Program Notes
Guest speaker: Myron Stolaroff
This podcast features a few sound bites from several of the previous podcasts featuring Myron Stolaroff, who departed this life on January 6, 2013. Not only was Myron one of the world’s leading psychedelic researchers, earlier in life he was instrumental in helping the Ampex Corporation develop the audio and video tape recorders. Below are a few links, videos, and books that more fully illustrate the life of this Renaissance Man.
The Myron Stolaroff Archive on the Psychedelic Salon
Donate to The Stolaroff Collection at Erowid
Myron Stolaroff memorial video
Myron Stolaroff and Gary Fisher in Dialogue
The Gary Fisher Archive on the Psychedelic Salon
A Visit with the Stolaroffs
The Myron Stolaroff Vault at Erowid.org
The Secret Chief:
Conversations With a Pioneer of the
Underground Psychedelic Therapy Movement
By Myron J. Stolaroff
The Secret Chief Revealed
By Myron J. Stolaroff
Thanatos to Eros:
35 Years of Psychedelic Exploration Ethnomedicine
and the Study of Consciousness
By Myron J. Stolaroff
What the Dormouse Said:
How the Sixties Counterculture
Shaped the Personal Computer Industry
By John Markoff
Myron Stolaroff on Wikipedia
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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.
00:00:26 ►
And welcome to my first podcast in 2013. Although I’d planned on getting this out to you a little sooner after my return
00:00:33 ►
from my 6,000 mile train ride across the country and back, well I picked up another pesky head
00:00:39 ►
cold that kept me awake for several nights and then left me with a lack of energy during the day.
00:00:44 ►
And then yesterday I started recording the podcast and after about three or four minutes,
00:00:50 ►
it sounded like I had a clothespin on my nose.
00:00:52 ►
So I put it aside and we’re going to try it again today.
00:00:56 ►
I at least think things are getting back to what passes for normal in this chaotic world of ours.
00:01:04 ►
what passes for normal in this chaotic world of ours.
00:01:10 ►
But before I introduce today’s program, I’d first like to give a shout out to John J.
00:01:17 ►
from the Chicago area, Per L., and two other fellow salonners to whom I should have written by now in answer to their messages to me regarding some difficult times that they are going through.
00:01:23 ►
It isn’t that I haven’t been thinking about you guys, but I just can’t seem to gather Thank you for watching. made donations during the time that I’ve been offline and have helped to set aside or offset
00:01:45 ►
some of these expenses here in the salon. It’s really gratifying that you didn’t forget about
00:01:50 ►
me while I was gone and as soon as I get the program notes out for today’s podcast I’ll be
00:01:56 ►
sending you a little personal note of thanks. And finally I want to thank one of our fellow
00:02:01 ►
salonners from the Washington DC area who helped to put me at ease on a night when I felt like I just didn’t quite fit in
00:02:09 ►
with the crowd in which I found myself.
00:02:11 ►
But when Julie, and that’s Julie with an E,
00:02:14 ►
hi Julie, came up and introduced herself as a fellow salonner,
00:02:19 ►
I knew that even in that somewhat conservative-looking assembly,
00:02:23 ►
there was at least one person there who was a kindred spirit.
00:02:27 ►
Also, of course, I want to thank you for being patient
00:02:30 ►
and waiting for this podcast to finally reappear,
00:02:33 ►
and for being with me here in the salon today.
00:02:36 ►
You know, I wouldn’t be doing this at all if it wasn’t for you and our other fellow salonners.
00:02:42 ►
So, where to begin?
00:02:47 ►
Originally, I had a different talk planned for today’s podcast, but upon my return home, I learned that my dear friend Myron Stolaroff
00:02:53 ►
had died a few days earlier, and so today I want to spend a little time with you remembering
00:02:58 ►
Myron and the incredible life that he led. What I’ve done is to compile a few soundbites
00:03:04 ►
from some of the 11 podcasts that
00:03:06 ►
I’ve done which featured Myron, either individually or in conversation with others. I hope that after
00:03:12 ►
hearing this that you’ll go out to our Notes from the Psychedelic Salon blog and check on the Myron
00:03:18 ►
Stolaroff category and then re-listen to some of those recordings. As you know, Myron has been highly acclaimed for his pioneering work with LSD,
00:03:27 ►
which took place before scientific research on that important chemical was banned by the U.S. government.
00:03:34 ►
However, what some in our community don’t know is that Myron also played a pivotal role
00:03:39 ►
in the design and production of audio and video tape recorders
00:03:44 ►
while he was working at the pioneering
00:03:46 ►
company in that early field, Ampex. And if you aren’t familiar with Ampex, well you probably
00:03:52 ►
should be, for it was Ampex that first gave us the multi-track recordings that essentially made
00:03:58 ►
today’s music recordings what they are. And it was Myron’s breakthrough work in designing the
00:04:03 ►
servo mechanisms of these early recorders that led to their commercial success.
00:04:08 ►
He eventually actually was honored for this work by his
00:04:11 ►
alma mater, Stanford University, where he ultimately
00:04:15 ►
received a master’s degree in electrical engineering.
00:04:19 ►
Now, for a time, Myron was what today I guess would be
00:04:23 ►
considered one of the rising stars in what then passed for Silicon Valley.
00:04:28 ►
And he was on his way to riches, it appeared.
00:04:31 ►
However, after his first LSD experience, he cashed in his stock and left the corporate grind altogether
00:04:37 ►
in order to pursue the further exploration of this important substance.
00:04:42 ►
And his mentor, I should add, was the legendary Johnny
00:04:46 ►
Appleseed of LSD, Al Hubbard. And in my podcast number 235, you can hear a rare conversation
00:04:53 ►
between Myron, Al Hubbard, and Humphrey Osmond, who, among many other things, is the person that
00:04:59 ►
coined the word psychedelic. In fact, I’ve included a little excerpt from that conversation in this collection
00:05:06 ►
that I’m about to play. And if you listen to that entire podcast, you’ll learn that their
00:05:11 ►
conversation was actually taking place on the day after the three of them had had an LSD session
00:05:16 ►
together. And again, that was back in the 60s when it was still all legal. Actually, it was in 1961
00:05:23 ►
that Myron founded the International Foundation for
00:05:27 ►
Advanced Study in Menlo Park, where they led clinical investigations of LSD in regards to
00:05:33 ►
its effectiveness in enhancing personal creativity. And somewhere around, I guess, 350 or more people
00:05:40 ►
went through that program, and the results were really impressive. And after we hear a few sound bites from Myron I’ll tell you a little bit more about
00:05:47 ►
that research and what records of it still remain. Sadly in 1965 the
00:05:53 ►
government revoked Myron’s permit to conduct LSD research and the Institute
00:05:59 ►
forevermore closed its doors. As a side note, I think that the last person who was an integral part of that
00:06:07 ►
Menlo Park group is still alive, and that’s Jim Fetterman, who you’ve heard here in the salon a
00:06:12 ►
couple of times. And hopefully some dedicated historian will one day sit down with Jim and
00:06:17 ►
get the full story of the Institute for us in much more detail than I’ll ever be able to provide from only my few conversations
00:06:25 ►
with Myron and a few others.
00:06:28 ►
Between 1970 and 1986, Myron and a small band of dedicated psychonauts conducted additional
00:06:36 ►
personal studies using unscheduled compounds.
00:06:40 ►
However, this work also ended with the passage of a law, namely the Controlled Substances Analog Act of 1986.
00:06:48 ►
And again, I’ll return to that part of the story after we listen to a few words from Myron.
00:06:53 ►
Now, as far as my own self, how my own story intersected with that of Myron, well, it began with what was essentially a chance meeting.
00:07:06 ►
what was essentially a chance meeting. In April of 2000, just two weeks after the death of Terence McKenna, my wife and I received an invitation to a private conference that was to be held at
00:07:11 ►
Hollyhock on Cortez Island in British Columbia. And it was to be an eclectic mixture of psychedelic
00:07:17 ►
researchers, psychiatrists and psychoanalysts, writers, musicians, and several leaders of the
00:07:24 ►
syncretic spiritual practice,
00:07:25 ►
Santo Daime. One day I’ll actually have to tell the story of that conference because it was really
00:07:31 ►
amazing from many standpoints. But when my wife and I arrived at Hollyhock, we were assigned a
00:07:38 ►
room in a building that only had two other couples in it. On one side of us were Jane and Duncan Blewett, and on the other side of us
00:07:45 ►
were Gene and Myron Stolaroff. Over the course of that week that we spent there, we became quite
00:07:52 ►
close with the four of them, and our acquaintance with Gene and Myron eventually blossomed into a
00:07:58 ►
deep friendship. Now, if you’re a student of the early history of the current psychedelic renaissance,
00:08:04 ►
if you’re a student of the early history of the current psychedelic renaissance,
00:08:11 ►
you will recognize not only Myron’s name, but that of Duncan Blewett as well. For it was Duncan who was one of the first professional researchers on the North American continent to personally
00:08:15 ►
experience LSD. The soundbites that I’m going to play for you right now, I’ve selected more or less
00:08:22 ►
at random. It is by no means a best-of podcast because some
00:08:27 ►
of Myron’s more important musings were, well, a bit too long to include here, but I think that
00:08:33 ►
the ones that I’ve selected will give you a good overview of Myron’s thought and personality.
00:08:39 ►
Unfortunately, at the time that I made the first recordings of my talks with Myron,
00:08:43 ►
at the time that I made the first recordings of my talks with Myron,
00:08:47 ►
which comprised the three Lone Pine Stories podcasts,
00:08:50 ►
I had no idea what I was doing.
