[Music] Greetings from the cyberdelic space. This is Lorenzo and I'm your host here in the psychedelic salon. So, how are you today? All ready for another installment of the trilogue between Terrence McKenna, Ralph Abraham and Rupert Sheldrake? As you probably know already, we're getting down to the end of the first series of conversations, the three of them held at Esalen Institute in 1989 and 1990. And since we're going to hear the first side of the ninth tape in the series of ten, my guess is that this particular talk was recorded in 1990. Although the cassette tapes weren't clearly labeled as to what year they were made, so we can't really be sure. But I hope you don't let the title of this tape throw you off. If you read the program notes, you know that they titled it "Education in the New World Order." Apparently, when they held this conversation, the phrase "New World Order" didn't have the negative connotation that it does today, at least for some people. But as I understand it from their conversation, they used the term only to project their thinking into a utopian future that didn't include the existing world order, which I think we can all agree is in some need of improving. Anyway, I think you're going to enjoy this particular talk. I know it gave me some new ideas about what's been going on with our current educational system, at least here in the States. And I think they came up with some workable suggestions for making changes in it. At least their ideas in this talk seem a little more practical than some of the more far-out plans that they've come up with in the past. So, let's join our merry trialoguers as they ponder what to do about the sad state of government-sponsored education. Education in the New World Order. Everybody agrees there's something wrong with the educational system that we have today. I mean, even mainstream official education is so worried about it. There's something about it which doesn't seem to be working. And obviously in the New World Order there'll be an educational system of some kind. Every society or civilization has one. So, one has to think what kind do we actually want? And we know that the present kind needs replacing in some way. So, what kind do we actually want? And if we take a walk through it, what would it look like, the educational system in the New World Order? Well, I think that the first thing about it would be that education would recognize that it is in fact a form of initiation. That its entire archetypal role is that of an initiation process. The education, in fact the present educational system, mimics the initiatory process, indeed is a kind of initiatory process, where you go through the different exams, like every initiatory, you have a training, you pass through a time of testing or trial. And some fail, others pass, and the pass ones are the initiates. And so at every level you have 11 year olds, sort of 15 year high school graduations, college exams, Bachelor of Arts, Master of Arts, Doctor of Philosophy. And these higher and higher degrees and qualifications, each of which involves its test of initiation, each of which, once initiated into that hierarchy in the academic, the grade within the academic hierarchy, people have a kind of official certification of higher and higher levels of education, recognized throughout our whole modern society, which pays great respect to things like academic qualifications. You'll get better jobs, better employment opportunities, more respect. And that's of course why everyone wants these degrees, and why to the despair of educators throughout the world, most college students passing through the universities seem to have so little real interest in the subjects they're studying. They want to, in the third world it's very clear, they just want the degree, because with a BA or an MA your entire social status has changed in India. And your marriage prospects, the size of diary you can command, and so on, it's a quantifiable sliding scale of status. Anyway, this is the present educational system we have, and the present educational system is based on an initiatory model. And in fact I think it is an initiation into a model. It's an initiation into what one could think of as the rationalist or humanist world view, or mind set, frame of mind, way of thinking. And so one of the things that it does all along is to mean that the mind or the intellect is the predominant god-like point of view from which everything is seen. So when you teach school children literature within this framework of this system that we've got now, this mechanistic humanist rationalist model, you don't just read them the great poems by sort of beating and drumming and bringing the magic of the poem and going into the myth. You say this poem was written in 1635 by so and so, who was born in so and so, and you then learn all these facts about the poets, which you have dates of when they were born and died, and that kind of thing, which you have to be able to know for exams. And then certain stock ways of analysing Shakespeare's plays, for example, for school exams, where such and such a character does this role. And here Shakespeare was borrowing from this tradition and putting this, and taking the whole thing to pieces by this kind of detached analytical mind. The same in the fine arts, as soon as this mind gets onto the arts, you've got the same thing, this was painted by so and so in the school of so and so, bought by so and so, in such and such a collection, and so on. So I think that all these ways of distancing the self and bringing the rational academic trained mind as being the supreme point of view, is the initiation into which this educational system works, it makes that the supreme arbiter, a kind of human reason. And so it's this kind of