►
When we use LSD appropriately, it can provide a direct, crystal clear path to the height of spiritual
00:33:07 ►
ecstasy. It can provide the direct experience of the Godhead. And our government makes this
00:33:14 ►
valuable tool illegal. Every coin that’s minted, every bill of our currency that’s printed holds the letters,
00:33:25 ►
In God We Trust.
00:33:27 ►
Yet we are denied the most direct path to experience and realize the Godhead.
00:33:34 ►
This seems to me an enormous tragedy.
00:33:41 ►
What might we do about this?
00:33:43 ►
I think if we can plan something and have a goal in the future that we can work toward,
00:33:51 ►
that perhaps we can create a situation where we can resolve this problem
00:33:58 ►
and have the freedom of religion that we’re entitled to.
00:34:03 ►
I suggest that we establish centers for spiritual realization, combining the appropriate use
00:34:10 ►
of LSD with meditation practice.
00:34:16 ►
The staff should include at least one leader who’s well experienced in the spiritual employment
00:34:22 ►
of LSD, and there should also be an experienced meditation teacher,
00:34:27 ►
although it could be the same person if he has the qualifications.
00:34:32 ►
You need a meeting place, and this can be as simple as someone’s house.
00:34:38 ►
Each candidate who wants to join this group must first have a solo,
00:34:43 ►
well-prepared LSD experience with the leader,
00:34:46 ►
as provided by Jacob in the book The Secret Chief. If the experience is satisfactory,
00:34:52 ►
he can join the group. If not, he can have repeated experiences until he is properly prepared.
00:35:00 ►
Members of the group will be expected to develop a good meditation practice,
00:35:04 ►
Members of the group will be expected to develop a good meditation practice.
00:35:11 ►
And you should be willing to devote at least 30 minutes a day, and better, it’s an hour a day.
00:35:18 ►
And as your practice deepens, you’ll find this easier and easier to do and more rewarding.
00:35:28 ►
The group will meet weekly for instruction and meditating together,
00:35:35 ►
and once every one or two months, the group can meet for a shared LSD experience.
00:35:42 ►
The continual sharing of meditation and sacramental experiences reinforces the group energy,
00:35:45 ►
while the learning of each individual contributes to the learning of everyone else in the group.
00:35:50 ►
What I’ve described here
00:35:52 ►
can open the doors to true spiritual development
00:35:55 ►
in a model that could well be incorporated
00:35:58 ►
by any sincere religious group anywhere in the world.
00:36:02 ►
Thank you.
00:36:18 ►
Well, thank you all very much.
00:36:20 ►
What a wonderful lot of speakers we’ve had.
00:36:25 ►
We now have about a little under 40 minutes for questions.
00:36:26 ►
Hi.
00:36:28 ►
This is a dosage question,
00:36:31 ►
so it is perhaps addressed to earth and fire.
00:36:34 ►
It’s actually addressed to whoever on stage or in the room can answer it.
00:36:41 ►
I’m wondering whether in the days when Sandoz was manufacturing LSD,
00:36:47 ►
whether there was a sort of standard dose in there.
00:36:50 ►
Can everyone at the back hear the questions all right?
00:36:53 ►
I’d suggest having Myron answer that.
00:36:59 ►
Well, it came in standard amounts.
00:37:03 ►
They supplied pills of 25 micrograms each,
00:37:07 ►
and they supplied ampoules of 100 micrograms each.
00:37:16 ►
And then I think they expected the researchers to do the work to find out what the best combinations were for certain situations.
00:37:18 ►
Next question.
00:37:19 ►
Okay.
00:37:20 ►
Thank you.
00:37:24 ►
I’m honored to say thank you to you. And I would like to inquire about the intentional evolution of consciousness
00:37:29 ►
and to get more ideas from you on how can we incorporate memes for our growth,
00:37:37 ►
how can we adapt our hardware, this vessel, to be a better receptor site,
00:37:43 ►
to generate a higher vibration?
00:37:45 ►
How can we move on to a new octave and use our light bodies in a more effective manner?
00:37:53 ►
Are you asking anyone in particular?
00:37:55 ►
All of you, please.
00:37:56 ►
Any concrete ideas?
00:37:57 ►
Who would like to answer?
00:38:00 ►
Thank you.
00:38:02 ►
We’re all as unique and individual
00:38:05 ►
as snowflakes
00:38:07 ►
the responsibility for our consciousness
00:38:10 ►
has to be taken
00:38:12 ►
just for who
00:38:14 ►
you find yourself
00:38:16 ►
to be
00:38:16 ►
because there is no template
00:38:19 ►
that you can use
00:38:20 ►
there are many designs
00:38:23 ►
that you can use for There are many designs that you can use. For myself, I have found that using psychedelic
00:38:31 ►
drugs over and over and over, and I have used them over and over and over, is after a while
00:38:39 ►
unproductive. So I have found that what I needed to do was do something that worked my body. I
00:38:47 ►
chose yoga. Some people use weights, but you need to use it or you lose it. You need to do meditation
00:38:56 ►
and you need to do extensive meditation. And as Myron said, 30 minutes a day minimum, I think that’s absolutely crucial.
00:39:08 ►
And so what you have here is a bouncing between action on the outward level,
00:39:18 ►
where you’re taking LSD and you’re having an experience,
00:39:21 ►
and then you go inward and you ground it and you’re having an experience, and then you go inward, and you ground it, and you work this experience so that you can observe all of the unconscious material
00:39:30 ►
that has come up and integrate it.
00:39:33 ►
You must do this.
00:39:34 ►
Otherwise, you will just keep repeating the same loop, the same tape that has been conditioned into you
00:39:40 ►
without being able to go on to new areas.
00:39:46 ►
Now, once you adopt one or more practices that help you ground this experience,
00:39:53 ►
you can then go onward with further experiences,
00:39:58 ►
and you will start to break new ground.
00:40:02 ►
Does anyone else want to speak to that question?
00:40:06 ►
No? We’ll move on to the next question then, please.
00:40:08 ►
Yes, an interesting phenomenon has come to my attention
00:40:12 ►
and to that of many other informed people here,
00:40:17 ►
namely there seems to be an acute shortage of LSD at the moment.
00:40:20 ►
I don’t know what you’re talking about.
00:40:20 ►
at the moment.
