Program Notes
Guest speakers: Ram Das, Terence McKenna, and Angeles Arrien
“The thing that seemed to me so important about the psychedelic experience was that it happened to me. I wasn’t reading John Chrysostom or Meister Eckhart. And so I assumed that I am a very ordinary person, therefore, if it happened to me it could happen to anyone.” —Terence McKenna
“Psychedelics are a miracle, yes. They may not be the only miracle. I think they may have already done what they were to do. I think what is done is so much more powerful than anybody recognizes.” —Ram Das
“I see all this destruction as just the process of transformation. The question is whether we’ll keep it together in the process of transformation.” —Ram Das
“So I really see the psychedelics as directly intervening in the core process, which is running us over the edge, which is our inability to connect with the consequences of what we’re doing.” —Ram Das
[Speaking of the Sixties: “The fact that they noticed us was because we were busy making statements, instead of just being it.” —Ram Das
[McKenna] “So it isn’t enough to just say, the system will take care of itself?” [Ram Das] “Well I am part of the system that is taking care of itself.”
“I lead a continuous paradox that suffering stinks and suffering’s great. And I live with both of those all the time.” —Ram Das
“To me, the most amazing the most amazing transformation in my lifetime is not the revolution of the Sixties but the counter revolution of the Seventies, where they managed to put the cuckoo clock back together again” —Terence McKenna
“I think that the crisis that came to Marxism is coming now to the RepubliCrat oligarchy in America.” —Terence McKenna
“No more do we create cultural artifacts that are simply our furniture, but now it’s our thoughts, our values, are embodied in this [digital] stuff.” —Terence McKenna
Signs of Life: The Five Universal Shapes and How to Use Them By Angeles Arrien
World Council of Indigenous Peoples
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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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Now, before I get into today’s program, I first want to give you an update about what’s
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been going on with our Notes from the Psychedelic Salon blog and download site. As you already
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know, if you’ve been following this saga on my Facebook page, there was a major equipment failure at the DreamHost
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data center where our site has been hosted since 2006.
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And even though this took place about five days ago, they still have not been able to
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fully recover our website.
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Fortunately, however, the folder where the actual podcasts were stored has been recovered.
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And what that means is that anyone who picks up these MP3 files via iTunes
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or some other RSS feed aggregator can still download all of the podcasts.
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At least they could a few minutes ago when I last checked.
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The main reason that it’s still working is that while I’ve been using DreamHost
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as my primary download site, the RSS feed remained with our original hosting company,
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and that site has never gone down.
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The problem right now is that DreamHost is unable to fix the WordPress blog with the program notes,
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which is where many of our fellow salonners downloaded these podcasts each week.
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The good news is that thanks to our fellow salonners who
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either made a direct donation to the salon or who purchased a copy of one of my books,
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I’ve been able to put aside enough money to go ahead and get our own dedicated server,
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which of course will be located at our original hosting company. So it’s probably going to take
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a week or more to get everything transferred and reconfigured, but in the long run, I think you’re going to find a nice improvement in the service you get from the salon’s website.
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And without the assistance of you incredible donors, this could not have happened.
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I guess that it’s fortunate that the Burning Man organization screwed up their ticket purchase lottery,
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because I was able to use the money that I’d been setting aside from donations going way back to last August, and instead of using them for the Burning
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Man Festival, well, instead I used it for our own dedicated server.
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So my heartfelt thanks goes out to all of our donors, current and past, for helping
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to keep the salon humming along.
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Hopefully I’ve already contacted each of you individually, but if not,
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I apologize and offer my sincere thanks for your support. So now let’s get back to podcasting.
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After a somewhat long interlude, I’m now today going to get back to playing another recording
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of some old Terrence McKenna material that I picked up from YouTube.
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And it took place sometime in June of 1992 during the 12th International Transpersonal Conference in Prague.
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And if the stats on the YouTube site are correct, about 800 people have already heard this,
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as it’s posted there under the title of Prognosis.
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And what I’m going to play today is the first section of this video that begins with a conversation between Terence McKenna and Ram Dass.
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Then that is followed with an interview with Angela Saron,
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who Terence McKenna describes as a professional in the field of neo-shamanic anthropology.
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As it happens, I actually have the VHS videotape of this,
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but until several of our fellow salonners pointed it out to me on YouTube,
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I’d held back on podcasting it since I was unsure of the copyright limitations.
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But since it’s now available online,
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I felt that it would do no harm to pass it along here in the salon.
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And on our notes from the Psychedelic Salon blog, which you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us
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once we get our psych transferred and operational again, I’ll post the link to the video which
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you probably should watch in order to get the full impact of the conversation you’re
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about to hear.
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The first of which is between Terrence and Ram Dass in a
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somewhat noisy Prague cafe. And besides being able to watch the facial expressions on these two
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interesting people, you’ll also be able to see the parts that I’ve cut out for clarity. You see,
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at a couple of points during their talk, a waiter appears who, he must have been put up to this
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to play a strange but humorous role in the video.
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But without the images associated with his dialogue, it seems kind of strange when you just listen to the audio part,
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which is what I’m going to play for you here.
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However, before I play this interesting recording,
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I first want to read part of a comment that one of our fellow salonners posted about my previous podcast.
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I think you’ll find it interesting.
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On April 10th, a fellow salonner named Levi posted a comment about my last podcast,
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which featured Bruce Dahmer in a radio interview where he was discussing the Occupy movement.
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And here’s what Levi had to say.
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I have been patient with Lorenzo’s Occupy Wall Street
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segments because the shows still have featured some Leary, McKenna, or something in that vein.
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This one, however, lacks that perspective altogether. I think it’s very important to
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have the psychedelic salon. This is where we learn about our inner minds and what potential is there.
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We learn things here, and then we go out to the world
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and participate in things discussed by Bruce, etc. But if the salon turns into just another
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political soapbox, then we’ve lost something truly special. And then in parentheses, he closed and
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said, and to put my above statement into perspective, I certainly side with Bruce and
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Lorenzo’s politics for the most part. So my old man grumpiness is not because I oppose your views. Just keep them to a smaller segment
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on the show, please. Well, Levi, you may want to skip listening to the rest of this podcast as well.
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You see, even though the first part of it is a recording of a conversation that
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took place in Prague over a decade ago.
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And even though the conversation is between two certifiably psychedelic thinkers, Terence McKenna and Ram Dass,
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I’m afraid that if you listen closely, you’re going to think that they too are focusing on the Occupy movement,
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even though it hadn’t even begun yet.
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hadn’t even begun yet. The way I see it, while I am a firm believer of the importance and necessity of reintegrating psychedelic medicines back into human culture, I also think that there is much
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more to the experience of being in a psychedelic state than simply learning about our inner minds
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and what potential is there. After all, hey, what’s the use of potential if we don’t put it to some
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use? As you’ll hear Ram Dass say in just a minute, just don’t talk about it, let’s the use of potential if we don’t put it to some use?
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As you’ll hear Ram Dass say in just a minute, just don’t talk about it, let’s do it.
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So, I don’t see this discussion of the Occupy Movement, both here and all over the world right now, as a political soapbox.
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In fact, anyone who thinks that the Occupy Movement is about politics still doesn’t have a grip on what the movement is all about.
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It is much, much deeper than that.
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So deep that it is actually the essence of what some of us think of as psychedelic thinking.