00:08:54 ►
And so the recordings are not even up to average amateur status,
00:08:57 ►
in so as the quality of the sound.
00:09:01 ►
For example, in the first three selections that I’m going to play for you,
00:09:04 ►
from time to time you’ll hear a thumping sound.
00:09:09 ►
Well, what caused that is that I put the microphone on a stand in front of Myron,
00:09:15 ►
and in fact I’ll post a picture of Myron ascending in front of that microphone in the program notes with this podcast, so you can get a little better idea of the scene. But what was happening that I
00:09:20 ►
didn’t notice at the time was that Myron, well, from time to time, he’d sort of
00:09:25 ►
nervously thump his fingers on the microphone stand, and since I couldn’t hear it myself, my
00:09:30 ►
lack of experience blinded me to the fact that those thumps were being transmitted through the
00:09:35 ►
mic stand and into the microphone itself. However, instead of kicking myself over this little mistake,
00:09:42 ►
I’ve instead to come to come to treasure those sometimes irritating
00:09:46 ►
thumps because they remind me of what it was like to visit with Myron. It’s not that he had a nervous
00:09:52 ►
tick or twitch or anything like that, but it was this vibrant, smiling surge of electric energy that
00:09:58 ►
just seemed to constantly radiate out from him that, to my mind, wouldn’t let his hands be completely still during the hours that we made our recordings.
00:10:07 ►
So, I’ve included a few selections from that series just to pass along that image for you.
00:10:13 ►
I’ve also included a short bit from the next-to-last public appearance that Myron made, which was
00:10:19 ►
a speech that he gave in Basel, Switzerland, on the occasion of Dr. Albert Hoffman’s 100th
00:10:25 ►
birthday celebration. And the final bit that I’ve included is from a public conversation between Myron and
00:10:32 ►
Gary Fisher at one of the famous salons hosted by Kathleen at her home in Venice Beach, California.
00:10:40 ►
And that conversation is also available in full in my podcast number 232.
00:10:45 ►
And in fact, there’s also a video recording of that talk, which I’ll try to remember to embed in the program notes for today’s podcast,
00:10:53 ►
which, as you know, you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us.
00:10:58 ►
And if you happen to have read or listened to my novel, The Genesis Generation,
00:11:02 ►
listened to my novel, The Genesis Generation,
00:11:06 ►
you’re probably going to recognize that scene in Kathleen’s Salon as the basis of the fictional one in the chapter titled Caitlin’s Salon.
00:11:12 ►
Now for me, this final meeting between Myron and Gary Fisher,
00:11:16 ►
who by the way was equally important in those early days of psychedelic research,
00:11:20 ►
well, I think it’s my best recording of either of them.
00:11:24 ►
As you know, Gary died a little
00:11:26 ►
I guess a little over a year and a half ago now
00:11:28 ►
And in fact, I’ve been remiss in not also doing a tribute like this to Gary
00:11:33 ►
Which is something I’ll be sure to do yet this year
00:11:35 ►
But in any event, the conversation between Gary and Myron at Kathleen’s Salon
00:11:41 ►
Is by far my favorite recording of each of them
00:11:44 ►
Simply because it gives a good example of the relaxed, friendly, and humorous times at Kathleen’s Salon is by far my favorite recording of each of them, simply because
00:11:45 ►
it gives a good example of the relaxed, friendly, and humorous times that many of us have spent
00:11:51 ►
with one or the other or both of them.
00:11:54 ►
I guess I should also mention that in the second of the sound bites that I’ll be playing
00:11:58 ►
for you, Myron is talking about the work that he and a small group of psychedelic explorers did in researching
00:12:06 ►
the chemicals that are described in great detail in Ann and Sasha Shulgin’s books,
00:12:12 ►
P-Call and T-Call. And in case you think that those titles refer to ancient Mayan temples,
00:12:19 ►
well, they don’t. They are acronyms that stand for phenethylamines that I have known and loved,
00:12:26 ►
and tryptamines I have known and loved.
00:12:28 ►
And in the second parts of those two books,
00:12:31 ►
you’ll find a long list of psychoactive chemicals, recipes for making them,
00:12:36 ►
and recommended dosage, along with brief experience reports about their effects.
00:12:41 ►
Now, it may not have occurred to you,
00:12:44 ►
but someone had to do all of that research
00:12:46 ►
to come up with the information. And while I’m not yet at liberty to disclose some of the details
00:12:52 ►
about that work, the work that Myron told me about, I still hope to be able to do just that one day.
00:13:00 ►
But if you feel as I do about the importance of that work that’s detailed in those two books,
00:13:05 ►
then you may agree with me in thinking that Myron’s Little Red House in the High Desert,
00:13:11 ►
along with Sasha Shulgin’s laboratory,
00:13:13 ►
should both one day be moved to the Smithsonian Institution
00:13:17 ►
as the locations of most important research into the nature of human consciousness
00:13:23 ►
that may have taken place in the last century.
00:13:27 ►
Now, I guess that’s a little melodramatic.
00:13:31 ►
So, maybe I should only say that, psychedelic history aside,
00:13:35 ►
that little red house was a scene of some of my own most memorable experiences in the past 20 years.
00:13:41 ►
And, if you want to get a feel for that house where much of this work took
00:13:46 ►
place, I’ve put up a short video of a visit and walk with Myron that I had sometime in 2006,
00:13:52 ►
and I’ll embed that video in the program notes for today’s podcast too.
00:13:59 ►
Well, as much as I’d like to go on and tell more stories about all of these early psychedelic
00:14:04 ►
researchers, I guess I’d better stop for now and simply more stories about all of these early psychedelic researchers,
00:14:10 ►
I guess I’d better stop for now and simply get out of the way and let Myron speak for himself.
00:14:17 ►
So here now is Myron Stolaroff sitting at his dining room table in a remote little red house on a hill in the high desert somewhere near the foot of the eastern Sierras. And by the way,
00:14:24 ►
Myron was 86 years old at the
00:14:26 ►
time the first of these recordings was made with your background you know you you went to stanford
00:14:33 ►
you know didn’t you get your master’s and bachelor’s there i got a master’s degree there
00:14:37 ►
yeah that’s stanford my god you know and then you helped develop the video tape system at Ampex.
00:14:49 ►
I’ve always wondered, you were really on a fast track there.
00:14:52 ►
Oh, I’ve been lucky as can be.
00:14:54 ►
How did you feel about walking away from all that, though,
00:14:58 ►
to really pursue the expansion of consciousness?
00:15:02 ►
Oh, God, after I’d had LSD,
00:15:07 ►
there wasn’t anything else that could come anywhere close to it.
00:15:10 ►
That was the most remarkable thing of my whole life.
00:15:18 ►
And even just the very first trial, it was so profound and so opening.
00:15:24 ►
And just dimensions of consciousness opened.
00:15:26 ►
And there’s nothing else like this anywhere.
00:15:32 ►
There isn’t anything else you can do to equal that.
00:15:34 ►
What I’d like to say is,
00:15:40 ►
we were first introduced to these things while we were living in the Bay Area,
00:15:42 ►
and then we decided to move out here.
00:15:44 ►
And we did.
00:15:47 ►
We had this house constructed and we moved out here,
00:15:49 ►
I think it was in the 78,
00:15:54 ►
1978 is when we finally moved out here.
00:16:00 ►
And by this time,
00:16:01 ►
we’d had quite a bit of experience
00:16:03 ►
with a lot of different substances,
00:16:05 ►
and we thought they were valuable,
00:16:07 ►
and we thought that maybe we could contribute by exploring with other people
00:16:13 ►
and seeing how others responded to it.
00:16:16 ►
So for some, I’d say, maybe 15, 20 years, we were seeing people very regularly.
00:16:26 ►
Sometimes we would have people come every weekend.
00:16:30 ►
If we got too much and it was getting too much for us,
00:16:33 ►
we’d skip a week or two.
00:16:35 ►
But we were having people come on a regular basis,
00:16:40 ►
and we would use these different substances.
00:16:45 ►
The question I want to ask is,
00:16:47 ►
you two have done so much work together and with other couples,
00:16:52 ►
but have you ever taken MDMA and danced all night?
00:16:56 ►
Have you ever done what’s called recreational?
00:17:01 ►
Well, since you brought that up, I’ll say yes.
00:17:05 ►
That’s one of the things that we like to do.
00:17:07 ►
Gene and I would often, after an experience,
00:17:11 ►
and it would be different things.
00:17:13 ►
Vasculin was very good.
00:17:15 ►
Of course, LSD was our favorite.
00:17:18 ►
There were other things that we used,
00:17:20 ►
and a lot of times, at the end of the day,
00:17:23 ►
we’d turn on the music and dance
00:17:25 ►
and just had a ball with it.
00:17:28 ►
So you don’t have an objection
00:17:30 ►
to the recreational end of the medicines?
00:17:33 ►
Oh, not at all.
00:17:36 ►
It’s kind of interesting how people react differently.
00:17:44 ►
I think 2C-B was one that we thought was pretty good.
00:17:50 ►
And then we had some very close friends
00:17:52 ►
who had been close friends for 20, 30 years.
00:17:56 ►
And actually, they had gone through the LSD treatment
00:18:02 ►
in Menlo Park when it was legal
00:18:05 ►
and we were providing
00:18:07 ►
that function
00:18:08 ►
and they came here
00:18:10 ►
and we used
00:18:13 ►
the 2C-B and
00:18:14 ►
boy, they didn’t like it at all.
00:18:17 ►
And I was really surprised
00:18:19 ►
because we thought it was pretty good.