00:40:29 ►
There’s a lot of speculation about whether this has to do with the
00:40:31 ►
big bust in Kansas a couple years
00:40:33 ►
ago and perhaps
00:40:36 ►
a shortage of ergotamine
00:40:38 ►
tartrate that might have been created
00:40:40 ►
by the DEA. My question is
00:40:42 ►
is this actually a real phenomenon
00:40:44 ►
this shortage? Is this
00:40:47 ►
an example of some success by the DEA? Maybe the Erowids know something about this? And
00:40:52 ►
also, if there really is a shortage of ergotamine, tartrate, what are the prospects for the market
00:40:58 ►
making up for this in any short time.
00:41:11 ►
I can reply to the first part of the question.
00:41:14 ►
I can’t answer anything about whether there’s a shortage of regotamine tartrate, but we have received for a couple of years
00:41:18 ►
now a lot of people saying there’s a shortage of LSD from
00:41:22 ►
around the country.
00:41:24 ►
And so there is a perceived, sort of a consensus of a perceived shortage
00:41:28 ►
to some degree or another. But we’ve also received that
00:41:31 ►
people have told us that since we started collecting information about this in the early
00:41:36 ►
90s. People have consistently said from around the country, oh there’s a shortage here, there’s a
00:41:40 ►
shortage there. So it’s not super easy to separate that
00:41:43 ►
message that there is a shortage now from
00:41:46 ►
just sort of the general, you know, localized shortages in the past. And we do continue to
00:41:52 ►
receive reports from people saying there’s no shortage here, you know, and identifying some
00:41:56 ►
particular place. So there are clearly places where there is LSD available. I think there might be a demand for a map here.
00:42:09 ►
One of the ways that I think about this is that because of the way that black markets or gray markets work,
00:42:15 ►
it’s different from normal markets.
00:42:17 ►
In normal markets, you advertise things for sale.
00:42:20 ►
You go around and you put up billboards.
00:42:21 ►
And if people don’t know about it, the primary thing you’re trying to do is advertise the fact that you’ve got something.
00:42:26 ►
In the black markets, the way it works is it’s very much of a network and a node-based system
00:42:31 ►
where if you’re not on one of the lines of the network, you don’t have any access at all.
00:42:35 ►
If your neighbor has 14 kilograms of LSD,
00:42:39 ►
they’re going to do everything in their power to keep you from knowing that.
00:42:41 ►
their power to keep you from knowing that.
00:42:49 ►
And so there’s a very big problem that you can end up with very localized glut and global sort of lack.
00:42:53 ►
Shorted.
00:42:56 ►
So we have, I mean, we recently got several e-mails
00:43:01 ►
and a couple of people talking about a bunch of liquid showing up in the northeast,
00:43:06 ►
and we got, you know, there’s these brown micro dots which have been going around,
00:43:10 ►
but they’re so expensive and there aren’t probably all that many of them.
00:43:15 ►
So one of the sort of hypotheses as far as the bust a couple of years ago
00:43:19 ►
and how that may have impacted the supply of LSD is that even if there is other LSD out there,
00:43:25 ►
it takes a while for those networks to regrow from different sources
00:43:28 ►
so that the sources have to get hooked into the networks of distribution
00:43:31 ►
that finally get down to the people before they necessarily,
00:43:34 ►
even if there is LSD, it doesn’t necessarily have the distribution system.
00:43:37 ►
So does anyone else want to say anything on that question?
00:43:41 ►
Yes, Nicholas.
00:43:44 ►
I don’t think there’s any shortage of
00:43:45 ►
ergotamine in the world. There are new
00:43:47 ►
fermentation techniques which
00:43:49 ►
are producing
00:43:50 ►
10,
00:43:53 ►
20, 30 tons a year of ergotamine.
00:43:56 ►
There would be more LSD. We could take a
00:43:57 ►
bath in it if that were all
00:43:59 ►
converted to LSD.
00:44:03 ►
The control
00:44:04 ►
of this substance, of course, is extremely strict, and licensing
00:44:10 ►
and the treaties and conventions to which the United States ties everyone through the
00:44:16 ►
UNDCP makes it very difficult to obtain these materials. However, where there’s a will,
00:44:23 ►
there’s a way. And although
00:44:26 ►
I’m not involved in manufacture and I’m only doing teaching of meditation these days, you
00:44:32 ►
do hear things. And my feeling is that, you know, when I looked at the effect of LSD during the 60s and early 70s, I thought LSD creates change.
00:44:49 ►
But as I have matured, I don’t feel it.
00:44:53 ►
I think that LSD and all the psychedelics arise, as they did with the Indians.
00:44:59 ►
The mushrooms were always there.
00:45:01 ►
The peyote was always there.
00:45:01 ►
were always there.
00:45:03 ►
The peyote was always there.
00:45:06 ►
But it only suddenly became dynamically expressed in the culture
00:45:09 ►
when change became so strong
00:45:13 ►
that something was needed
00:45:16 ►
to help make the jump
00:45:18 ►
to a new level of consciousness.
00:45:22 ►
And I think we are at that stage now.
00:45:28 ►
I think that the psychedelics are the midwives of consciousness. And I think we are at that stage now. I think that the psychedelics are the midwives of change. They help the change occur. Change is happening. And when change
00:45:37 ►
becomes intense enough, so I would predict, you know, having no real contact with this,
00:45:43 ►
I’ve been in prison for six years. I’ve cut all my ties with the underground
00:45:47 ►
I just write
00:45:49 ►
and meditate and do yoga these days
00:45:51 ►
but I would
00:45:53 ►
predict that there will be a lot of LSD
00:45:55 ►
around shortly
00:45:56 ►
because the change is so intense right now
00:45:59 ►
applause
00:46:01 ►
applause
00:46:02 ►
applause
00:46:02 ►
right, we’re going to let
00:46:05 ►
even though he hasn’t been queuing up
00:46:08 ►
we’ll let John Hanna
00:46:09 ►
ask the next question
00:46:11 ►
I apologize for cutting in line
00:46:14 ►
I wanted to have this question prepared
00:46:16 ►
at the start to kick off the questions
00:46:18 ►
and then I forgot to write it down
00:46:20 ►
and then also I apologize because
00:46:22 ►
I haven’t been paying attention
00:46:24 ►
to this panel
00:46:25 ►
because I’ve been pulled in a million different directions.