rationalistic humanism. So it is an initiation right now. The present educational system is an initiatory system. One has to recognise that, and each of its levels, like commencement, graduation day from high school and so on, is attended by impressive public ceremonies, which in the classic tradition of public initiation and recognition to a higher grade or status, like a medieval guild or craft, makes one of the few realms in which that kind of world lives on, these hierarchical gradations, with robes and all the apparatus in the realm of science of a scientific priesthood, in fact. And indeed it is the scientific priesthood envisaged by Bacon in the scientific world, the academic model, and the priestly role of the higher initiates in running and ordering society, the more educated. So we do have that kind of system, but in order to replace it, we obviously have to have not only just tinkering with the present system, but a system which is entirely dedicated to that view of the world, and when it extends its baleful influence over the third world countries, as I've seen it do in Indian villages. As soon as the school comes in, and the secondary school, these kids go through that, they become alienated from tradition. They want to wear pants instead of dhotis. They want to work in cities instead of stay in the village. They want to have an office job, sort of, with a count, you know, sitting behind a desk and being a kind of bureaucrat, rather than getting their hands dirty. All these classical archetypes of a kind of Indian bourgeois aspiration take over, and they're alienated from the village culture in which they were educated. Most of them drop off and go to the cities, and the villages, they sort of distill off, fortunately, for village life. But you can see this whole new frame of mind being introduced in the entire third world, through UNESCO and through educational things. The first step is literacy. You've got to have them reading and writing, because then you can get across that what's in books is more important than what you actually feel or experience. Because books, the world of books, huge libraries and stuff, scientific journals, is vastly larger than anything any one of us could ever read, comprehend, or experience. So there's this overwhelming weight of fact which one can't but be in awe of and respect. And as soon as one, the more one's initiated into that world and the priesthood of the world of books and of the written word, then the more one's mind is bound up in that whole realm, and the more one's beings assimilated to it. And the less the realm of ordinary experience counts for anything. In fact, it still counts, but it counts behind the diaphragm that separates from the educated public persona, from the private domestic or romantic solitude or hiking in the wilderness weekend persona, or holiday in Bali persona. These other wilder, freer aspects of the personality are relegated to free time, not in the educated part. So the alternative educational model would still be based on initiations, but it would be based on going with the grain of initiation, which is throughout the world what most people want to be initiated into a lot of things. And they realize that being initiated into them means taking on a new social role, a new social pattern. And usually these roles are in some sense sacralized, you know, guilds of craftsmen, etc., with their patron saints, and Indian castes, each with their own traditions, you know, the potter caste, the weaver caste, and so on, with traditions and skills which are passed on with them. And the children with them want to be initiated into being a potter or a weaver, if you're in that. There's a respect and accord given to the initiates, which the young aspire to. And you get exactly the same thing in our own society with driving. I mean, nobody, most adult people don't want to be the kind of people who either can't drive or haven't qualified for a driving license, or they have to go through a learning period and they have to pass the test. And once they've passed it, they join the club of qualified drivers. Most kids actually want to be initiated into that. There's a real power, a kind of magnetic pull about being along. There's a glamour to it, which they want. And a whole new freedom and a true initiation takes place. And these are very deep, and people want to be initiated into swimming, into sex, into drugs of various kinds, into games, into skills and professions. These are basic desires for initiation. So the model of education would be this initiation-based education, of which the present educational system has many of the elements, but in a kind of parody version, because these tests only operate in the written mode. They only operate in the language mode. All examinations involve sitting at a desk with a pen and writing. But they entirely work through this written mode, and there are initiations into the written world, as it were. So there are other kinds of initiations, and if you think about it, a lot of the present educational system could be transformed by recognising its initiatory quality. Like medical students, to become doctors, have to dissect a complete human corpse. This is an absolute requirement. And every medical student, when they first come into the dissecting room, undergoes an instinctive, deep-down revulsion from this room full of partially dismembered corpses, something against which all societies have had taboos, you know, on the respect for the corpse and that sort of thing, the power of the corpse. And to overcome all these traditional taboos, they have to adopt a highly detached and usually jocular attitude, dissecting rooms full of people playing hockey, as they did in the Cambridge ones, with severed legs, using testicles as the hockey