00:18:22 ►
But the thing is,
00:18:23 ►
you see,
00:18:24 ►
people don’t know some of the deep things
00:18:28 ►
that you carry within our consciousness.
00:18:31 ►
These are repressed materials,
00:18:34 ►
and they’re quite a load to us.
00:18:37 ►
And actually, it’s of enormous benefit
00:18:39 ►
to be willing to go into that,
00:18:42 ►
move into it, discover what it is, realize what it is, and be able
00:18:48 ►
to release it and be free.
00:18:50 ►
And when that happens, that’s an extremely freeing experience.
00:18:55 ►
It’s just like taking a load off of yourself.
00:18:59 ►
And so we like to encourage people to do that.
00:19:02 ►
But every once in a while, you know, you find people who are up pretty tight
00:19:06 ►
and it’s almost too much.
00:19:09 ►
But with those kind of people, what we would do is we’d give them,
00:19:15 ►
go through some, and a lot of times they were too resistant
00:19:19 ►
and didn’t want to go too far.
00:19:20 ►
They’d come back another time and have them break through a little more,
00:19:24 ►
and hopefully after three or four times, they would open up pretty much and get into
00:19:29 ►
a lot better space than they were before.
00:19:33 ►
You know, I find that kind of fascinating because today, you know, kids just go out
00:19:37 ►
and teenagers and middle school even and take acid for the first time with friends out,
00:19:43 ►
you know, sneaking around.
00:19:42 ►
even and take acid for the first time with some friends out, you know, sneaking around.
00:19:44 ►
You really had a program
00:19:45 ►
where you
00:19:46 ►
took people through
00:19:49 ►
Carbogen and then
00:19:52 ►
you talked to them, you interviewed
00:19:53 ►
them before their first session.
00:19:55 ►
Oh, absolutely.
00:19:58 ►
Generally, we spent several
00:19:59 ►
weeks with them. They come in just once a
00:20:02 ►
week and we would
00:20:04 ►
see them maybe three or four times
00:20:06 ►
to get better
00:20:07 ►
acquainted. We’d
00:20:09 ►
give them, Hubbard
00:20:11 ►
was the one that brought this
00:20:14 ►
to our attention.
00:20:16 ►
Carbogen.
00:20:18 ►
And
00:20:18 ►
they would come
00:20:21 ►
and we would discuss things
00:20:23 ►
with them, find out what their problems were, what they were looking for, and so on.
00:20:30 ►
And then we’d give them the carbogen.
00:20:33 ►
Do you understand what carbogen is?
00:20:36 ►
70% oxygen, 30% CO2, right?
00:20:39 ►
Right.
00:20:40 ►
Okay.
00:20:40 ►
Yeah.
00:20:41 ►
And they would breathe that, and you get a lot of action out of that
00:20:45 ►
but Hubbard loved
00:20:47 ►
he loved calling people around
00:20:50 ►
while he gave me Carbogen
00:20:52 ►
because usually I exploded all over the place
00:20:55 ►
and I would just fuck them
00:20:57 ►
or Jesus Christ
00:21:01 ►
or something
00:21:02 ►
I’d always come up with something
00:21:04 ►
they all got a big kick out of it.
00:21:09 ►
So you were the demonstrator.
00:21:11 ►
Yeah, the demonstrator.
00:21:13 ►
And if they saw your demonstration
00:21:15 ►
and still felt that they wanted to try it,
00:21:16 ►
then they passed the test.
00:21:19 ►
Right on.
00:21:22 ►
My guess is that you would recommend
00:21:24 ►
that meditation practice
00:21:26 ►
should be
00:21:26 ►
beneficial
00:21:29 ►
oh absolutely
00:21:30 ►
if you’re going to work with these materials
00:21:33 ►
meditation is a marvelous
00:21:36 ►
supporter because
00:21:38 ►
as you use the materials
00:21:40 ►
you open your consciousness
00:21:42 ►
more and that opens your
00:21:44 ►
meditation more so then your meditation consciousness more, and that opens your meditation more,
00:21:45 ►
so then your meditation becomes more effective and more fulfilling. So it’s a growing process.
00:21:52 ►
I asked you last night, and I loved the answer, you know, what would your life have been like
00:21:58 ►
without LSD?
00:22:01 ►
Oh, God. It would have been miserable by comparison
00:22:06 ►
absolutely miserable
00:22:08 ►
oh no
00:22:10 ►
taking LSD was just a
00:22:12 ►
remarkable change of life
00:22:14 ►
it’s just criminal
00:22:16 ►
that our nation
00:22:18 ►
holds
00:22:20 ►
it down
00:22:22 ►
so thoroughly they won’t have anything
00:22:24 ►
to do with it they don’t have anything to do with it
00:22:25 ►
they don’t even want to look at it
00:22:27 ►
that’s changing a little bit now
00:22:29 ►
it’s changing a little bit
00:22:31 ►
do you want to say anything about your
00:22:35 ►
say relationship with Timothy Leary
00:22:38 ►
and your involvement with Timothy Leary
00:22:40 ►
or do you want to leave that one alone
00:22:41 ►
I don’t care
00:22:42 ►
well I don’t mind saying
00:22:45 ►
Hubbard
00:22:47 ►
went and met
00:22:49 ►
Leary and he liked him a whole
00:22:52 ►
lot and
00:22:52 ►
he came back. He wanted me to put
00:22:55 ►
Leary on our board of
00:22:57 ►
directors and
00:22:59 ►
I wasn’t about to do it without
00:23:02 ►
meeting him and
00:23:04 ►
after a few months after Hubbard had been over there,
00:23:08 ►
he came to the West Coast, and he came to our place,
00:23:12 ►
and I got introduced to him,
00:23:15 ►
and I found that he’s a very winsome person.
00:23:20 ►
He’s a very smooth talker,
00:23:23 ►
and I made a date with him.
00:23:29 ►
He was seeing some people in San Francisco.
00:23:33 ►
And so he told me to come up
00:23:37 ►
and we’d spend more time together.
00:23:38 ►
And he gave me the address of a lady
00:23:42 ►
to go to where he was going to see later in the day.
00:23:49 ►
And I got there quite a bit before he got there.
00:23:53 ►
So I spent some time talking with her.
00:23:55 ►
She was a lovely person.
00:23:56 ►
She was a nurse, and he had met her.
00:24:00 ►
And he’s a smooth character.
00:24:02 ►
I think he’s really smooth with women.
00:24:06 ►
So the three of us went out for dinner,
00:24:09 ►
and we talked until close to 1 o’clock in the morning.
00:24:17 ►
And just between us, the girl, she must have been very, very bored.
00:24:22 ►
But on the other hand, you know,
00:24:24 ►
see, I was sitting there with her,
00:24:26 ►
and then when he came and knocked on the door,
00:24:28 ►
he walked in, he had a suitcase,
00:24:31 ►
and he set it down.
00:24:32 ►
It was very clear that he was going to spend the night there.
00:24:36 ►
So we enjoyed our dinner,
00:24:38 ►
and we enjoyed our talking,
00:24:39 ►
and she probably was pretty bored
00:24:41 ►
about all the stuff we were doing.
00:24:43 ►
I don’t know.
00:24:44 ►
Anyhow, I went home at 1 o’clock, and he went back with her.
00:24:49 ►
And he made it to the board, I guess.
00:24:51 ►
And he made it to the board, yeah.
00:24:53 ►
I liked him.
00:24:55 ►
And then a whole bunch of stuff happened,
00:24:57 ►
and they said, look, they don’t care the way that they’re behaving,
00:25:03 ►
and if they’re going to be on your board, we’re not.
00:25:06 ►
We’re going to resign.
00:25:07 ►
So I actually went out there and…
00:25:13 ►
Out to Harvard or Cambridge?
00:25:17 ►
Yeah.
00:25:19 ►
Larry was still at Harvard then.
00:25:21 ►
Yeah, he was still at Harvard,
00:25:22 ►
but the dissension had already gotten risen.
00:25:27 ►
And we
00:25:27 ►
sat at
00:25:27 ►
Big Tail.
00:25:28 ►
I remember
00:25:28 ►
about 24
00:25:29 ►
people there.
00:25:30 ►
And they
00:25:31 ►
were part
00:25:33 ►
of his
00:25:33 ►
group.
00:25:34 ►
I had
00:25:34 ►
heard that
00:25:35 ►
they were
00:25:36 ►
going to
00:25:37 ►
release him.
00:25:39 ►
And somehow
00:25:40 ►
the discussion
00:25:41 ►
came up and
00:25:42 ►
I brought it
00:25:43 ►
up that
00:25:44 ►
when is this going to happen?
00:25:46 ►
And all the other people said, what do you mean?
00:25:50 ►
This is all bullshit.
00:25:52 ►
That isn’t true.
00:25:54 ►
And I said, Tim, is this true or not that you’re going to be released?
00:26:00 ►
He hadn’t told his own people.
00:26:03 ►
But, you know, I had him caught and he said yeah
00:26:06 ►
this is gonna happen so that’s when they found out that’s how they found out
00:26:10 ►
if I hadn’t been there God only knows how much money it would have taken the next
00:26:18 ►
morning I got up early in the morning I had to catch a plane. And I told him that we had to take him off. Yeah.
00:26:30 ►
And I couldn’t help liking the guy.
00:26:34 ►
How did he take it when you said you were taking him off the board?
00:26:36 ►
Oh, he understood.
00:26:37 ►
Yeah.
00:26:37 ►
He understood.