00:46:27 ►
Maybe you’ve already answered my question, and I know that I did see a little bit of your talk,
00:46:31 ►
and you sort of addressed a bit of it.
00:46:34 ►
And so what my question is is related to LSD that’s on the street
00:46:38 ►
and the fact that some people who obtained LSD in the 60s and 50s that came from Sandhouse
00:46:49 ►
said that that LSD was much purer.
00:46:51 ►
It gave them a much more pure experience
00:46:54 ►
and that the LSD that’s on the street has given them sort of a number of side effects
00:46:59 ►
that they feel that it is perhaps cut with things or tainted with things
00:47:03 ►
or that perhaps there are breakdown products that affect the neuropharmacology
00:47:07 ►
or that there are products of incomplete synthesis that affect the neuropharmacology
00:47:14 ►
where these things are latching into the brain receptors
00:47:17 ►
and not allowing the LSD to have the full effect.
00:47:21 ►
My own personal experience has been that LSD is LSD is LSD. I’ve never
00:47:26 ►
noticed any difference, and it’s always affected me, you know, setting differences, but it’s
00:47:32 ►
always affected me physiologically the same way. I haven’t gotten stomach cramps or I
00:47:36 ►
haven’t gotten headaches or any of these complaints that some people have when they say that they
00:47:40 ►
get bad acid. But other people have had these things. They’ve had, you know, what they term bad acid.
00:47:48 ►
And I’m just curious, you know, one person, Jonathan Ott, who wrote Pharmacotheon,
00:47:53 ►
has said that the difference between the 60s and today is just the dose,
00:47:57 ►
that the doses today are much lower and they were taking much higher doses in the 60s.
00:48:03 ►
I’m just curious, your own thoughts as to whether or not neuropharmacologically,
00:48:08 ►
because if there are impurities, you would think that they’re such a small trace amount
00:48:12 ►
that they wouldn’t be pharmacologically active.
00:48:14 ►
So just some thoughts on that question.
00:48:19 ►
Well, for myself, I agree with you completely.
00:48:21 ►
I don’t have much experience with street acids since I got burned in the early 60s with some totally bogus,
00:48:31 ►
it was scopalamine or hyoscyamine or something, and I went blind for three days,
00:48:35 ►
and then I decided something had to be done about this.
00:48:39 ►
But I think you’re absolutely right.
00:48:43 ►
All your reasoning, in my opinion, is correct, and the main difference is dosage.
00:48:50 ►
Does anybody else want to answer that question?
00:48:56 ►
So, I mean, one of the things that, you know, it’s really hard to separate.
00:49:00 ►
People’s experiences of different types of acid are reportedly very different.
00:49:06 ►
And so what do you do with that?
00:49:08 ►
I mean, there are people who claim
00:49:09 ►
that they’ve taken this one acid
00:49:12 ►
several times over
00:49:14 ►
a period of years, same
00:49:15 ►
type of water, and they get
00:49:17 ►
no visuals, it lasts a little bit longer,
00:49:20 ►
no physical
00:49:22 ►
side effects. And during that same time
00:49:24 ►
they take other types of acid
00:49:28 ►
and they get lots of visuals and jaw clenching or whatever they report.
00:49:34 ►
And so it’s very difficult to know exactly what to do with that.
00:49:39 ►
One of the people that I’ve talked to who is an aliquoter of LSD,
00:49:44 ►
people that I’ve talked to who is an aliquoter of LSD,
00:49:48 ►
meaning a person who takes a amount of crystal or something like that and deposits it on blotter or something, said that his experience was
00:49:52 ►
that he would make some green blotter and some red blotter and he would give out the green blotter
00:49:57 ►
and the people would come back and say,
00:50:00 ►
or he’d give out both the green blotter and the red blotter. Both came from the same crystal, both made in the
00:50:04 ►
same way, and they’d say, oh, the green blotter and the red blotter. Both came from the same crystal, both made in the same way,
00:50:05 ►
and they’d say, oh, the green was so good, and the red was bad.
00:50:09 ►
And he said consistently he’d get back from the exact same process
00:50:15 ►
people saying that one was good and one was bad.
00:50:17 ►
And his opinion was that that was mostly just sort of noise.
00:50:22 ►
Although I think that from the HPLC charts that we showed earlier,
00:50:26 ►
obviously there are differences in the chemicals.
00:50:28 ►
I mean, you can have pure DLSD on blotter,
00:50:33 ►
and you can have other things on blotter with your pure DLSD.
00:50:37 ►
So it’s not as simple as just it’s all the same exact thing that you’re taking into your mouth.
00:50:43 ►
You have to keep in mind that of all the ergot alkaloids, LSD is by far the most
00:50:47 ►
potent.
00:50:48 ►
So if you had a blotter with 50 micrograms of LSD and 20 or 30 micrograms of
00:50:53 ►
some impurity, it’s highly unlikely that impurity is going to have an effect
00:50:56 ►
because it’s not going to be nearly as potent as LSD.
00:50:59 ►
The principal contaminant is iso-LSD, and we’ve actually purified iso-LSD and
00:51:04 ►
done preliminary experiments, so it’s
00:51:05 ►
certainly not complete.
00:51:06 ►
But there’s no evidence that the iso-LSD really has an effect at the
00:51:10 ►
concentrations that would be in a blotter.
00:51:15 ►
You have to have affinity for the receptor.
00:51:17 ►
And iso-LSD drifts way off by over an order of magnitude in its affinity for
00:51:23 ►
the receptors we’ve looked at.
00:51:25 ►
Right. Can we have the next question, please?
00:51:28 ►
I have a very deep concern for this wonderful community and for all of the communities which
00:51:37 ►
you see all over Berkeley, especially, which are the communities of people who are creative
00:51:42 ►
and whose lives are based on love.
00:51:46 ►
I’m old enough to remember what fascism is.
00:51:51 ►
I want us to somebody to be seriously thinking, how do we protect the communities of creative people in this time.
00:52:10 ►
I look for one example to the Sufis.
00:52:15 ►
Sufis were persecuted in their countries
00:52:19 ►
and they developed whole systems of how to do it.
00:52:23 ►
One of them was they were the local madman.
00:52:26 ►
No one ever knew what they were really up to.
00:52:29 ►
It was just this crazy guy.
