Program Notes
Guest speaker: Lorenzo and friends
In this follow-up session after Bruce Damer’s “Deep Dive into the Mind of McKenna”, Lorenzo leads the discussion of the participants in a workshop held at the Esalen Institute in June of 2012. Topics of the conversation include:
- Consciousness, not drugs were the focus of McKenna’s work
- Heroic doses are not as important as bringing back information
- The healing and love value of teaching plants
- We all contributed to making Terence McKenna a cultural icon
- Building a new civilization in the shell of the old
- The Eschaton as another step in human evolution
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321 - A Discussion About Psychedelics
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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 ►
Psychedelic Space. This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
00:00:29 ►
And to begin with, I want to send my love and thanks to all of our fellow salonners,
00:00:38 ►
and particularly those who posted supporting comments on several of the websites that have been following our little dramas here in the salon.
00:00:45 ►
And in particular, I’d like to thank those who either paid for a copy of my Pay What You Can audiobook,
00:00:48 ►
an edition of my novel, The Genesis Generation,
00:00:51 ►
and to those who made direct donations to the salon.
00:00:56 ►
Altogether, you’ve helped us to get out of the woods, so to speak,
00:01:00 ►
and our hosting fees are now taken care of for the next two months,
00:01:01 ►
and actually even into October.
00:01:05 ►
So a lot of pressure has been removed from my life and for that I will remain eternally grateful. But even more than your financial donations,
00:01:12 ►
well your messages of support have lifted my spirits immeasurably. And this weekend I’ll
00:01:19 ►
be contacting each of you directly to again give you my thanks. And for the recording that I’m about to play for you
00:01:26 ►
right now, I want to thank both Tom Riddell, who traveled to Esalen with us to make the recording,
00:01:32 ►
and to Mystical Sun, the musician and sound engineer who spent a lot of time
00:01:36 ►
leveling up all of the various voices and eliminating as much extraneous chatter as
00:01:42 ►
possible, you know, stuff that comes with recording in a room full of interesting people.
00:01:47 ►
Now, I’ve only just begun going through these recordings myself,
00:01:51 ►
and so I’m not sure yet how many podcasts will come out of our Esalen workshop.
00:01:55 ►
For sure, there will be a compilation of several segments by Bruce Dahmer,
00:02:00 ►
and today I’m going to play the recording of the session that took place immediately
00:02:04 ►
after Bruce’s now controversial deep dive,
00:02:08 ►
although I still don’t really understand what was so controversial about it.
00:02:13 ►
Anyway, what follows is the interaction and commentary between myself, Bruce, and several of the other participants in this workshop.
00:02:22 ►
As you’ll hear, this, to me at least, is an
00:02:25 ►
excellent example of what I call psychedelic thinking. And thinking outside of the box
00:02:31 ►
like this is what I personally focused on during our weekend together at Esalen. And
00:02:36 ►
that’s why I’ve also titled this episode, Occupy Yourself. However, I suspect that the
00:02:43 ►
title alone will maybe keep a few of our fellow
00:02:45 ►
salonners away from listening to it, since from the title one might think that it’s simply
00:02:50 ►
about the Occupy movement. And I guess in a sense it probably is, because again, to
00:02:57 ►
me at least, the movement is about a movement in consciousness, and for many of us, consciousness, not drugs,
00:03:05 ►
was actually the focus of Terence McKenna’s work.
00:03:08 ►
As you already know, the apparently most controversial part of Bruce’s deep dive into the mind of McKenna
00:03:15 ►
that immediately preceded the conversation we’re about to hear
00:03:19 ►
was the fact that after some time in 1988 or 1989, that Terrence no longer partook of magic mushrooms.
00:03:28 ►
And as we continue to listen to more talks by Terrence in the months ahead,
00:03:32 ►
I think that we’ll see quite clearly that he never implied otherwise.
00:03:36 ►
On numerous occasions that I can recall,
00:03:39 ►
many of which have already appeared in recordings posted all over the net,
00:03:44 ►
Terrence very clearly stated that he used psychedelics only rarely.
00:03:48 ►
And I know of at least one recording in which he specifically talks about using psilocybin.
00:03:54 ►
However, there is a difference between using mushrooms and using synthetic psilocybin,
00:03:59 ►
which is the main, but perhaps not only, active ingredient in magic mushrooms.
00:04:05 ►
So let’s be clear about this, at least, that while Terence maybe didn’t use mushrooms again,
00:04:10 ►
he did use psilocybin on several occasions that I’m aware of.
00:04:15 ►
Now, you’re going to hear a lot more from me in just a minute,
00:04:19 ►
but if you’ll listen closely, I’m sure that you’ll discover that the deep value coming out of this workshop was what the other participants had to say.
00:04:28 ►
For our part, Bruce and I tried to seed the conversation and respond to comments,
00:04:34 ►
but the bulk of the important stuff actually came from the rest of our little group, some of whom you are about to hear in just a moment.
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And while I won’t be identifying any of the speakers by name,
00:04:46 ►
as I listen to them again with you right now, I can very clearly see their faces and my heart
00:04:53 ►
just glows with love for them. As we will hear in just a moment, these wonderful souls are most
00:04:59 ►
likely a very good representation of what all of our fellow salonners are like.
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You know, they’re young, old, women, men, and from all walks of life and experience.
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So thank you all for being a part of a very special gathering.
00:05:20 ►
And as you and I are going to hear right now, they also had some very important things to say.
00:05:26 ►
What I’d like to maybe kick it off a little discussion here is that uh you know I’ve had this information for some time and and it uh it really did kind of traumatize me at first because
00:05:32 ►
like we were just talking that you know I I used to feel like myself was a psychedelic failure
00:05:38 ►
because I wasn’t going out doing uh heroic doses of mushrooms every other night and things like that.
00:05:47 ►
But the more I’ve thought about it, the more I realize that I’ve kind of tuned out on anything Terrence,
00:05:54 ►
whenever he’s talking about the medicine itself, and it’s consciousness that seems to me was his gig.
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And we’re at a really interesting point, or you could call it other words too, but in world
00:06:07 ►
history, that, you know, the world is coming unglued. And some of those comments of Terence
00:06:13 ►
about the economic collapse and all, well, he was a little early. But, you know, we are facing on a
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global basis things like this. And I’ve always felt that it was the psychedelic community that is going to
00:06:26 ►
be like the keel on a ship to keep the ship calm. And so that, you know, if you’ve had even just one
00:06:34 ►
or two psychedelic experiences, you know how to expect the unexpected and you don’t freak out
00:06:39 ►
about things. And I think part of the role of our community, and I’ll be talking about that a little more this afternoon,
00:06:45 ►
but perhaps we should be thinking of ourselves as somebody to kind of put oil on the waters
00:06:52 ►
and helping our friends get through things because we’re going to go through a big change.
00:06:56 ►
Like it or not, the world is changing.
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And, you know, it’s not like it’s unexpected.
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These things have been bubbling under the surface for a long time.
