Greetings from cyberdelic space. This is Lorenzo and I'm your host here in the
 psychedelic salon. And today we're going to be hearing a little more from the
 private trialogue that Ralph Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake and Terrence McKenna
 held in September of 1991. But before we get to them I want to take a moment and
 thank two of the salons most stalwart supporters. They are Vipal P and
 Michael M, both of whom made very generous donations to the salon during
 the past week. And I want to note that both Vipal and Michael were frequent
 owners last year as well. Their contributions have significantly
 enhanced my ability to continue producing these podcasts and I want to
 thank them and all of the salons other financial supporters for helping us keep
 expanding our physical facilities to accommodate the ever-growing number of
 friends who join us here in the salon each week. Thanks again to all of you. Now
 for today's program. This is the next to last session on the set of cassette
 tapes made of a private trialogue that I'm guessing they held in preparation
 for the completion of their book, "Trialogues on the Edge of the West" that
 came out the following year. The topic today is crop circles and to me it
 provided what I am thinking of as a role reversal for Terrence McKenna. I've kind
 of always thought of Terrence as being out there on the far edge of things for
 the most part, but in this discussion he becomes the conservative one. As you'll
 hear, Rupert and Ralph have pretty open minds on the subject, but Terrence is
 convinced it's a hoax. The irony here, at least to me, is that from where I sit
 Terrence's theory about the British government being behind the phenomena in
 some kind of a long-term research study about public opinion seems to be as far
 fetched as the little green men and flying saucers being behind it. Of course
 this trialogue was held over 16 years ago and a lot has happened since then. You
 may not agree with me, but I think that Ralph's and Rupert's objections to
 Terrence's position are even stronger today now that there have been several
 thousand more circles that have been formed in the interim. But I'll let you
 decide about this for yourself after you hear their various takes on this
 interesting phenomena. We'll start with Rupert Sheldrake setting up the premise
 of this discussion. So it's Tuesday evening, September 3rd, 1991, and our subject is
 crop circles. Well I think it's interesting to talk about crop circles
 and it's particularly interesting for those of us in Britain, partly because
 this is almost the only phenomenon in which Britain currently leads the world.
 And my own involvement in this, apart from the general interest, an interest
 shared by practically everybody in Britain, a subject as discussed by
 almost every man, woman and child in the British Isles, is that I'm a member of
 the Centre for Crop Circle Studies and on the scientific panel, both because of
 my interest in morphic resonance and also because I'm one of the few crop
 physiologists around. And since this is a crop phenomenon, crop physiology is one
 of the relevant disciplines.
 The phenomenon of crop circles first came to public attention in 1980 or
 1981, when people started noticing circular areas of fields which were
 depressed, usually with a spiral pattern of flattening of the corn. And to start
 with, these were simply circles, and so the name grew up. They were called
 crop circles. There were a few seen in 1981 and at first they attracted the
 attention of the UFO people and the Earth Mysteries people, particularly UFO
 experts, because they started occurring in the neighbourhood of Warminster and
 Wiltshire, which is an area famed for UFO sightings. In fact, in those parts of
 south-west England with long histories of UFO interest. Then in subsequent years,
 as interest grew, more and more of them were observed. By the mid 80s they've
 become a fairly well-known phenomenon. They were reported in the media and
 caused quite a lot of comment. And the main way that they were explained at the
 time was in terms of whirlwinds. The chief proponent of the whirlwind theory
 is an indefatigable fellow called Meaden, who believes that they're caused by
 plasma vortices, a new kind of previously unobserved whirlwind, which unlike
 ordinary whirlwinds, which move across fields like dust devils and therefore
 leave a trap, came into being at a single localized focused point. And by
 spinning around, created the sharply defined depression of the crop.
 By the mid 80s the phenomenon had developed so that instead of just single
 circles, circles appeared now with smaller circles around them, sometimes
 four circles spaced at equal intervals around the central circle. Sometimes with
 rims around them, so there'd be the circle, then there'd be a gap of standing corn, and
 then there'd be a ring around the original circle. Meaden had to elaborate
 his plasma vortex theory now to account for vortices which could jump and create
 symmetrical patterns of vortices around the original circles. And as he
 elaborated his theory, so the phenomenon became more elaborate. He was one of the
 principal investigators at the time and he's the editor of the Journal of
 Meteorology and the president of the Tornado and Storm Research Organization,
 which is to do with curious weather phenomena. By 1988 phenomena had started
 appearing where you got rows of circles. By 1989 these had become more elaborate
 and by 1990 the phenomena had become so extraordinarily elaborate that
 these aroused extremely widespread attention and media interest. There were
 ones where there were a series of rings joined together by lines with symmetrically
 placed boxes on the side and sometimes with cone-like structures coming off.
 Well this was clearly a challenge for the plasma vortex theory and Meaden,
 ever ingenious, elaborated it further so that these plasma vortices could now
 create things that look more like Sumerian hieroglyphs than anything else.
 So his theory was elaborated ad hoc until this year. He had to resort to an
 additional hypothesis, namely that these plasma vortices were organized by chaotic
 attractors. Well for some reason, because Meaden claimed to have the principle
 scientific explanation for these, at first people thought well they were
 curious phenomena, an anomalous scientific phenomenon. As the phenomena
 has become more and more elaborate, his attempts to explain the phenomena in
 terms of seemingly normal natural forces have become less and less credible to
 many. In June 1990 there was a conference organized by him and his group in
 Oxford in England, the culmination of which was supposed to be a general
 endorsement of the fact the phenomenon had now been solved in terms of the
 plasma vortex. However just at the end of the conference one of the investigators
 came in with a set of slides of the crop circles that had appeared within the few
 preceding weeks, which included these large Sumerian hieroglyph forms with
 series of rings, symmetrical boxes and so on, and the conference dissolved in
 disarray as everybody but Meaden realized that these extremely complex
 and symmetrical structures couldn't conceivably be explained by the type of
 whirlwind theory he was putting forward.
