Greetings from Cyberdelic Space, this is Lorenzo and I'm your host here in the
 psychedelic salon. Well we're winding down to the last three tapes in this
 series of podcasts. Those of you who have been with us here in the psychedelic
 salon for a while know that I've been podcasting a series of conversations
 between Terrence McKenna, Ralph Abraham and Rupert Sheldrake that were held at
 the Esalen Institute in the fall of 1989 and 1990. The cassette recordings of
 these discussions, which the participants called a trial log, were loaned to me by
 Ralph Abraham a few months ago and I've been trying to get at least one tape out
 each week since then. After we listen to today's trial log I'll come back and let
 you know where we are in the series and I'll give you a rough idea of what the
 next month or so of programs will include. But first let's get on with
 today's trial log in which our intrepid trial loggers approach the topic of the
 re-sacralization of the world. I don't know if I have shared with you the story
 of my religious training and upbringing. Maybe that will be appropriate for this
 discussion as I have heard a little bit about yours. My parents of course were
 derived of some Jewish background but after some removal of generations
 particularly my father. My mother had been a regular temple visitor in her
 town until she married my father and since his parents had relocated from New
 York to the backwoods of Vermont in their youth they had no connection with
 any Jewish tradition. So my father was brought up in somewhat of a vacuum.
 Nevertheless he, I think he developed an aversion to organized religion of any
 sort and particularly Jewish. I thought he might have forbade the mention or
 presence of any Jewish religious stuff in the house but my mother denies this.
 Anyway there wasn't any and in the meanwhile he developed a kind of
 religion of his own which was centered on the family and on a concept of love
 which was fairly abstract. So he used to say that love was everything. Occasionally
 some circumstance would cause me to be in a church while a service was going on
 and then I would look around at the other people with heads bowed when told
 to bow their heads thinking I am the only one who's not casting my eyes down.
 I'm the only one that doesn't believe this stuff. So I don't know if there's a
 name for this kind of religious upbringing I guess total vacuum.
 Explicitly my father's idea was it's better to start when you're an adult and
 then you can acquire whatever religious training you want, sort of considering all with an
 open mind. Now I never considered all with an open mind and decided whether to
 have one or none. I just didn't bother to think about it and then I
 studied you know psychoanalysis and music and physics and eventually
 mathematics that has no relationship to any religious tradition. So eventually
 the the 60s happened and probably my first experience that I would now
 identify as a real religious experience was the experience of LSD and whatever
 intrinsic meaning it carried to me without too much suggestion from the set
 setting the popular books and so on. And I immediately thought as many people did
 in those days but not so many today I think that this was a religious
 experience in the true sense of religion as was probably lost from organized
 religion which I knew on the basis of no knowledge or anything just a guess
 because of course I knew people in fact practically everybody I did know went to
 some kind of church or at least had been brought up with one and formally rejected
 it and through them I got the idea that there was no evidence of any sacred
 knowledge outstanding in any of these churches. Through eventually in the study
 of art, architecture, music and so on I could see in the recent past that there
 had been a sacred knowledge in the churches of Europe that was embodied in
 the architecture of the music and so on. It occurred to me that there might be
 what I had recently discovered in the form of religion had become extinct only
 in the recent past in the Western world. These were just idle thoughts as in
 these days in the 60s we were very preoccupied with politics. Then when I
 got to India I found that this lapse of the extinction of the sacred in
 organized religion was sort of reduced to zero there that at least in the with
 the jungle Babas and so on you had a live tradition of identification with
 sacred what I recognized as sacred at that time and an easy sharing of the
 idea of it with the students the chelas and and so on. And then when I returned
 from India to California about the time I met you Terrence I I began to think
 that there might be some way to revitalize the Western tradition of
 course other people were speaking about this also particularly those concerned
 with Western yoga the remnants of the adepts of the Middle Ages and the
 Renaissance and so on and of course we had our great influence from the
 Theosophists and the studies of alchemy and and so on but there was still at
 this time in 1972 a tremendous separation between political activity
 which we were still involved with particularly around issues of chemical
 pollution things like that on the one hand and the loss of the sacred in
 religion on the other hand I mean it was more like it's a shame this pretty thing
 is gone. Then in the course of time these these came together and in the
 suggestion which now I see many people have made in their books about it that
 what's gone wrong in the world now is actually I mean a root cause is the loss
 of the connection to the sacred within and without organized religion. After
 this connection is made then political activity has to address this I mean if
 people have different theories of evil I would call them whether the loss of the
 partnership society in 1400 BC or the loss of the sacred in church ritual
 after the scientific revolution or the population explosion and the advance of
 modern medicine in reducing infant mortality and so on.