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The change in human consciousness has become very obvious with what some people are calling the Occupy Movement,
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but it started long before that, and it’s been bubbling up really since January of 94 in the Chiapas
00:07:22 ►
when the Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle was issued when NAFTA went in.
00:07:29 ►
And that was really the beginning of a worldwide shift in consciousness.
00:07:33 ►
And so I’ve always felt that this whole 2012 meme that unfortunately Terrence also helped spread the thing,
00:07:42 ►
you know, it got carried away.
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It’s great for Hollywood.
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But I’ve always felt that if there are still people around talking about these things five, six hundred years from now,
00:07:51 ►
that the generation on either side of this particular year we’re in,
00:07:58 ►
that two-generational swing is when they’ll see there was a definite change
00:08:03 ►
in human consciousness.
00:08:06 ►
swing is when they’ll see there was a definite change in human consciousness and moving our consciousness away from the power elite who actually took over consciousness a long time ago.
00:08:15 ►
And if we have time, I’ll get back into talking about that some. But right now, what I’d like to
00:08:20 ►
do, because some of you probably knew this about Terrence before and some of you may be in shock
00:08:28 ►
to know that he wasn’t the big head psychedelic head that we thought he was but how does this
00:08:33 ►
change your perception of the value of his words his message him coming here has it you think it’ll
00:08:40 ►
have an impact on you how do you take this message back when Dennis’ book is going to be coming out
00:08:45 ►
and we’re the vanguard that I think will help spread our friends,
00:08:51 ►
the word to our friends that there’s a lot deeper person there
00:08:56 ►
than just the guy that did drugs all the time.
00:08:58 ►
And I think we can start right there.
00:08:59 ►
Do you want the microphone?
00:09:02 ►
Well, for me, it really humanizes Terrence,
00:09:05 ►
and it gives so much more realistic value to what he has to say.
00:09:11 ►
I mean, I’ve always thought that those heroic doses
00:09:13 ►
are just too much overload for the human system,
00:09:17 ►
and we’re already experiencing so much overload on so many different levels
00:09:22 ►
that what we need to do, I think, is to cultivate a
00:09:25 ►
sense of balance and wisdom and sanity. And I agree with you that consciousness was really
00:09:33 ►
Terence’s main message. And the way that he could diagnose and observe social dynamics,
00:09:39 ►
coming trends, he was an incredibly insightful, observant human being, very unique. And
00:09:47 ►
I, like all of us here, just really, really love him and love him for who he was as well as what
00:09:54 ►
he said and did. And because I knew him personally, I know that he was a very authentic, genuine,
00:10:08 ►
authentic, genuine, beautiful, sterling man. He was trustworthy. He was amazingly candid and honest.
00:10:16 ►
And I have great respect for him. So I commend Dennis for having presented this side of things because it humanizes him in a way that I think ultimately makes his message much more valuable
00:10:22 ►
for all of us. So I say thank you, Dennis, and thank you for bringing it forth.
00:10:27 ►
I agree with you.
00:10:28 ►
And I have to admit that when I first learned this, I actually cried.
00:10:32 ►
I wept for Terrence.
00:10:33 ►
He was suffering because he got a tiger by the tail and he had to pay the bills.
00:10:37 ►
And, of course, some of it was fun.
00:10:39 ►
But on the other hand, he had to have some long nights of the 2 o’clock in the morning.
00:10:46 ►
And I think any sentient, conscious, aware human being living through these times does.
00:10:51 ►
And I think to deny that is to rob us of what we really need to be doing at this time,
00:10:57 ►
which is paying attention and responding appropriately.
00:11:01 ►
And I think that’s an appropriate response.
00:11:03 ►
responding appropriately, and I think that’s an appropriate response.
00:11:14 ►
So Terrence really did have foresight into these times coming up,
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and I think we’re all in our fashion going to be experiencing our version of it.
00:11:21 ►
And none of us know what that’s going to look like,
00:11:25 ►
and we don’t know what to expect or how to be prepared.
00:11:29 ►
But I think we can all feel the energy of that coming in.
00:11:49 ►
And the dynamics at Esalen, the dynamics at and so much buckling of the structure of our institutions that we have been living by, that are no longer serving us, that
00:11:55 ►
are totally out of balance, that need to collapse and create something new. And none of us have a
00:12:01 ►
clue how to go about that or what it’s going to look like. I agree.
00:12:05 ►
And my personal take on the thing is politics are not the answer.
00:12:11 ►
You know, I don’t want to say that people shouldn’t be engaged
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if you feel that you should be promoting medical marijuana or whatever.
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But getting emotionally involved in it, in the outcome,
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the current system is just broken.
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And I think those are good rearguard actions.
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But somehow I think us and our friends and neighbors and relatives, we need to start talking about a community.
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Not moving to a commune somewhere, but what we what we do with what we’ve got, where we’re at,
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and how do we, how do we bring this kind of consciousness into our lives? How can we be
00:12:51 ►
more honest about ourselves to ourselves and to our, those that we associate with,
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so that we don’t get into the bind that he got himself into. And yet, you know, even though he
00:13:02 ►
was in that bind, he, he got these people thinking, like these young kids say.
00:13:06 ►
I didn’t understand what he was saying, but it got me to thinking about this.
00:13:09 ►
So what has he gotten us to think about?
00:13:12 ►
And that’s where the value of his message is to me.
00:13:15 ►
But let’s hope that this doesn’t turn a lot of people off and turn them against him.
00:13:21 ►
But I don’t see how it will myself.
00:13:24 ►
Hey.
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a lot of people off and turn them against him, but I don’t see how it will myself.
00:13:32 ►
Hey, as a friend of Terrence that loves him very much and also a business partner that saw his sketchy, sketchier side, he wasn’t quite sterling.
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He was a human being and full of all this stuff we’re talking about.
00:13:42 ►
But the thing that keeps reoccurring to me is Terrence didn’t get himself in that position by himself and he didn’t get it out of
00:13:49 ►
some kind of moral flaw. I was trained as a sociologist, anthropologist, and we made Terrence
00:13:56 ►
who he was. His fans made Terrence into who he was. And when you got a guy trying to raise two kids
00:14:02 ►
that has a complicated past
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and you start making money because people are smiling at what you say in a place like this,
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it’s very hard to derail that momentum.
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It’s very difficult to say no to cash and admiration and adulation.
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And we have a responsibility for who Terrence was and is.
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In fact, at this point, it’s really up to us to say who he was and is and could be.
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Living around him, I can just testify that there was really unbelievably brutal pressure on the man,
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and he was incredibly lonely.
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I just spent a weekend with Daniel Pinchbeck,
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and basically all we talked about was how lonely it is to spent a weekend with Daniel Pinchbeck and basically all we talked about was
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how lonely it is to be a celebrity intellectual in a quasi-spiritual movement without any rules.
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It’s very, very hard to be out there. So I just keep thinking about mercy for my friend.