 Because the whirlwind theory was so widely accepted as being the most
 rational scientific explanation for this, the hoax theory, which is one of the
 main alternatives, was not considered that seriously initially. As the
 phenomena got more elaborate, the phenomena has become more and
 more puzzling and more and more people have been driven to consider the hoax
 theory. There have been some definite hoaxes. One was commissioned by one of
 the popular daily newspapers in Britain, partly to outwit one of the rival
 newspapers who'd been giving a lot of coverage to corn circles. They were then
 able to show evidence of a hoax which was carried out by people commissioned
 by themselves to produce a spurious phenomenon. One appeared two years ago
 which was a fairly crudely executed hoax, and to make the point that it was a
 hoax, Ouija boards were found in the middle of the circles when the hoax was
 discovered. So that one was clearly announcing itself as a hoax. Well, there
 are several features about these which perhaps I should mention by way of
 introduction. Firstly, they don't occur just in single types of crops, they
 mainly occur in cereal crops, usually wheat and barley, and other cereal crops,
 but they also have been found in oilseed rape and other crops, so they're not
 confined to cereals, but they're mainly in cereal crops. And just a footnote
 for the benefit of Americans, what we in England called corn means all cereal
 crops, so when people talk about corn circles they don't mean circles of maize
 in maize fields. Maize is hardly grown in England, and as far as I know these have
 never been observed in maize crops. The crop is flattened, the stems are not
 broken, they're bent over, usually at the base. There's two kinds of flattening, one
 is where the stem is bent and the other which happens in wet ground is where the
 roots become loose and the whole plant goes over because the roots have
 provided very little resistance. Both these types of flattening occur naturally
 as a result of wind damage to crops, and in the trade they're called lodging, where a
 crop falls over. When a crop falls over, if it's still at the green and growing
 stage, then the growing ends of the thing will right themselves and start growing
 up again. This is a normal physiological response found in any flattened grass.
 And so if the lodging occurs at any stage in the growth of the crop, then you
 get them regenerating and recovering and growing up. There's nothing mysterious
 about this, it's what happens to any crop, whether lodged by wind, pressed over
 mechanically, or in a crop circle. These crop circles have mostly been
 found in southwestern England and a remarkably high concentration is found
 around UFO centres like Warminster. There's a particular hill near Warminster
 which is a centre of UFO sightings and they've been found round there. They've
 been found near to Stonehenge, near to Avebury, Silbury Hill and
 East and West Kennet Long Barriers, a whole complex of
 megalithic remains in Wiltshire. And they've been found near Winchester and
 other places where there are ancient centres. So there's a curious association
 of these with some of the prime complexes in England of megalithic
 remains and megalithic sites. They're often within a few miles of them and
 some of the best ones have been sites where you can actually stand on Silbury Hill
 and see them. This year there were something like eight or nine within two
 miles of Avebury in that particular complex. The patterns, as I've already
 mentioned, have been rapidly evolving from simple circles, they've moved on to
 complexes of circles, then to these lines of circles joined with boxes around and
 sometimes with semi-circles at the end. This year the elaboration
 continued further. Ones appeared with ladder-type patterns in
 them and perhaps the most remarkable of all occurred in July 1991 involving a
 circle in the middle, a ring around it, a triangle over that and at the apices of
 the triangle further circles containing different spiral patterns in each. This
 last one is remarkably like the centre of a crop circle studies logo which
 consists of a circle with a triangle and rings at the end. And the ones with
 ladders which appeared this year are very like pictures of Neolithic rock
 markings which were published in an article earlier in the year comparing
 crop circles to archaic artifacts in Europe, drawing attention to the fact
 that some of them were like ball and ring markings. And there were some of the
 pictures in this book which showed ladder formations very similar to the ones that
 subsequently appeared. Well there have also been sightings of crop circles in
 other parts of England and a few have been reported from parts of the
 US, Australia, Crimea and elsewhere.
 The evolution of the phenomenon and also its spread is very remarkable. In 1990
 there were over 400 circles or formations in fields whereas the total
 recorded number up to 1990 from 1980 onwards only came to about 400. So the
 number of these is increasing quite rapidly. This year the season started
 late 1991 partly because we had a wet spring, apparently they're deterred by
 rainy weather. The peak time for the occurrence of these is in May, June and
 July when the crops are still growing. Some occur in August but in August the
 crops are maturing and becoming, drying up and they're harvested typically in
 August. So there's a limited season in the phenomenon period. You don't get them
 between August and May because there are no standing crops or in the earlier part
 of the spring they've hardly grown at all.
 Attempts have been made to observe them forming. People have set up structures,
 observed fields with field glasses, infrared recording apparatus and so
 forth. There have been various accounts of mysterious blue lights, buzzing noises,
 humming noises, some of which have been recorded on tape recorders and other
 peculiar phenomena. Dowsers, occultists, parapsychological researchers,
 ufologists and all kinds of people interested in paranormal phenomena,
 Fortuans and so on, have been drawn to these phenomena in droves and attempts to
 explain them in terms of occult forces, dowsing lines, ley lines and so on, are so
 numerous that it would take many hours to go through them all. The remarkable
 thing though is that almost every hypothesis that's been put forward to
 explain them is either refuted by the facts or even more mind-boggling than the
 phenomenon itself. The variety of theories include migrating hedgehogs
 moving in circles, mysterious fungus and viral diseases occurring in patterns
 in the fields, of course the plasma vortex theory, and then a whole range of
 other theories which fall into two main categories, the top-down theory that has
 the patterning influence coming from above, like in the wind, the air, or by some
 force coming down from above, or the bottom-up theory that has the patterns
 emerging through the earth and somehow weakening the crop so that it falls over
 possibly by the agency of wind, but a kind of weakening force moving up from
 the earth. So you could call these the Gaian theory, moving up from the earth,
 or the celestial theory, forces moving down from above. It's perfectly clear
 now to everybody involved in the field that these involve some kind of designing
 intelligence, they're obviously not merely random patterns caused by
 chance natural phenomena. The fact that the complexity of the phenomenon has
 increased so much in the few years that they've been observed can't be explained
 simply in terms of more people looking out for them, therefore patterns being
 seen which were not seen before. These are huge structures, it's impossible that,
 especially in the last 10 years, structures of the complexity observed in
 the last two or three years could have occurred in that part of England and not
 been observed. Of course people involved in trying to explain them
 naturalistically have to try and say they've always happened, it's just that
 no one observed them before, it's only the press attention that's led to them being
 observed. And so when we come to the present state of play, it's clear to
 everyone that there's some kind of intelligence involved, some kind of
 patterning or formative influence. The two main categories of explanation that
 have been put forward involve first the hoax theory, that the whole thing is an
 incredibly elaborate hoax involving a great deal of precision and planning,
 commando-like skills masterminded by people of extraordinary imagination and
 intelligence, and so far with complete secrecy on the part of all those
 involved. Or that we're dealing here with a phenomenon so remarkable that it goes
 off the end of the scale of any previously known poltergeist, Fortean or
 other such paranormal phenomenon, because of its evolving nature, the intelligence
 behind it and the fact that it has a kind of sense of humor and interacts
 with what we think about them. Whatever theory is put forward, the phenomenon
 seems to refute within the next year. One of the very few generalizations you can
 make is that they never cross field boundaries, they've never yet been
 observed to straddle a hedge, for example, between two fields. But almost
 because that generalization has been made, there are some people in the Center
 for Crop Cycle Studies who expect that that will in fact happen next year. So in
 summary, I think what they present is a kind of koan, a kind of puzzle which
 evolves year by year, which is a definite phenomenon that's unmistakable, can be
 photographed and is photographed, reported in the national press and the
 local media, on television, discussed throughout Britain and increasingly in
 other parts of the world. But for which the mind can find no single satisfying
 explanation, because any attempt to come up with such an explanation seems to
 be refuted by the facts or can be countered by some alternative
 explanation. So they present a real enigma or riddle which, in my opinion, is
 as yet completely unsolved.
