Program Notes
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna
[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]
“It seems to me that it [Nature] is psyche in a way that has become occluded by the perverse development of language.”
“Standing outside the cultural hysteria the trend is fairly clear. It is a trend toward temporal compression and the emergence of ambiguity.”
“Nature is actually the goal at the end of history.”
“Hallucinogenic plants act as enzymes which stimulate imagination.”
“And what we’re looking toward is a moment when the artificial language structures which bind us within the notion of ourselves are dissolved in the presence of the realization that we are a part of nature. And when that happens, the childhood of our species will pass away, and we will stand tremulously on the brink of really the first moment of coherent human civilization.”
“We are an intelligent species caught in an historical process. No generation which proceeded us knew what was going on, and there is no reason to assume that we know what’s going on or that the generation which follows us will know what’s going on. And what kind of trip is it anyway to insist on knowing what’s going on?”
“It’s no big deal about how you get language to evolve. You cause language to evolve by saying new and intelligent things to each other.”
“Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.”
“Only responsible human beings can exist in an anarchistic society.”
“Living psychedelically is trying to live in an atmosphere of continuous unfolding of understanding. So that every day you know more, and see into things with greater depth, than you did before.”
“Culture is another dimention.”
“The lack of a sense of history makes us really prey to manipulation.”
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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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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
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Well, as you know, I’m about ready to head up north for the fourth almost annual Symbiosis Gathering.
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And I’ve been working on my talk and getting ready for the trip,
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and so I hadn’t really planned on doing another podcast until I got back.
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But some of our fellow saloners have convinced me that maybe I shouldn’t be such a slacker and get one more podcast out before I left.
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And those fellow salonners are PDM Podcast.
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And PDM Podcast, I think you maybe accidentally checked the donation button more than once.
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So I refunded one of your two identical donations. Thank you. B and Nikolai R, all of whom made generous donations to help offset the expenses of the
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salon.
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So thank you all ever so much for your kind help.
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It is very much appreciated.
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And on top of that, we also received donations from Sam B and my old grandfather friend Robert
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O.
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And they were way over the top.
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You guys really shouldn’t have.
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But I have to admit that your generosity came at a very good time.
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So thank you again.
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And a big thank you to all of our fellow salonners who are helping us to spread these ideas in whatever way they can.
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And I should add that some of these donors are also regular contributors to the salon over a long period of time, so your long-term support is something I treasure greatly.
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Now let’s get on with today’s talk, which comes from a collection of Terrence’s lectures that he had on cassette tape and passed along to some friends of mine for safekeeping.
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tape and passed along to some friends of mine for safekeeping. And while I think that this talk is most likely out there on the net under several titles, the only thing I can say for sure about
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it is that this tape was titled McNature on the tape, and I don’t know if that was Terrence’s idea
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or just the name my friends gave the file after they digitized the tape, because he uses a different title in the talk, as you’ll hear in just a minute.
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So let’s give it a listen right now, and yes, there is one little break in the talk
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where the person making the recording must have had to turn the tape over or something,
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but I don’t think we’ll miss much, so here is Terence McKenna.
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The formal title of the lecture is Nature is the Center of the Mandala.
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And this is really basically simply a
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structure to work off of,
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to anticipate and discuss where nature lies in the future,
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the cultural future that is unfolding in front of all of us.
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And these times spent,
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and then of course there were the times in the Amazon,
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which most of you have heard me lecture on,
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where the pursuit of psychedelic plants
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was really in the forefront.
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But I came to see nature as experienced,
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meaning as it hits you when you walk around in it
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and pick at it and carry it with you,
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that this kind of nature had been read out
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of the repertoire of images
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that most people bring to bear on their reality and
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consequently the reality is de-spirited
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the spirit resident in nature is not visible when these mechanistic grids are laid over it. Sort of by a kind of anticipatory osmosis,
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we called our company, which has existed now 10 years or more,
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Lux Natura.
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Lux Natura means the light in nature.
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The Lux Natura is the salvational radiance
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that can be found in the organic kingdom.
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It’s a term of paracelsus.
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And it has slipped from the grip of modern human beings
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except in special cases
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where it is cultivated as in a sensitivity
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or where it is pursued in the guise of an aspect
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of the psychedelic experience.
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So what is nature and what’s so great about it
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that it should be the center of the mandala?
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Well, it seems to me that it is psyche in a way that has
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become occluded by the perverse development of language so that what we
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take to be exterior to ourselves and sustained by the laws of physics
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which do not arise out of the human mind
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is in fact not that at all,
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but a kind of stratum of expectation
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that has been laid down
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by the human journey through time.
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Now granted, there are aspects of nature which are not part of the human journey through time. Now, granted, there are aspects of nature
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which are not part of the human journey through time,
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but they are a cult from our point of view.
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They are not expressed,
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except perhaps through the demonic artifice of an instrumentality.
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And this has been the course of the strategy
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of science is to use an instrumentality to reveal the mechanics of the occult
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side of nature the problem is that this occult side of nature, once explicated,
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does not yield a satisfying reflection of ourselves.
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It yields instead a very unflattering reflection of ourselves, if any at all.
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So, you know, in Hawaii, sitting on the mountainside,
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you think that you are like Lenin in Germany or something,
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and you have to politically think it all through
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so that to whatever degree one’s voice is heard,
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mistakes are not made.
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Because it seems to me clear that a small miracle is taking place.
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It is that, and I was saying this to Roy today, it is that our point of view is actually gaining
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ground. The thing which we least expected to happen, I think, that all this new age hustle and bustle,
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though granted that 95% of it
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is just intellectual noise
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and efforts that fail,
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efforts to coin the perfect analogy that fail,
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nevertheless, there is a residual 5%
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that appears to have become the cutting edge
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of the guiding image of this megaculture. So it becomes important then for people who
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identify themselves with the human potential movement, spiritual development, the rebirth of intuition,
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all of these things to make a place in the plan for the role of nature. And different responses
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have gone on to that. The Gaia response, which claims nature as a stabilizing feminine force which I’m all for that. I think
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that’s definitely the image that has to emerge that the recognition of the presence of control
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mechanisms which are not coercive but which are Taoistic is a way of coming to terms with nature that we have resisted.
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It’s a simple idea.
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It’s just the idea that before technology,
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people had to store firewood in the autumn for the winter.
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And in the spring, they had to sharpen tools for
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the late spring planting and this sort of thing, that there was an implicit rhythm laid
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down by nature that entered the human cosmos at every level and then was reflected in the
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poetry, the culture building, the language evolution, etc.
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And between urbanization
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and other
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factors removed
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the influence of these
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rhythms, ending in the final
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culmination of the
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modern city where life under
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electric light goes on 24
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hours a day. There’s then
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a flattening of the human dimension.
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There is no more a sense of being embedded in flux.
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There is instead the myth of the eternal culture.
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It’s like Woody Allen, you know,
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his comment that he didn’t like to go to the country
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because you see all these screen doors
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with cobwebs in the corner.
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Well, you’ve got to come to terms with this kind of thing.
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Because there is no question that there is a deepening ambiguity in the present moment.
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There is a something stealing over global civilization.
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I was at a conference recently where someone proposed the notion that our time is not special,
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that there is nothing unique about this moment other than that it is presently occurring.
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I think nothing could be further from the truth
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that actually the deepening ambiguity of the historical experience,
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which registers in all of us as a sense of how weird it is,
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how compressed time is, how complicated the interconnections are,
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is a real phenomenon which eventually will be elucidated.
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In other words, it will be recognized as a phenomenon.
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Eventually, there is going to be a break with the with the prevailing paradigm of historical process in case you’re not
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aware of it the prevailing paradigm of historical process is the script is the
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one which calls itself the trendlessly fluctuating theory and it says we trendlessly fluctuate. And to search for a trend is to just be drawn
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into a kind of cultural hysteria. The fact of the matter is that standing outside the
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cultural hysteria, the trend is fairly clear. It is a trend toward temporal compression and the emergence
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of ambiguity. How is it possible, you know, you look at something like Common Ground or even the
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Shared Visions newsletter and you say, you know, apparently the major commodity moving on world markets is ambiguity.
