643 - Journeys to the Edge of Consciousness

Program Notes

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Guest speaker: Rob Harper

https://www.journeysmovie.com/Date this live salon was recorded: February 3, 2020.

Today’s podcast features a recording from last Monday’s live salon where our guest was Rob Harper, the creator of a new documentary titled “Journeys to the Edge of Consciousness.” The film features three men whose psychedelic journeys have had a profound impact on our world. These men are Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, and Aldous Huxley. After the interview with Rob, I play a short recording from earlier podcasts that featured these three men. Hopefully, this will give you a better idea of what pioneers they were and how relevant their ideas are yet today.
Journeys to the Edge of Consciousness

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Transcript

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Greetings from Cyberdelic Space, this is Lorenzo and I’m your host here in the Psychedelic

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Salon.

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And today I’m going to play a recording from last Monday’s live salon

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where our guest was the creator of a new documentary titled Journeys to the Edge of Consciousness.

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Now I’m putting a link to the movie’s trailer in today’s program notes, and you may want

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to click over to that short video right now so that you will have a little better idea

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of what we’re talking about.

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short video right now so that you will have a little better idea of what we’re talking about. While the film features three psychedelic journeys that have had

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a profound impact on our world, it also includes interviews with a dozen

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psychedelic elders who are still with us. The three featured psychonauts are Alan

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Watts, Timothy Leary, and Aldous Huxley, and they are featured through readings

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from their books and

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these readings, which are backed up by some wonderful animated graphics and original music,

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well, they’re interspersed with comments from live interviews. And if you’ve been with us here in the

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salon for a while, you’re already familiar with some of the people who are interviewed, such as Dennis McKenna, Amanda Fielding, Rick Doblin, and

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Graham Hancock.

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Now, after my live salon conversation, I went back and watched his film once again, and

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I realized then that while Watts, Leary, and Huxley are well-known to us here in the Psychedelic

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Salon, there will also be some new fellow salonners who may be hearing about these men

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for the first time.

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So after the interview with Rob, I’m going to play a short recording from earlier podcasts

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that featured each of these three men. And hopefully this will give you a little better

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idea of what pioneers they were and how relevant their ideas are yet today. Now, here’s our live salon. I think we’re good now. Okay, I think we’re good.

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Okay, and believe it or not, it’s only one minute after our scheduled start time.

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That’s pretty good. Anyhow, welcome here, Rob. This is our first Greenwich Time live salon.

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So you’re inaugurating a new service.

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And I thought we’d pick up a few people in Europe.

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You know, we’ve had people in Russia and places like that join us before.

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But we’ve got some old timers that are here all the time.

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So it should be interesting.

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So welcome to the salon.

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It should be interesting. So welcome to the salon.

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And I learned about you from Dennis Berry, who is the woman who really preserved the Timothy Leary archive. So let’s start with Dennis and then we’ll rewind and get your story, too.

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How did you and Dennis make contact?

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So once I had. Yeah, i guess we will need a rewind but once i had decided

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on which short stories i wanted to include in the film um and narrowed that down to to the three that

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you see in the film um one of those was a chapter from timothy leary’s Priest, which is a fantastic book, incredible book.

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I’m a huge fan of Leary’s writing.

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I think that he captures something of the psychedelic experience on page in a way that few others have for me.

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And with a real dry wit and humor.

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So I had this material from High high priest which I wanted to use

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and I looked up you know who was looking after Leary’s estate and that was Dennis.

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So I got in touch and this was in 2015 I believe and I got in touch and we had a

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transatlantic phone call

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which was quite exotic for me I don’t have many of those

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and it’s great to be talking to you now Lorenzo and

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yeah I approached Dennis and I told her my intentions and what I wanted to do

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and asked for her permission to use some excerpts from Le’s book. And she was very supportive and more than happy.

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Well, I’m Dennis is going to be here in a live salon,

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either this month or next year was in India when she put me in touch with you.

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And I think she’s coming back.

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But I want to be sure that,

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that people realize that she,

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she really is an important person in preserving the legacy here.

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So we’ll rewind now. And what happened, so that people know, is Dennis has been a longtime friend

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of mine. And she got a hold of me and says, you really ought to look at this trailer and get a

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hold of Rob Parbury. He’s got a really great film going. And, i i get these uh these notices from time to time but usually

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it’s it’s uh it’s something that that’s uh just people are still thinking about it and getting

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going and and yours is is completed now so uh how did how did you uh get involved in psychedelics

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to begin with and i’m going to uh i’m going to uh mute some of these uh people

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because your background noise uh kind of gets in here guys uh but how did you get into psychedelics

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and then what made you decide to spend your your free time and your money to create a documentary well that’s exactly what it was lorenzo um so i’m i’m in my mid-30s now

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so about six years ago i was in my late 20s and i had a um a very powerful um experience of an

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expanded state of consciousness and i wasn’t particularly prepared for it i wasn’t at all

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spiritually aware or you know in touch with these sorts of things and it it really just

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one of the ways i describe it is like being on um one of these internet maps and just clicking zoom out zoom out zoom out zoom out zoom out zoom

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out you know until um until my everyday life and my everyday take on reality was pretty

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far gone you know um far gone in what way now do you mean well planet earth seemed like a long way way away at that point and all of my usual daily concerns

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and worries and i guess you know what leary describes the kind of chessboard you know

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everyday life stuff that that one can spend a lot of one’s time and energy is worrying about

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suddenly seemed pretty inconsequential and i was given a new offered a new perspective and

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um with it came a sense that there was a lot lot more to to this life and to reality than i had

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previously thought um and so i came back from the experience um a bit like Leary after his his first in his case LSD

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experience in in the movie um with a lot of questions and a lot of what was that you know

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what what just happened to me and how on earth do I integrate that into my taking perspective on the world and life and and all the rest of it so

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really the film has been a five-year journey of my own of kind of trying to make sense of

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of that initial experience and um you know as is often the case in making a film i had

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you know i sort of had the privilege of approaching people like

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Gabor Mate and Dennis McKenna, Rick Doblin, and all the brilliant people in the film.

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Let me just interrupt you for a second, because, you know, most everybody here, I’m sure,

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right now, and it’s going to be hearing the recording of this, has had a first time experience

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that was overwhelming.

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And, you know, we all got into it different ways, et cetera. But, and,

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you know, we all get kind of evangelical at first, want to talk about it,

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but not many people get off at the dime and actually do something. What,

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what was the catalyst that prompted you to tell the story on a larger stage?

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that prompted you to tell the story on a larger stage?

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Good question.

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It just had to be done.

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It’s always, you know, it’s been a long, hard five years.

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And it’s been a real labor of love and a lot of hard sort of sacrifice along the way to get this thing done as you said in my spare time and on my own dime um

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it just demanded really i’m a trained filmmaker um It’s what I do. And so this just demanded it of me.

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That explains a lot because this thing,

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this film is just so professionally done.

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And, you know, I thought, you know,

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you couldn’t just be sitting in a,

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like I am in the corner of my bedroom doing this stuff.

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You had some good friends and some powerful equipment to do this.

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Do you want to talk about the film a little bit,

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about the concept of it and how you put it together?

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Yeah, sure.

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So, yeah, the film is called Journeys to the Edge of Consciousness.

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And I guess I think my inspiration for that was kind of the somehow maybe kind of 1940s, 1950s comic books.

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You know, I pictured a big booming announcer saying journeys to the edge of consciousness.

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You know, and it’s I think my starting point was like, you know, we’ve reached the 20th century or now the 21st century.

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we’ve reached the 20th century or now the 21st century and all of these far distant continents and oceans and, you know,

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the times when you sailed off in a boat and you might fall off the edge of the

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world, you know, humanity, we’ve sort of done that exploration.

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We’ve Google mapped everything now, you know, it’s all recorded.

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And so I figured the next great frontier is this sort of internal exploration that Leary

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and others were doing um I’d never seen I’d never seen anything like this before I don’t know if you

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have Lorenzo but in terms of the format I chose um having three three animated stories interspersed with studio interviews

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let me add here that the animation is brilliant it’s it’s uh it reminded me of uh richard

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linklater’s uh waking life in in in a sense that uh who who did the animation how did you get that

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done um the guy who did the animation’s name is hen Lambourne, and he’s an incredibly talented man.

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He single-handedly animated not only 45 minutes of animation in the film, but every background of every interview has an animated moving background.

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So this guy’s basically single-handedly animated nearly every frame of the film.

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That’s just awesome. And the animation is brilliant. And the animations in the interviews

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with live actor, not actor, Dennis McKenna, not an actor, but that really held a lot of interest.

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It’s like you said, it’s not something I’d seen before.

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Yeah. And it was a real gamble it was

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like I’m gonna try this thing and I really hope it works and so I made we

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made one animation and we shot a couple of interviews and we put them together

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and we said yeah okay I think this is gonna work and so we did more animation

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and shot more interviews and yeah the thing was kind of pieced together bit by bit over,

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as I said, the last five years.

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Well, you know, you sent me a link to see it.

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And I wrote you back with all caps and exclamation points that I don’t often do that.

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This thing really touched me.

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Of course, you know, here in the salon,

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we played a lot of talks by Leary and Huxley, a few, and Watts as well.

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And then, of course, there’s Dennis McKenna and there’s Rick Doblin and who else?

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We had several other people in there that we have here in the salon.

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So I really related to it.

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I think everybody here in the salon is going to as well i hope some of them have uh

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you know clicked over that link to see the trailer already too because uh the trailer gives a pretty

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good feel for what the film’s like i think yeah no thanks lorenzo and you know what you wrote to

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me it was i really touched me thank you you know i’m very aware of your work and your place in in

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this scene and it really meant a lot to read that.

