Program Notes
Guest speaker: Lorenzo
NOTE: This chapter was revised for the paperback edition that was released in February 2015. Please see the Kindle edition for the current version of this chapter.
[NOTE: All quotations are by Lorenzo.]
“Forget getting a permanent job. Forget careers and the quest for financial stability. They are all false gods, sent to you by the Capitalist elite on Wall Street, whose primary goal is to trap you into a life of servitude.”
“You still haven’t figured it out yet, have you?” began Shadow. “It should behoove us all to take the words of the Empire’s leaders at face value. They have declared what they call a War on Drugs. Of course, that’s a lie on its face, because they aren’t putting drugs into prison cages, they’re putting people in them. This is no war on drugs, William, this is a war on consciousness, as Richard Glen Boire says. It’s a war on people who aren’t satisfied with the status quo. It is a war on the very people that we are going to need to get us humans out of this mess we’ve created for ourselves. And if this is really a war, as they want to call it, then you and I, young William, you and I are their sworn enemies.”
“We are at what many believe to be the most pivotal moment in human history that we know of. The arrow of unsustainable consumption, powered by the bow of credit, has reached the top of its flight. There is nowhere for that arrow to go now but down, and where it is going to land is anyone’s guess.”
“A thousand years from now, humans will most likely still be walking the Earth, as we have done for over a million years already. Some of those future humans will have genetic links to us… . And those people of the future will be alive because they had at least one ancestor, maybe you, who was a part of what their historians will call the Genesis Generation.
“We are raising our children to become serfs!”
“Our families are detaching from the monetary system and applying their energy in different directions, like raising some of their own food, and entertaining ourselves without spending exorbitant amounts of money.”
“Unlike that insidious John Galt, I am advocating that We the People go on strike and remove our minds from their System of servitude. For we are fully aware that it isn’t the handful of CEOs who are the producers. No, in fact, they are the looters now. It is time to keep our best ideas to ourselves, here in our own community.”
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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.
00:00:24 ►
This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:28 ►
And your additional hosts, if I may call them that,
00:00:33 ►
are the following salonners who sent in donations to help with the expenses here in the salon.
00:00:39 ►
And these fine people are Maximilian H., Nexus 112,
00:00:43 ►
who, by the way, did some of the editing on Podcast 210,
00:00:47 ►
Daniel W., Patrick R., and Deb A.
00:00:55 ►
And I want you all to know how much I really appreciate your help in paying the hosting and other expenses associated with these podcasts.
00:01:02 ►
So, Daniel, Patrick, Deb, Maximilian, and Nexus 112, thank you one and all.
00:01:04 ►
I sincerely appreciate your help. Now, how to go about introducing today’s
00:01:08 ►
talk? Well, first of all, today it’s all Lorenzo, all the way down as it’s said about turtles, if you
00:01:16 ►
get my obscure reference. What I’m going to do today is to play another chapter from my novel,
00:01:22 ►
The Genesis Generation. As you probably know, back in June of last year,
00:01:27 ►
I played Chapter 1 here in my podcast number 186,
00:01:31 ►
just to give you a little feel for the book.
00:01:34 ►
However, over the past month or so,
00:01:36 ►
I’ve heard from quite a few people who say that they intend to buy a copy
00:01:40 ►
once they get a little ahead cash-wise.
00:01:43 ►
And while I’ve tried to keep the
00:01:45 ►
price down to help out a bit, I do realize that for way too many of our fellow salonners,
00:01:50 ►
they simply don’t have the $12 right now, and I certainly understand that since I’ve
00:01:56 ►
been there myself more than once.
00:01:59 ►
But as much as I’d like to just give my book away, I realize that most people who get something for nothing assume that what they’re receiving isn’t worth very much.
00:02:09 ►
So that’s one reason to not just put it in the public domain.
00:02:12 ►
But the more important reason, at least for me, is that I’ll be using the money it generates to take a big trip that I’ve wanted to make for a long time now.
00:02:48 ►
Thank you. So, hey, Dope Fiend, I apologize for letting you know this way, but if you or any of the others in the Dope Tribe can find a place for us all to get together,
00:02:55 ►
well, Bruce Dahmer and I would like to carry on with the tradition that KMO and Neil Kramer have begun by taking our show on the road.
00:02:57 ►
And if we can find a place to get a group of people together, one that doesn’t cost anything,
00:03:03 ►
then we won’t even have to pass the hat to cover those expenses.
00:03:07 ►
In other words, Bruce and I would like to facilitate a salon in London,
00:03:11 ►
either around the 17th or 18th of July,
00:03:14 ►
and that’s 2010 in case you’re hearing this in some time-warped future.
00:03:20 ►
And keep in mind now that the main purpose of these kind of get-togethers
00:03:24 ►
is to help you find a few more of the others.
00:03:27 ►
In fact, that’s the whole point.
00:03:29 ►
Getting together in small groups and kicking these ideas around a bit.
00:03:34 ►
And I hear that several of our fellow salonners have begun getting together once in a while
00:03:38 ►
and discussing something that Terrence McKenna just said or what new podcasts they’ve been listening to,
00:03:44 ►
along with a whole range of other interesting topics.
00:03:47 ►
And what I expect will eventually come about is to hook several of these local salons together
00:03:52 ►
with a Skype conference call or something,
00:03:55 ►
and essentially hold our own psychedelic conferences without the expense of leaving our own homes.
00:04:01 ►
So if you or one of your friends has the tech chops to set something like this up,
00:04:07 ►
I’d be happy to promote it and to participate in it. I’m sure that we could line up some guest
00:04:12 ►
speakers who are experts in various areas who would speak at one salon while being broadcast
00:04:17 ►
to the others. It’s a somewhat ambitious project, but certainly within the realm of possibility.
00:04:24 ►
You know, information wants to be free,
00:04:26 ►
and the more ways we can come up with to distribute information
00:04:30 ►
about what it means to be a psychedelic thinker, the better.
00:04:34 ►
And by the way, you may want to go back to last week’s podcast
00:04:37 ►
and re-listen to Terrence’s definition of the word psychedelic.
00:04:41 ►
I think you’ll find that most certainly you are already a psychedelic thinker.
00:04:45 ►
Now it’s time to begin making more and more connections with others like you and me.
00:04:51 ►
But before I get too carried away here, I’d better first introduce and play today’s talk.
00:04:57 ►
And as you already know, it’s not a talk exactly, but it’s my reading of Chapter 13 of the Genesis Generation.
00:05:05 ►
I’m playing this for several reasons today, the primary one being that although there is a distinct point I make in each chapter,
00:05:13 ►
it is this chapter that best sums up the tone of the book.
00:05:16 ►
And also it covers the subject of university educations and their alternatives, which has been a hot topic around here lately.
00:05:24 ►
So here’s the setup.
00:05:26 ►
You can get a general idea of the main characters by listening to Chapter 1,
00:05:31 ►
which I podcast in my program number 186.
00:05:34 ►
Now we jump ahead to Chapter 13, which takes place on a small island in British Columbia
00:05:39 ►
where several hundred people have come together for a gathering of the clans.
00:05:44 ►
The book is in the shape of a journal kept by 29-year-old William Battersley,
00:05:49 ►
and it is his voice in which the story is told.
00:05:52 ►
Now, by the time we get to Chapter 13,
00:05:55 ►
Will Battersley has done mushrooms in Amsterdam, MDMA in Dallas, and booze in Vietnam,
00:06:01 ►
not to mention his weekends in L.A.
00:06:04 ►
In other words, a lot of ground has been covered since his brownie incident in Chapter 1.
00:06:09 ►
And by now, Will has finally begun to see that his home is with the tribe,
00:06:14 ►
and not in the world of cubicle hell that he was coming from.
00:06:18 ►
I hope it isn’t too difficult to jump into the middle of the story like this,
00:06:22 ►
but for all of our fellow salonners who can’t afford their own copy right now, well, here’s the core of the story like this, but for all of our fellow salonners
00:06:25 ►
who can’t afford their own copy right now,
00:06:27 ►
well, here’s the core of the book.
00:06:28 ►
I hope you enjoy it.