 Well, I think to take the most sympathetic view to your presentation,
 the most radical hypothesis behind the enigma, something like intelligent species on
 the twelfth planet with a radon, or powerful force, or whatever you please,
 intelligent, an external intelligence really trying seriously to communicate
 with us, let's say I like this, I am ready to go then, before even so we could
 interpret the phenomenon, we would be
 required by every consideration to completely eliminate the hoax theory. So
 even the UFO theorists I think would agree, before you could start listing
 some more or less credible explanations, you would have to dispose of the hoax
 theory or give your argument why it's extremely improbable or something like
 that. This would just, in service, in proper service to the traditional
 cognitive style of this planet, and trying to give the best service to the
 intelligence of the other planet. And yet, it seems in your discussion and in the
 discussions I've read in the journals and books, there is no argument is given
 to rule out or diminish the likelihood of the hoax theory. So this is the point,
 first of all, that I'm not understanding. I need to dispose somehow of what seems
 to me the likeliest explanation in order to give any serious consideration to
 alternative explanations. All right, so let us consider the hoax theory,
 since Terence is such an expert at elaborate conspiracy theories, perhaps
 this would fall to him to provide an explanation. I think the main reason why
 people who are involved in investigating it don't think they're all hoaxes, and
 almost everyone who I know who's actually investigated and been there,
 including farmers in whose fields they appear, the policemen in the aerial
 patrol whom we met when we visited one in Rotshaw, the people who've seen
 them on the ground and who've seen most of them, there's hardly anyone who's
 actually acquainted with the phenomenon at first hand who thinks they're all
 hoaxes. The people who think they're all hoaxes are people who've never seen them,
 who sit in armchairs, and the armchair skeptics... But why? What is it that
 has made you personally to think that a hoax is unlikely, unlikely explanation?
 Well, first of all, the fact that the hoaxes haven't been detected, if so.
 Secondly, that when looking at the phenomena it's very hard to conceive
 how the whole thing could have been executed. Thirdly, and probably the most
 important objection, that for such a hoax to have been perpetrated
 over a 10-year period would require an extreme elaborateness of organization,
 dedication on the part of quite a large number of people,
 military precision in planning and execution, ability to do these things
 under the nose of teams of investigators who spend all night trying to find
 out how they're done - they often occur within a few hundred yards of
 investigators trying to track the phenomenon and somehow don't detect them -
 an imagination and intelligence of a high order, and a dedication to this
 cause, which is rare among hoaxers. A persistent hoax going on for over 10
 years, showing remarkably skillful elaboration, so that to start with the
 phenomena are quite simple and straightforward, and therefore can easily
 be accepted as if they're created by whirlwinds. That does seem a plausible
 explanation for the occasional circle of this kind. And then, carefully building
 up so that the thing becomes more and more intriguing and peculiar, it's
 just that a hoax on that scale and of that kind seems exceedingly improbable.
 It's difficult to think who could have done it, how they could have maintained
 the secrecy, what could have motivated them, and what kind of dedication and
 skills could have been involved. So the hoax theory, if it was just one, the hoax
 theory would be very plausible, but a phenomenon over such a long time period,
 now with ones turning up in other parts of the world as well, on increasing level
 400 of them last year, in different parts of Britain, this requires quite a large
 effort. So are there documented cases with photographs from other parts of the
 world? I mean, I keep hearing that they've been observed in Russia and Canada and so on, but I haven't seen any.
 I haven't yet seen any documented evidence for these, except that the people who say
 they've seen them seem reasonably reliable. So in terms of some kind of
 actual conviction, you would think it's so conceivable that it will be discovered
 that it's a hoax, and then the whole phenomenon would be forgotten. That's not
 totally ruled out. I don't think so. There are various reasons to say that it's very improbable, a matter of scale,
 secrecy, persistence in time, and so on. Is it more improbable than any other
 explanation? Can one think of a more probable explanation than that it's a
 hoax? It seems to me any other explanation will be orders of magnitude
 more improbable than that it's a hoax. Well, it depends where you come from.
 You see, someone who was a skeptic, you know, would be forced to that hypothesis,
 whatever happened. The Humean sceptical position, where Hume's argument
 against miracles, is that miracles occur rarely, they're extremely improbable, it's
 far more probable that these are all either conjuring tricks, deceptions, or illusions.
 This is a standard rationalist position, and I think for anyone who takes a
 rationalist or sceptical point of view, the hoax theory will always be a priori
 the best theory, whatever happens, whatever the phenomenon. For those who
 think paranormal phenomena are likely, even probable, for people who subscribe
 to the Fortune Times, for members of the Society for the Psychical Research, and so
 on, then the possibility that some other forms of intelligence may be
 communicating with us in some way at this crucial juncture in human history
 has a certain plausibility. But the phenomenon, you see, rather depends on
 what you believe to start with. Well, that's a very interesting point, because it's as if.