balls, this kind of thing. Typical medical student hijinks in the dissecting room, where this kind of jocularity is forced as a response. Say, instead of that, to become a doctor you have to dissect a dead human body. And to do that, you have to have a meditation on death first. You maybe have to, like in a Tibetan meditation, spend a night in a graveyard, and, you know, really confront what one's doing, the initiatory quality of confronting death in some kind of way. This is a solemn moment. And in most other trades, professions, skills, etc., there would be this initiatory way of doing it, which exists to some extent in voluntary organisations and clubs and hobbyists of every kind, you know, who want to have their people pursue things because they're really interested. There'd also be adolescent initiation rites somewhere in this. We mentioned that at Hollyhock, Jill and I were talking about vision camps, summer camps, where kids go and where there's a truly initiatory programme there, involving a vision quest, for example, at least 24 hours away, alone in the wilderness. These camps already exist in Northern Vancouver Island in the summer, mostly for Indian youths. And so there'd be this initiatory quality introduced throughout the educational system, and computer modelling, for example, would be a very important part of the initiatory thing into mathematics, which would be an initiation into the mathematical landscape, which is the hidden mystery of mathematics, which most students of it never get an inkling. They don't even know it's there, because mathematicians don't talk about it. They pretend that it's this rational system of numbers and symbols. But actually, the really good ones have these vivid visual imaginations, which is where it all happens, where the magic goes on. Well, now, one of your great points is this can now be rendered visible through computer models. You can enter into it as you can, through fractal programmes and that kind of thing, and actually explore the mathematical landscape in the privacy of your home, a moderately priced diskette available from Aerial Press. [laughter] And so this obviously is part of it, too. So, and also, within each branch of learning, there would be, through, you'd learn about how to mend cars, you'd learn from plumbers about the elements of plumbing, you'd learn useful things in schools, and be initiated by members of recognised trades or professions, like a plumber and teach you plumbing, a real plumber, who's really part of the kind of plumbers' union, you know, the really initiated plumber world. And so you'd see that you'd have an entry into these different worlds through these initiations, which could take place within the framework of ordinary schools. And through acknowledging the tradition, which is in each of these cases a way of life, a whole cultural tradition, not just a piece of book learning or things written on paper, you'd come into the larger group dynamics, the social psyche, the education would be integrated into the larger emotional and intuitive and social bonding aspects of one's life. Anyway, one kind of educational system that has this initiatory quality to some extent is the workshop system, and this is the principal alternative educational system that has developed outside the orthodox one. And it's obviously the best model for actually replacing the present one, a vast extension of the workshop system of education, because workshop-type education involves people interacting as a group, and it's impossible to forget the group dynamics. It's not just a teacher in a classroom who are meant to be quiet, although in fact what's going on is group dynamics of an often turbulent kind. The workshop makes the group dynamics explicit, and is the model of people who actually want to do, want to learn something together, to make some new insight, to make some new step or experience or transition, which, at the end of which, Friday noon, they'll have actually been through a kind of group initiatory experience, which has involved a group bonding, a new shared way of seeing the world, a new consensus reality emerging, a new insight into self-transformation, etc. Initiatory hopes, anyway. The other thing is that, the other final point is that, for the educational system to be transformed, each branch of it, each profession of it, that already exists as a kind of guild, like mathematicians have their own kind of guild, and biochemists, and, you know, these are guilds with their founding fathers, their honoured traditions, etc. They're like guilds. Each one of them has to, from within itself, within the group, have a new vision of what it could be, like re-visioning psychology, you know, like Hillman's book, there's the re-visioning model, re-visioning medicine. What would happen if a group of doctors got together, led in a workshop-type format, somewhere like Esalen, and did things like shamanic chanting in a workshop format, and then also discussed what was their original vision in becoming a doctor, what was the going right back to contact the original inspiration for each of them, and then tell it to other people. What did you see medicine could be? What's your experience of it as you've actually come into it? You know, limitations and so on. And what could a new vision of medicine be? A new kind of healing profession. This kind of re-visioning could occur within each of the, you know, what could a real botany be, within the botanical? A real botany would be a science really related to the spirits of the plant world, with an understanding of their forms, names, colours, embryologies and so on, but essentially knowing in the greatest detail and relating to the spirits of the vegetative kingdom. So this would be what the new professions would be like, and