00:06:31 ►
The Genesis Generation
00:06:33 ►
Chapter 13
00:06:36 ►
The Wizard’s Council
00:06:38 ►
Although Joe and I had planned on arriving
00:06:42 ►
at the campground on Friday night,
00:06:44 ►
we didn’t allow for the fact that there were several water crossings involved
00:06:48 ►
in getting from the mainland to the remote island where the gathering of the clans was taking place.
00:06:53 ►
By the time we reached the ferry terminal, we had missed the last boat
00:06:57 ►
and so had to share a motel room for a second night.
00:07:01 ►
We arrived at the campsite late Saturday morning.
00:07:04 ►
Everyone else from our little group had already pitched their tents and were off somewhere.
00:07:09 ►
As I looked around the little circle, I noticed that stuck on top of most of the tents were handwritten signs
00:07:16 ►
displaying the name of the person who would be living there.
00:07:19 ►
In addition to the residents of Rindy’s place, I noticed Shadow’s name on a tent that also had Deirdre’s name on it.
00:07:27 ►
I found the tent that Fig and I would be sharing and discovered that she had already decorated the inside with scarves and beads,
00:07:35 ►
giving it a little of the Burning Man vibe.
00:07:38 ►
There was no sign on the tent next to us, but since I didn’t see Ray Lua’s name anywhere,
00:07:43 ►
I figured she hadn’t arrived yet and would be camping next to Fig and I later on. At least that is what I assumed, but I
00:07:50 ►
also noticed that there was a tent that only had Sisko’s name on it. Maybe she would be
00:07:55 ►
staying with him, I thought, noting that my former jealousy about a possible relationship
00:08:00 ►
between them had now dissipated.
00:08:02 ►
relationship between them had now dissipated.
00:08:10 ►
November 13, 2004. An island in British Columbia. Saturday afternoon.
00:08:17 ►
Humanity has just entered what is probably the greatest transformation it has ever known.
00:08:21 ►
Something is happening in the structure of human consciousness.
00:08:24 ►
It is another species of life that is just beginning.
00:08:27 ►
Teilhard de Chardin It didn’t take Joe and I long to find the rest of our group after we dropped off our
00:08:33 ►
backpacks in the tents that Fig and Tiger had pitched for us. As we followed the little
00:08:39 ►
trail that led from the main camping area through a beautiful patch of old-growth forest,
00:08:44 ►
led from the main camping area through a beautiful patch of old-growth forest,
00:08:48 ►
the amplified voice in the distance began to become intelligible,
00:08:50 ►
and old Joe said,
00:08:54 ►
It sounds like Al is about to wind up the scheduling session.
00:08:56 ►
Let’s hurry up and listen to his summary.
00:08:59 ►
I was sorry we were so late in arriving,
00:09:04 ►
because I had hoped to get a better understanding of how they had organized what the default world would call a community outreach program.
00:09:09 ►
Recognizing the fact that most courses of study in today’s colleges and universities
00:09:13 ►
are essentially the equivalent of a high school shop class for future cubicle workers,
00:09:20 ►
Al and Apache decided to create a parallel system of higher education that,
00:09:24 ►
in addition to subjects normally taught at a college level,
00:09:28 ►
they would also provide life coaches who gave courses in parenting, gardening, diet and exercise,
00:09:34 ►
and cooking, among other important skills.
00:09:37 ►
The thing that was most remarkable about their plan was that no one would have to pay for these classes.
00:09:44 ►
All of the instructors taught for free, even the full-fledged university professors who
00:09:49 ►
would be teaching small groups in people’s homes at night.
00:09:53 ►
What had begun as a local project in a small university town in Oregon had now grown to
00:09:59 ►
dozens of cities with hundreds of volunteer instructors.
00:10:03 ►
This resulted in the need for an annual scheduling meeting of representatives from each city
00:10:08 ►
in which some of the courses would be taught.
00:10:11 ►
At the end of every year, they gathered together to compile a master list of volunteers, courses,
00:10:16 ►
and the cities in which they would be taught.
00:10:19 ►
That way, people like Stein and Fig, who didn’t have full-time jobs, could spend the year
00:10:24 ►
traveling around the country, staying with jobs, could spend the year traveling
00:10:25 ►
around the country, staying with friends, and at the same time they could gain an excellent education.
00:10:31 ►
Instead of registering for a class that was to be held on a given day and at the particular time
00:10:37 ►
you preferred, here people could register for classes in ski country during the winter and
00:10:42 ►
at the beach in the summer.
00:10:48 ►
I wish there had been something like this available to me when I was starting college,
00:10:52 ►
I said to Joe as we approached what looked to be a clearing up ahead.
00:10:55 ►
Me too, said Joe.
00:10:58 ►
I thought he was about to say something more, but just then we stepped into what appeared to be a natural clearing in the woods.
00:11:04 ►
The tall trees opened up in an almost perfect circle
00:11:07 ►
of perhaps 200 feet or more in diameter.
00:11:11 ►
After clearing his throat, old Joe whispered,
00:11:14 ►
What do you want to bet that this clearing was intentionally created?
00:11:19 ►
Look at this.
00:11:20 ►
There’s no way that these trees all agreed to not drop any seeds in the middle.
00:11:25 ►
Some of these guys may have been standing here for almost a thousand years now.
00:11:30 ►
Can you feel it, kid? Joe asked.
00:11:33 ►
Can you feel the eyes of those people watching us right now?
00:11:37 ►
Those people who planted these trees?
00:11:39 ►
They might have done that around the time of the end of the first millennium.
00:11:43 ►
Maybe they thought the world was coming to an end,
00:11:46 ►
like some people believed about the Y2K scare.
00:11:49 ►
But they’re still here, watching, waiting for something big to happen.
00:11:54 ►
Who knows, maybe they aren’t going to be disappointed after all.
00:11:59 ►
While old Joe was taken with the natural beauty of the scene,
00:12:02 ►
it was the people who stood out to me.
00:12:06 ►
For an instant I had the impression that I was looking through one of those old kaleidoscopes I had when
00:12:10 ►
I was a kid. The word rainbow didn’t come to mind because of the patchwork nature of the assembly,
00:12:17 ►
but for sure almost every shade of every color in the rainbow was represented here.
00:12:22 ►
When I thought back to the times I had to register for classes in college,
00:12:27 ►
there was no comparison.
00:12:29 ►
Not only were these young people seemingly very happy,
00:12:32 ►
I also noticed that a few of them were passing joints around.
00:12:36 ►
Catholic school was never like this, I’m here to tell you.
00:12:40 ►
Not wanting to disturb anyone,
00:12:43 ►
Joe and I sat down at the edge of the clearing,
00:12:45 ►
just as Al was saying,
00:12:47 ►
I think it is pretty obvious that
00:12:49 ►
there is no single perfect way for us humans to live.
00:12:53 ►
For one thing, it depends upon the age in which we are living.
00:12:57 ►
And now we humans have once again reached a bifurcation point,
00:13:01 ►
and we are about to begin an entirely new era of civilization.
00:13:07 ►
Sadly, as has happened before with earlier visions of us walking and talking apes, those
00:13:13 ►
of us who are not willing to adapt to a rapidly changing world will see their line come to
00:13:18 ►
an end.
00:13:20 ►
After a brief pause, Al continued and said,
00:13:24 ►
After a brief pause, Al continued and said,
00:13:35 ►
However, that isn’t going to happen to you and me as long as we refuse to settle into the sad, robotic lives of conspicuous consumption that we see all around us.
00:13:43 ►
A life like that doesn’t interest us because we see that way of life to be degrading and dehumanizing. And so we have come together once again to make our plans for another year of personal growth and adventure.
00:13:51 ►
Obviously, we don’t know how sudden and disruptive the great shift will be,
00:13:56 ►
but we do know that a change in civilization on a massive scale is needed
00:14:00 ►
if our descendants are to have any chance at all of living gentle lives.
00:14:06 ►
And that is why we have begun to experiment with this alternative way of educating ourselves.
00:14:13 ►
We are no longer willing to let the chambers of commerce dictate the parameters of what
00:14:17 ►
constitutes an educated person.
00:14:21 ►
Our idea about education points in a different direction, and we have a very different objective, Al went on.
00:14:28 ►
Forget getting a permanent job.
00:14:31 ►
Forget careers and the quest for financial stability.