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There comes a time, I think, when we’ve got to put some legs on our thoughts,
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and that is why I’m continuing to support and participate in the Occupy Movement. So, as we listen right now to Ram Dass and Terence McKenna’s somewhat rambling conversation,
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perhaps on another level, we should try to understand how they have come to a place
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where they are actually integrating the thoughts and ideas that they encountered during psychedelic voyages,
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and they’re now bringing this new knowledge back into the world
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in a way that maybe can have some practical effects
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on the development of a better civilization.
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Or maybe it’s just wishful thinking on my part,
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and I’m reading more into this conversation than is justified.
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But let’s give it a listen now, and I’ll let you be the judge of that.
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justified but let’s give it a listen now and i’ll let you be the judge of that i’m standing in the center of one of central europe’s most beautiful and mysterious cities
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this is prague czechoslovakia and i’m terence mckenna we’re here to meet with some of the
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world’s most outstanding thinkers to discuss science, spirituality, and the mounting global crisis. And it’s fitting that we
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should meet in this, the capital of ancient Bohemia, for Prague and Bohemia have always stood
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for intellectual innovation, chance-taking, and the life of ideas. In the Jugendstil splendor of one of Prague’s most famous concert halls,
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we encountered Richard Alpert and persuaded him to have lunch with us. Alpert, who now calls
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himself Ram Dass, is one of the most enduring figures from the American cultural upheaval of
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the 1960s. Alpert, whose career reaches from Harvard University to the plains of the 1960s Albert whose career reaches from Harvard
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University to the plains of the Punjab has transformed himself into a spokesman
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for humanities ignored and downtrodden you don’t think there’s any it would it
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would needs the external form of the mushroom it would never have happened
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for me I only argue from my own experience.
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Yeah, but you and I were both so thick in crap when it happened.
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You know, that’s why we needed it.
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Well, but there are a few others out there.
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We didn’t corner the market on being thick in crap.
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Yeah, but I’m talking about somebody like a Ramana Maharshi or somebody like that.
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Oh, well, these people.
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I mean, there are people.
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Sure. somebody like that oh well these people I mean there are people sure who but the
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idea is not to come up with something that the best among us can make hay with
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but a democratic something which addresses the species the thing that
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seemed to me so important about the psychedelic experience was that it happened to me I wasn’t reading John
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Chrysostom or Meister Eckhart that course those guys right on it happened
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to me happen to me yes and and so I assume that I am a very ordinary person
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therefore if it happened to me it could happen to anyone and that’s really questionable
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You know just set of assumptions there one that you’re a very ordinary person
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And whether the same chemical given to a dozen people would bring about 11 other
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people like him I think it would be not you the outcome would be very different and
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That’s what I keep getting cast into an evolution of consciousness model about individuals
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because there’s such marked individual differences.
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Three people come before my guru,
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one completely goes,
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and the other two get a chapati.
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And people take psilocybin and they…
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Some go like that and they go like that,
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and some go like that and they go like that and some go like that well
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don’t you think a good metaphor for it would be sexuality apparently there are
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some people who can kind of take it or leave it and others of us it rears its
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ugly head with great presence yet everybody has to notice as I get older I move from one of
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these categories to the other it leaves so much space in my life I don’t know what to do with my
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free time I hope it never happens to me just clinging no just aspiring to claim.
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Actually, I live the life of an ascetic.
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It’s my aspirations that are pulling me down.
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Well, see, the nice thing about this evolutionary argument is that you can sort of make the snake take its tail in its mouth.
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It does. The escape is not into some science fiction future.
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No.
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It’s into an archaic recursion of some sort.
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We once knew everything we need to know.
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So what we are trying to find out is lost knowledge, not new knowledge.
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And if you direct people
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back toward 10,000 20,000 years ago they see a kind of completion that an
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open-ended future is seems to me it’s a can it’s a confusing thing to use time
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in that way because it makes the artifacts of that period seem to be valued
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as opposed to the artifacts of this period it seems to me that i mean whether you call it not
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science fiction but science fiction can also be very compassionate it can be very historically
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relevant it doesn’t have to be it’s just using a different set of artifacts to work with. Well, for instance, I see most of what’s happened in the 20th century
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as being unconsciously driven by this fascination with the archaic.
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Fascination with the archaic?
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Yes.
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Wow, of all the things I predicted you’d say, it wasn’t that.
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Well, for instance, impressionism deconstructs the hard image of realism and gives you a
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feeling-toned thing, which was very antithetical to Victorian Edwardian thought. Then Freud
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and Jung described different aspects of the unconscious, but to do it, Freud has to talk about repressed, primitive
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sexual imaginings. Jung talks about folklore, fairy tales, and mythology. Meanwhile, the
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Dadaists and the Surrealists are saying we have to break up the linear expectations of
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the bourgeois mind. And then you get at Jackson Pollock and those
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people who say the image itself has to be thrown out and then to my mind the psychedelic thing in
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the 60s based on rock and roll and a boundary dissolving psychedelic we almost by a random walk are finding our way toward shamanism, tribalism, nomadism.
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Go beyond the isms to tell me what we’re really finding.
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We’re finding a world made out of mind rather than stuff.
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Great, okay, we’re finding a world made out of mind.
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Every time you describe which mind you find that’s just limiting a limiting condition
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I mean if we just find the thing of wine created stuff live in that
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Then what happens?
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Well, I mean there is a transcendental dimension beyond language
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It’s just hard as hell to talk about it
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But if you live in it and talk from there then the forms
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that it will manifest in become just the forms that manifest it it’s nothing more
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or less than that so so you mean you download the unspeakable into language
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young let the chips fall where they may well they don’t fall where they may. Well, they don’t fall where they may. They fall in a perfectly harmonious pattern.
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Well, that’s them falling
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where they may.
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Where they may, where they will.
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Yeah.
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Well, so what I’m hearing from you is
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you have a very strong
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sense of the pattern.
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Strong enough
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that your limited,
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necessarily limited personal viewpoint
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doesn’t tend to get in the way.
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You can always push the reset to hope button
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and then you hope almost on principle.
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Trump has said to me, stand halfway between hope and hopelessness.
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I thought that was very useful.
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And is that… Eh? No. What is it? It’s awe. It’s the ecstasy of total horror and total beauty at the same moment. That’s what I feel
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again and again. It’s when I’m with somebody dying of AIDS. My God, my heart’s breaking. It’s
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horrible. It’s a ghastly social ostracization this that opportunistic
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illness and everything and there’s another part of me that’s giggling and i can hardly handle the
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the multifrenia of it all in the sense of the the perfection of it all and the beauty of the moment and the horrible of it
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well it all is spun together is that because you feel confident that the self
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is somehow indestructible or because you don’t even ask that question
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you got to watch the words indestructible, because that has a time dimension.
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I think that awareness is…
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For example, do you think this is the stage upon which all acts are performed?
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Or that we move up and down many levels?
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No, this is one of the stages. Oh, infinite number of… Probably infinite number.
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Because I just look into two minds
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and I see two different ones.
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And those are all on just this one.
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No, I feel like…
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Like I have this friend Emanuel,
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you know, this spook that has no body.
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And Emanuel’s two lines to me were
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death is absolutely safe, first first thing that’s a very profound
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statement the next thing he said it was like taking out the tight shoe
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and then i said to him emmanuel what am i doing here who made this error what am i doing on this
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plane he said you’re in school why don’t you try taking the curriculum and the curriculum is life any line means it
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means the exploration of the clinging of mine within the world of projected form
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so the exploring life it’s the exploring life with the hurt its purposes in the
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sense of returning back into the Garden of Eden.