they could be transformed, I think, by a whole transformation of consciousness that could come about in a group format within members of the profession, a whole new vision of what it could be. So, in summary, I think that in the New World Order, the educational model would be an education through initiation. The initiations would be things that people on the whole want to do and involve far more than just writing things down, but actually a real mental, physical and social competence to do whatever it is that needs to be done, which is what's involved in real guild initiations, apprenticeships and so on. And that the workshop mode is probably the best model for what the new educational models would be like. And the professional groups that already exist to transform these traditions from within, which has to be done to maintain their organic integrity as a profession, and hence the source of ancient traditions, which can actually have a mythic power and therefore help to transform. All this might happen in a new millennium and lead us into a new psychedelic world order. Well, it's very interesting. I agree. I think you put your finger on it, that this initiatory thing is the continuing thread from the archaic that could lead into the future, and that that means there's reason for hope. The only thing I would really add to that is that when I imagine the educational system of the future, I think that part of our problem and how we reached this historical impasse was through accepting a kind of historical amnesia, and that the education of the future should have a tremendous focus on history. The educational system currently in place, I take to have as its sort of paradigm, the teaching of physics, in other words, the conveying of an extremely abstract, mathematically based description of nature that ushers into high engineering competence. And I would imagine in an ideal educational milieu in the future that perhaps the science of archaeology might replace the science of physics as the place where focus was to go. Most people are not aware of the revolution in information recovery ability that has occurred in archaeology in the last even ten years, so that in a sense a kind of telescope into the past is being erected by the world archaeological community, and teaching this is a way of re-anchoring ourselves from the post-industrial notion of history as a kind of trendless fluctuation or a class struggle or some of these other very disinsoled models of what the human journey through time is. So I think we have fallen into a kind of historical amnesia. This has blunted the acuity of our political decision-making, and that part of reforming education has to be to teach people that history is a system of interlocking resonances in which they are embedded and they are going to be called upon to make decisions which will affect the state of life on this planet millennia in the future. So without a complete knowledge of history that is seamless from the birth of the universe down to yesterday's headline, we are not in a position to act toward our best interests. And I take education broadly to be the inculcation of attitudes that cause us to act generally in the interest of all. That's about it. I think your other very strong point is the power of the feudal guild model and that this goes hand in hand with the McLuhanist expectation of what he called an electronic feudalizing of society, that this hierarchy of academic cant that has been built up is in fact a sham, a thing of squeaking gears and creaking pulleys that is left over from another age, and that we should just understand that education is a kind of value-neutral medium, and that whether you learn the Tao of waste disposal or the Tao of 16th century Spanish literature, you are essentially tilling the same field, and that people have lost the sense of the how-ness of their professionalism, and the educational system has been contaminated by concepts like class struggle, class difference, this sort of thing. Ralph, what's your take on that? Well, I like these visions, revisions, as far as they go. I think the initiation mode is a good one, in that it has traditional track record, successful track record. It engages the motivation of children to try to proceed from the green belt to the brown belt, and so on. And it also is, as you correctly pointed out, Rupert, is the system that we have in today's educational factory. So I think that this is excellent as far as it goes, and I like the workshop mode, and I think I agree, Terence, it would be valuable to infuse the curriculum with new dimensions of history, archaeology, and the revision of the past, and the revision of the past must be re-revised annually. And this mode would make that possible, because I presume in the workshop model you have in mind asking a different plumber every year, asking a different archaeologist, not being a professor with tenure. Oh, no, the ones that are main, actually professional plumbers that would come in. Yes, but still I think that this somehow doesn't go far enough. I feel uneasy in that the, maybe, the main problems in the current system haven't really been engaged yet. And the trouble is we don't know exactly what they are. And, no, I think this view is kind of focusing on higher education, and maybe that's good because lower education will always be on the way to higher education, and when higher education is transformed it will somehow change the whole system. And myself, I took a shortcut in school and left in the ninth grade and never returned. And then I entered early in university and I'm now starting my 40th year, so I can not really suggest a revision of the elementary school system. Well, the invocation of feminism and feminine values or some kind of way of feminizing the