Program Notes
Guest speaker: Lorenzo
RIP: Zoe7 & Dr. Andrew Sewell
Today’s podcasts is from the audio book edition of my novel, The Genesis Generation. It consists of a reading of Chapter 9, Catlin’s Salon. This is a fictional account of what was once the most fashionable psychedelic salon on the West Coast. Once each month, for more than eight years, an amazing group of people would gather to discuss a mind-numbing array of topics. And while the story line in my novel is obviously fictional, the backdrop of the salon itself is described as best I can … and as best that I now remember, looking back after so many years that have passed since those wondrous meetings of the L.A. Chapter of the Albert Hofmann Society.
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Transcript
00:00:00 ►
Greetings from Cyberdelic Space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic
00:00:23 ►
Salon.
00:00:26 ►
space. This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the psychedelic salon. And once again, I’d like to thank some of our fellow salonners like Mark W, Ken B, and several others who helped us make it
00:00:32 ►
over the hump once again. And so we covered all of our out-of-pocket expenses this month.
00:00:37 ►
So thank you very much to each of you who have either purchased a copy of one of my books or
00:00:42 ►
who made a direct donation to the salon.
00:00:48 ►
It’s your support that keeps us keeping on here in the salon.
00:00:54 ►
And as much as I don’t like to begin a podcast on a sad note,
00:00:59 ►
there are two recent deaths in our psychedelic community that I have to tell you about,
00:01:01 ►
just in case you haven’t already heard.
00:01:07 ►
One is Dr. Andrew Sewell, who was one of our speakers at the Planque Norte lectures held during the 2006 Burning Man Festival.
00:01:11 ►
Unfortunately, Andrew’s talk was one of the ones
00:01:14 ►
during which our recorder failed,
00:01:16 ►
and so it didn’t make it to a podcast.
00:01:18 ►
But his work was very impressive.
00:01:21 ►
It was, after all, Dr. Sewell,
00:01:23 ►
while working at Harvard University,
00:01:25 ►
who first began the investigation of using LSD to treat cluster headaches. And his pioneering research
00:01:32 ►
in that field is going to long be remembered. The other member of our extended family that we lost
00:01:39 ►
is our dear friend Zoe Seven. You’ll perhaps remember Zoe from my podcast number 38,
00:01:47 ►
and that was actually the first public talk given by Zoe,
00:01:50 ►
and it was there at the 2001 Mind States Conference
00:01:54 ►
where we first met.
00:01:56 ►
After that, I never was fortunate enough
00:01:58 ►
to visit with him again in person,
00:02:01 ►
but we kept up a sporadic correspondence
00:02:03 ►
about his latest research,
00:02:06 ►
which he was conducting in Brazil, where he moved several years ago. I wish I could tell you more about Zoe’s demise,
00:02:11 ►
but all I know right now is from the following message that I received yesterday from his sister,
00:02:17 ►
and it read, Hello Lorenzo, this is Eileen Marti. I’m Zoe’s sister, and I wanted to let you know that we lost my brother on July 15, 2013, in Brazil.
00:02:29 ►
I still can’t believe it. He had so many new projects. His third book is still not yet finished.
00:02:36 ►
We will be doing a memorial in Brazil at Spirit Vine, and I hope one day you can visit and see all the other stuff he was working on.
00:02:43 ►
Thank you for your support,
00:02:51 ►
Eileen. And if you’re interested in following up on Zoe’s work at Spirit Vine, you can find their website at www.spiritvine.net. Actually, Zoe was one of the most ingenuous cartographers
00:03:03 ►
of altered states of consciousness that I’ve
00:03:05 ►
ever met. He published two books that I know of, Into the Void and Back from the Void,
00:03:11 ►
which are about his experiments that fuse psychoactive plants and compounds together
00:03:16 ►
with computer-based neurotechnology devices that some people call mind machines. Zoe Seven
00:03:22 ►
was as unique a human being as I’ve ever encountered, and he’s
00:03:26 ►
going to be greatly missed. Now, I guess that there’s really no way to pick up the mood here
00:03:33 ►
in the salon other than to just get into today’s program. As I mentioned in my previous podcast,
00:03:39 ►
I’ve been hearing various variations on the theme of what we think of as the default reality that
00:03:45 ►
may actually be all taking place in some vast computer game of some sort. The story or myth
00:03:53 ►
or funny idea or whatever you want to call it seems to be floating around in many forms lately.