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It’s a return.
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There is a return metaphor underlying all of it.
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And I’m sure you’re asked this all the time,
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so am I, and maybe we give different answers.
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Do you think that this can be done without psychedelics fast enough to have an impact on the global situation?
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I can conceive that it could be.
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You asked do I think.
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I don’t really have an opinion whether it will or won’t,
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but I could see it go either way.
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Like John Seed said to me,
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it’s too late as far as the rainforest is concerned.
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He says the inertia is too great in the whole system.
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It’s too late.
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So I said, okay, John.
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I mean, it was the first time somebody said it to me just like that.
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He said, it would take a miracle.
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I said, oh, that threw me back on whatever that was.
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And then he said, but after all, he said,
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we came up out of the ocean and came onto land.
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He said, we have quite a lineage of miracles.
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I wouldn’t underestimate it.
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That was a nice one.
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Well, so my question to you is,
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are psychedelics a miracle?
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Psychedelics are a miracle, yes.
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They may not be the only miracle.
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Are they the miracle we need?
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I don’t know that.
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I don’t know that.
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I think they may have already done
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what they were to do.
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Really?
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That’s interesting.
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I’ve never heard anybody say that. I think what is done is so much more powerful than anybody yet recognizes.
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See, I see that all this destruction is just the process of transformation.
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The question is whether we’ll keep it together in the process of transformation.
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And that’s why all I’m interested in doing is becoming a person
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and helping others become a person
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who in the process of the dramatic stuff will keep
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some equanimity and keep there’s some love and some presence in that process but that’s
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psychedelics may play a role in that so you’re right that comes back to your point
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well see my assumption in trying to think about thousands of psychedelic trips rather than just mine what they seem to do
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Generically is they seem to dissolve boundaries?
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Yes, and the ego is in the business of creating maintaining and defending boundaries
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So I really see the psychedelics as directly intervening in the core
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see the psychedelics as directly intervening in the core process which is running us over the edge which is our inability to emotionally connect with the consequences of what we’re doing if for a
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single moment we could feel what we’re doing we would stop i understand but we do it’s interesting
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because you take images that all of us know um of the um
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a girl running down the street naked in uh in cambodia you know or something like that
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and we say that wasn’t strong enough it all you know it won the life of the year award
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but it wasn’t strong enough it didn’t stop everybody and say holy shit what are we doing here so what would
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be strong enough to do that and you say well psychedelics but that’s you know it’s in a one-on-one
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thing i mean we’re talking major game players at this moment take i mean put china into your
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computer you know how do you deal with you know i, either you’re spraying it or it’s hotter or it’s some other level of consciousness that does it. There is a certain level of trauma
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that’s possible that can soften the ground. Not Three Mile Island and not Chernobyl, but
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I mean, I don’t want to create this with my mind, but I can imagine a certain trauma,
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I don’t want to create this with my mind, but I can imagine a certain trauma,
00:22:27 ►
like in Marin when they ran out of water.
00:22:29 ►
It was interesting.
00:22:33 ►
Suddenly all the ego barriers and everything and neighbors were talking.
00:22:34 ►
We’d never even met each other.
00:22:36 ►
People were taking showers together. A whole process was happening.
00:22:38 ►
I’m sure marriages, babies were conceived, everything as a result of that trauma, of that denial.
00:22:44 ►
So a massive, significant trauma.
00:22:47 ►
I’ve just got to tell you one scary image.
00:22:49 ►
There’s a saint in India who lived up to about 1930, I think, or something.
00:22:54 ►
And one of his devotees said to me, one night he was sort of looking off in the distance,
00:22:59 ►
and he said, there’ll come a time, he said, when you’ll walk five miles,
00:23:03 ►
and he said, you’ll sight the light from a fire
00:23:07 ►
of another person and you’ll be so happy to know another person exists.
00:23:11 ►
Quite a prediction.
00:23:13 ►
Isn’t that quite a prediction?
00:23:16 ►
It’s in there.
00:23:17 ►
It’s just in there somewhere, you know.
00:23:20 ►
Interesting.
00:23:21 ►
Can I ask you a personal question?
00:23:23 ►
You can ask me anything you’d like, Terence.
00:23:25 ►
It’s not a personal question to you, it’s a personal question from me.
00:23:30 ►
How do you like having the projection of special identity constantly laid on you?
00:23:38 ►
It’s a sadhana. It’s my practice.
00:23:42 ►
That’s a good answer.
00:23:47 ►
Although you didn’t say how you liked it I like it to the capacity I have
00:23:51 ►
to transpose it
00:23:52 ►
if I can’t
00:23:55 ►
sometimes these are going very fast
00:23:57 ►
to just keep it transposed
00:23:58 ►
then I love it
00:23:59 ►
it’s like a fire
00:24:01 ►
if the minute I start to lose it
00:24:04 ►
it’s a fucking drag.
00:24:06 ►
It really is.
00:24:07 ►
Because, I mean, you know, I was in a situation in Miami
00:24:11 ►
where all these women with blue eyes and curfewed hair
00:24:17 ►
were grabbing at the buttons of my jacket.
00:24:20 ►
And I thought, oh, I don’t want this.
00:24:22 ►
Whatever this life is, I don’t want to be part of this.
00:24:25 ►
I mean, this is, they eat your flesh, finally.
00:24:27 ►
Sure.
00:24:28 ►
But I realized at any time, I can walk away from it.
00:24:33 ►
And it’s my, you know, I’m a free agent.
00:24:36 ►
So do you never get in a situation where you say,
00:24:39 ►
gee, I’d like to do X, but Rob Doss would never do that?
00:24:43 ►
I’d like to do X, but Rob Doss would never do that.
00:24:48 ►
My stock and trade, my coinage,
00:24:51 ►
is in sharing just those predicaments publicly.
00:24:54 ►
See, I’ve turned it into… You’ve managed to…
00:24:55 ►
But public confession is the subtlest form of wastrel.
00:25:00 ►
Of wastrel, yes.
00:25:03 ►
I do it myself.
00:25:06 ►
I say,
00:25:07 ►
I’m not a
00:25:08 ►
good guy.
00:25:08 ►
Don’t follow
00:25:09 ►
me.
00:25:10 ►
I’m a bad
00:25:10 ►
guy.
00:25:11 ►
Then I leave
00:25:11 ►
the stage and
00:25:12 ►
say,
00:25:12 ►
now I can
00:25:13 ►
really be a
00:25:14 ►
bad guy.
00:25:15 ►
I often see
00:25:15 ►
my holy pictures
00:25:16 ►
in there.
00:25:17 ►
That’s one of
00:25:17 ►
my lines in
00:25:18 ►
my lecture.
00:25:22 ►
I don’t,
00:25:23 ►
I’ll tell you,
00:25:23 ►
you’re all,
00:25:24 ►
I only see the stuff
00:25:26 ►
that would disturb me
00:25:28 ►
is inside myself
00:25:29 ►
it has nothing to do with out there
00:25:30 ►
out there is just being what it is
00:25:32 ►
and I’m responding with my own stuff
00:25:34 ►
and if my stuff is my enemy
00:25:36 ►
it’s going to get too much for me
00:25:38 ►
and if it isn’t
00:25:39 ►
it depends on how much I can consume it
00:25:41 ►
joyfully participate in it
00:25:43 ►
passionately, all of it.