00:26:45 ►
After all, if they can kick him out, I can kick him out I can kick him out I guess but he’s pretty understanding
00:26:50 ►
about those things
00:26:51 ►
you know at breakfast this morning
00:26:54 ►
Jean was kind of
00:26:56 ►
I forgot how she said it
00:26:58 ►
but she said
00:26:58 ►
oh yeah everywhere you go
00:27:00 ►
you’re riding on a shuttle
00:27:02 ►
from the airport to a hotel
00:27:03 ►
or something
00:27:03 ►
you strike up a conversation about psychedelics. How do you approach strangers? I mean, if you’re
00:27:09 ►
just sitting on a bus with somebody, do you just strike up a conversation?
00:27:12 ►
I really had a lot of fun with that. I had to go to catch an airplane, and we’re usually at my daughter’s house and it’s quite a distance to the airport.
00:27:28 ►
And so we’d get the, what do you call it?
00:27:32 ►
The shuttle?
00:27:33 ►
The shuttle.
00:27:34 ►
Yeah, we’d have the shuttle come pick us up and it took, oh, 45 minutes usually to get
00:27:42 ►
over there.
00:27:43 ►
So we’d get in and, you in and sooner or later they’d pick up
00:27:46 ►
other people. There’d be a few people in the car. They were close and if they looked friendly
00:27:54 ►
I might bring up an issue and ask questions and so on. It kind of struck me how frequently it was
00:28:08 ►
that somebody that were sitting there,
00:28:10 ►
usually it’s not a big,
00:28:12 ►
I think it’s only maybe a half a dozen people
00:28:16 ►
that would get in the same unit,
00:28:19 ►
but almost always
00:28:21 ►
I’d get the interest of at least one person,
00:28:25 ►
maybe some more than that,
00:28:27 ►
and then we’d go from there, you know,
00:28:29 ►
and just see how far we were willing to discuss it.
00:28:33 ►
I don’t think I was ever totally shut off.
00:28:36 ►
It might have been that sometimes, you know,
00:28:38 ►
nobody was interested and so you just had to forget it.
00:28:41 ►
But it was kind of interesting.
00:28:44 ►
I think I got somebody’s interest almost every time.
00:28:48 ►
I wouldn’t be surprised.
00:28:49 ►
And I just did it just to see if I could raise that interest.
00:28:56 ►
Well, at least talking about politics and religion, you know.
00:29:02 ►
And, of course, you always have to be careful, you know,
00:29:04 ►
that I’m not doing anything now.
00:29:06 ►
Right.
00:29:06 ►
This is stuff that I used to do, and unfortunately our stupid government shut things down.
00:29:14 ►
So not much is going on, but we’re fortunate that there was a time when we could do these things.
00:29:19 ►
And at least we can, at least for the time being, still talk about these things.
00:29:23 ►
Yeah.
00:29:23 ►
So hopefully that’ll go on.
00:29:23 ►
At least we can, at least for the time being, still talk about these things.
00:29:24 ►
Hopefully that will go on.
00:29:29 ►
So, yeah, you never had any ugly incident with anybody preaching to you about the evils of these substances?
00:29:33 ►
Not a one. Not a one.
00:29:36 ►
You know, getting them to understand that although he now feels great
00:29:40 ►
and has had this marvelous awakening,
00:29:42 ►
and some of the things he’s been talking about are really true,
00:29:45 ►
his congregation may not be so convinced,
00:29:48 ►
and they may need to be shown this a lot more slowly and delicately.
00:29:54 ►
So, of course, all I’m saying is really to kind of assess where we are at this.
00:30:03 ►
I think we’ve learned a great deal about this.
00:30:05 ►
I think, in fact, our focus here,
00:30:07 ►
one of the focuses that’s made us successful
00:30:10 ►
is the fact that we’ve had this basic attitude
00:30:13 ►
that the experience per se doesn’t mean anything.
00:30:17 ►
It’s what are you going to do with it?
00:30:20 ►
And getting more and more understanding
00:30:21 ►
of what the person is doing and his relationships and how he’s utilizing the information that he’s obtained.
00:30:30 ►
So we’re gradually learning.
00:30:32 ►
I think in the last two or three years we’ve learned a great deal about this.
00:30:37 ►
On the other hand, as you saw yesterday, we still have a great deal to learn.
00:30:42 ►
But I would say this.
00:30:41 ►
a great deal to learn.
00:30:44 ►
But I would say this. My feeling is, Humphrey,
00:30:46 ►
that with the more responsible people,
00:30:53 ►
the more mature people,
00:30:55 ►
you really need to do less
00:30:57 ►
in helping them integrate the experience
00:31:00 ►
than with some of the disturbed ones
00:31:02 ►
or with those who are in difficult
00:31:04 ►
environmental situations. The ones who are in difficult environmental situations.
00:31:07 ►
The ones who are in difficult environmental situations really need help
00:31:10 ►
because, for instance, if the family is opposed
00:31:16 ►
or there’s some family problem
00:31:17 ►
and the environment that they have to deal with is tough,
00:31:20 ►
they need support, they need to be helped to understand.
00:31:21 ►
is tough. They need support.
00:31:23 ►
They need to be helped to understand. But the more
00:31:25 ►
mature ones seem
00:31:27 ►
to become sort of self-actualizing
00:31:30 ►
and self-generating and
00:31:31 ►
pretty much take care of themselves.
00:31:33 ►
And those who’ve had good experiences,
00:31:36 ►
we’ve seen from our
00:31:37 ►
crowd, I think very little, very
00:31:39 ►
very few people get off the beam
00:31:41 ►
the way I would consider Lurie and
00:31:43 ►
Alpert are off the beam,
00:31:45 ►
for example. What’s your feeling about this, Bill?
00:31:50 ►
Early in the week, I was talking to Albert Hoffman. I told him I would be here and
00:31:56 ►
asked if he had some things that he would like me to say for him. And he said several things.
00:32:08 ►
say for him, and he said several things. The first is that he’s looking to the next generation with high hopes. Now, since he’s 97 years old, that means that most of you here are the next
00:32:16 ►
generation, so keep that in mind. Dr. Hoffman is absolutely convinced that LSD has a very important future,
00:32:29 ►
too important a medium by far to be neglected.
00:32:34 ►
It’s true that sometimes it’s difficult and sometimes even dangerous if not properly used. But used properly, he’s absolutely sure that new dimensions of consciousness
00:32:49 ►
and new levels of experience will be reached. Consciousness is the true nature of man,
00:32:56 ►
and LSD is a powerful revealer of extended consciousness. He’s convinced that it would be insane to not use such a valuable tool.
00:33:07 ►
I’m sure a lot of you here agree. I’m going to make a brief summary of some of the characteristics
00:33:13 ►
of LSD. You probably all know this, you’ve heard it before, but I thought I would just review
00:33:20 ►
so that we’d all sort of be working on the same plane here. First of all, I’d like to report, and I can’t deny this because it’s in writing,
00:33:30 ►
but I’m on record as claiming that LSD is the most powerful learning tool that we have.
00:33:37 ►
But there are a lot of misunderstandings about it, particularly our government and the public at large.
00:33:44 ►
about it, particularly our government and the public at large.
00:33:50 ►
The DEA like to say that LSD is dangerous and toxic.
00:34:00 ►
And when I talk about it, I do admit that there’s one really powerful defect or one thing that makes it very uncomfortable,
00:34:09 ►
and that is in order to have a valuable experience,
00:34:10 ►
you have to be honest.
00:34:15 ►
I thought that might get more response.
00:34:27 ►
The general mistake is that a lot of people look at LSD in the same way you look at allopathic medicines,
00:34:30 ►
that you take LSD and it does something to you.
00:34:34 ►
And actually, I think it works in a totally different way.
00:34:41 ►
Having been working with this for a number of years and observing a lot of experiences,
00:34:46 ►
I’m convinced that what LSD does is simply open the door to your unconscious.
00:34:52 ►
Unfortunately, one of the areas you encounter there is the shadow,
00:34:55 ►
as defined by Carl Jung. The shadow material contains all the stuff that we really don’t want to know.
00:35:01 ►
A lot of it’s painful and hurtful,
00:35:04 ►
and so we have the ability with our
00:35:07 ►
powerful mind to repress this and keep it totally out of consciousness. So a lot of people, especially
00:35:15 ►
if they’re not properly prepared and don’t realize these potentials, can get into those places and they can be very uncomfortable. Another thing that
00:35:25 ►
I found personally is that the deeper that I’ve gone into my own psyche to clear things up,
00:35:33 ►
I find that I run into more heavily defended areas. So the deeper you go, the more powerful
00:35:41 ►
is the repression. And also that means it’s more painful to go through these areas.
00:35:48 ►
So I think a lot of people really stop exploring their own inner psyche
00:35:52 ►
because they don’t want to go into that deep shadow material.
00:35:58 ►
On the other hand, if you realize that this is what you’re doing and you choose to do it,
00:36:05 ►
the release of shadow material is extremely rewarding.
00:36:10 ►
First of all, it takes a lot of energy to hold repressed material down.
00:36:14 ►
So as you release it, that energy becomes available again.
00:36:29 ►
There’s an opening in awareness.
00:36:30 ►
You see with greater clarity.
00:36:33 ►
Your intuition improves.
00:36:36 ►
Creativity improves.
00:36:39 ►
There’s increased well-being and joy.
00:36:43 ►
All of this from the release of this stuff that we’re holding down that serves us no purpose.
00:36:45 ►
If we continue in our exploration, we find that doors are open to profound levels of realization.
00:36:53 ►
We discover that we’re intimately connected to everything in the universe.
00:36:59 ►
And we find that we’re immersed in this life force, which is really inconceivable love.