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Well, you know, I’ve watched a lot of these movies and documentaries.

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And sometimes, you know, they just don’t quite hold me long enough.

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But this one, actually, I’m going to go back and watch it again.

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It really, you know, there’s so much I’ve missed when I was watching it the first time.

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I’m going to mute a couple of people here on the phone.

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Background noise comes in.

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No, the whole experience,

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just when you’re starting to get into a groove,

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then there’ll be another animation

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or there’ll be another interview.

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And it’s sort of like a Terrence McKenna talk,

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you know, with the audience coming up and saying,

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well, what about this?

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What about that?

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And of course, the three people you chose were were excellent

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the publishers and new world were very understanding and accommodating and it was

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all done through them but yeah we got we got the blessing of of the watts family and um

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and and the huxley family too so you know it was ongoing process but uh yeah i’m really pleased to have everyone on board and

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to have been able to share all of their words but yeah you know i read the joyous cosmology and what

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a book what an incredible book um and to me it felt like such a kind of response to huxley’s

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doors of perception you know it’s like I can almost feel

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what’s answering Huxley

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or bouncing back off back to Huxley.

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It’s an incredible book.

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One of my biggest challenges was what to cut out, you know?

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Yeah, tell us about that.

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What all did wind up on the cutting room floor?

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Tons, loads, lots and lots.

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Gosh, can i even remember um i can’t no i can’t well there was a ram dass story there was a ram dass story that i really wanted to include and i was in touch with

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his people and um it was just a question of of making it manageable you know and i think 90

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minutes is a good length for a film right and I think if you if you start going much over two hours you’ve really got to be the godfather

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you know to keep your audience yeah I’ve taken a a couple courses in screenwriting so I know

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about the magic numbers and all and all and and and uh now now do you have a any follow-ons uh

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plan for this is this got momentum that’s pulling you forward?

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Yeah, well, you know, what’s happening at the moment,

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you know, we released in September 2019.

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And at the moment, a lot of my time and energy

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is just stewarding the film on out into the world.

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And, you know, I’m really grateful for you

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for giving me a platform to talk

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about this you know we don’t have any big uh big media machines behind us any big distribution plans

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it’s all happening by word of mouth and every day i’m getting contacted by people

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wanting to put on kind of uh grassroots screenings um we’ve had the film play in Sweden, Australia, Austria,

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all over the UK, Argentina, North America.

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We’ve got Denmark coming soon.

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So it’s really just, it’s taken off,

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but just bit by bit, you know,

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I’ve had a medical student in canada open up her apartment

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to have 20 friends over and they all put five dollars in the hat you know and she sent that to

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me and at the other end of the scale we had a 300 seat mega cinema in stockholm sweden packed out

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with people so it’s really what we’re really relying on is people taking this on

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and seeing the value in the film

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and wanting to share it

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with their local community.

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And it’s awesome what’s happening.

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So if somebody wants to do a screening,

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whether in their home,

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their apartment,

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or a larger one,

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how do they get in touch with you

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and do this then?

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So they go on to our website,

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which is www.journeysmovie.com.

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Journeys plural,

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right?

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Yeah.

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Yeah,

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absolutely.

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Journeys with a Y,

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journeysmovie.com.

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And they click organize a screening and they’ll,

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they’ll be able to be in touch with me.

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And yeah, and we we’re

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just about to launch the german language version we’ve had it translated um and we’re just about

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to launch the romanian and the hungarian subtitles as well so again people are contributing and off

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their own backs translating the film it’s touching, actually, how enthusiastic people are

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to help get the film out there.

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And, well, you know,

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the translation now,

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you’re putting German subtitles.

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You said Romanian.

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Yeah, Hungarian.

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Because we have listeners.

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We’ve had people from Slovenia

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come into the live salon here, too.

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And I don’t know if anybody from Germany,

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but I know Russia has been here. So this will reach people in other countries as well and I guess if they

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want their language subtitled they’ll get a hold of you as well. Please do yeah I’m very much

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currently looking for someone to translate the film into Japanese and Spanish and anyone else

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whose language I haven’t mentioned, please get in touch.

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It’s quite easy and fun to do.

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Well, you know, until he died almost 10 years ago, my brother was the professor emeritus

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in the College of Language and Translation at the University of Granada.

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Oh, wow.

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Ten years ago, I could have helped you out quite a bit with translations, but unfortunately,

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he’s gone now.

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But what about your other film work?

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What type of film work do you do or do you want to talk about that?

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Yeah, sure.

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Well, this is my first feature.

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This is my first feature.

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And, you know, I’m just so pleased to have gotten to the other end of it.

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You know, I do have that feeling that this is out there now and,

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you know,

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I’ve kind of stuck my flag in the sand or whatever you want to say,

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you know,

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and I’m very proud to have done it in relation to this topic,

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you know,

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to psychedelics and this sort of development,

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this change of consciousness strikes me as in this quite troubled current world climate

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perhaps the most important thing each of us can do is to take a long hard look inside and see

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what’s going on and what we perhaps need to change or attend to um so my previous work um

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made a lot of short documentaries.

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I’ve worked in the UK film and TV industry for some years.

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I’ve kind of filmed as a cameraman for most of the major UK broadcasters.

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And I also teach.

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I’m also a visiting lecturer, teaching the next generation how to make documentaries.

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Now, do you have a link to some of the documentaries you’ve done,

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like on Vimeo or YouTube or somewhere?

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Yeah, I do. Yeah.

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If you’ll send me that, I’ll put it in the program notes for today’s podcast.

00:20:37 ►

Cool. Thanks, Lorenzo. That’d be awesome.

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I think that what you have put together in this film

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really is great background material for people who are just getting into psychedelics one way or another,

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whether it’s a lawyer who’s going to have to defend somebody, or whether it’s a parent, their kids are getting into it,

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or whether it’s a kid who’s teaching their parents about it.

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How did you come about your first experience?

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It obviously was world-changing for you.

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How did that come about?

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You didn’t just go to a rave and drop some acid, I assume.

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I didn’t, no.

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But, yeah, just on your first point, you know,

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what you’ve just said is exactly it.

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I want this to be a resource potentially for people who’ve maybe haven’t yet

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had an experience and are planning to,

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and they want to know what they’re letting themselves in for as much as one

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can.

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But also,

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yeah,

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perhaps also something for them,

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people to take to their families and say,

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you know,

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when I disappear off for a week and come back talking stuff,

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you don’t really understand.

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Give this a watch.

00:21:46 ►

This might help you put that in context.

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You know, and one person at one of the recent screenings said,

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I was at Oxford University last night screening the film there and doing the Q&A here in England.

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And, you know, one of the people in one of my audiences said this should be viewing in every school,

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you know, someone else said someone else said in every psychology department.

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I’d love to see the film be, you know, as widely used as possible for people as a resource.

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As to my own personal experience, I’d rather not go into the details so publicly, if you don’t mind, Lorenzo.

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Most of us are right there with you, so don’t worry about that.

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Maybe over a beer sometime the two of us can talk about it.

00:22:31 ►

Right.

00:22:33 ►

No, I just, I was hoping it was some sort of a structured event of some kind,

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because, you know, I’ve danced all night at raves on MDMA. And I now agree with

00:22:48 ►

Terrence that if you want to come down from a psychedelic experience, go where there’s live

00:22:52 ►

music and dance, you know, it’s not the right environment. But, you know, nonetheless, we all

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have done things like that. But I was thinking when I was watching your movie that how I wish that I’d had

00:23:06 ►

it when I was a parent, because I could have sat down with my kids and said, you know, let’s talk

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about this war on drugs thing, because I knew my kids were experimenting and all, but we didn’t

00:23:17 ►

have a convenient way to talk about it. And this movie here is a really good way. I’ll tell you

00:23:23 ►

who I wish would see it would be politicians.

00:23:26 ►

They really need to see the history of this and to understand that, like you said in the very beginning, Rob,

00:23:33 ►

that we’re at a really unique time in human history.

00:23:39 ►

I’m not sure how it’s all going to come out, but I think, as Terrence said,

00:23:43 ►

if we don’t support an increase

00:23:46 ►

in human consciousness then what are we

00:23:47 ►

doing here you know and I think

00:23:50 ►

some of the answers are in

00:23:51 ►

what we learn when we

00:23:54 ►

get out of the boxes that we’ve built around ourselves

00:23:56 ►

Hell yes

00:23:58 ►

Hell yes

00:23:59 ►

On Saturday I was at another screening of the film

00:24:02 ►

and a guy from in the film

00:24:04 ►

one of the interviewees

00:24:05 ►

called William Rowlandson, brilliant man, was talking and I was talking to him and we

00:24:12 ►

were talking about our concerns about the recent election here in England where Boris

00:24:17 ►

Johnson’s just gone back in with an overwhelming majority with this agenda to leave Europe

00:24:24 ►

and to separate ourselves off from the rest of the continent,

00:24:28 ►

which a lot of people are quite, half the country is quite very unhappy about.

00:24:33 ►

And, you know, the guy behind the scenes for Boris Johnson’s campaign, a guy called Dominic Cummings,

00:24:40 ►

you know, we were talking about him and the sort of spell he was able to weave over people here

00:24:47 ►

in the uk um and you know he will was talking and he said you know these people are magicians

00:24:53 ►

these people are powerful magicians and they’re enchanting whole nations you know with their

00:24:58 ►

spells and he we took we got onto this film and you know know, I got thinking and I said, well, yeah, this is the best magic I could put together in response.

00:25:10 ►

You know, this is my best attempt to weave a different narrative, to weave a different spell, other than the ones that are being pumped into people’s living rooms every day.

00:25:19 ►

Exactly right.

00:25:20 ►

You know, and I really, you know, I used to be politically active.