00:25:45 ►
Well, you’ve sort of achieved a unique synthesis.
00:25:48 ►
I mean, you’re almost a secular holy man
00:25:51 ►
because I don’t think people…
00:25:53 ►
I don’t care much about what you believe
00:25:56 ►
or who you light candles to.
00:25:59 ►
Basically, I think I heard you describe yourself once
00:26:03 ►
as a kind man.
00:26:08 ►
And you’ve gotten incredible mileage out of that because there are so few
00:26:10 ►
it’s far out
00:26:11 ►
right?
00:26:12 ►
yeah
00:26:12 ►
well when you talked about coming back into the boundarylessness
00:26:17 ►
to me that’s the whole quality of compassion
00:26:20 ►
has that boundarylessness to it
00:26:23 ►
it’s that your suffering is my suffering and your
00:26:25 ►
joy is my suffering and you are me and here we are. And if you hurt, I’m responding to your hurt, not
00:26:31 ►
because I’m a good guy and you’re needful, just because here is, this is suffering and this is the
00:26:36 ►
response to suffering and we’re both part of the same thing. And that’s the way I like to play it
00:26:41 ►
from. That’s to me, it’s like riding a wave. It’s the joy of just being
00:26:46 ►
part of the force of compassion in the universe. Well, when you look, you mentioned in your talk
00:26:52 ►
the other night, since some people think the 90s are going to be a second turn of the spiral,
00:27:01 ►
I observed the 60s as a spear-carrying 14-year-old.
00:27:07 ►
I was down in the masses.
00:27:09 ►
What were the mistakes that are avoidable if there’s a second chance?
00:27:19 ►
They’re inevitably going to be avoided.
00:27:22 ►
The first mistake was idealism.
00:27:24 ►
The first mistake was thinking that because you had seen it,
00:27:28 ►
you could just go like that and everybody else would see it.
00:27:31 ►
And you could just say, it’s all love, and then everybody would love.
00:27:34 ►
I mean, that was a naivete.
00:27:37 ►
It was naivete.
00:27:38 ►
It was not working on ourselves deeply enough
00:27:42 ►
to be without the clinging of mind that made us try to use it
00:27:48 ►
it’s it was our lurking righteousness that got in our way can you make a revolution though without
00:27:55 ►
an inner righteousness that’s exactly that’s the far out question of where would the action come
00:28:02 ►
from and there’s this line in budd that says, out of emptiness arises compassion.
00:28:06 ►
And what I experience is that there is a way in which
00:28:10 ►
I can sit down in front of a truck or feed a person
00:28:14 ►
or go make love or go surf,
00:28:18 ►
and there is an appropriateness in every one of those acts.
00:28:21 ►
And for me to hear that, I’ve really got to shut up.
00:28:24 ►
And my work is to keep shutting up,
00:28:28 ►
to hear which one it is.
00:28:29 ►
And if it is a revolution,
00:28:31 ►
it’s a revolution.
00:28:31 ►
So be it.
00:28:33 ►
So be it.
00:28:34 ►
You know the story of the monk
00:28:37 ►
and the army general?
00:28:40 ►
You know, and the army general
00:28:42 ►
is disemboweling all the monks?
00:28:44 ►
Tell me.
00:28:44 ►
And his reputation has spread far and wide.
00:28:47 ►
He’s a cruel, cruel man.
00:28:49 ►
And he comes into this village and he says to his adjutant,
00:28:51 ►
tell me what’s happening.
00:28:52 ►
And the adjutant said, all the people are frightened.
00:28:54 ►
They’re bowing down to you.
00:28:55 ►
All the monks in the monastery have fled to the hills but one monk.
00:28:59 ►
And the general is outraged about this one monk.
00:29:03 ►
And he gets up and he goes to the monastery
00:29:05 ►
and he pushes open the doors of the monastery
00:29:07 ►
and he walks into the courtyard
00:29:08 ►
and there’s the monk standing in the middle of the courtyard.
00:29:11 ►
And he walks up to him and he says,
00:29:13 ►
Don’t you know who I am?
00:29:16 ►
I could take my sword and run it through your belly
00:29:20 ►
without blinking an eye.
00:29:23 ►
And don’t you know who I am?
00:29:25 ►
I could have your sword run through my belly
00:29:28 ►
without blinking an eye.
00:29:32 ►
That’s great.
00:29:33 ►
That’s the place from which revolutions can heal,
00:29:37 ►
rather than just starting the cycle all over again.
00:29:40 ►
Then this is the place we never found in the 60s.
00:29:43 ►
I mean, I’ve always said it was all well and good.
00:29:47 ►
We reduced it to revolution.
00:29:48 ►
Although we had the taste of evolution, we reduced it to revolution.
00:29:52 ►
Well, and the day they came with machine guns, we didn’t stand like that much.
00:29:57 ►
Everybody said, oh my God, you could get killed playing this game.
00:30:01 ►
And I flew to Laos and India for three years.
00:30:05 ►
But already we had produced the they, by being so busy being we.
00:30:09 ►
True.
00:30:10 ►
Because so that they even noticed we. The fact that they noticed us was because we were busy being, we were just occurring to me, that being in a place like Prague, the real thing we have to learn here is how to make velvet revolutions, not a confrontation.
00:30:33 ►
Exactly right, exactly right. That’s why I admire Havel so much. That’s why he’s way up there in life.
00:30:39 ►
Because he’s a compassionate leader. He’s got wisdom, not just knowledge.
00:30:45 ►
He is tuned.
00:30:46 ►
There’s a quality of his heart that feels present.
00:30:49 ►
And he said in this op-ed article,
00:30:51 ►
I just read his letter last month.
00:30:53 ►
I read it too.
00:30:53 ►
At one point he said,
00:30:56 ►
we have to allow the naturalness to come back,
00:31:00 ►
the personal stuff, the heart stuff.
00:31:02 ►
I mean, he was right there with all of the…
00:31:06 ►
Do you see… I mean, I don’t want to put you on the spot,
00:31:08 ►
but I don’t, let me preface it by saying,
00:31:11 ►
do you see anybody who could play that role
00:31:15 ►
for the millions of kids in England and the United States
00:31:21 ►
who are now asking, where do we go from here?
00:31:27 ►
No. Is that good or bad?
00:31:30 ►
I guess the situation hasn’t demanded the emergence of that being it. Of those kinds of people.
00:31:36 ►
Because it can’t be anybody that comes forward and says I’m it. Oh, no.
00:31:39 ►
It has to be someone who the people say you’re in demand. But the situation is it.
00:31:42 ►
The formation. I mean you watch this, does the man make the time or you’re in demand the formation i mean you watch this does the man
00:31:46 ►
make the time out of the time make the man you know and you can feel how what took a certain
00:31:50 ►
person 20 years like to ride a bicycle somebody later on can ride a bicycle like that because the
00:31:57 ►
whole culture rides bicycles there’s some like a process where the situation emerged where the
00:32:03 ►
person has to come forward and they’re just forced out. I mean, I go
00:32:06 ►
and I look at all the senators that are
00:32:08 ►
running for this or that and I go to breakfast
00:32:10 ►
with them and I listen and I tune and
00:32:12 ►
Jerry Brown I hung out with and I said, you know,
00:32:14 ►
he’s got interesting ideas
00:32:16 ►
but his heart, my
00:32:18 ►
God, he’s got work to do. This poor guy,
00:32:20 ►
he’s suffering so much and
00:32:22 ►
I just keep, I love him
00:32:24 ►
and I want those ideas out,
00:32:26 ►
but I want him to work on himself, you know?