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The voices which whisper to us from crystals, herbs, and housewives.
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The invisible fields from all dimensions which impinge upon us.
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The imagined histories and futures which intersect the present moment.
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the imagined histories and futures which intersect the present moment.
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I mean, if all of these models, or even a small portion of them, are given credence,
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then the density of the human experience is considerably deepened.
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I mean, how many past lives can you keep track of?
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How many extraterrestrial channels can you have open before you begin to realize that you’re not living in the kind of society like mom and dad were used to.
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So, back to the theme of nature.
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Nature anticipates all of this and anchors it.
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Nature is actually the goal at the end of history.
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We’re getting closer and closer to the end of history
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and we will not go past it with a moment of blindness.
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There will be vouchsafed intuitions
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about the emerging structure of the other
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into which culture is being subsumed.
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You’re all familiar with the image of the Ouroboros,
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the snake which takes its tail in its mouth.
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Well, the end of history, which you’ve heard me talk about as an archaic revival, is, that’s true, an archaic revival, but the
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the ground of being in which the original archaic Renaissance occurred was
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nature. So in terms of the expression of design elements, in terms of the expression of human relationships, political agendas,
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all of these things, the economies of nature are going to set the guiding images.
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It’s very interesting.
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I read Stephen Jay Gould’s book Biophilia, in which he describes his work with ants in Suriname and how
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there are ants which grow fungi in their nests they chew up they cut leaves off trees and chew
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them up into this mash which they then store in rooms underground
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and they bring the right spores to it and grow it there and it produces a sugar which
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the ants then eat and they tend the fungal gardens they actually remove foreign spores and this sort of thing and the whole
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symbiosis goes on well it’s a symbiosis between a social organism the ant and a
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fungal organism which is able to provide an enzyme sugar which drives the ant society to a greater state of activity.
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Activity being the bottom line in an insect economy where how much you can get done determines
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your how well you survive provided the triodes of getting done are well established well this provides a curious analogy to the
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situation that exists in human societies vis-a-vis hallucinogenic plants
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hallucinogenic plants act as enzymes which stimulate imagination and imagination having a
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practical side to itself is usually reconnected to this process in a
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feedback loop that asks the question how can we make more of the hallucinogenic
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plant which is giving us all these great ideas so then
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you get initially the invention of agriculture and but one can’t grow all
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plants in one place as we learned even about Hawaii so then the imaginary the
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feedback loop in the imagination driven by the presence of the hallucinogen in the
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diet asks the question, how can we get the plants that we can’t grow?
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And the answer is networks of trade and systems of barter.
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And behind that lies the need for language, similar sorts of things.
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These kinds of symbiotic processes are implicit in the human experience. Some of you have heard
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another lecture I give which goes into this in great detail where I actually try to show that
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the presence of mushrooms in the dung of ungulate animals on the Velk of Africa 150,000 years ago
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drove a set of processes which resulted
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in self-reflecting human beings.
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I won’t recapitulate that now except to say
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that that process didn’t end with the invention of language
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or the domestication of cattle.
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It continues right up until the present day it really is as though
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from a planetary point of view what has happened is an enzyme system called the
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human species was deputized into an information gathering mode sent out as a kind of prodigal
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subsystem a kind of episode of the social environment to cognize the
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organization of the natural world through a process called human history or the historical advance of
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understanding toward sufficiently complete modeling of the ground that the
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that closure could occur and that is now I think what is happening that the human
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species which was deputized for Gaia into the fall, the fall into profane time,
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the time of non-participation in the immediacy of the Tao,
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through a series of successive linguistic declensions, That’s what it was. I mean this begins to sound
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almost biblical because what we’re saying is there’s a fall and then and
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the fall is somehow related to a confusion of languages not one from
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another but from the object of experience and as the language became
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less and less natural the world of the species using this language became less and less natural.
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Because the evolution of symbols became toward the abstract, became the realization of ideals.
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of ideals notice that as early as as platonic philosophy and I’m not sure well no even in pre-socratic philosophy you get the enunciation of abstractions
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great overweening concepts which subsume large sets of particulars underneath
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them and this this ability to subsume the particulars
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under a name, which is a class name,
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is the beginning of this process
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of replacing the natural language
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with the symbolic structures
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that then interfere between soul and nature.
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The reason for this process, we can really only guess at,
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it seems as though nature requires this reflection
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upon itself, that the completion of nature
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is somehow in the hands of a single target species,
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which acts as an enzyme within the global
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global organism of Gaia. From the point of view of an extraterrestrial looking
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down on the surface of the planet there are not discrete organisms there is
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simply a gene swarm and through transmission of viruses and numerous
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non-genetic ways in which genes are transformed the previously imagined
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sharp declensions between species are actually somewhat illusory so that
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really within the confines of my body,
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the unfolding of gene expression
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and the molecular assembly of enzyme systems
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and proteins and that sort of thing
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is simply under a tighter regimen of control
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than are the same kind of processes
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which are going on between people. We are
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really a loosely regulated organism that has a tendency to ever tighten the control between
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its subunits so that you can see the evolution of language, the evolution of technology, and its being at the service of media,
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the rise of cities, oral poetry,
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all of these things we seem to strive
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for greater and greater cohesion,
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greater and greater free flow of thought among ourselves.
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And what we’re looking toward
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is a moment when the artificial language structures
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which bind us within the notion of ourselves
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are dissolved in the presence of the realization
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that we are a part of nature.
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And when that happens,
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the childhood of our species will pass away
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and we will stand tremulously on the brink
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of really the first moments of coherent human civilization.
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And when that happens,
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the noise which haunts our social systems
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our inability to couple things together so that they work will begin to evaporate
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this I think is already beginning to happen it’s a slow process but it’s a
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kind of cascading phenomenon such that once it
00:24:26 ►
begins to happen it happens faster and faster and
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the mirroring of psyche that was always the glamour, if you will, which stood behind nature, is
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correctly perceived with greater and greater clarity as this process
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proceeds. And this correct perceiving of nature’s relationship to self and language is the essence of all
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of these cultural vectors that are converging feminism the exploration of
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space the perfection of the thinking machine or of the human machine interface, the mysterium tremendum
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at the core of the psychedelic experience.
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All of these things are, I think, going to be seen as anticipations of this post-historical state which lies beyond the working out of the themes that have been set in motion by materialistic science.
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In other words, the forces that are being set in motion and sustained by so-called new thought, new age thinking.
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so-called new thought, new age thinking. This is why, because this seems to be happening, because it seems that we and by we I mean all of us did in fact
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identify early on a trend in society there is a responsibility to clear thinking
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about what this thing is and how it works.
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There seems to be a kind of a rush to get in line
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with the sloppiest metaphor as quickly as possible.
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So that, you know, there have been a number of,
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let’s say,
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syncretic fates
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or new myths
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that have arisen
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and competed with each other
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with greater and lesser
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degrees of success.
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I suppose this is a healthy thing
00:27:00 ►
except that it gives such comfort
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to the people who think
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we’re all airheads. You know mean they observe all this and it confirms for them that
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it’s a hopeless lot nevertheless
00:27:19 ►
so so I guess what I want to say about that is that everybody has their own version of what is the mistake which is being made.
00:27:29 ►
So here’s my version of what is the mistake that’s being made.
00:27:33 ►
It’s that there is a confusion between scientific materialism and reason.
00:27:42 ►
Science has set itself up as a kind of new pontificate and Brooks no
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challenge. It expects to make judgment on any idea emerging from any realm of
00:27:59 ►
human endeavor. It has set itself up as judge and jury the fact of the matter is that this is only
00:28:07 ►
by virtue of its spectacular acts of technological prestidigitation that it’s able to uh presume to
00:28:17 ►
do this because really what science is most successful about in telling us about are realms
00:28:27 ►
which none of us have ever penetrated nor are ever likely to I mean how much
00:28:34 ►
do you wish to know about the rings of Neptune or the the quark, we are continuously sold the line that somehow when the metaphors of consciousness
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are fully mapped onto quantum physics and biology, that a great step forward will have
00:28:58 ►
been taken.
