367 - The Evolution of a Psychedelic Thinker

Program Notes §

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“This is a very central part of the psychedelic attitude toward the world, to entertain all possibilities but to never commit to belief. Belief always being seen as a kind of trap, because if you belief something you are forever precluded from believing its opposite..”

“In a sense, sexuality is the built-in psychedelic experience that only a very few people manage to evade.”

“Eros is an ego-overwhelming, boundary dissolving, breakthrough creating force scripted into human life that is pretty intrinsically psychedelic.”

“One of the core elements of this psychedelic thing is freedom, on the broadest scale.”

“Nothing is as boundary dissolving, except for psychedelic compounds, as travel. Travel is up there.”

“I have nothing but scorn for all weird ideas other than my own.”

“Without an understanding and a familiarity of the psychedelic experience you should be sued for fraud if you’re practicing psychotherapy.”

“The archaic revival is an invitation to historical humanity to view itself as a kind of a prodigal son.”

“What the psychedelics are for us as a species, rather than for each one of us as an individual, what they are for us as a species is an enzyme that catalyzes the language-making capacity.”

Symbiosis Gathering 2013
The Transcendent Nature of Symbiosis Festival

Previous Episode §

366 - Terence McKenna’s Suggested Reading List

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368 - Psychedelics and the Feminine

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Transcript §

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Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

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This is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

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This is Lorenzo, and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

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And I would like to begin by thanking Ted R. and Adam H. for their recent donations to the salon.

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I really appreciate your help.

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And although I probably should get some more variety going here in the salon,

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well, after receiving Ted’s note that encouraged me to keep the McKenna coming, well, I just couldn’t help myself, and, well, I kind of thought that

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I’d at least do a quick preview of the next McKenna material

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before beginning work on a talk from a different speaker.

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But then, for reasons that I still can’t quite understand,

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the talk that I’m about to play for you right now just really grabbed me.

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So I’m going to play it, and we’ll do a little more McKenna

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before we get all the new material from the 2013 Palenque Norte lectures

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that just completed their run at Burning Man this year.

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The Terence McKenna workshop that this is from actually took place in June of 1989,

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which means that when you hear him mention what he calls this thing going on

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in China, he’s most likely talking about the Tiananmen Square Massacre that occurred on the

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4th of June that year. And now there are quite a few raps in this talk that you’re going to find

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quite enjoyable as Terence discusses the progression that he took both in his mind and on the ground as well,

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as he evolved into a psychedelic thinker,

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a term that will become more clear as we listen to his remarks in just a minute.

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And while like you, I’ve already listened to quite a few Terence McKenna talks,

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I’m still amazed each time that I listen to one that I hadn’t heard before and realize that I’m listening to something either completely new or a topic that he’d covered before, however this time from a completely

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different perspective.

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But hey, I’m not telling you anything that you don’t already know yourself.

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I should let you know, though, that the first 20 minutes or so had a really loud hum of

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some kind in the background, which made it quite difficult to hear Terrence.

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So I did my best to eliminate the hum, but that means that the recording sounds a little bit tinny or something like that at first.

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But after about 20 minutes or so into the talk, the problem on the tape seemed to have cleared up, and it sounds much better.

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So just bear with us in the beginning, and I promise you that the sound will definitely improve as we go along. The way I got into all of this and

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it seems to me it’s worth talking about because it’s psychedelic. The word has in

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a sense been too narrow. It’s a kind of secret faith having to do with perception of the world, I think.

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I mean, I feel that I was psychedelic long a child was nature and complexity,

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but not simply nature and complexity,

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but a certain visual suggestiveness of mystery.

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So I was like a beetle collector and a butterfly collector,

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and it was this pursuit of iridescence was actually what it was.

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And then years later when I studied psychology in the brain,

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I read Sherrington’s definition of consciousness as an iridescence upon matter,

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meaning an effect that when you shift the point of regarding slightly, the iridescence disappears.

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And I was, you know, it’s hard to even explain to myself, let alone to a room full of people,

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how much I cared about this kind of thing.

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I mean, how is it possible for a nine-year-old child to hold the image of one insect continuously

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in their mind for months as in almost a mystical epiphany because of how it looks?

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Something about how it looks.

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And then, you know, as I broadened my interests as a pre-adolescent child, I got into science fiction. And as I look back on it now, I see it was simply that it broke down barriers, conceptual barriers about what was possible, and that it was setting me up for this position

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vis-à-vis the input of the world,

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which was that I would entertain any idea but believe in nothing.

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And this is, I think, a very…

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If we’re trying to actually talk about a psychedelic canon,

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this is a very central part of the psychedelic attitude

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toward the world,

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to entertain all possibilities

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but to never commit to belief.

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Belief always being seen

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as a kind of trap.

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Because if you believe something,

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you’re forever precluded

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from believing its opposite.

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So you have run a line down the center of the cognitive universe

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and divided things into the believable and the unbelievable.

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Well, you know how a child lives in fantasy

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and how fantasy then gives way and gave way, in my case, to science fiction.

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This is a kind of pre-psychedelic mindset

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that many, many people of my generation were experiencing

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as they came up through the Eisenhower years,

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which were spiritually a complete desert, but in these pulp magazines, you know,

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beneath the surface of consciousness. Notice throughout this month how much of what is

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important to what we’re talking about goes on in the non-anctioned gatherings of friends, rock and roll,

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all of these areas where the emotional content of the culture is allowed to come to rest are somewhat off-limits.

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this cognition-breaking, iridescence-pursuing thing came directly up against Eros,

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which was, you know, a complete new dimension

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for the goggle-eyed terror of the science fairs

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to be plunged into,

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which was myself.

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And, you know, women, sexuality,

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social signaling, intense emotion,

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all of this.

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And everyone experiences this.

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In a sense, sexuality is the built-in psychedelic experience

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that only a very few people manage to evade.

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Because, you know, we may like to think that we are rational animals,

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but for purposes of biology, a whole set of completely irrational programs have been built in that just can

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take, you know, a professor of Indo-European grammar and turn him into a haunted figure

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pursuing chorus girls, or any of the other 50,000 variations on that theme. So eros is an ego-overwhelming,

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boundary-dissolving,

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breakthrough-creating force

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scripted into human life

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that is pretty intrinsically psychedelic.

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And I think that, you know,

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I don’t really understand

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how all this works at all.

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But when you get very deep in, especially on some of these tryptamines,

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you brush up against some kind of…

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It’s hard to even put words to it, but it’s erotic.

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It’s a potential within the concept of eros that is almost too much to bear.

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And it almost seems to imply that what we call erotic sensibility

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is a kind of lower dimensional slice of some higher dimensional reality

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that our feelings are trying to carry us into.

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This is sort of an aside on that but one of the interesting things about psychedelics and i now speak of the compounds themselves

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is especially the plants is they have a certain fascination with where the genes go and will pair people across great lines of improbability.

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In other words, it’s almost as though the biological control which is exerted on this

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mammalian species by the mushroom is actually, at the materialistic level,

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a control of who has children by whom,

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which means the control of the evolution of gene lines.

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I maintain this is why the place most people feel magic in their own lives,

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even the most humdrum people feel magic in their own lives. Even the most humdrum people feel magic in their lives.

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It’s in the matter of mate selection.

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Because, you know, I was just down in the baths and heard a story this morning

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where a man said, you know, I had a happy marriage for seven years.

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It was perfect, and I ran

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some kind of a company, and one day I got a telephone call, someone wanted to sell me

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a new line of nails, and I knew when I heard the voice on the other end that my marriage

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was ruined, and that I would follow this voice and possess this woman and so forth and so on, which he had done, for

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better or worse. Well, this kind of thing, where the most staid lives can be skewed off

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in other directions, is, you know, in the old style of talking about it, it’s an eruption

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of the unconscious. But where psychedelics are involved, it seems to be more a winnowing

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of the genes. So sex obviously has this deep, complex, multi-meaning kind of feel about it that pretty much the rest of reality for most people doesn’t, I think.

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The next step in my own evolution, and I feel like I am simply the fortunate beneficiary of a series of random events

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which were very fortuitous from my own point of view.

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In other words, that without having a whole lot of sense

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and with very little foresight,

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I very fortunately found myself in a lot of right places

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at a lot of right times.

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And the place I went after adolescence was political awareness

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and the discovery of what it meant. You know, the goggle-eyed kid had conquered, or at least

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had had a brush with the feminine. But then the next great item on the agenda was the community.

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And I was in Berkeley for the street uprising in 1968

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and learned what a revolution is,

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not what it is from the point of view of the history books

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or the 11 o’clock news,

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but what it feels like, what it actually feels like to take and hold a place

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that’s been denied you against the state.

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And what I learned from that, I think, is that one of the core elements of this psychedelic thing

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is freedom on the broadest scale.

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I mean, it truly is, and you will hear me use this phrase over and over again,

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boundary dissolving.

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And that’s almost, for me, synonymous with freedom.

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This is what we want to do we want

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to dissolve boundaries between the rich and the poor the feminine and the masculine the living

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and the dead all boundaries do dissolve in the psychedelic experience and the social metaphor

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that captures this is revolution revolution is an eruption from the unconscious.

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It is not a reasonable thing. It has a logic of its own. It’s as though the overmind reaches down

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into the mechanics of political process and says, no, it won’t be that way. It will be this way. And, you know, as you watch this thing in China unfold,

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the revolution that I went through was child’s play.

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But the revolution going on in China is about consciousness.

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I mean, God, the notion that, you know,

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people were selling John Stuart Mill in translation in Tiananmen Square like hotcakes

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brings a tear to your eye.