00:03:58 ►
And so what I’m going to do today is to play a recording from another chapter of my novel, The Genesis Generation.
00:04:06 ►
As you know, I’ve already podcast two other chapters, and you can listen to the entire
00:04:12 ►
book for free if you want to. The audiobook version is a pay-what-you-can book, and should
00:04:17 ►
you not be in a position to make a donation, well, that’s no problem, because you can do
00:04:21 ►
what over 10,000 others have done and download it and listen to it for free. You don’t even have to leave your email address. There are no strings attached.
00:04:31 ►
Now, in order to pick up on the story in the chapter I’m about to play, you really don’t
00:04:36 ►
need to know all that much about the story so far, as this is more or less a stand-alone
00:04:41 ►
chapter. My main purpose in including this chapter in the book is to briefly document what for over eight years was one of the most interesting
00:04:49 ►
and important gathering places in the Los Angeles area, and that was Kathleen’s salon
00:04:55 ►
in Venice Beach. In the book I call Kathleen by the Irish version of her name, Caitlin,
00:05:00 ►
but the rest of the description of her salon is exactly as I remember it.
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The character who is the primary focus of this chapter is a young man in his early 20s who goes by the name Stein, which came from his friends teasing him about being as smart
00:05:16 ►
as Einstein.
00:05:18 ►
So now let’s pick up with Chapter 9 of the Genesis Generation.
00:05:22 ►
Chapter 9 of The Genesis Generation The Genesis Generation
00:05:30 ►
Chapter 9
00:05:33 ►
Caitlin’s Salon
00:05:35 ►
According to Figg, Caitlin’s was one of the places where the worlds of music, art, and intellectual conversation converged in Southern California.
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On the occasions when I attended one of these gatherings,
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I met movers and shakers from the Hollywood scene, prominent university professors,
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musicians from all over the world, more writers than you can count, DJs, drifters, old hippies,
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and young couples, some even with infants in tow.
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I found that if you used your imagination when you were attending one of these salons, it was easy to think that maybe you were
00:06:11 ►
attending a Communist Party cell meeting in Chicago during the 1930s. Without a doubt, this was one of
00:06:18 ►
the most eclectic and fascinating crowds I have ever encountered. Only at Burning Man have I seen its equivalent.
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What is most exceptional about Caitlin’s house,
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at least to me,
00:06:34 ►
is not its decor or even its funky goth-meets-art-deco design.
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What I find so unique about her place is the force with which its ambiance hits you
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when you first walk in the door.
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Maybe you wouldn’t feel it if you came in
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without first knowing some of
00:06:45 ►
the history that has transpired there, but that wasn’t the case with me. After Fig picked me up
00:06:51 ►
at the airport for my first visit to L.A., we spent the afternoon strolling along the waterfront in
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Venice Beach, while she told me about many of the great evenings she had experienced at Caitlin’s.
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So as soon as I stepped down into the living room, I recognized the huge curved sofa where
00:07:09 ►
at various times psychedelic elders like Anne and Sasha Shulgin, Oscar Janager, Arthur Kunkin,
00:07:15 ►
and John Lilly had vigorously exchanged ideas and joined in the group conversations.
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So vivid had been Fig’s description of some of the more memorable nights
00:07:25 ►
at Caitlin’s that I swear I could almost see the ghosts of Gary Fisher and Myron Stolaroff sitting
00:07:31 ►
on the little couch that squared the L-shaped sofa, talking about the legendary Al Hubbard,
00:07:37 ►
the Johnny Appleseed of LSD. What a history that magical room has.