00:14:35 ►
They are all false gods,
00:14:37 ►
sent to you by the capitalist elite on Wall Street,
00:14:40 ►
whose primary goal is to trap you into a life of servitude.
00:14:46 ►
Granted, those who choose our way of living won’t be driving the latest gas-guzzling automobile
00:14:51 ►
or living in a mansion, but it is possible for you to live a comfortable and joyful life
00:14:57 ►
largely outside of the system, without ever crossing any line that would cause you a problem.
00:15:03 ►
Instead of going into debt to get a college degree
00:15:06 ►
that is primarily a ticket to permanent credit card and mortgage debt,
00:15:11 ►
it is time to relearn the basics,
00:15:13 ►
like growing some of our own food
00:15:15 ►
and building energy-efficient houses that are completely off the grid.
00:15:20 ►
Worst-case scenarios for the decades ahead
00:15:23 ►
speak of today’s societies undergoing a process of steady degeneration,
00:15:28 ►
which will most likely also be punctuated by natural and man-made disasters.
00:15:34 ►
If we are lucky, society won’t completely disintegrate but will gradually transition into a new culture,
00:15:41 ►
one that is more at peace with the earth and with our neighbors.
00:15:44 ►
new culture, one that is more at peace with the earth and with our neighbors.
00:15:50 ►
And so I applaud each and every one of you who are here today for being self-aware enough to recognize that, as the old song says, the times they are a-changing.
00:15:56 ►
And we should also keep in our thoughts the countless others who are not as fortunate
00:16:01 ►
as we are to be here today, but who are as deeply devoted to this mission as we are.
00:16:07 ►
In Dune, Duke Eitrides said,
00:16:11 ►
Without change, something sleeps inside us and seldom awakens.
00:16:16 ►
The sleeper must awaken.
00:16:19 ►
Well, my dear friends, change is in the air once again,
00:16:23 ►
and if we do our jobs right, this time we are going to
00:16:27 ►
wake up a lot of sleepers. With that, a big roar went up from the crowd as Al did his best to shout
00:16:35 ►
above the din, I’ll see you all again tonight. Don’t forget, we begin promptly at ten. As we made our
00:16:43 ►
way through the crowd to where we had seen Fig and Tiger sitting,
00:16:46 ►
Joe groused,
00:16:48 ►
These guys get a little too melodramatic for me, kid. How about you?
00:16:53 ►
Before I could think of an answer,
00:16:56 ►
I heard what I thought to be Stein’s voice coming from behind me and saying,
00:17:00 ►
Aren’t you guys even going to say hello?
00:17:03 ►
Turning around, Joe and I were greeted with a sight right from the playa at Burning Man.
00:17:10 ►
Stein had a long, shimmery gold sash wrapped around his waist as a skirt,
00:17:14 ►
and then he looped the rest of it up his back, over his right shoulder,
00:17:19 ►
and back down again to where it fastened to the skirt part on his left side.
00:17:24 ►
To me it looked like a big
00:17:26 ►
out-of-place suspender holding up a golden diaper, but it was his hat that really got my attention.
00:17:32 ►
He was wearing a large coulis hat that had a pattern on it made out of L-wire,
00:17:38 ►
much the same as the one on his beer mug. My guess was that it would be hard to miss in the
00:17:43 ►
dark once he turned it on.
00:17:47 ►
Meet my friend Sebastian, he was saying,
00:17:51 ►
as Joe and I closed the gap between Stein and his friend.
00:17:55 ►
I knew that Stein had recently begun a relationship with someone he met at one of the Hidden Theater productions,
00:17:58 ►
an actor, I was told,
00:18:00 ►
but I certainly wasn’t prepared for the sight that greeted me just now.
00:18:05 ►
Sebastian’s already tall frame was topped by the most outrageous hat I have ever seen.
00:18:10 ►
The only way I can describe him is that he looked like my image of a Greek god
00:18:15 ►
who was playing the role of one of the three musketeers.
00:18:19 ►
When Joe held out his hand to greet him, instead of reaching out and shaking hands,
00:18:24 ►
Sebastian took off his hat and, with a grand bow to greet him, instead of reaching out and shaking hands, Sebastian
00:18:25 ►
took off his hat and, with a grand bow to old Joe, said, Sebastian Melmoth, at your
00:18:31 ►
service, sir. Taking his clue from Sebastian, old Joe took off his own hat, a greasy-looking
00:18:38 ►
old gray baseball cap, and, bowing back, said, Just plain Joe, and back at you with the service, kid.
00:18:47 ►
So are you guys planning on taking some of these courses, I asked.
00:18:52 ►
Before Stein could answer, Sebastian’s stage voice exclaimed, As a great poet once said,
00:19:00 ►
Education is an admirable thing, but it is well to remember from time to time that nothing that is worth knowing can be taught.
00:19:09 ►
That said, yes, we are nonetheless going to dip our toes into the pool of knowledge while visiting the slopes of Colorado this winter.
00:19:19 ►
Just then the rest of our merry little band reached us, and a round of hello, I missed you’s were shared as we explained why we arrived late.
00:19:29 ►
Before I could get back to my conversation with Stein and Sebastian,
00:19:34 ►
the authoritative voice of Shadow took charge and asked of no one in particular,
00:19:38 ►
So, what do you all think about Al’s assumption that we humans are at another bifurcation point?
00:19:46 ►
What does that mean, I asked, bifurcation point?
00:19:50 ►
In simplest terms, Shadow said, it means that our species is splitting into two parts,
00:19:57 ►
just as we have done several times before.
00:19:59 ►
But, like the most recent changes in the way we classify humans,
00:20:04 ►
it doesn’t always require a change in physiology.
00:20:07 ►
Of course, while Al may only be using the term metaphorically,
00:20:11 ►
it could be argued that when a large group of humans,
00:20:14 ►
like the worldwide dance community today,
00:20:17 ►
will no longer mate with others who don’t share their
00:20:20 ►
Earth-friendly, non-fast-food diets,
00:20:23 ►
then it could be argued that, even from a scientific standpoint,
00:20:27 ►
this is a new species of humans.
00:20:30 ►
You know, he went on,
00:20:31 ►
it wasn’t until I re-read Delanda that it became clear to me that,
00:20:36 ►
at a tipping point like the one we are approaching now,
00:20:39 ►
it only takes a change in degree of intensity of just a single parameter
00:20:44 ►
to cause a system
00:20:45 ►
to switch from one attractor to another. I think it is really possible, in the strictest
00:20:51 ►
scientific sense, to induce a bifurcation of our species in the very near future.
00:20:57 ►
So how do we do that? asked Deirdre.
00:21:01 ►
By just keeping on doing what we’ve been doing all along, answered Shadow.
00:21:06 ►
Every time we gather together in a medicine circle or to dance,
00:21:10 ►
we pump more positive energy into the human holon.
00:21:14 ►
We already number in the many millions now,
00:21:17 ►
and soon our 100th butterfly will join us, of that I am sure.
00:21:22 ►
I still couldn’t quite understand what they thought they were doing,
00:21:26 ►
and asked,
00:21:27 ►
So how do you decide what to split into?
00:21:30 ►
We don’t decide, William, said Shadow.
00:21:33 ►
It’s a singularity, the mathematicians would say,
00:21:35 ►
or an event horizon to the physicists.
00:21:39 ►
In other words, by definition it is fruitless to speculate
00:21:42 ►
about what is on the other side of a singularity,
00:21:45 ►
and that is largely the case with the change that must take place across our species as a whole
00:21:50 ►
if we are to have any chance at all of surviving for another ten thousand years.
00:21:56 ►
So what can we do about it? I rather plaintively asked.
00:22:00 ►
This doesn’t sound like something to be happy about to me.
00:22:04 ►
Give it some time and let it sink in, lad, Shadow laughed.
00:22:08 ►
Once you’ve had more experience as a psychonaut,
00:22:11 ►
a lot of these things are going to become brilliantly clear to you.
00:22:15 ►
But first, let’s go have some lunch.
00:22:17 ►
And with that, we all headed back to camp.
00:22:21 ►
So tell me again what this parameter is that can be used to raise the intensity,
00:22:26 ►
I asked Fig as we lagged behind the rest of the group.
00:22:30 ►
The tribe, she answered without any hesitation.