 Again, I really want to believe that the paranormal forces will be
 revealed with superhuman intelligence and speak to us, like a
 massive dolphin could speak to us. So, from that perspective, that means that
 this intelligence has chosen a way to speak to us, which will be misunderstood
 in most people. I mean, it almost appears to be intentionally disguised as a hoax,
 starting from the simplest forms, where a plasma vortex theory could conceivably
 apply, gradually separating the men from the boys, as it were, and let us
 find a way of speaking which is a whisper of intelligence to one group and
 is absolutely ridiculous to another group. It's a great idea.
 It isn't communication, it's anti-communication.
 It's kind of anti-communication.
 Can I wade into this?
 Yes.
 Well, let's see.
 First of all, in trying to understand any unsolved mystery or unknown phenomenon,
 it seems to me the Western mind has developed a number of tools that have
 general application, one of them being what's called Occam's razor, that
 hypotheses should not be multiplied without necessity, so that we should seek
 the simplest explanation and force it to fail before we move on to time travelers,
 space travelers, to Luric forces, and so forth and so on. There are a number of
 things about this that seem to me to argue very, very strongly that it is a
 hoax. First of all, and in your description of it, Rupert, there were all
 the... if it is shown to be a hoax, we could replay the tape of your description of it.
 It's consistent with it being a hoax and with the
 explanation of it being right under the surface. You speak of how it could only
 be done by a commando-style operation. It would require an organization with
 great self-discipline and secrecy, that oddly enough, every explanation is then
 met with a crop circle which torpedoes that explanation. The people who
 are attracted to the phenomenon, it occurs within driving distance of their
 doorstep in an area with a history of unusual phenomena, so forth and so on. It
 seems to me that the likely explanation is that we're dealing with not a hoax
 so much as an experiment, an experiment in deception. It's a
 deception. Someone is studying how people react to the paranormal. One of the most
 puzzling things about this entire thing is that no one has ever seen one of
 these things in the act of coming into existence, so we get before and we get
 after. The hoax theory would be completely shot out of the water by
 videotape of these cereal grains lying down in a pattern, and I predict that we
 will never obtain such videotape, because I'll bet you to see it happening is to
 see how it's done, and that the absence of this videotape is a strong indication
 that this is a disinformation project. It's the most devious argument I've ever heard. Why is it
 devious? If you can't catch it in the act, it means that seeing how it's done will
 tell you how it's done. Yes, but that's very clever of it to always be invisible.
 Or very necessary for it to keep from being blowing its own cover. Rupert said
 it's discussed by all and everyone in the UK. That is obviously the intent of
 whatever is behind it. He said it displays humor. Now humor is one of the
 most human of all characteristics. Polish jokes don't even make sense
 outside of Poland, yet this has humor. We're told that it is the product of a
 designing agency. We're told that blue lights and humming noises are associated
 with it, as if these facts made it more mysterious. They don't make it more
 mysterious, they make it less mysterious. And to my mind the most astonishing fact
 about all this, which seems to pose no problem for the English, is that their
 own Ministry of Defense shows no alarm whatsoever over this phenomenon. Here are
 nightly trespasses of law-abiding English property owners, violations of
 the airspace of the United Kingdom, and the government maintains a blithe
 aloofness. And I dare say I'm sure there are nuclear weapons storage areas within
 driving distance of these areas. We've been seriously exhausted chasing UFOs for the past 20 years.
 Well, so here's my notion of what is going on. Every intelligence agency on
 earth that does its work well has within it special units that are devoted to
 studying the paranormal, both as a real possibility and as a potential
 disinformation tool to be used against their enemies. And in spite of the fact
 that in other discussions Rupert has somewhat disparaged, is it MI5? Yes.
 The world reputation of MI5 is that it contains some of the
 subtlest thinkers that any intelligence agency on earth has ever brought under its...
 The best expert. Well, Alan Turing, so forth and so on. We could go on and on
 about this. So I suspect that an experiment is in progress to see how
 people react to a phenomenon which defies explanation. And every time an
 explanation is brought forth, the phenomenon is redesigned to destroy and
 discredit the explanation. It's a deep cover study of the
 semiotics of deception. And this does, this seems to me a very good way for an
 intelligence agency to spend its money. This is the business intelligence
 agencies are in, is deception. Now the people who are participating in this on
 the front lines, the ley liners, the dousers, the UFO, the enthusiasts and the
 two lures are simply dupes. And a population, the easiest population on
 earth to do any stage magician will tell you that the easiest people to fool are
 people who believe in magic. They are, have already come over to your side. Now
 in the United States a somewhat similar phenomenon occurred somewhat earlier in
 time, which were cattle mutilations. And much was made of this and the same crowd
 of people manned the front lines and announced that aliens were experimenting
 with bovine pituitary glands and so forth and so on. And in fact I believe
 what was happening was a similar effort on the part of the CIA to start a
 disinformation backfire to the spreading cult of allegiance to UFOs. There is a
 method for looking at this kind of phenomenon where you analyze what it's
 doing in terms of its effect on society and then you can reason back to its
 causes. And what this phenomenon is doing is casting doubt on
 scientific orthodoxy. The story of the gentleman, yes the gentleman who called
 the conference to have his theory sanctioned, who was in, who had his
 conference dissolve in chaos when evidence was brought in that was
 completely outside the purvey of his theory, was simply, he was made a monkey
 of by this agency. So I think that we, I find this all very very interesting, but
 I think we should be very cautious of lining up with the people who proclaim
 that friendly Zanabal Ganubians or people from a far-flung future are
 communicating, because nothing is being communicated and in the absence of the
 observation of the phenomenon in progress, I think it would be absurd to
 go outside the conjuring power of reason and just say this is an intelligence
 operation in progress and deception and the mechanics of deception and the
 sociological response to deception is being very very carefully studied. I find
 it fascinating that from August to May it can't happen. I submit this is when,
 this is the period when the data is analyzed and next year's designs are
 planned and perhaps training is carried out in other parts of the world where
 the commandos, if it is true that these things are occurring in other parts of
 the world, then that may be where the practice takes place. I would suspect
 that it actually isn't going on in other parts of the world and that it's simply
 the enthusiasm of the the ley line people to make this claim. The whole
 thing seems to me beneath our intelligence, it's a mass, it's directed
 toward the mass mind, it's a dialogue between MI5 and the tabloids with the
 gullible haplessly caught in between and the rest of us able to look down with a
 small smile that had all this sound and fury over nothing. It's extremely implausible for anyone who's brought up in Britain and knows the kind of official set up there, to think that an intelligence agency in Britain could have the
 imagination, that such an imaginative scheme could be sanctioned by whatever
 committees are in power, that they should have the motivation to discredit
 science in the eyes of the public, or that any official body could carry on
 for so long in the spirit of mischief. More implausible than that out here the
 aliens from another dimension are writing incomprehensible glyphs in the
 cornfields of England? No, the main theory that appeals to people on the paranormal
 front in England is not aliens. Aliens and the UFO thing subsided into
 background quite early. You see when you had circles with symmetrical smaller
 circles around them, placed in fours or even fives, the ufologists said well this is
 obviously the landing marks of an alien spacecraft. However as soon as they'd said
 that, the next year ones of this kind appeared directly under power
 transmission lines, thus refuting the idea that any heavy object could have
 come down vertically from above and landed there. It would have had to come down
 then move sideways, a large heavy object, without having any effect on the
 surrounding crop, and then land, which is surely a devious way for it to happen. So
 the most obvious flying saucer type theories were refuted by the phenomenon
 itself. The alien theory is a very rare one among the theories encountered. The
 one that I think is most popular among people who take seriously the
 phenomenon and think that the hoax theory is not the only possible
 explanation is that there's a spirit of the land itself, or earth mysteries long
 embedded in these ancient megalithic monuments are sort of coming back to
 life again and somehow are being reactivated in Britain's hour of need, or
 that Gaia, the Gaian intelligence or the Gaian mind itself is involved in some
 ongoing dialogue or communication which principally has the effect year by year
 of attracting more and more attention, and the message year by year seems to be
 watch this space. Well I would make a series of predictions about this
 phenomenon. The strongest prediction that I would make is it will simply be
 eventually exposed as exactly what I said it was, a government disinformation
 study, because if the British government is as bungling as you say it is, then
 eventually they will drop the ball. That would be my first prediction, and the
 whole thing will be exposed as a study of disinformation and deception.