 The different theories of evil because of the strength of the direct experience
 I had with the sacred I this became and remains my favorite theory of evil so if
 I was going to direct myself to some activity to not exactly save the world
 but at least to hope in that direction then I would try to create for some
 larger portion of humanity the the lost thread of connection to the sacred. So
 this is the program that we have all thought about under the name the
 re-sacralization of the world. So as far as I know there are just a few proposals
 for any kind of direct action that go in this direction. One is the resumption of
 rituals not native to us but native to other people that still exist in some
 kind of life form such as the shamanism of native tribes. And another idea is the
 revitalization of existing religion by finding means to re-attract people to
 the wonderful churches of the Western world having not only the shape the
 architectural shape most appropriate for communication with the sacred thread but
 also the tradition the morphic field the run all the creode of this connection. By
 figuring out through some sort of archaeology of knowledge the missing
 link when was it that this went out for what reason was it that the organ
 replaced singing in the church or what was it and whatever it was to do
 experiments on bringing it back. And another idea is to remain within the
 context of Western society but outside the organized churches and replace
 churches with an equivalent institution perhaps based in the sacred arts and
 music architectural painting and so on. And another one that we have all given
 great attention to and I'm beginning to think too much attention is the
 revitalization of science acknowledging that science has replaced the traditional
 Christian mythology with its own substitute mythology and the weaknesses
 of this mythology are at the root of evil. So those are four things I put on
 my list as top candidates already discussed and in this connection we
 probably should keep in mind the Partnership Society because there's a
 connection I mean it's it's suggested I think in these works like Leon Eisler's
 on the Partnership Society that the disintegration the devitalization the
 decline of the of the church of organized religion of the significance
 of organized religion is associated with the patriarchal transformation of
 society and the embodiment of the patriarchal values within the organized
 church in the papal hierarchy of the Roman Church and so on had contributed
 to the roots of its decline. So my favorite idea at the moment from this
 list has to do with rituals these New Year's rituals and so on I would take
 the Eleusinian mysteries as a model and I don't think that everybody should take
 psychedelics for example or have a shamanistic experience in the Amazon
 jungle in order to reawaken to rebuild their connection to the divine but it
 could be that the churches and their rituals and so on could be reinvigorated
 by having a certain class of priesthood as Jesuits and so on that may be a new
 class that specialized in maintaining this connection with the purity of this
 connection being devoid of of any intrinsic cultural overlay and that
 could be one component among many the
 the weaknesses of the scientific mythology could be somehow fixed by
 incorporating scientific worldview into the church view and so on so some sort
 of syncretism between the the Christian tradition the Judeo-Christian model
 including its patriarchal weakness for the moment trying to repair that in the
 ways that people are doing in the new church movement and in the inclusion of
 the the sacrament at least for a holy elite the the re-sacralization of music
 I think is very important if I had to point to a single factor that I thought
 was destroying society faster than other it would be evil music my personal bias
 well that's my view for a start on the re-sacralization of society in short I'm
 looking for something beyond the the understanding of the virtues of the past
 that could be the basis of some kind of program in the present even if it wasn't
 something that we could do but something that we could foresee that might might
 happen that would create a successful society here very interesting very
 interesting why don't you just say a tiny bit more about what constitutes
 evil music well since Orpheus Pythagoras and so on there has been a permanent
 tradition of sacred music and we have recorded sacred music is still played
 various places and we have recordings of Gregorian chants and Gurdjieff playing
 and and so on but the best analysis of the relationship between style and music
 and style in society that I've come across is Cyril Scott Cyril Scott is
 somebody that Janice Rosé pointed out to me this was a moderately famous
 composer and pianist in England and his pieces aren't well known but he's in a
 process of rediscovery now and some people have said who are you know
 serious musical scholars that he will one day rank with Beethoven that might
 be an overvaluation anyway he he's an interesting composer I've heard his
 music played and he wrote a book called I forget the harmony of the spheres of
 something in which he analyzed the particular contribution and the