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The guy made all sorts of mistakes. I won’t ever tell you the ones he made with me,
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but they’re there and they were scarring,
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and they disrupted my life at times. But end of the day, I love that guy incredibly, and
00:15:12 ►
the validation he gave to my own life by his attention literally changed it more than any
00:15:20 ►
other experience with any other human. So again, just sociologically, let’s think of this man as a
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cultural artifact like gumbo or square dancing or technology. And it’s a little more
00:15:34 ►
merciful to understand that he wasn’t trying to cheat us in any way. He was trying to juggle.
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And eventually there were too many plates in the air and things crashed down in various patterns of amusing, crazy shit. But still,
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I love that guy and I really deeply appreciate that he just helped bring this conversation
00:15:58 ►
back into the public and give us a chance to find each other. That’s really all I have
00:16:04 ►
to say about all the other stuff of that.
00:16:07 ►
Well, I’m a latecomer into this Terence McKenna craze, and I’m enjoying it totally here.
00:16:14 ►
In fact, sitting from the sideline and looking at what you guys are talking about, perhaps
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no one called it perhaps defective personality or taking the easy road.
00:16:27 ►
I don’t see it this way at all.
00:16:30 ►
I see a person that took psychedelic in order to enhance his imagination
00:16:36 ►
and get connected, come with new idea, and he came up with wonderful ideas.
00:16:41 ►
I mean, the last piece that I heard over there about the system breaking down
00:16:46 ►
may not have been exactly correct in timing, but it is correct in essence
00:16:52 ►
because we could see this tension bulging and this tension growing
00:16:58 ►
and perhaps snap at some point in our lifetime or in this year or next year.
00:17:07 ►
So I see a person that, I see in Terence McKenna,
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a person that researched on himself, it’s psychedelic,
00:17:17 ►
until he could no longer afford to do it.
00:17:20 ►
His body rejected it.
00:17:22 ►
And that doesn’t mean that he couldn’t spread the same, the
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word for other people to try to enhance themselves, to try it. So I don’t see irony in the fact
00:17:33 ►
that he was not doing it himself, but promoting it for other people. I hope somehow this circle can actually lead with the essence of the time we live in.
00:17:50 ►
And rather than saying we don’t know what’s going to happen,
00:17:57 ►
somehow attempt to try a role in this. because it’s the polarized system, and the haves have a hold on everything,
00:18:11 ►
from the banking system down to energy system and corporate America.
00:18:17 ►
You know, it’s obvious to all of us that gravitate towards places like Esalen,
00:18:25 ►
but it’s not so obvious to the rest of the people.
00:18:28 ►
And the question is how to bring this to the masses
00:18:31 ►
and perhaps how to find a way of preventing the energy from snapping
00:18:40 ►
and perhaps find a parallel system along the line to diminish them until they die.
00:18:48 ►
Yeah, I agree.
00:18:51 ►
Who else has something they’d like to add here?
00:18:54 ►
You know, Terence, last night it was brought out that Terence often said the world is created by language.
00:19:02 ►
You know, a lot of things he said I had a lot of trouble
00:19:05 ►
understanding. You know, I couldn’t quite
00:19:08 ►
grok that until
00:19:09 ►
one of his talks he mentioned
00:19:11 ►
I think it was William James said
00:19:14 ►
how when an infant is born
00:19:15 ►
it’s laying there in the crib
00:19:17 ►
and she’s seeing a
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blooming, buzzing confusion.
00:19:23 ►
You know, just
00:19:23 ►
energy.
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And then all of a sudden there’s this whoosh and color and she’s just amazed.
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And then the parents come in and say, that was a bird, a peacock.
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And her world is starting to be built of language.
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And when I was walking through the garden on the way over here today,
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I was trying to see things without language, and I couldn’t.
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You know, that’s lettuce, that’s a tomato, that’s a plant.
00:19:55 ►
And Terrence was guilty of that too. You know, for years I felt I was a psychedelic failure
00:19:59 ►
because I never saw those transforming machine elves
00:20:04 ►
and the self-dribbling basketballs.
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And then one time, finally, I was looking at what he called self-dribbling basketballs,
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and I realized, oh, I would have said something really different about that,
00:20:18 ►
but I could see how he could see that.
00:20:20 ►
Now, I’m not going to tell you what I thought it was because it’s just as bad as what he did to me.
00:20:23 ►
Now, I’m not going to tell you what I thought it was because it’s just as bad as what he did to me.
00:20:32 ►
But, you know, I get e-mails from kids saying, I don’t see these castles in the sky and stuff like that that he talked about.
00:20:42 ►
So we all, I think, need to kind of be more conscious about our use of language and how we pass some of our thoughts on to other people. And like what you were just saying, you know, we’re in a time of transition.
00:20:48 ►
And it’s not like it hasn’t happened before.
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I mean, you know, Rome came and went, but it didn’t go overnight.
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And people built a new civilization within the shell of the old.
00:20:58 ►
And I think that’s the kind of thing that we’re up to.
00:21:01 ►
And we can talk about some of those things as well. But to circle back to how the story that Terrence hasn’t taken mushrooms
00:21:11 ►
for the last 12 years of his life,
00:21:14 ►
does that change any of your opinions of Terrence McKenna?
00:21:18 ►
It was such a relief to hear that.
00:21:21 ►
Because, you know, when I started taking things,
00:21:23 ►
I started thinking like, oh, man, three grams is enough. And taking more and thinking about the heroic doses and thinking,
00:21:29 ►
how am I ever going to get up to six or eight? You know, God, I don’t think I ever want to do that.
00:21:35 ►
And it’s really interesting because my experience has been that if you take a dose where you can
00:21:40 ►
stay in both worlds, you can bring back the information. If you take something that blasts you out, you lose that information. So this is really good. And maybe we can help
00:21:49 ►
other people who are starting or doing things to realize that it’s not about the so-called heroic
00:21:55 ►
dose of massive doses. It’s about what works for you to get the information that you can carry with you. So I was very relieved to hear that. Thank you. I actually was too. And
00:22:07 ►
the one of the things I think over here that one of the things that I think that we everybody in
00:22:14 ►
this room, I don’t care if you’re how old you are, you’re an elder, like it or not, in the psychedelic
00:22:20 ►
community. And Aldous Huxley’s last book, Island, according to Laura, he considered his very most
00:22:27 ►
important work. And that was about building ritual, you know, bringing the children up,
00:22:34 ►
not as psychedelic heads, but as in the world of consciousness, where you break free of the,
00:22:40 ►
you know, cultural and consciousness cauldron that your mind is poured into with,
00:22:46 ►
with family, religion, state, culture, all that. And to get people to start thinking outside of
00:22:52 ►
the cauldron, so to speak. And, and so again, I think us, uh, as a psychedelic community
00:22:58 ►
need to be thinking about how do we teach our children? You know, my oldest grandchild is now 13, and the youngest is four, almost four.