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I mean, it just, it’s incredible.

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And as I said on Friday, this, the psychedelic dimension lies directly ahead of us.

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It is permission for cognition,

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permission for revolution and resolution of the contradictions

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that have emerged out of 500 years,

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a thousand years,

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of practicing culture

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in this particular way

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that we’ve been doing.

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It just doesn’t work. in this particular way that we’ve been doing.

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It just doesn’t work.

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Well, Abbie Hoffman said that the first duty of a revolutionary is to survive.

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And so my political career reached a point

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where I had to choose between exile and martyrdom.

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Hope that you should be so lucky

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because both choices are heroic, you see.

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But I chose exile,

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which brings me to the next

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of these psychedelic metaphors

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or these psychedelic styles

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that have nothing to do with the compounds,

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and that is travel.

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Travel.

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Some of you are traveling, I know,

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because you have accents from far away,

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so you probably know what I mean.

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But the people who don’t go anywhere

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are in danger of missing a major point about what is going on.

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So my traveling began very tentatively, and I went to Israel, and then I went to the Seychelles

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Islands, and then I went to India, and then I went to the Seychelles Islands and then I went to India and then I got in trouble

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and then I couldn’t come back so then I had to be who I said I was because I had essentially been

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making a tour in order to return to Berkeley and slay women with my tales of daring do, that I got caught out there halfway around

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and had to stay not the planned three months,

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but years, years and years and years,

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and India and Indonesia and the Amazon and Tokyo

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and just, you know, a series of scenes where my life seemed…

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I used to say I never sleep in the same bed twice.

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I also came to realize then that what happened to me in ten days

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was more than happened to my friends back at home in a year.

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more than happened to my friends back at home in a year. Because I would see, you know, three countries, five cities, 18 ecosystems, five cuisines, so forth and so on, in two

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weeks. And for them, you know, they were living out some kind of machine-like existence. Nothing is as boundary dissolving as, except psychedelic compounds, as travel.

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Travel is really up there. I mean, you know, go to these places. There are many, many places,

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and they are not to be taken at face value. They are parts of your own psyche.

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They are syntactical intersections of intentionality and cognition.

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The fact that you have to fly there on KLM is only incidental, you see.

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Because what you come up against

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in these other places

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is cultural relativity

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and culture

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the deep

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coming to

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awareness of cultural relativity

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is finally permission

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to look at who you are

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not who they say

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you should be

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you know

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because you see that in this tribe you’re an sob if you

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fail to eat your uncle at a certain critical time in the situation and in this society you’re an

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sob if you don’t own a condo in carmel so you know what how seriously are we to take all this?

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There’s a great saying, an alchemist of the 15th century,

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Athanasius Kirshner said,

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the highest mountains, the oldest books, the strangest people,

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there you will find the stone. And this idea that

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there is something to be found, first of all, this is very important for the psychedelic

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life. Again, I was very lucky. I read Carl Jung very very early before the unions really got a hold of him and ruined it

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and um what jung is saying about conceiving your life as a quest is absolutely true psyche is some

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kind of semi-malleable uh medium and if you set yourself up as a loser if you image yourself as a loser

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you will be a loser and so forth this is not big news but what’s big news is that if you set

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yourself your life up as a quest you will actually find something transcendental and unimaginable.

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I mean, I am living proof of this

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because I set my life up as a quest for a perverse reason,

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to prove that there was no mystery.

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In other words, to debunk it,

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to say, you know, I will follow the ancient formulae

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and show that it’s baloney by doing it perfectly and achieving nothing.

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That’s the kind of guy I am.

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However, what I discovered was that the model of the world that we inherit, that it’s three-dimensional space and very humdrum and you’re caught in its laws and like that,

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it’s just not so.

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I mean, I don’t have all the answers answers but this is where we need to put pressure

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is the world is some kind of thing

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which can be taken apart

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and shown to be something else

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many other things

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and nobody’s saying this

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I mean these physicists are just sober as can be

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and all this argument that goes back and forth

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about this paradigm

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and that paradigm

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and whether the world

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is made of anti-new masons

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or it’s…

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The world is obviously made

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of mind and intention.

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And I’m not…

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I don’t mean this

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in some airy-fairy

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can’t-get-a-grip-on-it way.

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I mean,

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if the world is made of cognition and intention then let’s get a technology together that allows us to use that principle to make it the way we

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want it to be my mother said to me when i was at her knee if if wishes were horses, beggars would ride.

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And I think, you know, the political implication of that is beggars should ride,

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and therefore turning wishes into horses

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is a reasonable political agenda.

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And the psychedelics show, you know,

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the way it is to be done.

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It’s somehow… I don’t know.

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I don’t know.

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My intuition is very strong that with people with sufficient intelligence

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and sufficient courage could at any time break through

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and make this somehow happen.

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I mean, it’s a fantasy of two people having a conversation at any time, break through and make this somehow happen.

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I mean, it’s a fantasy of two people having a conversation which ends with the abolition of language, basically.

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In other words, turn the tools upon themselves

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and unscrew everything and lay it out and look at it

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and then rebuild it the way we want to. Now this could not

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even be talked about if there were not evidence that it is possible. And the evidence lies in this

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weird dimension, this psychedelic thing. And I would be utterly despairing of the state of this planet and ourselves if it weren’t

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for the existence of these compounds i think we would not have the chance of a snowball in hell

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not a chance because everything on the surface spells ruin you know we are murderous monkeys. We have looted the future.

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We have eaten the food of our own children.

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This is the kind of crowd we are.

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And yet, and yet, and yet, you know, there is this shining, transcendent thing that is real. And this is what I hold against all the priests and gurus and rishis and roshis and geishas and babajis around,

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is they don’t explain that what they’re talking about is real.

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I don’t even think they know that it’s real.

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Perhaps they’re just, you know, parasites on an idea.

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But it is real, and it is possible to manifest it. The problem is that we are so

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perversely committed in the way we invest energy. I mean, a modern, well-equipped fighter plane

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costs 75 million dollars. The United States government orders them in lots of 500 at a time you know

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what 75 million dollars would do to consciousness research in california one the cost of one fighter

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plane i and the people i know and the people they know could deliver the millennium for that kind of

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money if uh you know the law stood back Because what we’re talking about is a correlation

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of data that has gone on now for four or five hundred years. Botanical data, chemical data,

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human data, anthropological data, data about language, data about complex systems generally,

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data about language, data about complex systems generally, mathematical models, dynamics, chaos theory, so forth and so on.

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These are the tools out of which an understanding of the dynamics of mind can be created.

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And creating an understanding of the dynamics of mind is the way out of the political logjam. No amount of haranguing and preaching is going to do it.

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It requires a breakthrough to the mechanics of ourselves.

00:26:38 ► §

That’s what it basically comes down to,

00:26:41 ► §

that we must see ourselves as potentially salvageable,

00:26:47 ► §

reprogrammable, and worth saving.

00:26:51 ► §

And I think that because the psychedelic experience

00:26:56 ► §

is not bound in history,

00:27:00 ► §

but in a way is a morphogenetic field amplifier

00:27:04 ► §

of our species.

00:27:06 ► §

I mean, if you think of the Sheldrakean model of morphogenetic fields

00:27:11 ► §

and then imagine that they cannot be detected by radio,

00:27:16 ► §

they cannot be detected by any electronic means,

00:27:21 ► §

the field is too subtle.

00:27:29 ► §

means the field is too subtle that if you imagine that mind is a quantum mechanically indeterminate and delicately balanced enough system that it can actually resonate to the

00:27:36 ► §

presence of the morphogenetic field then you begin to have a theory of what the psychedelic experience is. It’s the experience of the transcendent dimension of every object.

00:27:51 ► §

And every object has a transcendent dimension, more than one.

00:27:55 ► §

I mean, it has a dimension which extends into the past,

00:27:58 ► §

it has a dimension which extends into the future,

00:28:01 ► §

and it has a dimension which is orthogonal to any of these,

00:28:06 ► §

that is the internal horizon of its own transcendence.

00:28:12 ► §

Now this kind of talk is Whiteheadian talk.

00:28:16 ► §

Whitehead, in the 20s and 30s, actually created a philosophy,

00:28:21 ► §

a rigorous metaphysic,

00:28:23 ► §

entirely capable of working in a psychedelic environment.

00:28:29 ► §

Had he written it in Sanskrit, he probably would have had a wider audience.

00:28:35 ► §

But he wrote in plain English.

00:28:37 ► §

So if you’re interested in a metaphysic of the psychedelic experience,

00:28:43 ► §

will you actually take it seriously.

00:28:46 ► §

And so these things which we perceive,

00:28:49 ► §

the dissolution of boundaries,

00:28:51 ► §

the recombining of form,

00:28:53 ► §

the transience of form,

00:28:55 ► §

the transience of meaning,

00:28:58 ► §

the coming together of actual events in a real world,

00:29:04 ► §

and the dissolution of those events into a world of potentiality.

00:29:08 ► §

This is all whitehead type stuff.

00:29:12 ► §

Some of you may know the notion of memes.

00:29:16 ► §

A meme is the smallest unit of an idea.

00:29:20 ► §

It’s to ideas what genes are, to biology.

00:29:23 ► §

It’s to ideas what genes are, to biology.

00:29:30 ► §

And memes compete in the same way that genes are competitive in an environment.

00:29:33 ► §

A meme can be copied.

00:29:38 ► §

I can tell you something and you can tell someone else.

