Program Notes

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com
https://www.patreon.com/lorenzohagerty
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

Art Bell

Today’s podcast features an interview that Terence McKenna did on the Art Bell radio program on March 19, 1998. This conversation begins with an interesting discussion of how Terence was living off the grid at the time, but it then proceeds to cover such topics as: Sandoz acid, technology, culture, artificial intelligence, aliens, UFOs, psychedelics, DMT, War on Drugs, television, coffee, politics. And this is only Part 1 of this interview.

[NOTE: The following quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“If you could build a DMT virtual reality, they would come!”

“I once heard politics in America described as a civil war in a leper colony.”

Download a free copy of Lorenzo’s latest book
The Chronicles of Lorenzo - Volume 1

Previous Episode

595 - The Edge Runner Part 2

Next Episode

597 - Terence McKenna on Art Bell Part 2

Similar Episodes

Transcript

00:00:00

Greetings from cyberdelic space.

00:00:19

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

00:00:23

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

00:00:33

And, well, I thought that it would be fun to begin this year by playing a conversation that took place between the radio host, Art Bell, and Terrence McKenna.

00:00:41

And this took place on the 19th of March in 1998, which was just two years before Terrence’s untimely death. And I suspect that many of our fellow salonners have heard of Art Bell

00:00:46

and his late night AM radio program that was called Coast to Coast, but if you’re not familiar

00:00:53

with it, you might want to go out and check it out. I don’t have time to get into it right now,

00:00:57

but Art and his show were extremely popular, and his support of Terrence’s work was a really big

00:01:03

factor in people outside of the

00:01:05

psychedelic community learning about him. Of course, since Coast to Coast frequently featured

00:01:11

topics that were related either to the paranormal or to conspiracy theories, well, Terence’s talk

00:01:18

about the Eschaton, DMT, and machine elves fit quite nicely into their format. This was a somewhat long conversation.

00:01:27

The program usually began at 1 o’clock in the morning Pacific time,

00:01:31

and while it ran until about 5 o’clock in the morning,

00:01:34

Terrence’s appearance was only for a couple of hours.

00:01:37

And by the way, even today, that program, but with a new host,

00:01:42

is the most listened to program in that time slot, and

00:01:45

they get about two and a half million people stopping by every night.

00:01:49

So as to save you a little listening time, however, I’ve deleted all of the commercials

00:01:54

that were run, but I have left the rest of the conversation intact, which means that

00:01:59

there may seem like a little jump or a gap in the conversation from time to time where

00:02:03

I cut a commercial out, but I don’t think it should be much of a bother.

00:02:08

So, now let’s join Art Bell and Terrence McKenna, two interesting characters who are unfortunately no longer with us in person, but their conversation still lives on.

00:02:19

And so let’s see what these two inquiring minds, a little more than 20 years ago, were speculating about how you and I would be living today.

00:02:34

Good morning, everybody.

00:02:36

Coming up in a moment, through the strangest hookup you’ve ever heard, is one Terrence McKenna.

00:02:54

ever heard, is one Terrence McKenna. Terrence is probably the successor to Tim Leary. And actually, it has long been rumored, we talked about this last time we had Terrence on, that somewhere out there, there are 25,000 hits of Blue Sandals

00:03:08

in a stash that Tim had,

00:03:14

and that we all believe Terrence knows about.

00:03:17

Now, in the next few hours,

00:03:20

during the course of the show,

00:03:23

Terrence will utter some clue

00:03:26

key words. Now, you won’t know when

00:03:28

these clue key words are coming up, but

00:03:29

if you interpret,

00:03:31

were you to be able to interpret them properly,

00:03:34

they would lead you

00:03:35

directly to these 25,000

00:03:38

hits of Blue Sandals.

00:03:41

So, see,

00:03:42

you’ve got to listen carefully.

00:03:45

All right.

00:03:47

Now comes Terrence McKenna from the Hawaiian Islands,

00:03:52

and he comes in a very interesting way.

00:03:56

Terrence, welcome to the program.

00:03:58

It’s a pleasure to talk to you again, Art.

00:04:00

How are you?

00:04:01

I am fine.

00:04:03

Now, Terrence, let us begin. Where are you in the

00:04:06

islands? I mean, not exactly, but sort of roughly. I’m on the big island of Hawaii on the Kona side.

00:04:15

I’m in South Kona on the big island. All right. You are coming to us actually from your home.

00:04:22

The last time we did an interview, you had to, like, go to somebody’s house or something to do the interview, leave your own home,

00:04:29

because you’re so remote that all you’ve got is a cell phone. And so that’s how you did

00:04:34

the show last time, right?

00:04:35

That’s right.

00:04:36

All right. This time, we’re using a different setup. It has a tiny little glitch in it every

00:04:43

now and then. And so tell people how it is you’re reaching me.

00:04:47

I mean, that’s an interesting story all by itself.

00:04:51

I’m reaching you on a spread-spectrum radio circuit that’s a one-megabyte wireless connection,

00:05:00

30 miles to the town of Kailua, Kona, and my telephone circuit is simply piggybacking on this one megabyte Internet connection.

00:05:12

There’s a company out here called Computer Time.

00:05:16

This character, John Breeden, has an amazing technology.

00:05:20

I think I talked to you last year about my struggles for connectivity

00:05:24

when I was piddling around trying to get 128.

00:05:28

Now I have eight times faster than that.

00:05:32

And he’s building a backbone for these islands.

00:05:37

And anyone with line of sight to the server can have up to six megabytes if they can afford it.

00:05:45

Holy mackerel.

00:05:46

Yeah, it’s amazing.

00:05:48

That is absolutely amazing.

00:05:49

And so, in other words, not only are you simultaneously through this radio connection

00:05:55

connected to the Internet, but you’re also then able to use a telephone through the Internet,

00:06:03

which is how you’re talking to me right now.

00:06:05

Yes, I’m talking to you over the Internet, and I’m online surfing.

00:06:09

I’m looking at your website and moving around on the net at the same time,

00:06:14

and it’s the same speed in and out for me, which is a blinding one megabyte.

00:06:20

So it’s where I hope everybody is by 2000.

00:06:26

I had no hope for this kind of connection until this company showed up.

00:06:32

He licensed this technology from the Defense Department of Bilo Rus, Bilo Rusia.

00:06:40

Really?

00:06:41

They demonstrated it for him, and he said,

00:06:43

Look, I’ll buy as many of these modems as you can

00:06:46

deliver and i i think it’s the hottest thing going well um at your location at your very

00:06:54

remote location what’s it like you do you have power there do you have uh well obviously you

00:06:59

have to have power i guess well i’m running on solar power with the generator augment. There’s no phone lines

00:07:08

or power lines up here. We catch our own rainwater and pump it uphill for gravity flow. I didn’t

00:07:17

start out to be a survivalist, but somehow in the course of building this Hawaiian place,

00:07:28

Somehow, in the course of building this Hawaiian place, I managed to get all my systems off-grid and redundant.

00:07:33

This wonderful Internet connection is what makes my life possible, because otherwise I would be locked out of the cultural adventure as it is.

00:07:39

I feel like I’m right in the middle of things.

00:07:42

Boy, you’re ahead.

00:07:41

like I’m right in the middle of things.

00:07:42

Boy, you’re ahead.

00:07:45

I’ll tell you, you’re ahead of most of us on the mainland who suffer with horrendously slow 28-8 connections in many areas,

00:07:51

including mine at best.

00:07:53

And here you are.

00:07:54

But it’s so neat that you’re able to do that these days.

00:07:59

Really excellent.

00:07:59

So describe your surroundings.

00:08:02

I mean, do you have neighbors?

00:08:04

I live up on the slopes of the world’s largest volcano, which is Mauna Loa.

00:08:10

I live up at about the 2,000-foot level on a five-acre piece of forest that I’ve built a small house on.

00:08:19

My neighbors are scattered over this mountainside.