00:23:08 ►
And, you know, I’m thinking about, you know, in another few years, the oldest one, I’m
00:23:14 ►
going to, how do I tell her about this?
00:23:17 ►
How safely do we bring people in so that they don’t think they have to do a heroic dose,
00:23:23 ►
you know?
00:23:24 ►
And I don’t know exactly what happened to Terrence,
00:23:27 ►
but in one of the recent podcasts I put out,
00:23:30 ►
and I wish I’d paid better attention to my own program,
00:23:33 ►
but he said that he had combined mushrooms with something else,
00:23:37 ►
and it might have been Syrian rue, I’m not sure,
00:23:39 ►
but something, you know, he made it really adamant,
00:23:42 ►
never, never, never do this.
00:23:43 ►
And so if I find that again, I’m really going to pay closer attention.
00:23:48 ►
And so that’s the kind of information we need to be passing along,
00:23:51 ►
is don’t do 12 grams in silent darkness.
00:23:55 ►
And, of course, I wouldn’t do it without music anyhow.
00:23:57 ►
I never bought the silent part.
00:23:59 ►
But I think we have some sort of a responsibility to the people coming after us
00:24:05 ►
to start building things that were lost in Eleusis 2,300 years ago.
00:24:13 ►
What struck me about what I learned about Terence this morning
00:24:18 ►
was how his first early experiences started really from that place of wonder
00:24:24 ►
and looking at the iridescence and the beauty and the butterfly wings.
00:24:28 ►
And the conversation, I feel like, to this point and even in his life,
00:24:34 ►
was a lot about the mind and exploring the mind through psychedelics.
00:24:39 ►
And for me, in my experience with psychedelics,
00:24:41 ►
it’s really been a vehicle
00:24:45 ►
to get in touch with my heart and my body.
00:24:49 ►
And as part of this time of transition
00:24:52 ►
and transformation in the world,
00:24:54 ►
I really feel like having a more collective,
00:25:00 ►
heart-centered awareness
00:25:02 ►
and having, like you said, a space
00:25:06 ►
to accommodate the human soul.
00:25:08 ►
I really think that’s going to contribute
00:25:10 ►
to a part of the healing
00:25:12 ►
that these plants
00:25:14 ►
and these medicines can offer the world at this
00:25:16 ►
time. And I feel like that was something he came to
00:25:18 ►
later in his life when in the end
00:25:20 ►
he did say it is all about the love
00:25:22 ►
and to kind of
00:25:23 ►
and that it was mentioned that wasn’t a place that he was so willing or able to go earlier on,
00:25:30 ►
but that that’s what he came to.
00:25:32 ►
And it’s just something that stirred in me,
00:25:35 ►
that maybe the next phase of this work and this exploration is more of a heart-centered
00:25:45 ►
and even body-centered
00:25:46 ►
maintaining and reestablishing connection
00:25:49 ►
with our living earth right now
00:25:51 ►
so that we’re making more clear choices
00:25:55 ►
about how we move and how we interact
00:25:57 ►
with this planet as we go forward.
00:26:02 ►
Yeah, I think that’s really interesting how he put up some barriers between himself and love.
00:26:09 ►
And there was a tribute CD put out after he died.
00:26:13 ►
And I don’t know where this particular talk came from.
00:26:16 ►
But there’s a little sound bite where he was talking about such and such.
00:26:21 ►
And all of a sudden he says, well, I’m almost embarrassed to say this.
00:26:24 ►
But really the answer is love.
00:26:26 ►
And that’s the only time I’d heard him mention the word
00:26:28 ►
other than the last words of his life.
00:26:30 ►
And so he had put up some barriers, and we all do.
00:26:34 ►
And that’s where I see these medicines,
00:26:37 ►
if they’re used in a sacred ceremony, et cetera,
00:26:41 ►
with some grounding and good support,
00:26:43 ►
how they can tear down the barriers that we all build up.
00:26:46 ►
And that’s why the music album, in case you’re wondering,
00:26:49 ►
that is one I’ve heard more than any other, is The Wall.
00:26:53 ►
Tear down the wall.
00:26:54 ►
And that’s what psychedelics have done for me.
00:26:57 ►
And I don’t have to tear down the wall every weekend.
00:27:01 ►
My wall is down.
00:27:03 ►
And so, you know, once your wall is down,
00:27:07 ►
hang up the hammer. How’s that? A play on Alan Watts’s thing. But I think that, you know,
00:27:15 ►
for Terrence, he took me from using these medicines as a party animal. And I came to
00:27:24 ►
them for pleasure. And I stayed for the spiritual thing. Well, I and I came to them for pleasure and I stayed for the spiritual
00:27:27 ►
thing. Well, I think I came to Terrence for pleasure and I stayed for the other things that
00:27:31 ►
he was talking about as well. Um, as far as learning anything new about Terrence, I, uh,
00:27:39 ►
I, I never assumed that the man wasn’t a real man, that he didn’t have struggles and that,
00:27:42 ►
I never assumed that the man wasn’t a real man,
00:27:44 ►
that he didn’t have struggles and that he didn’t have a hard time
00:27:48 ►
following or living by his own message.
00:27:51 ►
I think everybody does.
00:27:53 ►
I think it’s a lot easier to conceive of a value and an ideal,
00:27:59 ►
and it’s a lot more difficult to live that all the time
00:28:04 ►
without ever faltering. Everybody falters, right?
00:28:10 ►
As far as the heroic dose thing or anything like this, I do agree that it’s a very individual
00:28:18 ►
choice what people do, how much they do, what they use it for, etc. I personally,
00:28:23 ►
what people do, how much they do, what they use it for, etc.
00:28:26 ►
I personally, eight dried grams is my standard.
00:28:30 ►
This has been the way for years.
00:28:34 ►
But I also don’t use it in quite the way that I think a lot of other people do.
00:28:41 ►
I’ve become very uninterested in the visual hallucinations of the substance.
00:28:50 ►
Mostly because the things I see just seem semi-annoying. It’s like aliens trying to sell me addictions or something. They don’t seem very beneficial or helpful
00:28:55 ►
to me or something that I’m interested in. But what I do use it for is it mushrooms seem to be kind of this like psychic Drano for me my wall did come
00:29:07 ►
down but then society and day-to-day life and various stresses and pressures build that wall
00:29:14 ►
back up and so every once in a while I take eight eight or so grams and then it flushes out the
00:29:21 ►
system and the kind of love river the flowing the flowing of love and of life and of everything, gets back going.
00:29:30 ►
And I feel perfect and content and amazing and wonderful and I try to share that with everybody that I can.
00:29:38 ►
But it does. The gunk gets in the system.
00:29:41 ►
And that’s really how I use this particular substance and
00:29:45 ►
that’s part of the reason that I do a high dose. It’s always been a very
00:29:49 ►
difficult thing for me. Other people trip and they have very wonderful times. I’ve
00:29:55 ►
always had a very hard time that then leads to a like open space where I feel
00:30:02 ►
wonderful. But that very hard time is always there.