00:29:00 ►
It seems to me that since the information coming out of quantum physics and molecular biology
00:29:05 ►
is so removed from the realm of common experience,
00:29:09 ►
that if we succeed in mapping mental phenomena onto those realms,
00:29:14 ►
we will have succeeded in the final act of alienation,
00:29:19 ►
because we will have at last totally removed our experience of ourselves from the realm
00:29:27 ►
of felt cognition. So I think that instead of the idea that there needs to
00:29:35 ►
be a kind of erection of an overarching metaphor from the physical sciences into the social and psychiatric sciences.
00:29:47 ►
Instead, there should be the recognition and celebration of mystery.
00:29:54 ►
That, in fact, we are an intelligent species caught in a historical process.
00:30:01 ►
No generation which preceded us knew what was going on and there is no
00:30:06 ►
reason to assume that we know what’s going on or that the generation which
00:30:10 ►
follows us will know what’s going on. And what kind of trip is it anyway to insist
00:30:18 ►
on knowing what’s going on? It’s a highly unlikely enterprise. I mean, look at the data sample. The data sample is your
00:30:30 ►
lifetime on one planet in one tiny corner of the universe. And from this, via the fallacy of
00:30:40 ►
induction, certain principles of uniformity are extended to the far
00:30:46 ►
flung corners of the cosmos in space and time, then a bunch of fancy metaphors are
00:30:53 ►
built up that nobody can check on anyway and then this is called understanding.
00:30:59 ►
You see it isn’t understanding. Understanding issues into appropriate activity.
00:31:08 ►
And, you know, a model of the universe
00:31:11 ►
which doesn’t issue into appropriate activity in the here and now
00:31:16 ►
is a curious model indeed.
00:31:19 ►
After all, appropriate activity in the here and now
00:31:22 ►
I would think would be the sine qua non.
00:31:25 ►
Everything else is an unconfirmed rumor. So nature is the visible manifestation of
00:31:35 ►
this mystery. It entirely surrounds and completes us. It is there to be beheld and imbibed in. It is simply that one must either replace the
00:31:49 ►
sterile language of scientific materialism or one must bring no
00:31:53 ►
language whatsoever to it so that it speaks for itself. I’ve noticed with
00:32:01 ►
ayahuasca, this South American visionary vine that’s a hallucinogen,
00:32:06 ►
unlike the mushroom, it does not speak.
00:32:10 ►
It shows, its language is visible, a fractal hieroglyphic surface of intermediate dimensions
00:32:20 ►
that contains an endless unfolding of phenomena at level after level, apparently,
00:32:28 ►
you know, who knows, down into the micro-physical realm. This is a correct seeing of what is.
00:32:36 ►
The mystery is co-present with its denial. It is a matter of changing points of view and changing
00:32:49 ►
points of view is a matter of retooling language if nature is psyche then is the
00:33:13 ►
is the autopoetic, self-reflecting cloud of cognition that manifests as language. It is partly based in the structure of matter.
00:33:18 ►
It is partly based in the implicit syntax of the perceiver.
00:33:23 ►
It is partly an interference pattern between the two. But
00:33:27 ►
it is as close to the ground that one can approach without theory. Which brings me then the last point that I want to make about this, which is
00:33:49 ►
the key to
00:33:54 ►
the forward-looking
00:33:57 ►
expression of the archaic revival, the key to making the New Age
00:34:04 ►
fulfill its best hope and not fall into a kind of crypto-fascism of paradigmatic warfare is to enunciate two principles, which are really two ways of saying the same thing. They are the primacy of experience
00:34:25 ►
and the toxic nature of ideology.
00:34:30 ►
This, to me, is the core.
00:34:34 ►
And if the New Age, the archaic revival, whatever,
00:34:38 ►
if it can exemplify these two principles,
00:34:41 ►
we will navigate past the dangerous shoals that inevitably rip any social point of view that grows, that attempts to leave its cult status and enter the mainstream.
00:35:07 ►
I connect it to Heidegger’s notion of what he called care for the project of being. The primacy of felt experience, it begins with a notion as simple as be here now,
00:35:13 ►
but it takes that further and says, you know, we must take ourselves more seriously,
00:35:26 ►
more lightly and more seriously at the same time.
00:35:31 ►
We are not at the bottom of a pyramid
00:35:35 ►
of goods and information production
00:35:40 ►
where we pay the sucker’s price for everything
00:35:45 ►
as it’s handed down through a series of intractable pieces of cultural machinery
00:35:52 ►
that we have no effect on.
00:35:55 ►
That is the myth that is being promulgated by those very institutions.
00:36:01 ►
The myth of the hapless consumer.
00:36:08 ►
The myth of the meaning of fadism that there is in fact a meaning to switching from one ideology
00:36:17 ►
to another ideology the way hemlines and perfumes and decorator colors come and go.
00:36:25 ►
This kind of allowing ourselves to be self-victimized.
00:36:31 ►
You know, I mean, God forbid, I’m now at an age where three times in my life
00:36:37 ►
I’ve seen good ideas emerging on the fringes of American culture
00:36:44 ►
end up as slogans for Madison Avenue.
00:36:49 ►
You know, first with the Beats, then with the hippies. I’ll never forget the day I first
00:36:55 ►
confronted a billboard which talked about the Dodge Rebellion. I mean, rebellion was our word,
00:37:01 ►
not their word. And here they were, you know,
00:37:06 ►
our word selling this piece of tin junk.
00:37:10 ►
So, you know, the co-option that comes
00:37:13 ►
from disempowering yourself
00:37:15 ►
with regard to what you view as important.
00:37:19 ►
Which is more important to you,
00:37:21 ►
your opinion or Ted Koppel’s opinion? It’s got to you your opinion or or Ted Koppel’s opinion it’s got to be your
00:37:29 ►
opinion you know because these other things are just chimeras they’re they’re
00:37:33 ►
myths in the electronic night the other side of that is the toxicity of ideology but ideology itself is poisonous
00:37:45 ►
that
00:37:46 ►
in the
00:37:48 ►
you know
00:37:49 ►
in the
00:37:50 ►
15th and
00:37:50 ►
16th century
00:37:52 ►
it was like
00:37:52 ►
120 years
00:37:54 ►
of intermittent
00:37:55 ►
religious war
00:37:56 ►
because people
00:37:58 ►
were so
00:37:58 ►
uptight
00:37:59 ►
about whether
00:38:00 ►
or not you
00:38:01 ►
were a
00:38:01 ►
Catholic
00:38:01 ►
or a
00:38:02 ►
Huguenot
00:38:03 ►
or a
00:38:04 ►
Walloon
00:38:04 ►
or you know all this stuff,
00:38:07 ►
which were, these were life and death issues.
00:38:09 ►
And finally people just became sick of it.
00:38:13 ►
And I hope, I choose to believe that we may be approaching such a watershed
00:38:20 ►
with the social ideologies that have just been dinging themselves into the global
00:38:27 ►
population for the past hundred years they are extremely bankrupt the notion of any kind of
00:38:35 ►
serious competition between uh marxist leninism and capitalist uh democratic techno-fascism or whatever it is, is ludicrous.
00:38:49 ►
Neither system works in the presence of the need to wage ideological warfare against the other.
00:38:58 ►
And yet it’s fairly clear that each society could function quite well if it didn’t have that burden.
00:39:06 ►
And similarly, in many microcosms of that situation around the world,
00:39:12 ►
it’s clear that ideology has become some kind of anachronism.
00:39:19 ►
It’s a kind of lack of good taste.
00:39:23 ►
It’s like being a nut, you know, so that you come on with
00:39:29 ►
some ideology and people just look at their plate. They’re
00:39:35 ►
embarrassed for you and well they should be because that butters no bread. That’s just a big pain in the neck.
00:39:47 ►
The ideology which naturally claims our attention
00:39:51 ►
is pretty well understood.
00:39:55 ►
You know, it’s like it says in the Old Testament.
00:40:00 ►
You can know the truth.
00:40:02 ►
The truth is the still small voice in your heart.
00:40:07 ►
We don’t have to take courses in theology and ethics to get all this down.
00:40:12 ►
The political agenda is fairly clear.