00:29:40 ► §

The meme has been copied.

00:30:10 ► §

A meme can be repeated. I can say the same thing over and over again to different people who then copy it and take it away. But in the same sense as a gene is only effective if it remains faithful to its original, the meme must remain faithful to its original. And the only way we can correctly copy these memes and pass them among ourselves is through clarity of understanding.

00:30:18 ► §

So it’s always this pressure on clarity. Nothing should be ambiguous. I don’t believe in it.

00:30:26 ► §

You know, I believe that understanding passes everywhere

00:30:30 ► §

and that a thing is not existentially apprehended

00:30:37 ► §

in some sense until it is understood.

00:30:41 ► §

And as far as what understanding is,

00:30:43 ► §

it’s simple. It’s nothing more than the perception of connecting pattern. So that here is a data field, could be a beach full of people or a great corporation or the history of England, a data field.

00:31:20 ► §

of England, a data field. What patterns do you perceive in it? The more patterns you perceive in it, the more you understand it. And there is no bottom to this. I mean, understanding just falls through the phenomena of the world endlessly. mindlessly. Essentially it’s about communication, that most of what we say and do, even though

00:31:29 ► §

we may define ourselves as wide-ranging intellectuals, most of what we say to each other is incredibly

00:31:37 ► §

animalistic and low-grade data exchange, because we’re not used to pouring the energies of cognition into articulate speech

00:31:48 ► §

we just tend not to do that but actually it’s at this stage of things the closest we can get to

00:31:57 ► §

hardwired telepathy you know honest straight talk that draws from as deep as it can.

00:32:09 ► §

And a search for, well, Blake said this thing, let’s see if I can get it right.

00:32:18 ► §

He said, the truth, if it is told so that it is understood, must be believed.

00:32:29 ► §

In other words, if you hear it and you understand it and it’s so,

00:32:33 ► §

you will automatically give allegiance to it.

00:32:37 ► §

This is because we resonate with some kind of ground of being

00:32:42 ► §

that is below the speakable and yet supporting it.

00:32:48 ► §

So the idea here will be to try and communicate between ourselves

00:32:53 ► §

to create a slightly different kind of reality than everybody else is hanging out in.

00:33:01 ► §

is hanging out in.

00:33:04 ► §

Mostly, I hope,

00:33:08 ► §

our reality will have more hope than the generic reality

00:33:11 ► §

that’s going on outside.

00:33:13 ► §

Because I think that

00:33:16 ► §

there’s a lot of data

00:33:20 ► §

on the table now,

00:33:23 ► §

more information than ever before. And we can actually begin to figure out

00:33:29 ► §

what’s going on not in terms of the first three milliseconds of the universe but actually you know

00:33:38 ► §

what is going on on this planet what is human history what is a cognizing species doing running around by the

00:33:48 ► §

billions on the surface of this planet obsessed with religions and driven by vice and hatred and

00:33:56 ► §

visionary longing this is not what they talk about in the biology books still less is it what they

00:34:04 ► §

talk about in the physical chemistry books and something has torn loose on the surface of this planet, and we are embedded in it, and we are it, and it is sweeping us and all life on this planet into some kind of apotheosis, some kind of shit-hit-the-fan situation where all the hopes and dreams and

00:34:30 ► §

fears and obsessions are going to be held up to some kind of transcendental inspection.

00:34:37 ► §

Nothing can stop this.

00:34:40 ► §

Perhaps, you know, it could have been stopped in the 12th century or the 6th century,

00:34:45 ► §

but now technical processes, population growth, information transfer, destruction of the environment,

00:34:53 ► §

the great dying is well underway.

00:34:59 ► §

And the question is, does this make sense?

00:35:04 ► §

And an even more cogent question, can it be made to make sense in other

00:35:09 ► §

words can we come to in the situation of a planet sinking into chaos and somehow run around and

00:35:19 ► §

punch some buttons and close off some areas and salvage something? Can meaning be salvaged? Or is the

00:35:27 ► §

process that has gone on over the last, you pick a number, but it’s in the billions of years,

00:35:34 ► §

essentially meaningless, dumb show and absurdity? The really freaky thing about this, I think, is that it’s not clear, that it seems to rest in the domain of human decision, that the universe is not at all what we suppose it to be.

00:36:10 ► §

a three-dimensional, four-dimensional, eleven-dimensional koan, a labyrinth, a puzzle, a kind of conundrum which has to be cut through. And it’s all done in the mind. The whole apparent world is actually

00:36:25 ► §

syntactical

00:36:27 ► §

in nature.

00:36:29 ► §

This is what they don’t tell you

00:36:31 ► §

in the philosophy departments

00:36:32 ► §

or the physics departments.

00:36:35 ► §

That the universe is made of words

00:36:37 ► §

and that there has to be a speaker

00:36:40 ► §

and there has to be a hearer.

00:36:42 ► §

Photons, quarks, anti-mumain…

00:36:44 ► §

That’s not what it’s about.

00:36:45 ► §

That is a linguistic model

00:36:48 ► §

that floats above the bedrock

00:36:52 ► §

of syntactical connectedness

00:36:56 ► §

that mind travels through

00:36:58 ► §

to create networks

00:37:01 ► §

that it interprets meaningfully.

00:37:04 ► §

That’s what’s really going on.

00:37:08 ► §

So, looking at this situation years and years ago,

00:37:15 ► §

knowing and feeling what I’ve essentially just said to you

00:37:19 ► §

25 years ago,

00:37:22 ► §

I’ve always been a skeptic I mean I’ve always been a sort of on a

00:37:30 ► §

downer cynical even and take things apart and belittle them and see how they

00:37:37 ► §

tick it’s just it’s a male style, scientific style.

00:37:52 ► §

And the assumption behind that is that you can reduce the whole world to something which is non-threatening and neutral somehow.

00:37:59 ► §

But a weird thing happened on the way to completing this program which was um i discovered something

00:38:10 ► §

which it is my intention to try and share with you i don’t know it’s many people have this discovery that I can only speak for myself. So for me it had a very intense and kind of

00:38:31 ► §

transformative immediacy. And this was, I discovered that in the realm of the so-called

00:38:40 ► §

transcendental. I was raised Roman Catholic and in the process of cutting that loose switched

00:38:47 ► §

to Latin for Sanskrit for a while. And, you know, I’ve had a lifelong interest in the

00:38:57 ► §

transcendental, but basically from a debunking point of view. In other words, not for me sweeping up at the ashram, not for me the

00:39:07 ► §

ambiguities of Babaji. I mean, I just, and in India, the tack which I always took with these

00:39:16 ► §

people was, what can you show me? You know, anything. Because talk is cheap. God, if I don’t know that, who does?

00:39:27 ► §

So a line of patter is completely non-convincing.

00:39:35 ► §

Well, it’s not to be found in those traditions.

00:39:42 ► §

What I’m trying to say is that when I put pressure on the spiritual domain,

00:39:47 ► §

the only people who could deliver were shamans with a history of use of hallucinogenic plants.

00:39:58 ► §

And an awareness of this came to me, say, as early as 1967, and I began to pursue it.

00:40:07 ► §

At first I pursued a pharmacological basis behind Tibetan shamanism,

00:40:15 ► §

the pre-Buddhist shamanism of Tibet is called Punpo,

00:40:18 ► §

and I went there thinking that their art could not possibly be what it is

00:40:24 ► §

unless they had access to hallucinogenic plants

00:40:27 ► §

and were using them well i was you know 22 years i didn’t know anything i didn’t speak these

00:40:34 ► §

languages i had no notion of the task that i was setting up for myself but later i went to the Amazon basin, and there, there is extant and thriving,

00:40:49 ► §

a rich shamanic tradition of hallucinogenic plant use,

00:40:53 ► §

and they can just convey you into astonishing dimensions.

00:41:01 ► §

And it’s those astonishing dimensions that will form, inevitably, the focus of what we do this month.

00:41:11 ► §

Because we need to run it as a headline.

00:41:17 ► §

It goes something like this.

00:41:20 ► §

Scientists discover nearby hyper-object in alternative continuum.

00:41:28 ► §

It’s that sort of thing.

00:41:29 ► §

It’s that by pushing the psychedelic experience,

00:41:36 ► §

we can satisfy,

00:41:38 ► §

and by, let me define pushing there,

00:41:40 ► §

I mean putting a great deal of research pressure on the tryptamines

00:41:50 ► §

by pushing the hallucinogenic psychedelic experience.

00:41:56 ► §

I think we could fairly quickly satisfy ourselves,

00:42:00 ► §

if the legal climate were different,

00:42:03 ► §

that the Freudian model won’t do, the Freudian model won’t do,

00:42:07 ► §

the Jungian model won’t do,

00:42:10 ► §

and that in fact all psychological models will fail,

00:42:14 ► §

and that what we’re dealing with

00:42:16 ► §

is something quite of another order.

00:42:22 ► §

And I am not one to reach for, you know,

00:42:25 ► §

the metaphors of spirit

00:42:27 ► §

with the connotation of moral opprobrium and all that.

00:42:30 ► §

But there is a dimension

00:42:35 ► §

which is accessible to each and every one of us.

00:42:39 ► §

This is the primary thing about it.

00:42:42 ► §

It’s accessible

00:42:43 ► §

that is so appallingly, titanically, and bizarrely

00:42:49 ► §

different than the continuum that we’re currently residing in, that it seems to throw doubt on the

00:42:56 ► §

entire effort to understand the world as it’s been carried out over the past 1500 years. In other words, there is an object in this mental space

00:43:11 ► §

which as culture-creating creatures,

00:43:14 ► §

we are attempting to colonize and invade this cultural space

00:43:18 ► §

through the concrescence of language.