00:37:08 ►
We can look at our creation and see the enormous beauty,
00:37:13 ►
the wonder, the aliveness everywhere.
00:37:16 ►
As one who’s abused LSD by trying to overcome difficulties
00:37:20 ►
with repeated experiences,
00:37:22 ►
I have found that a good meditation practice
00:37:24 ►
is an excellent way to keep the gains from experiences alive.
00:37:30 ►
Deepening meditation practice deepens your LSD experience,
00:37:35 ►
and having more profound LSD experiences
00:37:37 ►
yields instant gains in deepening meditation practice.
00:37:43 ►
Now, unfortunately, there’s a very tragic dilemma
00:37:46 ►
in our country.
00:37:48 ►
Our Constitution guarantees
00:37:51 ►
this freedom of religion.
00:37:53 ►
When we use LSD appropriately,
00:37:56 ►
it can provide a direct,
00:37:58 ►
crystal-clear path
00:37:59 ►
to the height of spiritual ecstasy.
00:38:02 ►
It can provide the direct experience
00:38:04 ►
of the Godhead.
00:38:06 ►
And our government makes this valuable tool illegal.
00:38:11 ►
Every coin that’s minted,
00:38:13 ►
every bill of our currency that’s printed,
00:38:17 ►
holds the letters,
00:38:18 ►
In God We Trust.
00:38:20 ►
Yet we are denied the most direct path to experience and realize the Godhead.
00:38:27 ►
This seems to me an enormous tragedy.
00:38:31 ►
What might we do about this?
00:38:32 ►
I think if we can plan something and have a goal in the future that we can work toward
00:38:40 ►
that perhaps we can create a situation where we can resolve this problem
00:38:47 ►
and have the freedom of religion that we’re entitled to.
00:38:52 ►
I suggest that we establish centers for spiritual realization,
00:38:58 ►
combining the appropriate use of LSD with meditation practice.
00:39:03 ►
The staff should include at least one leader who’s well experienced in the spiritual employment of LSD with meditation practice. The staff should include at least one leader who is well experienced
00:39:07 ►
in the spiritual employment of LSD and there should also be an experienced meditation teacher
00:39:13 ►
although it could be the same person if he has the qualifications. You need a meeting place and
00:39:20 ►
this can be as simple as someone’s house. Each candidate who wants to join this group must first have a solo,
00:39:28 ►
well-prepared LSD experience with the leader,
00:39:31 ►
as provided by Jacob in the book The Secret Chief.
00:39:35 ►
If the experience is satisfactory, he can join the group.
00:39:38 ►
If not, he can have repeated experiences until he is properly prepared.
00:39:44 ►
Members of the group will be expected to develop a good meditation practice.
00:39:50 ►
And you should be willing to devote at least 30 minutes a day,
00:39:54 ►
and better, it’s an hour a day.
00:39:56 ►
And as your practice deepens, you’ll find this easier and easier to do and more rewarding.
00:40:04 ►
The group will meet weekly for instruction and meditating together,
00:40:10 ►
and once every one or two months, the group can meet for a shared LSD experience.
00:40:17 ►
The continual sharing of meditation and sacramental experiences reinforces the group energy,
00:40:23 ►
while the learning of each individual contributes to the learning of everyone else in the group.
00:40:29 ►
What I’ve described here can open the doors to true spiritual development
00:40:34 ►
in a model that could well be incorporated by any sincere religious group anywhere in the world.
00:40:41 ►
What is it like to enter the dimensions of higher consciousness? Dr. Hoffman has presented
00:40:49 ►
a great deal of information from his own personal experiences in books he has written. In my own
00:40:57 ►
experience, I’ve been unusually blessed to have the privilege of entering dimensions never previously imagined.
00:41:06 ►
While I have not always been able to retain the full impact of these discoveries,
00:41:11 ►
if I did, I would be enlightened in the Buddhist sense,
00:41:15 ►
the impact of these openings has exposed such grandeur and vastness
00:41:21 ►
that the only acceptable response is incredible gratitude.
00:41:28 ►
Being human and still carrying burdens beyond my ability to resolve them,
00:41:34 ►
there still remains important work to be done.
00:41:38 ►
But just having experienced glimpses is enough to master determination to press forward, for
00:41:46 ►
it is now clear that our
00:41:47 ►
real self, the true
00:41:50 ►
I that resides in the
00:41:51 ►
heart of each of us,
00:41:54 ►
is present and available
00:41:56 ►
and is worth
00:41:57 ►
far more than anything
00:41:59 ►
one could possibly imagine.
00:42:03 ►
Entering
00:42:04 ►
this dimension is pure indescribable bliss.
00:42:08 ►
We are one with the universe,
00:42:11 ►
including all other beings and creatures,
00:42:14 ►
and it is crystal clear that love is the only answer.
00:42:19 ►
It is really impossible to fully describe
00:42:22 ►
the remarkable essence of who we are.
00:42:27 ►
What I am presenting here are simply words,
00:42:30 ►
and we all know how easy it is to present words in all kinds of ways.
00:42:35 ►
But in each of us, the remarkable core that is one with all,
00:42:43 ►
and hopefully, as these words are stated, something deep
00:42:47 ►
within yourself will recognize a new reality, a reality that is the most worthwhile thing
00:42:54 ►
we can possibly realize. Hopefully, just a taste of this can reveal what is possible and is ultimately real, the only reality that really matters.
00:43:11 ►
Since 1965, I have learned that psychedelic substances were the most powerful learning
00:43:18 ►
tools available to mankind. Complex, powerful, they are easily misused and abused. Yet for this sincere seeker,
00:43:30 ►
armed with honesty, courage, and an unquenchable thirst for self-discovery, I know of no other
00:43:38 ►
means they can so readily provide self-understanding and the ultimate nature of reality,
00:43:46 ►
nor they can so readily reveal
00:43:48 ►
the source of most of the difficulties
00:43:50 ►
of the human race
00:43:52 ►
and the most appropriate path
00:43:54 ►
to their resolution.
00:43:58 ►
Okay, you guys can take it from there.
00:44:02 ►
Myra is going to talk for a while
00:44:04 ►
about himself, hopefully, and Al Hubbard.
00:44:11 ►
And after he’s finished, then we’re going to take questions from the audience. But while
00:44:18 ►
he’s talking, we don’t want to interrupt. Just train of thought because he’ll never get back to us.
00:44:26 ►
My thoughts disappear this fast.
00:44:31 ►
I know because I’ve got the same syndrome.
00:44:34 ►
I was a little disconcerted to get a call from George Bush earlier today
00:44:39 ►
and Myron’s been appointed sainthood.
00:44:43 ►
Bush is the Pope.
00:44:45 ►
Well, he’s the Pope. And so I Of course you’re supposed to do it.
00:44:46 ►
Well, he’s the Pope.
00:44:49 ►
And so I don’t know who this guy is here.
00:44:50 ►
I thought I knew him.
00:44:55 ►
So, Myron, let’s start.
00:44:57 ►
Okay.
00:45:02 ►
One of the questions that Gary asked me,
00:45:04 ►
which I hope you’ll all be interested in, is how did I get mixed up with Hubbard
00:45:07 ►
in the first place?
00:45:08 ►
And it’s a really fascinating story to me,
00:45:11 ►
in a way.
00:45:13 ►
But I’d gotten acquainted with
00:45:15 ►
Gerald Hurd in Southern California,
00:45:17 ►
who’s one of the world’s really great mystics
00:45:20 ►
and a marvelous author,
00:45:21 ►
if you’ve read his books.
00:45:23 ►
And I was very taken with him.
00:45:25 ►
And I was with Ampex Corporation
00:45:28 ►
and went to Southern California frequently.
00:45:30 ►
And every time that I went down there in business,
00:45:32 ►
I tried to see Gerald.
00:45:35 ►
So one time I was visiting him
00:45:38 ►
and he started telling me about LSD and taking it
00:45:42 ►
and what a remarkable thing it was
00:45:44 ►
and all the openings that it
00:45:46 ►
provided.
00:45:47 ►
I thought, my God, what’s a mystic doing taking drugs anyway?
00:45:52 ►
And so I didn’t do much more about it, but then Alex Ponyatov was the head of Ampex Corporation
00:46:00 ►
and he’d gone to Canada and somehow or other he’d run into Hubbard.
00:46:04 ►
And he came back and told me all kinds of stories that Hubbard had told him about the work he was doing.
00:46:11 ►
So I thought, well, gee whiz, maybe I’ll get in touch with him.
00:46:14 ►
So I wrote Al a letter, and much to my amazement, two or three months later,
00:46:18 ►
there he is on the steps of Ampex.
00:46:24 ►
So we got acquainted,
00:46:26 ►
and I was sucked in immediately.
00:46:30 ►
He’s a very gregarious person,
00:46:33 ►
full of fun and laughter.
00:46:35 ►
And the thing that got me,
00:46:38 ►
I was all shut up inside myself
00:46:41 ►
and worried about this and that and the other thing.
00:46:44 ►
I could never really feel anybody.
00:46:47 ►
But in his presence, I could feel his warmth.
00:46:50 ►
And especially as I got to know him and spent more time with him,
00:46:53 ►
I just thought it was great just to be in his presence.
00:46:56 ►
And he’s full of stories and all kinds of interesting things.
00:46:59 ►
So it only took that one meeting for me to make up my mind
00:47:06 ►
that I wanted to go to Canada, where he lived, and have LSD.
00:47:10 ►
And my first LSD experience was just absolutely remarkable.
00:47:14 ►
So I think I ventured to say right off the bat
00:47:20 ►
that that’s the greatest discovery man has ever made.