00:07:44 ►
May 7th, 2004. Venice Beach, California.
00:07:50 ►
Myth is neither fact nor history.
00:07:53 ►
Myths are acted out in our own psyches, and they are repetitive and ongoing.
00:07:58 ►
Tom Robbins
00:07:59 ►
We arrived early enough to get a couple of cushions to sit on and found a spot on the floor near the end of the little couch.
00:08:08 ►
The fireplace was to our backs, but since it was almost summer, there wouldn’t be a fire in it tonight.
00:08:14 ►
See those people over there? Fig whispered as she nodded her head toward a little group of four sitting at the far end of the gigantic black sofa.
00:08:23 ►
Yeah, in fact, isn’t that one of the speakers from the ayahuasca
00:08:26 ►
conference a couple of weeks ago, I asked. Yes, that’s Dr. Grobe, but everyone calls him Charlie.
00:08:34 ►
He has probably done more kinds of sanctioned psychedelic research with humans than anyone else
00:08:39 ►
who is active right now. He did the MDMA safety study, the ayahuasca research you heard him talk about, and now he’s
00:08:46 ►
working with end-stage cancer patients and giving them psilocybin to see if it eases their anxiety
00:08:51 ►
about death. Psilocybin? Yeah, it’s the main active ingredient in magic mushrooms, she answered.
00:08:59 ►
He’s giving magic mushrooms to dying people? I asked, somewhat astonished.
00:09:04 ►
He’s giving magic mushrooms to dying people? I asked, somewhat astonished.
00:09:07 ►
I’ll tell you more about that later.
00:09:10 ►
It was the people I wanted to point out.
00:09:14 ►
The lady he’s talking to is the nurse who is his research assistant,
00:09:18 ►
and her husband is the guy next to her, Raylua’s old friend Lorenzo.
00:09:23 ►
And he is sitting next to one of the more legendary characters in this part of the country,
00:09:27 ►
a guy they call Casuac, but I think his real name is Mateo.
00:09:35 ►
Just then, Old Joe, Tiger, and Apache began to squeeze into the few vacant spots on the floor near us.
00:09:38 ►
As we were rejiggling our seating arrangements,
00:09:43 ►
I saw that Al and Stein were orchestrating a similar dance in the corner of the room nearest us,
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from which I assumed they would be leading the evening’s conversation.
00:09:50 ►
Almost as if some unheard signal had been sounded,
00:09:54 ►
people began to pour out of the kitchen and into the dining room that led to the large room where most of us were already comfortably seated.
00:09:59 ►
I wound up between Ray Lua and Fig,
00:10:01 ►
which for no reason whatsoever filled me with a strange sense of pride.
00:10:06 ►
Okay, everyone, a voice from the dining room called out, let’s get started. We’ve got a
00:10:11 ►
larger crowd than usual tonight, so everyone scrunch in a little closer, and you guys in
00:10:16 ►
the kitchen, come on in here if you can fit. I turned around to locate the source of this
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lilting female voice, just as Fig was saying, That’s Caitlin.
00:10:25 ►
I’ll try to remember to introduce you to her before we leave.
00:10:30 ►
Within a few minutes, Caitlin had somehow taken control
00:10:33 ►
and had quieted the dozens of private conversations
00:10:36 ►
that spilled out of the living room and into the dining room and kitchen.
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As you know, she said,
00:10:43 ►
tonight we are going to continue our ongoing search for new
00:10:46 ►
myths to carry us into the future. So far we’ve heard some ideas from our artistic friends in
00:10:53 ►
the film industry, and then there was that fascinating talk by Shadow about consciousness
00:10:58 ►
evolving to a point where it prefers existence in a silicone substrate over these current organic models.
00:11:13 ►
This brought out some hoots and jeers, along with some rather harsh words about those crazy codeheads, which kind of surprised me.