00:43:21 ► §

In other words, through exteriorizing our ideas as tools we are invading

00:43:27 ► §

this cultural domain and the psychedelic uh tryptamines and very recently discovered by the

00:43:37 ► §

way i’m doing a book for bantam and i have to go through the whole history of these things. And to my amazement, the indole hallucinogens actually were never studied.

00:43:53 ► §

LSD was invented in 1938.

00:43:56 ► §

They put it on the shelf for five years.

00:43:58 ► §

Then the guy took it, Hoffman.

00:44:00 ► §

He said it’s a hallucinogen.

00:44:02 ► §

But the war was raging. That was 1943. It didn’t actually make

00:44:08 ► §

its way into the journals until 1947. Then from 47 to roughly 65, there was a great deal of interest

00:44:18 ► §

in LSD and research on it. Then that ended with it becoming illegal meantime psilocybin DMT and and

00:44:29 ► §

the beta carbolines the number of articles and papers published on these

00:44:35 ► §

things numbers in the dozens in the case of DMT it’s under 10 human we’re talking now human experiments,

00:44:49 ► §

not rat slicing and physical chemistry,

00:44:51 ► §

but actual human data.

00:44:54 ► §

So what we inherit out of the 60s,

00:44:57 ► §

one of the ways which we have been disempowered that we didn’t even know,

00:44:59 ► §

isn’t this fun to learn a new way that you were disempowered

00:45:02 ► §

that you didn’t even know,

00:45:04 ► §

is that the LSD experience was made the paradigm of the psychedelic experience.

00:45:14 ► §

And it was placed at the center of the phenomenological mandala.

00:45:18 ► §

And then all these other compounds were sort of related into it in terms of doesn’t last as long as,

00:45:25 ► §

lasts twice as long as, that sort of thing.

00:45:31 ► §

When you think about this alternative reality and the exploration by drugs,

00:45:39 ► §

with psychedelic drugs, and then the pervasive problem with other sorts of drugs in the society it’s it’s

00:45:48 ► §

and it cuts very close to the core of ourselves as creatures I mean we are addictive animals we

00:45:58 ► §

addict to everything we addict to each other and glorify it as our most noble outpouring of sentiment in

00:46:08 ► §

the phenomenon of romantic love. I mean, when a pair of lovers are parted, the withdrawal symptoms

00:46:17 ► §

are indistinguishable from heroin. I mean, vomiting, shaking, uncontrollable emotional outbursts,

00:46:26 ► §

sleeplessness, short temper, hysteria.

00:46:30 ► §

This is real.

00:46:31 ► §

What romantic love is, is a pheromonal bonding,

00:46:37 ► §

an exchange of chemical messengers which takes these two autonomous organisms and welds them into one galaxy of need and intention and understanding and expectation.

00:46:50 ► §

Well, then you just tear that apart and people are, you know, shook up.

00:46:55 ► §

We addict to political ideals, you know, all kinds. I mean, it’s wonderful what’s happening in Peking, but several decades ago the same thing was happening in Berlin to a different beat.

00:47:10 ► §

You know, people find an idea and it works

00:47:15 ► §

and all barriers appear to be movable and all goals attainable.

00:47:21 ► §

We addict to things.

00:47:30 ► §

goals attainable. We addict to things. This is like magpies, but then through media trained to propel ourselves into ever more extensive relationships with objects. We invent money,

00:47:37 ► §

which is kind of a multitransformable drug. It stands for everything,

00:47:46 ► §

you know, everything you ever wanted,

00:47:48 ► §

and you can addict to money.

00:47:51 ► §

Nevertheless,

00:47:52 ► §

what I will argue during this month

00:47:56 ► §

is that

00:47:58 ► §

that this is not a bad thing,

00:48:03 ► §

that we have a secret history

00:48:07 ► §

that I will try to convince you of,

00:48:11 ► §

and you should try to convince me that I’m wrong,

00:48:16 ► §

and we will argue over the secret history of the human race

00:48:20 ► §

and why it is, therefore, that we are as we are,

00:48:29 ► §

race and why it is therefore that we are as we are and why it is that these psychedelics are not some peripheral issue of screwballs who can see God in a cabbage but that in fact

00:48:37 ► §

the issue of psychedelics is directly on the tracks of the onrushing locomotive

00:48:45 ► §

of rationalist, paternalist, schlockola society,

00:48:51 ► §

and that it ain’t going to go away,

00:48:53 ► §

because what we’re talking about here is a nude part of the human mind.

00:49:00 ► §

What we’re talking about here is something which takes its place in the great unfolding of the defining of human freedom that characterizes the middle ages uh slavery has now been generally embraced as a bad thing

00:49:31 ► §

to be into and we’ve gotten that on the books as a bad idea women have been suddenly recognized to be human beings, and so forth.

00:49:46 ► §

So this swelling bubble of aha and perception of the real nature of the universe

00:49:53 ► §

should also include the sudden realization that governments have no business telling people

00:50:01 ► §

what foods and spices they should prefer, that this is an absurd role for government,

00:50:08 ► §

and that, like slavery, like the subjugation of women,

00:50:13 ► §

the legal persecution of dietary habits

00:50:20 ► §

has just got to take its place with the high-button shoe.

00:50:28 ► §

And we will talk a lot about the consequences of this. What does it mean? Because you see, what the government would have

00:50:34 ► §

us believe, and perhaps believes itself, although I doubt it, is that we would return to the beast.

00:50:48 ► §

return to the beast that’s all you know we would just shoot junk and toot blow and flop around in ruinous orgies until hell froze over and they wiser sterner more disciplined than ourselves

00:50:59 ► §

represent the edifice of moral authority this is a I’m doing it for your own good trip, see.

00:51:08 ► §

And actually,

00:51:09 ► §

this is all hypocrisy,

00:51:11 ► §

and we will talk about that,

00:51:13 ► §

the roles of governments

00:51:14 ► §

in the promulgation of drugs

00:51:18 ► §

and drug cartels,

00:51:20 ► §

and how,

00:51:21 ► §

this is what I learned

00:51:22 ► §

doing this book for Bantam,

00:51:24 ► §

is that drugs have always been there and how, this is what I learned doing this book for Bantam,

00:51:29 ► §

is that drugs have always been there and have always been manipulated by governments.

00:51:33 ► §

I mean, this is almost what money was invented for,

00:51:36 ► §

was to do dope deals.

00:51:39 ► §

And, you know, I’ll show you what I mean as we get into it.

00:51:45 ► §

But I want to return for a minute to the transcendental object

00:51:49 ► §

because that’s the part which gets me off the most.

00:51:55 ► §

It’s taken me a long time to believe what was actually happening

00:52:00 ► §

in that I always said I could believe it if I read it in the newspaper but I can’t

00:52:08 ► §

believe it because it’s happening to me or it’s happening so near to me but I just you know it

00:52:17 ► §

hardly now seems to matter and what we just have to do is to try and talk frankly

00:52:25 ► §

based on the experience

00:52:29 ► §

which each of us brings to this

00:52:32 ► §

about the thing.

00:52:35 ► §

How much of it have you seen?

00:52:37 ► §

Well, what do you think?

00:52:39 ► §

How does it cast its shadow into your life?

00:52:43 ► §

What is it?

00:52:44 ► §

Because I talk on these subjects,

00:52:48 ► §

I am a sort of a nexus point for information,

00:52:51 ► §

and I gather stories,

00:52:53 ► §

and I see that, you know,

00:52:56 ► §

science and rational philosophy

00:52:59 ► §

and all that stuff is going on over here

00:53:02 ► §

quite to its heart’s content.

00:53:05 ► §

Well, hundreds and hundreds, if not thousands and thousands of people,

00:53:11 ► §

exactly like ourselves, are logging in these experiences,

00:53:18 ► §

which are, you know, absolutely off the scale.

00:53:24 ► §

you know, absolutely off the scale.

00:53:28 ► §

And I just don’t, I mean,

00:53:31 ► §

you know, there are a lot of people having problems,

00:53:33 ► §

people abducted by UFOs,

00:53:36 ► §

people visited by Whitley Strieber’s triangle face.

00:53:38 ► §

That’s not where I’m coming from. I mean, I have nothing but scorn

00:53:42 ► §

for all weird ideas other than my own.

00:53:50 ► §

And the reason I tolerate my own weird ideas

00:53:53 ► §

is basically because of what I’ve gone through.

00:53:57 ► §

I would never believe it if I hadn’t seen it.

00:54:00 ► §

You know, there’s a wonderful story,

00:54:02 ► §

and I have no love for Christianity either, but

00:54:06 ► §

I’ll tell a Christian story. This is what I got out of the Gospels. Christ appeared

00:54:15 ► §

several times in the upper room after the crucifixion to the apostles. The first time he appeared, the Apostle Thomas was not there.

00:54:31 ► §

And so then Thomas came after the visitation,

00:54:36 ► §

and they said, the Master was here.

00:54:37 ► §

He was with us.

00:54:40 ► §

And Thomas said, oh, shit.

00:54:48 ► §

And they said, no, no, he was here.

00:54:53 ► §

And he said, unless I put my hand into the wound,

00:54:56 ► §

I will not believe it.

00:54:59 ► §

So time passed,

00:55:03 ► §

and Christ came again to the upper room. And Thomas was there among the other apostles.

00:55:10 ► §

And Christ said, Thomas, come forward.