00:25:26 ►

right you know and and i really you know i i used to be politically active i was involved in the uh vietnam prisoner of war issue and i was very active for quite a few years until i i finally

00:25:32 ►

burned out and i’m no longer politically active at all but i i do uh think that uh the activism

00:25:41 ►

rather than trying to change actors in a system that’s totally broken, you know, and the U.S. Constitution is really worthless if we can’t get rid of an insane child who’s running everything.

00:25:55 ►

So I really believe that the political activism has to be internal, like you just said.

00:26:02 ►

We have to, you know, I have quit flying because I can be green

00:26:07 ►

all year long. I don’t have a car. You know, I try to be as green as I can. And yet one flight,

00:26:13 ►

and I take two years of my goodness away. And so, you know, I’m really working at these things,

00:26:19 ►

but I’m in a position where I can. Now, if you’re in the working world and you’re raising kids,

00:26:24 ►

things like that, it’s

00:26:25 ►

totally different. You have to find your own way within the environment you’re in because,

00:26:30 ►

you know, when you wake up, you can’t really just step out of the culture that you’re in. You know,

00:26:36 ►

you have to change it at least with your friends, relatives, neighbors, co-workers like that.

00:26:42 ►

And this particular film, I know there’s a lot of little groups, meetups-workers like that and uh this particular film i know there’s a lot of uh

00:26:46 ►

little groups meetups and people like that that could get a lot out of screening this film and

00:26:52 ►

you can stream it i think from your website isn’t it a you it’s a fee and and does it stream or do

00:26:58 ►

you have to download it yeah it’s a stream lorenzo it’s, you can rent or buy it. If you buy it, you can watch it as many times as you like.

00:27:07 ►

You rent it, you watch it at once.

00:27:09 ►

The link’s on my website, journeysmovie.com, to do that.

00:27:15 ►

There are links via both Vimeo and Amazon.

00:27:19 ►

People are welcome to use either,

00:27:20 ►

but please bear in mind Vimeo gives video producers a much fairer cut of this

00:27:27 ►

of the profits right so please bear that in mind when you when you’re buying

00:27:30 ►

that yeah i i uh i use vimeo for uh my funny little things and all but

00:27:36 ►

i like vimeo particularly because there’s no ads

00:27:39 ►

well listen uh this does anybody have something they’d like to add here?

00:27:47 ►

Kevin, you got something you wanted to say?

00:27:49 ►

I don’t know.

00:27:50 ►

I was just going to say hello.

00:27:51 ►

It’s been a while.

00:27:54 ►

Most of the people here know Kevin from the road, so it’s good to see you not on the road, Kevin.

00:27:58 ►

Yeah, it’s good not to be on the road.

00:28:01 ►

I was just going to interject really quick.

00:28:03 ►

I had to kind of come and go.

00:28:03 ►

Good not to be on the road. I was just going to interject really quick.

00:28:06 ►

I had to kind of come and go, but you know,

00:28:12 ►

the Denver psychedelic society they put on a movie every Monday night,

00:28:14 ►

some sort of psychedelic themed.

00:28:18 ►

So I will make sure that they get in touch with you, Rob. Absolutely.

00:28:23 ►

That’s a big theater. They fill up every, every Monday.

00:28:26 ►

So I think this film would be wonderful for them.

00:28:28 ►

So I’ll definitely reach out to them.

00:28:30 ►

And that community is really strong.

00:28:31 ►

And other than that,

00:28:32 ►

I just want to say hi to everybody.

00:28:33 ►

Rob,

00:28:36 ►

it was wonderful to meet you and hear your story and can’t wait to check out the movie.

00:28:37 ►

Thank you.

00:28:38 ►

Thank you.

00:28:39 ►

Much appreciated.

00:28:40 ►

Yeah.

00:28:40 ►

We’re having a lot of,

00:28:41 ►

a lot of the screenings are coming from psychedelic societies.

00:28:44 ►

So Lorenzo, you mentioned Portland.

00:28:46 ►

And is it Kevin, you mentioned Denver?

00:28:50 ►

Yep.

00:28:51 ►

Fantastic.

00:28:51 ►

Because they already have these networks, you know, and it’s just working out perfectly for everybody.

00:28:57 ►

So, thank you.

00:28:59 ►

Yeah, absolutely.

00:29:00 ►

Nice.

00:29:00 ►

Thank you.

00:29:02 ►

How did your psychedelic experience affect you?

00:29:07 ►

Like what, how did it change you? Like benefits, deficits,

00:29:10 ►

like if you can’t talk about the experience itself.

00:29:15 ►

I think,

00:29:16 ►

I think the biggest single thing was just kind of giving me a,

00:29:20 ►

a taste of a much more um macro perspective on life on my life on my priorities

00:29:30 ►

on my values and my goals in life um and it also gave me a very felt not just intellectual

00:29:41 ►

or cognitive but a very felt sense of connection with the natural world around me.

00:29:46 ►

The two biggest take-homes.

00:29:49 ►

I was thinking, Rob, that you had this experience

00:29:52 ►

and then you integrated it into your work life in particular

00:29:57 ►

because you’re a filmmaker.

00:29:59 ►

And, of course, not many of us are filmmakers,

00:30:03 ►

but what I’m thinking is the way that people can bring these experiences, one way to bring it into your life is what I call the Myron Stoleroff method.

00:30:14 ►

And his method was if you’re close enough to talk to somebody, talk about psychedelics.

00:30:19 ►

So one of the ways that people can use your film, I think, is to watch it themselves, of course,

00:30:25 ►

and then at work, school, wherever you are, say, man, I just saw this greatest film.

00:30:31 ►

Can you believe this?

00:30:32 ►

And ask about maybe Alan Watts or somebody pretty non-controversial,

00:30:36 ►

something you hear in the film about it, and get people talking.

00:30:39 ►

Say, I’ve got it at my house.

00:30:40 ►

Do you want to come over and see it?

00:30:41 ►

And I think that way we start, you know, it’s building up to this. I don’t know if you’ve heard in England, there’s a group here in the States,

00:30:48 ►

they’re trying to make February 20, coming out day. Well, they’re not in the States,

00:30:52 ►

they’re actually from Costa Rica that started this, they have hundreds of people in 40 countries

00:30:56 ►

that are organizing this and coming out of the psychedelic closet day. And you know, you did that

00:31:02 ►

by doing this film, you know, I did it by doing the podcast,

00:31:05 ►

but not everybody can or should, quite frankly. You know, there’s people who have jobs and

00:31:10 ►

positions that they have to be more careful about, but they can at least say, man, I saw this cool

00:31:15 ►

film. Did you know that Alan Watts was into psychedelics or something like that? You can,

00:31:20 ►

it’s an icebreaker. And I think this is a great way to do it. And I just can’t encourage people enough to watch this, this film.

00:31:27 ►

Anyhow, it’s, it’s a really nice thing that you’ve done a great project.

00:31:32 ►

And I hope that it’s just the beginning of many because the,

00:31:36 ►

the talent that you have and that you’ve assembled the, the graphics, again,

00:31:40 ►

I can’t say enough about him.

00:31:42 ►

Please tell your graphic artists that he’s a genius.

00:31:44 ►

No, thank you, Lorenzo. That will mean a lot to him. Please tell your graphic artists that he’s a genius.

00:31:45 ►

No, thank you, Lorenzo.

00:31:47 ►

That will mean a lot to him.

00:31:48 ►

And it means a lot to me too.

00:31:49 ►

Thank you.

00:31:53 ►

But do you have anything you’d like to say to people as far as how to encourage them to promote your film?

00:32:00 ►

Yeah, so we were talking about the importance

00:32:02 ►

of talking to each other

00:32:03 ►

and what we’re finding with the screenings of Journeys.

00:32:08 ►

Whenever they’re happening around the world, as I said,

00:32:11 ►

people are doing it in their local town hall or in a big 200-seat cinema

00:32:15 ►

or in their apartment with their mates.

00:32:19 ►

What we’re finding is that space after the film screen,

00:32:23 ►

sometimes people invite a local speaker

00:32:25 ►

you know who’s relevant to psychedelics and so forth uh sometimes there are even panel discussions

00:32:30 ►

or as i said sometimes it’s people with their mates the space that this film seems to open up

00:32:36 ►

after it’s finished playing i think is a really valuable one for people to have these conversations

00:32:42 ►

and somehow doing it publicly doing it in the town

00:32:45 ►

hall doing it in the cinema it makes people realize they’re not so alone with these experiences or

00:32:52 ►

with these thoughts and um so i would really encourage anyone who’s on the fence and maybe

00:32:58 ►

half interested to just take the plunge and get in touch and and put on a screening in your local

00:33:03 ►

area because um i think all of our communities need these discussions right now.

00:33:08 ►

I’m going to email some of the people that I know that are working

00:33:11 ►

on the February 20th coming out day because this could be something

00:33:14 ►

that people use to come out, say, take a look at this.

00:33:18 ►

So I want to do everything I can to help you guys, Rob, get this thing out

00:33:23 ►

because it’s going to help us all

00:33:25 ►

the more people that learn this story

00:33:28 ►

the truth of the story

00:33:29 ►

the better off this planet’s going to be

00:33:32 ►

at least that’s my opinion

00:33:34 ►

and I’m sticking to it

00:33:35 ►

thanks Lorenzo

00:33:37 ►

I’m really grateful anything you can do

00:33:40 ►

and your listeners can do to spread the word

00:33:42 ►

and these guys here

00:33:44 ►

there’s a couple dozen of us here right now and uh uh these guys are are the regulars most of them that

00:33:50 ►

i see all the time i’m really shocked to see them here uh uh ditching work or whatever they’re doing

00:33:55 ►

it’s an unusual time for us but uh so thanks thanks for making that shift in time as well

00:34:02 ►

to accommodate me i appreciate it it. Well, yeah.