00:52:33 ►
We’re in a different situation.
00:52:34 ►
I can’t imagine that we’re going to do it that way.
00:52:37 ►
But whatever we’re going to do, I think we need to begin thinking of it. My headline in the newspaper today
00:52:45 ►
has said that the government
00:52:46 ►
is going to remove all pot from America.
00:52:51 ►
No, seriously.
00:52:52 ►
This is…
00:52:53 ►
Ashcroft is a very dangerous person
00:52:58 ►
and represents truly…
00:53:10 ►
And it’s something, if you haven’t experienced it and you haven’t at least known the people who lived in it,
00:53:19 ►
totalitarianism is just so different from anything you and I are accustomed to that we need to think how we are going to deal with it.
00:53:23 ►
Who would like to speak to that? Yes, Earth? Briefly, I think there’s, I mean, people have very different views about what to do in the world that we live in.
00:53:30 ►
And, I mean, my own personal sort of view is sort of, you know, publish.
00:53:36 ►
Publish as if there is no world that controls, that tries to sort of make these things,
00:53:43 ►
tries to put people in prison for making choices
00:53:46 ►
which might be unhealthy for them or might not.
00:53:49 ►
And so other people that we talk to
00:53:51 ►
who don’t necessarily either love what we do
00:53:53 ►
or don’t think that it’s right for them
00:53:55 ►
participate in mystery cults or mystery groups
00:53:58 ►
where they don’t talk about what they do
00:54:00 ►
with anyone outside the groups that they participate in.
00:54:02 ►
And in that way, they protect themselves.
00:54:04 ►
And I think that each person sort of has to make a choice about how open they are with
00:54:07 ►
the people in their family and the people that they know, and how much they want to
00:54:11 ►
share with the world, and whether they want to post to forums on the internet or whether
00:54:14 ►
they want to write about it.
00:54:16 ►
But it seems very individual to me, and that the only, like, in a lot of ways, survival
00:54:21 ►
of a meme set is about diversity.
00:54:24 ►
like in a lot of ways survival of a meme set is about diversity,
00:54:29 ►
that if there’s a diverse set of ways of handling something,
00:54:34 ►
that it’s unlikely that any single attack against it will completely eliminate it. I’ll just very quickly add something to that question.
00:54:38 ►
I mentioned in passing in my talk that I’ve recently come to understand,
00:54:43 ►
actually through the starting of the war on terrorism,
00:54:45 ►
I understood the war on drugs better.
00:54:47 ►
I now see that they actually both have the same agenda,
00:54:52 ►
which I never saw as clearly before.
00:54:54 ►
They’re both fascistic agendas.
00:54:56 ►
In other words, the only purpose, the political purpose,
00:54:59 ►
for both the war on terrorism and the war on drugs
00:55:01 ►
is to create fear in the population.
00:55:04 ►
And in the case of the drugs, for example, see, the thing that confused me,
00:55:09 ►
it’s not the education campaigns are beside the point.
00:55:13 ►
That’s just smokescreen.
00:55:15 ►
They’re not trying to create fear in the drug users,
00:55:18 ►
because they already know that there’s nothing to be afraid of using drugs.
00:55:21 ►
They’re trying to create fear in the general population that votes, that doesn’t take drugs,
00:55:27 ►
so that drugs are demonized and can lead to prohibition and can lead to jail sentences
00:55:32 ►
and control and police state measures can be instituted.
00:55:36 ►
And so we live in a fascistic society.
00:55:39 ►
The drug users are actually better protected than, say, Muslims and, you know,
00:55:47 ►
are actually better protected than, say, Muslims and people from Middle Eastern countries who look the way they look and who have to watch out for that.
00:55:51 ►
So discretion and caution, it’s always been like that.
00:55:55 ►
We need some memetic engineering.
00:55:57 ►
We need to let loose some memes that will counteract that.
00:55:59 ►
If anyone’s got good ideas for that, be delighted.
00:56:04 ►
Right, next one, question, please.
00:56:06 ►
So I have a question for, I guess,
00:56:10 ►
Nichols representing kind of reductionistic science
00:56:13 ►
and then Stanegroff representing, you know,
00:56:15 ►
this other kind of oppositional aspect.
00:56:19 ►
And, you know, you said that you can’t, you know,
00:56:21 ►
you shouldn’t view the consciousness or the mind
00:56:25 ►
as arising causally out of neurophysiological
00:56:29 ►
and neuropharmacological processes in the brain.
00:56:32 ►
But then how do you propose that we unify these two sets of observations,
00:56:37 ►
one, of these transcendental transpersonal experiences
00:56:40 ►
that currently cannot be explained by conventional science,
00:56:42 ►
and two, of of extremely powerful predictive science,
00:56:47 ►
you know, neuroscience, systems neuroscience, neuropharmacology, chemistry,
00:56:52 ►
that we’ve shown to be powerful by our technology
00:56:56 ►
and its predictive power for what we can predict things will do to the brain.
00:57:00 ►
Well, you know, contrary to general opinion, we have absolutely no proof that consciousness comes out of the brain? Well, you know, contrary to general opinion,
00:57:05 ►
we have absolutely no proof that consciousness comes out of the brain.
00:57:10 ►
Actually, we have a lot of evidence that it is not the case.
00:57:15 ►
What we have is tremendous evidence from experimental neurology,
00:57:21 ►
clinical neurology, experimental psychiatry,
00:57:23 ►
that states of consciousness are correlated with anatomical, physiological, biochemical changes.
00:57:30 ►
But how do you propose to explain those correlations then is what I’m asking.
00:57:35 ►
Well, this is what they are.
00:57:36 ►
They’re correlations.
00:57:37 ►
But you make a major jump when you say this proves that consciousness comes out of the brain.
00:57:42 ►
Well, I understand.
00:57:43 ►
But the correlations still need to be explained in some way.
00:57:47 ►
And, you know, how do you propose
00:57:48 ►
to do that? Because it’s an important thing to
00:57:50 ►
explain them. You know, I mean,
00:57:52 ►
the physical world and, like, what’s
00:57:54 ►
going on out there have to have some kind of
00:57:56 ►
correspondence. I’m sorry.
00:57:58 ►
No, it’s a perfectly reasonable question. Everybody agrees
00:58:00 ►
I mean, they’re daft if they don’t,
00:58:02 ►
that there are correlations there. And the question
00:58:04 ►
is, how do these two radically different approaches presume to explain it?