00:55:16 ► §

Put your hand into the wound.

00:55:19 ► §

And he did. And he did.

00:55:24 ► §

Now, the conclusion that I draw from this story

00:55:28 ► §

is alone of all human beings in human history,

00:55:34 ► §

Thomas the Doubter touched

00:55:36 ► §

the incorporeal resurrected body of Christ.

00:55:41 ► §

Only the Doubter was allowed that privilege. For everybody else, you know,

00:55:49 ► §

the show. And I just take that absolutely seriously. I think that God or he, she, or

00:55:57 ► §

it loves the doubter and prepares treasures in paradise for the doubter that eclipse anything.

00:56:09 ► §

And the method has worked for me.

00:56:13 ► §

And I have seen absolutely astonishing things.

00:56:18 ► §

I’m sure many of you have too.

00:56:20 ► §

I have seen things where I had perfect confidence

00:56:24 ► §

that no human being had ever laid eyes on these places before.

00:56:30 ► §

And I’m sure you have too.

00:56:32 ► §

Because that’s how big it is in there.

00:56:36 ► §

It is the further in you go, the bigger it gets.

00:56:44 ► §

we are like monkeys sitting in the presence

00:56:47 ► §

of a flying saucer

00:56:49 ► §

whose doorway has just been flung open

00:56:52 ► §

this is what we need to become conscious of

00:56:56 ► §

we need to

00:56:57 ► §

dissolve the assumptions of the culture

00:57:01 ► §

and this is why LSD was so terrifying

00:57:04 ► §

because I firmly believe that one of the culture. And this is why LSD was so terrifying because I firmly believe

00:57:06 ► §

that one of the things psychedelics do

00:57:08 ► §

is they dissolve cultural assumptions.

00:57:12 ► §

It doesn’t matter whether you’re

00:57:14 ► §

a member of the Politburo

00:57:15 ► §

or a go-go dancer in Berlin

00:57:17 ► §

or a professor of agronomy in Kansas.

00:57:20 ► §

You will doubt your beliefs

00:57:23 ► §

and your world

00:57:23 ► §

if you take psychedelics.

00:57:26 ► §

This is good.

00:57:27 ► §

We need to dissolve our cultural conditioning and try to get down to brass tacks

00:57:33 ► §

because I’m convinced that reality is a tinker toy set

00:57:38 ► §

that we can learn to take apart and put together in completely different ways.

00:57:44 ► §

And we’re going to have to pull some real rabbits out of the hat

00:57:48 ► §

or the planet is just going to pour over the edge into chaos.

00:57:56 ► §

And I, you know, before they were called psychedelics,

00:58:00 ► §

they were called consciousness-expanding drugs.

00:58:04 ► §

Well, if there’s any possibility

00:58:08 ► §

that that’s true

00:58:09 ► §

let’s put our best people on it

00:58:12 ► §

because consciousness is what we’re dying for

00:58:16 ► §

we don’t have enough of it

00:58:17 ► §

we can’t feed the hungry

00:58:19 ► §

we can’t manage a global economy

00:58:21 ► §

we can’t hold down guerrilla warfare

00:58:22 ► §

we can’t cure AIDS

00:58:24 ► §

we need to get smart.

00:58:26 ► §

And if this stuff has anything to do with getting smart on any level, even for one in a thousand of

00:58:32 ► §

those who use it, pour it on. We can’t stand around like a bunch of nitwits just watching

00:58:40 ► §

the planet burn down around us. Now, it’s very touchy, this whole thing,

00:58:47 ► §

because it is literally,

00:58:49 ► §

and perhaps metaphorically as well,

00:58:53 ► §

illegal, forbidden territory.

00:58:56 ► §

We’re like South Pacific islanders.

00:58:58 ► §

We have taboos, you know?

00:59:01 ► §

Bring this plant into your house

00:59:03 ► §

and you must go away to the big slammer

00:59:06 ► §

for a while

00:59:07 ► §

this is a taboo

00:59:09 ► §

I don’t

00:59:12 ► §

my position

00:59:14 ► §

which I don’t suppose I should say I advocate it

00:59:16 ► §

because as I understand it

00:59:17 ► §

that’s one higher level of federal crime

00:59:20 ► §

so here is my position

00:59:22 ► §

but I don’t advocate it

00:59:24 ► §

is that, you know, people should

00:59:28 ► §

be able to do whatever they damn well please, that government is for the convenience of

00:59:35 ► §

people.

00:59:36 ► §

And in particular, in the United States, we already have in place a clause which says

00:59:42 ► §

life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness are inalienable rights.

00:59:48 ► §

Inalienable. That means government cannot interfere with these rights. Well, pursuit of happiness,

00:59:54 ► §

I don’t think you have to be a shyster to believe that pursuit of happiness covers

00:59:58 ► §

experimenting with psychedelic substances. Seems to me perfectly clear.

01:00:07 ► §

I think that, you know,

01:00:10 ► §

part of what I do as I speak around,

01:00:12 ► §

and I suppose I should say it here because I imagine some of you

01:00:13 ► §

will end up psychotherapists

01:00:15 ► §

or are psychotherapists,

01:00:17 ► §

is that, you know,

01:00:21 ► §

without an understanding

01:00:22 ► §

and a familiarity

01:00:23 ► §

of the psychedelic experience, you should be sued for fraud if you’re practicing psychotherapy.

01:00:31 ► §

Because the dynamics of the mind, isn’t that what psychotherapy is about?

01:00:37 ► §

Well, you know this much unless you have had a variety of psychedelic experiences. That’s where the confirmation of all this

01:00:46 ► §

theory is, and that’s where you find out what you’re running from. It isn’t that it is a

01:00:53 ► §

psychotomimetic, as the government researchers hoped it would turn out to be. It’s simply

01:01:00 ► §

that it plays all the changes. It pulls out the stops

01:01:05 ► §

and it plays in the major and the minor keys.

01:01:08 ► §

And you see it all.

01:01:10 ► §

This is indispensable for psychotherapy.

01:01:13 ► §

And if you look at the cure statistics

01:01:17 ► §

on alcoholism with LSD,

01:01:21 ► §

it’s phenomenal.

01:01:23 ► §

Before LSD was made illegal.

01:01:25 ► §

Now, I understand.

01:01:27 ► §

I don’t believe these are chemical cures to drug dependency.

01:01:33 ► §

That isn’t how it works.

01:01:34 ► §

It works like this.

01:01:35 ► §

You take LSD, you’re an alcoholic or a junkie.

01:01:39 ► §

You take LSD, all your illusions and defenses are dissolved.

01:01:44 ► §

You see that you’re killing yourself and that

01:01:46 ► §

you’re a pathetic wretch and that you’re destroying yourself and the people around you. And then

01:01:51 ► §

you come down. And out of that experience, you existentially draw, in some cases, the

01:01:58 ► §

power, the self-will, and the motivation to change your behavior. Well, I believe that as a culture, we could

01:02:08 ► §

do this. And this comes perilously close to sounding like everyone should take LSD. I

01:02:14 ► §

don’t believe that. I think that it’s a calling. It’s a kind of a profession. It’s, well, shamanism is the best model.

01:02:29 ► §

And I think that the rebirth of shamanic awareness

01:02:34 ► §

is part of a much larger cultural phenomenon

01:02:39 ► §

which I call the archaic revival.

01:02:41 ► §

I hate the term new age.

01:02:44 ► §

I think it’s just, you know,

01:02:47 ► §

11 o’clock news stuff.

01:02:50 ► §

But the archaic revival

01:02:51 ► §

is a notion of a series

01:02:55 ► §

of integrated trends

01:02:56 ► §

that have been going on

01:02:58 ► §

for over a hundred years

01:02:59 ► §

that are the actual

01:03:01 ► §

turning belly up

01:03:03 ► §

of Victorian Christian scientific male-dominated materialist civilization.

01:03:11 ► §

It begins with phenomena like pataphysics in the 1880s in France,

01:03:17 ► §

and surrealism, and Freud, and Jung, and abstract expressionism,

01:03:21 ► §

and even the Nazis had a piece of the action because of their understanding of how ritual and propaganda,

01:03:30 ► §

and I mean Goebbels was the architect of the German archaic revival,

01:03:35 ► §

and LSD has a part of it,

01:03:37 ► §

and what it is, is it’s an intuition,

01:03:43 ► §

an intuition that to save ourselves from what we have done,

01:03:50 ► §

we must reach far, far back in time for a stabilizing metaphor,

01:03:57 ► §

not as the Renaissance did back to classical Greece and Rome to create classicism,

01:04:03 ► §

which of course all happened in

01:04:05 ► §

the 15th century, but further back to prehistory, to a time when people and nature lived in

01:04:18 ► §

a kind of balance. I don’t mean just any time in prehistory. I mean essentially the post-glacial period called the Magdalenian,

01:04:27 ► §

about 19,000 years ago, when the glaciers began to melt and the Sahara turned green

01:04:33 ► §

again and the cave paintings were done at Lascaux and Altamira. Bone antler technology

01:04:40 ► §

was invented. It was the great springtime of our people

01:04:45 ► §

and the last springtime of our people.

01:04:49 ► §

And then we came down through.

01:04:54 ► §

But in that time,

01:04:56 ► §

in a partnership society,

01:04:58 ► §

and this is Rian Eisler’s term

01:05:00 ► §

and I will talk about that through the month.