00:47:23 ►
Because I don’t know much else about what a man discovered,
00:47:27 ►
but as far as I’m concerned, I’m willing to stand by that.
00:47:31 ►
So that’s how I got into it.
00:47:34 ►
And Hubbard came down, introduced him to some folks.
00:47:38 ►
Sometimes we got along with some that he didn’t.
00:47:41 ►
But in the end, I just saw that I had to spend the rest of my life as
00:47:47 ►
much as possible in doing something about LSD. So I used to visit him quite a bit. He
00:47:53 ►
got together with Ross McLean in Canada. Ross McLean was a psychiatrist who had a mental
00:48:00 ►
hospital, and they administered LSD there, and visited them there and after a while it got to
00:48:07 ►
the point where I felt we had to do something and so we started the clinic in Menlo Park
00:48:12 ►
where for three and a half years we gave people LSD, some mescaline, a little bit of psilocybin
00:48:20 ►
at times until the FDA finally put FDA finally stopped everything in 1965.
00:48:28 ►
So that’s how it got involved.
00:48:31 ►
And, Myron, tell us how Alan Humbert, how did he get a hold of LSD?
00:48:40 ►
How was he introduced to it? I’m not sure
00:48:45 ►
exactly who the people
00:48:47 ►
were that he got involved with.
00:48:50 ►
He did run into
00:48:52 ►
someone in the Vancouver
00:48:53 ►
area who
00:48:55 ►
introduced him to LSD,
00:48:58 ►
and it only took one shot with him.
00:49:00 ►
He had an amazing
00:49:01 ►
opening, a tremendously
00:49:04 ►
spiritual experience,
00:49:06 ►
and he felt actually he’d been given a mission to really spread this around.
00:49:12 ►
Fortunately at the time, he was very well off financially.
00:49:16 ►
He had a very close friend who was wealthy.
00:49:21 ►
He gave LSD to his friend, and his friend had the same kind of opening
00:49:25 ►
and was willing to support him in anything that he wanted to do.
00:49:29 ►
So he began to devote a lot of time meeting people, getting acquainted,
00:49:35 ►
and he was very good at sizing people up
00:49:37 ►
and assessing whether they’d make good candidates,
00:49:41 ►
and he was very good at supporting people through the experience.
00:49:45 ►
So he began to spread the word around, and he covered an awful lot of ground.
00:49:52 ►
My connection was second-hand to him,
00:49:56 ►
because my mentor was a guy by the name of Nick Cholales,
00:50:00 ►
who was my brother-in-law.
00:50:03 ►
And he was a research psychiatrist
00:50:05 ►
at the University of Saskatchewan.
00:50:09 ►
And at the time, they were studying LSD.
00:50:15 ►
And it was called at that time a psychotomimetic,
00:50:20 ►
mimicking psychosis.
00:50:22 ►
So they were giving people LSD
00:50:26 ►
thinking they would discover
00:50:28 ►
what were the structures and the dynamics of psychosis.
00:50:32 ►
And Al went over and said,
00:50:33 ►
it’s easy to make people crazy.
00:50:35 ►
What’s hard is to make them sane.
00:50:37 ►
And LSD will make them sane.
00:50:39 ►
It won’t make them crazy.
00:50:40 ►
But if you give it the wrong,
00:50:42 ►
if you don’t give it in the proper environment,
00:50:44 ►
it will make them crazy. And so that’s how, and I don’t know how he got to the Saskatchewan.
00:50:51 ►
It was called the Saskatchewan Group on Schizophrenia. That was the name of their project. And that
00:50:57 ►
was Hoffer and Osmond. And then my brother-in-law, Nick Chawalas, and then his partner, Duncan Blewett.
00:51:06 ►
And I had my first experience there with them in 1959
00:51:09 ►
before any of you were born.
00:51:14 ►
And I got born that day that I had my first session.
00:51:20 ►
And, Myra, why don’t you tell us a bit about
00:51:23 ►
the work that was done at Menlo Park?
00:51:27 ►
Well, I’ll be glad to do that, but I’d like to interject a little bit
00:51:31 ►
in what you just said about Duncan and Wood,
00:51:34 ►
because I’m not sure how the connection was made,
00:51:38 ►
but Al went to central Canada and met with Hoffer and Osman.
00:51:47 ►
And he’d heard about their approach,
00:51:49 ►
which really wasn’t recognizing what LSD would do at all.
00:51:53 ►
But somehow he met Blewett.
00:51:56 ►
And he’s very sensitive, and Blewett’s a very open, warm person.
00:52:00 ►
He recognized right away that Blewett would be a good candidate.
00:52:03 ►
So he gave Blewett LSD. and he was off with Osmond and Hoffer,
00:52:10 ►
and he went in and looked at Blewett,
00:52:14 ►
and Blewett was just having the time of his life.
00:52:16 ►
So he went out to see Hoffer and Osmond and says,
00:52:20 ►
he said, you know, this guy Blewett is having a psychosis.
00:52:26 ►
You better come in and see if you can get him out of it.
00:52:29 ►
So they walked in, and immediately Blewett started laughing and laughing.
00:52:36 ►
And Al says, see, see, can you get him out of it?
00:52:38 ►
And he would just laugh all the way.
00:52:46 ►
well anyhow Hubbard worked with McLean
00:52:49 ►
at his hospital there for several years
00:52:51 ►
and I got to visit that
00:52:52 ►
and
00:52:53 ►
then Hubbard
00:52:56 ►
well he’s not an easy guy to get along
00:52:59 ►
with
00:52:59 ►
he very much likes things
00:53:02 ►
his own way
00:53:03 ►
I’m not sure what the conflict got between he and McLean,
00:53:10 ►
but he decided to set up his own treatment place in downtown Vancouver,
00:53:15 ►
and that went on for a while, and I thought,
00:53:17 ►
gee whiz, we ought to do the same in California.
00:53:21 ►
So I put the necessary things together. Fortunately, I accumulated a little
00:53:27 ►
cash and we set up a place where really it was set up pretty much the way Al designed it.
00:53:38 ►
Very nice furniture, comfortable setting, beautiful pictures on the wall, a lot of artifacts for
00:53:47 ►
people to look at to stimulate them various ways. And then of course one of
00:53:51 ►
his main tricks was to have people bring pictures of their family, their
00:54:00 ►
parents, their siblings, their marriage partners, and so on.
00:54:05 ►
Because looking at that under the influence is tremendously revealing.
00:54:12 ►
And he had several really good pictures, too.
00:54:17 ►
Actually, one just really opened me wide open.
00:54:23 ►
Well, I don’t know how much time…
00:54:25 ►
Is that St. Veronica’s veil?
00:54:27 ►
Yeah.
00:54:29 ►
Oh, hell.
00:54:31 ►
I use it thousands of times.
00:54:33 ►
It’s worn out.
00:54:35 ►
It’s a…
00:54:37 ►
Well, hell, I was a Catholic.
00:54:40 ►
And so it was…
00:54:44 ►
The setup that I created for my work
00:54:49 ►
was exactly what they had in Menlo Park
00:54:52 ►
because it’s what they had in Saskatchewan.
00:54:54 ►
So we were all benefactors of Al’s insights.
00:55:02 ►
And my understanding is when Christ was carrying the cross, insights and it’s when
00:55:05 ►
my understanding
00:55:06 ►
is when
00:55:07 ►
Christ was
00:55:08 ►
carrying the cross
00:55:09 ►
he fell
00:55:11 ►
and
00:55:11 ►
Veronica
00:55:12 ►
wiped his brow
00:55:14 ►
with her handkerchief
00:55:15 ►
and then
00:55:16 ►
it was the
00:55:16 ►
and then the next day
00:55:18 ►
on the handkerchief
00:55:18 ►
was the image
00:55:19 ►
of
00:55:20 ►
Christ
00:55:22 ►
and there’s
00:55:23 ►
this
00:55:23 ►
awesome painter called Saint Veronica Dale and of Christ and this awesome painting
00:55:25 ►
called St. Veronica’s Tale.
00:55:27 ►
And the most powerful thing,
00:55:31 ►
we used it every session.
00:55:34 ►
You know, when they used it with me,
00:55:36 ►
I was not happy with Christians,
00:55:38 ►
I’m telling you.
00:55:39 ►
I mean, I had a family of Christians
00:55:41 ►
and they were all crudely.
00:55:44 ►
And so I wasn’t about to look at it, you know.
00:55:48 ►
But Nick, you know, every hour or so, he’d pass it to me again.
00:55:52 ►
And, well, I’m not ready for that.
00:55:56 ►
And so finally, thank God, I looked at it, and it was an overpowering experience to experience what Christ’s love is.
00:56:11 ►
And I was astounded.
00:56:14 ►
I was absolutely astounded.
00:56:16 ►
So that worked for me, and I thought,
00:56:20 ►
if it works for me, it can help work for anybody.
00:56:24 ►
Well, you’re certainly right in my case.
00:56:27 ►
I’ll just elaborate briefly.
00:56:29 ►
I’ve covered this in the book.
00:56:31 ►
But I looked at this figure, and one of the things about it
00:56:35 ►
is one of these pictures where you look and the eyes are open.
00:56:40 ►
And then you keep looking and the eyes close.
00:56:42 ►
Did that happen with you?
00:56:44 ►
So I saw the eyes close, and I thought, oh my God closed did that happen with you? so I saw the eyes closed
00:56:46 ►
and oh my God
00:56:47 ►
something’s wrong with me
00:56:48 ►
why is he closing his eyes?