00:40:16 ►
You know, you feed people, you cure disease,
00:40:21 ►
you anticipate and solve social problems having to do with sewage disposal, distribution
00:40:28 ►
of land and wealth, so forth and so on. I mean, who’s kidding who? None of this stuff
00:40:34 ►
is controversial unless you’re living inside a locked ward, which we seem to be doing so more and more this anti-ideological position has to be articulated it’s no big deal
00:40:52 ►
about how you cause language to evolve you cause language to evolve by saying new and intelligent
00:41:00 ►
things to each other and then other people say oh well So this thing that I’ve always thought but never felt like saying is actually legitimate and okay
00:41:09 ►
And I can say it and I will say it and then it begins to move like a wave through society
00:41:15 ►
You will be told
00:41:17 ►
that
00:41:19 ►
for me to advocate
00:41:23 ►
The poisonous nature of ideology without calling it anarchy is
00:41:28 ►
to peddle my own private ideology but this is absurd it’s like saying if
00:41:35 ►
someone tells you not to drive that they’re advocating a certain style of
00:41:39 ►
driving that isn’t it at all you know it’s a translation of level it’s it’s something entirely different
00:41:49 ►
both of these things the toxic nature of ideology and the the importance of the felt presence of immediate experience can be brought together under the notion that we cannot afford
00:42:12 ►
the continued existence of what has been called throughout most of the 20th century
00:42:17 ►
the unconscious that the unconscious is actually a kind of neurotic excuse
00:42:26 ►
for not getting our act together as a species.
00:42:32 ►
It is a kind of infantilism,
00:42:35 ►
a giving of permission by each of us to all of us
00:42:41 ►
to not get our act together.
00:42:48 ►
And the way in which the unconscious is eliminated is by the by turning the language machinery back upon itself and
00:42:59 ►
reflecting on the process of attention This is what Buddhism is all about. Attention to
00:43:06 ►
attention. Awareness of the modality of the cognitive process. Don’t be fooled by
00:43:13 ►
yourself. Don’t be made a sucker of by yourself. Just rise above that possibility by paying attention.
00:43:26 ►
Attention to attention causes the light of language
00:43:30 ►
to fall into these dark and unilluminated corners
00:43:36 ►
where infantilism is tolerated in the individual personality.
00:43:42 ►
To oneself has a kind of a morphogenic field effect a kind of chain reaction
00:43:51 ►
which sweeps through society this is i believe what all these gurus are always trying to say
00:43:57 ►
in a somewhat i don’t know more uh um concrete concrete and therefore somewhat less convincing fashion.
00:44:09 ►
But it’s simply that the act of conscious self-inspection
00:44:13 ►
creates more conscious people,
00:44:16 ►
which create a more conscious society,
00:44:19 ►
which erodes the possibility of the poisonous
00:44:22 ►
and toxic effects of ideology.
00:44:24 ►
This is what psychedelics were and are about
00:44:29 ►
in terms of their social position and their legal position in society.
00:44:35 ►
Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned
00:44:40 ►
that you may jump out of a third-story window.
00:44:44 ►
Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures
00:44:49 ►
and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing.
00:44:56 ►
They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong.
00:45:02 ►
And, you know, government and society
00:45:06 ►
spend a lot of money
00:45:07 ►
educating you into being
00:45:10 ►
a loyal worker,
00:45:13 ►
consumer,
00:45:14 ►
debt payer,
00:45:16 ►
and citizen.
00:45:18 ►
So,
00:45:19 ►
if anarchy is to have a meaning,
00:45:23 ►
and I think it is
00:45:24 ►
the great future for human society
00:45:27 ►
because what it means is only responsible human beings
00:45:31 ►
can exist in an anarchistic society.
00:45:34 ►
To the degree that people are responsible,
00:45:38 ►
we will have anarchy.
00:45:40 ►
And the reason America I believe historically
00:45:46 ►
has been so
00:45:48 ►
successful is because it’s really
00:45:50 ►
a place where you can almost
00:45:52 ►
get away with anything
00:45:54 ►
and if that is lost
00:45:57 ►
if the
00:45:58 ►
if monolithic ideologies
00:46:01 ►
throw a damper on
00:46:04 ►
that then cultural momentum will pass to other cultures if the ideologies throw a damper on that,
00:46:05 ►
then cultural momentum will pass to other cultures.
00:46:08 ►
In fact, to some degree, I see this coming.
00:46:12 ►
We had a conversation with a prominent politician recently,
00:46:17 ►
and he pointed out that Japan is now the leading Western country.
00:46:23 ►
Japan is now the leading Western country.
00:46:30 ►
This indicates a cultural crisis of some depth for the ideals of the American Constitution.
00:46:34 ►
My brother is a brain scientist
00:46:37 ►
at the National Institute of Mental Health
00:46:39 ►
in Bethesda, Maryland,
00:46:40 ►
the crown jewel of American brain science.
00:46:44 ►
Everybody there is a Japanese graduate
00:46:47 ►
student doing work on a two-year or three-year scholarship. But I don’t see or hear a new
00:46:58 ►
age voice coming out of the Japanese. I think this is the cultural model that
00:47:05 ►
the West is
00:47:07 ►
uniquely able to
00:47:09 ►
promulgate and perfect
00:47:11 ►
because it comes
00:47:13 ►
out of a rejection
00:47:15 ►
of the tradition of scientific
00:47:18 ►
materialism that
00:47:20 ►
we are responsible for
00:47:22 ►
and that we are most
00:47:23 ►
sophisticated about,
00:47:26 ►
where, for instance, Japan has come fairly recently to high-tech and mass industrialization.
00:47:32 ►
So I just basically want to leave you with that.
00:47:36 ►
The notion is that nature, which is the topological,
00:47:44 ►
the linguistically expressed topological manifold
00:47:47 ►
of the psyche
00:47:48 ►
is the an historical object
00:47:52 ►
that is pulling us forward
00:47:54 ►
and that when we actually cross into
00:47:58 ►
the eschatology that appears fairly eminent
00:48:02 ►
we will find it to have been anticipated
00:48:06 ►
by the human relationship to nature,
00:48:10 ►
the embedding of psyche in nature
00:48:14 ►
through the mysterious relationship
00:48:17 ►
mediated by language,
00:48:19 ►
and the key to unfolding a sane society, in my single, humble opinion,
00:48:32 ►
is an obligation to reason that clearly distinguishes between reason and science,
00:48:40 ►
an obligation to self-involvement in immediate experience,
00:48:51 ►
and that means psychedelics, sexuality, and what I call time. But what I really mean is a kind of deep literary involvement with the felt presence,
00:48:59 ►
psychedelics, sexuality, and time to empower the individual, to make the individual naturally responsible
00:49:10 ►
to create then the basis for a caring global society that will transcend the historical cultures as though we were just moving very naturally
00:49:27 ►
out of winter and into spring.
00:49:30 ►
No apocalypse, no millennium,
00:49:32 ►
no rescue by flying saucers,
00:49:35 ►
no Mayan return,
00:49:37 ►
simply the unfolding of understanding
00:49:40 ►
in a program of mutual caring and responsibility,
00:49:48 ►
this is the highest aspiration of the new age,
00:49:51 ►
and I feel that it is attainable.
00:49:55 ►
So let’s break, and then we’ll have questions.
00:49:57 ►
Thank you very, very much. Thank you. Okay. Is there any kind of response to diet and through meditation, things like that.
00:50:30 ►
And if I take a psychedelic drug, it makes it very difficult to make a function in the world because almost too much information is coming in in order to do the day to day thing. so your question is how do you integrate
00:50:46 ►
psychedelics into an ordinary
00:50:48 ►
work a day existence
00:50:50 ►
well
00:50:54 ►
I don’t know that it is easily integrated
00:50:58 ►
I’m not sure whether you mean
00:51:00 ►
you can’t function while it’s happening
00:51:02 ►
or you can’t function
00:51:04 ►
three weeks afterwards.
00:51:10 ►
With the psychedelics it’s not a matter of high frequency I think. The good trips are usually
00:51:19 ►
good for plenty of rumination for a long time. The harder the hit, the longer you want to ponder it
00:51:28 ►
before you go that route again.