00:58:09 ►
So can you have a go at answering?
00:58:10 ►
We have the same relationship between a television set and the television program.
00:58:15 ►
You see, there are systematic correlations between what’s happening with the relays and the condensers and so on,
00:58:23 ►
and the quality of the picture and the sound.
00:58:26 ►
This is what they are, they’re correlations.
00:58:28 ►
We would laugh if somebody would think that this means,
00:58:30 ►
this is a proof that the program is generated in the box.
00:58:35 ►
This still leaves open some other possibility.
00:58:39 ►
We have just an enormous number of observations.
00:58:41 ►
I don’t have time to go into them, but I’ll give you just one,
00:58:44 ►
enormous number of observations. I don’t have time to go into them, but I’ll give you just one,
00:58:54 ►
which is a repeated observation that people in near-death situations, like cardiac arrest during an operation,
00:59:00 ►
consciousness goes out of the body, maintains the ability to perceive the environment. You can watch your body from the ceiling. You can go through the wall. You can accurately
00:59:06 ►
perceive what’s happening in other parts of the
00:59:08 ►
building. You can experience
00:59:10 ►
something that’s happening a thousand miles away.
00:59:12 ►
There’s no way the
00:59:13 ►
current model, the way
00:59:16 ►
we understand the brain, can
00:59:18 ►
account for that. You don’t have to study
00:59:20 ►
medicine to know. I’m going to have to
00:59:22 ►
stop you there, I’m afraid.
00:59:23 ►
If we’re going to have a chance for David to say something. I think he was also, did you also
00:59:28 ►
ask David? Yeah, yeah, I did. So, again, that provided the opposite perspective,
00:59:32 ►
or, you know, your perspective, I guess. So we need a theory that explains
00:59:36 ►
the current observations, but also the observations from
00:59:40 ►
a modern day state. I understand this, but how do you propose, you know, directions towards
00:59:44 ►
such a theory? I think this is too big a question for here.
00:59:47 ►
I’ll give just a very short time to David if he wants to say something.
00:59:50 ►
I think Stan was doing a great job.
00:59:53 ►
I am reductionistic about 80% of the time.
00:59:57 ►
And certainly I have the view that these chemicals can change consciousness.
01:00:02 ►
Now exactly how that happens, I’m not completely sure,
01:00:05 ►
but I have chemicals that I could give you that would reliably change your consciousness
01:00:09 ►
in very dramatic ways.
01:00:11 ►
They presumably act in the frontal cortex,
01:00:13 ►
which is the most recent evolutionary addition to the brain.
01:00:16 ►
It’s where we make all of our executive decisions.
01:00:18 ►
And we don’t really know what the cortex does,
01:00:21 ►
but as humans it’s the most important part of the brain we have.
01:00:24 ►
And I view these chemicals as really being more like a necessary but not sufficient switch
01:00:28 ►
that turns on a process.
01:00:30 ►
So if we use the television as analogy, these are like just turning on the power switch.
01:00:35 ►
What channel you tune to and where you turn the volume and so forth,
01:00:38 ►
the set and setting and preconception and so forth.
01:00:40 ►
So I’m basically looking at these as a switch that somehow shuts off ordinary processing and allows consciousness to change.
01:00:48 ►
But where it’s located, I mean, as a reductionist, I’d have to say it’s a product of brain, but publicly that’s what I’d say.
01:00:55 ►
The question I have, to try to keep this short, is basically we have the psychedelic experience, and we’ve talked a lot about that,
01:01:05 ►
and perhaps the neurological changes.
01:01:07 ►
This is kind of directed to probably Nichols on the neurological changes,
01:01:12 ►
but any of you on everything here.
01:01:14 ►
These changes that occur both in the brain and depletions of enzymes and cofactors
01:01:22 ►
and all of that, depletions for recovery.
01:01:26 ►
And then comparing that to meditation and yoga and kundalini rising
01:01:31 ►
and those types of experiences,
01:01:33 ►
are those changes also seen when that type of energy is going through the system
01:01:39 ►
in a kundalini awakening as it is in a psychedelic experience? And have you noticed differences in, say, yogis that have never done any psychedelics at all
01:01:52 ►
that then have those experiences versus…
01:01:55 ►
I’m mainly looking at the…
01:01:57 ►
Can you keep it short?
01:01:58 ►
Yes, I’m in the final stages here.
01:02:01 ►
Final stages here.
01:02:07 ►
Mainly looking at whether the psychedelic experiences affects negatively the ability to have the natural yoga kundalini rising.
01:02:16 ►
Who would like to answer that?
01:02:18 ►
Look within and you will find it.
01:02:21 ►
Thank you.
01:02:24 ►
I’m a physician and it’s more that I work at a yoga,
01:02:27 ►
so I do the two.
01:02:29 ►
It’s more of a conflict of trying to explain it scientifically.
01:02:33 ►
You see, there’s an enormous spectrum of these methods.
01:02:35 ►
Several years ago, we had a conference in Manaus,
01:02:40 ►
in the middle of the Amazonian jungle,
01:02:42 ►
called the ITA Conference, International Transpersonal Association,
01:02:46 ►
was called Technologies of the Sacred, Ancient, Aboriginal, and Modern,
01:02:51 ►
discussing the whole spectrum of methods, both ancient and modern,
01:02:58 ►
that can induce these kinds of experiences.
01:03:00 ►
And there are certain differences when you induce it through different means but they
01:03:07 ►
generally follow the same cartography. They bring up something from your
01:03:11 ►
individual history, from postnatal history
01:03:15 ►
they can make you confront your birth, they can take you to the prenatal life
01:03:19 ►
they can give you anything from the collective unconscious, past life experiences
01:03:24 ►
take you into the archetypal realm.
01:03:27 ►
You can experience these demonic presences, oneness with the universe, oneness with God.
01:03:34 ►
So it would be very difficult to find the common final pathways for so many different things.
01:03:40 ►
They can happen in a way that we have to call spontaneous because we don’t know what’s involved. It can happen through
01:03:47 ►
faster breathing. It can happen through withholding breath. It can happen
01:03:51 ►
through dancing and chanting, fasting, I mean, you name it.
01:03:56 ►
Next question, please.