00:30:05 ►
I’m always extremely anxious coming up.
00:30:08 ►
I always encounter things that either bring me to tears or to my knees or whatever.
00:30:16 ►
And then I always intentionally go back
00:30:18 ►
because I recognize that as being a part of the process of getting to where I want to go, I guess.
00:30:25 ►
So I don’t know.
00:30:26 ►
I think it really is an individual thing and how we getting to know ourselves
00:30:33 ►
and how it affects us and how we choose to use it.
00:30:37 ►
So I don’t really, I wouldn’t, I have no ill will towards him for the advice that he gave
00:30:45 ►
because I don’t think anybody should take somebody else’s advice wholly on itself
00:30:50 ►
without evaluating what that advice means to you first.
00:30:54 ►
Good point.
00:30:55 ►
And one size does not fit all is really the answer.
00:30:59 ►
And, you know, a number of years ago I one time talked to Ann Shulgin about bad trips because I had never really had a bad trip.
00:31:08 ►
And I said, am I saving up for the mother of all bad trips?
00:31:12 ►
And she said, no, a bad trip comes when something comes up and you refuse to face it.
00:31:18 ►
And as long as you’re willing to face it, you know.
00:31:20 ►
And so I think that, you know, I’ve seen people that have taken one gram of mushrooms
00:31:26 ►
and had a deeper experience than I did at five. So, you know, it’s not a one size fits all. And
00:31:32 ►
that’s one of the things that we have to relearn. I mean, our society, our culture, you know,
00:31:38 ►
2,500 years ago, 3,000 years ago, at least in the Greek world, ancient Greek world,
00:31:45 ►
through the mysteries of Eleusis before the state took control of it,
00:31:48 ►
people were living in a different world, you know, the pre-Homeric world,
00:31:53 ►
before we really got into things.
00:31:56 ►
I read a book recently called Memories and Visions of Paradise,
00:32:00 ►
where they went through and collected a lot of commonality from various myths.
00:32:07 ►
And they were talking about the pre-Homeric, the mystical, the paradise mindset.
00:32:14 ►
And it kind of reminded me of Terence’s concept of the stoned ape, because they said that
00:32:21 ►
throughout all of these, gleaning these facts from the myths, that the people that lived in this state, there was an onset with a dazzling light that fled the brain,
00:32:32 ►
overwhelming ecstasy, intellectual illumination impossible to describe, fear of death vanishes,
00:32:38 ►
transcendental love, a reappreciation of nature and a sense of mission and a change of personality, psychic gifts.
00:32:46 ►
I mean, that all sounds like the description of a psychedelic experience.
00:32:51 ►
So I think one of the things that was kind of fun to do is to see what kind of a wild, weird idea for me
00:32:59 ►
that I could come up with that was as crazy as some of Terrence’s ideas. So I’m going to turn his stoned ape idea on his head because, as you know, we make DMT in our bodies.
00:33:13 ►
And John thankfully pointed out that it’s not medically proven.
00:33:19 ►
It’s the pineal gland that does it.
00:33:21 ►
They don’t really know where it’s coming from.
00:33:22 ►
I was passing that bad information around too, but it is in our bodies. And so my upside down, Terrence, is that
00:33:31 ►
before the apes started eating the mushrooms, there was a steady trickle of DMT and they were
00:33:39 ►
living in paradise in this sort of mystical state. And then they came down out of the trees, and they found the mushrooms.
00:33:47 ►
And just like before we invented shoes, we had pads on our feet that we didn’t,
00:33:52 ►
you know, really thick feet.
00:33:52 ►
Now we can’t walk on gravel very well because the shoes have replaced it.
00:33:58 ►
Maybe the mushrooms were so easy to do that the DMT trickle stopped,
00:34:03 ►
and that’s why we don’t know what the use of it is in our body yet.
00:34:07 ►
You know, they’re talking about maybe at birth and death.
00:34:09 ►
So there’s my opposite stone date.
00:34:11 ►
Maybe he got it wrong.
00:34:12 ►
Maybe it was the mushrooms that took us out of paradise
00:34:15 ►
because we had an easy way to trip instead of the on the natch thing.
00:34:19 ►
You know, it’s a cockamamie idea.
00:34:21 ►
But that’s one of the beauties, I think, of Terrence McKenna,
00:34:25 ►
is that he was able to allow us to get until you get to a level where you can’t cross the line,
00:34:33 ►
but he allowed us to explore ideas that aren’t taught in schools.
00:34:39 ►
So just my two cents on it.
00:34:43 ►
There we go.
00:34:42 ►
So just my two cents on it.
00:34:44 ►
There we go.
00:34:52 ►
You know, for me, some of the concepts that he brought to mind,
00:34:57 ►
like Gaia and, you know, the collective,
00:35:02 ►
and thinking about this whole idea, the stone-day concept,
00:35:07 ►
it really makes me wonder if there really is something to this eschaton.
00:35:12 ►
You know, we were in the desert over the weekend in a group of like-minded people,
00:35:16 ►
and we had just finished watching Terrence’s riff on DMT.
00:35:24 ►
And yet the conversation afterward,
00:35:28 ►
everybody, half of the room was talking about
00:35:31 ►
the changes that are happening in our world, you know,
00:35:35 ►
and what’s going on with, you know, the Arab Spring
00:35:39 ►
and, you know, the Occupy Movement and everything else.
00:35:42 ►
And then it just kind of gets me thinking,
00:35:47 ►
well, you know, the Occupy movement and everything else. And then it just kind of gets me thinking, well, you know, the human species,
00:35:53 ►
maybe we really are just going through a step in evolution. Maybe the eschaton is really something that Terrence felt inside as his part
00:35:59 ►
for all of us to make that next step, to evolve.
00:36:03 ►
for all of us to make that next step, to evolve.
00:36:05 ►
And if that’s the case,
00:36:11 ►
he jumped right up to the plate and he hit the ball.
00:36:12 ►
He did his part.
00:36:16 ►
And for that, I thank him.
00:36:18 ►
He really did his part.
00:36:23 ►
But that also means that by him doing his part enables all of us to be here,
00:36:25 ►
and we all have a part to play.
00:36:27 ►
And that’s it.
00:36:30 ►
I agree. I agree.
00:36:31 ►
And, you know, an eschaton can be different things to different people.
00:36:37 ►
You know, that there are, like the talk by Eben Moglen I recently podcast,
00:36:44 ►
where he talked about the fact that, in his opinion,
00:36:47 ►
the World Wide Web is the most significant invention of technology since writing.
00:36:53 ►
And if you think about it, you know, I can, you know,
00:36:57 ►
Bruce and I have been involved in the net for many, many years,
00:36:59 ►
and the speed with which things have changed.
00:37:03 ►
Look at the world we’re in right now,
00:37:07 ►
that 4 billion people in this planet have connections to the Internet right now.
00:37:13 ►
I mean, that boggles the mind.