00:32:30 ►
But do you really care in terms of political terms
00:32:34 ►
whether Jerry Brown makes himself palatable to an electorate?
00:32:37 ►
I care because I work with the Mayan widows in Guatemala,
00:32:42 ►
and I feel like I’m representing them,
00:32:46 ►
and our our government our
00:32:52 ►
administration’s policies are killing them and their children and their husbands and
00:32:59 ►
Some way I’ve got to play my part as a member of a society that is imposing so much suffering on so many people I can’t just walk away and say I’m helping the nice Mayans
00:33:02 ►
I’ve also got to realize I’m an American citizen that’s hurting the Mayans, and I’ve got to play both games to
00:33:07 ►
change one way and do the other thing.
00:33:10 ►
So there’s a kind of, not to go egghead here, but a kind of coincidencia positorum, because
00:33:19 ►
on one level what you’re saying is, it’s all right, don’t worry. And on another level what you’re saying is it’s all right don’t worry and on another level you clearly are
00:33:26 ►
involved in a search for defining your role your where you would do some good optimum judo move
00:33:36 ►
optimum judo move so it isn’t enough to just say the system will take care of itself i am part of
00:33:43 ►
the system that is taking care of itself
00:33:52 ►
so it’s a sense of acting without acting through self it’s being not identified with the actor and not being identified with the fruits of the action that’s i mean to me that my one of my basic texts
00:33:57 ►
is the bhagavad-gita and those are the two injunctions and i really hear those and they’re
00:34:02 ►
very weird how you do an act when you’re not identified with being the actor
00:34:05 ►
and you’re not attached to the group.
00:34:09 ►
I mean, I lead this funny, continuous paradox
00:34:13 ►
that suffering stinks and suffering is grace.
00:34:17 ►
And I live with both of those all the time.
00:34:20 ►
Well, I think most people do.
00:34:22 ►
I think most people have taken a position.
00:34:25 ►
Oh, that suffering is bad, they hate it, they want to keep it away from them.
00:34:28 ►
Or that it’s grace, that it’s, you know, love.
00:34:31 ►
Well, and then the great masses of people never really draw the distinction
00:34:36 ►
because for them suffering is like air and water.
00:34:39 ►
It’s life.
00:34:39 ►
It comes with it.
00:34:41 ►
Burying the many children you bear.
00:34:43 ►
That’s why I found in the villages in India
00:34:46 ►
less suffering than I found around the middle class in America.
00:34:51 ►
Certainly less whining.
00:34:53 ►
Well, less preoccupation with what they don’t have.
00:34:58 ►
Well, they have a philosophy of reincarnation that must sustain them.
00:35:02 ►
There is something else that’s feeding them.
00:35:04 ►
Where we have a philosophy of, you know,
00:35:06 ►
if you don’t get it now, you never will.
00:35:10 ►
Exactly.
00:35:12 ►
We threw out in the councils of Nicaea, Trent, and Constantinople
00:35:16 ►
just the thing that would have healed,
00:35:20 ►
but we did it so that the Church could have power over it.
00:35:23 ►
Well, I think it was Friedrich Nietzsche who said,
00:35:26 ►
there was only one Christian and they crucified him.
00:35:30 ►
Yes, exactly.
00:35:31 ►
That’s so good.
00:35:32 ►
That’s such a good line.
00:35:36 ►
Well, my…
00:35:38 ►
You know, I was asking you, what did we do wrong in the 60s?
00:35:41 ►
One thing that has occurred to me,
00:35:45 ►
and I certainly felt it with my friends,
00:35:47 ►
was we assumed it would go on forever.
00:35:51 ►
We had no notion of window of opportunity.
00:35:54 ►
We just thought we’d blown the doors off the hinges
00:35:58 ►
and they would never be put back on.
00:36:00 ►
To me, the most amazing transformation in my lifetime
00:36:03 ►
is not the revolution of the 60s, but the counter-revolution of the 70s, where they managed to put the cuckoo clock back together again, even though it happened then and all of the 70s and 80s and all that was
00:36:26 ►
this kind of reverberation to this process and that I’m here and you’re here and we’re both
00:36:32 ►
still here it’s the 90s and I got a lot of people that you know I talk now in middle America
00:36:38 ►
and I look at my audiences and they they’ve never dope, they’ve never read Eastern holy books or anything.
00:36:47 ►
And I just say the same stuff I was saying in the 60s that I was saying to people with flowers and big pupils.
00:36:54 ►
And these people in the middle, you know, they’re corseted, nice people.
00:36:58 ►
And they’re going, and I think, far out, look, it happened.
00:37:03 ►
And I was looking the other way.
00:37:05 ►
Well, that’s true.
00:37:07 ►
And that’s where you’re looking for the resonance of a person to come forth
00:37:11 ►
that speaks from that consciousness with the assurance of the truth of it.
00:37:16 ►
Right.
00:37:17 ►
That’s what I think.
00:37:20 ►
All this business of a Christ figure, I mean, I see how seductive it is, but how we’ve gotten very cynical
00:37:27 ►
because we’ve projected into such a person
00:37:30 ►
a purpose.
00:37:35 ►
A purpose.
00:37:36 ►
Instead of just that light forming
00:37:39 ►
out of the needs of the moment,
00:37:41 ►
create that light to which…
00:37:43 ►
Because I find if i speak from a true
00:37:45 ►
enough for a moment when i can do it from a true enough place in my heart it it reduces the
00:37:52 ►
paranoia the subtle veils of paranoia in another person they don’t i don’t do it to them it just
00:37:58 ►
falls away because they test their testing and they don’t get from me anything that says like that
00:38:04 ►
they’re testing and they don’t get from me anything that says like that and I just watch them like a flower and I think boy I give a lot to just be that instrument you know
00:38:14 ►
that’s worth working for. Well that’s a great role. That’s worth it but it’s a role for everyone else.
00:38:18 ►
That’s the role for that’s the role that’s what I said to the ITA. I said, you know, just don’t talk about it. Exemplify it.
00:38:25 ►
Let’s be it.
00:38:27 ►
Well, you know, Blake said a wonderful thing.
00:38:30 ►
He said, if I can get it right,
00:38:33 ►
if the truth can be told so as to be understood,
00:38:38 ►
it will be believed.
00:38:41 ►
Right. Exactly.
00:38:42 ►
So all you have to do is say it.
00:38:44 ►
Exactly. When can you say it simply enough?
00:38:47 ►
Is it only said in silence simply enough?
00:38:50 ►
Or are there words? Or is there music? Or is there more?
00:38:54 ►
There’s words, there’s music, there’s silence, there’s gesture.
00:38:58 ►
Because it’s always going to exceed one’s grasp.
00:39:02 ►
See, my mantra is the Gandhihi line my life is my message
00:39:07 ►
that yes you said that every level very good of every level
00:39:13 ►
i think i’m at a little lower level because i’m very aware that
00:39:21 ►
i have to struggle to have my luck to say my life is my message.