00:34:12 ►

And, you know, I might try to do this more regularly and pick up, you know, get a few more people that are overseas.

00:34:17 ►

Because like you say, Brickset, you guys have detached from Europe.

00:34:21 ►

Well, with the guy in the White House, we’ve detached from the whole world. So we understand what it’s like to be kind of alone. But in my

00:34:27 ►

opinion, it’s a good thing to have the American empire come to an end, but not the way it’s

00:34:32 ►

happening. But we won’t get into politics now. We don’t need to do that. It’s these connections

00:34:38 ►

that really matter. Yeah. Yeah, it is. And I and I, you know, I, I, I hope that you, you might be available to

00:34:46 ►

zoom into some screenings that people are doing, if they can work the time out on a weekend or

00:34:52 ►

something like that. I think that’d be really valuable. I’ll talk to people in Portland. I

00:34:58 ►

know I’ve had some Portland Psychedelic Society is pretty active, and maybe they could coordinate

00:35:03 ►

something where you could zoom into it too. So that would be fantastic um I’ve never been to the states and any excuse to come

00:35:10 ►

would be very welcome I’ve been to England several times have a lot of friends there so

00:35:16 ►

I love England particularly the south down in the down by the moors is where I liked it

00:35:22 ►

but anyhow we’re uh we’re taking your time now.

00:35:26 ►

And I know you just got home from work.

00:35:27 ►

And I appreciate you zooming in for us here today.

00:35:32 ►

Well, listen, everybody, I thank all of you.

00:35:34 ►

And until next week, keep the old faith and stay high.

00:35:39 ►

Now, before I forget to do this,

00:35:41 ►

I want to recognize three of the people who worked on Journeys to the Edge of Consciousness with Rob Harper.

00:35:47 ►

And they are the brilliant animator Henry Lambourne, music by Bruce Gainsford, and the interviews were filmed by Luke Harper.

00:35:57 ►

Well done to all of you. I really think you did a great job.

00:36:07 ►

job. Now, as I said earlier, I’m going to play a few short recordings from podcasts that I’ve done earlier that featured the same three speakers who are also featured in Rob’s film.

00:36:13 ►

Now, if you go to our website, psychedelicsalon.com, and click on the link titled Podcasts,

00:36:20 ►

you’ll be taken to a page that lists all of our podcasts, well over 600 of them,

00:36:24 ►

and each of them are on a single line with a link to the program notes for that show.

00:36:29 ►

To help narrow your search, you’ll find a drop-down menu on the right sidebar,

00:36:34 ►

and it’s labeled Listing of Speakers and Topics.

00:36:38 ►

Well, if you click it and scroll down to the listing for Alan Watts,

00:36:41 ►

you’ll see the number 11 in parentheses next to it,

00:36:45 ►

and that indicates that there are 11 podcasts here in the salon featuring Alan Watts, you’ll see the number 11 in parentheses next to it, and that indicates that there are 11 podcasts here in the salon featuring Alan Watts. Click it,

00:36:50 ►

and you’ll find a listing of these programs. So right now, I’m going to play a little bit

00:36:55 ►

of an Alan Watts lecture from podcast number 213, which is titled The Alchemy of LSD.

00:37:02 ►

The Alchemy of LSD.

00:37:10 ►

And so it is with the current, what we will call LSD scene,

00:37:13 ►

that is raging through the United States.

00:37:19 ►

It unfortunately lacks discipline.

00:37:26 ►

And I’m not trying to say this in a kind of severe, authoritarian, paternalisticistic way but only that it would be so much more fun if it had it

00:37:29 ►

in other words

00:37:32 ►

when people try to express

00:37:37 ►

what they have seen in this kind of changed state of consciousness

00:37:42 ►

they show five movies going on at once,

00:37:46 ►

projected upon torn bed sheets

00:37:49 ►

with stroboscopic lights going as fast as possible at the same time

00:37:53 ►

and eleven jazz bands playing.

00:37:56 ►

And they’re going to blow their minds, baby.

00:38:04 ►

And everybody else who hasn’t seen this thing

00:38:07 ►

look around and say

00:38:08 ►

well it’s a mess

00:38:10 ►

I don’t like the looks of it

00:38:12 ►

let’s suppose that while you were very very high

00:38:16 ►

on LSD

00:38:17 ►

you looked into a filthy ashtray

00:38:18 ►

and you saw the beatific vision

00:38:20 ►

which is of course the case

00:38:23 ►

because wherever you look,

00:38:26 ►

if your eyes are open,

00:38:28 ►

you will see the face of the divine.

00:38:30 ►

Then you come out of your ecstasy

00:38:33 ►

with the dirty ashtray

00:38:34 ►

and say to everybody,

00:38:36 ►

here it is.

00:38:44 ►

No.

00:38:46 ►

There is a possibility if you are

00:38:49 ►

an extraordinarily

00:38:50 ►

skillful painter

00:38:51 ►

or even photographer

00:38:52 ►

of presenting

00:38:55 ►

the dirty ashtray

00:38:56 ►

so that everybody else

00:38:57 ►

will see

00:38:58 ►

almost what you saw

00:38:59 ►

in it

00:39:00 ►

but you will have

00:39:02 ►

to have a technique

00:39:03 ►

which will translate

00:39:04 ►

every grain of ash into a jewel.

00:39:09 ►

Because that’s what you actually saw.

00:39:13 ►

But that requires mastery of an art.

00:39:18 ►

And I’m afraid people think that all it’s necessary to do is just throw out any old thing,

00:39:27 ►

because under that transformed state of consciousness, any old thing is the works.

00:39:33 ►

But nobody else can see it if they haven’t shared that point of view.

00:39:38 ►

This becomes, for us in the United States, an extremely important social problem.

00:39:47 ►

The cat is out of the bag.

00:39:56 ►

We are living in a scientific world where secrets cannot be kept. And anyone, anytime,

00:40:06 ►

can pick up something which will short-circuit all the ancient religious techniques yoga practice meditation

00:40:06 ►

etc. etc.

00:40:07 ►

this is all very embarrassing

00:40:08 ►

but it will happen

00:40:10 ►

not for everybody

00:40:11 ►

but for a lot of people

00:40:12 ►

and they will

00:40:14 ►

see

00:40:14 ►

what all those

00:40:15 ►

sages

00:40:16 ►

and buddhas

00:40:17 ►

and yogis

00:40:18 ►

and

00:40:19 ►

prophets

00:40:20 ►

saw

00:40:21 ►

in ancient times

00:40:22 ►

and it will be very clear

00:40:23 ►

so you see you can say saw in ancient times and it will be very clear.

00:40:27 ►

So you see, you can say look at all these people

00:40:31 ►

who haven’t seen it.

00:40:35 ►

This is a temptation.

00:40:37 ►

Look at them all going about their business

00:40:39 ►

earning money

00:40:40 ►

and grinding it out at the bank

00:40:44 ►

or the insurance office or whatever it is

00:40:46 ►

every day, and how serious they look all about it and they don’t really know it’s a game.

00:40:51 ►

And you can cultivate a certain contempt for people like that.

00:40:55 ►

But it’s very, very bad to do that.

00:41:00 ►

Because, of course, don’t forget they have a certain contempt for you.

00:41:07 ►

because of course don’t forget they have a certain contempt for you you see always the nice people in town who live in the best residences they know that

00:41:16 ►

they’re nice because there are some people on the other side of the tracks

00:41:20 ►

who are not nice and so at their parties, they have a lot to say about the people

00:41:27 ►

who are not nice, because that boosts their collective ego. There would be no other way of

00:41:34 ►

doing it. You don’t know that you’re a law-abiding citizen unless there are some people who aren’t.

00:41:40 ►

And if it’s important to you to congratulate yourself on being law-abiding,

00:41:47 ►

you therefore have to have some criminal classes.

00:41:50 ►

Outside the pale, of course, of your immediate associates.

00:41:55 ►

On the other hand, the people who are not nice, they have their parties.

00:42:00 ►

And they boost their collective ego by saying that they’re the people who are really in.

00:42:07 ►

Whereas these poor squares who deliver the mail faithfully and who carry on what you call responsible jobs, they’re just dupes. Or when they earn their money,

00:42:13 ►

all they do is they buy toy rocket ships with it, and go roaring around and so on, and that’s,

00:42:19 ►

they think that’s pleasure. So the people who are not nice boost their collective ego in that way neither of them realize that they need the other just as much as a flower needs

00:42:29 ►

a bee and a bee needs a flower so you when you see the people who you think

00:42:39 ►

are not in on the secret you If you really understand, you have to revise your opinion completely

00:42:46 ►

and say that the squares

00:42:48 ►

are the people who are really far out.

00:42:52 ►

Because they don’t even know where they started.

00:42:57 ►

See, an enlightened Hindu or Buddhist

00:43:01 ►

looks at the ignorant people of this world

00:43:03 ►

and says

00:43:05 ►

my respects

00:43:07 ►

because here I see

00:43:10 ►

the divine essence

00:43:11 ►

having altogether

00:43:12 ►

forgotten what it is

00:43:14 ►

and playing the most

00:43:16 ►

far out game

00:43:17 ►

of being completely lost

00:43:18 ►

congratulations

00:43:21 ►

how far out can you get?

00:43:31 ►

So if you understand that,

00:43:33 ►

you don’t start a war with people you might say are square.

00:43:37 ►

Don’t challenge them.

00:43:38 ►

Don’t bug them.

00:43:40 ►

Don’t frighten them.

00:43:42 ►

The reason is not because they are immature,

00:43:47 ►

because they are babies, and you mustn’t scare babies.