 evolution of Western society of the various composers for example Debussy
 and Buchtdorf Bach and so on I don't remember the details he said for
 example that the I think the woman's movement when it began in England was
 enabled by a handle that there's something about handle which is
 supportive for political revolution and not for other things and Beethoven
 developed the romantic and the emotional and German culture this is spelled out
 in a book now if if Cyril Scott were alive today and watched MTV I'm sure
 that he would say that this worldview embodied in this music was
 leading rather than following the decline of the biosphere and he would
 see a causal connection and I think we could take that as a hypothesis that
 maybe can't be proved I have no faith in experiments that have been done with
 music played to plants and so on although it might be worth a serious
 review of that literature at some point I see what you think I think that this
 music is very harmful to the ears it's much too loud if you go to a concert
 it's harmful it's physically harmful it's mentally it's emotionally harmful
 and people flock to this and I think it takes a long time of listening before
 you get really tired of it and that has something to do with the starvation of
 the soul for for beauty the disconnection this is the esthetical side
 of the the disconnection of the human species from some sort of divine guidance
 which might go under the name of of harmony or the world soul or whatever if
 you're not in resonance with this world soul and you can't have a future so the
 aesthetics of the world so well a lot of what you're saying is you're talking
 about an archaic revival these various things that you listed the resumption of
 ritual the revitalization of existing religion I agree completely with all of
 this the only thing that I would add and I know you agree is feminism comes in
 here somewhere in the form of the revitalization of partnership I'm not
 entirely clear sometimes you seem to be talking about a revitalization of the
 forms of the 15th and 16th century and sometimes much further back like all
 this business about organs and churches that's relatively recent well there's
 been loss has been going on for 10,000 years for a long long time and in
 different ages past is something that they couldn't be revived in its original
 form we may have to use video and film technology so you're saying incremental
 recovery of the gylanic perspective well the value of getting the true
 partnership into the church would mean that we then didn't have to replace the
 church just because it had been on the wrong track for 5,000 years true it has
 to be true maybe it's possible to correct without rebuilding the Gothic
 cathedrals but isn't this a little like trying to reform the Soviet Union and
 keeping the Communist Party around I think the momentum of these
 institutions makes them hard to reform well the organization that collects the
 money and buys the land and so on might be totally replaced but I think the
 architecture is good as I think that the current music is evil oh I see what
 you're saying even though an analyst more expert than myself could somehow
 could maybe see dominator forms are built into the actual architecture of
 many of the cathedrals I still think it's possible to revive them that their
 form would take new meaning because of the life going on inside if we have to
 start from scratch figuring out architecture for a partnership society
 then that's going to be very difficult and I don't know if we'll have time to
 succeed well I think beginning with a revival of Gothic Cathedral building in
 the high matriological style of Chartres sounds just fine I certainly think that
 the Romanesque style is a dominator style and a ponderous and uncomfortable
 way to do it but I love the Gothic and Gothic revival I mean this is a
 celebration of vegetation and lightness and air well my own sentiments exactly I
 mean I I'm very interested to hear this proposal of Ralph's because it's
 something that I've formulated and it's starting from a different point of view
 and try to follow it because as a practicing member of the Church of
 England I obviously think that the there's a value in the traditional
 continuity of the institution I also believe that the way forward is since
 it's obvious that organized religion is at one of its lowest ebbs ever this in a
 sense creates an extraordinary openness and possibility for change and I think
 that one of the ways in which modern Christianity could reconnect with the
 same sort of sources of inspiration that gave rise to the Gothic cathedrals is
 partly through the Gothic cathedrals themselves which at least in England and
 throughout the whole of Europe are all still there I mean practically all of
 them are still functioning and they still have sacred chants going on in
 them every day prayers offered up on a regular cycle just as great temples
 should have they're continuously active sacral places that have been sacral for
 centuries and lead us to a position that would at least connect us with the kind
 of ancestral psyche because they're still functioning they put us into that
 particular model of the cosmos that they have the cathedrals like temples the