00:37:15 ►
And in Bangalore, where they slum, it’s either 2,200 or 2,400 people,
00:37:21 ►
one toilet, 1,700 children, and 914 cell phones. One toilet and 914 cell phones.
00:37:32 ►
Those people are connected to all of the world’s information that’s being put up there. Now,
00:37:37 ►
granted, it’s a mess out there, but think about the fact that in another 20 years or so,
00:37:50 ►
Think about the fact that in another 20 years or so, you will be able to contact by text or whatever every human being on the planet.
00:37:52 ►
We will literally be wired together.
00:37:55 ►
That’s changing things.
00:38:11 ►
And that’s why all of these, you know, solidified minds inside the Beltway in Washington have no clue what’s going on. And the people that talk about the Occupy movement should get involved with the Democratic Party and elect somebody.
00:38:14 ►
They don’t understand what’s going on with the movement.
00:38:19 ►
Isn’t it wonderful that there is no one in charge?
00:38:26 ►
Yeah, that was one of Terrence’s things that he said,
00:38:30 ►
if you’re afraid about who’s in charge or worrying about the Illuminati,
00:38:34 ►
he said it’s really more frightening because nobody’s in charge.
00:38:39 ►
That brings up something interesting I’ve been thinking about.
00:38:42 ►
Doug Rushkoff, is that his name?
00:38:43 ►
Do you know who that is?
00:38:45 ►
Program or be programmed?
00:38:50 ►
He brings up a very interesting issue that I would not otherwise have thought about because I agree that technology is really going to be a big part of this evolution that we’re undergoing.
00:38:56 ►
But he says if we allow the status quo to program our technology,
00:39:01 ►
we will simply be programmed in that way. So what we need to do is
00:39:07 ►
elect to learn how to program so that we can program these technologies in accordance with
00:39:14 ►
the way we want them programmed, not how we want to be programmed.
00:39:19 ►
Exactly. And that’s one of the things Moglen pointed out where they in Bangalore in this slum,
00:39:25 ►
how it all started is he’s got a computer center there now.
00:39:30 ►
But what happened, he said, these young communist kids working in a corporation were going through their trash bins
00:39:36 ►
and pulling out all the computers that were thrown away and fixed them and put them in a computer center in the middle of this slum.
00:39:43 ►
And nobody cared about learning how to use the office suite or anything like that to get a job in a computer center in the middle of this slum. And nobody cared about
00:39:45 ►
learning how to use the office suite or anything like that to get a job in a cubicle. They used it
00:39:50 ►
to create art and music. And then they hacked into it and they learned how to, that’s one of his
00:39:55 ►
objections to the Mac, because you can’t hack it. And he said that the innovation, you can either
00:40:02 ►
have it coming from a corporation that’s in control, or you can have a hackable machine where the kids, you know, the 12 years,
00:40:08 ►
our little four-year-old granddaughter is about ready to start hacking into our computer.
00:40:12 ►
I mean, she is just geeky.
00:40:14 ►
And so it’s taking the control away from whoever is trying to do it.
00:40:20 ►
And, of course, the people in control are trying to stay in control.
00:40:23 ►
You know, that’s the what it’s been forever. You go back to the ancient days when it was the temple, everything was around
00:40:30 ►
the temple and the priest and the king were essentially the same. But these temple complexes
00:40:36 ►
had thousands of people and that’s where their food came from. So you start controlling the
00:40:41 ►
consciousness and the food supply. And that’s one of the things I think we, all of us, here in the planet today,
00:40:48 ►
need to start getting our food supply independent of money.
00:40:53 ►
And in Greece, where the people are starting to start their family gardens outside of the town and all,
00:40:58 ►
in San Diego, downtown San Diego, in the projects,
00:41:02 ►
the kids are learning how to make hanging gardens,
00:41:05 ►
wall gardens hanging up and down the sides of the buildings.
00:41:08 ►
So getting back in touch with nature and getting control of things away from the power elite,
00:41:14 ►
I think, is part of what we’re up to.
00:41:17 ►
And we only do that on an individual basis.
00:41:19 ►
We don’t go pick at the congressman to do it.
00:41:21 ►
We start learning how to plant our own food,
00:41:24 ►
which is significantly
00:41:25 ►
harder than I ever imagined until I saw Mary C. building her garden, and I don’t volunteer to help
00:41:30 ►
her. And I feel guilty about it, but it’s a huge amount of work, you know, and it’s something that’s
00:41:36 ►
worth learning. Yes, I have experienced a lot of creativity and immense change from psychedelics.
00:41:49 ►
And I’ve also enjoyed McKenna’s workshops, about half a dozen of them.
00:41:56 ►
That said, I have a few other comments.
00:42:02 ►
One about the stoned ape I think one huge question is when the
00:42:11 ►
the several dozen several dozen of us become stoned do we each experience our
00:42:18 ►
own trip or do we experience something out there?
00:42:32 ►
And that’s a big question that McKenna obviously answered and then backtracked.
00:42:36 ►
There isn’t anything out there or there’s not as much out there
00:42:39 ►
or the exact things I said were out there.
00:42:44 ►
As a psychedelic pioneer and as a courageous exponent of psychedelics
00:42:48 ►
and a researcher in his tabulation of ethnobotanicals, he was unsurpassed. On the other hand, as an
00:42:59 ►
intellectual, somebody mentioned hitting balls out of the park
00:43:05 ►
I actually think he sliced
00:43:07 ►
the golf ball into the rough
00:43:09 ►
basically
00:43:11 ►
because in my opinion
00:43:13 ►
he made a cardinal error
00:43:15 ►
that the existentialists don’t make
00:43:19 ►
he made the cardinal error
00:43:21 ►
of reifying language
00:43:23 ►
thinking language is something.
00:43:28 ►
When that baby who sees the flower sees a flower, but the baby sees the flower,
00:43:38 ►
the baby does not see the symbol and the language element.
00:43:42 ►
I think language leads us into very tenuous ground,
00:43:47 ►
and I think poor Terence traversed a lot of that ground
00:43:52 ►
running along the language path,
00:43:54 ►
which essentially is reverting back to being a Cartesian, a dualist.
00:44:04 ►
There’s the spirit, and then there’s material.
00:44:10 ►
And dual perceptions of reality are not very much in vogue in philosophy.
00:44:18 ►
And I think he went with the patriarchal system as as far as being a a dualist a cartesian
00:44:28 ►
and and reifying language and therefore i think he sliced a lot of balls into the rough
00:44:35 ►
and he sliced so many into the rough i think he realized his score was uh pitiful
00:44:41 ►
pitiful.
00:44:47 ►
So that’s my major thoughts for the moment.
00:44:58 ►
I had no problems with his body wearing out with too many psychedelics. And I had even had no problems with his being a bit of a huckster.
00:45:04 ►
I kind of admired huckster.
00:45:08 ►
I kind of admired P.T. Barnum for a while.