whole system in those early grades, that's probably the most important back end. Infusing the current system with a new spirit, I think, somehow won't do it. Among the rash of books criticizing the higher educational system this year, there's one, Page Smith's "The Death of the Spirit," which he's a historian, America's premier historian. And he spent half his book complaining about the current system and the other half discussing how it got that way. And I was pleased to discover that the higher educational system of Europe and America is not getting worse and worse. It was always this bad. We can't take fault even if we go to the first one, which is when Ptolemy gave this huge endowment to the Alexandria Museum. Here we had professors with lifetime tenure whose responsibility was to give one lecture per week or to contribute a poem or amusement for public display. Sounds like a good job to ask. So Page Smith takes issue, first of all, with the tenure system. Now, I like the tenure system. I would be out of my ear years ago if I didn't have this very, very strong job security. But somehow it's part of the problem, I think. And you have to ask in your vision of the new educational system in the new world order, where the workshops are, who is organizing this? Where is the Department of Administration, the administration building? Who is deciding which workshops will be offered? Which plumber will be? And so on. Will there be new emphasis on feminist revision of history? Will there be new results from archaeology or not? Somebody, after all, is deciding whether it's the PTA or whatever. How many people are going to school? All, a few, those who wish, rewards will be offered, yes or no. And these things have to do with the nitty-gritty, the nuts and bolts of running a school system. And as the system evolves, or devolves, would be more ominous, since we don't expect it to get better and better in the course of time, somehow the paths of evolution, the seeds would be contained in this administrative system put in place in the beginning. Who is in charge? Do students participate in decisions and so on? Then, even with the initiation model, I find some anxiety in thinking about this, because we have, in the current initiation system, there are two different roles in the initiation that, in the beginning of your introduction, you alluded. One is initiation, as with the corpse. And the other is valuation, accreditation, a guarantee to the world that this doctor has reached a certain level of skill, and is therefore accredited, authorized, to dispense antibiotic medicines by prescription. That means that in the initiation there has to be a test. And in the test, usually verbal, as you said, when I was an engineering student, we had to pass the welding course. The test was given by a tensile test machine. Oh, and the science is practical as well, of course. Yes. So I, as a teacher, always hated this testing aspect, and claimed other people should do it, I'm only willing to teach people who want to learn from me. That is my only role that I accept. But nevertheless, I must write letters of recommendation, and friends who have respected me, who now beg me to assist them by writing a letter of recommendation. I must say that this student reached a certain level. I don't even know what level this student reached. And whatever I thought it was, I'm not sure. And even if I was sure, I wouldn't know how to say it in a sentence. I hate this role. And I hate grading tests, and trying to figure out where to place the lines between the grades A, B, C, or whatever. So the testing aspect, and the initiatory aspect, must not necessarily be combined into a single tool, function, or whatever. No. And so I like the initiation, I don't like the testing, and yet, if you don't have the testing, then the educational system is somehow failing its mission to society, in doing one of the things that society asks it to do, which is to produce trades. But you see, I don't accept plumbing in the educational curriculum. Everybody should learn computer programming and other kinds of plumbing, of course. But I think the heart of the curriculum, the school system, should somehow transcend the trades, and the apprenticeship for a profession, and the learning of basic skills, walk, run, jump, eat a complete diet, and so on. Where is spiritual value? Where is moral and ethical value? Where is the fabric of society, as it were? Where is that taught? If not in the school, then embedded in soap operas, or where? Somehow, the curriculum has to have a spiritual, moral, well, social values, which could fit in the workshop mode, which could be consistent with the initiatory, but have nothing to do with the trade school and the trade union. More, there would be some, maybe some spiritual elite, some professors of moral philosophy. We would have Plato and Socrates would be leading a workshop, something like that. Then I could see that it fits in this mode. But somehow, whoever is arranging the workshop in plumbing, and who is arranging the workshop in spiritual value, these must be, I guess, differently qualified people. Finally, I think this, another thing that has crippled the modern university is the isolation of specialties. And I don't see in this new vision a way of dealing with that. I think that besides the workshop with one leader, we must have workshops with trilogue leaders, so that the interplay of the different specialties could be given due time, in fact, equal time with specialties. I don't propose, as many people do, to replace courses in specialties completely with interdisciplinary courses. I think it's kind of a partnership, Mother Earth, Father Sky, that there will be specialties and equal time for syncretists to put it together and obtain some meaning