 models of the cosmos and they have all the things that interest us in them in
 a way I mean this is the vegetation principle there are gargoyles and
 protector spirits there are green men these mysterious vegetation gods that
 burst out everywhere in this mysterious way the they're usually dedicated the
 greatest ones are dedicated to Our Lady who was seen in various forms
 particularly the form of Our Lady of Wisdom and Sophia in the Middle Ages and
 they have in their windows geometrical designs and they have three-fold
 mandalas four-fold mandalas five-fold mandalas and there are rose windows with
 these extremely complex psychedelic mandala things with all these stained
 glass windows they have all these qualities so they're one way I think of
 reconnecting us with the sacred places of Europe and they connect us to the
 the places and also to the traditional cycle of festivals so I think that's one
 important route I think another important route is through the practice
 of festivals in general you know the sacralization of time which some Jewish
 people are doing through revitalizing the tradition of the Sabbath you know in
 the Friday evening lighting the candles with the invocation of the Sabbath
 Bride or the Shekinah these the feminine principles involved in in the home and
 in space and time and in the world and in embodied existence and anyway the
 sacralization of time is another way that can reconnect us with these
 traditions and I think the most important aspect of this process really
 because I agree with Terence about the archaic revival is to find behind the
 existing forms and existing festivals the the pre-christian roots which in all
 cases are the ones that feed the particular timing of the festivals and
 the particular locations of the sacred places and which ground the new religion
 in the old and connect it through the present tradition as it still goes on
 through it there's a continuous living strand in the tradition that goes right
 back to the pre-christian shamanic societies of Europe so I think that this
 is a connection that can still work it works for me I find it actually works
 this connection I find it does make me feel that I do have an affinity with the
 cathedrals in the late and the high Middle Ages and so and also with the
 particular places but then obviously the whole thing has to be tied in with if
 this is this continued sacralization of space and time involves recognizing the
 importance of sacred places everywhere of every kind including the hills and
 the high places and the sacred graves and the national parks and so on so it
 involved a much more animistic version of Christianity or Judaism and it would
 involve the process that I'm I've come to think of as the greening of God this
 new greening of God process that's going on there it's theologians who've revived
 the whole tradition of Hildegard von Bingen and the greening process and this
 whole hidden strand of the Judeo-Christian tradition which may
 never have been a majority stance strand but even as a minority strand can be
 used to authenticate feed and give life to a burgeoning of that aspect of the
 thing no no when that's what's needed
 yes well it seems Ralph you're sort of advocating this I I'm I find it asking
 is it possible I'm not sure well what I was going to say was you know McLuhan
 said it was inevitable in the sense that he had this notion that he called
 electronic feudalism and he felt that the consequence of the shift from
 illiterate phonetic alphabet cultures which existed for us as recently as the
 1940s that the replacing of it with electronic forms of media would have an
 effect on the ratio of the senses and that the ratio the new ratio created by
 electronic media would be most similar to the ratio of the senses that existed
 in medieval Europe before the invention of printing he based this on the idea
 that before the linear uniformity of print you had to actually look at
 manuscript because every manuscript was different because it reflected the hand
 of its author and that after print was invented people no longer looked they
 read and this was a very different function where you don't actually study
 each E and L you you generalize with television and electronic media you're
 again returned to the situation where you must look you must assemble out of a
 out of a gestalt an image you cannot read it and he felt that the consequences
 of this shift in the sense ratio would be global and immense that it would cause
 the fragmentation and dissolution of the nation-state which we certainly seem to
 be seeing in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union and that it would return
 people to a kind of pietistic fundamentalism homebound because
 electronic media brings information to you and that all of these factors would
 conspire to create a an era in which the Gothic model would be very strongly
 expressed I from my own point of view with the theory of the time wave see
 this coming in the mid 90s and expect it to be very strong and it will be it will
 have many aspects in the same way that the Middle Ages are certainly an
 ambiguous period of time I mean the glory of the Gothic cathedrals is one
 side of it but it was a time of wandering flagellants pestilence