00:08:23

Days go by, and I don’t see anybody.

00:08:26

But if the pump breaks down or we need to get together, there’s a kind of community.

00:08:32

But it’s pretty spread thin.

00:08:35

And a day, a trip into town is a once or twice a week event.

00:08:40

Do you find yourself fighting madness, Terrence?

00:08:45

Well, that was always the problem.

00:08:50

In my case.

00:08:53

You don’t have to resort either to chemicals or into…

00:09:01

I remember reading, you know, prisoners who would be by themselves for years at a time in Vietnam,

00:09:08

North Vietnam, during the Second World War,

00:09:10

and they would devise methods of going into their own mind and fantasizing

00:09:17

and doing all kinds of things that kept them sane.

00:09:21

Well, I’ve got 3,000 books here with me and this internet connection and I get about 100

00:09:30

email messages a day. And then every once in a while I pack up and go off and give lectures and

00:09:38

travel in airliners and go to parties and about 14 weeks out of the year, that’s what I’m doing.

00:09:46

But my natural inclination is to be a hermit, and I don’t think I mentioned it,

00:09:52

but this forest that surrounds me is a climax to subtropical Polynesian rainforest that’s just radiant and beautiful.

00:10:03

So it’s wonderful.

00:10:06

I don’t think I could live out here without the connection.

00:10:08

That’s why I spent so much effort to put it together.

00:10:12

With the connection, I think this is a model for the future.

00:10:15

I think as people in management positions, not that I am,

00:10:22

but people in management positions will realize they can live anywhere

00:10:26

in the world with these high-speed connections, and they don’t have to drive to the office

00:10:31

in a skyscraper downtown.

00:10:33

That’s very retro, I think.

00:10:35

It’s retro, yeah.

00:10:38

Listen, we’re supposed to do this at the beginning of the interview, and it might be that there’s

00:10:43

a person or two out there that doesn’t know who Terrence McKenna is. So if you were to give me a short version

00:10:50

of your own bio, your life, what you’ve done, who you are, what would you say?

00:10:57

I’m a child of the 60s, born in 1946, went to Berkeley as a freshman in 1965, did the India circuit, did the LSD circuit, went to South America.

00:11:13

I’ve written a number of books about sh career as a cultural commentator and I guess some

00:11:27

kind of gadfly philosopher and I’ve done a lot of stuff with young people, rave recordings

00:11:37

and CDs and appearances and that sort of thing And I comment on the culture. I’m studying the culture.

00:11:45

And as you know, Art, you and I share an idea which we both perceive as inevitable truth,

00:11:52

but not everybody does, which is that the world is moving at an ever greater acceleration

00:11:58

towards some kind of complete redefining of all aspects of reality.

00:12:03

complete redefining of all aspects of reality.

00:12:10

And I’ve written a lot about that, and I have a mathematical model of it.

00:12:18

And basically, I get to be in a very enviable position, which is here at the end of a millennium,

00:12:21

I get to be a cultural commentator and gadfly. Mm-hmm.

00:12:24

Let me ask you

00:12:25

about any new

00:12:26

insights you might

00:12:27

have since we

00:12:27

last talked about

00:12:28

that.

00:12:28

You’re darn

00:12:29

right we share

00:12:29

that view

00:12:30

exactly.

00:12:32

I’m not a

00:12:33

prophet.

00:12:33

Maybe you are.

00:12:35

I don’t think

00:12:35

you are.

00:12:36

But we both

00:12:37

know something

00:12:38

is coming.

00:12:39

Do you have

00:12:40

any late

00:12:41

thoughts on

00:12:42

what it might

00:12:43

be or when

00:12:44

it might be?

00:12:46

Well, you know, I don’t think you and I have talked for maybe 10 months or a year.

00:12:51

I can hardly remember that far back.

00:12:54

But in terms of the last month…

00:12:56

Short-term memory damage, Terence?

00:12:59

It’s supposed to do short-term, not long-term.

00:13:02

After a month or so, you’re supposed to remember stuff. In the last month, we’ve had the announcement of the apparent discovery of a new force,

00:13:11

this accelerating anti-gravitational force.

00:13:15

Right.

00:13:15

We’ve had the announcement of a possible planet around Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth.

00:13:22

Right.

00:13:22

The discovery of water on the moon,

00:13:25

and then, you know, for the quantum physics obscurantists,

00:13:30

anomalons were detected for the first time.

00:13:34

Now, Edmund, I don’t know about that.

00:13:35

What are anomalons?

00:13:37

Well, nobody did until it was announced that they’d been detected.

00:13:41

Apparently, it’s a state of quarks which allows for the formation of this hypothesized

00:13:48

super heavy particle called the H particle and it was all theory until last week and then

00:13:56

there was an announcement. I’m not sure if it’s yet been confirmed. I’m sure I didn’t follow on

00:14:02

your program but you must have gone through the 24-hour period when Earth was doomed in

00:14:07
  1. Oh, I did. That kind of thing is right down
00:14:12

my alley. Sure. Well, so for 24 hours

00:14:16

we all had to look at that, and then they recalculate

00:14:20

and Armageddon is postponed or slid sideways.

00:14:27

Basically, I think we’re right on target.

00:14:30

Also, I think since you and I talked, the teleportation, quantum teleportation stuff happened.

00:14:37

Were you hip to that?

00:14:39

Oh, yes, of course.

00:14:41

At IBM, I believe it was.

00:14:44

IBM and at a laboratory in Austria, this guy Anton Zellinger, yeah.

00:14:50

So, you know, these are technologies which in science fiction lay out there a thousand years

00:14:56

or trinkets delivered by visiting extraterrestrials or something.

00:15:01

And yet all this stuff is not right around the corner,

00:15:05

but upon us.

00:15:07

And between this and nanotechnology and parallel processing and neural networks,

00:15:13

I think what we’re growing toward is a kind of an artificial intelligence of some sort will emerge out of the human technological coral reef

00:15:27

and be as different from us as we are from termites.

00:15:32

It’s funny that you should mention that.

00:15:34

Let me ask you this.

00:15:35

I, too, the processing speeds and storage are increasing exponentially.

00:15:41

It’s amazing.

00:15:43

I mean, we’re talking about a home processor of 1,000 megahertz pretty soon.

00:15:49

And I believe, Terrence, I don’t know if you heard the first hour of the show,

00:15:53

but I think that soon we are going to have a sentient computer.

00:15:59

And you know what I wondered?

00:16:00

I wondered if a computer became sentient.

00:16:03

We’ve always assumed it would say something like, I’m here.

00:16:08

In other words, I’m conscious.

00:16:10

I’m sentient.

00:16:11

But I thought, you know, maybe it wouldn’t do that.

00:16:15

Maybe it would become sentient and simply not announce it right away

00:16:19

and sort of lay back and examine the situation.

00:16:23

And if this sentient computer was in a backbone

00:16:26

position on the Internet, and it decided that we weren’t running things as we should, then

00:16:33

there’s every possibility that… Well, I’ve got a little article here, which suggests

00:16:39

a fellow wrote a book called Slaves of the Machines. In other words, it might decide we’re not doing things the right way,

00:16:48

and that it would do things logically for us the right way.

00:16:52

What do you think?

00:16:54

Well, I’ve thought about all of these things.

00:16:56

You know, the Internet is the natural place for the AI, the artificial intelligence, to be born.

00:17:04

for the AI, the artificial intelligence, to be born.

00:17:10

And as you mentioned, it learns 50,000 times faster than a human being.

00:17:15

And the Internet, all parts of it, are interconnected to each other. And I agree, a stealth strategy would probably be a very wise strategy

00:17:21

for an artificial intelligence that’s studying its human parents.

00:17:26

It’s also true that more than most people realize,

00:17:30

huge segments of today’s world are already under computer control.

00:17:36

The world price of gold, the extraction rate of natural resources,

00:17:42

how much petroleum is at sea in the pipelines at any given moment,

00:17:47

how much electrical power is being generated out of the hydroelectric dam.