from three or four specialties, and to free associate on all of this, relating whatever is the subject matter of a workshop, of the entire educational experience, to the progress, the future of society, and evolutionary challenges presented to each generation. There are just some other problems, I think, not addressed by your suggestions so far, and that somehow these have to be not addressed individually, but taken into account somehow in the overall design of the educational system for a new world order. It needs the participation of the community in the selection of the curriculum. It needs a certain rigidity that resists evolution that's too fast. It needs the partnership of the special and the general. It needs the relationship to life, not only in terms of fixing the faucets, but also in making moral decisions in every day about how to relate to altruism and selfishness and synergy. And I have no idea how to do this, how to change the system. I just think that what you've suggested is the beginning of an evolutionary track, very similar to the one that we're now on, and in the course of just a few years or generations, would result in the same mess that we now have. We need a newer new idea. Well, I mean, what's... Obviously, the element lacking from what I talked about, and which you draw attention to, is largely the kind of spiritual dimension, because I was talking about a reformed secular educational system, taking for granted the fact that the present educational system is secular. Now, if one can think of a spiritually based educational system, then it's in a completely different realm of possibilities. The problem, however, is that if it were Christian-based, then all the Jews, Muslims, Hindus and atheists would object. If it were Jewish, all the rest... And if it were Hindu, then fundamentalist Christian parents would object. What's stymied, one of the terrible impasses of the modern educational system, is because of secular pluralism, and because the role, the importance secular pluralism has for the modern political ideology, which is this kind of humanist, capitalist, free market ideology, I mean, it's a very important feature. It means that no one spiritual traditional practice can be used in schools, except in explicitly Roman Catholic schools, or Jewish schools, or Muslim schools, which is why a lot of people want separate German Catholic, Jewish, Muslim schools, exactly because they do think this is important. But in the secular system, you can't do it. So there's a terrible blockage there. And the only way to overcome this problem would be to have a new official world order, which could empower, accredit, etc., which is not the secular state, because the secular state by its very nature is desacralized, it's a humanist concept. So the thing is that this revolution would have to go a long way, if you want the entire act to deal. It would require some kind of new religious consensus, into which people could be initiated. Now I think that's perhaps hoping for too much. And my more moderate suggestion would be, firstly, that each initiation has to involve a real experience at different levels of the answer. So like archaeology, you wouldn't just study in books and see slides and videos of these things. You'd have to go to certain sacred places, and maybe spend the night there alone, if it was that kind, or the day there, or whatever, so that you actually came to know the spirits of these places that you've been talking about, the kinds of places, you knew it directly from real experience. And you'd also do this kind of thing, if it had this vision quest element, you'd have a group initiation quality to it as well, and there'd be this sense of initiation into social groups and the honor of groups and so on, which would be a series of self-regulating societies, which would be models. Then if for the entire society to have a system of regulation, you'd need to have official state rights, like they do in Japan through the Shinto religion and the Emperor, and as we do in Britain through the monarchy, and still acknowledged official state rights, like the royal opening of Parliament, praying for the Queen, and that kind of thing. But most countries don't have the possibility of transforming that system. In Britain we do, and I think the problem is quite different here in America, because there isn't... American politics is based on a different model, a desacralized model. So the alternative is the American way, would be to have a free-for-all. And how it would work is this. Each student at age 17 would be given a book of 55 workshop vouchers, and they'd be told that to become an initiated adult, they would have to take 55 workshops over the next three years, or maybe 40 workshops, or whatever. And there'd have to be five in the kind of group dynamics, social myths, history, understanding our society and the kind of social ethic, as well as direct group experience. Some would be in philosophy, others in natural history and knowing about the natural world, etc. So you'd have some stipulation on the minimum number in each. And then there's simply a computerized, centralized, Esalen, Hollyhock, etc. catalog. Far many more workshop centers would spring up all over, based on modified summer camps, etc. Or modified schools, existing schools. And you'd have local patterns of workshops, and you'd have also ones to which people travel and stay. And the student's credential on finishing the use of the 55 vouchers would be the list of workshops that had been completed to the point of initiation. Then the whole process would be started by some initiatory thing into this pathway. Each workshop would itself have an initiatory pattern. And the whole thing would culminate in some final test, which would be the borderline from