 bigotry suppression of women hatred of outsiders insularity provincialism
 barbarism so forth and so on but I think we're in an excellent position from
 McLuhan's point of view and from my own reasoning from entirely different
 premises to experience something very much like what you're advocating and I
 for one look forward to it well I think the conditions under which this
 transformation could somehow take place would require first of all the
 decentralization that one of the most patriarchal aspects of the church is the
 monolithic centralized government of it and the justice there's the local
 movements the little national movements for the resumption of languages such as
 Welsh and so on and the return of the Slavic the Baltic states to local
 control and so on I think also the churches would have to be returned to
 local languages in order that the festivals could relate to the local
 hills wells and trees and so on and then on this local basis the partnership of
 men and women emerging as a parallel movement with within the society would
 in the context of this emerging partnership the locally controlled
 churches would then be transfigured so that their festivals had a new meaning
 and took place on the locally appropriate days and and so on I mean
 that's just one level that people would have to value their local truth maybe
 they would have dances in it and actually have their marriages in it and
 and so on and a lot of rituals would have to be rewritten and then there
 would have to be scholarship as to the proper relationship of the ritual in
 the place and then there would have to be journals where the scholarship was
 published or something and then there would have to be an educational system
 something like Sunday school where this new stuff or old stuff what was taught
 and it could be that the society is much too rigid for any of these necessary
 conditions to to be created what you just described sounded much more much
 more like a model of the Anglican Church than the Roman Catholic I mean the
 Anglican Church has autonomous each country has its own the Church of
 England is the English Church there's a church in Wales that's the Church of
 Ireland is the Episcopalian Church of the US the Episcopalian Church of Canada
 and then in all these African countries they have their own there with black
 bishops and in each case each church is autonomous and some have decided to
 ordain women and have done so like the Episcopalian Church in the United States
 and Canada and in New Zealand some have not decided to do so yet like in
 England and so there's a kind of pluralism of each finds its own way now
 it's not the the thing is it's quite a flexible model Anglicanism doesn't have
 the same problems with the Pope and the the strong tradition of authority it's
 a much more autonomous Church and in its organization each bishop has a high
 degree of autonomy and each parish priest does too so it's in his own
 parish so it's it's that's one model and it's not the only one it's not a perfect
 one but it's one they've also said that religion organized religion is at its
 lowest ebb and I think you told me that the attendance and churches and
 Anglican churches in England is it at its lowest ebb it's now running it's
 slightly under 2% of the population 2% 2% so somehow the flexibility of this
 system which does in that ending sound ideal for the purpose I'm describing in
 this fantasy is actually of no use that has no attraction to people and so what
 would be necessary in order to reverse this trend to make it really of obvious
 benefit to go there you might first ask is it worth doing in America attendance
 at church is much higher and it convulses the body politic because
 unable to fulfill its sacral function the church has become simply a ruthless
 lobbying force for fundamentalist social policy so I you know I think new
 institutions in your first statement you suggested that replacement I think we
 should build some new level to the ground and start over at least in
 America the Anglican Church I think it's great virtue as I understand it is that
 it's fairly harmless but in America religion leads to hangings in my
 experience well the Episcopal Church in America in particular since Rupert said
 they're ordaining women that seems to be a really major change and maybe if this
 were the case in England which I gather it is not not yet but it might be
 gradually increasing rather than decreasing attendance in church well I
 think you see I think the reason why I think the main reasons for attending
 people attending churches would have to do with an appreciation of collective
 participation in ritual appreciation of the benefit of established forms and a
 continuous tradition and appreciation of sacred place now I think that these are
 three strong arguments for going to services you're taking place in a
 traditional ritual at a sacred place which has a validity and a tradition
 behind it now I think any replacement of the Church of England or of churches as
 institutions if it were to be effective and if it were to sacralize political
 life would have to be more than just a vast numbers of proliferating tiny cults
 to have to be more than like that more it wouldn't really work if it were like