01:04:01 ►
My question addresses the high possibility
01:04:03 ►
that Albert Hoffman didn’t actually ingest LSD on that day.
01:04:07 ►
I’ve observed that all of my psychedelic friends and I experience altered mind states just by being in the presence of an entheogen.
01:04:18 ►
And I’m wondering how many people in this room have contact ties just by being in the presence of an infusion?
01:04:26 ►
Looks to me like about a third.
01:04:28 ►
So it seems to me that there’s a possibility that we have some sort of infusion sensing organ
01:04:34 ►
that we haven’t detected yet, and that this organ could help explain
01:04:40 ►
why we have discovered these substances throughout history.
01:04:44 ►
So my question is, is anyone doing any work to see if we can detect this?
01:04:47 ►
Because I think it would be possible to stimulate it without having
01:04:52 ►
any substances, if we could find it.
01:04:55 ►
Anyone want to comment?
01:04:57 ►
I remember thousands of years ago when I was still taking psychedelics
01:05:01 ►
that when I would say, for instance, go to take some, any one
01:05:07 ►
of the psychedelics, I would have the same reactions when I was about to take it, like
01:05:15 ►
carotid saliva, feeling like I was coming on, chills, all the same kind of things I’d
01:05:22 ►
get when I would take it.
01:05:25 ►
Right, we’ll have, oh, Ralph, did you want to say something?
01:05:27 ►
Very quickly, that question relates to something that I’ve often thought is that, you know,
01:05:33 ►
homeopathy works on this principle that the more you dilute the substance, the more potent it becomes.
01:05:39 ►
And in extremely high homeopathic dilutions,
01:05:43 ►
there’s often not a single molecule of the original starting point substance left in it.
01:05:47 ►
And I’ve often thought the action of LSD must be kind of homeopathic
01:05:51 ►
because it seems to almost get more intense the less you take.
01:05:55 ►
And Hahnemann described that the more you dilute it and the more than you shake it,
01:06:01 ►
because that was the other thing, shaking it. It like releases the spirit from the matter.
01:06:07 ►
And then it becomes pure spiritual action in its pure form
01:06:12 ►
and causes then the matrix to resonate.
01:06:16 ►
So maybe ingesting LSD just guarantees that it’s going to be in your body for a long time
01:06:22 ►
and you can get whatever you get from it just from being in its presence.
01:06:27 ►
Last question, please.
01:06:30 ►
Hi.
01:06:32 ►
My name is Bach Zurbman, and I’m a U.S. Navy sailor, 16 years.
01:06:40 ►
Deep-sea diver, medic, with the SEAL team for the past four years.
01:06:44 ►
Deep sea diver, medic with the SEAL team for the past four years.
01:06:50 ►
I have many experiences throughout my life.
01:06:56 ►
I can’t legally talk about many of them, being still on active duty, which is only for about two weeks.
01:07:09 ►
But I would have to say I’m honored and privileged to serve you and you.
01:07:19 ►
And this is what makes it all worthwhile for me and my brothers and sisters who have already died, still dying, and still yet to die.
01:07:22 ►
This is what makes it all worth fucking wow. Wow.
01:07:22 ►
This is what makes it all worth fucking wow.
01:07:31 ►
Well, that’s something of a note to end on.
01:07:32 ►
Thank you very much indeed. Keep it up.
01:07:33 ►
Thank you very much.
01:07:34 ►
And your thanks to all the panel, please.
01:07:48 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,
01:07:51 ►
where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
01:07:58 ►
You know, I almost cut out the ending of that question and answer session,
01:08:01 ►
but for those of us who were there,
01:08:04 ►
particularly those of us who are ex-military,
01:08:06 ►
it was a very poignant moment.
01:08:07 ►
I scrambled the sailor’s name who made
01:08:10 ►
that statement because I don’t want to get him in trouble.
01:08:12 ►
But among the many things
01:08:14 ►
that are drilled into military people
01:08:16 ►
in this country is that
01:08:18 ►
one of the main reasons they are sacrificing
01:08:20 ►
so much is to protect our freedom
01:08:22 ►
of speech.
01:08:23 ►
And so it was good to be reminded of that at the moment. And in case you don’t know, there are Thank you. I’m also a part of the salon. I know it isn’t easy to do what you have to do once you’ve begun thinking psychedelically.
01:08:47 ►
I know because I went through it myself.
01:08:49 ►
But I’m sure that you’re going to make it back to the world, as we used to say,
01:08:53 ►
and that upon reflection, you will then hopefully experience a deep spiritual rebirth.
01:08:59 ►
Until then, keep your heads down.
01:09:01 ►
We really need you back home.
01:09:04 ►
I wish I had the time and energy to say all of the things that are on my mind right now about Myron and Nick.
01:09:11 ►
And since I also consider them dear friends, it’s a little difficult to be objective about their work.
01:09:17 ►
For our fellow salonners who lived through the 60s, especially if you were in the psychedelic milieu,
01:09:23 ►
you will already have heard about
01:09:26 ►
Orange Sunshine, and of course Nick was the master alchemist behind that incredible product.
01:09:32 ►
And you can also hear more about those days in our podcasts number 37 and 54.
01:09:39 ►
And Myron, of course, has been featured here in the salon on quite a few occasions, including
01:09:43 ►
his talk at Dr. Hoffman’s 100th birthday celebration
01:09:46 ►
and the series of lone pine stories he recorded for us just for the salon.
01:09:52 ►
And in one of them, he provides a lot more detail
01:09:55 ►
about his first psychedelic experience
01:09:57 ►
under the guidance of the legendary Al Hubbard.
01:10:01 ►
Another good source of information about Myron’s work
01:10:04 ►
comes from the video he talked
01:10:06 ►
about just now, which is Connie Littlefield’s great documentary titled Hoffman’s Potion.
01:10:12 ►
As you heard Myron mention, that film was screened at the conference later that night,
01:10:16 ►
and until now, that was the only time I’ve seen it. But yesterday, I discovered that it has
01:10:22 ►
been posted in several parts on YouTube.
01:10:25 ►
And I’ll embed the first of those videos along with the program notes for this podcast so you can see it for yourself.
01:10:31 ►
And I hope that you take the time to do that because in addition to learning a lot about the early days of LSD research and experimentation,
01:10:40 ►
you’re also going to get to see some of the people who have either been guests or that we’ve talked about here in the salon.