00:56:50 ►
because the picture
00:56:51 ►
when you’re under LSD
00:56:52 ►
is so alive
00:56:54 ►
it’s almost like
00:56:54 ►
the living person
00:56:55 ►
in front of you
00:56:56 ►
it is
00:56:57 ►
and so I looked again
00:56:59 ►
and then all of a sudden
00:57:00 ►
there was a swish
00:57:01 ►
and I was looking
00:57:03 ►
at a female face
00:57:04 ►
like God what’s happening here? and all of a sudden sw was a swish and I was looking at a female face. My God, what’s happening
00:57:05 ►
here? And all of a sudden, swish, another face. And then in the next few minutes, a
00:57:11 ►
thousand faces of all variety of mankind went by and I said, this is every man. I’m Jewish, mind you.
00:57:37 ►
One of the things I suppose you all know, but you may not, but in that era nobody had a clue what LSD was.
00:57:42 ►
I’ve got a funny story.
00:57:44 ►
When I was working with my group of kids that I worked with,
00:57:48 ►
I was working at a hospital in Costa Mesa with schizophrenic and autistic children.
00:57:53 ►
And I thought, well, hell, if it worked with me, it can work with anybody.
00:57:57 ►
So I told the psychiatrist in charge, I said, I want to give these kids LSD and see what will happen.
00:58:07 ►
And so what’s LSD? Well, this is the name of it, well is there any literature? No. So he sort of trusted
00:58:13 ►
me. So we just got LSD from Sandos and started using it. But nobody knew what it was. So
00:58:23 ►
there weren’t any committees
00:58:25 ►
or evaluating what we were going to do
00:58:28 ►
we didn’t know what we were going to do
00:58:29 ►
I didn’t even know what I was going to do
00:58:31 ►
one of the funny things
00:58:32 ►
I was telling somebody one time
00:58:34 ►
when I was doing this work
00:58:36 ►
LSD work with these children
00:58:39 ►
and the guy looked at me and said
00:58:41 ►
you’re converting children to Mormonism?
00:58:53 ►
I said, no, no, LSD, not LDS.
00:58:56 ►
He clearly had a learning disability.
00:58:59 ►
He needs it.
00:59:08 ►
So the environment was absolutely wonderful. Laura Huxley, Myron and I both have known Laura forever and she made the comment one time, we didn’t have any bad trips
00:59:15 ►
because we didn’t know you could have bad trips. So all the input that we ever had from anybody was how wonderful the experience was.
00:59:28 ►
So we didn’t have any set that it was other than positive.
00:59:33 ►
And what a blessing that was
00:59:37 ►
because it hadn’t gotten anywhere.
00:59:40 ►
It was totally unknown.
00:59:42 ►
And there were a few groups around the world that were
00:59:45 ►
using it. A friend of mine in Holland was using it. And another friend of mine in London
00:59:51 ►
was using it. So we would all find each other somehow, because there wasn’t any internet
00:59:58 ►
in those cases. But, you know, word gets around. And one of my best friends came to be Joyce Martin,
01:00:07 ►
who was an analyst in London,
01:00:10 ►
and out of the Tavistock Clinic.
01:00:11 ►
And she did incredible work.
01:00:15 ►
And Aaronson Hine in Holland, incredible work.
01:00:19 ►
He had his own hospital,
01:00:21 ►
and that’s all he did was LSD work.
01:00:22 ►
And just awesome kinds of results
01:00:26 ►
and then came along came I was going to say Leary the devil but I won’t
01:00:36 ►
long came shit and they hit the fan and then we’re all closed down so then we
01:00:42 ►
did it all well some of us did it
01:00:45 ►
without government approval,
01:00:46 ►
I guess you would say.
01:00:50 ►
Do you want to make any other comments
01:00:54 ►
or should we ask people for questions?
01:00:57 ►
Let me just mention one more thing
01:00:59 ►
with regard to Hubbard.
01:01:02 ►
I think his going to mid-Canada,
01:01:08 ►
to Hoffer and Osmond,
01:01:09 ►
and the demonstration with Bluett,
01:01:12 ►
really opened their eyes,
01:01:14 ►
and I think it really was the beginning
01:01:17 ►
of people beginning to discover what LSD could do.
01:01:21 ►
And they went and started doing a variety of programs and and 12th and
01:01:27 ►
look work together for several years with alcoholics and then other hospitals
01:01:32 ►
in Canada were trained and did it so I really think you have to say that
01:01:38 ►
Hubbard was an enormous factor and LSD being properly recognized for its true merits and work proceeding.
01:01:48 ►
Actually, in America, they’re harder to convince and I don’t think they caught on nearly as
01:01:56 ►
well as the Canadians did.
01:01:58 ►
There are a few that did some pretty good work in America, but by and large, I think
01:02:03 ►
you have to give Hubbard a lot of credit for getting the thing moving.
01:02:09 ►
You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one
01:02:14 ►
thought at a time.
01:02:18 ►
Before I make any other comments, there is one thing that I’d like to be sure to say
01:02:22 ►
about the references that you just now heard Myron and Gary make regarding Dr. Timothy Leary.
01:02:29 ►
To be brief, there was a lot of personal history between the three of them back in the 60s,
01:02:34 ►
and it didn’t always have comfortable outcomes.
01:02:38 ►
And you can hear some of these stories in the Gary Fisher recordings that I did a while back.
01:02:43 ►
Also in Myron’s recordings, Lone Pine series, there’s some interesting ones.
01:02:47 ►
And, of course, there’s the one I just played.
01:02:49 ►
But here’s something that I find quite interesting about these Timothy Leary comments.
01:02:54 ►
Now, some people who were involved with Dr. Leary in the 60s
01:02:58 ►
came away with a real negative image of the good doctor.
01:03:02 ►
However, I also know a lot of people who got to know the man that
01:03:05 ►
Timothy Leary had become by the final decades of his life. And without exception, they just can’t
01:03:11 ►
speak highly enough of him. In fact, even in the part we just heard where Myron told the story
01:03:17 ►
about meeting Leary and his staff at Harvard, he did end the story by saying some kind things about
01:03:23 ►
him. So, what I’ve taken away from this, and from my own experience,
01:03:28 ►
is that maybe we shouldn’t judge a person until we’ve seen how they end their years here on Earth.
01:03:34 ►
I know that for myself, there are some things that I did and ways that I acted in my 30s, 40s, and 50s
01:03:40 ►
that, well, they caused me to wince at the memories.
01:03:44 ►
You know, trust me, there were times
01:03:46 ►
when you would not have liked me, most of which I think took place during the alcohol phase of my
01:03:52 ►
life, you know, the years before I discovered the psychedelic world. But in my case, at Burning Man
01:03:58 ►
in 2002, I changed my name from Larry to Lorenzo. And for me, it’s been a wonderful thing to do,
01:04:05 ►
because if ever someone brings up some of the stupid things that I’d like to forget,
01:04:10 ►
my response is simply,
01:04:12 ►
Oh, you’re talking about Larry.
01:04:14 ►
Oh, I agree. He was a real lout.
01:04:16 ►
But that was Larry. I’m Lorenzo.
01:04:20 ►
Well, I guess I’m really off track now. Where was I?
01:04:23 ►
Oh, getting back to the sound collage that we just listened to.
01:04:27 ►
Granted, we have to give Al Hubbard a lot of credit for, as Myron just said, getting the thing moving.
01:04:34 ►
But no less credit is due Myron Stolaroff and Gary Fisher for their pioneering work that they also did,
01:04:40 ►
much of which will most likely never be repeated.
01:04:46 ►
also did, much of which will most likely never be repeated. And I hope that with that last sound bite that you got a little idea of what Kathleen’s salons were like in Venice Beach back then.
01:04:52 ►
One further note of possible interest is that Myron gave me the print of Veronica’s veil that
01:04:58 ►
they used at his Menlo Park Institute for Advanced Studies, and you can see a scan of it in the program notes for
01:05:05 ►
my podcast number 200, which is titled A Few Words from Our Elders, in which Myron also appears.
01:05:13 ►
Now, in listening to those sound bites with you just now, when Myron said how miserable his life
01:05:19 ►
might have been had he never found LSD, well, I was really struck with another image of Myron and that was
01:05:25 ►
how he suffered during the first few hours of an acid trip. On the few
01:05:31 ►
occasions when we had an experience together I was always amazed at how
01:05:35 ►
difficult a time he had in the beginning of a trip. Myron and I and his wife Jean
01:05:41 ►
talked about that at length on several occasions, because it really baffled me, since I have only rarely had a negative experience on LSD.
01:05:50 ►
Well, what was taking place, I learned, was that even though Myron wasn’t what is called a practicing Jew,
01:05:57 ►
he nonetheless carried what must have been a terrible weight of the psychic suffering of,
01:06:03 ►
well, maybe of the entire Jewish people.
01:06:05 ►
And at the beginning of almost every psychedelic experience, even the non-acid ones, he went
01:06:11 ►
through some sort of hellish experience of the combined suffering of his ancestors.
01:06:17 ►
To be honest, had I even had one experience as difficult as almost all of his were, well,
01:06:23 ►
I would never have taken LSD or anything else for a second time.
01:06:27 ►
His courage in these matters was, quite frankly, immense.
01:06:31 ►
In fact, I’ve never met a more courageous psychonaut than Myron.
01:06:35 ►
He will always be a true hero of mine.
01:06:39 ►
Unfortunately, not much has been written about Myron, but there is one book that finally did him justice,
01:06:45 ►
and that is John Markoff’s brilliant book, What the Dormouse Said, How the 60s Counterculture Shaped the Personal Computer Industry.