 the religious landscape of Southern California you know with its divisive
 cultism there would have to be a certain validity to it where it could
 authenticate it would have the power of the valid mission the power of the
 ruler and the power of the power of the political system and and validate the
 the entire workings of the political the body politic for that you need something
 like an established church and you one of the problems the United States it
 doesn't have one and it can't have one for constitutional reasons so there's
 very little way in which the the political life in America could be
 sacralized since by definition it's secular now so there's a different
 problem here in America but say in Britain to consider this possibility
 there is a there is in fact already an established Church which can fulfills
 many of the traditional sacralizing roles it's the custodian of the great
 sacred places of England the great cathedrals and many other glass and very
 Abbey all these places under the custody of the established Church which on the
 whole fulfills this role extremely well maintains their sacredity and so now say
 that this is abolished or simply allowed to wither and and disappear and say one
 wants to replace it with another institution which would be able to accept
 a widespread claim to validity through all classes of society how would one go
 about doing it I mean the one reason I don't think that's a feasible route to
 follow is that I think you'd simply have a proliferation of endless small cults
 or sects and that you'd be left with a secular authority which was and a whole
 secular official life which was thoroughly desacralized well one answer
 might be you have to find a religious mission of sufficient consequence to
 command that kind of loyalty mythology you need a unifying principle and
 this fellow that I mentioned Dave Brower of the Sierra Club he actually said you
 know to save the earth we need a an outbreak of religious mania that would
 dwarf Islam this is an idea which can send millions on the move this is the
 new idea it counts above everything and it will sweep across national borders
 and topple dynasties and melt away empires and he this is what got him
 tossed out of the Sierra Club I mean he called for a jihad to save the earth and
 I think you know this kind of thing is worth considering the other thing I
 wanted to say is I'm the big I'm a very big fan of the archaic revival but as we
 talk about a new feudalism and look around the earth we might ask ourselves
 where is it that an archaic revival is actually underway and how is it going
 and the obvious example is Iran where you know people took archaic revival
 seriously took old religious forms seriously the importance of resuming
 old rituals the importance of returning to tried and true ways and it's I don't
 think the kind of not what we had in mind well they returned to a time when
 the sacred thread was already broken you mean the 14th century or something like
 that I mean the the essence here is the actual connection to the sacred and I
 think now we can't have an archaic revival by going backwards exactly we
 have to do our archaeology of knowledge to the point where we understand what
 the essence of it was and to revive that would mean to bring it into modern forms
 it would have to acknowledge for example that the total population of the planet
 is larger now than them that means that recycling is mandatory that means that
 green consciousness Gaia hypothesis consciousness would have to actually
 play a leading role in the actual rituals performed on the various days
 and so on so the the mandate I think to create a new mythology that could
 organize different styles of churches on a path of convergent evolution would be
 one that was intrinsically attractive because it actually offered a reversal
 of the present trend that was somehow obvious to two people what about
 resacralization through religion as a slogan and it would come to many people
 as being a new idea well the churches would have to be taken over I mean where
 you have still a church government a world government that's excommunicating
 preachers for acknowledging the equality of women or something this is too far
 removed from the current state of what the average person in our society knows
 to be attractive I think the thing is that religious reform has to come
 through the movement actually getting going being practiced and through
 example and you know it could spread either one could have the growth of a
 new religion like say I have lost a church or something like that spreading
 spontaneously and entirely new the thing that sooner or later I think to gain any
 authority it would have to undergo a kind of syncretism with the existing
 structures of religion and it could be reinvigorated in that way that's one way
 it could happen so well localization of control of the church would aid this
 process it would aid the process yes but and I mean the only other way it could
 happen as far as I could see would be through neo-pagan religious movement
 starting up in various ways and they then have to go back further than the
 sacred Christian sites they'd have to connect with aboriginal well that would
 be this jihad to save the earth an outbreak of paganism the but the