00:22:34 ►
The worldwide psychedelic community.
00:22:36 ►
We’re only now just coming to realize how many of us there are.
00:22:40 ►
As Dr. Germain, who was one of my professors in college, once said,
00:22:44 ►
as Dr. Germain who was one of my professors in college once said if the ears of all the people in the nation who had ingested illicit substances in the past six months
00:22:51 ►
were to turn bright green for one whole week
00:22:54 ►
the nation would be amazed
00:22:56 ►
what he is saying is that you already know more than one person who is using or has at some time used psychedelics
00:23:04 ►
and for sure you know
00:23:05 ►
many people who smoke grass, and once we are all connected in some way, everything will change
00:23:11 ►
almost overnight. When we caught up with the others, I overheard Sebastian saying to someone
00:23:18 ►
who is walking between him and Stein, as Emerson once said, we are not miners and invalids in a protected corner,
00:23:27 ►
not cossards fleeing before a revolution, but guides, redeemers, and benefactors advancing
00:23:34 ►
on chaos in the dark. And I thought to myself, yes, now there’s an image of the adventure lying
00:23:42 ►
before us that I can hold on to.
00:23:47 ►
Maybe there really is a way to have some fun on this journey.
00:23:52 ►
November 13th, 2004.
00:23:54 ►
An island in British Columbia.
00:23:56 ►
Saturday night.
00:24:02 ►
The generation you belong to is of key importance.
00:24:03 ►
Timothy Leary.
00:24:07 ►
We gathered on a bowl-shaped hillside,
00:24:09 ►
a natural amphitheater of sorts.
00:24:12 ►
I tried to take a rough count of the people as they brought their blankets and pillows to sit on,
00:24:15 ►
but I gave up when I realized that
00:24:17 ►
our gathering numbered well over 300.
00:24:19 ►
A large fire in the center of the stage area up front
00:24:23 ►
had already burned down to a soft amber glow,
00:24:26 ►
with little flames leaping here and there from the fresh logs that were thrown on during the course of the evening.
00:24:33 ►
Fig and I were sharing a blanket with Deirdre and Shadow, who was giving us the latest news about Raelua.
00:24:40 ►
Since there’s no connectivity out here, I sent Q to town to try and track her down.’
00:24:46 ►
“‘Q’s here?’ I exclaimed,
00:24:48 ►
“‘looking forward to getting to know him a little better
00:24:51 ►
“‘now that I felt more like I was one of them,
00:24:54 ►
“‘whatever that meant.’
00:24:56 ►
“‘Of course,’ said Shadow.
00:24:58 ►
“‘How else do you think we’d get all this news back to the old world?’
00:25:02 ►
“‘There are a lot of secure ways to do that without traveling, I boasted,
00:25:07 ►
but it’ll be fun to see them anyway.
00:25:10 ►
There’s only one secure way to communicate, period, returned Shadow.
00:25:15 ►
Even with the best tech on the planet, and believe me, we’ve got it,
00:25:19 ►
but even as highly sophisticated as we are,
00:25:22 ►
there are others who will eventually be able to crack our codes.
00:25:26 ►
So for some messages, ones that might affect someone’s freedom, we only pass them face to face and in secure spaces.
00:25:35 ►
You know, Shadow, I said, finally gaining a little more self-confidence when I was around him.
00:25:40 ►
You tell me that you aren’t breaking any laws and that you have no plans to disrupt
00:25:45 ►
anything, but why all the secrecy then? You still haven’t figured it out yet, have you?
00:25:52 ►
began Shadow. It should behoove us all to take the words of the Empire’s leaders at face value.
00:25:59 ►
They have declared what they call a war on drugs. Of course, that’s a lie on its face because
00:26:05 ►
they aren’t putting drugs into prison cages. They’re putting people in them. This is no
00:26:10 ►
war on drugs, William. This is a war on consciousness, as Richard Glenn Boyer says. It’s a war on
00:26:17 ►
people who aren’t satisfied with the status quo. It is a war on the very people that we
00:26:23 ►
are going to need to get us humans out of this mess we’ve created for ourselves.
00:26:27 ►
And if this is really a war, as they want to call it, then you and I, young William, you and I are their sworn enemies.
00:26:37 ►
Now, I never set out to be anyone’s enemy, but then no one ever consulted me before declaring a war on my mind.
00:26:44 ►
So it’s time to wake up the zippy sleepers, as Fraser Clark calls them.
00:26:49 ►
They’re the old ones who experimented with psychedelics during the 60s.
00:26:54 ►
Those days, those trips, have got to haunt them more than ever right now,
00:26:58 ►
because they know the truth.
00:27:00 ►
They know what’s really going on here with this so-called war on drugs.
00:27:05 ►
They know that this is a war on consciousness.
00:27:08 ►
It’s a massive mind-control experiment that, until the Internet came along, was about to come to a sad end.
00:27:15 ►
But now the rules of the game have changed.
00:27:18 ►
The net and all of our subnets, our so-called shadow nets, he smiled, this has changed everything.
00:27:25 ►
Now the shoe is on the other foot, as they say.
00:27:29 ►
I hate to interrupt this lofty discussion, Fig said,
00:27:33 ►
but weren’t you about to tell us where Raylua is?
00:27:37 ►
Oh, yeah, Shadow said, somewhat sheepishly.
00:27:40 ►
Sorry, I guess I caught the get-up-on-your-soapbox bug
00:27:44 ►
by spending so much time with old Joe this afternoon.
00:27:47 ►
He certainly has wound up these days, isn’t he?
00:27:51 ►
Anyway, Q got back just as we were leaving camp a few minutes ago.
00:27:56 ►
He’ll be here soon, Shadow said as he nodded my way.
00:28:00 ►
But he told me that there were several emails from her saying that one of her friends was having a crisis of some kind and that she couldn’t leave her that way.
00:28:09 ►
Her current plan is to meet up with you guys at Rindy’s place next weekend.
00:28:13 ►
Ah, bummer, Fig said.
00:28:16 ►
Just then, someone struck the huge gong that was standing behind the fire pit,
00:28:21 ►
and before I could get turned around and resettled on my cushion,
00:28:25 ►
the drumming began. What followed, I later learned, was what they called their opening ceremony.
00:28:32 ►
But had you been there, I doubt if the word ceremony would have come to mind.
00:28:37 ►
It was more like a Broadway musical, which included guitars, flutes, dancing, singing,
00:28:43 ►
and poetry, all accompanied by a spectacular light show.
00:28:47 ►
Where they got the electricity for the lasers and other lights I never figured out,
00:28:51 ►
because there was no sound of generators at all.
00:28:55 ►
Eventually, the music slowed and became softer.
00:28:59 ►
As the lights grew dim, the long, diaphanous veils of the last dancers
00:29:04 ►
seemed to evaporate into the darkness at the edges of our gathering.
00:29:09 ►
With only the fire’s glow for her spotlight, Apache began to speak.
00:29:15 ►
My dear fellow aspects of creation,
00:29:17 ►
for the next few minutes, we ask that you suspend the inner dialogue of your primate ego mind
00:29:24 ►
and listen only with your heart.
00:29:27 ►
Become this group mind that is our little family
00:29:30 ►
out here on the edge of the tribe.
00:29:34 ►
We come here tonight to take stock,
00:29:37 ►
to take an inventory of where we are and of who we are,
00:29:40 ►
and we hope to come to some conclusions
00:29:43 ►
about the direction in which we now must proceed.
00:29:47 ►
Where we are at this moment in time has become obvious to us all.
00:29:51 ►
We are at what many believe to be the most pivotal moment in human history that we know of.
00:29:58 ►
The arrow of unsustainable consumption, powered by the bow of credit,
00:30:03 ►
has reached the top of its flight.
00:30:06 ►
There is nowhere for that arrow to go now but down, and where it is going to land is anyone’s guess.
00:30:13 ►
After joining in some of the discussions that have been taking place here the past few days,
00:30:18 ►
Apache went on, I have noticed that many among us are clinging to a desperate hope that all we need
00:30:24 ►
to do is
00:30:25 ►
make it through another four years of the Bush crime family running things, and the
00:30:29 ►
worst will be over.
00:30:31 ►
I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but after Bush, the worst is still yet to come.