00:51:31 ►
It isn’t like a practice.
00:51:34 ►
It isn’t like something you do daily.
00:51:36 ►
It’s more like a unique act of courage
00:51:41 ►
that arises out of the substratum of ordinary daily existence,
00:51:48 ►
whether it be profane or sacral.
00:51:53 ►
There really isn’t an answer to your question.
00:51:56 ►
As long as we’re part of the worker anthill or living in a society which makes tremendous demands on us,
00:52:04 ►
it’s going to be a problem
00:52:06 ►
the way to take psychedelics is you must have seen these t-shirts which say I take drugs seriously
00:52:15 ►
well that’s the way to take them which means rarely and at substantially challenging doses
00:52:26 ►
and in an atmosphere where there are no distractions.
00:52:32 ►
And by that I mean, other people will say something different,
00:52:36 ►
but I mean no light and no sound, including music,
00:52:42 ►
unless you’re a musician or you have some special relationship
00:52:45 ►
to music. But really, what you’re trying to see is the surface of the brain-mind interface.
00:52:58 ►
And to the degree that you can create a situation of sensory deprivation, you will have a greater expectation of succeeding.
00:53:07 ►
Some people wouldn’t dream of tripping without music, but I find that it becomes the trip.
00:53:15 ►
The whole thing then becomes about that piece of music where in silence it would have been
00:53:22 ►
equally audially interesting
00:53:25 ►
so it isn’t the early model of the
00:53:29 ►
psychedelic experience was sort of that you
00:53:31 ►
eat an orange and look
00:53:35 ►
at art books and listen
00:53:38 ►
to Bach’s choral preludes
00:53:40 ►
but that art historical approach
00:53:44 ►
to it doesn’t give enough credit to the power of the substance
00:53:48 ►
I mean it can lift veil after veil in silent darkness to just catapult you into endlessly
00:53:56 ►
undulating tapestries of organic beauty and there need be no sensory input. In fact, shouldn’t be for this to happen.
00:54:08 ►
You had a question.
00:54:10 ►
I was wondering about practical sort of tips.
00:54:13 ►
How do you take something back?
00:54:14 ►
It’s sort of like going to a magic kingdom
00:54:15 ►
and wanting to take back a golden piece with you
00:54:18 ►
or a key or something because I lose it.
00:54:22 ►
Well, I think I sort of touched on this obliquely tonight,
00:54:26 ►
that attention to attention
00:54:28 ►
or paying attention to the nuances of cognition
00:54:32 ►
is a psychedelic way of being.
00:54:37 ►
I mean, if any of you are familiar with
00:54:39 ►
Marcel Proust’s Recherche de Temps Perdue,
00:54:42 ►
he didn’t take drugs except for laudanum and valerian
00:54:47 ►
and alcohol and absinthe and tobacco and things like that. So he was drug free and he managed
00:55:00 ►
to refine, you know, this art of just the awareness of the tensions and nuances in the moment.
00:55:08 ►
For really what I have come to believe about the psychedelic experience
00:55:13 ►
is that it is simply a compressed instance of what we call understanding.
00:55:22 ►
So that living psychedelically is trying to live in an
00:55:28 ►
atmosphere of continuous unfolding of understanding so that every day you know
00:55:36 ►
more and see into things with greater depth than you did before. And this is a process,
00:55:48 ►
it’s a process of education.
00:55:51 ►
What the psychedelic experience is,
00:55:54 ►
is it’s the process of education so compressed that it has become a cascade of actual visual images,
00:56:00 ►
which rather than a kind of slow unfoldment of linked perceptions
00:56:07 ►
but really attention to attention and appreciation of the immediate
00:56:16 ►
I always think when this comes up of William Blake’s advice
00:56:21 ►
Blake was as you know a great mystical visionary English poet who
00:56:27 ►
spoke with angels and had these wonderful visions of the angelic world.
00:56:35 ►
And he was asked what was the secret of his angelic poetry and he said attend the minute particulars that’s all just attend the
00:56:48 ►
minute particulars that the and what he meant was to focus attention in the
00:56:55 ►
moment not to not to betray attention into expectation born of abstraction or regret born of misplaced assumption or of remembrance
00:57:08 ►
born of boredom and alienation in the moment but just to attend the minute
00:57:16 ►
particulars it’s a way of training it’s like yoga people think that psychedelic
00:57:22 ►
psychedelics are somehow the easy way out.
00:57:26 ►
This is what people think who wouldn’t dare dream of taking one.
00:57:31 ►
And it’s not because it’s the easy way out.
00:57:34 ►
It’s because they sense the reality of it, the reality of the fact of it,
00:57:40 ►
and the challenge of assimilating it.
00:57:43 ►
I mean, it’s very real. It’s not a metaphor.
00:57:51 ►
It’s not an analogy. It’s not a dramatic reconstruction. It is not a simulacrum. It
00:57:58 ►
is not a model. It is the pith essence of the thing itself. It’s real.
00:58:06 ►
And I don’t know how many things can make that claim.
00:58:10 ►
I mean, everyone has a different set of experiences.
00:58:15 ►
My own experiences of the other,
00:58:20 ►
of the transcendent naked beauty of truth,
00:58:24 ►
have almost all entirely come out of the psychedelic
00:58:28 ►
realm or out of involvement with the viscerality of my emotions you know the death of marrying someone, not else but those.
00:58:50 ►
So I think it’s about attending the minute particulars as a kind of practice.
00:58:56 ►
It may not get you anywhere for several years,
00:58:59 ►
but if you attend the minute particulars, cultivate an ongoing stream of self-description, telling
00:59:09 ►
yourself what is happening. Get used to the idea that mind can penetrate the immediate
00:59:17 ►
surface of being and reveal the tactile density of it as a manifold whose measure cannot be immediately taken by the eyes.
00:59:30 ►
But it’s deep, it’s connected, it’s complex.
00:59:34 ►
Everything holds within itself the anticipation
00:59:37 ►
and the memory of everything else.
00:59:41 ►
Yes?
00:59:42 ►
I guess I don’t feel so optimistic.
00:59:46 ►
Well, it’s hard to feel optimistic sometimes
00:59:48 ►
it’s
00:59:49 ►
but it’s almost like an obligation
00:59:52 ►
and I think
00:59:54 ►
there’s enough evidence around
00:59:56 ►
to support it
00:59:58 ►
if Ronald Reagan
01:00:04 ►
is going to begin the process
01:00:07 ►
of the dismantling of strategic nuclear stockpiles,
01:00:12 ►
then what would a civilized and humane political leader
01:00:17 ►
be doing in this context?
01:00:20 ►
So on one level, I’m fairly cynical.
01:00:23 ►
I see people whose major life’s work has been banditry and bloody rampage
01:00:33 ►
getting into the history books as great peacemakers.
01:00:39 ►
Nevertheless, I love the fact that the constraints of the situation
01:00:44 ►
have forced these clowns into this position.
01:00:49 ►
That’s what I mean when I say that no political group,
01:00:53 ►
no faction has its hands on the tiller of history.
01:00:58 ►
There is an invisible hand
01:01:01 ►
which seems to be channeling the life of these institutions
01:01:06 ►
toward what we deem progressive ends.
01:01:16 ►
And not because these people have converted to altruism and reason and sweetness and light but because it’s
01:01:26 ►
a way for them to save their political ass so it has become expedient peace has
01:01:33 ►
become politically expedient consequently we shall have it I think in
01:01:39 ►
a big hurry now granted it doesn’t address starvation, sexism, abuses of propaganda,
01:01:50 ►
torture, all of these things, but I feel like that there is a kind of a log
01:01:58 ►
jam in human affairs that formed in the late 60s where we all looked over into the future and
01:02:11 ►
saw what it was and the governing agencies froze with terror and attempted to halt the onrushing momentum of the 20th century
01:02:26 ►
to not only make psychedelic drugs illegal for the public,
01:02:31 ►
but to actually end scientific research into them.
01:02:35 ►
This is phenomenal.
01:02:37 ►
Scientific research is supposed to be freely pursued in any field.
01:02:41 ►
That’s the banner under which science rides its horse.