01:05:03 ► §

In a partnership society, there was no oscillation between a matriarchy and a patriarchy. There are dominator societies and there are partnership societies. And gender has nothing to do with it. We can entirely overcome the bullshit about gender in talking about cultural forms. It’s dominator versus partnership. And the partnership

01:05:28 ► §

society that existed in those times was the quintessential expression of a symbiotic

01:05:37 ► §

relationship. And this is a new, you know, new idea that I want to get across during this month

01:05:45 ► §

which is our

01:05:47 ► §

anxiety, our

01:05:49 ► §

angst, our wandering

01:05:51 ► §

in the wasteland

01:05:53 ► §

is because

01:05:55 ► §

there’s something wrong

01:05:57 ► §

with us that we

01:05:59 ► §

don’t know about

01:06:01 ► §

what it is is this

01:06:03 ► §

we are symbiotic creatures.

01:06:07 ► §

We require a relationship

01:06:10 ► §

with a certain plant.

01:06:12 ► §

And if we don’t have this,

01:06:14 ► §

we go slightly bananas.

01:06:17 ► §

And this symbiotic relationship

01:06:20 ► §

was disturbed about 12,000 years ago.

01:06:25 ► §

It has to do, and I will go over it in more detail downstream,

01:06:29 ► §

but it has to do with periods of drought

01:06:33 ► §

in the African continent

01:06:35 ► §

that forced people into the Middle East

01:06:38 ► §

to where they were no longer able to access this plant.

01:06:42 ► §

Then begins what we call human history

01:06:46 ► §

at the 11,000 BP point

01:06:50 ► §

at places like Jericho and Chattahoochee and Southern Anatolia.

01:06:56 ► §

What’s happening with human history

01:06:58 ► §

is a perhaps not even articulated,

01:07:02 ► §

but nevertheless restless, driving search

01:07:06 ► §

for substitutes.

01:07:09 ► §

Substitutes for the lost partnership ambiance,

01:07:13 ► §

substitutes for the plant symbiote,

01:07:15 ► §

which held that in stasis.

01:07:17 ► §

And these substitutes

01:07:19 ► §

worked their way over the millennia

01:07:21 ► §

through the opium cults of Anatolia, the hemp cults of the Scythians,

01:07:29 ► §

the Eleusinian mysteries, and these are the great acceptable substitutes for the mystery.

01:07:37 ► §

You see, what religion is is a contact with the tremendum, with the numinosum at the beginning of history in this context of plant hallucinogenesis.

01:07:48 ► §

And then the fall, literally the fall,

01:07:52 ► §

is the telescoping stages that moved us away

01:07:56 ► §

from the original purity of this numinous image.

01:07:59 ► §

And it ends in crack addiction.

01:08:02 ► §

It’s all about substances.

01:08:05 ► §

This is why we frantically search the universe

01:08:08 ► §

for what my friend Leo Zeff used to call

01:08:12 ► §

the perfect high.

01:08:14 ► §

That’s what we’re looking for.

01:08:16 ► §

We can’t help ourselves.

01:08:17 ► §

Whole cultures are doing it.

01:08:19 ► §

And they don’t think of it as a drug.

01:08:21 ► §

They think of it as an epiphany,

01:08:23 ► §

a religious system,

01:08:24 ► §

a set of sacramental

01:08:26 ► §

buildings, or a city organized on a divine plan. But what they’re trying to do is restore order,

01:08:35 ► §

and they can’t do it because, like the romantic lovers parted, the partner is not present. The completing anima image is simply not there. And so we

01:08:52 ► §

are restless, violent, neurotic, repressive, migratory, destructive, self-negating, so

01:09:02 ► §

forth and so on. I think that we’re coming to the place

01:09:07 ► §

where we can actually begin to take an idea,

01:09:11 ► §

like what I just said,

01:09:13 ► §

and amass evidence for and against it

01:09:16 ► §

and try to then cure ourselves.

01:09:21 ► §

In a way, I’m trying to carry out a kind of Jungian analysis where we realize that we

01:09:28 ► §

are all the children of some kind of very damaging thing which happened in prehistory. And it’s plain

01:09:36 ► §

as the nose on your face. It’s just that we are so traumatized we do not see it. I mean, look at the story of Eden,

01:09:45 ► §

which is the central datum,

01:09:50 ► §

the central mythologium of our culture.

01:09:53 ► §

It’s a story of substance abuse

01:09:57 ► §

and the consequent punishment that follows upon that

01:10:01 ► §

because Eve eats of the fruit of the tree of life.

01:10:09 ► §

And it says in Genesis,

01:10:11 ► §

if they eat of this fruit,

01:10:14 ► §

they will be as we are.

01:10:16 ► §

In other words, it was specifically

01:10:18 ► §

the issue of consciousness expansion

01:10:21 ► §

and Yahweh, the jealous God,

01:10:24 ► §

the volcano God of a paternal,

01:10:26 ► §

of a dominator culture,

01:10:29 ► §

and said, no,

01:10:30 ► §

you’re not coming into that inner sanctum.

01:10:33 ► §

But she had eaten of it anyway.

01:10:35 ► §

So there was a parting of the ways.

01:10:37 ► §

Well, this parting of the ways,

01:10:39 ► §

I believe, is a metaphorical description

01:10:42 ► §

of the breakup of the symbiosis in Africa

01:10:46 ► §

and the fall into profane time,

01:10:51 ► §

the withdrawal of the bride, really,

01:11:00 ► §

in alchemical terms or in terms of the Jungian marriage of the anima and the animus.

01:11:08 ► §

And we are now, I think, in a position to at least talk about this as a possibility

01:11:16 ► §

because this thing which was driving these religions on the plains of Africa

01:11:23 ► §

was a tryptamine hallucinogen. It was specifically

01:11:29 ► §

a mushroom which was occurring in the dung of the early cattle that were just at that stage

01:11:38 ► §

being domesticated. Well, the experience which that mushroom induces in us is no less overwhelming and transcendental and incomprehensible than it was to those people 15,000 years ago.

01:12:00 ► §

We have nothing up on them. In fact, we may be in a worse position to understand it,

01:12:06 ► §

because our language is now carrying a millennia-long legacy of paternalistic,

01:12:15 ► §

egocentric, materialistic, and empirical biases. They may have possessed languages that far better commanded the true modalities of the transcendental object than do our languages.

01:12:28 ► §

So the archaic revival is an invitation to historical humanity to view itself as a kind of prodigal son

01:12:41 ► §

and to abandon the wandering in history, the peregrination in history,

01:12:49 ► §

and to return to the archaic fold with what has been learned. And what I will suggest is the purification and rational analysis

01:13:09 ► §

of the sine qua non of the whole shtick,

01:13:15 ► §

which is the hallucinogenic compounds.

01:13:18 ► §

In other words, human history is a dipping into matter,

01:13:22 ► §

a kind of Faustian pact

01:13:26 ► §

to come away with what the shamans of archaic times were approaching by a natural means.

01:13:39 ► §

Well, let’s see.

01:13:41 ► §

It means I’ve talked for about an hour.

01:13:43 ► §

Are there questions?

01:13:42 ► §

means I’ve talked for about an hour.

01:13:44 ► §

Are there questions?

01:13:49 ► §

Yes, I’d like to hear you talk a little bit more about language and words.

01:13:52 ► §

I read somewhere, I can’t remember exactly where,

01:13:55 ► §

if silence is the reality,

01:13:57 ► §

then all words as intrusion is lie.

01:14:01 ► §

And when you said that reality is made up of words

01:14:05 ► §

and yet it seems to me aren’t you talking about

01:14:07 ► §

rather than you talking about it?

01:14:11 ► §

Yes, well, that’s a good question.

01:14:14 ► §

My brother said a funny thing one time.

01:14:17 ► §

He said, has anybody noticed

01:14:20 ► §

that as you expand the sphere of understanding,

01:14:24 ► §

the surface area of ignorance necessarily grows

01:14:30 ► §

larger? So there is this paradox that as we understand, there becomes more and more that

01:14:37 ► §

we don’t know. What I am interested in, and it may not be the highest value, I’m perfectly willing to agree that it perhaps isn’t, is communication.

01:14:53 ► §

So I can’t do much with silence.

01:14:57 ► §

But I do, I think, grant it primacy.

01:15:00 ► §

What we’re trying to do, also you know I have to say

01:15:05 ► §

and I suppose it’s good to say it in the early phases

01:15:08 ► §

I am

01:15:09 ► §

I try to be rational

01:15:11 ► §

and analytical

01:15:13 ► §

about what I’m dealing with

01:15:15 ► §

and I don’t even know

01:15:17 ► §

if I would agree that the psychedelic

01:15:19 ► §

dimension is a

01:15:21 ► §

spiritual dimension

01:15:22 ► §

in other words

01:15:24 ► §

all I’m willing to say at this point is it’s another dimension dimension is a spiritual dimension. In other words,

01:15:27 ► §

all I’m willing to say at this point is it’s another dimension.

01:15:29 ► §

Trying to turn it into something

01:15:32 ► §

which would make us better people

01:15:34 ► §

or worse people,

01:15:36 ► §

it doesn’t seem to operate like that.

01:15:41 ► §

William Burroughs had the notion,

01:15:43 ► §

he said language is a virus from outer space.

01:15:49 ► §

It’s possible that language is some kind of higher order organizing principle.

01:16:00 ► §

It only arises in the most highly organized higher mammal on the planet.

01:16:07 ► §

And to those of you whose hearts leap to the defense of dolphins, magpies, and honeybees, good luck.

01:16:16 ► §

But, because it ain’t King Lear, that’s the point, you see.