00:30:38 ►
His gang of international criminals has been systematically looting the Treasury for years.
00:30:43 ►
The empire is now bankrupt,
00:30:46 ►
but nobody is ready to acknowledge that fact just yet. All things come to an end eventually,
00:30:52 ►
and there is an excellent chance that some of us are still going to be around when the
00:30:57 ►
USA comes to its natural end, as did the Soviet Union and so many other nation states.
00:31:03 ►
as did the Soviet Union and so many other nation states.
00:31:07 ►
That is the march of history, and it cannot be stopped.
00:31:12 ►
But if we truly believe our present situation to be unique,
00:31:14 ►
then how do we proceed from here?
00:31:20 ►
We are now heading into uncharted territory, and so how do we find our way?
00:31:28 ►
Well, to begin with, we keep in mind that locals always survive empires, which implies that we must become as deeply interconnected with our neighbors and local communities as
00:31:34 ►
possible. So let’s take a look at this logically, and with as little emotion involved as we
00:31:40 ►
can manage. For sure, for sure,
00:31:47 ►
there is going to come a time in human history when it will become too expensive
00:31:49 ►
for us to continue using oil to power our lives.
00:31:53 ►
Some people think this will occur soon.
00:31:56 ►
Others believe that day will not arrive
00:31:58 ►
until the end of this century or later.
00:32:00 ►
But it seems to me that rational people
00:32:03 ►
will not quibble about when the shift away from a petroleum-based civilization will absolutely have to begin.
00:32:10 ►
It seems to me that rational people, knowing that there is even the slightest chance that when the seventh generation of our descendants is born,
00:32:19 ►
they will find themselves living in a world without oil,
00:32:22 ►
then right now, today, we should begin to do whatever it is we can with whatever it is we have
00:32:28 ►
to ensure that our descendants don’t just survive.
00:32:33 ►
No, we want more for them than that.
00:32:35 ►
We want the generations that come after us to thrive.
00:32:40 ►
A thousand years from now, humans will most likely still be walking the earth,
00:32:45 ►
as we have done for over a million years already.
00:32:49 ►
Some of those future humans will have genetic links to us.
00:32:53 ►
However, our names and our deeds will have long since faded from living memory.
00:32:59 ►
Yet, that does not mean that we will be forgotten.
00:33:02 ►
For those future humans, those future reincarnations,
00:33:06 ►
will look back to the age that is just now beginning, and they will remember you. They
00:33:12 ►
will remember you, not by name, but as having been part of a new generation of humans. They
00:33:19 ►
will remember you as one of the people who helped to build a civilization that should last for yet another
00:33:25 ►
thousand years. And those people of the future will be alive because they had at least one
00:33:31 ►
ancestor, maybe you, who was part of what their historians will call the Genesis generation.
00:33:40 ►
This generation isn’t bounded by the age of its members. That isn’t how it is defined.
00:33:47 ►
Members of the Genesis generation distinguish themselves
00:33:50 ►
by the way they think and the way they live.
00:33:53 ►
It is a state of mind, not a state of body.
00:33:57 ►
We are the people who are preparing the land for whatever comes next,
00:34:01 ►
a new foundation for a new civilization.
00:34:04 ►
And that is precisely what we are all about.
00:34:08 ►
You and I are the Genesis generation. However, before I say more, I would first like to bring
00:34:15 ►
up our lawyer friend, Tiger, and she will share with you a few things that you might
00:34:20 ►
want to think about regarding your dealings with the Empire, now that it is on its final downhill run.
00:34:27 ►
Then, a female voice coming from the darkness
00:34:30 ►
behind the fire pit said,
00:34:32 ►
Thank you, Apache.
00:34:34 ►
And Tiger walked to the other side of the fire and began,
00:34:38 ►
Like it or not,
00:34:40 ►
it behooves us all to pay close attention
00:34:42 ►
to the American Empire right now,
00:34:44 ►
if for no other reason than to simply stay out of its way.
00:34:49 ►
Unfortunately, at the present time, it isn’t very practical to be completely detached from any of our governments,
00:34:56 ►
even outside the states, because without us realizing what was happening,
00:35:01 ►
they have gained control over our food supplies,
00:35:06 ►
along with a host of other niceties.
00:35:09 ►
And so, like it or not,
00:35:12 ►
even the most dedicated among us cannot yet completely detach from the system just now.
00:35:17 ►
As we all know,
00:35:19 ►
for several generations now,
00:35:21 ►
the word was that without a college education,
00:35:24 ►
you would never get anywhere. But if you do get that little piece of paper we are told
00:35:29 ►
it will be your ticket to riches the truth of the matter however is
00:35:34 ►
something far different because your diploma isn’t the only thing a college
00:35:39 ►
education will bring it also comes with a massive amount of personal debt so you
00:35:44 ►
can’t simply go to college and learn something you are interested in.
00:35:49 ►
No, instead most people begin a particular field of study for the potential it may hold
00:35:54 ►
for getting the high-paying job that they will need to pay off their college loans.
00:35:59 ►
Seldom do I hear of students choosing a field of study because it is their passion.
00:36:05 ►
So it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to understand that this is nothing more than a kinder, gentler
00:36:11 ►
form of indentured servitude.
00:36:13 ►
We are raising our children to become serfs.
00:36:17 ►
And that, my dear friends, is why we have spent the last several days working out a
00:36:22 ►
curriculum for what I like to think of as a traveling tribal university, where students can take only the courses that interest them,
00:36:30 ►
and the tuition is free. Our students won’t end up with a little piece of paper that,
00:36:36 ►
in reality, is their ticket to cubicle hell. However, they will gain an excellent education
00:36:42 ►
and thus become better people for having satisfied their intellectual appetites.
00:36:48 ►
By not becoming too deeply entangled in the system, we will be better able to evolve ways of living that will free our grandchildren from the oppressive yoke of a national debt so massive that in fact it can never be repaid.
00:37:02 ►
that in fact it can never be repaid.
00:37:06 ►
By keeping our taxable incomes as small as possible,
00:37:11 ►
we can significantly reduce our contributions to the American war machine.
00:37:15 ►
Today, over half of all the taxes we pay in the States go to supporting military misadventures around the world.
00:37:19 ►
I have no problem paying taxes to support the women and men who,
00:37:23 ►
for whatever reasons, have been injured as a
00:37:25 ►
result of their service. No group of people deserve our support more. But that is only a small part of
00:37:32 ►
the nation’s war budget. So let the flag-waving mindless patriots provide the money to continue
00:37:38 ►
the slaughter of innocents abroad. If they feel that threatened by the lies put out by the Bush
00:37:44 ►
crime family, then let them
00:37:45 ►
enslave their own families into perpetual servitude in order to pay off the arms dealers who sell
00:37:51 ►
their murderous weapons. Our families are detaching from the monetary system and applying their energy
00:37:58 ►
in different directions, like raising some of their own food and entertaining ourselves without spending exorbitant amounts of money.
00:38:07 ►
By keeping our incomes small, we not only reduce the amount of money the looters in Washington have to spend on their deadly affairs,
00:38:15 ►
we also become invisible to the powers that be.
00:38:18 ►
And so we appear to be in the system while contributing as little as possible to the empire’s treasury.
00:38:26 ►
Instead of working like a slave
00:38:28 ►
in order to send more money
00:38:29 ►
to a bunch of mindless politicians,
00:38:32 ►
we do our work locally,
00:38:34 ►
helping our neighbors
00:38:35 ►
and strengthening our local communities.
00:38:39 ►
Unlike the flower children of the 60s, however,
00:38:41 ►
we are not dropping out and moving to communes.
00:38:46 ►
No, our role is to stay in place physically,
00:38:48 ►
but to remove ourselves from the system as much as possible.
00:38:52 ►
And by not agitating for political change,
00:38:55 ►
we in truth pose no threat to the currently established order.
00:39:00 ►
Our mission is to change the culture,
00:39:02 ►
and then the politicians will adjust accordingly.
00:39:06 ►
You see, there really are no leaders left in the world of politics.
00:39:10 ►
All we have is front followers who base their decisions only on the latest polls.
00:39:16 ►
As you already know, it is the system itself that must be changed.