 Especially now with the budget problems. If that doesn't happen then I would make the
 following two predictions. We will never see film or videotape of one of these
 things in the act of happening, and the phenomenon will stop very suddenly of
 its own accord, because the project will end. One point I didn't get to make in my
 attack is you mentioned that it is deterred by rainy weather. I submit to
 you this is simply because in rainy weather it's harder to cover your tracks,
 to cover your tracks. You're going to leave footprints, helicopter skid marks,
 or whatever it is, that rainy weather makes it more difficult to carry out the
 deception. So I think we will never see videotape or film of this, and that it
 will either go away very suddenly when the project is completed, or some at
 night a number of these ley liners will stumble on MI5's group hard at work
 making a crop circle. Yes, and anything else, I mean I'm willing to be
 convinced, and I would say I'll abandon my position if I see film of it in
 progress. That's what we need. It's intolerable to claim that this is going
 on on such a large scale, and no one can come. It must take many minutes to make
 one of these things, even if you were a commando team, and unless we're asked to
 believe it happens instantly, it seems that the strangest thing about it is
 that we never catch it in the act. And also I do find the silence of the
 British government absolutely beyond understanding, unless they are at the
 highest levels fully informed. The American government had a UFO project, but it was
 top secret, so they might be interested in a way that we don't know about.
 Terrence, I don't like this idea of making a large bet on the single theory. I agree
 that from our perspective the hoax theories have not been diminished in
 probability enough, and that Occam's Razor does seem to apply. And among hoax
 theories, I would say your military version is maybe, let us just suppose,
 it's the most likely hoax theory. It still seems to me that you could be the
 Duke, because we have these very interesting precedents, if they be
 precedents, the Vedas, the Bible, the sacred books, they are written in several
 levels. In the Vedas they have four levels of communication. The Bible has two
 clear levels that are constantly interpreted and hermeneutics and put before us.
 There is a level for ordinary stupid people, and there is another level for
 elite spiritual devotees. So here we have a phenomenon where if a Gaia is
 speaking to us, I mean in case it's not a hoax, in case it's not a hoax, then what
 is it? It does seem to be disguised as a hoax, that's true, but there would be a
 reason for that, you see, and all people who believe it's a hoax, when as a matter
 of fact it's a divine communication, those people are dupes, as in the case of
 the Bible. There are a lot of people who think it's just history and so on.
 Well, but even the people who don't believe it's a hoax are of
 many minds about what it is. It doesn't seem to be clearly communicating
 anything to anybody. Well, the interpretation of the Bible is also not
 so clear. Well, this is anti-communication. In other words, what in
 the world is the point of opening a channel and then sending noise through
 the channel? Well, as you were saying about Cain and Abel, exactly who did they
 make with to produce the legions that followed? Is this noise? Is this a story?
 Well, I don't feel the force of calling on the Vedas or the Bible at all. The
 very fact that you have to reach back that far shows the desperate effort to
 save the phenomenon. It seems to me that this is quite a tight little
 explanation, and I'm sure that the British government doesn't dismiss the
 safety of its thermonuclear weapons by appealing to the double level of the Vedas.
 I think that we should bet on the red and we should bet on the black.
 Probably you're right. Probably it's a hoax. In cases of hoax, probably it's military.
 All right. But just as the fanatics of this phenomenon can't reduce the
 hoaxes theory to zero, neither can we reduce the non-hoax theory to zero.
 Therefore, we have to keep our eyes open in case it begins to actually say some
 understandable intelligence to us. We can't dismiss it completely. We have to keep
 watching the photographs. It doesn't even have to say something intelligent to us.
 It just has to happen while we're looking at it. That would...
 Every newspaper on earth would report it. Well, why not? Is it trying to
 communicate? What would it lose by being seen in the act of happening? We see that
 it happens. If I produced a videotape and said, "Look, here's the thing taken by the
 Center for Crop Circle Studies team in the field. Here's the video. Here you can
 see the stalks being flattened." If you didn't say it, certainly
 members of PSYCOP and skeptical organizations would... This videotape is a hoax.
 But the people who write... No, but they would be on the defensive. Right now it's
 the ley liners who are on the defensive. No, they're not on the defensive. That's why
 they watch for it. That's why they're so keen to watch. They know that seeing it
 happen is a key event in the evolution of the phenomenon. Well, everybody agrees that it would be interesting to be able to record one happening.