00:39:27 ►
I would almost rather say,
00:39:29 ►
my message is my message,
00:39:30 ►
please don’t look at my life
00:39:32 ►
because I’m a fallible human being
00:39:33 ►
and I’m constantly fucking up.
00:39:35 ►
But you see how that weakens your message.
00:39:37 ►
You see how that quality means
00:39:40 ►
that the message doesn’t come from the root, the central.
00:39:44 ►
There’s a way in which it waffles.
00:39:46 ►
True.
00:39:47 ►
And that’s the thing.
00:39:48 ►
I really can’t.
00:39:49 ►
Once I saw the possibility of that, I said, why waffle?
00:39:54 ►
What is worth holding on to that’s worth waffling about?
00:39:58 ►
Well, I once said to Leo Seth, I’m sure you knew Leo.
00:40:01 ►
I said to him in a meeting, I said, Leo, you’re finished, you’re completed, you’re baked. Me, I’m half-baked. And I hope’s interesting. I mean, when you and I talk, you and I hear each other perfectly.
00:40:26 ►
Truth.
00:40:27 ►
And so where are we hearing each other from?
00:40:29 ►
I mean, then we each play our game the way we play our game.
00:40:32 ►
And you can play your game saying I’m half-baked.
00:40:34 ►
That’s your strategy if you choose.
00:40:36 ►
It’s a mercurial strategy.
00:40:38 ►
Yes, I understand.
00:40:41 ►
Here’s to mercurius.
00:40:43 ►
here’s to Mercurius you have somehow been able to survive
00:40:51 ►
the gauntlet of American media
00:40:54 ►
in a way that your colleagues
00:40:56 ►
and comrade in arms
00:40:58 ►
didn’t seem to
00:41:01 ►
they either had to step away from their leader role or they transmuted it into some lesser thing.
00:41:09 ►
So now Allen Ginsberg is poet laureate, Tim Leary keeps the club scene in Los Angeles interesting.
00:41:29 ►
interesting yes but you in a sense never backed down never retooled you were also not first among equals back in the original thing but when all is said and done i was always the second
00:41:35 ►
in a way it’s like birds if you stay just behind the lead bird you don’t have to do much
00:41:41 ►
you know you’re just kind of riding along on the well And Ralph tells me to be third is the real good position
00:41:49 ►
It’s like being the young prince you won’t ever be actually it was only until about five years ago
00:41:57 ►
Little past five years. They’ve stopped introducing me as Tim Larry’s partner right at which I mean, I think that was great
00:42:04 ►
I see him as one of my you
00:42:06 ►
know first teachers great teachers and uh but i don’t have the friend for me and says i have no
00:42:15 ►
model of myself i mean i don’t know who i am i don’t know whether i’m an anachronism from the 60s
00:42:21 ►
or i’m just about to have a prophet to be yes I have no idea and I don’t care
00:42:25 ►
That’s what I saw either of them all the things you get in either way are a drag and they’re beautiful
00:42:33 ►
No, well, I think you’re a prophet to be I think we all are that you know
00:42:37 ►
You know as Bilbo Baggins once said the greatest adventure still lies ahead
00:42:43 ►
I believe that I’ll believe that when they lower
00:42:46 ►
my box i’ll believe i do too exactly good exactly well thanks for coming by i’m sure you had many
00:42:53 ►
many demands on you thank you it was a pleasure pleasure i was afraid of you up until now now
00:42:59 ►
i’m delighted no no don’t be afraid of me the people who are afraid of me don’t know me or
00:43:04 ►
they know me better than you ever will.
00:43:11 ►
Angela Sarian is an anthropologist and workshop leader from California
00:43:16 ►
who brings the unique perspective of her Basque ancestors
00:43:20 ►
to the formulation of a new discipline
00:43:23 ►
which I would call neo-shamanic anthropology.
00:43:28 ►
So there you have it, as the king said to Mozart. Yes, as the caterpillar on top of the mushroom
00:43:37 ►
said, who are you? Well, so I looked over your newsletter and and it looks like sort of neo-shamanism is the
00:43:54 ►
category that you are now defining in your public talks.
00:43:59 ►
Is that right?
00:44:00 ►
Yeah, I’m doing a lot of that, but mostly universals, what we all have in common,
00:44:06 ►
finding those basic roots which then take us back to indigenous cultures.
00:44:12 ►
Archetypes?
00:44:13 ►
Archetypes.
00:44:14 ►
Uh-huh.
00:44:15 ►
Especially the archetype of the warrior and the healer and the teacher and the visionary.
00:44:19 ►
Those are the four that the shamanic or indigenous cultures really focus upon.
00:44:27 ►
Well, so you’re genuinely in the mainstream of the archaic revival.
00:44:34 ►
I never thought about it that way, Terrence.
00:44:37 ►
Well, actually, I’m sort of subliminally plugging one of my books,
00:44:41 ►
which is called The Archaic Revival,
00:44:43 ►
plugging one of my books, which is called The Archaic Revival,
00:44:50 ►
but the notion is that what this whole cultural thrust of the 20th century,
00:44:55 ►
and especially the last 30 years, will ultimately be understood to be about is a return to aboriginal models.
00:44:59 ►
And that means especially shamanism, and to my mind, especially psychedelic shamanism.
00:45:07 ►
But the Renaissance went through a rebirth of classicism, probably without ever really
00:45:14 ►
articulating that that’s what was happening.
00:45:18 ►
But I think this shamanic or aboriginal ecological feminine partnership impulse is now pretty explicit.
00:45:30 ►
So that’s what I meant.
00:45:31 ►
Yeah.
00:45:32 ►
Well, I think that I love the title like Archaic Revival because at the same time what’s coming
00:45:40 ►
up is everyone talking about a new world order. And yet, in order to understand what constitutes a new world order,
00:45:48 ►
we need to take a look at what the current world order is.
00:45:53 ►
And so we really have essentially four worlds.
00:45:56 ►
We have the industrialized first world,
00:46:01 ►
and we have the socialist bloc, which would be the second world, and we have
00:46:06 ►
the third world countries, which are really the developing countries like Brazil. But
00:46:11 ►
the fourth world is really the ab three worlds say that the land belongs to the people,
00:46:31 ►
but the fourth world says that the people belong to the land.
00:46:35 ►
And so that people belonging to the land is really an archetype.
00:46:51 ►
really an archetype, it’s your archaic revival, but it’s getting back to nature and owning those roots brings up that revival, which is the shift that we’re going to need to make
00:46:57 ►
in order to do the New World orders to get the people back to the land. Well, it’s too bad that there’s no place in the world where that aboriginal position
00:47:10 ►
is in a governing position.
00:47:14 ►
Starting for the first time in the last three years is the establishment of the World Indigenous
00:47:21 ►
Council.
00:47:23 ►
of the World Indigenous Council. And this summer in July is the first time
00:47:27 ►
that there will actually be a vote
00:47:30 ►
to have a seat on the United Nations
00:47:32 ►
where there will be representatives
00:47:34 ►
from each of the world indigenous peoples.
00:47:38 ►
And so that’s, I’m real hopeful about that.
00:47:41 ►
Really, you mean every Amazonian tribe
00:47:43 ►
could potentially have a delegate in the union?
00:47:47 ►
Or that they themselves could have a council and vote who would be their best representatives as a bioregional?