00:39:21 ►
Merely exchanging one politician for another, no matter how promising she or he may seem,
00:39:27 ►
is nothing more than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic.
00:39:31 ►
And so the time has now come for us to also remove our minds from the system.
00:39:36 ►
And that means doing no more than what we agree to do
00:39:39 ►
when we take a job to earn what money we need to survive.
00:39:43 ►
If you agree to work for 40 hours a week, then give them no more.
00:39:48 ►
Since we aren’t looking to build a career or get rich,
00:39:51 ►
giving your employer your overtime hours for free gets you nothing.
00:39:56 ►
Unlike that insidious John Galt,
00:39:59 ►
I am advocating that we the people go on strike
00:40:02 ►
and remove our minds from the system of servitude.
00:40:05 ►
For we are fully aware that it isn’t the handful of CEOs who are the producers.
00:40:11 ►
No, in fact, they are the looters now.
00:40:14 ►
It is time to keep our best ideas to ourselves, here in our own community.
00:40:20 ►
No longer are we willing to lend our minds to the vast corporate empires
00:40:24 ►
whose only objective is to accumulate ever more wealth.
00:40:28 ►
It is time for consciousness itself to go on strike.
00:40:33 ►
Tiger’s rousing ending brought an unexpected cheer from us all
00:40:36 ►
as she began to make her way to a spot on the hillside where old Joe was sitting.
00:40:42 ►
It was then that Fig leaned over to me and whispered,
00:40:45 ►
I’m glad you are cheering, Will.
00:40:47 ►
I hope that means you have come to a decision about what to do next.
00:40:52 ►
Her comments stopped me in my tracks,
00:40:55 ►
because until that moment I didn’t realize that
00:40:57 ►
there was no turning back for me anymore,
00:41:01 ►
and I realized that these people,
00:41:03 ►
most of whom I hadn’t even met, had now become
00:41:06 ►
my new family.
00:41:08 ►
Even though my trial for smuggling drugs into the country was still a few days away, I knew
00:41:13 ►
in my heart that, no matter what happened on Wednesday, I was finished with corporate
00:41:18 ►
America.
00:41:19 ►
Without consciously making a decision, I had come to the point where I could no longer
00:41:24 ►
participate in
00:41:25 ►
blindly consuming everything that struck my fancy.
00:41:29 ►
I don’t know if it was my participation
00:41:31 ►
in several medicine circles, or
00:41:33 ►
if it was simply by spending so much time
00:41:35 ►
with these incredible people
00:41:37 ►
that caused this shift in my mind.
00:41:40 ►
But that no longer mattered to me.
00:41:42 ►
At last I understood
00:41:44 ►
what Raelua means when she said,
00:41:46 ►
Once you discover the tribe,
00:41:48 ►
you also discover that your home isn’t a particular location on Earth.
00:41:52 ►
It is the entire planet.
00:41:54 ►
You finally grok the fact that
00:41:56 ►
you aren’t simply a detached individual moving around the world,
00:42:00 ►
but that you are an integral part of the fabric of life
00:42:03 ►
that covers Mother Earth like a blanket.
00:42:07 ►
And as those thoughts flooded my mind, I could sense Relua’s spirit among us,
00:42:12 ►
how I wished that she was here tonight for me to talk with.
00:42:17 ►
My reverie was broken when Apache began to speak once again.
00:42:22 ►
It is therefore imperative that our community continue to grow
00:42:26 ►
and join together with other people such as us
00:42:29 ►
so as to collectively create
00:42:31 ►
a critical mass of Gaian consciousness.
00:42:34 ►
A great moment of decision
00:42:36 ►
is breathing down our collective human necks right now,
00:42:40 ►
for it is becoming obvious
00:42:41 ►
to even the most lumpen among us
00:42:43 ►
that we simply cannot continue living as we have been for the past 100 years.
00:42:49 ►
Some people are saying that the global conflicts we are now experiencing are indications of a clash of civilizations.
00:42:56 ►
I don’t see it quite that way.
00:42:59 ►
It seems to me that we are actually in the early stages of a conflict between two great ages.
00:43:05 ►
This is a battle that is taking place in our collective human consciousness.
00:43:10 ►
It is a battle between a mentality that belongs in the Middle Ages
00:43:14 ►
and another mentality that is appropriate for the 21st century.
00:43:19 ►
What we are actually witnessing is a clash between civilization itself and the type of primitive, barbaric behavior that has characterized so much of humanity until now.
00:43:31 ►
The age of Pisces is ending, and Aquarius has begun to rise.
00:43:37 ►
What we are witnessing today, my dear friends, is most definitely not a clash of civilizations,
00:43:44 ►
because by definition, civilized people do not clash.
00:43:49 ►
With that, Apache paused for a moment and asked,
00:43:53 ►
Does anyone have something they would like to add before I go on?
00:43:58 ►
I do, spoke up Stein.
00:44:00 ►
He and Sebastian were sitting in the front row, just to the left of the fire pit.
00:44:06 ►
The overcast sky effectively blocked any chance of moonlight,
00:44:09 ►
which made it difficult to see him until he stood up and took a step or two to be closer to the glow of the flames
00:44:15 ►
that were now shooting up from a big log that Al threw on the fire a few minutes ago.
00:44:22 ►
If the worst does happen, Stein began, and a great Malthusian correction does
00:44:27 ►
take place, then the people who survive to repopulate this planet are going to be those of
00:44:33 ►
us or our descendants who truly care about the earth and about one another. But for sure those
00:44:39 ►
looters who are so misusing the world right now aren’t going to be around to rebuild, that much
00:44:45 ►
I’m sure of. The lad is right, I believe, yelled Shadow from just behind me. I hadn’t expected him
00:44:53 ►
to speak up just then, and startled, I gave out an unintelligible shout of some kind. Once again,
00:45:00 ►
the laugh was on me, but my unintended little outburst was just what it took to break the heavy mood that had begun to descend upon us.
00:45:10 ►
I didn’t mean to scare you, William, said Shadow in a tone that actually sounded as if he was concerned about my well-being.
00:45:18 ►
So I guess I’d better stand up and request the floor, he continued to several hoots and jeers from people I again realized had become my family.
00:45:28 ►
Standing just behind Fig and me,
00:45:30 ►
Shadow went on,
00:45:31 ►
I only wanted to point out how much I agree
00:45:34 ►
with both Stein and Apache.
00:45:37 ►
The way I see it,
00:45:38 ►
history is on the march once again,
00:45:40 ►
and I’m not talking about the history
00:45:42 ►
we are fed in schools.
00:45:44 ►
Those school book histories
00:45:45 ►
were all written by the winners. If you look at those books objectively, you will notice that
00:45:50 ►
they are mainly stories about rich and powerful people trying to expand and preserve their wealth.
00:45:57 ►
There have been many attempts by we the people to wrest control from the rich and powerful,
00:46:03 ►
and most often they came in the form of revolutions,
00:46:06 ►
generally violent revolutions.
00:46:08 ►
But what has all of that bloodshed gained us?
00:46:12 ►
Not very much, I think you’ll agree.
00:46:14 ►
No, violence and revolution are not the correct tools
00:46:18 ►
for this age we are entering.
00:46:20 ►
Evolution is the name of the new game,
00:46:23 ►
the conscious evolution of our own selves.
00:46:26 ►
This in turn will propel the evolution of human culture as a whole.
00:46:30 ►
And once human culture reaches its next plateau, the political changes will follow.
00:46:36 ►
As Apache just said, we are finally experiencing the end of the medieval feudal system.
00:46:43 ►
And so we must be clear about the fact that
00:46:45 ►
it is an entirely new way of living that we are about.
00:46:49 ►
Getting distracted by the carnival of political action
00:46:52 ►
is something we must carefully guard against.
00:46:55 ►
Now, I’m not talking about things like
00:46:58 ►
working for the release of men like Mumia Abu Jamal
00:47:01 ►
and other political prisoners.
00:47:03 ►
It is politics itself that I am talking about.
00:47:07 ►
While there is nothing wrong with spending a small amount of your time on a political cause or
00:47:12 ►
working for a particular candidate, it is important to keep in mind that all political activities
00:47:18 ►
right now are rear-guard actions at best. The main event, the place where we should be investing the majority of our time,
00:47:26 ►
is in learning how to touch Mother Earth ever more lightly, and once again live sensibly.