01:02:45 ►
But apparently this doesn’t apply to hallucinogens.
01:02:51 ►
Freezing all dialogue on disarmament,
01:02:55 ►
freezing all dialogue on the retraction of imperial,
01:03:00 ►
the projection globally of imperial power
01:03:03 ►
and strategic stockpiles. All this was frozen in place in the late 60s, and it’s only now beginning to give way. The future has a momentum that no institution can deny. and the 25 years of constipated dithering that we have just come through
01:03:29 ►
has only meant that now the transition into the new order
01:03:33 ►
will be that much more sudden and that much more complete.
01:03:40 ►
So I guess I am optimistic.
01:03:44 ►
I see many causes for pessimism,
01:03:48 ►
but generally I think things globally are working out fine.
01:03:52 ►
Now it may be, and I addressed this tonight in the talk a little bit,
01:03:56 ►
it may be that a sane, humane, and well-fed world is coming into being,
01:04:05 ►
but it may not be led by the United States of America.
01:04:10 ►
We, muscle-bound with strategic arsenals,
01:04:15 ►
unable to produce things which the rest of the world wants to buy,
01:04:19 ►
entertaining a massive trade deficit,
01:04:23 ►
tolerant of reactionary pseudo-religious forms of political crypto-fascism.
01:04:31 ►
We are not exactly in the best position to lead the charge into this great and glorious future.
01:04:47 ►
A society with a tradition
01:04:49 ►
of resource management
01:04:51 ►
like Japan
01:04:52 ►
is perhaps in a much better position,
01:04:56 ►
although then there are other problems.
01:04:57 ►
Japan speaks a language
01:04:59 ►
no one understands.
01:05:01 ►
It’s going to be quite a world
01:05:03 ►
if the power of the projection of the Japanese
01:05:06 ►
cultural self-image is to become so overwhelming that Japanese is to become the dominant language
01:05:14 ►
of the West, although this is a possibility. Certainly, if any of you are familiar with the
01:05:20 ►
fiction of William Gibson, and if you’re not, I urge it upon you.
01:05:25 ►
This is some of the most exciting science fiction being written.
01:05:28 ►
He pictures a world where Japanese cultural dominance,
01:05:32 ►
I would say, is a primary factor.
01:05:35 ►
So yes, I’m optimistic.
01:05:38 ►
We have to be.
01:05:39 ►
It’s the only game in town.
01:05:41 ►
And look at the opportunities.
01:05:50 ►
only game in town and look at the opportunities it’s simply a matter of insisting on human values garnered from the felt experience of the moment and holding back the toxic effects of ideology
01:05:56 ►
in other words this anarchic prescription that i sort of put forth this evening, mainly holding back the toxic effects of ideology,
01:06:07 ►
because then we can create a sane world
01:06:10 ►
if we just recognize that pragmatism,
01:06:16 ►
love for each other,
01:06:18 ►
and a reasonable amount of goodwill
01:06:21 ►
will do quite nicely, I think,
01:06:24 ►
if the shriller voices, the ideologically
01:06:28 ►
driven voices can be made de classe, not repressed, just simply recognized as tasteless, you know.
01:06:42 ►
Anything else? Yes.
01:06:51 ►
Could you just reflect on what culture will be like after the end of time?
01:06:57 ►
And what the end of time has to do with what you said tonight?
01:06:58 ►
What kind of time?
01:07:00 ►
A different kind of time?
01:07:04 ►
Well, certainly I’ve reflected on what it’s like.
01:07:05 ►
It’s sort of a blank screen on which to project your mind what will it be like once we pass the omega point
01:07:10 ►
i’m not really sure i mean you can take two approaches to it you can take the sort of the
01:07:18 ►
deus ex machina approach which means we can’t know what it is because it’s going to be so wonderful. It’s going
01:07:25 ►
to be like the descent of the flying saucers and we will all march into the four-gated city
01:07:33 ►
and that will be it. Or you can take a more conservative approach and say, well, maybe
01:07:40 ►
there’s something going on in the trends around us that we can extrapolate to try and understand the world beyond the end of time.
01:07:49 ►
Taking that approach, what I think is happening,
01:07:53 ►
and it’s been happening for a long time, and it’s very interesting,
01:07:58 ►
is that culture, culture is another dimension.
01:08:04 ►
culture is another dimension and perhaps properly so
01:08:09 ►
in the early part of my talk
01:08:12 ►
I talked about how culture
01:08:14 ►
had subsumed the position of nature
01:08:17 ►
so that we had lost sight of nature
01:08:19 ►
by erecting culture
01:08:21 ►
through erecting these linguistic structures
01:08:24 ►
but I noticed that by erecting culture through erecting these linguistic structures.
01:08:30 ►
But I notice that, and not only linguistic structures,
01:08:35 ►
but architectural structures, the infrastructure of our society, that is what culture is.
01:08:37 ►
The way we differ from the Witoto is all the stuff that we have bound into ideas
01:08:44 ►
and excreted through our engineering processes
01:08:48 ►
to surround ourselves with.
01:08:55 ►
This dimension, which is culture,
01:09:00 ►
is becoming ever more all inclusive at the same time that it’s also becoming, strangely enough,
01:09:08 ►
ever more ethereal, ever less material.
01:09:14 ►
A perfect example of this,
01:09:15 ►
I don’t know how many of you are familiar with it,
01:09:19 ►
but if you deal with the Macintosh computer,
01:09:23 ►
the operating system of the Mac
01:09:25 ►
is the genius
01:09:27 ►
of it. And what makes it the best
01:09:30 ►
in the biz is that
01:09:31 ►
it attempts to trick you into
01:09:33 ►
believing that you’re dealing with ordinary
01:09:36 ►
three-dimensional space.
01:09:38 ►
You know, you don’t
01:09:40 ►
type in commands, you don’t choose
01:09:42 ►
printed options, you
01:09:44 ►
move in a symbolic representation
01:09:46 ►
of three-dimensional space.
01:09:48 ►
Well, again, to mention William Gibson and his novels, what he imagines is simply a larger
01:09:56 ►
version of this conventionalized symbolic representation of three-dimensional space so that you enter in his novels his
01:10:07 ►
characters enter into a world where the Bank of America database is perceived as a huge red
01:10:16 ►
rectangle hundreds of feet in height in a certain spot in the memory of this global computer. And yes, it’s cyberspace. And near it
01:10:29 ►
is the memory bank of Wells Fargo or something else. So that when you enter into cyberspace,
01:10:36 ►
ordinary reality is replaced by a symbolic representation of the informational content of ordinary reality. Well, this is in fact happening.
01:10:48 ►
It’s happening at a very rapid rate.
01:10:51 ►
So the dimension which we call culture,
01:10:55 ►
which we have previously erected
01:10:59 ►
in the three-dimensional world around us
01:11:01 ►
through the intercession of what we call
01:11:02 ►
manufacturing and architecture
01:11:05 ►
is very rapidly being internalized and erected as cyberspace, this alternative dimension
01:11:14 ►
to ordinary three-dimensional space in which our minds are able to move like fish in water. What I think lies beyond the end of time
01:11:26 ►
is a very concrete realization
01:11:31 ►
of this other dimension.
01:11:34 ►
That’s why things like the time wave
01:11:37 ►
that I’ve developed
01:11:38 ►
and some of these other projections
01:11:40 ►
run off the scale.
01:11:42 ►
The world beyond the end of history
01:11:45 ►
is literally not mappable
01:11:47 ►
in the lower order set of mapping
01:11:51 ►
that are applicable to history.
01:11:54 ►
So it is like being downloaded into circuitry.
01:11:59 ►
It’s possible to conceive of the entire human species
01:12:03 ►
fitting into the area of a large refrigerator
01:12:11 ►
in cyberspace so that the goal of history is the creation of a mirror image of culture in the cyberspatial dimension so that culture in the dimension of nature
01:12:29 ►
can be slowly retracted, slowly retracted into the compressed quintessence.
01:12:38 ►
You can almost think of this as an alchemical process.
01:12:41 ►
as an alchemical process.