00:47:57 ►
Well, you know, there’s some phrase in Latin, I can’t remember what it is,
00:48:02 ►
but it means that he who does not expand his borders
00:48:06 ►
will have his land taken by somebody else. And this was the theory that drove colonization in
00:48:13 ►
South America. All of these countries like Peru, Colombia, Ecuador, Venezuela, actually encroach on a vast aboriginal core of that continent which should be
00:48:27 ►
self-governed yeah and were it self-governed it would be huge force
00:48:33 ►
huge force yeah it’s amazing that I really think that for the last 20 years
00:48:40 ►
there’s been this whole east-west bridging, but we’re really starting in the last five years to this north-south kind of bridging,
00:48:49 ►
and I really feel that the Latin American countries,
00:48:57 ►
which there are 12 plus the indigenous force countries,
00:49:02 ►
that the northern force would be Europe, Russia, Canada,
00:49:07 ►
but the whole southern force is like Africa, Asia, and the Latin American countries.
00:49:13 ►
So that whole force, those two forces really coming together.
00:49:20 ►
So even though you’re a spiritual teacher, you talk global politics like a State Department second string.
00:49:28 ►
I do. I do.
00:49:31 ►
I was thinking about the grandparents of the planet being the old Asian cultures and all the Pacific Rim,
00:49:41 ►
and then the exciting thing that’s happening in Europe for the first time in
00:49:45 ►
history that 11 countries are coming together to form a European coalition that it puts
00:49:52 ►
the child of the planet which is like America or the United States which is so based on
00:49:59 ►
a hero myth or a heroine myth and fierce independence that the call in the next 50 years is for
00:50:08 ►
Americans to learn about community, which indigenous societies and the grandparents
00:50:15 ►
of the planet, the old Asian cultures, and now the parents of the planet, really modeling
00:50:21 ►
teamwork and collaboration and community is that America is going to
00:50:27 ►
need to really learn about collaboration and community and cooperation. And in order to
00:50:34 ►
do that, then there’s going to need to be going back to what would be the archaic revival
00:50:40 ►
or that beginning to shift so that there can be a new world order
00:50:45 ►
where that fourth world is addressed.
00:50:48 ►
Well, don’t you think sort of what’s happening is that people have a very strong
00:50:53 ►
local sense of place, loyalty.
00:50:58 ►
It’s true.
00:50:58 ►
And then they are forming a planetary loyalty.
00:51:03 ►
But in a way, all the levels in between are dissolving,
00:51:06 ►
so people don’t think of themselves as Americans.
00:51:09 ►
They think of themselves as Northern Californians and Earthlings,
00:51:13 ►
sort of like that.
00:51:14 ►
But in a way, federal Europe, which is no longer a sure thing,
00:51:19 ►
because of these recent developments, goes against that.
00:51:26 ►
I sort of think maybe McLuhan was right
00:51:29 ►
and that there is going to be a kind of electronic feudalization
00:51:34 ►
where many more small states will emerge.
00:51:39 ►
And the reason detritus for the nation state appears to be slowly disappearing.
00:51:47 ►
And the states, I think the crisis that came to Marxism
00:51:52 ►
is coming now for the republican oligarchy in America.
00:51:57 ►
I think you’re right.
00:51:59 ►
I think you’re right.
00:52:00 ►
I think there’s a terrific shift of power that’s going on that out of maybe the hierarchical types of power to people power. the computer or the electronic because it’s people-based, individual-based,
00:52:28 ►
bringing the power back to the individual,
00:52:29 ►
and also free enterprise rather than capitalism or communism.
00:52:37 ►
There’s that middle road coming in.
00:52:41 ►
So I think that when we take a look cross-culturally at the three kinds of power,
00:52:46 ►
or the power of presence, or the power of communication, or the power of position,
00:52:51 ►
the willingness to take a stand, is that it’s going to be very important to see how those shifts of power
00:52:58 ►
really are going back to empowerment of the people.
00:53:03 ►
So what are you looking toward in the future, personally
00:53:06 ►
and globally?
00:53:08 ►
I’ve been doing a lot with
00:53:10 ►
taking a look at
00:53:12 ►
what’s found
00:53:14 ►
that’s similar in all art
00:53:16 ►
globally, because I
00:53:18 ►
feel that
00:53:19 ►
what humanity consistently
00:53:22 ►
creates in art
00:53:24 ►
is really reinforcing deep spiritual processes.
00:53:30 ►
And so what I’ve found is that there are five shapes
00:53:34 ►
that are found consistently in all art globally.
00:53:38 ►
One is the circle, and the other is the cross,
00:53:42 ►
like the plus sign, the equidistant cross, and the triangle, and the square, and the other is the cross, like the plus sign, the equidistant cross,
00:53:46 ►
and the triangle and the square and the spiral.
00:53:51 ►
And you can see them all here in Prague, everywhere you look.
00:53:57 ►
I mean, in all the decor are those repeated over and over and over again.
00:54:02 ►
So I began to look cross-culturally to see if if
00:54:06 ►
cultures attributed the same meaning to those shapes and found that 92% of all the cultures
00:54:13 ►
attribute the same meaning to the circle which is the process of individuation or to the cross
00:54:19 ►
relatedness and interconnection and interface and the square stability and foundation setting and
00:54:29 ►
the um so does this imply a genetic syntax of form or something like that i i think that it that it’s
00:54:38 ►
um it’s part of the archaic revival in that there would be a cellular, deeply cellular imprinting
00:54:49 ►
of some kind.
00:54:50 ►
Well, that’s what I mean, perfection.
00:54:51 ►
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, really do.
00:54:55 ►
The triangle being the visionary or searching, seeking, questing process or the planning,
00:55:01 ►
dreaming process and the spiral being the need for variety or the need
00:55:07 ►
for change or growth and evolution.
00:55:10 ►
So it’s been really wonderful.
00:55:12 ►
It’s part of a new book that’s coming out called Signs of Life, and showing how those
00:55:20 ►
images come up in all of the continents and are also found in literature and poetry
00:55:27 ►
and put all that together in one place.
00:55:30 ►
So do you spend much time thinking about the future?
00:55:34 ►
I do.
00:55:36 ►
What’s your take on it?
00:55:38 ►
I think that it’s exciting for me to think
00:55:41 ►
that we’re being called in the next 50 years to our own creative fire,
00:55:47 ►
that we all have salvation myths and we all have doomsday myths,
00:55:54 ►
but there’s a whole body of myths in mythology that have been totally overlooked
00:56:01 ►
that I think we’re being called to, which are creation myths.
00:56:06 ►
And what are the creation myths,
00:56:07 ►
but stories about how to build new worlds
00:56:10 ►
internally and externally.
00:56:13 ►
And I think that for 2,000 years
00:56:15 ►
we’ve done the polarity dance,
00:56:19 ►
and we’re moving into a both-and world
00:56:21 ►
rather than an either-or world.
00:56:24 ►
And I’m excited about the future that if we can really move into the wisdom of the plant kingdom
00:56:34 ►
and if we can move into the deep wisdom of nature as a mirror of our own nature and remember our creative fire. I think it will be a wonderful
00:56:50 ►
time in history. I’m so glad I was born at the time I was born to be a part of this evolutionary
00:56:56 ►
renaissance.
00:56:57 ►
How do you see it happening? I mean, do you see a breakthrough of technology or an abandonment of technology?
00:57:05 ►
Do you see pharmacological engineering?
00:57:08 ►
Do you see new religions?