00:11:18 ►
I don’t know what I expected to see and hear at one of Caitlin’s salons,
00:11:22 ►
but I apparently assumed that it would be more of a high-class affair,
00:11:28 ►
with a lot of people talking about the arts and about psychedelic drugs and other things that I didn’t keep up with.
00:11:37 ►
But as I soon learned, these evenings were more of a raucous intellectual free-for-all where you had better know what you were talking about,
00:11:42 ►
because for sure there would be at least one person there who knew as much about your topic as you did. As I look back to the times I made it to
00:11:45 ►
one of Caitlin’s get-togethers, I can almost see a thread running from her salon back to the
00:11:51 ►
eclectic College of Complexes in Chicago during the time Slim Bundridge was its proprietor.
00:11:57 ►
And from there, this slender little thread of a never-ending conversation continues back through
00:12:02 ►
the salons of Paris and on back in time
00:12:05 ►
to the public spaces in ancient Athens. How else could we have evolved as far as we have if there
00:12:11 ►
hadn’t been countless thousands of these little gatherings where ideas could collide, regroup,
00:12:16 ►
and then collide again, until the final seed of some new idea grew into a meme, which, in turn, might eventually grow into yet another new idea.
00:12:27 ►
Last month, Caitlin continued,
00:12:29 ►
after once again regaining control of the room,
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Our discussion leader was our British friend Al,
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or the Alchemist, as he is more affectionately known.
00:12:39 ►
With that, the tall, stately, and over-the-top gorgeous Caitlin smiled,
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blew a kiss, and winked at Al, who blew a kiss back her way.
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And Al is going to pass the conversation on to Stein,
00:12:51 ►
who I think most of you already know.
00:12:54 ►
But please stick around after we finish discussing Stein’s ideas,
00:12:57 ►
because I’ve got a few announcements about some upcoming events you might be interested in,
00:13:02 ►
Caitlin concluded as she sat down on a chair
00:13:05 ►
at the edge of the dining room.
00:13:07 ►
Thanks, Caitlin, said Al, and thank you one and all for being here again this month.
00:13:12 ►
I think you are going to find it well worth your time.
00:13:16 ►
After I convinced Stein to lead our discussion tonight, I began to think about how I would
00:13:21 ►
introduce him to those of you who haven’t had a chance to get to know him yet.
00:13:26 ►
Now, I realize that this is a pretty tough crowd when it comes to giving our discussion leaders any slack,
00:13:32 ►
but since I had a hard time talking him into doing this, I hope you will all be on your best behavior.
00:13:39 ►
What’s that? shouted a shady-looking character standing near the door.
00:13:44 ►
But, Al went on, ignoring the interruption,
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“‘but you are also a very fair crowd,
00:13:50 ►
“‘and since I know that more than one of you is afraid to stand up and speak in public,
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“‘I promise not to point you out as long as you’re nice to Stein.’
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“‘Well, that covers almost all of us, I guess,’ laughed the shady guy.
00:14:03 ►
“‘So we’ll be nice. Just get on with it.
00:14:06 ►
Great idea, said Al. And now, if I may, I’ll begin once again.
00:14:12 ►
What you are about to hear is way off the charts when it comes to what most of us think of as
00:14:17 ►
reality. But this idea of Stein’s provides a fresh new way to answer some of the more interesting
00:14:23 ►
questions like, what is really going on? What’s the point? Why are we all here?
00:14:28 ►
A sardonic voice from the kitchen rang out,
00:14:31 ►
We’re all here because we’re not all there. That’s why.
00:14:35 ►
Again, the room buzzed out of control until Caitlin stood up and firmly, but not very loudly, said,
00:14:42 ►
Okay, boys and girls, don’t make me warn you again.
00:14:47 ►
And very quickly, all was quiet.
00:14:51 ►
Al cleared his throat and went on.
00:14:53 ►
To begin with, let me speak to Stein’s youth.
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I would like to gently remind you that
00:14:59 ►
most likely some of your own best ideas
00:15:01 ►
came to you when you were quite young.
00:15:04 ►
If not, that’s a real pity.