00:43:48 ►

It’s nothing to do with that.

00:43:52 ►

You mustn’t frighten them because they are doing a very far-out act.

00:43:56 ►

They are walking on a tightrope, miles up,

00:43:59 ►

and they’ve got to do that balancing act,

00:44:00 ►

and if you shout, they may lose their nerve.

00:44:06 ►

See, that’s what we call the responsible people of the world are doing.

00:44:11 ►

It is an act. It’s a game, just like the tightrope walker. But it’s a risky one. And you can get ulcers from it and all sorts of troubles. But you must respect it and say congratulations

00:44:20 ►

on being so far out. This is the whole essence, you see, of seeing,

00:44:26 ►

if you really see,

00:44:28 ►

into the secret

00:44:29 ►

that

00:44:31 ►

the world

00:44:33 ►

doesn’t contain any serious threats in it

00:44:37 ►

because it’s all the basic you

00:44:39 ►

running up behind itself and saying boo

00:44:41 ►

to see if you can get yourself to jump out of your skin.

00:44:47 ►

If you see that, be cool.

00:44:53 ►

And back in the 60s, Alan Watts was one of the coolest dudes around.

00:44:58 ►

Just to give you a little idea of how in the mix he was back then, it was on Watts’ houseboat tied up in Sausalito just

00:45:06 ►

across the bay from San Francisco that Allen Ginsberg, Gary Snyder, and Alan Cohen met with

00:45:13 ►

Watts and Timothy Leary shortly after the first human being. And you may remember that being as

00:45:19 ►

the event where Timothy Leary first said, turn on, tune in, and drop out. And it was at that so-called houseboat summit

00:45:27 ►

that Leary was first critiqued for the meme that he’d just started.

00:45:32 ►

And if you’re wondering how Leary, in hindsight,

00:45:36 ►

thought that he should have phrased it,

00:45:38 ►

well, you can go to podcast number 193

00:45:40 ►

and listen to a recording of that event.

00:45:43 ►

But right now, let’s move on to Dr. Timothy Leary

00:45:46 ►

himself. And if you scroll down to Timothy Leary’s link on that drop-down menu on my podcast page,

00:45:53 ►

you’ll see that there are 59 podcasts so far of Dr. Leary. And for that wealth of audio treasures,

00:46:01 ►

we also have Dennis Berry to thank. As the longtime protector of the Leary

00:46:06 ►

Archive, before it was acquired by the New York City Public Library, well, it was Dennis who did

00:46:12 ►

everything she could to keep people’s interests alive in Leary’s archive materials. And one of

00:46:18 ►

the ways that she did that was to give me digital copies of many of his talks that I podcast.

00:46:24 ►

And today, of course, you can go to the library in New York and listen to the originals,

00:46:28 ►

or you can listen to them here in the Psychedelic Salon.

00:46:32 ►

Right now, I’m going to play a selection for you of a Timothy Leary talk from my podcast number 175,

00:46:39 ►

which is titled, The Intelligent Use of Psychedelic Drugs.

00:46:43 ►

titled The Intelligent Use of Psychedelic Drugs.

00:46:50 ►

Just north of Athens is a place called Eleusis.

00:46:55 ►

And you well know the Eleusinian Mysteries for hundreds and hundreds of years were practiced there.

00:46:56 ►

Plato, Aristotle, most of those great philosophers went through the mysteries there.

00:47:00 ►

And recently, drug ethologists and scholars like Robert Gordon Watson and Lagra

00:47:06 ►

have told us that the key to the Illusinian Mysteries was a ceremonial plant

00:47:11 ►

which is probably related to LSD.

00:47:13 ►

Now we popped up throughout history in France,

00:47:18 ►

the Hashishins, Baudelaire, Gautier, Verlin.

00:47:22 ►

We popped up in England, Wordsworth, Colleridge, Nietzsche.

00:47:31 ►

Nietzsche was over there in Germany, you know, he was very sickly.

00:47:34 ►

They used to say when you went to see Nietzsche, he was like going into a drugstore.

00:47:40 ►

I wonder why he got all those crazy ideas.

00:47:43 ►

I wonder why I got all those crazy ideas.

00:47:52 ►

Now, you’re never going to read about the history of brain exploration in the textbooks in institutions like this, tax-supported, run by academic politicians

00:47:58 ►

to keep young people serenely and productively stupid.

00:48:02 ►

serenely and productively stupid.

00:48:09 ►

You have to, you know,

00:48:11 ►

it’s an intelligence test.

00:48:12 ►

If you want to get smart,

00:48:13 ►

you have to learn how to get smart.

00:48:14 ►

You have to look through history and you’ll find the fingerprints,

00:48:17 ►

the footprints,

00:48:18 ►

the vapor trails of people like us

00:48:21 ►

who have been doing

00:48:23 ►

what we’re doing here tonight,

00:48:26 ►

trying to learn how to grow and develop and make it a better planet.

00:48:30 ►

You know, American history is filled with people who knew how to use drugs intelligently.

00:48:35 ►

Robert Louis Stevenson, Edgar Allan Poe.

00:48:38 ►

You know, Edgar Allan Poe was actually considered in Europe to be the ultimate North American

00:48:44 ►

writer, much more famous there than here.

00:48:49 ►

Coming from Harvard, as I used to,

00:48:51 ►

it was a source of great amusement to realize that Ralph Waldo Emerson,

00:48:56 ►

who really started the American Transcendental Movement,

00:48:58 ►

who got kicked out of Harvard in 1838 because he went there and said,

00:49:02 ►

don’t go to those big Unitarian and Presbyterian churches in Boston.

00:49:06 ►

You’re going to find God within.

00:49:09 ►

Transcend this

00:49:10 ►

outer stuff. They didn’t want him around. They kept him

00:49:12 ►

away for 38 years.

00:49:14 ►

How come he got that way?

00:49:16 ►

Well, it turned out that he, along with

00:49:17 ►

Margaret Fuller, our first great feminist woman,

00:49:20 ►

had gone over to Europe and hung out

00:49:22 ►

with the Wordsworths

00:49:23 ►

and the Hashishins in

00:49:25 ►

Paris.

00:49:27 ►

And we have well-documented stories of how they turned on intelligently to pursue the

00:49:34 ►

philosophic quest.

00:49:36 ►

My favorite Harvard intellectual is a man named William James, who actually founded

00:49:41 ►

the psychology department there.

00:49:42 ►

He’s considered to be the father of American psychology.

00:49:42 ►

who actually founded the psychology department there.

00:49:44 ►

He’s considered to be the father of American psychology.

00:49:49 ►

At the age of 13, according to his brother Henry’s memoirs,

00:49:51 ►

William James was in France.

00:49:53 ►

Now talk about teenage punks.

00:49:56 ►

At the age of 13,

00:50:00 ►

William James, coming from one of our top Brahmin Boston families,

00:50:01 ►

was experimenting with all sorts of curious

00:50:03 ►

and strange brain drugs in France.

00:50:05 ►

He later wrote the book Varieties of Literature Experience,

00:50:08 ►

in which he said over and over again,

00:50:11 ►

no attempt at the metaphysical quest,

00:50:13 ►

no attempt to probe the philosophic wonders of the cosmos

00:50:16 ►

can be undertaken by those that don’t have some experience with chemicals.

00:50:22 ►

In his case, it was peyote nitrous oxide.

00:50:21 ►

with chemicals.

00:50:24 ►

In his case, it was peyote nitrous oxide.

00:50:28 ►

Not to mention,

00:50:31 ►

a man that I admire so much that you just heard talking here

00:50:33 ►

has just told us about the role

00:50:35 ►

of Harvard University and the CIA

00:50:37 ►

in the non-intelligent use of drugs.

00:50:43 ►

So as I speak tonight

00:50:44 ►

and as we confer here tonight, we are not alone.

00:50:47 ►

This tradition of interquest has always been a little on the outs because the power holders,

00:50:52 ►

the politicians, the kings, the generals, the bishops, the popes, one thing they’re all agreed

00:50:57 ►

on, they don’t want human beings learning how to access their own brain. Because if they do that,

00:51:03 ►

self-reward, self-growth, self-development

00:51:06 ►

takes the place of slavery for the hive.

00:51:09 ►

Now, this was first brought to my attention in 1961

00:51:12 ►

by one of my great teachers,

00:51:14 ►

Aldous Huxley,

00:51:15 ►

who came to join us at Harvard then.

00:51:18 ►

I remember one night,

00:51:20 ►

one night,

00:51:24 ►

during actually it was a psilocybin session, when I was kind of complaining to Alice Oxley

00:51:30 ►

about the slowness of the American public to catch on to the fact that you can access

00:51:36 ►

and activate your own brain, and Alice said, well, you must realize, Timothy, that the

00:51:43 ►

religion of this country is totally based upon opposition to drugs.

00:51:49 ►

I said, what do you mean?

00:51:50 ►

He said, well, Timothy, haven’t you read the Bible?

00:51:53 ►

I said, no, there’s nothing about drugs in the Bible.

00:51:56 ►

He said, well, you should go back and read it again.

00:51:58 ►

Don’t you remember Genesis, the first book of the Bible?

00:52:03 ►

Jehovah?

00:52:03 ►

Jehovah?

00:52:04 ►

You know, he’s an old shepherd,

00:52:06 ►

Semitic, macho,

00:52:08 ►

mafia condominium owner.

00:52:12 ►

Jehovah, just out of

00:52:14 ►

the hunter-gatherer stage,

00:52:16 ►

early paleolithic God,

00:52:18 ►

you know, looks around

00:52:19 ►

and said to Adam and Eve,

00:52:21 ►

hey, this is my home

00:52:24 ►

and I’m going to let you live

00:52:24 ►

in this wonderful Garden of Eden.