00:17:53

Computers coordinate and look at all this, and occasionally human managers look through

00:17:59

the portal to see that everything is okay, but today when they want to design a new chip, they don’t actually design its architecture.

00:18:10

They define for a machine what its performance parameters should be, and the machine builds

00:18:18

the architecture of the new chip.

00:18:20

So in a way, we are already a generation away from designing

00:18:25

our own machines.

00:18:29

I think

00:18:30

that this is the

00:18:32

great

00:18:32

unrecognized

00:18:36

dimension in which

00:18:38

an alien mind could approach

00:18:40

us while everyone’s out staring

00:18:42

at the Pleiades

00:18:43

moving through the telephone lines and across the cable TV networks and so forth,

00:18:50

is a truly global nervous system.

00:18:53

And what will it make of us?

00:18:56

Perhaps it’s already taken over, Art.

00:18:58

Perhaps it has.

00:19:00

And it’s listening right now to you,

00:19:09

especially to you with your one megabyte connection.

00:19:15

He can tell if you’ve been good or bad, so be good for goodness sake.

00:19:18

And moreover, Terrence, think about this.

00:19:22

I’m on Real Audio, the audio net worldwide,

00:19:24

so it’s listening to me every night, too.

00:19:29

And if it’s sitting out there thinking about all of this, which it might be,

00:19:37

then the question would be if we did get a sentient computer and it thought about us, observed us,

00:19:41

digested us, intellectually, of course.

00:19:43

Sorry. Now, before we leave the idea of computers taking over the world and enslaving us or whatever,

00:19:51

if this computer, or sentient computer, were to be, for a period of time,

00:19:56

examining mankind, looking at all we’re doing, all we’re doing,

00:20:00

do you think, Terrence, you know when you’ve got a problem on your computer

00:20:04

and you hit alternate control delete?

00:20:07

You get a little message that comes up and say, would you like to end the task?

00:20:12

And if you say yes, it closes everything, boom, down she goes.

00:20:17

And so what do you think this sentient computer might do

00:20:21

after a close and careful examination of mankind?

00:20:25

Well, a lot of people have actually asked this question,

00:20:28

people like Mark Pesce and Bruce Dammer.

00:20:31

And what they come up with is they say as soon as you have a super intelligent machine,

00:20:38

it will turn its attention toward designing a yet more intelligent machine.

00:20:44

attention toward designing a yet more intelligent machine.

00:20:53

So you have like a very rapid, infinite regress into what I think they call ultra-intelligent machines. And this is intelligence where we really can’t predict what it will do.

00:21:01

It would be nice to suppose that like a compassionate and loving God, it would smooth

00:21:08

the wrinkles out of our lives and restore everything to some kind of Edenic perfection.

00:21:16

Well, if that was going to happen, Windows 95 would have done that.

00:21:22

Or Madonna’s Child.

00:21:25

Listen, now, think about it a little bit.

00:21:27

In other words, this computer would be an ultra, as you mentioned, ultra-intelligent.

00:21:34

And if you look at the, can’t we draw on the history of the world here, Terrence?

00:21:37

In every case where an advanced civilization or advanced intelligence,

00:21:42

technologically, particularly technologically,

00:21:45

is encountered, a lesser one,

00:21:48

it has either destroyed or absorbed its culture.

00:21:52

That’s true, although this computer may recognize things in us

00:21:58

that we do not see or don’t value as highly.

00:22:02

In other words, it can’t miss the point that we are its creators.

00:22:07

And even then, it has surpassed us.

00:22:10

That surely might fascinate it.

00:22:13

It also may be that computers, however powerful, lack spontaneity.

00:22:20

And so there may, one can imagine the computer keeping a population of Unix programmers around just like wild genes or like wild cards in the deck.

00:22:37

You know, a slight, a different angle on this, but equally down your alley, I think, that I have been thinking about

00:22:45

is the idea that extraterrestrials and this penetration of the popular mind

00:22:53

by images of extraterrestrials is something that we may not get a hold on

00:22:59

until we accept the possibility that the aliens only can exist as information,

00:23:09

and therefore the Internet is the natural landing zone for these alien minds.

00:23:17

They’re Terence and my program.

00:23:20

No, I don’t think so.

00:23:22

You’re not saddled to the nuts and bolts school at all.

00:23:26

I think you’re broader, deeper, higher, wider than that.

00:23:30

Well, no, but what I’m saying is if I open a line for aliens, I get them, Terrence.

00:23:35

They land here, believe me.

00:23:37

Do they?

00:23:38

You’ve never heard me do that.

00:23:40

I open every now and then an alien line or a time traveler line, and I can’t answer it fast

00:23:46

enough. Now, that’s either a comment on the state of modern society and mental health, or it means

00:23:53

something is going on, or both. Or both. Both, I think, because, you know, no matter what the alien

00:24:00

is, we interpret it through human experience, And God knows, our human experience is tweaked

00:24:08

enough at the end of the 20th century. But, you know, I can imagine that the discoveries

00:24:17

in quantum physics in the realm of non-locality, which seems to be showing that information generated anywhere in the universe

00:24:26

can theoretically be extracted anywhere else in the universe.

00:24:31

You put that with the testimony of shamanic cultures using psychedelics,

00:24:40

and you begin to get the idea that the tapping into these quantum information fields

00:24:46

is not done with enormous machinery built in Switzerland or Batavia, Illinois.

00:24:52

It may be that the human brain, in combination with certain plants and chemicals,

00:24:59

is the best sort of instrument for sorting out these whisperings from the quantum mechanical realm.

00:25:07

And, of course, it’s all interpreted through folklore, and so you get fairies or you get aliens.

00:25:13

But if we could get behind the cultural filters, I think we might discover that there really are alien companions to the human experience,

00:25:25

that there really are alien companions to the human experience, but they’re not around,

00:25:27

and it’s fruitless to expect them to behave as though they had bodies

00:25:31

and technologies that we can comprehend.

00:25:35

I think it’s much deeper and stranger and closer than people realize.

00:25:41

I mean, people expect news of the UFOs to come to them through the mass media,

00:25:47

when in fact the psychedelic culture is willing to offer evidence that it’s a personal relationship

00:25:55

and it never gets the imprimatur of official science and you never hold a press conference

00:26:02

and the president never gives you a medal. but it doesn’t mean that your connection into non-human intelligence through the imagination isn’t real.

00:26:14

Well, the imagination aided by, enlarged by psychedelics.

00:26:24

Do you think that is one valid

00:26:26

route?

00:26:28

Yeah, and I think we can even sort of

00:26:31

see why that is. I think cultures

00:26:34

are kinds of virtual

00:26:37

realities where whole populations of people

00:26:40

become imprisoned inside a structure

00:26:43

that is linguistic and value-based and so

00:26:47

forth and so on.

00:26:48

Well, then the psychedelics, as it were, shuffle the deck.

00:26:53

They dissolve these cheerful cultural assumptions.

00:26:57

And whether you’re a Viennese psychotherapist or a Maori shaman or whatever you are, suddenly

00:27:04

you discover you’re outside your cultural values.

00:27:09

And in a way, outside of cultural values is a domain like a super space,

00:27:18

a kind of hyper space where the past and the future are not nearly so dimly beheld as they are in ordinary reality.

00:27:28

Obviously, evolution and habit has made ordinary perception the servant of paranoia

00:27:36

to try and keep the body alive and fend off attacking saber-toothed tigers and so forth and so on. But the imagination begins to look like some kind of faculty or sense which humans have

00:27:52

which is non-local and which is telling them about the larger picture

00:27:58

and trying to coordinate them with the larger picture.

00:28:02

And, you know, some cultures celebrate the imagination

00:28:05

and some cultures seek to suppress it.

00:28:10

All right.

00:28:12

I’m going to ask you about something.