00:15:07 ►
Anyway, here’s a thought that your own Ralph Waldo Emerson once had about the ideas of young
00:15:12 ►
people. And with that, he took a small note card out of his back pocket and read,
00:15:18 ►
Meek young men grow up in libraries, believing at their duty to accept the views which Cicero, which Locke,
00:15:26 ►
which Bacon have given? Forgetful that Cicero, Locke, and Bacon were only young men in libraries
00:15:32 ►
when they wrote these books. Al continued, but there is nothing meek about our dear young friend
00:15:39 ►
Stein here, and at least for me, he has come up with one of the most novel ideas about living in a quantum universe that I’ve heard in a long time.
00:15:49 ►
Before Stein could take over from Al,
00:15:51 ►
an old guy with a ponytail, the one Fig said was Lorenzo,
00:15:55 ►
kind of rudely cut in and said,
00:15:57 ►
Can I say just one thing before he begins?
00:16:01 ►
Sure, and you just did, shouted someone in the audience.
00:16:07 ►
Lorenzo ignored him and went on.
00:16:14 ►
Okay, two things, and I’ll be really brief. You’d better be, someone else shouted good-naturedly.
00:16:20 ►
Well, I was about to say that in my 30s and 40s I must have been a real jerk,
00:16:25 ►
but now I guess I’ll have to extend it to my 60ies for some of you, Lorenzo said as he smiled back at his hecklers. But for sure, I knew everything back then. I was just like these young
00:16:33 ►
yuppies today who have all of the answers for everything. Granted, these are very bright young
00:16:38 ►
people, and they do a good job of talking what they’ve learned from books and then spout it back
00:16:43 ►
at the generations on either side of them, as if this knowledge was something they arrived at on their own after a
00:16:49 ►
lengthy first-hand investigation. And I’m not knocking them. They are very good within their
00:16:55 ►
own narrow fields of specialty. But give me a raver who’s self-educated and who comes up with
00:17:01 ►
an off-the-wall theory that is completely original, and I’ll trade him for a hundred Ivy League PhDs any day.
00:17:09 ►
With that, Lorenzo sat down as Stein stood up to applause mixed with catcalls from the crowd.
00:17:15 ►
He was obviously already well-known to most of the people there.
00:17:20 ►
Over the past few months, he began,
00:17:23 ►
we’ve heard Shadow, Al, Apache, and a few others share their views about what they think is really going on in the world and in this cosmos.
00:17:32 ►
But to tell the truth, none of their stories have been able to move me away from my own take on things.
00:17:38 ►
What I think they’re missing is something that’s going on right in front of everyone’s eyes, namely the world of gaming.
00:17:42 ►
is something that’s going on right in front of everyone’s eyes,
00:17:44 ►
namely, the world of gaming.
00:17:49 ►
That brought a round of cheers from the younger people in the room and groans from a few of the older ones.
00:17:52 ►
What I didn’t know at the time is that
00:17:54 ►
there had already been several heated discussions
00:17:56 ►
about the importance, or non-importance,
00:17:59 ►
of the gaming industry and its tens of millions of devotees.
00:18:03 ►
Don’t worry, I’m not going to bring that whole
00:18:06 ►
discussion up again, because I’ve got an even more radical hypothesis than the ones we talked
00:18:11 ►
about a few months back, Stein said. Here is my idea in a few words. We are somehow stuck
00:18:19 ►
in a vast and very complex computer game, and we’ve forgotten that we’re in a game.
00:18:26 ►
A stillness came over the room as Stein continued.
00:18:30 ►
I think that it is possible that the underlying reality
00:18:33 ►
for all we take for granted in this material world,
00:18:37 ►
including our own bodies,
00:18:39 ►
is that everything is code,
00:18:42 ►
simply code, in a vast quantum computer.
00:18:46 ►
We just may be right in the middle of the most realistic computer game imaginable.
00:18:51 ►
I call it the Earth Game.
00:18:54 ►
Come on, Stein, get serious, came a voice from the dining room.