00:47:31 ►
What we need is a new breed of human. After the cat calls about my unintentional shout,
00:47:39 ►
I expected to hear a loud round of applause for Shadow’s little speech. But as he sat down, he was greeted only by silence.
00:47:47 ►
It was at that moment when it finally dawned on me that
00:47:50 ►
this gathering was far more than just another excuse to
00:47:53 ►
party all night with some friends you haven’t seen for a long time.
00:47:57 ►
What I was witnessing, here on this little island in the Pacific Northwest,
00:48:02 ►
was nothing short of the conscious evolution of a new kind of human being.
00:48:07 ►
These people were not only fun-loving free spirits,
00:48:10 ►
they were also hard-working, dedicated individuals whose mission in life is to prepare places
00:48:16 ►
where the children of their great-great-grandchildren can live peaceful, joyous lives.
00:48:23 ►
I agree with you, Shadow, Apache was saying,
00:48:26 ►
except about the new breed part.
00:48:30 ►
Then, as if she had been reading my mind, she went on,
00:48:33 ►
You see, we are not actually a new breed of human
00:48:37 ►
because we have always been here,
00:48:40 ►
living quietly just beneath the gaze of the average eye.
00:48:44 ►
We are the original human line.
00:48:47 ►
Homo Divinis is what Lorenzo calls us,
00:48:50 ►
and we will be here for many generations yet to come.
00:48:53 ►
Empires merely wash over us,
00:48:56 ►
for we are the children of the children of Atlantis,
00:48:59 ►
and we have come back to earth at this particular moment in time
00:49:03 ►
to once again become the catalyst for yet another major shift
00:49:07 ►
in the way people think about life, all life.
00:49:11 ►
Millions upon millions of old souls have come back to earth just now
00:49:15 ►
to help start yet another turn of the cosmic wheel.
00:49:20 ►
We have returned to lay the foundation for the earthly paradise
00:49:23 ►
that is now technically within our grasp
00:49:25 ►
and awaits only an overall change in the way people think.
00:49:30 ►
It really is as simple as that, changing the way we think about how we best fit into the fabric of life on this little planet.
00:49:38 ►
As simple as changing one’s mind is, however, it is seldom easy.
00:49:46 ►
mind is, however, it is seldom easy. Often it takes a major tragedy or illness or some such thing to trigger the need to change the way one thinks. Fortunately, we have our sacred medicines
00:49:54 ►
to serve us, and so for most of us, we have been able to change our worldview without having to
00:50:00 ►
first experience a major trauma. And now we have reached a point in our lives where we understand that only by remaining
00:50:08 ►
as far removed from the nets of capitalistic consumption as possible, do we have any hope
00:50:14 ►
of building a sustainable future for those who will come after us.
00:50:19 ►
So it is imperative that you not get sucked back into the system, the global financial
00:50:24 ►
system that
00:50:25 ►
wants to own you until you die. It does this by chaining you to your debts, your promises to
00:50:31 ►
give your hard-earned money to a cabal of greedy bankers. It’s all about economics. That’s how they
00:50:38 ►
keep you trapped. Once you have a bank account, a credit card, and other debts, they hold you captive forever.
00:50:50 ►
We don’t have to agree on anything else, but to survive as a coherent tribe,
00:50:56 ►
we must first evolve a new economic model for ourselves and for any others who care to join us.
00:51:02 ►
Just then, Fig squeezed my hand and leaned over and gave me a kiss,
00:51:05 ►
as if to say, I’m glad you joined us.
00:51:09 ►
I felt more at peace than ever before.
00:51:15 ►
The experience was so transformative that I completely lost track of what Apache was saying for a moment or two.
00:51:20 ►
When I returned to the present, I heard her say, It is an historical fact that colonies that were tightly controlled by a remote political administration
00:51:26 ►
were the ones to most quickly form their own unique identities.
00:51:31 ►
The more outside control that is imposed on people,
00:51:34 ►
the easier it becomes for a new culture to spring up among them.
00:51:39 ►
For some reason, social creativity seems to thrive on pressure.
00:51:43 ►
So let’s be thankful that the fascists in Washington
00:51:46 ►
have decimated the Bill of Rights
00:51:48 ►
because they are applying so much pressure
00:51:51 ►
that it is going to make our mission
00:51:52 ►
to change mainstream culture significantly easier.
00:51:57 ►
Just then, a voice from the darkness off to my right
00:52:01 ►
and a little higher up the hill shouted,
00:52:03 ►
So what’s the plan?
00:52:06 ►
Even in the dim light from the fire, I could see a smile cross Apache’s face as she said,
00:52:13 ►
Many of us have been given the gift of directly and deeply experiencing the divine spirit that
00:52:19 ►
animates our bodies. This is what some of you so cavalierly call your moments of being a goddess or god.
00:52:26 ►
When it comes, the freedom and sense of power we experience is awesome, beyond words.
00:52:33 ►
Yet, when this same spirit of ours is concentrated in a human form,
00:52:38 ►
we discover that it often takes almost all of our energy just to perform the minimum daily tasks required to keep our bodies alive.
00:52:47 ►
Perhaps this is where our lesson lies.
00:52:50 ►
For while our disembodied spirit seems all-powerful, it really isn’t.
00:52:56 ►
And so for me, the plan then is to get some help.
00:52:59 ►
Because to accomplish any of the tasks that I see with my cosmic vision,
00:53:04 ►
I realize that I must first join with other like-minded awarenesses,
00:53:09 ►
if I am to have any hope at all of fulfilling my destiny.
00:53:14 ►
So, to answer your question more directly,
00:53:17 ►
I would say that the plan, as the great Bard McKenna often said,
00:53:22 ►
the plan is to find the others.
00:53:24 ►
It is as simple as that.
00:53:27 ►
For you see, Apache concluded,
00:53:30 ►
we are the living heirs of countless centuries of human spiritual evolution.
00:53:36 ►
And now the time has arrived for us to declare ourselves free
00:53:40 ►
from the foolish attempts to make laws declaring nature’s own plants to be illegal.
00:53:46 ►
How dare they? How dare they attempt to enslave our minds with their sick morality? How dare they?
00:53:53 ►
But we will have no more of it, no more of their attempted tyranny over our minds.
00:54:00 ►
And so we declare ourselves to be free from the politics of control.
00:54:04 ►
We hereby declare ourselves to be free of their inhuman religions.
00:54:09 ►
We hereby declare ourselves to be free from the jackboots of empire,
00:54:14 ►
free of their inhuman attempt to turn honest, hardworking people
00:54:17 ►
into mindless consumers in an unsustainable society.
00:54:22 ►
We reject your ways, you sad old empire,
00:54:25 ►
and we reject your mindless attack on our Mother Earth.
00:54:30 ►
Aho!
00:54:32 ►
In unison, several hundred voices thundered,
00:54:36 ►
Aho!
00:54:37 ►
And the gathering came to what I felt was a rather abrupt end.
00:54:42 ►
Before I could comment on this fact,
00:54:47 ►
Shadow said to no one in particular,
00:54:54 ►
We may be outcasts, but we are the outcasts who will ultimately reweave the tapestry of human consciousness into the beautiful design it once was.
00:54:59 ►
After gathering up our blankets and pillows, we were joined by Stein and Sebastian as we headed back to camp to prepare for a night of dancing under what had now become a starry sky.
00:55:11 ►
And I said, I have to admit that I’m kind of disappointed that Apache didn’t lay out some kind of a plan for us.
00:55:18 ►
I thought she was going to tell everyone where to move and what to do.
00:55:26 ►
everyone where to move and what to do. Granted, her words did inspire me to become more aware of how I’m living my life, but I was hoping for some kind of a master plan to take over the world.
00:55:33 ►
Shadow laughed and said, Then I’d say she did her job perfectly tonight, young William.
00:55:39 ►
You see, the great work we are about begins and ends with ourselves. We aren’t out to change the world, only to change ourselves.
00:55:48 ►
And if we do a sufficiently good job of it, then others will want to live as we do.
00:55:54 ►
It isn’t our way to try and talk anyone into living like we do,
00:55:59 ►
but it is our hope that they will want to copy us.