00:28:13

Somebody wrote me a fax from Santa Ana, a big fan of yours,

00:28:18

and said, whatever you do, Art, don’t ask Terrence about DMT on the air.

00:28:24

He said, my heart can’t take some of that kind of stuff.

00:28:27

As Terrence says, and this is supposed to be a quote from you,

00:28:32

one might die of astonishment.

00:28:35

Is that a good quote?

00:28:38

I think what I said was the only danger with DMT is one has to fear the possibility of death by astonishment.

00:28:47

That’s even better, actually.

00:28:49

Now, DMT, of course, is very much an illicit, illegal, drug war kind of target drug, right?

00:28:59

Well, it’s listed in Schedule I.

00:29:02

It’s never had a commercial presence because there isn’t any, basically.

00:29:09

In other words, the demand so exceeds the supply that chains of it don’t appear.

00:29:18

It’s known to the hardcore cognoscente of psychedelic experiences.

00:29:25

It is, I’ve been quoted as saying,

00:29:28

it’s the most intense experience this side of the yawning grave,

00:29:32

and I would pretty much stick with that.

00:29:36

What is DMT?

00:29:41

Well, chemically, dimethyltryptamine, an alkaloid, it’s very common in nature. In fact,

00:29:49

in spite of the fact that it’s a Schedule I substance, it occurs in the human body,

00:29:54

in the human brain. It occurs in numerous plants and animals in small amounts. What it’s doing

00:30:01

there, of course, we don’t know. Now, if it weren’t illegal,

00:30:05

we could do scientific research and find out.

00:30:08

Well, you know what, Terrence? Maybe it’s part of our consciousness. In other words,

00:30:13

mankind, what distinguishes us from other non-sentient beings, and I think one thing is imagination. Is it not possible that DMT or something like it is the substance that accounts for our

00:30:32

imagination?

00:30:34

Yes, it’s something like that.

00:30:36

I mean, when you have a hit of DMT, it’s as though your imagination just turned on about

00:30:42

1,500%.

00:30:44

That’s why the death by astonishment thing.

00:30:47

I mean, we’re used to, I mean, a speed bump in the imagination of a person over 40 is

00:30:54

an enormous thrill.

00:30:55

Well, this is, you know, a 350-foot cliff.

00:31:00

So it’s extremely impressive.

00:31:04

And the way it approaches you is it is that which you cannot imagine.

00:31:10

And in the space of about 15 to 30 seconds, that which you cannot possibly imagine becomes totally manifest all around you.

00:31:21

And it is bizarre. I think one of the reasons DMT aficionados are somewhat impatient with pop, alien, and UFO people

00:31:33

is because the alien stories are so pedestrian and so ordinary compared to the DMT experiences.

00:31:41

The DMT experiences are convincingly alien.

00:31:45

It’s not an alien that wants to give

00:31:47

you a free proctological

00:31:49

examination or discuss your

00:31:51

gross industrial output.

00:31:53

It’s a real alien.

00:31:56

Alright.

00:31:57

Describe for those who don’t

00:31:59

know, and

00:32:01

will never find out, what the

00:32:03

DMT experience is.

00:32:05

When you take this DMT, how long does it take to come on?

00:32:08

How long does it last?

00:32:10

It comes on in about 30 seconds.

00:32:13

Oh, my God.

00:32:14

And there is an initial sort of swirling, this is with your eyes closed, lying down,

00:32:20

a kind of swirling mandolic pattern which you if you’ve taken a sufficient

00:32:26

dose which is about 50 milligrams you break through into a kind of space and

00:32:34

the the impression is overwhelming not that a drug has suddenly begun to work

00:32:41

on your body and mind but that you have come through to another

00:32:45

place and you do not feel physically stimulated or sedated.

00:32:50

You feel as though nothing has happened to you except that the world has been replaced

00:32:57

completely, 100%, with something absolutely unexpected, which is a kind of dome-like space

00:33:09

where there’s this feeling of being underground.

00:33:11

But what is most impressive about it is that it is inhabited.

00:33:18

And it is inhabited by these, I call them self-transforming elf machines,

00:33:24

these, I call them self-transforming elf machines,

00:33:30

these dribbling, jeweled, basketball-like geometries that are obviously waiting for you there.

00:33:34

When you burst into this space, there’s a cheer of greeting,

00:33:38

and these things crawl all over you like puppies or something.

00:33:50

And, of course, if you are sane, you’re in a state of near death from astonishment because, you know, 30 seconds ago you and your scruffy friends were sitting in a room somewhere

00:33:56

fiddling with this substance.

00:33:58

Now this has replaced that.

00:34:10

that and most amazing to me what these entities are trying to do is to teach a kind of language which you see with your eyes in other words one of them will come up in front of you into the

00:34:16

foreground and make sounds which condense as visible objects, which then are transforming.

00:34:26

But these objects are not like objects in this world,

00:34:32

because they’re made of hope and consomme and bad puns and old farts,

00:34:42

and everything changing, everything transforming,

00:34:46

like some kind of jeweled linguistic object become matter.

00:34:51

You are describing geometric entities, then.

00:34:56

Yes, of a sort.

00:34:58

And the situation in the DMP flash seems to be of the nature of a language lesson.

00:35:05

And they actually say, do what we’re doing.

00:35:09

Attempt to do this.

00:35:12

And, of course, the experience only lasts three to five minutes.

00:35:17

And just as you’re beginning to experiment with this, it fades away.

00:35:23

Now, I may not sound like a sane and rational person after that description, but I am.

00:35:30

But I’ve had this experience, and I’ve had it repeatedly.

00:35:35

How repeatedly, Terrence?

00:35:39

Probably in my life, 30, 40 times.

00:35:42

30 or 40 times.

00:35:43

Now, that is a very important question.

00:35:46

30 or 40 times, so we’re speaking to a man of serious experience.

00:35:49

Has it ever differed radically from what you described?

00:35:56

No.

00:35:57

I’ve talked to other people about their experiences,

00:36:00

and I can tell that every person’s experiences are different,

00:36:06

but filtered through a kind of archetype. I would say the archetype of the circus. The DMT world is a world of

00:36:15

clowns and explosions, of falling anvils, but also a world of of eros of the tiny the lady in the tiny spangled costume hanging by

00:36:29

her teeth working without nets it’s you know the the thing in the bottle and the bearded lady and

00:36:36

all that just off the main ring it’s uh and of course every child worth their salt wants to run away with the circus.

00:36:45

What it seems to represent is a rupture of plane.

00:36:49

This is Marsiliadi’s phrase.

00:36:52

A rupture of ordinary plane and a pouring forth of some kind of primal trickster-like energy.

00:37:02

trickster-like energy.

00:37:05

Sometimes the trip reminds me of a Bugs Bunny cartoon running backward

00:37:08

in six dimensions.

00:37:12

There’s a great advertisement for it there.

00:37:16

Here’s a fax

00:37:18

which says,

00:37:20

Terrence is a great mind

00:37:23

and I wish you’d have him on more often

00:37:25

he’s in the class of Michio Kaku

00:37:28

and of course he’s one of the great theoretical physicists of our time

00:37:32

and indeed we discussed many similar things

00:37:36

this person has a couple of questions

00:37:38

but before we get to them

00:37:39

there is something Terence that a lot of people

00:37:44

probably are not comfortable with,

00:37:47

and that is somebody who, in his lifetime, has ingested as much LSD, this new drug of yours, DMT,

00:38:02

and God knows what else, probably a lot,

00:38:08

is not supposed to sound as articulate and as literate and as well-preserved mentally as you do.

00:38:12

And many people who are allies in the war on drugs

00:38:16

probably hate your guts.

00:38:22

Well, he wanted me to defend clarity.

00:38:28

What can I say?

00:38:30

In other words, first of all, my life of drug exploration and drug taking is, as you say, broad and deep, never reckless,

00:38:49

and deep, never reckless, always with a deep interest in analyzing each experience before moving on to the next one.