00:57:10 ►
Do you see…
00:57:13 ►
In other words, it’s easy to hope,
00:57:16 ►
but very hard to get the details in focus.
00:57:18 ►
Yeah. I think that what I see is that there’ll be both the bridging of the natural and the technological.
00:57:34 ►
So a more cellular technology, a more organic infrastructure.
00:57:41 ►
And I think that computers are here to teach us about those organic structures.
00:57:48 ►
I think that we’re learning different kinds of systems-spiritualize re-humanize technology and
00:58:09 ►
interpersonal relations yeah well i’ve come right down the line on that and to me psychedelics are
00:58:17 ►
just simply the best catalyst but anything which works should be pushed to that yeah absolutely absolutely and I don’t know I was
00:58:30 ►
just thinking that somehow we’ve we’ve got to think about possibilities I was thinking about
00:58:37 ►
in the Rosicrucian era which is very close here to Prague is that they would often say you can count the seeds in
00:58:47 ►
an apple but you can’t count the apples in a seed and I think we’re moving in that that that era
00:58:55 ►
where we really good you know think of the possibilities and the seeds that we have been
00:59:02 ►
planting or the fact that computers
00:59:05 ►
are teaching us about instant feedback or instant response and acknowledgement and that
00:59:12 ►
the power of acknowledgement and feedback to allow organisms to grow. And that’s why
00:59:19 ►
children are in many ways know that instinctively that they they’re mesmerized by, that they can get a
00:59:26 ►
yes or no or go back or fatal error or whatever it might be.
00:59:31 ►
Well, it’s a kind of explicit hard wiring of our own unconscious.
00:59:37 ►
No more do we create cultural artifacts that are simply our furniture, but now our thoughts,
00:59:44 ►
our values are embodied in this stuff.
00:59:48 ►
Yeah, it’s very exciting.
00:59:51 ►
Yeah, it really is.
00:59:52 ►
It’s very exciting.
00:59:57 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,
01:00:00 ►
where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
01:00:05 ►
Before I say anything else, I feel that I should point out how the trend of the conversation
01:00:11 ►
between Ram Dass and Terence seemed to carry with it a feeling of continuity from the 60s
01:00:17 ►
through the reverberations of the 70s and 80s to their present time, which was the 90s.
01:00:23 ►
And the point I want to make is that
01:00:25 ►
our work here will never be done. For me, the process of the transformation of human
01:00:32 ►
experience, the so-called human experiment, is just that. It’s a transformation, a process,
01:00:40 ►
something that, like a dance, has no ending point. point which if you look at it the right way should bring a bit of peace to your life
01:00:48 ►
sure the world is in a state of chaos right now but hey that’s nothing new
01:00:53 ►
it’s always been this way
01:00:55 ►
the main difference that I see is that with the amazing degree of interconnectivity
01:01:01 ►
that has been brought about by the internet and the advent of mobile computing,
01:01:05 ►
we are now much more aware of how tumultuous human life can be and often is. So rather than
01:01:13 ►
hide in a corner somewhere and try to wait it out, my advice is, while it is very important that you
01:01:19 ►
do have a safe corner of some kind, I think it’s equally important that you leave it from time to time and engage in
01:01:26 ►
life to the fullest. Get some direct experience of life in the street, life on the ground, life
01:01:31 ►
outside of cyberspace. Then you can retreat to your safe nest and think about how you’re going
01:01:37 ►
to engage in and act on your next foray into the very messy world of 7 billion human beings who are all trying to kind of sort things out for themselves as best they can.
01:01:49 ►
But don’t despair just because the world seems to be on fire,
01:01:53 ►
because, heck, to one degree or another, it’s always been that way.
01:01:57 ►
Of course, that is also no reason to not do your part
01:02:01 ►
in trying to change things as best you can.
01:02:04 ►
So, what did you think about their advice for the future?
01:02:07 ►
Which, of course, at the time, they thought of as the 90s,
01:02:11 ►
and which, of course, are already long forgotten.
01:02:14 ►
But what about their advice to forego idealism?
01:02:18 ►
To me, that is very sound advice.
01:02:21 ►
Not that we shouldn’t have ideals,
01:02:23 ►
but that we should be aware that blind obedience
01:02:25 ►
to our ideals may also prevent us from actually getting anything done to change the direction in
01:02:31 ►
which humanity is now heading. And don’t you love it when in Speaking of the Sixties that Ram Dass
01:02:38 ►
said, it was our lurking righteousness that got in the way. That’s something that all of us in the Occupy
01:02:46 ►
movement may want to keep in mind. There was a period of my life during which I was very
01:02:51 ►
righteous, but I got cured of it by being around a bunch of other righteous people who
01:02:56 ►
were basically a pain in the neck, as I’m sure that I was from their point of view.
01:03:02 ►
Of course, that still doesn’t answer Terrence’s question as to whether we can make a revolution go without righteousness. Now, that’s a really good
01:03:09 ►
question, don’t you think? And it’s one that I guess you’re going to have to answer on your own.
01:03:15 ►
So, do you find it more rewarding to talk about the indestructibility of the soul or awareness,
01:03:22 ►
as Terrence and Ram Dass did in the beginning of their conversation?
01:03:26 ►
Or do you find it more rewarding to talk about how to apply the insights gained through the
01:03:31 ►
use of psychedelics as they apply to the world we live in and must navigate through today?
01:03:37 ►
I guess it depends upon your demeanor.
01:03:39 ►
And to be honest, there have been times in my life when talk about the potentially eternal aspects of awareness was all that I wanted to focus on.
01:03:48 ►
But now that I’m getting older and the specter of death is more than a remote possibility,
01:03:54 ►
I find that talking about things that ultimately are unknowable, at least to me,
01:03:59 ►
aren’t nearly as interesting as trying to figure out how to prepare young children for life on this planet 40 years from now.
01:04:07 ►
And that’s why talking about the issues surrounding the worldwide Occupy movement hold more interest
01:04:12 ►
for me than speculations about life after death or the origin of consciousness.
01:04:18 ►
If you think about it, even if you’re only 20 years old right now, how did your parents
01:04:23 ►
prepare you for life today?
01:04:21 ►
even if you’re only 20 years old right now.
01:04:24 ►
How did your parents prepare you for life today?
01:04:28 ►
It certainly wasn’t with a view of iPhones and the Internet in mind,
01:04:33 ►
because not many people even considered the possibility of such things 20 years ago.
01:04:37 ►
Yet, here we are, all surviving to one degree or another.
01:04:45 ►
So, what basic values and lessons did we learn in order to be better equipped to cope with today’s world, and how can we help those who will come after us to be better prepared to carry our species forward for another thousand years or so?
01:04:53 ►
To me, it’s by extracting the insights learned during psychedelic explorations,
01:04:58 ►
and then applying them to everyday issues that the value of the experience, psychedelic experience, I think, can actually
01:05:06 ►
be found.
01:05:07 ►
And while that may include an occasional foray into politics, I still think that the Occupy
01:05:13 ►
movement is much larger than that.
01:05:16 ►
To my way of thinking, a thousand years from now, some old guy sitting in a little room
01:05:21 ►
creating a podcast might just be tempted to say that the Occupy movement of the early 21st century
01:05:27 ►
was the ultimate psychedelic trip.
01:05:30 ►
But I admit that the odds of that are extremely long.
01:05:37 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo,
01:05:39 ►
signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
01:05:42 ►
Be well, my friends.