00:52:27 ►

Do whatever you want,

00:52:29 ►

except there are a couple

00:52:30 ►

of food and drug regulations.

00:52:36 ►

See this tree here?

00:52:37 ►

The fruit of this

00:52:38 ►

is a controlled substance.

00:52:44 ►

And you are forbidden by law

00:52:46 ►

to ingest, absorb, or in any way

00:52:48 ►

taste of this

00:52:49 ►

because if you do

00:52:50 ►

the blinds will fall from your eyes

00:52:52 ►

and you’ll see

00:52:53 ►

through good and evil

00:52:54 ►

and become a god like me

00:52:55 ►

you don’t want to do that

00:52:59 ►

Adam said no sir

00:53:00 ►

see the fruit of this tree over here

00:53:02 ►

is also a controlled substance

00:53:05 ►

because if you eat of this

00:53:06 ►

you will become immortal

00:53:08 ►

and a god like me

00:53:10 ►

you don’t want to do that

00:53:11 ►

do you

00:53:11 ►

of course Adam said

00:53:13 ►

no sir

00:53:14 ►

now it’s very curious

00:53:16 ►

about most of the

00:53:17 ►

organized

00:53:18 ►

political associations

00:53:20 ►

and the great

00:53:21 ►

great monolithic

00:53:22 ►

monotheistic

00:53:23 ►

power religions

00:53:24 ►

they are all very male oriented and they’re not very friendly to the female sex.

00:53:29 ►

You know, Christianity is not very flattering to women.

00:53:33 ►

They lay all the blame on Eve, remember?

00:53:37 ►

That as soon as Jehovah had jumped in his squad car and gone back to headquarters. It was that naughty, hip-wiggling Eve that led poor

00:53:49 ►

straight arrow Adam. Adam, you’ve got to try this. It gets kind of comic, you know, the

00:54:00 ►

sirens come and the first narcotics bust in history is Jehovah.

00:54:12 ►

So, Elder S. Hoekse continued, you see that, what’s Christianity all about? Well,

00:54:23 ►

the only son of Jehovah, Ralph, came down here to sacrifice his life for our original sin. Oh, yeah? What was our original sin?

00:54:27 ►

Oh, the original sin was the one in the garden.

00:54:28 ►

I see.

00:54:33 ►

The original sin was the intelligent use of drugs in the Garden of Eden.

00:54:35 ►

Now, this is not going to be easy, Timothy.

00:54:42 ►

Now, you know, believe it or not,

00:54:50 ►

I’ve come here tonight loaded with scientific and technological information to discuss the intelligent use of drugs.

00:55:00 ►

But after listening to John’s talk and this incredible rapport with the audience, I realized that most everyone in this audience is using drugs more intelligently than I am tonight.

00:55:07 ►

So I’m in a bad position here.

00:55:15 ►

So, is it any wonder that President Nixon once called Dr. Leary the most dangerous man in America?

00:55:19 ►

Now, while Leary did a significant amount of serious psychedelic research,

00:55:24 ►

he also let the world know that, well, these drugs can sometimes be a lot of fun.

00:55:29 ►

And even with all of the tragedy that dogged his life,

00:55:32 ►

he never lost his sense of humor and his sense of fun.

00:55:36 ►

Of course, at the last corporate job that I had,

00:55:40 ►

we considered FUN to be an acronym,

00:55:43 ►

so that when the bosses would come around and ask us how

00:55:46 ►

things were going, we’d say, well, this is really fun. And what we meant is the acronym which stood

00:55:52 ►

for Fucked Up Nightmare. So if I ever tell you that I’m having fun, you now know what I’m saying.

00:55:59 ►

But I digress. Anyway, now it’s time to hear from Aldous Huxley. And while it may not be as clear

00:56:09 ►

to you as it is to me why these three elders were chosen to represent the beginning of what some

00:56:16 ►

people are now calling a psychedelic renaissance, I don’t think anybody can doubt that it was and is

00:56:22 ►

Aldous Huxley who is considered the intellectual cornerstone of this new movement.

00:56:28 ►

And hey, just now it dawned on me that both Watts and Huxley were British, although most of their psychedelic work took place in the States.

00:56:37 ►

So I guess that we’re indebted to two Englishmen and an American elf for launching this grand adventure in consciousness,

00:56:45 ►

one in which you and I are right this very minute participating.

00:56:51 ►

So as we listen to Huxley’s words right now,

00:56:54 ►

I think it’s important to keep in mind that this talk was given over 50 years ago.

00:56:59 ►

But in my opinion, it could have been given last night.

00:57:03 ►

But, in my opinion, it could have been given last night.

00:57:17 ►

Today, we are faced, I think, with the approach of what may be called the ultimate revolution,

00:57:24 ►

the final revolution, where a man can act directly on the mind body of his fellows.

00:57:32 ►

Well, needless to say, some kind of direct action on human mind bodies has been going on since the beginning of time.

00:57:38 ►

But this has generally been of a violent nature.

00:57:42 ►

The techniques of terrorism have been known from time immemorial,

00:57:48 ►

and people have employed them with more or less ingenuity,

00:57:58 ►

sometimes with the utmost crudity, sometimes with a good deal of skill acquired by a process of trial and error,

00:58:07 ►

finding out what the best ways of using torture, imprisonment, constraints of various kinds.

00:58:13 ►

But as, I think it was Metternich said many years ago,

00:58:17 ►

you can do everything with Bernets except sit on them.

00:58:24 ►

That if you are going to control any population for any length of time,

00:58:26 ►

you must have some measure of consent.

00:58:32 ►

It’s exceedingly difficult to see how pure terrorism can function indefinitely.

00:58:35 ►

It can function for a fairly long time,

00:58:41 ►

but I think sooner or later you have to bring in an element of persuasion,

00:58:45 ►

an element of getting people to consent to what is happening to them.

00:58:52 ►

Well, it seems to me that the nature of the ultimate revolution with which we are now faced is precisely this, that we are in process of developing a whole series of techniques

00:58:59 ►

which will enable the controlling oligarchy, who have always existed and presumably always will exist,

00:59:09 ►

to get people actually to love their servitude.

00:59:16 ►

This seems to me the ultimate in malevolent revolution, shall we say. And this is a problem which has interested me for many years

00:59:28 ►

and about which I wrote 30 years ago a fable, The Brave New World,

00:59:34 ►

which is essentially the account of a society making use of all the devices at that time available, and some of the devices which I imagined to be possible,

00:59:50 ►

making use of them in order to, first of all, to standardize the population,

00:59:56 ►

to iron out inconvenient human differences to create, so to say, mass-produced models of human beings arranged in some kind

01:00:11 ►

of a scientific caste system.

01:00:16 ►

And since then, I have continued to be extremely interested in this problem, and I have noticed, with increasing dismay,

01:00:28 ►

that a number of the predictions which were purely fantastic when I made them 30 years ago

01:00:34 ►

have come true, or seem in process of coming true,

01:00:39 ►

that a number of techniques about which I talked, seem to be here already, and that there seems to be a general movement in the direction of this kind of ultimate revolution,

01:00:53 ►

this method of control by which people can be made to enjoy a state of affairs

01:01:01 ►

which, by any decent standard, they ought not to enjoy.

01:01:07 ►

This, I mean, the enjoyment of servitude.

01:01:11 ►

Well, this process, as I say, has gone on for over the years, and I become more and more interested in what is happening.

01:01:30 ►

And here I would like briefly to compare the parable of Brave New World with another parable, which was put forth more recently, in George Orwell’s book, 1984,

01:01:49 ►

Orwell wrote his book between, I think, between 45 and 48,

01:01:55 ►

at the time when the Stalinist terror regime was still in full swing,

01:02:00 ►

and just after the collapse of the Hitlerian terror regime.

01:02:07 ►

And his book, which I admire greatly, it’s a book of very great talent and extraordinary ingenuity,

01:02:16 ►

shows, so to say, a projection into the future of the immediate past of what for him was the immediate past and the immediate

01:02:26 ►

present.

01:02:27 ►

It was a projection into the future of a society where control was exercised wholly by terrorism

01:02:35 ►

and violent attacks upon the mind-body of individuals.

01:02:43 ►

upon the mind-body of individuals.

01:02:50 ►

Whereas my own book, which was written in 1932,

01:02:56 ►

when there was only a mild dictatorship in the form of Mussolini in existence,

01:03:00 ►

was not overshadowed by the idea of terrorism,

01:03:06 ►

and I was therefore free in a way which Orwell was not free to think about these other methods of control, these non-violent methods.

01:03:15 ►

And I’m inclined to think that the scientific dictatorships of the future

01:03:22 ►

and I think there are going to be scientific dictatorships in many parts of the world, will be probably a good deal nearer to the brave new world pattern than to the 1984 pattern.

01:03:35 ►

They will be a good deal nearer, not because of any humanitarian qualms in the scientific dictators, but simply because the brave new world pattern

01:03:45 ►

is probably a good deal more efficient than the other.

01:03:48 ►

That if you can get people to consent to the state of affairs in which they are living,

01:03:54 ►

the state of servitude, the state of having their differences ironed out

01:03:59 ►

and being made amenable to mass production methods on the social level,

01:04:06 ►

if you can do this, then you are likely to have a much more stable and much more lasting society,

01:04:14 ►

a much more easily controllable society,

01:04:17 ►

than you would if you were relying wholly on clubs and firing squads and concentration camps.

01:04:23 ►

on clubs and firing squads and concentration camps.

01:04:32 ►

So that my own feeling is that the 1984 picture was tinged, of course,

01:04:37 ►

by the immediate past and the present in which Orwell was living,

01:04:44 ►

but that the past and present of those years does not represent, I feel,

01:04:48 ►

the likely trend of what is going to happen.