00:18:59 ►
I am very serious, Stein replied, and if you give me a few uninterrupted minutes, I’ll present my case.
00:19:07 ►
Instead, the next few minutes reverted back to a verbal free-for-all,
00:19:11 ►
as it seemed that everyone there had an opinion that they wanted to inject at that point.
00:19:16 ►
I was beginning to get the feeling that my idea of this salon being some kind of fancy intellectual party
00:19:23 ►
was about as far off the mark as could be.
00:19:26 ►
The picture that was now coming into focus was one I recognized from my college days,
00:19:32 ►
where we would stay up late into the night and solve all of the world’s problems.
00:19:36 ►
The only difference was that many of the people here had already reached prominence in their
00:19:41 ►
careers and had a lot more experience behind them than we did back then. As if some invisible signal had been flashed, the buzz in the room came to an abrupt
00:19:51 ►
stop, and Stein continued, As I was about to say, even if you just treat this as a new metaphor,
00:19:59 ►
I think you will find that it can prove very practical in dealing with the everyday affairs of life.
00:20:05 ►
But first, let me give you a scientific peg to hang this on.
00:20:10 ►
Granted, it’s a pretty thin peg, but try to ride with me on this for a bit.
00:20:15 ►
If you look back to around the year 1500,
00:20:19 ►
you find that most people thought the Earth was flat and that the Sun revolved around us.
00:20:25 ►
people thought the earth was flat and that the sun revolved around us. But over time,
00:20:30 ►
the Copernican worldview took over and Newton’s laws became the bedrock of our thinking.
00:20:36 ►
Then, a few hundred years later, the world of science brings quantum physics on us.
00:20:42 ►
Just then, a small dark-haired woman sitting next to Caitlin spoke up and interjected,
00:20:45 ►
I believe it was Nick Herbert who once said,
00:20:49 ►
humans can never experience the true texture of quantum reality because everything we touch turns to matter.
00:20:53 ►
Yeah, came a voice from the big couch,
00:20:56 ►
quantum mechanics in layman’s terms,
00:20:58 ►
reality is in the eye of the beholder.
00:21:01 ►
True enough, said Stein, but there’s more to it than that.
00:21:07 ►
I’m not going to try and explain how a quantum computer can work, but there is already more information about quantum
00:21:12 ►
computing on the net than you’ll ever have the time to read. Besides, we’ve got a few experts
00:21:17 ►
on the subject who are usually here, and maybe we can have them add some more detail in a few minutes.
00:21:22 ►
But for now, you’re just going to have to take it on faith that
00:21:25 ►
there are serious scientists who are postulating that all of this flickering in and out of material
00:21:31 ►
reality that quantum physicists talk about can also be intertwined with some of the ideas
00:21:37 ►
surrounding quantum computing. For me, the Earth game is a good description of what underlies
00:21:43 ►
physical reality, he went on.
00:21:45 ►
But let’s leave that aspect alone for now and just think about this idea as a new myth,
00:21:51 ►
or a new metaphor for life on planet Earth.
00:21:55 ►
That’s one of the things I like about this idea, added Al.
00:21:58 ►
Rather than trying to reshape society through new laws or through violence,
00:22:03 ►
why not simply change our myths?
00:22:06 ►
I know that I, for one, am sick and tired of some of our current governing myths,
00:22:10 ►
like the one that says alcohol is good for us and marijuana is bad for us.
00:22:15 ►
Well, I was actually going for something even deeper, Stein said.
00:22:20 ►
I’m thinking about the underlying myths that we build our views of the world on.
00:22:25 ►
For some, it’s the Christian myth or the Jewish or Muslim myth.
00:22:29 ►
A huge number of people have staked their lives on the myths of science.
00:22:34 ►
A tall blonde woman in the back of the room added,
00:22:37 ►
Yeah, but the fact is that right now scientists claim that 75% of the universe
00:22:42 ►
consists of something they call dark matter and dark energy.