00:45:18 ►
Anyway, that’s a few of my thoughts that aren’t entirely positive, I would say,
00:45:24 ►
since I think any gathering that runs around doing exactly just positive,
00:45:32 ►
I don’t want to be a party to a group where everybody thinks the same and everybody thinks positively.
00:45:33 ►
Or the reverse.
00:45:41 ►
And I can’t speak for Terrence, obviously, but I suspect if he was here today,
00:45:47 ►
he would be really pleased that people are taking a close look at things. And, you know, he didn’t take himself seriously. You know, he did for a while, maybe,
00:45:52 ►
but for the most part, he even told Bruce. What was that about?
00:45:59 ►
Yeah, now, when it came to 2012, I said, Terrence, are you serious about this thing?
00:46:06 ►
Here you are, you’re telling the UFO believers,
00:46:11 ►
you must be subject to the same rules of evidence as everyone else.
00:46:16 ►
And he’s criticizing them because they make an assumption
00:46:19 ►
and then pile another assumption on top of that, another one,
00:46:22 ►
and say, and this all means that each assumption is less probable. I say, Terrence, you know,
00:46:27 ►
this is the same kind of piling on.
00:46:31 ►
And he kind of looked at me and he said, well, and I said something like
00:46:35 ►
we both had the thought, hmm, this could become a kind of new age Y2K.
00:46:41 ►
And I said, or he said to me, I hope
00:46:43 ►
people don’t take this too literally
00:46:46 ►
so
00:46:47 ►
so and I don’t think
00:46:50 ►
many people are anymore because Hollywood
00:46:52 ►
has pretty well milked the
00:46:53 ►
2012 meme but
00:46:56 ►
on the other hand I think all of us
00:46:58 ►
individually can make 2012
00:47:00 ►
a pretty pivotal year if we
00:47:02 ►
start changing the way
00:47:04 ►
we’re thinking about things the way we’re thinking about things,
00:47:05 ►
the way we’re living and things that we’re doing.
00:47:07 ►
And I think that’s part of what this weekend is for.
00:47:09 ►
So I think what we can do now is we’re going to pick up on this.
00:47:13 ►
We’ve got a few other directions to poke things in here this afternoon to go on.
00:47:18 ►
One of the things I want to get to later today is to talk a little bit about myth,
00:47:27 ►
want to get to later today is to talk a little bit about myth, creating new myths that, you know,
00:47:36 ►
if people don’t have a myth, they have an ideology. And those don’t last nearly as long as the myths.
00:47:49 ►
But, you know, the myths that we’re living with are way out of date. You example, the Christian myth about the bodily assumption of Christ’s body into wherever, if he left 2,000 years ago at the speed of light, he still wouldn’t be out of this galaxy.
00:47:56 ►
So we have to take some reality check in here and maybe create some new myths. And so that’s
00:48:01 ►
something I’d like to be thinking about is what do we leave behind
00:48:06 ►
when we go? That recently I heard a TED talk, a young woman archaeologist who grew up in Maine
00:48:14 ►
searching for sand dollars. And she learned that you just look at the pattern and finally,
00:48:19 ►
because they’re hard to find if you’ve ever searched for sand dollars. Well, now she’s
00:48:22 ►
become an archaeologist that uses satellite imaging and infrared and has, I guess maybe several years ago now, discovered the city
00:48:31 ►
that was the capital of the Middle Kingdom of Egypt and was a major force in Egypt for 400 years.
00:48:40 ►
And they discovered it under the sand. It’s only just now they’re starting to even look for it. So what’s left?
00:48:45 ►
Where are our pyramids?
00:48:47 ►
Where are our cave paintings?
00:48:48 ►
And as Terrence once pointed out, you know,
00:48:51 ►
it’s not that big a mystery of how they built the pyramids.
00:48:54 ►
The real mystery is how did we lose all that knowledge?
00:48:57 ►
So what is it that we can create in the form of a myth to help our descendants
00:49:03 ►
who, if you happen to believe
00:49:06 ►
in reincarnation, maybe will even be us.
00:49:08 ►
So what do we leave behind for ourselves to come back and pick up on?
00:49:12 ►
So those are some of the questions that I think we should kick around this afternoon.
00:49:18 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one
00:49:22 ►
thought at a time. So where are our cave paintings, huh?
00:49:28 ►
What are the myths that we should be teaching our children and grandchildren
00:49:32 ►
so that what little we’ve learned about the world so far isn’t once again lost?
00:49:37 ►
Maybe we should be looking for some cave walls to paint our stories on, huh?
00:49:42 ►
Or maybe not.
00:49:44 ►
Maybe there’s a better way to keep our myths alive,
00:49:46 ►
and in the weeks ahead, I plan on playing some more
00:49:49 ►
of this weekend conversation at Esalen
00:49:52 ►
and see what ideas it may spawn in your own mind.
00:49:55 ►
But talking about generating new ideas
00:49:58 ►
reminds me that there’s going to be a whole bunch of new ideas
00:50:02 ►
that come to life at Burning Man this year,
00:50:05 ►
and while there will be several lectures on the playa this year, from my point of view,
00:50:09 ►
you won’t find a better place to fill your intellectual appetite on the playa than at the Planque Norte lectures,
00:50:16 ►
which are going to be hosted by Camp Above the Limit.
00:50:19 ►
And you’ll find them located at 9, 15, and B.
00:50:23 ►
So if you’re going to the burn this year, be sure to write that down.
00:50:27 ►
Because once you arrive on the playa, as I remember, sometimes things kind of slip through the cracks if you haven’t planned ahead.
00:50:34 ►
So just remember this.
00:50:36 ►
Camp Above the Limit at 915 and B.
00:50:40 ►
Bravo.
00:50:41 ►
And as you know, the street names change each year depending on what the theme is, but they’re always alphabetical from the inside Esplanade ring.
00:50:51 ►
So I guess that would be like the second street back from the center ring.
00:50:56 ►
And for what it’s worth, I just spent about, I guess, five or ten minutes searching through the official Burning Man site for this year’s map so that I could give
00:51:05 ►
you the actual name of B Street. But they’ve either kept it a secret or hidden the link so
00:51:10 ►
deep in their site that an old guy like me can’t find it. So just remember B as in Bravo and 915
00:51:17 ►
and you’ll get there with no problem. Now as for the lectures themselves, the Planque Norte lectures themselves,
00:51:25 ►
I first of all want to thank Chris Pezza for coordinating this massive speaker schedule.
00:51:31 ►
Without his efforts, there might not even be any Planque Norte lectures on the playa this year.
00:51:37 ►
As you may remember, originally Bruce Dahmer and myself and a core group of other burners
00:51:42 ►
had planned a rather large theme camp in which to host these lectures.
00:51:47 ►
But then with the ticket lottery fiasco, well, our camp more or less just fell apart after only one or two of the key people got tickets.