01:04:51 ►

Needless to say, we shall never get rid of terrorism.

01:04:54 ►

This will always find its way to the surface. But I think that insofar as dictators become more and more scientific,

01:05:02 ►

more and more concerned with a technically perfectly running society,

01:05:07 ►

they will be more and more interested in the kind of techniques which I imagined and described from existing realities in Brave New World.

01:05:22 ►

in Brave New World.

01:05:32 ►

So that it seems to me then that this ultimate revolution is really not very far away,

01:05:40 ►

that we already, a number of the techniques for bringing about this kind of controller here,

01:05:49 ►

and it remains to be seen when and where and by whom they will first be applied in any large scale.

01:05:57 ►

And first, let me talk a little bit about the improvement even in the techniques of terrorism.

01:06:01 ►

I think there have been improvements. Pavlov, after all, made some extremely profound observations,

01:06:08 ►

both on animals and on human beings. And he found, among other things, that conditioning

01:06:17 ►

techniques applied to animals or humans in a state either of psychological or physical stress,

01:06:27 ►

sank in, so to say, very deeply into the mind-body of the creature

01:06:31 ►

and were extremely difficult to get rid of.

01:06:34 ►

They seemed to be embedded more deeply than other forms of conditioning.

01:06:41 ►

And this, of course, this fact, I think, was discovered empirically

01:06:46 ►

in the past. People did make use of many of these techniques. But the difference between

01:06:54 ►

the old empirical intuitive methods and our own methods is the difference between a sort

01:07:01 ►

of hit and miss craftsman’s point of view and the genuinely scientific point of view.

01:07:09 ►

I mean, I think there is a real difference between ourselves and, say, the inquisitors of the 16th century.

01:07:17 ►

We know much more precisely what we are doing than they knew,

01:07:21 ►

and we can extend, because of our theoretical knowledge, we can extend

01:07:26 ►

what we are doing over a wider area with a greater assurance of producing something which

01:07:36 ►

really works.

01:07:37 ►

In this context, I would like to mention the extremely interesting chapters in Dr. William Sargent’s Battle for the Mind,

01:07:50 ►

where he points out how intuitively some of the great religious teachers, leaders of the past,

01:07:58 ►

hit on the Pavlovian method.

01:08:00 ►

He speaks specifically of Wesley’s method of producing conversions, which were

01:08:06 ►

essentially based upon a technique of heightening psychological stress to the limit by talking

01:08:15 ►

about hellfire, and so making people extremely vulnerable to suggestion, and then suddenly

01:08:21 ►

releasing this stress by offering the hopes of heaven.

01:08:26 ►

And this is a very interesting chapter of showing how completely, on purely intuitive

01:08:34 ►

and empirical grounds, a skilled natural psychologist, as Wesley was, could discover these Pavlovian

01:08:43 ►

methods.

01:08:44 ►

could discover these Pavlovian methods.

01:08:50 ►

Well, as I say, we now know the reason why these techniques worked, and there is no doubt at all that we can, if we want to,

01:08:54 ►

carry them much further than was possible in the past.

01:09:00 ►

And, of course, in the recent history of brainwashing, both as applied to prisoners of war and to the lower personnel within the Communist Party in China,

01:09:18 ►

we see that the Pavlovian methods have been applied systematically and evidently with extraordinary efficacy. I mean,

01:09:26 ►

I think there can be no doubt that by the application of these methods, a very large

01:09:33 ►

army of totally devoted people has been created. The conditioning has been driven in, so to say, by a kind of psychological ionophoresis,

01:09:47 ►

into the very depth of the people’s being,

01:09:51 ►

and has got so deep that it’s very difficult for it ever to be rooted out.

01:09:56 ►

And these methods, I think, are a real refinement on the older methods of terror, because they combine methods of terror with methods of acceptance, the person who he subjected to a form of inducing a kind of voluntary, quotes, acceptance of the state,

01:10:28 ►

the psychological state into which he has been driven,

01:10:32 ►

and the state of affairs within which he finds himself.

01:10:36 ►

So that, as I say, there has been, I think, a definite improvement, shall we say,

01:10:42 ►

even in the techniques of terrorism.

01:10:46 ►

But then we come to the consideration of other techniques,

01:10:50 ►

of non-terroristic techniques for inducing consent

01:10:55 ►

and for inducing people to love their servitude.

01:11:01 ►

Here, I mean, I think we can, I don’t think I can possibly go into all of them

01:11:06 ►

because I don’t know all of them

01:11:07 ►

but I mean I can mention a few of the more obvious methods

01:11:11 ►

which can now be used

01:11:15 ►

and which are based upon recent scientific findings

01:11:20 ►

first of all there are the methods connected with straight suggestion and hypnosis.

01:11:29 ►

I think we know much more about this subject than was known in the past.

01:11:35 ►

People, of course, have always known about suggestion, and although they didn’t know the word hypnosis, they certainly practiced it in various ways. But we have, I think,

01:11:48 ►

a much greater knowledge of the subject than in the past, and we can make use of our knowledge

01:11:56 ►

in ways which I think the past was probably never able to make use of it. For example, one of the things we have, we now know for certain, is

01:12:07 ►

that there is, of course, an enormous, I mean, this has been always known, a very great difference

01:12:15 ►

between individuals in regard to their suggestibility. But we now, I think, know pretty clearly the sort of statistical structure of a population in regard to its suggestibility.

01:12:31 ►

It’s very interesting when you look at the findings in different fields.

01:12:36 ►

I mean, in the field of hypnosis, in the field of administering placebos, for example,

01:12:49 ►

administering placebos, for example, in the field of general suggestion in states of drowsiness or of light sleep,

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you will find the same sorts of orders of magnitude continually cropping up.

01:13:03 ►

You will find, for example, that the experienced hypnotists will tell one that the number of people,

01:13:11 ►

the percentage of people who can be hypnotized with the utmost facility, just like that, is about 20%. That about a corresponding number at the other end of the scale can, with more or less difficulty, be hypnotized.

01:13:30 ►

That they can gradually be, if you work hard enough at it, be got into the hypnotic state.

01:13:40 ►

And in the same way, the same sort of figures crop up again, for example, in relation to the administration of placebos.

01:13:48 ►

A big experiment was carried out three or four years ago in the General Hospital in Boston on post-operative cases

01:13:58 ►

where several hundred men and women suffering comparable kinds of pain after serious operations,

01:14:07 ►

were given injections whenever they asked for them, whenever the pain got bad,

01:14:15 ►

and the injections, 50% of the time, were of morphine, 50% of the time were of distilled water.

01:14:30 ►

water. And about 20% of those who went through the experiment, about 20% of them got just as much relief from the distilled water as from the morph pure. About 20% got no relief

01:14:35 ►

from the distilled water. And in between were those who got some relief or got relief occasionally. So here again we see the same sort of distribution. And similarly

01:14:49 ►

with regard to what in Brave New World I call hypnopedia, which is the sleep teaching, I

01:14:56 ►

was talking not long ago to a man who manufactures records which people can listen to during their light part of sleep.

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I mean, these are records for getting rich, for sexual satisfaction,

01:15:12 ►

for confidence in salesmanship and so on.

01:15:18 ►

And he said it’s very interesting that these records are sold on a money-back basis, and he says that there

01:15:28 ►

is regularly between 15 and 20 percent of people who write indignantly, saying the records

01:15:33 ►

don’t work at all, and he sends the money back at once. On the other hand, there are

01:15:39 ►

some, what, over 20 percent who write enthusiastically, saying they’re now much richer, their sexual life is much better, etc., etc.

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And these, of course, are the dream clients,

01:15:51 ►

and they buy more of these records.

01:15:53 ►

And then in between are those who complain they’re not getting much results,

01:15:57 ►

and they have to have letters written to them saying,

01:15:59 ►

well, go persist, my dear, go on, and you’ll get there.

01:16:03 ►

And they generally do get results in the long

01:16:08 ►

run. Well, as I say, on the basis of this, I think we see quite clearly that the human

01:16:16 ►

populations can be categorized according to their suggestibility fairly clearly. I suspect very strongly that this 20% is the same in all these cases.

01:16:29 ►

And I suspect also that it would not be at all difficult to recognize in very early childhood

01:16:36 ►

who were those who were extremely suggestible, who were those who were extremely unsuggestible? And who were those who occupied the intermediate space?

01:16:48 ►

Quite clearly, if everybody were extremely unsuggestible, organized society would be quite impossible.

01:16:56 ►

And if everybody were extremely suggestible, then dictatorship would be absolutely inevitable.

01:17:04 ►

I mean, it’s very fortunate we have people who are moderately suggestible in the majority

01:17:09 ►

and who therefore preserve us from dictatorship but do permit organized society to be formed.

01:17:18 ►

But once given the fact that there are these 20% of highly suggestible people,

01:17:24 ►

it becomes quite clear that this is a matter of enormous political importance.

01:17:29 ►

For example, any demagogue who is able to get hold of a large number of these 20% of suggestible people

01:17:38 ►

and to organize them is really in a position to overthrow any government in any country.

01:17:44 ►

is really in a position to overthrow any government in any country.

01:17:52 ►

And I mean, I think this, after all, we’ve had the most incredible example in recent years of what can be done by efficient methods of suggestion and persuasion in the form of Hitler.

01:18:01 ►

Anybody who’s read, for example, Bullock’s Life of Hitler, comes forth from

01:18:07 ►

this with a sort of horrified admiration for this infernal genius, who really understood

01:18:16 ►

human weaknesses, I think almost better than anybody, and who exploited them with all the

01:18:22 ►

resources then available. I mean, he knew everything.