 It would be the crux of the matter. Well, that's why people are out there
 investigating it, you see. But anyone who's out there investigating it, well,
 whatever they find, have their testimony doubted. Unless they happen to find
 people actually photographs of clear-cut evidence of military people
 flattening it. Now, you see, the trouble is nothing will prove it
 either way. That's my point. If you have a picture of the military involved in a
 hoax, or non-military, or anybody else, then some people say that
 proves they're all hoaxes. Others will say, "Well, we've always known that some of
 them are hoaxes, and this is just one of the hoaxes, but the others aren't."
 That's right. This happened with the cattle mutilations. No matter how many times they
 found military scalpels at the site, and saw helicopters departing from the site,
 the hard core continued to claim that there was a residuum of these phenomena
 that were, in fact, aliens connecting pine needles.
 Well, there's very little difference between a low-speed helicopter and a UFO.
 Well, that's except where they come from.
 Well, the thing is, you see, I don't see why you have such a need to close the issue in advance.
 You see, I think the reasonable position is to keep an open mind. The hoax theory is one theory.
 It has a certain plausibility. It's the one that involves the least...
 It involves a very considerable stretching of one's mind and credulity about the powers of the British government
 or organizations in Britain to do something like this.
 It involves the least offense to ordinary scientific rationalism.
 It involves the same kind of Occam's razor principle by which many would dismiss claims, for example,
 of elf sightings under the influence of hallucinogens.
 Well, but this is a repeatable phenomenon.
 If you don't think elves can be observed under DMT, smoke DMT and see.
 This doesn't have that kind of straightforward...
 This has that weird, slippery, you know, for the believer it's obvious, for the non-believer it's nonsense kind of thing.
 Well, I think the DMT and elf sighting is a parallel, since in some areas you side with the rationalists
 and others with the non-rationalists.
 The elf sightings under the influence of DMT are not seen by all who take DMT according to the only scientific study of the subject.
 But some do.
 They're seen by two people out of twelve.
 What's claimed here is a massive violation of physics.
 A complete breakdown of natural law over hundreds of square meters.
 Yes, yes.
 On very little evidence.
 On some trampled down crops.
 Well, talk about a mountain out of a molehill.
 And I submit to you, you keep avoiding directly addressing this,
 why isn't the British government concerned about the violation of its sovereignty in airspace?
 I mean, somebody...
 That issue has never been raised.
 Well, why not?
 Because in Britain there's this kind of defence paranoia thing.
 It is not. That's a very odd culture bound...
 It's like I see you as a painted cannibal when you explain to me that Britain is different.
 We don't really care about the security of our thermonuclear weapons and air bases.
 That's an odd cultural phenomenon that you Americans seem to have developed.
 We're quite casual about securing our thermonuclear weapon depots.
 Are you serious?
 Well, then, there are more American thermonuclear weapons in Britain than there are British ones.
 Well, then the CIA, then good old American paranoia must be quite agitated by this kind of thing.
 Well, possibly.
 As soon as UFOs were reported in the United States, the first thing that happened was they said,
 "What is the President's position on this?"
 And the President said, "We're immediately appointing a blue ribbon committee to look into this,
 and it will report to me and the Congress and I assure the people of the United States, blah, blah, blah, blah."
 Okay, well, let's hear what they say in this case.
 Why don't you write to your representative and say that you're alarmed that these crop circle phenomena are happening in Britain within 20 miles of the U.S.
 Well, apparently there are one or two in the United States.
 Well, this gets very shaky.
 But for sure they're happening in Britain, and for sure there are lots of American nuclear weapons there, far more than there are British nuclear weapons.
 So you could have the matter raised in Congress,
 and we could get a statement from the President of the United States and him to appoint a commission on the subject straight away.
 Well, I'm sure what he would say was, "On matters of the safety of thermonuclear weapons, we make no statements.
 However, we are in contact with the British government on this matter. Stay tuned."
 That's what they would say.
 Well, then at least they'd be...
 Then you could ask a question a few months later and say, "What have you found out?
 If nothing, why not? What are we paying these intelligence services for?"
 And it may then, if it's forced to a political crisis in America with freedom of information or the rest of it,
 force them to compel the British secret services to reveal that the whole thing is a military hoax.
 But don't you find it odd that it's never been raised in England?
 No, because it's the kind of...
 This is not a soul in England who would think like that.
 No, the flattening of... You're assuming all along that it's a violation of airspace.
 The normal assumption that most people would have is that...
 Hoaxers arrive by car.
 Well, what are the attitudes of the farmers whose crops are ruined by this?
 Well, they vary in attitude. Some of them are puzzled and find the whole thing very mysterious.
 And some of them set up a sign and make a pound a person off of it.
 To get into it.
 But I should think some would be quite... Some people are very proprietary.
 And to get up some morning and see your wheat crop ruined and a bunch of teluruses wandering around taking pictures...
 The police are doing what they can. They're protecting their rear.
 They fly around in helicopters trying to prevent occurrences.
 If they see anybody rolling around in a crop circle, they attack them immediately.
 But to pretend that it stops at the constabulary level...
 Well, that's a good level for trespassing on farmers' property.
 I think you have a... I just don't get it.
 It's obvious that the British government is fully informed of what's going on and is not alarmed.
 And the only reason they're not alarmed is because there's nothing to be alarmed about.
 And the reason there's nothing to be alarmed about is because MI5 is doing it.
 It's so obvious that to think anything else is to... You might as well line up with Elvis at the 7-Eleven.
 Well, let's say it's a good theory. All right, it's a good theory. And then we can discuss it.
 We're just putting on the list.
 Under the hypothesis that this is actually what's happening all right now.
 They're going to a fantastic expense over a period of 10 years.
 They've done over a thousand crop circles so far, a considerable expense for...
 Well, these agencies are well-funded.
 Of course, it could be the French intelligence services or the American or the Russian intelligence services making a statement,
 proving to MI5, as a matter of fact, that there's nothing they can do to apprehend them.
 But supposing it's the, as you say, the simplest theory, the English military are doing this, making this expense, as what?
 As an experiment in disinformation.
 Now, let's see what we can learn about disinformation from this.
 They get the results in the newspaper. They're watching us.
 They're reading the Journal of Seriology and so on.
 We can also read the Journal of Seriology.
 Let us be scientists. We'll do some grassroots science here and we'll study the process of disinformation.
 Well, what have we learned?
 Well, we actually aren't learning very much, you see, because we know that some people like, prefer to believe in the paranormal theories.