01:12:46 ►
We’re talking about forging a philosopher’s stone out of a hyperdimensional medium
01:12:50 ►
which is composed of energy and language
01:12:54 ►
and into which we can all cast ourselves at will.
01:13:00 ►
It is, you know, Plato said,
01:13:02 ►
if God didn’t exist, man would invent him or her.
01:13:06 ►
Well, it may well be that the pilot’s seat,
01:13:13 ►
the pilot’s chair of the flying saucer is empty.
01:13:19 ►
It awaits mankind.
01:13:22 ►
It is the condensed expectation
01:13:25 ►
of complete
01:13:26 ►
inner penetration
01:13:27 ►
of all of us
01:13:29 ►
through each other
01:13:30 ►
and our
01:13:31 ►
cultural artifact
01:13:32 ►
in a mode
01:13:33 ►
that we cannot
01:13:34 ►
even imagine
01:13:35 ►
at an earlier
01:13:37 ►
talk at
01:13:38 ►
Will’s
01:13:38 ►
here
01:13:39 ►
a couple of years ago
01:13:40 ►
I did a talk
01:13:41 ►
called
01:13:41 ►
Shedding the Monkey
01:13:42 ►
which I talked
01:13:44 ►
about dropping
01:13:45 ►
the primate image
01:13:48 ►
that is projected
01:13:50 ►
onto the human
01:13:51 ►
soul through
01:13:53 ►
the accidents of biological
01:13:56 ►
evolution
01:13:57 ►
that as we take control
01:13:59 ►
of our genetic heritage
01:14:02 ►
as we take control
01:14:04 ►
of the process of manufacturing as we take control of the process
01:14:05 ►
of manufacturing culture,
01:14:07 ►
we are going to become
01:14:09 ►
what we dream we are.
01:14:12 ►
And we have never really explored consciously
01:14:16 ►
what it is we dream we are.
01:14:19 ►
But very shortly,
01:14:21 ►
this will become a major part
01:14:22 ►
of the cultural agenda
01:14:23 ►
because we are going to be able to do anything.
01:14:29 ►
And with that kind of power,
01:14:33 ►
again recurring to the theme of the evening,
01:14:36 ►
I think we have to anchor ourselves in nature.
01:14:40 ►
So sort of my apotheosis or my vision of how this should come to be
01:14:48 ►
is that everyone is given their own 500 acres of paradise in the chip.
01:14:59 ►
And that is your heritage, your space, your right place to be.
01:15:07 ►
And out of the mellowness which accrues only to the very wealthy,
01:15:15 ►
which we will then, each and every one of us, fall into that category,
01:15:20 ►
we will be able to return to the dimension of the limited pie and very decorously and thoughtfully apportion it out
01:15:29 ►
in a sane and rational manner.
01:15:34 ►
And it’s very, very tricky, see,
01:15:39 ►
this rush toward the ability to completely realize the self-image in hyperspace
01:15:46 ►
my mother used to say to me when I was a small child
01:15:49 ►
if wishes were horses
01:15:51 ►
beggars would ride
01:15:52 ►
and I think that’s the dream
01:15:55 ►
to turn wishes into horses
01:15:58 ►
that beggars may ride
01:16:01 ►
and it’s that world
01:16:03 ►
where we each get our own horse
01:16:06 ►
or when our ship comes in
01:16:08 ►
that lies
01:16:09 ►
beyond the historical dimension
01:16:12 ►
because it’s where we
01:16:13 ►
in effect each becomes
01:16:16 ►
all and then
01:16:18 ►
is freed into the
01:16:20 ►
imagination of the oversoul
01:16:21 ►
to create whatever castles
01:16:23 ►
in the imagination seem most pleasing it’s the triumph of the oversoul to create whatever castles in the imagination seem most
01:16:26 ►
pleasing. It’s the triumph of art. Art in the imagination and reverence for nature in
01:16:38 ►
the placental dimension, which is the life support system for this fantastic indulgence in the expression of the imagination.
01:16:52 ►
Yeah.
01:16:53 ►
Talking about culture and the toxicity of ideology,
01:17:00 ►
I’m an educator. I educate young children.
01:17:03 ►
I’m an educator. I educate young children.
01:17:08 ►
And I’d just like you to address what we can do,
01:17:13 ►
or what your ideas about what society can do, so that we don’t have to undo it at some point.
01:17:19 ►
I mean, most of us here have to kind of undo what we went through as children in public education anyway,
01:17:25 ►
so that we can at least come to some level of awareness or peacefulness within ourselves.
01:17:32 ►
What is the positive side of it? What is your… Well, in Hawaii this past year, we homeschooled
01:17:42 ►
our children, and we also coincidentally rented office space
01:17:46 ►
from a major company which creates homeschooling curriculums and on their
01:17:52 ►
letterhead they had the motto you are your child’s best teacher and we found
01:18:01 ►
out how hard it is to live up to that ideal and yet in a way we also found out how hard it is to live up to that ideal.
01:18:06 ►
And yet, in a way, we also found out how rewarding it was to attempt it.
01:18:12 ►
When we return to Northern California, our children will go to public school.
01:18:19 ►
I think, basically, you have to not leave it up to the school you have
01:18:28 ►
to check in on what’s going on and input into the process I don’t I don’t feel
01:18:37 ►
that I can give a very deep answer to this I think it’s one of the most
01:18:40 ►
perplexing problems one thing I think that’s terribly wrong with education is that there is no sense of history instilled in people and
01:18:54 ►
history has almost as bad a rap on it as mathematics. And yet these are the two
01:19:01 ►
modes of thought which I think would do the most to anchor us
01:19:07 ►
because they both are about different forms of grounding.
01:19:14 ►
One grounds in eternal demonstrable principles, mathematics,
01:19:20 ►
and the other dissipates amnesia.
01:19:25 ►
It’s a very weird thing that somebody can’t tell you,
01:19:29 ►
isn’t quite clear on whether event X happened in the 13th or the 16th century.
01:19:36 ►
I mean, after all, 13th, 16th, 19th.
01:19:40 ►
How would you like to be, you know, so imprecisely perceived in somebody’s mind that they couldn’t
01:19:47 ►
get within 300 years of where you lived and died?
01:19:52 ►
So the lack of a sense of history makes us really pray to manipulation.
01:20:01 ►
That’s why I am cynical enough to believe that the de-emphasizing of history that’s why I am cynical enough to believe that the de-emphasizing of history
01:20:06 ►
that’s gone on in American education
01:20:08 ►
over the past 30 years
01:20:10 ►
is almost the equivalent of a plot
01:20:13 ►
the notion
01:20:15 ►
even as recently as when I graduated
01:20:19 ►
from the university
01:20:20 ►
and it took me 12 years
01:20:22 ►
so I didn’t graduate until 75
01:20:24 ►
but the idea
01:20:25 ►
was that if you went to a university you emerged a liberal gentle person in well
01:20:34 ►
informed on the accomplishments of your culture its history its aspirations its
01:20:40 ►
ways of governing itself its ways of resolving conflict and so on
01:20:45 ►
now I think people
01:20:47 ►
these things have become gigantic trade schools
01:20:50 ►
and you are not
01:20:52 ►
you are expected to learn to do a job
01:20:55 ►
and when not doing your job
01:20:58 ►
malls have been provided for you to shop in
01:21:01 ►
and 240 channels of garbage have been piped into your home for you to keep up on what it is that is au courant to go out and buy. mindless consumerist person at the expense of the
01:21:26 ►
democratic, of the ideal
01:21:28 ►
of the democratically informed
01:21:30 ►
citizen is going to
01:21:32 ►
wreak great havoc in our
01:21:34 ►
society. People
01:21:36 ►
often
01:21:38 ►
compliment me on
01:21:40 ►
you know, my
01:21:42 ►
enchanting command of these
01:21:44 ►
various subjects
01:21:45 ►
and so forth and so on.
01:21:47 ►
And I’m amazed because what’s being sold to you here tonight,
01:21:52 ►
ladies and gentlemen,
01:21:53 ►
is nothing more than the fruits of a liberal college education.
01:21:58 ►
You know?