 truth the thing is that paganism emerging in a post-christian context
 would be so heavily flavored with Christianity that one could say that it
 was a kind of neo-christian paganism well then shamanism the yet further
 brought back the same not present in shamanism in the same way I shouldn't
 think the thing is that jihad is a particular model with Jewish roots
 affected most by Islam whose color incidentally is green and it says that
 the green movement should have a jihad and has to remember that all the shrines
 of the Saints and the kind of the Prophet is green but jihad's and come
 out of the whole sort of Judaic crusade jihad and Jewish holy walls and so on
 that's for the particular field from which the concept and a green and my
 mass movement you see the most natural thing in a place like California who
 would have decentralized movements of tired small cults each with their
 following a kind of entrepreneurial cult economy and with no dominating
 giants and probably some secular antitrust laws to stop any of them
 getting to pick so but that's that wouldn't cause a mass movement a mass
 movement of crusade or jihad requires a much more unified movement I think
 convergent evolution is a gentler way to go I think that there's a real gap
 the conflict between these two different strategies of starting a new system
 based on the archaic revival or pagan revival on the one hand and revolution
 of the churches re-sacralization by religion on the other hand and that has
 to do with traditional church practice of denying the validity of previous
 forms archaic pagan forms and particularly carried to the point of
 revising history I mean pulverizing goddess figurines and statues and and so
 on what would be necessary besides partnership of the genders local control
 a green politic and so on within the ritual of the church would be an
 acknowledgement of the validity of the essential religiosity of the pagan forms
 including the the goddess that worship of idols and so on and the fact that
 that means that the Bible might have to be here it is abandoned the Bible might
 have to be abandoned as sacred document of the church no reinterpreted
 reinterpreted that's a process that goes on continually and the whole development
 of the Christian religion like any other depends on the series of
 reinterpretations of traditional texts so the reinterpretation that's going on
 right now is through the process theologians an attempt to develop the
 idea of an evolutionary God of an evolutionary universe that's one major
 strand of theological reinterpretation and they have a very strong case because
 the God of the Old Testament is not a platonic transcendent God outside
 history he's a thoroughly hands-on interactive God who's present in within
 history even ranging details like the passage through the Red Sea you know this
 is this is a this is an interactive process it's an ongoing providence
 that's guiding the historical process that's the Jewish conception of God a
 kind of process God they would say and I think they're right but this is in fact
 the true Judeo-Christian conception to a process evolutionary model is one
 revolution going on in theology another is the recovery of the feminine and a
 recovery of the tradition of the Shekinah the feminine presence of God
 Sophia the holy wisdom is the feminine wisdom principle which is it could
 fulfill many of the roles of the world soul which is feminine and a revival of
 that whole tradition these revolutions are actually occurring in theology right now
 I guess I'm going to have to go back and re-listen to parts of the conversation
 we just heard because every time they start talking about organized religion
 well my blood began to boil just thinking about how those institutions
 have caused so much death and destruction that I miss what people are
 saying next so I did like Terence's suggestion by the way though of leveling
 all the churches to the ground I'd like to think that he was talking about the
 institutions themselves and not the old buildings because I think that some of
 those old churches would make a great location for a rave just imagine a giant
 rave being held in all of the major churches of the world all at the same
 time that I think would be a way to begin the re-sacralization of the world
 don't you think another way of course is to continue doing what I know a lot of
 you are already doing and that is to create your own personal ceremonies and
 rituals for various days like the solstice gatherings and full moon
 parties that seem to be sprouting up all over the place I've been quite fortunate
 to have participated in several of these new homegrown festivals and I always
 feel better about life afterwards so keep the flame going you ritual pioneers
 I'm really convinced that each time you conduct another little ceremony like
 that you deepen the creode of the new basin of attraction that our psychedelic
 community is working so hard to create and speaking of basins of attraction
 there's a strong attractor starting to take shape in Costa Rica right now and
 that is the focus on the 2007 mind states conference that John Hanna has
 planned you can find the details about this at mind states org but here's a