the student having passed a test not only involving intellectual skills, but also skills in groups, also some kind of social sense or responsibility, as actually done through groups and workshop learning, making group dynamics conscious, etc. And then there'd be some final test that involved all these. And it would be like one of these, and I think it could probably also involve, like the Eleusinian Mysteries, a psychedelic revelation. I think this would be probably the best way to have the graduation thing, to have the psychedelic initiation thing. Maybe mushrooms would be the best thing. Oh, absolutely. The archaic return, the culmination of the educational process in the archaic mystery, which is where it always ended. Well, besides the fact that you address my complaint about the lack of the sacred, with actually an interesting covert plan for the introduction of a new world religion through this religious aspect of the initiations and the visits to the sacred sites, there's also the possibility, since there's no school in this plan, there are workshop centers all over the place, that ordinary courses of religion, ethics, and so on, according to different traditions, would also be offering workshops, and students, according to their choice of ancient tradition, could take a neo-Pagan, a neo-Platonic, a neo-Pythagorean, etc. Roman Catholic, Methodist, Islamic, Hindu. There'd be workshops in Tibetan Buddhist, led by people in those traditions. If you want to know about Judaism, you don't go to a religious education instructor who tells you about it from a book. You go to do a workshop with a rabbi. Yes. And then the relationship between education and the job market would be imagined then through some classified ads, as a person wanted, must have three W courses, two E courses, and one S, or something like that. Right. And then as these requirements of different industries became known, people seeking a certain profession would see to it that they learned how to read, for example, or how to run a computer. Well, that would be one way it would work, yes. And I think that this educational system probably would fulfill the needs of industry, though I hadn't thought of it that way, better than the present one, because it would actually give a much better sense of the industry. They're not interested in taking graduates who just think from books. They complain all the time in Britain about how they don't want university graduates in a lot of British industries. Their heads are too big, and they're too big for their boots, and they don't respect practical experience. So they'd rather take people straight from school. Common pattern. Well, English universities were started by the church, but American universities, as Page Smith points out in his book, were started by tycoons of business. And each successful tycoon had to have among his credentials a university he'd started with an endowment. So besides, I think the vision, or this is a good one, it's becoming for me personally more and more satisfactory and also plausible. I think that some people have suggested, actually, that the public school system be replaced with a voucher system. That's the active proposal at the moment. This is a saturated idea, too. The point is this voucher system is part of the current political orthodoxy, so it's very easy to see how it might be realised in a new form. Well, that's, I think, a question we have to face is the, besides the envision of the final product, also some idea as to the path that goes from here, point A, to there, point B. And it's hard to see how to get rid of this entrenched public school system. It would have to be, as we're talking about politics here, there would have to be a plebiscite, where the voters insist on the opportunity to control the school system, and that they want a voucher system. You simply privatise it, and you privatise the education, you have a voucher system, valid at any school, on an approved list which is constituted by a new kind of educational board, not the old one. And the approved list includes Waldorf schools, Montessori schools, it would include Catholic schools, Islamic schools, I mean, there would be a whole range of accredited schools, including former public schools, which would now become sort of autonomous town schools or something. They would compete in the open market. And this system would be extremely, it would be pluralistic, it would be extremely responsive to what people actually want and what parents and students are really interested in. And it would have the advantage of being very decentralised and self-regulating. Well, they had me there for a while, but I have to admit that Rupert lost me at the end there when he started promoting a voucher system for public schools. Maybe we'll hear Terrence and Ralph's response to that in the second half of this trilogue, which will be our next podcast. But unfortunately, that won't be until next week. I know, you were getting used to me putting out three podcasts a week there for a while, and you were really kind to give me a pass when I cut it back to only two a week. It really does bother me that I'm going to have to cut back to just one podcast a week for a while here. But I've got a really good reason this time. At least I think so. You see, I'm leaving for the East Coast tomorrow so that I can be with my children and grandchildren to help celebrate my oldest granddaughter's eighth birthday. So you see, I really do have a good excuse this time. And I promise to get the second half of this tape out as soon as I get back next week. But that means it will probably be late Wednesday or sometimes Thursday before I get it out to you. And, hey, I really appreciate your understanding. I don't know about you, but I do like the idea about