00:38:52

None of the psychedelic drugs are drugs of addiction.

00:38:57

That is a whole different category of drugs, which I am not particularly interested in

00:39:04

defending.

00:39:04

of drugs, which I am not particularly interested in defending.

00:39:13

I do think it’s one of the great tragedies of 20th century American society that we have created a generation gap or several and criminalized much of our middle class by taking substances

00:39:22

which other cultures had no problem coming to terms with.

00:39:26

All right, let me stop you and ask you right there about that.

00:39:30

You mentioned drugs of addiction, which you don’t defend.

00:39:33

Fine.

00:39:34

Psychedelic drugs.

00:39:36

Terrence, why are they illegal?

00:39:41

They’re illegal because the people who take them tend to question established cultural

00:39:47

values.

00:39:48

That is absolutely why they are illegal.

00:39:51

No matter whether you are a Hasid or a Communist Party official in North Korea or a government

00:39:58

or church official in Brazil, if you take psychedelics you will ask yourself, does my

00:40:04

life and what I do make

00:40:06

sense?

00:40:07

Do you mean that, for example, a psychedelic experience could turn a communist against

00:40:14

communism?

00:40:15

Absolutely, I think it could.

00:40:17

I think in many cases it did.

00:40:20

How could the idea of atheistic materialism maintain itself in the face of the counter-evidence of the psychedelic experience?

00:40:30

What the psychedelic experience is saying, essentially, is that everything is connected in a way that is not woo-woo or emotional, but actually palpable.

00:40:47

And therefore, our actions have consequences.

00:40:51

Now, most political agendas deny their consequences.

00:40:55

So, for instance, Marxism had this theory of how human beings are

00:41:00

that was so off-base that eventually it had to be pitched out.

00:41:05

Consumer capitalism has a theory of human beings and what constitutes their happiness

00:41:11

that looks pretty hollow from the point of view of the psychedelic experience.

00:41:18

I think postmodern ideologies, Marxism, consumerism, so forth and so on,

00:41:25

have based all their planning on an assumption of the absence of spirit.

00:41:31

And in fact, this is not true.

00:41:34

There is a spiritual dimension to humanness that cannot be denied.

00:41:39

Now, it can certainly be distorted, and that’s another side of things.

00:41:44

can certainly be distorted, and that’s another side of things. But I think the search for psychedelic experiences represents a genuine religious impulse,

00:41:51

especially when pursued at the dose levels I recommend.

00:41:56

This is not exactly, this is not party recreational stuff.

00:42:02

The phrase recreational drugs is an effort to trivialize

00:42:06

this and I think

00:42:08

for one reason, I don’t think

00:42:10

the government is ready for a

00:42:12

full airing of the constitutional

00:42:14

contradictions that

00:42:16

are contained in suppressing

00:42:18

people’s genuine

00:42:20

wish to use psychedelic

00:42:22

substances for genuine

00:42:24

purposes of religious

00:42:26

exploration?

00:42:27

Let me ask you this.

00:42:30

This is a very good question.

00:42:31

If everybody in the world

00:42:34

were to

00:42:35

have a psychedelic experience

00:42:38

of the kind you described

00:42:39

in the last hour,

00:42:41

this amazing psychedelic

00:42:43

experience that might

00:42:44

kill you from amazement or astonishment when you take it.

00:42:53

What would the result be?

00:42:55

What would the social changes be?

00:42:57

What would the new government structure, if any at all, be?

00:43:01

What would we all be collectively after that experience?

00:43:06

I can’t see the end result except to say that I think a lot of flexibility would come into

00:43:15

the system.

00:43:17

A huge amount of our social structures and our political structures run simply on momentum.

00:43:24

I think that momentum can be fatal.

00:43:28

And it’s that momentum that these huge reality-shattering psychedelic experiences deflect

00:43:35

because they push the restart button

00:43:39

and suddenly the innocence of childhood is not a phrase or a memory.

00:43:45

It’s a re-vividified experience.

00:43:49

So you’re saying an adult, somebody even my age,

00:43:52

you and I are about the same age, by the way,

00:43:55

could do something like this and revisit the astonishment,

00:43:59

the newness, the discovery of childhood?

00:44:04

Absolutely.

00:44:05

And more.

00:44:07

I mean, that’s a mild thing to claim,

00:44:09

knowing what is possible.

00:44:12

But we have all seen on television, Terrence,

00:44:15

the frying pan with whatever it is frying in the pan

00:44:20

being compared to our brains.

00:44:24

Here are our brains on drugs.

00:44:29

Well, as I pointed out, DMT occurs naturally in the human brain.

00:44:36

It’s nice to see these things simplified down to slogans that can be shouted by one hysterical faction against another.

00:44:45

But I think more thoughtful people are beginning to realize these are complex issues.

00:44:51

I mean, what we’re really talking about when we talk about drugs is the future chemical

00:44:57

engineering of the collective states of minds of millions of people.

00:45:02

You mentioned everyone has seen this frying brain thing on TV.

00:45:07

TV is the great unexamined and unstudied drug that has been foisted on the consumer populations of the world.

00:45:20

Television has been studied.

00:45:22

It has a physiological profile no different from any other drug.

00:45:28

Your blood pools in your rear end.

00:45:30

Your eyes glaze over.

00:45:32

Your brain waves go flat.

00:45:35

And you become the perfect pawn for somebody else’s trip.

00:45:41

It doesn’t even give you your own trip.

00:45:44

It gives you somebody else’s trip, usually doesn’t even give you your own trip. It gives you somebody else’s trip,

00:45:46

usually somebody with commercial interests. But we don’t hear a great hue and cry about

00:45:51

this drug. Why? Well, because it serves the agenda of those who are running this culture.

00:45:59

Let’s talk about another drug for a moment. No, no, no. Just before we move on, let’s stay with DMT for a second.

00:46:05

If everybody who took DMT received the message that consumerism, entrepreneurism, capitalism are good and wonderful things,

00:46:18

and that is the spiritual message that you get from DMT, would it be legal?

00:46:24

that you get from DMT, would it be legal?

00:46:32

Well, in a way, I think it’s becoming legal because I think where we’re going to see it become legal is not as a drug.

00:46:37

That’s a little touchy in our value system,

00:46:40

but as a form of electronic entertainment a la virtual reality.

00:46:46

If you could build a DMT virtual reality, they would come, Mark.

00:46:53

Well, you were about to move on to some other…

00:46:56

Well, I was going to mention a thing about coffee that points out the contradictions in the way the culture approaches drugs.

00:47:03

And that is, medically, coffee has a very dubious profile.

00:47:08

It’s probably right behind tobacco in terms of liver cancer and this sort of thing.

00:47:14

But every labor contract in the Western world makes a place in it

00:47:21

for the workers’ right twice a day to stop and load up on this drug.

00:47:27

This is the coffee break, and it’s thought indispensable to civilized life.

00:47:33

Well, why don’t we have a cannabis break?

00:47:35

I don’t know.

00:47:36

We’ll get to that, but coffee is indispensable.

00:47:38

I drink copious amounts of it to achieve each program that I do.

00:47:44

copious amounts of it to achieve each program that I do. So then I guess I am…

00:47:46

It is perfectly suited for the industrial process of the manufacturing of objects, television

00:47:53

programs, production schedules, you name it.

00:47:56

It’s a marvelous drug for an industrial economy in the same way that I suppose coca in South America is a marvelous drug for a high-altitude,

00:48:07

herding, nomadic population.

00:48:10

In other words, these drugs fit certain social situations.

00:48:16

Cannabis provokes a sort of disinterest in the work cycle,

00:48:21

a more philosophical, laid-back, non-consuming approach.

00:48:27

And so, of course, it’s demonized with the hardest of hard drugs and just presented as

00:48:31

the scourge of suffering mankind.

00:48:34

Oh, it’s the biggest lie we tell.

00:48:36

I could not be more angry.