00:22:46 ►
What kind of weasel talk is that? Why can’t they just say they don’t know what the fuck
00:22:50 ►
most of the universe is made of instead of coming up with this dark matter BS?
00:22:55 ►
I agree, Stein said, but before we head down that trail, let me get back to a non-scientific look at
00:23:02 ►
the idea of treating this life as if we were in a computer
00:23:05 ►
game. The more scientific details you add to it, the more you’ll convince yourself that this is
00:23:11 ►
something other than just a new myth or metaphor. But that’s not really important here tonight.
00:23:17 ►
So just think about this for a minute. All of you have either played a video game or you’ve
00:23:22 ►
seen people playing them in theater lobbies and places like that.
00:23:26 ►
Have you noticed how intent the players are, how focused?
00:23:30 ►
If they’re real gamers, you can hardly get their attention while they’re playing because they are that avatar.
00:23:36 ►
They aren’t in some theater lobby.
00:23:38 ►
They are an avatar that is usually fighting for its life.
00:23:42 ►
While that game is going on, that game is their reality,
00:23:46 ►
their only reality.
00:23:48 ►
Now, what if there was a computer game
00:23:50 ►
in which once you put on a headset
00:23:53 ►
and picked up the controller,
00:23:55 ►
you were somehow prevented from remembering
00:23:57 ►
that you were just playing a game?
00:23:59 ►
What if we had games where
00:24:01 ►
until someone takes your headset off for you,
00:24:04 ►
there is no way you can tell that the game isn’t your only possible reality?
00:24:08 ►
Well, that’s what I think is happening to all of us right now.
00:24:12 ►
Our spirit, or our mind, or intellect, or whatever you want to call it,
00:24:18 ►
is controlling an avatar as it moves through a cyberspace construct we call Earth.
00:24:24 ►
So what’s the point of the Earth game then? asked Ray Lua.
00:24:28 ►
That depends on the player, Stein answered.
00:24:31 ►
For me, it’s to get to the next level.
00:24:34 ►
Right now, it seems that a lot of people are still stuck on the medieval level.
00:24:39 ►
Some are even back on the Stone Age level,
00:24:41 ►
while most of Asia and the West seem to be on the Dominator,
00:24:45 ►
war-loving level. Personally, I’m doing all I can to make it up another level, to the Paradise level.
00:24:53 ►
But the complicating factor in this game is that, even though the players aren’t all playing on the
00:24:58 ►
same level, we’re still somehow physically in the same space. Our levels are all merged together.
00:25:04 ►
somehow physically in the same space. Our levels are all merged together.
00:25:11 ►
How is this different from the religious belief in seven levels of heaven, or just in heaven and hell, for that matter? asked Al. It isn’t, actually, said Stein. But religion leaves a
00:25:17 ►
bad taste in my mouth, and this seems more realistic to me. Just try this for a while.
00:25:23 ►
Try fitting everything that goes on, everything you
00:25:26 ►
read, everything you see, into the concept that this is all taking place in some big VR simulation.
00:25:34 ►
Start asking that question at least. Ask yourself how you can prove that something you experienced
00:25:39 ►
last year wasn’t actually a computer simulation that you remember. But don’t worry, you’ll figure it all out as soon as you take your headgear off, he laughed.
00:25:49 ►
Yeah, and the best way to do that is with a little acid.
00:25:52 ►
That’ll dissolve your helmet right off, called out a voice from the dining room.
00:25:57 ►
I can see one nice advantage to looking at the world as a gigantic computer game, added Tiger.
00:26:05 ►
looking at the world as a gigantic computer game, added Tiger. And that is the fact that old long-standing grudges, like the Catholics versus the Protestants in Ireland, the Jews
00:26:11 ►
versus everyone in the Middle East, and the old wounds from slavery and the decimation of
00:26:17 ►
indigenous populations everywhere, all of those old grievances would become nothing more than
00:26:22 ►
episodes in a computer game that has already moved to its next level. Once you leave a level, it is easy to leave the
00:26:31 ►
memories of old battles behind and concentrate on whatever new conflict has taken center
00:26:36 ►
stage. Just then, a bearded man wearing very thick glasses spoke up in a German-sounding
00:26:42 ►
accent and said, Are you aware, Mr. Stein, that there is serious research into quantum computing now going on at
00:26:51 ►
various universities around the world, and that some scientists now claim that you cannot prove
00:26:57 ►
that we are not actually in a computer simulation of some kind, And these same scientists calculate that there is a 20% to 50% chance that this is so.