a workshop-based system to replace our current Western system of indoctrinating our children into the fabric of society before they have the opportunity to make an informed choice on their own about just where they want to fit in. I know that if I had an education that taught me how to think instead of what to think, I'm sure my life choices would have been significantly different than they were when I was still thinking the way I was brainwashed into thinking by the culture that I was born into. It seems to me that the way we educate those who come after us actually changes the world more than any of us can do on our own. So this is really a vitally important issue, at least in my humble opinion. And another thing they got me thinking about was when Ralph was talking about the workshop model for an education system, the one that Rupert and Terrence had proposed, and his primary question as I understood it was, "So who would decide which workshops would be given?" and so on. Basically, his question seemed to be, "Who would administer this new system?" And I wonder how Ralph would frame this question now that the Internet has evolved to its current point, which of course is still only a small glimmer of what it's going to be in 10 years. The amazing variety of courses and workshops that are offered right now already boggle the mind. So I guess the question goes from who will decide what is offered to one of how does one decide which courses and workshops to take? And I guess the Joseph Campbell answer is the one I'd vote for, "Follow your bliss," which I discovered is often easier to say than to actually do. And I'm sure that many professional teachers would argue that something more structured than the hodgepodge of today's Internet is needed to properly educate somebody. But I'll tell you this, from the thoughtful comments I've been receiving in emails from people who are less than one-third of my age, all I can say is that they're sure learning a lot of important things that I don't think you'll find in many school curriculums. I'm just blown away by some of your comments. My guess is that a lot of what you've learned has come from surfing far and wide on the Internet. I guess that's one reason I'm so hopeful about our long-term future. You know, while the Baby Boomers are products of television, their children are growing up on the Internet. And wait till we see what their children are going to be like. They'll never know what life was like without a high-speed Internet connection. I wish I could travel into the future and hear what kind of stories my great-grandchildren will tell their children about how hard life was when they were growing up. I remember my mother talking about not having indoor plumbing, and my big hardship was that our television was only in black and white when I was a kid. My children, of course, can see how hard life was before the Internet. And at the rate we're going, it won't be long before children are hearing their parents tell them what life was like before there was a holodeck in every home. Now, I guess I'd better close before I get too carried away here, but there is one more thing I want to mention. And that is, did you get a chance to see the comet McNaught the last few days? I don't think it's visible in the Northern Hemisphere any longer, but if you happen to live south of the equator, I think you still have a few days to see it. And to be honest, I wasn't all that excited about seeing it at first, but thankfully my wife encouraged me to join her in watching it while we could, and I have to tell you that it turned into a rather mystical experience for me. To begin with, it was a lot bigger than I remember Halley's Comet to be when it was here a few years ago. And when I looked at it through some binoculars, I was really blown away. It was just huge, and as I looked at it, I tried to imagine what it would sound like if I was riding it into our atmosphere. And when I did that, I was suddenly struck by the fact that had that comet's path been only a tiny bit closer, it actually could have hit the Earth and essentially brought our great human experiment to an end. I know that my words aren't really conveying what I felt at the moment, but seeing that huge fiery object speeding through space and knowing that if it struck the Earth, we'd all be done for, well, that just made me intensely aware of how fragile our hold on life on this little planet really is. Why we're spending so much of our time building weapons instead of figuring out ways to divert these large objects that keep coming our way is just beyond me. You know, eventually something as large as that comet is going to be heading right for us, and the sooner we begin working on what to do about that inevitable problem, the better chance we're going to have of solving it before it solves all of our human problems once and for all. So if you're living down under right now, why don't you go out and do some comet watching the next few nights? It really is inspiring. At least it was for me. Well, before I go, once again, I need to mention that this and all of the podcasts from The Psychedelic Salon are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 2.5 License. And if you have any questions about that, just click on the link at the bottom of The Psychedelic Salon web page, which you can find at www.matrixmasters.com/podcasts. And if you still have questions, you can send them in an email to Lorenzo@matrixmasters.com. Thanks again to Shatol Hayuk for letting us use your music here in The Psychedelic Salon, and for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from cyberdelic space. Be well, my friends. [Music] {END} Wait Time : 0.00 sec Model Load: 0.66 sec Decoding : 1.57 sec Transcribe: 3168.84 sec Total Time: 3171.08 sec