01:10:47 ►
Another thing that I plan on posting this week is a copy of the first research report
01:10:52 ►
produced by the Institute Myron and others set up in Menlo Park,
01:10:56 ►
which is talked about in Hoffman’s Potion, particularly in Part 4.
01:11:01 ►
As far as I’ve been able to determine, the only place this report has been published so far
01:11:06 ►
is on the www.hoffman.org website
01:11:10 ►
that Myron maintained for many years.
01:11:13 ►
And by the way, keep in mind that Dr. Hoffman’s name
01:11:16 ►
has one F and two Ns,
01:11:18 ►
H-O-F-M-A-N-N dot org.
01:11:22 ►
And I’ll be linking to that paper as well
01:11:24 ►
as to a review of the book, Discovery of Love,
01:11:28 ►
A Psychedelic Experience with LSD-25 by Malden Grange Bishop.
01:11:34 ►
And that little book, by the way, has one of the most complete and detailed accounts of the protocols used for the people who were experiencing LSD at the Institute.
01:11:44 ►
The paper I just referred to, Research Report No. 1, is a real gem.
01:11:49 ►
Its authors were Charles Savage, Willis Harmon, and James Fadiman.
01:11:54 ►
And by the way, you can hear more from Jim Fadiman in Podcast No. 42,
01:11:59 ►
where he talks about using psychedelics for rational work.
01:12:03 ►
Their report is a summary of the results of a questionnaire sent out to about 150 people
01:12:09 ►
who had gone through their program.
01:12:11 ►
And what to me is most striking about this particular study is that there are several sections
01:12:16 ►
where the respondents’ answers are segregated by gender.
01:12:20 ►
And I find it quite revealing to see how women and men sometimes view these experiences from slightly different perspectives.
01:12:28 ►
I’ll read a few sentences from the summary section to give you a feel for what this paper contains
01:12:33 ►
in the event that you want to follow up and read the whole thing.
01:12:37 ►
Here’s what it says.
01:12:39 ►
In overall summary, the most significant single figure is perhaps the percentage who claimed quite a bit or very much of lasting benefits, 83%.
01:12:50 ►
Even allowing for the unlikely possibility that all non-respondents were negative, the percentage would still be over 70%.
01:12:59 ►
The claimed improvement rate rises from 70% after 1 to 3 months to 85% after 12 months or more have elapsed since the LSD session.
01:13:09 ►
Most commonly reported benefits include increase in ability to love, 78%, to handle hostility, 69%, to communicate, 69%, and to understand self and others, 88%.
01:13:26 ►
Improved personal relations, 72%.
01:13:29 ►
Decreased anxiety, 66%.
01:13:33 ►
Increased self-esteem, 71%.
01:13:36 ►
And a new way of looking at the world, 83%.
01:13:40 ►
The sections that follow the summary are titled
01:13:43 ►
Sex Difference, Effective Time, Patience vs. Non-Patience, and Outstanding Event or Insight.
01:13:51 ►
It’s truly a fascinating picture of a relatively large group of people, and hopefully we’ll see more studies like this in the future.
01:14:00 ►
Now there are a couple more things I want to mention before I go,
01:14:04 ►
Now there are a couple more things I want to mention before I go,
01:14:08 ►
and one of them has to do with a fellow slawner who can be found on MySpace under the handle Central Processing Universe, or myspace.com slash cpuni.
01:14:15 ►
I think it was through our forum over on thegirlreport.com that I first found a link to his piece called
01:14:22 ►
There Is More To This, in which he weaves some McKenna sound bites into his music.
01:14:29 ►
As I’ve said before, I find some of these music tracks that sample a thought here and there
01:14:33 ►
from McKenna, Leary, Wilson, and others,
01:14:36 ►
to provide a deeper impression of their thoughts than just listening to them in lecture format.
01:14:42 ►
So keep up the good work, Central Processing and all you other sound sculptors out there.
01:14:47 ►
Your mixes are some of the best ear candy around.
01:14:51 ►
And I can really use a few pleasant sounds right now
01:14:55 ►
because there’s a huge military exercise that seems to have been going on for a while now
01:15:01 ►
just north of here at the Camp Pendleton Marine Base.
01:15:04 ►
going on for a while now, just north of here at the Camp Pendleton Marine Base.
01:15:10 ►
You know, I’m a Vietnam vet, and even though I didn’t go through any really difficult times when I was in Vietnam, the sound of large explosives going off all during the night
01:15:15 ►
has been making it very difficult for me to sleep.
01:15:18 ►
We’re about 20 miles or so south of the bombing range, and the sound of those bombs going
01:15:24 ►
off right now is very clear when I step out on the back porch.
01:15:28 ►
I hope this doesn’t mean that the nutjob in the White House and his buddy Darth Vader aren’t planning a new October surprise.
01:15:35 ►
I guess all that bombing is just driving me a little nutty.
01:15:39 ►
Hopefully it’ll come to an end soon, and not just for us lucky ones here on the West Coast, but for everyone
01:15:45 ►
everywhere that bombs are being dropped.
01:15:48 ►
So how about some good news?
01:15:50 ►
And that is that Sasha Shulgin has not only bounced back from some of the health problems
01:15:55 ►
that have so plagued him this year, at this very moment he is on the playa at Burning Man.
01:16:01 ►
I spoke with him a couple days ago, and he just sounded wonderful
01:16:05 ►
and really very excited about the fact
01:16:08 ►
that the next morning he was leaving for Black Rock City.
01:16:11 ►
And the fact that he feels strong enough
01:16:14 ►
to spend a week in that very physically challenging environment
01:16:17 ►
tells me that Sasha plans on being around for a long time yet.
01:16:23 ►
Another piece of news you may find interesting
01:16:26 ►
is about the straight world’s newfound fear,
01:16:29 ►
digital drugs.
01:16:32 ►
You may have missed it, but a few days back
01:16:35 ►
there was an article in a major U.S. newspaper
01:16:37 ►
that ran with a headline which read,
01:16:40 ►
Web Delivers New Worry for Parents, Digital Drugs.
01:16:44 ►
And the article concludes by saying, and I quote,
01:16:48 ►
If binaural beats work as promised, they are not safe.
01:16:52 ►
They could also create a placebo effect.