01:21:59 ►
You go to college, you learn about Gnosticism,
01:22:03 ►
Platonic philosophy, or you once did, but
01:22:06 ►
no more, apparently. So it can be sold as the most far-out, fringy thing in the New
01:22:13 ►
Age. This is amnesia on quite a scale. So, and the other thing I would say in answer to your question about education
01:22:27 ►
is separating physical culture from competition. That the notion of physical culture, and by
01:22:39 ►
that I mean gym class, and competition is one of the…
01:22:46 ►
I mean, now I feel the bile rising.
01:22:49 ►
This is…
01:22:50 ►
We’re talking serious here now.
01:22:53 ►
But saving people from the grief of P.E.
01:22:55 ►
is, I think, a major way to heal the culture.
01:23:01 ►
When we were living in Hawaii,
01:23:08 ►
Kat asked our son, how did he think of himself
01:23:09 ►
and he said he thought of himself
01:23:11 ►
as an artist and an athlete
01:23:15 ►
and I thought that this was just
01:23:17 ►
an amazing breakthrough
01:23:19 ►
because I thought of myself
01:23:21 ►
as a sort of 95-pound weakling.
01:23:29 ►
And the notion that my son could be physically just like I was at his age
01:23:36 ►
and yet conceive of himself as an athlete
01:23:39 ►
and have this balanced view of art, athlete, junior scientist and so forth meant we must be doing something
01:23:50 ►
right and what it is is stressing physical culture, being in the ocean, hiking, running,
01:23:56 ►
skateboarding, biking, all these things without the notion of males crashing against each other for the purposes of racking up points
01:24:08 ►
with females and elders to lay the groundwork for the whole imposition of the alpha male
01:24:16 ►
primate hierarchy that makes society such a mess.
01:24:21 ►
So that’s that for education.
01:24:35 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
01:24:43 ►
You know, I always learn something new when I listen to one of Terrence’s lectures, and this talk was no exception, but one of the little factoids I picked up just now was that it took Terrence 12 years to graduate from college.
01:24:53 ►
Now, that should be encouraging to any professional students who might hear it, although I’m sure it will also strike fear in the hearts of parents who are worrying about paying for their child’s college education.
01:25:04 ►
fear in the hearts of parents who are worrying about paying for their child’s college education.
01:25:11 ►
And again, I feel that I should add my two cents about Terrence’s comment that ayahuasca doesn’t speak, it shows.
01:25:13 ►
Well, I’m here to tell you that when she wants to, Mother Ayahuasca can speak quite clearly,
01:25:19 ►
and she has done so to me on many occasions.
01:25:23 ►
And while there have been a few occasions where she also showed me something,
01:25:27 ►
what I consider to be visions, while under the influence of ayahuasca,
01:25:32 ►
actually come to me in the form of a conversation, not images.
01:25:36 ►
So, for what it’s worth, once again, my suggestion is that
01:25:40 ►
should you ever have an opportunity to participate in an authentic ayahuasca circle,
01:25:46 ►
that you keep an open mind and have absolutely no preconceived ideas about what the experience
01:25:52 ►
may actually be for you, because I’ve found that no two of those trips are ever the same.
01:25:59 ►
For sure, it’s a tricky substance to learn how to use, but once you get it down, I’ve
01:26:04 ►
found that it can be extremely rewarding.
01:26:08 ►
And how about that phrase that Terrence used just now?
01:26:11 ►
The toxicity of ideology.
01:26:14 ►
In other words,
01:26:15 ►
be careful about what you wind up believing
01:26:17 ►
because it most definitely precludes you
01:26:20 ►
from even exploring the opposite point of view.
01:26:24 ►
And there may be something of value in looking at things from a different direction. As he said just now, Thank you. was more or less just lost interest in fighting over whose version of Christianity was more correct.
01:26:46 ►
But speaking of intelligent discourse,
01:26:49 ►
I would like to point you to an interview of my friend and fellow podcaster KMO.
01:26:54 ►
As you know, KMO has been conducting interviews for the past several years now
01:26:59 ►
and has recorded some of the best conversations I’ve heard since Terrence left this mortal coil.
01:27:06 ►
And now he is being interviewed himself on the Diet Soap Podcast number 22.
01:27:12 ►
And after listening to that program, I listened to some of the earlier shows, and now I’m hooked.
01:27:17 ►
It’s an excellent new podcast, and if you get a chance, you might want to check it out yourself.
01:27:24 ►
And if I’m not mistaken, either this week or next,
01:27:27 ►
KMO will be playing an interview that I did with him a few days ago.
01:27:31 ►
Also, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention all of the most excellent podcasts
01:27:36 ►
over at dopefiend.co.uk.
01:27:39 ►
Knowing how difficult it is to get a program out each and every week,
01:27:43 ►
which I haven’t been able to do myself,
01:27:46 ►
well, that makes the Dope Fiend’s accomplishment all the more amazing to me.
01:27:51 ►
Even though I’m no longer commuting to work each week,
01:27:54 ►
nonetheless, when I wake up on a Monday morning,
01:27:57 ►
I still get that sinking feeling that I used to get when I was a working stiff.
01:28:01 ►
But then I remember that the Dope Fiend will have a new podcast waiting for us when we
01:28:05 ►
get up on this side of the Atlantic each Monday.
01:28:08 ►
And knowing that I’ll
01:28:10 ►
soon be joining him and his friends for
01:28:11 ►
another rollicking adventure in cannabis
01:28:14 ►
land just makes it a
01:28:15 ►
lot easier to face a new week.
01:28:18 ►
And KMO, by the way, is
01:28:20 ►
just as regular with his programs.
01:28:22 ►
Which means that
01:28:23 ►
I don’t feel as bad about publishing my own podcasts
01:28:26 ►
on a more irregular schedule since we have some regular people among us.
01:28:32 ►
And speaking of my schedule,
01:28:34 ►
I do hope to get another program out near the end of next week,
01:28:37 ►
depending on how much recovery time I’ll need
01:28:40 ►
after this weekend’s symbiosis gathering.
01:28:43 ►
Once again, we are going to attempt to record some of the talks that will be given this weekend,
01:28:47 ►
and if the goddess so chooses, we’ll hear a few of them here in the salon in the months ahead.
01:28:54 ►
Now, I know that I’ll be seeing some of our fellow salonners at symbiosis,
01:28:59 ►
and if you’re planning on attending yourself, I’d love to meet you.
01:29:03 ►
On Saturday, I’ll be emceeing the
01:29:05 ►
talks in the village area, and I plan on camping near John Hanna, who will be there with the
01:29:10 ►
Arrowwood crew. So you should be able to find their sign somewhere around the village as well.
01:29:16 ►
And for those of you who happen to be on the other side of the continent right now,
01:29:20 ►
there is also a conference coming up at the end of this month that you may be interested in.
01:29:25 ►
It’s the Horizons Perspectives on Psychedelics Conference that will be held on September 25th, 26th, and 27th of this year at the Judson Memorial Church in New York.
01:29:37 ►
Now, I’ve heard from quite a few fellow salonners who have attended a Horizons event in the past, and they all rave about it.
01:29:44 ►
who have attended a Horizons event in the past, and they all rave about it.
01:29:49 ►
So this year, some of the speakers include Alicia Danforth,
01:29:52 ►
who will also be speaking at Symbiosis, by the way.
01:29:56 ►
Earth and Fire Arrowood will be speaking there, as will Robert Jesse.
01:30:00 ►
William Richards will be there speaking about his latest research,
01:30:03 ►
as will Franz Vollenweider, among others.
01:30:06 ►
And if you aren’t familiar with those names, you may want to go to the
01:30:08 ►
Horizons website and
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read a little about their backgrounds.
01:30:12 ►
Some of the top names in psychedelic
01:30:13 ►
research will be there, and you
01:30:15 ►
no doubt will also be able to
01:30:17 ►
find a few of the others there as well.
01:30:20 ►
And now I’ve got to
01:30:21 ►
get out of here and repack my
01:30:23 ►
camping gear that I kind of left in a mess in the garage since returning from the Oracle gathering.
01:30:29 ►
And so I’ll close today’s podcast again by reminding you that this and almost all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are freely available for you to use in your own audio projects under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 3.0 license.
01:31:07 ►
Thank you.