 Other people, like you, prefer to believe in the hoax theory.
 What actually does that tell us?
 Some people, like me, even prefer a kind of scientific theory based on...
 There's actually three categories of theory.
 And let's say we could survey the English populace by reading letters to the editor in the various newspapers.
 And we find out there's 30% for this, 35% for that, 25% for this.
 Is this research, is this worth the expense?
 Well, we don't know where it's going.
 We're halfway through this. We don't know what MI5 actually has in mind.
 It's not very simply that they are studying...
 They're going to overthrow the monarchy.
 We don't know what they have in mind.
 That's a good point.
 Jacques Vallée, in his book, The Messengers of Deception,
 he felt that there were forces at the highest levels of governments
 that actually were interested in destroying the credibility of scientific establishments.
 And that's what this thing does.
 That's its social consequence.
 The British government can cut science funding yet further, you mean.
 Well, who knows why.
 I mean, I don't think our inability to second-guess MI5's reasons for doing this
 means that they don't have reasons for doing it.
 I mean, the deep cover study of disinformation is not our field.
 Nor are we experts on propaganda, symbol manipulation, mass brainwashing, so forth and so on.
 This is not our field.
 So if your prediction is correct, it's going to be revealed as a hoax eventually.
 Or it will disappear.
 All the people who maintain it wasn't a hoax, they'll be discredited.
 So, unlike the Jacques Vallée situation, it is the Earth mystery, UFO, and terroir force people
 who are going to be discredited by the scientists.
 And thus, it's not the military, it's the British science establishment, led by John Maddox.
 It is his nature.
 Ah, well, now think about the consequences of that for a moment.
 If this blows up, and we flip on the BBC and see that, lo and behold,
 John Michel led his forces over a hill and surprised MI5 in the act,
 then that is like a body blow to a whole bunch of paranormal belief systems
 that have otherwise been flourishing furiously in England.
 It's the collapse of the Communist Party on an occult level in England.
 Those people would forfeit credibility for the rest of the millennium.
 That would put them all out of business.
 Now we understand what it is.
 It's a trap. It's a trap for gullible occultists, paranormalists, and soft-headed types of all sorts.
 And they're all going to be led into the trap,
 announce the imminent approach of the Zinebel Genubites,
 or the reemergence of the forces that built New Grange and all this.
 And then the government will say, the government may simply announce,
 "Yes, we did it. Here's how we did it. We'll show you how we did it.
 We're going to show you how the trick was done.
 And now why don't we get back to the business of being a rational and mature civilization,
 and all you Merlinites, Toulourisists, Leyliners, Ouija boarders,
 Channelers, and what have you, should seek honest work.
 Look at what fools you have made of yourselves."
 No, the incomplete military theory has become the complete military theory.
 I like it. I think we've got it, John.
 The military-industrial-scientific-alliance-complex theory.
 Pretty good, huh?
 I think that this is yet another version of the conspiracy theory.
 Well, let's not get caught in this trap.
 However, leaving aside the fact that I very much doubt if Toulourisists, Earth Mysteries, Leyhunters, Merlinites,
 and the rest of it in Britain constitute a significant threat to the social order,
 that would be taken sufficiently seriously for anyone to mount a scheme of this kind,
 leaving aside that objection, my approach is, in fact, empirical.
 I have a plan. The plan is to move beyond this stage of armchair speculation to actual empirical research.
 And the empirical research that I'm proposing, which I shall propose to the Centre for Crop Circle Studies when I get back,
 is this. Next year, since the hoax theory is one of the theories that we have to take seriously and consider,
 next year, the Centre for Crop Circle Studies sponsors a competition for the best hoax crop circles.
 We have a farmer on the committee who has offered his land for experimentation on this subject.
 People would be able to rent fields from him or other farmers to practice.
 There would be a small charge for that.
 The amount of damage in making one of these would be something like £100 worth of corn would be damaged.
 So, for fees commensurate with the amount of damage, they could rent fields from farmers, him or other ones, to practice in.
 Then, there would be the final competition. There would be a particular night,
 each group that entered for this would be assigned a particular field.
 There would be certain standard observation techniques applied to the field.
 They'd get marks for minimum detectability through infrared binoculars or other means.
 In the morning, the finished results would be seen and judges would go in who'd examine them,
 using the criteria used in the case of normal crop circles for trying to decide whether it's a hoax or not.
 An independent panel would judge which was the most ingenious design, the most surprising,
 that had got the most marks for being done undetected, that was the most convincing.
 This would be an international competition.
 There would be a prize of £10,000, let's say, for the best crop circle,
 which would be put up by the Guardian newspaper or the Daily Express,
 which would then have exclusive rights on the first publicity of the results,
 and then could be sold on to other... there'd be a tremendous media interest in this.
 This competition would then force the evolution of the phenomenon.
 It would first of all show us what competent and well-motivated groups of hoaxers were capable of,
 which there's been no demonstration of so far.
 Secondly, how long it took, how many people it took, what kind of apparatus they'd need,
 how you'd do it at night to try and escape detection.
 It would show the kind of imagination and schemes and plans and designs,
 and how you execute an undercover of darkness, fairly complex designs in the field,
 coordinating different people.
 And it would force the evolution of the phenomenon,
 because if the military or some other group of conspirators or hoaxers
 are in fact responsible for the phenomenon,
 this would then raise the standards against which they had to work.
 And whether it's a natural phenomenon, a paranormal intelligence,
 or a military or other kind of hoax,
 the following year we would accelerate the evolution of the entire phenomenon.
 So this is my proposal as a positive step forward to testing the hoax theory,
 to gaining positive evidence and providing further amusement for the British public.
 Well, I want to go back to something you said.
 You said you didn't think that this phenomenon was threatening,
 or that the Telurists and so forth were threatening the social order.
 But again, this book by Vallée, The Messengers of Deception, is very interesting.
 In the United States, over the past 20 years or so, up until about 1980,
 every poll that was done, every successive poll,
 showed that more and more people believed in the reality of UFOs.
 And it went from 15% to like 70%.
 People, whatever "real" means, people would say, "Yes, I believe UFOs are real."
 And then the cattle mutilation phenomenon came along,
 and instead of the friendly space brothers bringing peace to all mankind,
 you get these forces which move in the night with scalpels, removing the organs of animals.
 And this whole creepy aspect of it was brought in.