01:06:56 ►
And this is a book not to be missed if you have any interest at all in learning how we arrived at this world of mobile computing on a massive scale that we have now.
01:07:06 ►
And for those who don’t remember what computers were like in the 50s and 60s,
01:07:10 ►
well, they were huge boxes that were safely encased behind glass walls
01:07:14 ►
and tended to by super geeks who looked down rather disdainfully through their glass cages on us commoners
01:07:21 ►
who, well, we only wanted to get our hands on those great machines ourselves. And until the 60s, there was literally no talk anywhere about there ever being such a
01:07:31 ►
thing as a personal computer. But as Markoff documents, it was within a few mile radius of
01:07:37 ►
Kepler’s bookstore in Menlo Park at that very moment in time in the late 50s and early 60s that the personal computer was born.
01:07:46 ►
And Markoff gives credit to mainly four people for laying the foundation upon which, well,
01:07:52 ►
we are all now surfing waves of information.
01:07:55 ►
And one of the four was Myron Stolaroff, whose LSD program in Menlo Park at the time was
01:08:01 ►
the site of the personal transformations of many of the key
01:08:05 ►
players at the Xerox PARC and the Stanford Research Institute, as well as many of the
01:08:11 ►
members of the Homebrew Computer Club, at which the first Apple boards were sold.
01:08:16 ►
And I could go on for another hour or so about that book, but suffice it to say that Markov
01:08:21 ►
gives Myron a lot of credit for the birth of the personal computer.
01:08:25 ►
Interesting to me, at least, Markoff never interviewed Myron for the book. In fact, after it was published,
01:08:31 ►
Myron even wrote to Markoff asking to speak with him, but a reply was never received,
01:08:36 ►
much to Myron’s dismay, I should add. Which brings me to the story of what remains of the records of the Menlo Park research,
01:08:46 ►
as well as the work that Myron did with Sasha Shulgin.
01:08:50 ►
It was during one of our late-night conversations,
01:08:53 ►
Myron told me that when the Controlled Substances Analog Act came out in 1986
01:08:59 ►
and made illegal any and all research into mind-expanding substances,
01:09:05 ►
well, he became despondent and, quite frankly, lost all hope
01:09:08 ►
that these important chemicals would ever again be investigated.
01:09:12 ►
So, when his former administrative assistant called and said that
01:09:16 ►
she no longer had room to store the personal records of the 350 or so participants in their study,
01:09:24 ►
Myron told her to go ahead and destroy them all.
01:09:26 ►
And so much of that research has now been forever lost.
01:09:31 ►
So I asked him about the work that he did with Sasha. Where were those records?
01:09:36 ►
Well, when the second crackdown came in 1986, Myron took all of those records and stored them in a neighbor’s barn.
01:09:44 ►
And several years later, after Myron had already begun slipping into early dementia
01:09:49 ►
I was visiting with him and Gene and I asked Gene about those records
01:09:53 ►
And she immediately brightened up and said she’d forgotten all about them
01:09:57 ►
And so that afternoon she went and picked them up
01:10:00 ►
Well, for the next two days and nights
01:10:03 ►
Gene and I poured through a treasure trove of
01:10:05 ►
interesting papers. You see, for many of the experience accounts that are detailed in PCOL
01:10:11 ►
and T-COL, Myron wrote very detailed six to ten page reports for each and every participant in
01:10:18 ►
those experiments. It was an amazing amount of detailed information. But what was also in those
01:10:24 ►
boxes was some incredible
01:10:25 ►
personal correspondence between Myron, the Shulgens, Albert Hoffman, and others. In fact,
01:10:31 ►
although I had Gene’s permission to read this material, I kind of felt like a voyeur at times.
01:10:37 ►
But what great fun it was to read a whole series of letters from Ann and Sasha Shulgen over the
01:10:42 ►
period of one summer, during which Sasha’s main
01:10:46 ►
theme was his ongoing war against the gophers who were destroying his garden. You know, somehow
01:10:51 ►
reading about the more mundane aspects of their family relations made them all seem much more
01:10:57 ►
human and real to me. But it was sometime on the third day of looking through those records that
01:11:03 ►
I mentioned to Gene what a shame it was that the Menlo Park files had been destroyed.
01:11:09 ►
And it was then that she told me that, well, only the personal records had been destroyed, the ones from the participants.
01:11:15 ►
But they still had a whole mountain of other records from the Institute, and they were stored in a dilapidated old shed out back.
01:11:23 ►
And there I found all of the administrative records and more from the Institute.
01:11:29 ►
And in a flash, I was pulling open file drawers and poking into boxes just at random.
01:11:35 ►
And if I could spend another few hours today, I’d tell you about some of the amazing records
01:11:39 ►
that were slowly disintegrating in that old shed.
01:11:42 ►
However, eventually you’re going to be able to see them for yourself online.
01:11:47 ►
I’ll get back to that in just a minute.
01:11:50 ►
So when I returned home, the first thing I did is call John Hanna and told him what I’d stumbled upon.
01:11:55 ►
So John then got together with Greg and Tanya Manning,
01:11:58 ►
and along with Ann and Sasha Shulgin, went down to visit the Stolleroffs and to check out those lost records.
01:12:06 ►
And not long after they arrived, John called me and confirmed that the records of Myron and Gene’s work with the Shulgins
01:12:12 ►
was a truly invaluable find and thanked me for turning him on to it.
01:12:16 ►
So I asked him what he thought about the files in the old shed, and he said,
01:12:20 ►
What files? What shed? Because Gene hadn’t yet mentioned them to him.
01:12:21 ►
what files, what shed?
01:12:24 ►
Because Gene hadn’t yet mentioned them to him.
01:12:28 ►
So John and Tanya and Greg put on breathing masks to protect them from the rat and mouse poop
01:12:30 ►
that had accumulated in the shed,
01:12:33 ►
and they proceeded to load up John’s van
01:12:35 ►
with dozens of boxes of records,
01:12:37 ►
which he took back up to Arrowhead,
01:12:39 ►
where they have now all been digitized.
01:12:42 ►
In fact, the Arrowhead team did a lot more
01:12:44 ►
than just digitize those records. They have now completed
01:12:47 ►
a detailed inventory on a very large spreadsheet which documents
01:12:52 ►
the title, date, and other basic information for more than 5,000
01:12:56 ►
documents. The documents themselves have now been carefully
01:13:00 ►
stored in airtight boxes and returned to Jean,
01:13:03 ►
where she’s hoping to transport them to, well,
01:13:07 ►
that’s a problem that has to be solved yet. Jean told me that the family would like to see these
01:13:12 ►
records ultimately stored in the Stanford University Archive, but to date they haven’t
01:13:17 ►
been able to make direct contact with anyone associated with that institution who can help
01:13:22 ►
to move this project forward. So if you
01:13:25 ►
happen to know someone connected with the Stanford archive and can help, well
01:13:29 ►
please let me know so that I can put them in direct contact with Jean who is
01:13:32 ►
the current owner of this material. But what of the digitized records you ask?
01:13:37 ►
Well how can you see them for yourself? Unfortunately there’s still some work to
01:13:43 ►
be done before they can be placed online.
01:13:46 ►
Specifically, there needs to be an abstract created for most of the documents, and while
01:13:51 ►
this will be largely an effort done by volunteers, what is still lacking are funds to pay for two
01:13:57 ►
full-time Arrowwood staffers who will supervise this work and write the software required to help
01:14:03 ►
you sort through all this material.
01:14:06 ►
Fortunately, enough funds were raised through the donations to Arrowood earlier to get the
01:14:10 ►
digitizing and preservation of the records completed, but another $5,000 is required to
01:14:16 ►
finish the abstract work and to place the documents online. So if you’re in a position to help,
01:14:21 ►
on the program notes for this podcast, you’ll find a link to Arrowwood’s Support the Stolaroff Collection page,
01:14:28 ►
where you can make a tax-deductible targeted donation that will go directly to this project.
01:14:34 ►
Or you can just go directly to Arrowwood, E-R-O-W-I-D, Arrowwood.org,
01:14:39 ►
and search for the Stolaroff Collection.
01:14:42 ►
It’s really easy to find.
01:14:41 ►
and search for the Stolarov collection.
01:14:43 ►
It’s really easy to find.
01:14:51 ►
Well, I guess it is time to close this little tribute to my dear friend, Myron Stolarov.
01:14:55 ►
But while he may no longer be with us in body,
01:14:57 ►
he’s always going to be with us in spirit.
01:15:02 ►
And every time you think of him, or listen to one of his talks, read one of his books or papers or trip reports,
01:15:05 ►
you are keeping the flame of his spirit alive. And I think that’s also true of all the other
01:15:12 ►
people we’ve known who have departed this earthly plane. My own father died in 1975, yet there isn’t
01:15:19 ►
a day that goes by without me thinking about him, and in doing so, I feel like I’m keeping his spirit alive,
01:15:25 ►
and keep him as a companion with me on this interesting journey that we’re all on, this
01:15:30 ►
journey called life. So, sail on, dear Myron. Sail on to those celestial realms that you first began
01:15:38 ►
exploring here on Earth with your psychedelic adventures. May your everlasting experiences be filled with love and joy
01:15:46 ►
as your avatar on Earth always was.
01:15:49 ►
What a bold venture
01:15:50 ►
you had here on Earth, Myron.
01:15:52 ►
You will remain an inspiration
01:15:54 ►
for us all in our years ahead.
01:15:57 ►
And for now, this is Lorenzo
01:15:59 ►
signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
01:16:01 ►
Be well well my friends