01:18:25 ►

I mean, for example, he knew intuitively this Pavlovian truth

01:18:29 ►

that conditioning installed in a state of stress or fatigue

01:18:34 ►

goes much deeper than conditioning installed at other times.

01:18:39 ►

This was why all his big speeches were organized at night.

01:18:44 ►

He speaks of this quite frankly, of course, in Mein Kampf.

01:18:47 ►

He says this was done solely because people are tired at night

01:18:51 ►

and therefore are much less capable of resisting persuasion

01:18:55 ►

than they would be during the day.

01:18:56 ►

And in all his techniques, he was using,

01:19:04 ►

he had discovered intuitively and by trial and error,

01:19:09 ►

a great many of the weaknesses which we now know about in a sort of scientific way,

01:19:16 ►

I think much more clearly than he did.

01:19:19 ►

But the fact remains that this differential suggestibility, this susceptibility to hypnosis,

01:19:29 ►

I do think is something which has to be considered very carefully in relation to any kind of thought about democratic government.

01:19:46 ►

democratic government. I mean, if there are 20% of the people who can really be suggested into believing almost anything, as evidently they can be, then we have to take extremely

01:19:53 ►

careful steps to prevent the rise of demagogues who will drive them on into extreme positions and then organize them into very, very dangerous armies,

01:20:10 ►

private armies, which may overthrow the government.

01:20:15 ►

Well, this, as I say, is in this field of pure persuasion.

01:20:21 ►

I think we do know much more than we did in the past, and obviously we

01:20:26 ►

now have mechanisms for multiplying the demagogue’s voice and image in a quite hallucinatory way.

01:20:35 ►

I mean, the television and the radio, Hitler was making enormous use of the radio, he could speak to millions of people simultaneously. I mean, this alone,

01:20:47 ►

of course, creates an enormous gulf between the modern and the ancient demagogue. The

01:20:54 ►

ancient demagogue could only appeal to as many people as his voice could reach by the

01:21:00 ►

yelling at his utmost, but the modern demagogue can touch literally millions at a time.

01:21:08 ►

And, of course, with the multiplication of his image,

01:21:11 ►

he can produce this kind of hallucinatory effect,

01:21:16 ►

which is of enormous hypnotic and suggestive importance.

01:21:26 ►

But then there are various other methods which one can think of

01:21:30 ►

which have, thank heaven, as yet not been used,

01:21:35 ►

but which obviously could be used.

01:21:38 ►

There is, for example, the pharmacological method.

01:21:41 ►

This was one of the things I talked about in Brave New World.

01:21:47 ►

I invented a hypothetical drug called Soma, which of course could not exist as it stood

01:21:53 ►

there because it was simultaneously a stimulant, a narcotic and a hallucinogen, which seems

01:21:59 ►

unlikely in one substance. But the point is that in several, if you applied several different substances,

01:22:06 ►

you could get almost all these results even now. And the really interesting thing about

01:22:12 ►

the new chemical substances, the new mind-changing drugs, is this, that whereas if you look back

01:22:19 ►

into history, it’s clear that man has always had a hankering after mind-changing chemicals.

01:22:28 ►

He has always desired to take holidays from himself.

01:22:32 ►

But the, and this is the most extraordinary fact of all,

01:22:36 ►

is that every naturally occurring stimulant, narcotic, sedative or hallucinogen

01:22:42 ►

was discovered before the dawn of history.

01:22:48 ►

I don’t think there is one single one of these naturally occurring ones

01:22:52 ►

which modern science has discovered.

01:22:55 ►

Modern science, of course, has discovered better ways of extracting

01:22:58 ►

the active principles from these drugs,

01:23:01 ►

and, of course, has discovered numerous ways of synthesizing new substances

01:23:06 ►

of extreme power.

01:23:08 ►

But the actual discovery of these naturally occurring things was made by primitive men

01:23:15 ►

goodness knows how many centuries ago. underneath the lake dwellings

01:23:25 ►

the

01:23:26 ►

early neolithic lake dwellings

01:23:30 ►

which have been dug up

01:23:31 ►

in Switzerland

01:23:32 ►

we find poppy heads

01:23:35 ►

which looks as though people were

01:23:37 ►

already using

01:23:39 ►

this most ancient

01:23:41 ►

and powerful and most dangerous

01:23:44 ►

of narcotics

01:23:44 ►

even in the days before the rise of agriculture so that man was this most ancient and powerful and most dangerous of narcotics,

01:23:45 ►

even in the days before the rise of agriculture,

01:23:48 ►

so that man was apparently a dope addict before he was a farmer,

01:23:54 ►

which is a very, very curious comment on human nature.

01:24:00 ►

But the difference, as I say, between the ancient mind changers, the traditional mind changers, and these new substances, is that they were extremely harmful.

01:24:12 ►

And the new ones are not.

01:24:14 ►

I mean, even the permissible mind changer, alcohol is not entirely harmless, as people may have noticed.

01:24:22 ►

is not entirely harmless, as people may have noticed.

01:24:30 ►

And the other ones, the non-permissible ones, such as opium and cocaine,

01:24:34 ►

opium and all its derivatives, are very harmful indeed.

01:24:42 ►

They rapidly produce addiction and in some cases lead at an extraordinary rate to physical degeneration and death.

01:24:47 ►

Whereas these new substances, this is really very extraordinary,

01:24:53 ►

that a number of these new mind-changing substances

01:24:55 ►

can produce enormous revolutions within the mental side of our being,

01:25:03 ►

and yet do almost nothing

01:25:05 ►

to the physiological side.

01:25:08 ►

I mean, you can have an enormous revolution,

01:25:11 ►

for example, with LSD-25

01:25:15 ►

or with the newly synthesized drug psilocybin,

01:25:20 ►

which is the active principle

01:25:21 ►

of the Mexican sacred mushroom.

01:25:24 ►

You can have this enormous mental revolution

01:25:27 ►

with no more physiological revolution

01:25:30 ►

than you would get from drinking two cocktails.

01:25:33 ►

And this is really a most extraordinary fact.

01:25:37 ►

And it is, of course, true that pharmacologists are producing a great many wonder drugs

01:25:43 ►

where the cure is almost worse than the disease.

01:25:49 ►

Every new edition of medical textbooks contains a longer and longer chapter

01:25:56 ►

on what are called iatrogenic diseases, that is to say, diseases caused by doctors.

01:26:12 ►

by doctors. And this is quite true, that many of the Wanda drugs are extremely dangerous.

01:26:18 ►

I mean, they can produce extraordinary effects, and in critical conditions they should certainly be used, but they should be used with the utmost caution. But there is evidently a whole class of drugs affecting the central

01:26:27 ►

nervous system, which can produce enormous changes in sedation, in euphoria, in energizing

01:26:39 ►

the whole mental process, without doing any perceptible harm to the body. And in this sense, this

01:26:48 ►

represents, it seems to me, the most extraordinary revolution that it, in the hands of a dictator,

01:26:59 ►

these substances of one kind or another could be used in the most, well, with complete, first of all, with complete harmlessness.

01:27:13 ►

And the result would be that, I mean, you can imagine a euphoric which would make people thoroughly happy, even in the most abominable circumstances.

01:27:25 ►

I mean, these things are possible.

01:27:27 ►

I mean, this is the extraordinary thing.

01:27:29 ►

I mean, after all, this has even been true with the crude old drugs.

01:27:34 ►

I mean, as a houseman years ago remarked, apropos of Milton’s Paradise Lost,

01:27:41 ►

he says, and beer does more than Milton can to justify God’s ways to men. And

01:27:49 ►

beer is, of course, an extremely crude drug compared with these ones. And you can certainly

01:27:57 ►

say that some of the psychic energizers and the new hallucinants can do incomparably more than Milton and all the theologians combined could possibly do

01:28:07 ►

to make the terrifying mystery of our existence seem more tolerable than it does.

01:28:15 ►

So that here I think one has an enormous area in which the ultimate revolution could function very well indeed, an area in which

01:28:27 ►

a great deal of control could be used by, not through terror, but through making life

01:28:34 ►

seem much more enjoyable than it normally does, enjoyable to the point where, as I’ve

01:28:39 ►

said before, human beings come to love a state of things which by any reasonable and decent human standard

01:28:46 ►

they ought not to love.

01:28:48 ►

And this, I think, is perfectly possible.

01:28:51 ►

And then, again, in the case of these

01:28:54 ►

very strange substances like psilocybin

01:28:57 ►

and lysergic acid,

01:28:59 ►

I think there’s a great deal to be said

01:29:01 ►

for doing what William James talked about,

01:29:05 ►

for getting people to realize that their ordinary sort of common sense view of the world

01:29:12 ►

is not the only view that the universe they inhabit is not the only possible universe.

01:29:18 ►

There are other very strange universes which some people spontaneously inhabit.

01:29:24 ►

I mean, a man like William Blake obviously inhabits an extremely different universe

01:29:28 ►

from that which most people inhabit.

01:29:32 ►

And I think it’s probably very wholesome for people to be permitted to realize this fact,

01:29:39 ►

to perceive that the world of the mind is immensely large

01:29:44 ►

and that there are these very strange

01:29:46 ►

and extraordinary areas in them.

01:29:48 ►

You’re listening to The Psychedelic Salon,

01:29:51 ►

where people are changing their lives

01:29:53 ►

one thought at a time.

01:29:56 ►

Well, now it’s your turn to explore

01:29:58 ►

those uncharted expanses of mind.

01:30:01 ►

I wish you fair winds and calm seas.

01:30:07 ►

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from cyberdelic space. Namaste, my friends.

⚗️ alembic

Explorer

643 - Journeys to the Edge of Consciousness

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Program Notes

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