 little detail that you probably won't find on the website just just before I
 started recording this podcast I received the following information and
 an email that John sent out and he said for a short period of time I am offering
 a 10% discount off of the early bird price to those people who are willing to
 put down a 50% deposit that's five hundred and eighty five dollars on or
 before February 15th and pay the remaining 50% on or before April 1st
 this benefits you by allowing an additional hundred and thirty dollars
 off of the conference cost and also by allowing for the payment to be made in
 two installments creating less expense all at once now by the way the the price
 he doesn't say this in his email but the price of the conference includes not
 only the speakers but also meals and a room at the 2,000 acre eco resort where
 the conferences will be held and while I can't vouch for the food there what I
 can say about events like this is that the community meals are where a lot of
 the magic takes place it was at a similar event where I first met the
 Shoguns when they came and sat down at a table where I was eating with a couple
 of new friends that I just met there's just something about these
 conferences that take place outside the states that make them stand out maybe
 it's because they're smaller and thus more intimate or maybe it's simply
 because once you get out of this oppressively heavy vibe here in the US
 life just seems a little lighter and more worth living anyway if you're
 interested in attending a conference like this well I think this may be your
 only chance in 2007 so don't wait too long if you're being called where was I
 oh yeah John's email after mentioning the discount deal he then went on to say
 that in the past he's had a sponsor who helped him with the upfront cost you
 know like putting up the deposit for the hotel and things like that but this year
 he's on his own and so he's doing this limited time discount offer to help with
 his upfront expenses that's the reason for all this I guess so if you plan on
 attending here's a way to save some money and to help John out as well he's
 certainly done more than his share of the heavy lifting for many of us who
 never would have met had it not been for a mind states conference and speaking of
 John's conferences I received an email from I will who said now don't get me
 wrong I do like the trial logs but I also like to hear more of the other
 speakers you featured in the salon so how about breaking up the trial logs
 with some more of those mind states talks now and then well I will you've
 got a good point but I also don't want to break the flow of this first series
 of trial logs so here's my plan for the next month or so there are ten tapes in
 the first series and we'll finish tape eight in the next podcast and then next
 week I'll do tape nine and then do the last tape the following week then we'll
 take a short break from the trial logs and I'll get out a few more of this
 year's plank a nor day talks from Burning Man I know that I've got mark
 Pesci stock and Amanda fieldings talk ready to go and I think there are a
 couple more that I didn't get out yet as well as for the trial logs as you may
 remember from the first podcast in the trial log series these conversations
 were held somewhat regularly from 1989 through 1998 and thanks to Ralph
 Abraham we've got copies of almost all of them but here's what I thought might
 be the most interesting way to listen to are you ready for this how about
 backwards not that kind although maybe it would be interesting to see if
 there's any hidden messages that we might hear by playing a McKenna rap
 backwards but I didn't mean that kind of backwards what I'm thinking about is
 that instead of just listening to the rest of these programs after this first
 series in chronological order it might be more interesting to jump right to the
 last one the one they did in 1998 and since there were about ten years between
 that trial log and the ones we're hearing now I'm wondering if their
 positions have changed or just where their conversation drifted to over the
 intervening years of course the danger here is that we might learn that they
 didn't have anything new to say after the passage of all that time but my
 guess is that that won't be the case well it's time to wrap up for today but
 before I go I should again mention that this and all of the podcasts from the
 psychedelic salon are protected under the Creative Commons attribution
 non-commercial share like 2.5 license and if you have any questions about that you
 can click on the link at the bottom of the psychedelic salon web page which may
 be found at matrix masters comm slash podcast and if you still have questions
 you can send them in an email to Lorenzo at matrix masters comm just so that you
 know the reason for the Creative Commons license is to make this material more
 available not to restrict it just check out the creative commons org website and
 you'll see what I mean thanks again to the good folks from
 shuttle hi yuk for letting us use your music here in the psychedelic salon and
 for now this is Lorenzo signing off from cyber deluxe space be well my friends
 you
 you
 you
 (upbeat music)


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