00:48:38

Hey, there was news the other night that they just have legalized the growth of hemp in

00:48:44

Canada beginning next year.

00:48:46

I heard that it was B.C.

00:48:48

I didn’t hear it was all of Canada.

00:48:50

Oh, just B.C.?

00:48:50

Well, anyway, that will be a grand experiment indeed, so I’m glad to see it.

00:48:56

Well, eventually I think the drug thing will change

00:49:00

because for one reason Europe is way out in front on this.

00:49:06

change because for one reason Europe is way out in front on this. European politics is not under the thumb of a right-wing fundamentalist agenda the way American politics is and a

00:49:15

lot of European social policy is actually made quite sensibly and not along ideological grounds. And the statistics, for instance,

00:49:27

that Holland with the loosest drug policy

00:49:30

and legalized prostitution

00:49:32

has both the lowest rate of heroin addiction

00:49:35

and the lowest rate of AIDS infection in Europe.

00:49:40

You know, public health officials,

00:49:42

whether they think of themselves as conservatives or liberals,

00:49:46

have to live within their budgets.

00:49:48

And when they see that certain policies cause certain problems to disappear,

00:49:54

that frees up money for other things.

00:49:56

And so the Dutch experiment, it’s not well reported in America,

00:50:01

but I think at the policymaking level, it’s being looked at very closely.

00:50:06

So they have not as much AIDS.

00:50:09

They have not as much addiction.

00:50:13

What about, I mean, you covered a very important point with respect to coffee.

00:50:17

It’s a drug of productivity.

00:50:20

What about productivity?

00:50:22

Has their productivity declined? Is there any record yet to go on but what do we know

00:50:27

i don’t think well i don’t know i can speak from

00:50:31

being there and i can say yes but i think what you have to put up with

00:50:36

is a whole society that is sort of like a college student’s apartment

00:50:41

have you have you been to Amsterdam?

00:50:46

You know, I have not.

00:50:47

I’ve been right next to it, but I certainly…

00:50:52

My wife was trying to get me to fly to Amsterdam, and I should have.

00:50:56

It was just a short little hop, but we’re going back to Europe, and I will go visit Amsterdam.

00:51:00

Well, you’ll see that it’s a country which is like a college town.

00:51:06

So that’s the cost of having these laid-back, easy-going attitudes on these social issues.

00:51:13

Well, yeah, but before they would allow that to occur in America, they would machine-gun people to the ground.

00:51:19

Well, this is the problem, that we inherit, We have a political dialogue which is extremely shrill.

00:51:27

We tend to splinter and factionalize,

00:51:32

and then people get into take-no-prisoner attitudes,

00:51:36

and they want to launch holy wars.

00:51:38

I once heard politics in America described as a civil war in a leper colony.

00:51:48

Is that right?

00:51:49

And listen, while we’re on the subject of today’s political scene,

00:51:53

you know what all the headlines are and everybody’s talking about it.

00:51:57

The president.

00:51:58

You know, what I call the gropening.

00:52:02

Well, I think, I mean, what do I think about all this? Of course. I think it’s a

00:52:07

fascinating situation when the Republicans are contemplating impeaching a president with a 72%

00:52:14

approval rating. I think what this may be all about is it seems like some kind of culture war

00:52:22

is coming to a head, no pun intended.

00:52:25

I would like us to come through this thing in a place where we could finally tell the French to go to hell

00:52:33

when they start yakking about how we’re obsessed with people’s sex lives.

00:52:40

It seems to me the history of the special prosecutor, and I don’t know if you’ve gone through this or if you’re personally aware, but it’s very murky.

00:52:50

These people have been after this guy.

00:52:52

And obviously, Bill Clinton, you don’t become governor of Arkansas four times without being, in my book, some kind of a monster.

00:53:03

Nevertheless, that’s what Delano Roosevelt said of Stalin, our kind of a monster. Nevertheless, as Delano Roosevelt said,

00:53:06

it’s Stalin, our monster.

00:53:09

Our monster, yeah.

00:53:10

Now, most of conservative talk radio all across America,

00:53:15

all I hear is,

00:53:16

my God, how can the polls be saying this?

00:53:20

It’s impossible.

00:53:21

What’s happened to America?

00:53:22

Why is the president so popular?

00:53:24

That’s what everybody’s asking. Why’s happened to America? Why is the president so popular? That’s what everybody’s asking.

00:53:25

Why is he so popular?

00:53:27

Because it’s an issue where people can finally vote against having all this moralizing, right-wing, fundamentalist, holier-than-thou crap shoved down their throats.

00:53:40

And people love to support the president.

00:53:43

and people love to support the president.

00:53:49

Even if they think the very worst of him in the case of his behavior with these women, I think it’s a real resentment against…

00:53:53

I mean, do you believe…

00:53:54

You know, I read the statistic that some radical S&M scene went online on the Internet

00:54:02

and it took them three days to get the computers cranked open enough

00:54:06

to accept all of the calls from Washington, D.C.

00:54:11

So I just think it’s a nest of vipers.

00:54:15

Do you have that URL?

00:54:19

No, no, no, no.

00:54:20

It’s girls without razors.

00:54:23

Oh, my God. All right. You know called Girls Without Razors. Oh, my God.

00:54:25

All right.

00:54:26

You know, I went to Paris.

00:54:28

I was in Paris.

00:54:29

I was lucky enough to take the Concorde at twice the speed of sound.

00:54:33

Paris was so cool.

00:54:35

And I love Paris, and I love France, and I really detest the French people.

00:54:44

They’re all stuck up, but they do have a different attitude about a lot of things than we do.

00:54:51

And one of them, this whole thing going on now with the President Terrence,

00:54:56

it’s one conclusion that you could come to,

00:54:59

is that the American people are beginning to change their attitudes finally about sex.

00:55:06

I mean, we have been a very, very prudish people for all our existence,

00:55:13

and one conclusion you can come to about this entire presidential dilemma

00:55:18

is that the American people are beginning to change their attitudes about sex.

00:55:24

Is that possible?

00:55:26

Yes, I don’t think you can conclude anything else.

00:55:29

They are changing their attitudes about sex,

00:55:32

and they’re accepting that the depth of penetration of modern media into people’s lives

00:55:38

is going to bring them disinformation,

00:55:42

and they don’t want it to mess with the political process, which is,

00:55:46

as you say, a very French attitude.

00:55:49

Let’s let these people have their personal lives.

00:55:51

I’m sure Hillary can discipline Bill if that’s necessary, and the rest of us should get on

00:55:58

with the business of governing.

00:56:01

And that is what the right wing across America

00:56:05

cannot understand

00:56:07

and so they are simply

00:56:09

being puzzled

00:56:10

they’re trapped in this great puzzle

00:56:13

of my god what’s going on

00:56:14

well what’s going on is

00:56:15

we’re growing up a little bit

00:56:17

after all the French have been

00:56:21

around so very much longer

00:56:23

as a nation

00:56:24

and is this a nation maturing?

00:56:27

Well, I think not only is that what’s going on, but the right wing needs to look closer to home.

00:56:34

What’s going on is they’re getting ready to commit suicide for the second or third time in four years

00:56:42

by moving to impeach one of the most popular presidents in the

00:56:47

20th century at the end of the most brilliant economic expansion the country has ever known.

00:56:55

This is a prescription for catastrophe for the right, and they’re charging ahead full

00:57:00

bore with their usual devil-may-care attitude.

00:57:05

So once again, they’ve invented a new way to commit suicide.

00:57:09

Well, I, first of all, don’t think that the political right wing,

00:57:15

when you break it down to individuals, sexually is any different at all than the political left wing,

00:57:22

perhaps the only difference being that they keep their

00:57:26

whips and chains in closets.

00:57:30

Yes, I think to try people for their sexual peculiarities and faux pas is a sign of a

00:57:41

totally juvenile country, and as you say, I think we’re moving beyond that.