00:51:55 ►
And by the time the Burning Man organization got their act back together and reallocated some tickets,
00:52:01 ►
I’d completely lost my enthusiasm for the event, as did many of our key
00:52:06 ►
people, so our camp never really came together. However, Bruce pressed on, and thanks to an
00:52:12 ►
introduction made by Alicia Danforth, he linked up with a group that is now calling itself
00:52:17 ►
Camp Above the Limit, who in the past has also hosted speakers in their other incarnations,
00:52:24 ►
in the past has also hosted speakers in their other incarnations.
00:52:28 ►
And the person who did much of the work, both then and now,
00:52:31 ►
is Chris Pezza. And he hooked up with Bruce to work out a schedule for a combined lecture series this year under the
00:52:36 ►
Plinke Norte banner. Then Bruce got called away for
00:52:39 ►
business reasons, and Chris had to pick up the slack and more or less put
00:52:43 ►
this entire speaker schedule together on his own. Having done that myself for several years, I know what a huge and
00:52:51 ►
time-consuming job that is. You know, until you’ve had to deal with dozens of speakers trying to
00:52:56 ►
adjust their individual time and day requirements on the playa, it’s like that perennial herding cats metaphor.
00:53:06 ►
You know, it’s not very easy.
00:53:08 ►
Yet Chris has come up with a schedule for the talks that, from my point of view,
00:53:12 ►
is far and away the most exciting group of speakers ever to appear on the playa.
00:53:17 ►
And you can read the days and times of the talk on the webpage that I link to in the program notes for this podcast,
00:53:24 ►
which, of course, you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us, Thank you. most definitely plan on attending. There are still some additional talks that will be added to the schedule in the next few weeks,
00:53:46 ►
but here’s the schedule as it appears today.
00:53:49 ►
On Tuesday, August 28th at 1145 will be an opening ritual.
00:53:55 ►
From 1 to 2 is Amanda Sage, and I don’t have the topic that she’s speaking on yet.
00:54:01 ►
Then from 2 to 3 will be a music and tea break.
00:54:01 ►
on yet. Then from 2 to 3 will be a music and tea break.
00:54:04 ►
And these are going
00:54:06 ►
to occur during each day’s
00:54:08 ►
talks, these music and tea breaks,
00:54:10 ►
which I think are just a fantastic
00:54:12 ►
idea, particularly
00:54:13 ►
for those who will be attending more than
00:54:16 ►
one talk. You know, I didn’t do anything
00:54:18 ►
like that before, but I sure wish I had
00:54:20 ►
because it can really enhance
00:54:22 ►
the relaxed atmosphere
00:54:24 ►
that we try to get to on the playa.
00:54:27 ►
Anyhow, on that same Tuesday the 28th, from 4 to 5 p.m.,
00:54:32 ►
Ash Ritter will be speaking about ceremonial plant medicine for community building.
00:54:38 ►
From 6 to 7 p.m., Charles Shaw, The War on Consciousness and Psychedelics.
00:54:43 ►
Charles Shaw, The War on Consciousness and Psychedelics.
00:54:49 ►
7 to 8 p.m., Ken Adams, who is the producer of the Terrence McKenna Experience,
00:54:55 ►
the new movie that’s going to be shown at 8 p.m. at the same venue.
00:55:00 ►
Ken’s the producer, and he’ll be speaking for an hour about the source of the material and about Terrence and his relationship with Terrence.
00:55:03 ►
And then from 8 to 10 will be a screening of the movie.
00:55:06 ►
Now on Wednesday, August 29th, from noon to 1,
00:55:11 ►
Brian Wallace will be talking about cacao and neurobiology.
00:55:15 ►
And then from 1 to 2, Dr. Natalie, N.D.,
00:55:20 ►
will be speaking about entheogens and plant medicines.
00:55:24 ►
Then at 3 o’clock, we’ll be back with Daniel Pinchbeck, who I think everybody knows,
00:55:30 ►
followed from 4 to 5 p.m. by John Allen and Tango Parrish-Schneider,
00:55:35 ►
who will be speaking about visions and biospheres.
00:55:38 ►
And John and Tango are also friends of mine, and they’re going to be really interesting speakers.
00:55:43 ►
I think you’ll get a lot out of them.
00:55:43 ►
Also friends of mine, and they’re going to be really interesting speakers.
00:55:44 ►
I think you’ll get a lot out of them.
00:55:50 ►
Then from 6 to 7 is our friend John Gilmore, who will present an open discussion.
00:55:59 ►
And you can hear John in an earlier podcast here, as well as the 7 to 8 p.m. speaker, who is Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS.
00:56:04 ►
Then on Thursday, August 30th, from noon to 1 will be Troy Dayton. I don’t have the title of his talk yet.
00:56:07 ►
From 1 to 2 is going to be Xavier Phoenix, who’s going to be talking about psychedelic lifestyle design.
00:56:13 ►
From 3 to 4, James Orock, The Importance of the Second Psychedelic Revolution.
00:56:19 ►
From 4 to 5 p.m. is Robert Forte, and you’ve heard Robert here in the salon on several occasions as well.
00:56:26 ►
And then from 6 to 7, it will be Bruce Dahmer,
00:56:29 ►
who is going to be speaking about manifesting the golden universe.
00:56:33 ►
From 7 to 8, there’s going to be a panel discussion under the topic,
00:56:38 ►
Have psychedelics helped to build better lives and stronger communities,
00:56:43 ►
or have they had more of the opposite effect? And this will feature Bruce Dahmer and Thomas Manning and several others.
00:56:51 ►
And then from 8 to 9.30 p.m. is the one and only Paul Stamets, who you’ve heard on TED Talks.
00:56:58 ►
I’ve been to several workshops with Paul and some conferences he’s produced, and you just don’t want to miss that one for sure.
00:57:10 ►
Friday, August 31st at noon to 1 is Hamilton Souther,
00:57:13 ►
who is speaking about healing through sound and ayahuasca.
00:57:16 ►
And then from 1 to 2 is Annie Oak,
00:57:20 ►
and she’s going to be talking about developing a community tea house model.
00:57:25 ►
And of all the talks, that’s the one i’m most looking forward to hearing myself because i think we really should be looking into developing more community in our local areas
00:57:30 ►
and then from 2 to 3 p.m alex and allison gray will be speaking about psychedelic family business
00:57:36 ►
as i said there’s still some additional speakers who will be added to this schedule so
00:57:42 ►
be sure to take a last look at our online schedule
00:57:45 ►
before you head out to the playa in August. Oh, and did I mention that our faithful sound
00:57:51 ►
technician, Tom Riddell, will also be there with his recording equipment. And barring any
00:57:56 ►
unfortunate mishaps, such as the ones that plague me almost every time I try to make recordings at
00:58:03 ►
Burning Man, but barring those unfortunate happenings,
00:58:06 ►
Tom will be sending me recordings
00:58:08 ►
of all of these talks so that you and I
00:58:10 ►
can listen to them here in the salon this fall.
00:58:13 ►
I can hardly wait.
00:58:15 ►
But for now, this is Lorenzo,
00:58:17 ►
signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
00:58:20 ►
Be well, my friends.