01:16:21 ► §

It isn’t Milton, it’s something, but it isn’t, I mean, language has a force and a dynamic of its own.

01:16:28 ► §

Perhaps it is a virus from outer space inhabiting us,

01:16:32 ► §

using us to articulate sound.

01:16:36 ► §

I’m fascinated by the mystery of language

01:16:41 ► §

because it’s very central to understanding what psychedelics are why do i say that because

01:16:50 ► §

and i will refer again and again to dmt dimethyltryptamine as the most interesting

01:16:57 ► §

for many reasons of these psychedelics but today i just want to mention one aspect of it. In the trance that overwhelms you

01:17:07 ► §

when you experience this hallucinogen,

01:17:11 ► §

it only lasts for a few hundred seconds.

01:17:13 ► §

And in that place,

01:17:17 ► §

there are entities that are making sounds

01:17:23 ► §

which visibly condense before you.

01:17:28 ► §

In other words, language has the potential, I swear to you.

01:17:35 ► §

In other words, this settles the question.

01:17:38 ► §

Language has the potential to be seen rather than beheld.

01:17:44 ► §

Well, I saw this years ago in DMT flashes

01:17:48 ► §

and lo and behold, a thorough inspection of Philo-Judeus

01:17:52 ► §

who lived contemporary with Jesus Christ

01:17:55 ► §

and was an Alexandrine Jew

01:17:57 ► §

who wrote volumes of commentary on the religions of his era.

01:18:03 ► §

Philo-Judeus talks about what he calls the Logos.

01:18:07 ► §

The Logos was an interiorized teaching voice

01:18:11 ► §

which Greek ecstatics sought to contact.

01:18:17 ► §

And Philo says, he asks, he sets up a little dialogue

01:18:21 ► §

and the first speaker says,

01:18:24 ► §

what would be a more perfect logos,

01:18:29 ► §

a more perfect logos

01:18:31 ► §

than the informing teaching voice?

01:18:35 ► §

And Philo answers,

01:18:37 ► §

the more perfect logos

01:18:39 ► §

would go from being heard

01:18:43 ► §

to being beheld

01:18:45 ► §

without ever crossing over a noticeable moment of transition.

01:18:52 ► §

Astonishing.

01:18:53 ► §

I mean, I always wondered, do these people,

01:18:55 ► §

did they know what they were talking about?

01:18:58 ► §

What did it mean to them?

01:19:00 ► §

What did it mean to him to write that sentence?

01:19:02 ► §

Well, we’ll never know, so here’s what it means to me it means that the program of language is an open-ended one and that we are

01:19:17 ► §

dynamically caught up in it that we are language that’s what distinguishes us from the those who chirp and twitter and romp in the trees

01:19:27 ► §

that we are language and that language is evolving it’s changing and that in fact what we call

01:19:35 ► §

culture is nothing more than a kind of shock wave trailing behind the the forward edge of this language-making capacity.

01:19:46 ► §

Because you can’t invent it before you can say it.

01:19:50 ► §

You can’t sell it before you can describe it.

01:19:53 ► §

You can’t do anything with it until it exists as a commandable set of syntactical connections.

01:20:02 ► §

So in one sense, and I will carry this forward over the month,

01:20:08 ► §

what the psychedelics are for us as a species, rather than for each one of us as an individual,

01:20:15 ► §

what they are for us as a species is an enzyme that catalyzes the language-making capacity.

01:20:22 ► §

the language-making capacity.

01:20:24 ► §

What is an enzyme?

01:20:26 ► §

An enzyme is an organic catalyst.

01:20:28 ► §

What is a catalyst?

01:20:30 ► §

A catalyst is a chemical agent which causes a chemical reaction

01:20:33 ► §

to proceed faster

01:20:34 ► §

than it ordinarily would

01:20:37 ► §

without being consumed.

01:20:39 ► §

The catalyst is not consumed.

01:20:41 ► §

So I think that the astonishing proliferation of cultural effects,

01:20:48 ► §

languages, religions, ontologies over the past 40,000 years out of nothing, because before that

01:20:55 ► §

human organization was, I mean, it was dull back there for a million or two years. I mean, it was,

01:21:02 ► §

there was, so far as we can tell, no material culture at all. Now,

01:21:06 ► §

you may wish to defend that it was wonderful, but you will find you have no evidence for it.

01:21:11 ► §

But suddenly, after staying stable for a million years, the human brain size doubles almost

01:21:19 ► §

overnight, and there is this cascade of cultural effects. I maintain that it has to do with pastoralism

01:21:27 ► §

as a behavioral habit

01:21:29 ► §

bringing these proto-hominids

01:21:32 ► §

into contact with psilocybin

01:21:34 ► §

as a dietary element

01:21:35 ► §

and that psilocybin specifically catalyzed

01:21:38 ► §

certain qualities of the human organism

01:21:41 ► §

that worked to its evolutionary advantage

01:21:44 ► §

such as consciousness.

01:21:46 ► §

Can you imagine a more multipurpose, mutational, adaptational change that would serve you well

01:21:53 ► §

than being able to think clearly? I mean, if a flatworm could think clearly, evolutionary horizons

01:22:02 ► §

would open before it, or any any other organism it’s like a super

01:22:06 ► §

non-specific immune response you can handle any problem give me a problem i’m a thinker

01:22:13 ► §

i can handle it you know so uh the catalysis of language well then it only ceased uh two thousand ceased 2,000 years ago at Eleusis when triumphant christer stomped out paganism wherever they found

01:22:30 ► §

it and all of these mystery religions were driven underground and forgotten and it has to do you

01:22:36 ► §

know there are other factors such as the botanical scarcity of decent hallucinogens in the European ecosystem, but, you know, details which we can talk about.

01:22:47 ► §

But the point is, 2,000 years is all that we’ve been away from this.

01:22:52 ► §

And in that 2,000 years, you know,

01:22:54 ► §

we’ve elaborated the most lethal set of assumptions

01:22:58 ► §

and cultural conventions ever brought forth.

01:23:02 ► §

I mean, you know, war before,

01:23:05 ► §

people used to knock each other on the head,

01:23:07 ► §

but in the hands of these unstoned dominator types

01:23:13 ► §

with this linear linguistic bias,

01:23:16 ► §

which then is totally reinforced by the printing press,

01:23:20 ► §

well, you see, you know, it’s a suicidal cultural style.

01:23:24 ► §

Well, one of the things that I think happened in the 60s that supports my case,

01:23:31 ► §

in the wake of LSD, you see a tremendous enriching of language,

01:23:37 ► §

endlessly sneered at by those who don’t talk that way.

01:23:42 ► §

But, you know, it introduced the notion of the vibe, the ego trip. These

01:23:49 ► §

are worthwhile concepts. The bummer, the flashback, these are linguistic pearls that, you know,

01:24:00 ► §

crystallized out of that experience. And I realized in the Amazon, hanging out with these ayahuascaros,

01:24:07 ► §

these people using ayahuasca,

01:24:09 ► §

which is a different strategy to make DMT happen,

01:24:13 ► §

but it ends up with the DMT happening,

01:24:15 ► §

their songs were not to be listened to,

01:24:18 ► §

but to be seen.

01:24:20 ► §

And people would say,

01:24:21 ► §

how did you like my song last night?

01:24:24 ► §

And people would say, you mean the blue one or the yellow one?

01:24:28 ► §

And so, you see, I believe that the psychedelics are working at the cultural level to promote language,

01:24:41 ► §

but also to, it’s not simply a linear enriching of language there’s also something

01:24:49 ► §

going on biologically that language is actually gaining in the vertical dimension in its

01:24:57 ► §

beholdability and this is taken very seriously in the Amazon

01:25:05 ► §

because these small hunter-gatherer groups

01:25:08 ► §

where there’s big pressure on protein

01:25:11 ► §

and there’s no room for mistakes,

01:25:13 ► §

they guide their societies

01:25:15 ► §

by taking these drugs together

01:25:18 ► §

in a group situation

01:25:19 ► §

and collectively they see,

01:25:24 ► §

whatever this means,

01:25:26 ► §

they see and they model what their future is going to be.

01:25:31 ► §

It’s true telepathy.

01:25:33 ► §

You see, when you listen to my voice,

01:25:37 ► §

if you understand what I’m saying,

01:25:41 ► §

it’s because my incoming words cause you to go to your dictionary and look them up one by

01:25:48 ► §

one, and if your dictionary is pretty close to my dictionary, we will understand each other.

01:25:58 ► §

But the whole act of communication depends on this assumption that the dictionaries are the same. If they’re

01:26:07 ► §

not the same, then you will not understand me. If, on the other hand, I could make you see what I

01:26:13 ► §

mean, this is not a culturally conditioned avenue of information transfer. You don’t have to learn

01:26:22 ► §

English to look at an English woman.

01:26:26 ► §

It’s easy.

01:26:28 ► §

You just do it. It’s at the biological level. And so this

01:26:30 ► §

is, I think, in terms

01:26:32 ► §

of consciousness expansion, you say

01:26:34 ► §

well, it’s good as a general notion

01:26:36 ► §

but what direction is it moving?

01:26:38 ► §

It’s moving in the direction of literally

01:26:40 ► §

a clarifying of language.

01:26:43 ► §

A clarifying of language

01:26:44 ► §

into something that can be beheld.

01:26:48 ► §

And it’s an arrow toward a greater domain of existential validity

01:26:56 ► §

that each of us can move in.

01:27:00 ► §

We need to communicate.