00:27:08 ►
Did you know that, Mr. Stein? No, wow, no, I didn’t. In fact, the truth is, I almost didn’t
00:27:16 ►
show up tonight because I’d started to think that I was too far out for you guys, Stein said.
00:27:22 ►
I know that reading isn’t very popular anymore, old Joe suddenly said as
00:27:27 ►
all heads turned his way. But almost a decade ago, Greg Egan published Permutation City,
00:27:33 ►
and what you’re talking about is essentially his storyline. You know, I can remember as a boy being
00:27:39 ►
astounded at how many of Jules Verne’s science fiction fantasies had already come to pass.
00:27:45 ►
Maybe you guys are going to think the same about Egan.
00:27:49 ►
From there, the conversation moved to a discussion of the work of several science fiction authors,
00:27:55 ►
and then on to the implications of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle,
00:27:59 ►
Bell’s theorem of action at a distance, and several other things that I didn’t understand,
00:28:04 ►
and so held little interest for me. But I did like Stein’s idea of treating life as if we were in
00:28:10 ►
some grand computer game. While Fig and Ray Lua joined in the group discussion, I lost myself in
00:28:16 ►
thinking about some of the implications of what the old professor had said about Stein’s idea
00:28:21 ►
possibly being more than a myth or a metaphor. Before I realized how
00:28:27 ►
long I had been daydreaming, Fig was telling me that it was time to go. While we were squeezing
00:28:33 ►
through the crush of people spilling out the door, a tall man who was wearing what I took to be a
00:28:38 ►
trench coat or something like that, shunted us off to one side and said, I’m producing a little gathering tomorrow night that
00:28:45 ►
you may be interested in. Here’s the location. And he handed Rilua a small pink flyer.
00:28:53 ►
She smiled and said, thanks, Twist, but I’ve given up raves for now. So have I, he smiled.
00:29:00 ►
This is the next evolution, and it’s only a stepping stone to where we’re going.
00:29:04 ►
This is the next evolution, and it’s only a stepping stone to where we’re going.
00:29:09 ►
Is this something you picked up from Fraser? Ray Lua asked.
00:29:10 ►
Somewhat, he answered.
00:29:15 ►
But we’re putting our own spin on it over here, our own little twist, he grinned.
00:29:19 ►
As Ray Lua looked at the flyer she had just been handed, she said,
00:29:22 ►
Hmm, now that’s interesting.
00:29:26 ►
I see that you’re including workshops and lectures before and during the party.
00:29:30 ►
“‘How does that work? Does anyone leave the dance floor for these things?’ “‘You’d be surprised,’ he said with a big smile.
00:29:34 ►
“‘Why don’t you come for the first couple of hours tomorrow night and see for yourself?
00:29:38 ►
“‘We’re kicking it off with a talk by Mateo and Lorenzo about ayahuasca,
00:29:43 ►
“‘something you probably know more about than the two of them put together,
00:29:46 ►
now that I think about it.
00:29:48 ►
If I can get someone to drive me, I’ll be there, Ray Lua quickly replied.
00:29:53 ►
Thanks for inviting me, and I assume you’re inviting our whole house, is that right?
00:29:58 ►
Of course, he smiled as he was swept back into Caitlin’s house,
00:30:02 ►
along with the first wave of smokers who were returning for more conversation
00:30:06 ►
and a potluck dinner that was still very much underway.
00:30:12 ►
And that should be about enough of me for today.
00:30:15 ►
So for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
00:30:20 ►
Be well, my friends.