01:16:55 ►
The expectation elicits the response.
01:16:58 ►
Again, this is unsafe.
01:17:00 ►
At the very least, digital drugs promote drug use.
01:17:03 ►
Some sites say binaural beats can be used with illegal drugs. End quote.
01:17:23 ►
Now, should you want to learn more about this subject, you can read more about them
01:17:27 ►
in Wikipedia. But a better approach might be to just Google
01:17:32 ►
binaural beat LSD. That’s B-I-N-A-U-R-A-L.
01:17:38 ►
And instead of just Googling
01:17:40 ►
binaural, I put binaural beat LSD.
01:17:44 ►
And then you’ll find some of the forums that you can go to and learn more about Thank you. a chapter titled Psychedelic Thinking and the Dawn of Homo Cyber, and part of what I said back then was this.
01:18:07 ►
It is no secret that some of our best minds are working overtime
01:18:11 ►
on the development of what can be called digital drugs.
01:18:15 ►
This new generation of virtual reality devices
01:18:18 ►
will be able to launch you into entheospace
01:18:20 ►
just as effectively as does LSD today.
01:18:23 ►
The commercial availability of these devices will most likely signal the beginning of the
01:18:28 ►
last battle in the war on drugs.
01:18:31 ►
Finally, we will be able to reframe the issue into what it is really all about, the right
01:18:36 ►
to control our own state of consciousness.
01:18:39 ►
Attorney Richard Glenn Boyer calls this cognitive liberty and defines it as, and I quote,
01:18:46 ►
the right of each individual to think independently, to use the full spectrum of his or her mind,
01:18:53 ►
and to engage in multiple modes of thought and alternative states of consciousness, end quote.
01:18:59 ►
When the first government hearings are held in an attempt to ban these new silicon-based cognitive tools,
01:19:06 ►
the power elite are going to be forced to confront the fact that it is human thought they want to control.
01:19:13 ►
It is not the substances that mainstream culture fears.
01:19:16 ►
It is the psychedelic thinking these substances promote that is under attack.
01:19:22 ►
And in the event that you want to read the rest of that chapter,
01:19:26 ►
you’ll find a link to it along with the program notes for today’s podcast.
01:19:30 ►
In fact, the entire book is online if you want to read it in HTML format.
01:19:35 ►
I keep meaning to put it up there in PDF format for you to download,
01:19:39 ►
but somehow that just keeps slipping through the cracks.
01:19:43 ►
Hopefully I’ll get that done yet one day.
01:19:46 ►
But if I don’t quit talking right now, I’m not even going to get this podcast out.
01:19:50 ►
So I guess I better bring this to a close.
01:19:53 ►
But just to finish this digital drug story and bring it to an end,
01:19:58 ►
none of the postings I read on several forums had anything very positive to say
01:20:03 ►
about the current quality of these ethereal substances,
01:20:07 ►
and so I tried a few for myself.
01:20:09 ►
They’re interesting, but I certainly wouldn’t say that they are even close to what the experience is like
01:20:15 ►
when you use the physical material.
01:20:18 ►
So now I’m thinking that maybe what the screwheads are trying to do is to convince people who have never used LSD or cannabis or MDMA
01:20:27 ►
that this is what the experience is like.
01:20:31 ►
Had I never used LSD and then tried one of these alleged digital substitutes,
01:20:36 ►
I probably never would have tried the real thing because it wouldn’t have been worth it.
01:20:40 ►
But that doesn’t mean the day won’t arrive when virtual drugs will be a reality,
01:20:45 ►
particularly when you realize that the
01:20:48 ►
software used to create
01:20:50 ►
these audio experiences is
01:20:51 ►
now available for you to work with yourself.
01:20:54 ►
So who knows?
01:20:56 ►
Maybe the new alchemists are going
01:20:58 ►
to be the geeks who stay up late
01:21:00 ►
and code all night.
01:21:02 ►
Anyway, just because I’m not
01:21:04 ►
raving about how great these digital experiences
01:21:06 ►
are right now doesn’t mean that I’m
01:21:08 ►
not a believer in this new form of alchemy.
01:21:11 ►
So, code on,
01:21:12 ►
you brave souls. I look forward
01:21:14 ►
to your success.
01:21:16 ►
Now, there’s one more thing that I
01:21:18 ►
saved for the end of this podcast,
01:21:20 ►
and that’s a message that
01:21:22 ►
I got from Nick Sand yesterday
01:21:24 ►
in response to a question I asked about whether or not he had any words of wisdom he’d like to pass along.
01:21:31 ►
So this is from Nick to you.
01:21:34 ►
What I would like to say is for them to remember and study what was going on in the 60s, before and after criminalization of our sacraments,
01:21:44 ►
before and after criminalization of our sacraments and the importance of going back to the land,
01:21:47 ►
forming collectives, growing your own food and fuel,
01:21:51 ►
and tightening your belts and forget the American dream.
01:21:54 ►
It was a contrived spell to spin everyone into a lifestyle
01:21:58 ►
based on non-sustainability and planetary destruction.
01:22:02 ►
The idea was to sell waste and toxins as food
01:22:06 ►
and condemn real food as poison.
01:22:09 ►
Fluoride sold as a protection
01:22:11 ►
when it was actually toxic waste.
01:22:14 ►
Alcohol, tobacco, leaded gas,
01:22:17 ►
heavy metal misused to you,
01:22:20 ►
aspartame too, mention just a few.
01:22:23 ►
Gaia is our mother
01:22:24 ►
and the source of all wisdom.
01:22:27 ►
Learn from her, worship her,
01:22:30 ►
and learn to utilize her gifts as food and sacrament.
01:22:34 ►
Remember, love is the most important thing.
01:22:38 ►
So love one another and abide in light
01:22:40 ►
until the dream that is turning into a nightmare passes.
01:22:44 ►
It will pass if we remember to not let the bastards get us down.
01:22:49 ►
It won’t be easy, but it will be real.
01:22:53 ►
And then something even more important will arise.
01:22:56 ►
Beauty.
01:22:58 ►
Blessing and love, Nick Sand.
01:23:00 ►
Chief Alchemist, League for Spiritual Discovery.
01:23:04 ►
Nick Sand, Chief Alchemist, League for Spiritual Discovery.
01:23:11 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
01:23:13 ►
Be well, my friends.