01:27:02 ► §

We need to find out who we are, each of us individually, and then we need to tell each other. The whole dominator style of unstoned culture engineering is ego. That’s what happens when on the plains of Africa every Saturday night

01:27:26 ► §

everybody was getting loaded

01:27:27 ► §

and boundaries were dissolving

01:27:30 ► §

the boundary of the assumption

01:27:32 ► §

of the uniqueness of the individual

01:27:34 ► §

they were taking these things

01:27:36 ► §

and they were having

01:27:38 ► §

well, group sex

01:27:40 ► §

basically, these were the two things

01:27:42 ► §

it’s clear because of the quality

01:27:44 ► §

of psilocybin that it

01:27:45 ► §

actually at at mid-range doses causes arousal you see at very low doses it increases visual acuity

01:27:53 ► §

therefore your hunting improves therefore you and your progeny are more successful

01:27:59 ► §

then at slightly higher doses everybody’s horny and there’s a lot of activity in the group

01:28:05 ► §

and and partying at higher doses then that turns into religion and you’re just slammed to the floor

01:28:13 ► §

of the cave you know so it’s this three-step thing which plays on our basic needs to drive us into a deeper and deeper relationship

01:28:25 ► §

with this mystery.

01:28:29 ► §

And it’s such a huge idea

01:28:34 ► §

that this is what we are,

01:28:36 ► §

that this is so fundamental,

01:28:38 ► §

that this isn’t just some curiosity

01:28:40 ► §

of hedonic West Coast, so forth and so on,

01:28:45 ► §

but that it is in fact central

01:28:47 ► §

to understanding and defining humanness

01:28:50 ► §

and to trying to grab

01:28:53 ► §

some of the controls

01:28:54 ► §

of this sinking submarine of a planet

01:28:57 ► §

and get it back up to the surface

01:28:59 ► §

long enough for us

01:29:00 ► §

to all climb in a rowboat

01:29:02 ► §

and to make our way somewhere.

01:29:07 ► §

So thank you for being here today, all of you.

01:29:11 ► §

Thank you.

01:29:14 ► §

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,

01:29:16 ► §

where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.

01:29:20 ► §

Whether you know it or not,

01:29:22 ► §

your life, your life, your very own life,

01:29:26 ► §

is a quest that your spirit is on.

01:29:29 ► §

At least, that’s one of the things that I’m taking away from the talk that we just listened to.

01:29:35 ► §

And that’s an image that I really like.

01:29:38 ► §

You know, seeing my life not as this seemingly random walk through a lot of different experiences,

01:29:44 ► §

but rather as some kind of a quest.

01:29:47 ► §

Of course, now my problem is to figure out what the object of my quest is.

01:29:53 ► §

However, once I figure that out, I’m now convinced that everything’s going to fall into place

01:29:58 ► §

and I can at last understand what it is that I’ve been doing with my time on Earth here for the last 71 years.

01:30:07 ► §

But if you’re like me, you’ll most likely want to listen to this talk once again.

01:30:12 ► §

And this is now my third time to hear it, and I’m still getting new ideas from it.

01:30:17 ► §

So if you decide to listen to it again, here’s a little suggestion that may make it even better.

01:30:23 ► §

First of all, instead of picturing Terrence sitting in a room with a bunch of other people there,

01:30:29 ► §

instead, think of him in a small room, sitting at a table with you across from him,

01:30:35 ► §

as if the two of you are just having a conversation.

01:30:38 ► §

But, of course, with Terrence doing most of the talking.

01:30:42 ► §

But here’s a little trick.

01:30:41 ► §

doing most of the talking.

01:30:44 ► §

But here’s a little trick.

01:30:48 ► §

Each time that Terrence says something that prompts a thought that you would interject into the conversation if it were actually taking place,

01:30:53 ► §

well, at that point, pause your MP3 player and expound on that thought in your mind.

01:30:59 ► §

Explore for yourself the implications of whatever idea it was that Terrence just spawned for you.

01:31:06 ► §

Then, once you have worked through that idea in your mind, turn your player back on. And

01:31:11 ► §

if you do it that way, in my opinion, you’re going to be strengthening your own position

01:31:16 ► §

as a psychedelic thinker. Now, I’ll tell you two of the places in the talk that we just listened to

01:31:22 ► §

where I did just that. One was at the point

01:31:25 ► §

where he mentioned the fact that if you hold a belief, you are limited in your thinking because

01:31:30 ► §

believing something automatically precludes you from exploring the opposite of that belief.

01:31:37 ► §

That’s why I no longer hold any beliefs. I’ve actually converted all of my old beliefs into

01:31:42 ► §

nothing more than working hypotheses,

01:31:45 ► §

and I’m willing to test them all whenever some new information about them drifts my way.

01:31:51 ► §

The other thing that I found fun to think about is his continuing focus on language that is made visible.

01:31:59 ► §

Now, here’s my rather pedestrian thought about what for Terrence was a much more sublime concept.

01:32:06 ► §

But if you think about that old proverb that says a picture is worth a thousand words,

01:32:12 ► §

and you connect that thought with today’s world, where almost everything that now takes

01:32:17 ► §

place in public is photographed by either the government or by us common people that

01:32:22 ► §

have digital cameras always at our sides.

01:32:26 ► §

And then, when you add the convenience of freely distributing those images on the internet,

01:32:31 ► §

well, it was only a few generations back when the people depended solely on the printed word

01:32:37 ► §

for their news about current events.

01:32:39 ► §

Back then, when a black man was savagely beaten by the police,

01:32:43 ► §

if someone who saw that take place wrote a letter to the editor about it,

01:32:48 ► §

well, the letter, even if it was printed, would probably have very little effect on the local community.

01:32:54 ► §

But when Rodney King was beaten, and a citizen who witnessed the beating caught it on film and made it public,

01:33:00 ► §

everything began to change.

01:33:01 ► §

What formerly had to be conveyed in language, either written or spoken,

01:33:06 ► §

was now being conveyed in moving pictures,

01:33:08 ► §

with every frame being worth a thousand words.

01:33:12 ► §

And thinking about it that way makes me think that

01:33:14 ► §

perhaps we are already in some kind of a transitional phase

01:33:18 ► §

that is trending in the direction Terence dreamed of

01:33:21 ► §

when he thought communications would be beheld

01:33:24 ► §

instead of being heard or read. the direction Terrence dreamed of when he thought communications would be beheld instead

01:33:25 ► §

of being heard or read.

01:33:28 ► §

So, what did you think when he said that what the psychedelic community is about is that

01:33:34 ► §

it is about creating a slightly different reality than most of the other people are

01:33:39 ► §

hanging out in?

01:33:40 ► §

Well, if you’ve just been to the Burning Man Festival, then you’re likely saying,

01:33:45 ► §

duh, of course that’s what we’re all about.

01:33:48 ► §

So before I forget to mention it, if you’re still looking for a place to go

01:33:52 ► §

and help to create a new reality this month,

01:33:55 ► §

well then don’t miss the really wonderful Symbiosis Festival that,

01:33:59 ► §

well, I’ve been to one in the past and it still remains one of my most favorite events.

01:34:04 ► §

So if the harsh desert conditions of Burning Man aren’t for you,

01:34:08 ► §

well, then from the 19th to the 23rd of September 2013, this very month,

01:34:14 ► §

you might want to check out Symbiosis.

01:34:17 ► §

And here’s what their website had to say about their location this year.

01:34:21 ► §

Woodward Reservoir is an area of outstanding natural beauty.

01:34:26 ► §

A peninsula surrounded on three sides by a crystal clear swimming lake with incredible shoreline camping.

01:34:33 ► §

Bring floating toys, watch epic sunrises and sunsets from four lakeside dance floors.

01:34:39 ► §

This venue is going to blow you away.

01:34:42 ► §

And if that location doesn’t blow you away,

01:34:45 ► §

their lineup of DJs and music most certainly will.

01:34:48 ► §

So check it out if you’re able to,

01:34:50 ► §

and I’ll post a link to their website along with the program notes for today’s podcast.

01:34:56 ► §

Well, I guess this has gone a bit long today,

01:34:59 ► §

so I’ll just pass along one more announcement and then get out of here.

01:35:04 ► §

But I wanted to let you know that the Psychedelic Salon magazine is now available online directly through your browser

01:35:10 ► §

without having to use the Flipboard app on your phone.

01:35:15 ► §

Just go to our Program Notes blog, which you can get to via psychedelicsalon.us,

01:35:21 ► §

and on the right sidebar, you’re going to see a link that is titled,

01:35:27 ► §

and are you ready for this? You’re going to have to remember it.

01:35:29 ► §

The Psychedelic Salon Magazine.

01:35:36 ► §

I think that should be easy enough to remember, even if you sometimes get as stoned as I do.

01:35:46 ► §

But all kidding aside, if you do click on that link, you’re going to find in a page-turning magazine format a collection of over 250 articles that may be of interest to you. In case you were a reader of my personal blog in the past,

01:35:53 ► §

you may have noticed that I’m not blogging as much as I once did, and that’s because I’ve

01:35:58 ► §

shifted most of that posting into one of my five Flipboard magazines. You know, it’s free for me to

01:36:04 ► §

post there, and it’s free for you to use it.

01:36:06 ► §

Plus, it is several orders of magnitude easier

01:36:09 ► §

to post to a Flipboard magazine than blogging is.

01:36:13 ► §

So stop by and check out our new magazine if you get a chance.

01:36:16 ► §

My guess is that you’re going to find quite a few things there

01:36:19 ► §

that are of interest to you.

01:36:22 ► §

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

01:36:26 ► §

Be well, my friends.