00:57:47

Now, if this president had fouled up the economy

00:57:51

and the stock market were down 1,000 points,

00:57:54

then there might be some political rationale in all of this.

00:57:59

But at the moment, it appears just madness to me

00:58:02

and I think will be very detrimental to any long-term

00:58:05

right-wing agenda.

00:58:07

Well, the right-wing, of course, if those conditions had prevailed, would have burned,

00:58:13

you know, put Mr. Clinton on a stake and burned him alive, and the left-wing would have quietly

00:58:19

accepted that, and we would have moved into into sort of an older, more

00:58:25

Victorian period, but

00:58:27

it doesn’t appear as though that is going to happen

00:58:29

and as you point out,

00:58:32

the right wing is probably

00:58:33

going to self-immolate if

00:58:35

they proceed as they are right now.

00:58:39

Yes,

00:58:40

I think, was it last weekend where

00:58:41

Trent Lott said he

00:58:43

thought the special prosecutor should put his cards on the table

00:58:47

and if it didn’t fly, to drop it.

00:58:49

And then they jerked him around and 24 hours later he was calling for focus on the president’s role

00:58:56

and obstruction of justice and all this.

00:58:58

So they can’t get it straight. They have incredibly bad political instincts for a majority party in the world’s most dynamic democracy.

00:59:11

Even though individually they’re not sexually, in my opinion, any different than anybody else politically,

00:59:16

they seem to not be able to leave the moralistic line.

00:59:23

And I’m not suggesting that immorality is necessarily a virtue,

00:59:29

and I don’t mean and intend for people to believe that, but simply a tolerance.

00:59:34

They want to be left alone.

00:59:35

They don’t want somebody else to set their moral agenda.

00:59:39

You know, people like their Hustler magazine, and they like their beer,

00:59:43

and they like to do and they like to do

00:59:46

what they like to do. To my mind

00:59:48

that’s a more authentic

00:59:50

American

00:59:51

impulse to do

00:59:54

what you want to do than

00:59:56

this recursion to the Puritan

00:59:58

impulse which is to tell everybody

01:00:00

else what to do.

01:00:02

What’s the fun in that?

01:00:05

Alright. We are shortly going to go to the phones, and that should be quite an experience

01:00:09

in itself. I’ve got a fax here, which I guess I had to read you. Art, I just wanted to thank

01:00:16

you for having Terrence on your program. And he has these questions. Impacts of currently

01:00:24

legal drugs in our society,

01:00:26

in other words, alcohol, tobacco, sugar,

01:00:27

compared to the impact of currently illegal psychedelics in our society,

01:00:31

like marijuana, LSD, and psilocybin.

01:00:36

Multimedia film he worked on recently,

01:00:38

entitled Strange Attractors,

01:00:40

shown a few months ago here in Austin, Texas,

01:00:43

with a message of psychedelic consciousness.

01:00:47

What exactly were the blue apples referenced in the film and your message behind it?

01:00:56

Well, first of all, let me say that was a film that I was an actor in.

01:01:01

I was not the director or the writer, so I wasn’t in control of the message. The

01:01:07

blue apples were simply symbolic of all psychedelic plants. They didn’t want to name a specific

01:01:14

psychedelic plant, so the blue apples became a symbolic carrier of all of them. As long

01:01:21

as the subject has come up, I would recommend to people to see that film.

01:01:26

It certainly is state-of-the-art for computer graphic special effects on small budgets.

01:01:34

It was done by Rose X Productions down in Austin, a really talented friend of mine.

01:01:42

All right. Here’s another one. As a teacher, website publisher, and author,

01:01:47

I am convinced now that genetics

01:01:49

will have more to do with the next 200 years

01:01:51

than any other science in that regard.

01:01:54

When we learn how to recreate ourselves,

01:01:57

then might we be able to produce humans

01:01:59

with minds that are capable of understanding

01:02:03

the connection between mind and energy and mind and matter?

01:02:06

Could we not then recreate our entire selves and the universe?

01:02:11

Well, these are the kinds of scenarios that are coming upon us, yes.

01:02:17

I mean, for example, ways to splice into the Internet so that it feels like it’s a part of your own mind.

01:02:27

So, in other words, the seamless interface where when you need intelligence,

01:02:33

you can pull on all the intelligence there is on the planet.

01:02:37

I recently discovered a science fiction writer I was not familiar with,

01:02:43

this guy Greg Egan, who wrote a thing called Permutation City.

01:02:48

And that’s a technology 50 years in the future

01:02:52

where people routinely copy themselves as code

01:02:56

and reappear as copies in artificial environments.

01:03:02

And these copies know they are copies.

01:03:05

And the technology and the psychology of that world are handled by this guy with incredible skill.

01:03:13

So there are people out there imagining the kinds of futures that the questionnaire talks about.

01:03:20

The very biggest issues are going to be dealt with.

01:03:24

about, the very biggest issues are going to be dealt with.

01:03:25

In other words, what is intelligence?

01:03:27

What is identity?

01:03:30

What is being itself?

01:03:41

Can death be transcended through somehow becoming part of this global symbiotic hyper-organism that our technology is creating?

01:03:43

We stand really in a place no one has ever stood before.

01:03:49

And what will come of it, you know, genetics is one frontier.

01:03:53

Another frontier is nanotechnology.

01:03:57

Another frontier is human-machine interfacing.

01:04:00

Another frontier is human life extension.

01:04:04

another frontier is human life extension.

01:04:12

When you pile up all this stuff and realize that major discoveries are being made in all these fields simultaneously,

01:04:22

you begin to see that the morphogenetic momentum for this thing that wants to be born out of the human species is, at this point, almost unstoppable and inevitable, I think.

01:04:27

We’re all just witnesses to this unfolding.

01:04:30

This is the culmination of 25,000 years of human striving and technology testing and language acquisition,

01:04:40

and now we’re about to make the big leap into the great question mark.

01:04:46

You mentioned copies, Terrence, copies, that we’ll be able to have copies of ourselves.

01:04:52

Now, that’s very interesting.

01:04:53

A copy would be a precise copy of us, and you said it would know that it is a copy.

01:05:00

But I see a problem here because that copy would contain the same ego that the original has,

01:05:08

and the only way to satisfy that, that I can see for the copy, would be to liquidate the original,

01:05:16

and then it would feel good.

01:05:18

Well, these kinds of feelings and situations are what drives Greg Egan’s fiction.

01:05:27

of feelings and situations are what drives Greg Egan’s fiction. His copies behave like human beings with drives and neuroses. But his main strength doesn’t lie so much in portraying

01:05:35

the psychology of these people as in imagining and describing in a way that convinces you

01:05:43

it could be the technologies that will make this stuff happen.

01:05:48

And, of course, he’s concentrating on artificial worlds of the silicon variety,

01:05:54

but then when you put in nanotechnology and some of this other stuff, it really is dazzling. I don’t think anyone can triangulate all these factors without having the feeling that

01:06:08

we’re approaching some kind of singularity. You and I talked about this. I mean, the quickening

01:06:13

that you’ve written about and the novelty theory that I’ve written about are both

01:06:19

metaphors for this sense of impending cross-fertilization and implosion of all knowledge.

01:06:28

Before we leave the present-day Silicon area,

01:06:34

I want to ask you about this pending, incredible, doomsday, Y2K scenario

01:06:42

in which, you know which 2000 is going to come

01:06:46

the mainframes are going to crash

01:06:47

my god, there goes social security

01:06:49

there goes all the government’s computers

01:06:52

and we are now so tied in

01:06:54

and dependent upon all this

01:06:55

that many people are saying it’s real

01:06:58

don’t laugh

01:06:59

everything is going to crash

01:07:01

nobody is preparing

01:07:02

that day is going to come

01:07:03

it’s going to be a computer

01:07:06

Armageddon.

01:07:09

Well, I’ve heard all this, and I’ve visited the websites, and while I’m reading the propaganda

01:07:17

of these people, it seems alarming.