00:56:03 ►
Yeah, said Stein.
00:56:05 ►
While the default world is worried about full employment,
00:56:09 ►
we are into full enjoyment.
00:56:11 ►
It’s an easy choice, I think.
00:56:14 ►
Well, I still don’t feel like I’ve got a handle on this whole tribe thing, I said.
00:56:19 ►
Sometimes it feels to me like a house of cards.
00:56:23 ►
That’s life, William, said Shadow.
00:56:26 ►
As the great Irish writer Flan O’Brien once said,
00:56:30 ►
De Selby likens the position of the human on earth to that of a man on a tight wire
00:56:35 ►
who must continue walking along the wire or perish,
00:56:39 ►
being, however, free in all other respects.
00:56:45 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,
00:56:48 ►
where people are changing their lives
00:56:50 ►
one thought at a time.
00:56:54 ►
What a great image of where we are right now, huh?
00:56:57 ►
A man on a tight wire.
00:56:59 ►
Always got to move ahead.
00:57:01 ►
Otherwise, of course, you’re free to do what you want, right?
00:57:04 ►
Well, I obviously
00:57:05 ►
could go on all night about some of the topics that I loaded into that chapter, but I think
00:57:10 ►
you’ve heard enough from me for now. And as I tried to point out, right now it’s about
00:57:16 ►
finding the others, making connections. Not connection for buying and selling illicit
00:57:21 ►
substances, but rather making connections with like-minded people,
00:57:25 ►
people who think like you do, in short, the tribe.
00:57:29 ►
And by the way, I keep getting asked how one goes about being part of what a lot of us call the tribe.
00:57:36 ►
Well, if you know enough to even ask the question, then you already are a part of the tribe.
00:57:40 ►
It’s a state of mind, a view of the world, if you will,
00:57:44 ►
that’s a view that’s sort of like what Terence McKenna was talking about last week.
00:57:49 ►
A coincidencia oppositorum, a union of many unique and often opposite personalities who, according to some, are the leading edge of the cultural creatives.
00:58:00 ►
The tribe isn’t just Terence McKenna and friends.
00:58:03 ►
The Tribe isn’t just Terrence McKenna and friends.
00:58:10 ►
The Tribe is also you and me and all of our friends who think somewhat along the same lines as we do.
00:58:17 ►
And while a majority of podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon will feature McKenna, Leary, and the rest of the usual suspects,
00:58:24 ►
I also will try to pass along programs like the one we did two weeks ago that feature some of our fellow salonners.
00:58:31 ►
And I also want to encourage you to try out a new podcast every week if you can.
00:58:36 ►
This morning I was listening to the latest Diet Soap podcast with Charles Lane in which he interviews Daniel Coffin about the topic, A Virus Called Capitalism.
00:58:42 ►
And while I don’t agree with everything that was said, I do agree with most of their comments
00:58:47 ►
and found their discussion got me thinking about some of the same things I discussed in this podcast,
00:58:52 ►
but, you know, a little different light.
00:58:55 ►
I think it’s diet soap number 42 if you’re interested.
00:58:59 ►
Another thing I want to do to help us all feel a little more connected is to play voicemails that are left on our Skype account.
00:59:07 ►
Psychedelic Salon, all one lowercase word.
00:59:10 ►
That’s our number or handle or whatever you call it.
00:59:14 ►
But for a while there, I didn’t think anyone was going to leave a message.
00:59:18 ►
However, that has now changed.
00:59:21 ►
And so I would like to now play for you our very first voicemail that we received on Skype.
00:59:26 ►
Hey Lorenzo, my name is Byron King. I’ve been listening to your Terrence McKenna podcast series
00:59:33 ►
for the last couple months and it’s been really amazing and I’m glad you’re doing that. I wanted to share with you our blog, which is www.globatron.org. We’ve gotten a lot of
00:59:55 ►
inspiration from your work, and I just looked at your personal blog, and we’re honestly blogging
01:00:01 ►
almost about the same stuff. I just found it really odd, and I wanted to share that with you.
01:00:06 ►
So thanks, Lorenzo, and I just want to say hi.
01:00:10 ►
I also have my art site, ByronKing.com forward slash art, if you get bored or whatever.
01:00:17 ►
But just keep up the good work, and I love this voicemail feature.
01:00:21 ►
It’s really awesome.
01:00:22 ►
Take care.
01:00:23 ►
Cheers.
01:00:25 ►
Well, thanks a lot for the greeting, Brian.
01:00:27 ►
And since you gave your website address that uses your full name,
01:00:31 ►
I’m assuming that you don’t have a problem with me playing the message.
01:00:36 ►
And hopefully we’ll get some more voicemails,
01:00:38 ►
perhaps some that deal with a recent podcast
01:00:41 ►
or even with another podcast that you’d like to recommend or plug.
01:00:46 ►
And another fellow salonner, Tyler Smith, along with his brother Carl,
01:00:51 ►
at least I assume it’s Carl as your name,
01:00:54 ►
put together a little musical piece using quotes from Terrence McKenna and others.
01:00:59 ►
And while you can check out their work at carlsmith.freesitespace.net,
01:01:05 ►
I thought it would be nice to end today’s podcast by playing the Smith Brothers’ creation,
01:01:10 ►
which I’ll do in just a moment.
01:01:12 ►
And so I’ll close today’s podcast by mentioning that this particular podcast today
01:01:18 ►
from the Psychedelic Salon is fully copyrighted,
01:01:21 ►
as I still need to sell a few more copies of my book to pay for my
01:01:25 ►
big trip this summer.
01:01:26 ►
So if you would like to hear the entire 11 hours of me reading the Genesis Generation,
01:01:31 ►
you can avail yourself of that opportunity by buying a complete copy at genesisgeneration.us.
01:01:39 ►
But only do so if you are really interested in listening to the entire story, because
01:01:43 ►
with this podcast today, you
01:01:46 ►
now have the core of the ideas I
01:01:47 ►
present in that book.
01:01:50 ►
And now, until next time,
01:01:52 ►
this is Lorenzo, signing off from
01:01:54 ►
Cyberdelic Space.
01:01:55 ►
Be well, my friends. you may not have noticed but in this society they’re not handing out rights.
01:02:42 ►
And we’re told, no, we’re unimportant.
01:02:44 ►
We’re peripheral.
01:02:49 ►
Get a degree. Get a job. Get a this, get a that, and then you’re a player.
01:02:52 ►
You don’t even want to play in that game.
01:03:04 ►
I’m afraid we’re losing the real virtues of living life passionately, the sense of taking responsibility for who you are, the ability to make something of yourself, and feeling good about life.
01:03:14 ►
If the world that we are forced to accept is false and nothing is true, then everything is possible.
01:03:38 ►
Our planet is facing the greatest problems it’s ever faced.
01:03:39 ►
Ever.
01:03:44 ►
Now the challenge passes to us. the living, that the yet to be born may have a place to put their feet and a sky to walk under.
01:04:03 ►
We have to stop consuming our culture.
01:04:11 ►
We have to create culture.
01:04:19 ►
I’m trying to change all that, and I hope you are too.
01:04:23 ►
By dreaming every day. Dreaming with our hands
01:04:28 ►
and dreaming with our minds. So whatever you do, don’t be bored.
01:04:41 ►
So whatever you do, don’t be bored.
01:04:48 ►
Don’t watch TV.
01:05:03 ►
I don’t want a straw.
01:05:12 ►
I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don’t want to give that up. I don’t want to be a fan, you know?
01:05:27 ►
And what is real is you and your friends and your associations, your highs, your orgasms, your hopes, your plans, your fears.
01:05:34 ►
To say what has never been said, to see what has never been seen,
01:05:41 ►
to draw, paint, sing, sculpt, dance, and act what has never before been done,
01:05:45 ►
to push the envelope of creativity and language.
01:06:14 ►
There is nothing as powerful, as capable of transforming itself and the planet as the human imagination. Claim your place in the sun And go forward into the world
01:06:17 ►
The tools are there
01:06:18 ►
The path is known
01:06:20 ►
You simply have to turn your back on a culture
01:06:23 ►
That has gone sterile and dead
01:06:25 ►
and get with the program of a living world and a re-empowerment of the imagination.
01:06:40 ►
Things are just starting.