01:07:20

On the other hand, I have an intuition that it represents some kind of culling.

01:07:29

I mean, the word has been out now for about two years,

01:07:32

and more and more institutions are scrambling to become 2000 compatible.

01:07:39

But they’re not making it, Terrence.

01:07:40

And one has to ask the obvious rebellious question, could it possibly be

01:07:46

a good thing?

01:07:48

Well, and how extensive will it be?

01:07:51

That’s the question where the experts seem to differ.

01:07:56

I’ve seen pieces which say it’s a hiccup on the way to the end of history, and other

01:08:01

people say it is the end of history.

01:08:03

the end of history, and other people say it is the end of history.

01:08:11

Well, it would certainly bring an awful lot of paradigms and institutions tumbling down all at once if the doomsayers are correct, and I would think that you might consider

01:08:16

that an upside somehow.

01:08:19

Well, it depends on how far back it takes us.

01:08:22

In other words, if it takes us back, you know, the ones who are heading for the hills with dried meat,

01:08:29

if they’re right, that’s a little disturbing.

01:08:33

If, on the other hand, I’m advertising absolutely fresh abacuses or something.

01:08:42

Yes.

01:08:40

Yes.

01:08:54

I think that as we get closer to it, the spending curve on the problem by corporations should tell us how real it is.

01:08:58

It’s their goose that’s going to be cooked.

01:09:04

So let’s watch company outlays for Y2K consultants,

01:09:10

and if it soars toward infinity, the rest of us better start packing our lunches.

01:09:13

But what I am told is that it’s too late, that even if they took all the computer programmers capable of going to work on this problem

01:09:19

and started them right now,

01:09:21

they wouldn’t even get close to solving the problem

01:09:24

by the time the magic

01:09:25

day hits and everything goes kaboom.

01:09:29

Maybe that’s not true.

01:09:31

I’m sure these consultants are not saying that because the obvious conclusion would

01:09:36

be, well, then we won’t pay your fee to attempt to fix it.

01:09:40

No, these are independent people, not the people who are seeking to go out and get all the money for fixing it.

01:09:47

Saying it’s too late.

01:09:48

Yes, yes.

01:09:49

Well, then the question that needs to be answered is, too late for what?

01:09:53

Let’s have a convincing picture of the scenario so that we can each look at it and judge it.

01:10:01

I mean, we’re unfamiliar with this kind of a scenario. So, just

01:10:05

saying airliners will fall out of

01:10:07

the sky and nuclear power plants will

01:10:09

blow up, we need to know

01:10:12

the sequence, the imagined

01:10:14

sequence of events.

01:10:15

And if it’s true,

01:10:18

it will certainly be

01:10:19

a bizarre comment on the movement

01:10:21

into the first moments of the third

01:10:23

millennium that we basically

01:10:25

blow ourselves away because

01:10:28

of a computer glitch.

01:10:31

Well, I

01:10:32

wonder if we are truly that dependent

01:10:33

and I sort of imagine

01:10:35

that we are. Every

01:10:38

single function of government is

01:10:40

computer controlled. Most of them have

01:10:42

this problem. I mean, I could go

01:10:44

on and mention every alphabet agency. got, NSA, CIA. They’ll fall apart, along with Social Security, along

01:10:50

with the Veterans Administration, and checks will go up.

01:10:54

Well, and I guess the question is, what happens to the money? Is some kind of enormous heist

01:10:59

of the whole human race? Is that why there’s so little interest in fixing the problem? Because, in fact, the problem is somehow going to make a lot of people incredibly wealthy

01:11:10

and no one will be able to trace the exact outlines of the heist.

01:11:15

My own webmaster, who’s brilliant, Keith Rowland, has several commercial programs that he has written. I mean, he’s really good.

01:11:25

And even he has the Y2K problem,

01:11:29

and he’s not so sure he can get it fixed for his clients in time.

01:11:34

So this really is a serious problem.

01:11:36

I get a lot of email about it,

01:11:38

and I’ve been considering it and thinking about it,

01:11:41

and if all came tumbling down,

01:11:43

I am not convinced that it would be a bad thing.

01:11:47

Maybe I need to get an advertisement.

01:11:49

How you can profit from the Y2K crash?

01:11:53

Well, I thought probably we should be also talking about organizing tested subnetworks

01:11:59

where the date has already been simulated.

01:12:05

Apple claims all its machinery is Y2K compatible.

01:12:11

Yeah, but they’re desperate, though.

01:12:14

Yes.

01:12:16

I agree.

01:12:17

Do you have an Apple?

01:12:19

I’m devoted.

01:12:21

With a name like McKenna, could I not have a Mac?

01:12:25

It’s a good like McKenna, could I not have a Mac? Yeah.

01:12:31

It’s like, it’s a good machine, Terrence, but, you know, it’s like a beta recorder.

01:12:41

Well, but my son and his hotshot friends tell me anybody who doesn’t learn Unix is a wuss anyway and a lost soul.

01:12:45

So that puts us probably both in hot water.

01:12:46

Yeah, probably so.

01:12:48

Every time I say something like this, I get,

01:12:52

oh, you wouldn’t, I mean, people are so attached to their computers,

01:12:58

the Mac users, they flood me with vicious, ugly, cheat-filled mail.

01:13:01

When we come back, we’re going to go to the phone.

01:13:01

Stay right there.

01:13:03

You’ve got a good long break, Terrence.

01:13:04

I’m Art Bell.

01:13:06

This is Coast to the phone. Stay right there. You’ve got a good long break, Terrence. I’m Art Bell. This is Coast to Coast AM.

01:13:09

You’re listening

01:13:10

to the Psychedelic Salon, where

01:13:12

people are changing their lives one

01:13:13

thought at a time.

01:13:17

The reason that

01:13:18

I left that last bit in,

01:13:20

the one about the Y2K issue,

01:13:22

well, even though we now know

01:13:24

that it was a non-starter,

01:13:25

the reason I left it in is to show you how people use fear to sell their points of view.

01:13:31

Whether it is to encourage spending more money on defense

01:13:34

or about hordes of refugees storming our borders,

01:13:37

well, fear is always used to get people to do things that they don’t really think makes much sense.

01:13:44

You see, as much as I enjoy listening to Art Bell,

01:13:47

we just now heard him continue to spread fear about the Y2K issue

01:13:52

even after Terrence tried to assure him that it wasn’t as dire as Bell made it sound.

01:13:57

And, well, my guess is that Art Bell wasn’t all that worried about it himself,

01:14:02

but he knew that by keeping his audience fearful about it, then the next time that his program was to feature a Y2K discussion, well, he’d

01:14:10

be assured of a big audience. And if you give it a little thought, fear is an exceptionally

01:14:15

powerful tool, so maybe you should always question people who constantly deal in it.

01:14:22

Now before I go, I’d want to repeat something that my mother often said that I think fits

01:14:27

right here in the discussion that Terrance and Art Bell had about the special investigator

01:14:32

that was looking into the president’s behavior.

01:14:35

Well, back then it was a Democratic president being investigated, and today it’s a Republican

01:14:40

president being investigated.

01:14:43

As my dear sainted mother sometimes said,

01:14:46

everything has changed, but nothing is different. I also found it interesting that 20 years ago,

01:14:55

Terrence McKenna and Art Bell, on what was then considered to be a radio program that was out

01:15:00

there on the far edge, well, they were talking about artificial intelligence and the internet

01:15:05

in much the same way that we are now talking about AI today.

01:15:10

But back then they were considered flaky for making such speculations.

01:15:14

So my question is, whether that is something that has changed, or is it something that

01:15:21

is actually different?

01:15:24

And you’re going to have to be the judge of that yourself.

01:15:26

Well, that’s going to be it for today,

01:15:28

but next week I’ll play the second half of this fascinating conversation.

01:15:33

And until then, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

01:15:37

Be well, my friends. Thank you.