 Lo and behold, belief in UFOs, interest in UFOs, all of this stuff began to fall.
 Now, in fact, there is going on, and we are involved in an effort to subvert the social order.
 Your theory, my belief in the importance of psychedelic drugs,
 our general commitment to the idea that science is inadequate to describing reality,
 and all of these, what it is, Rupert, is it's a war between pagan thought,
 it's an ideological war between pagan thought and straight people,
 the Church of England, if you want to call it that.
 And they are, this is an incredibly clever way of dealing a tremendous setback to the forces of pagan thought.
 If this thing is exposed as a hoax, paganism, earth energy, Tularic stuff, ley line,
 all of this will be discredited in England for years to come.
 It will be a tremendous body blow to the anti-Christian forces in England.
 And if you, and tracking information and shifts in social attitudes toward orthodox morality
 and so forth and so on, may have in fact triggered a decision on the part of the British government
 where they go to MI5 and say, look, we are losing hold of society.
 People believe in the Sheldrake theory, and they believe in the Tularic forces
 and the return of the elf armies and the rise of the fairy legions and all this stuff.
 Can't you figure out some way to restore the power of orthodoxy?
 And they said, aha, we'll build an enormous trap for these people.
 We'll lure them so far out onto a branch, and then we're going to cut it off.
 And that's what's happening.
 I think that this is the prediction that should be forwarded to the seriologist.
 You people are all going to be made fools of.
 Your gullibility has set you up to betray the real pagan renaissance.
 There's no way to avoid it.
 Absolutely not, because first of all, the Center for Crop-Circle Studies is not committed to,
 like the Society for Psychical Research, is not committed to saying these are done by Martians or anything.
 But this guy, John Mischel, is a pagan through and through.
 He's the head of the pagan party in England.
 Yes, but he's the editor of the seriologist.
 And ruining him would be a tremendous blow to paganism.
 It's like what would happen to the Third Reich if you blew up Hitler,
 is what will happen to paganism in England if you get rid of it.
 But the chances are that if anyone discovers it's a hoax, it's going to be the Center for Crop-Circle Studies itself.
 Because this is the group that's actually mounting field investigations.
 No, I suspect the government is going to announce it, and say, we did it, and show it, and here's how we did it,
 and we'll show it in front of you, and send the media of the world to observe,
 and we'll make you crop circles from here to Canterbury and back again.
 Well, let us say that that doesn't happen. What would convince you you were wrong?
 Film of it happening. Film of it happening.
 That wouldn't convince you.
 Yes, it would. I'm not as hard as you think.
 But I just see that what's happened, it's not solid enough.
 There's too much funny business.
 It doesn't feel right. It feels like a bunch of well-meaning, gullible people are being coaxed deeper and deeper into delusion,
 and they're being set up for an enormous fall, and their political agenda will then be...
 Now, you always ask, why would they do it the other night? That was your challenge to me.
 Why would the British government do it?
 And here's why. To set back paganism, to preserve orthodoxy, to save England from the flakes.
 To protect themselves from this crap by simply saying, and repeating on a monthly basis in the seriologists,
 that yes, we think it may be a hoax.
 No, they should say, the most likely explanation is a hoax.
 And we're out there searching to discover it.
 Well, that's what... the point is, the centre of a crop circle is standing.
 It does say that, that it may be a hoax.
 Well, but I've read the seriologist, and it's by no means what you would call an organ of rationalism, of rational discourse.
 It's a clearinghouse for every screwball theory ever to come down the pike.
 Yes, well, the trap theory is one of them.
 The trap theory is just another theory. They print it in the seriologist. If you submit this, they'll print it.
 They print any theory. They regard the theories as interesting as the phenomenon itself.
 Well, I haven't... I've been puzzled. I've been under pressure of this dialogue.
 I've perfected this theory. I confess, up until this week, I was a fence-sitter.
 And I desperately, like you, I assume, and you, wanted to believe that from the far future, from beneath the earth,
 from somewhere that would rock our world view, someone was reaching out.
 But it's...
 You want the whole village to see the UFO coming down.
 I don't think so. I would not get near it now. I've seen through it. This does it for me.
 Well, I still think that the best way forward is this experimental approach to the hoax theory that I'm proposing.
 I think that's very good.
 It's the best thing that can be done in the circumstances. It doesn't commit one one way or the other.
 It does shed further information on just how hoaxes could or might do it.
 It's excellent. It escapes the trap, you see. It gives credibility to the gullible.
 You should lead them out of the trap, Rupert, before it's too late.
 This is what I intend to try and get the Centre for Crop-Cycle Studies to mount next year.
 This, I think, would enable them to maintain a position.
 My position, and that's the position of others in this organisation, is that here's an amazing phenomenon,
 whatever the cause, there's many theories, whatever the cause, it needs to be investigated.
 Now, you see, the position of people who are against this is to say,
 "Here's an amazing thing that appears in the papers. We shouldn't investigate it.
 We should pay no attention. We should leave it just to the journalists.
 We shouldn't attempt to find out how it's happening.
 We shouldn't wait at night to try it with video cameras to see how it happens."
 That seems to me a very peculiar position.
 It seems to me the position of the investigators of this phenomenon is far more scientific and rational
 than the position of those who say, "We already know the answer.
 There's no point whatever in attempting to see what's happening or paying any attention.
 Just leave it to the media."
 So, I think that this is the only rational position to adopt,
 namely, to treat it as a natural historical phenomenon, or at least a phenomenon,
 let's just say a phenomenon, to investigate it empirically.
 I think this is Baconian science.
 Yes, well, this is what I called for, Occam's Razor.
 The hypotheses should not be multiplied unless there's a necessity to do so.
 I can assure you that there's hundreds of hypotheses of which yours is one.
 You've just multiplied the hypotheses this evening.
 Well, but I handled all of the facts in three-dimensional space, in political space, in rational space,
 and managed to tie it up all very neatly without violating physics or calling on other dimensions
 or hypothesizing strange forms of energy or any of the violations of ordinary...
 ...conspiracy.
 It's not a strange form of conspiracy.
 It's orthodoxy fighting back with the weapons at its disposal.
 What's new about that?
 It gives them a great credit of intelligence which may not be justified.
 Yes, I found the most...
 I think that's...
 I've seen no evidence either that orthodoxy is as coherent as you assume,
 or that it's as intelligent as you assume,
 or that it has the kind of humor, imagination, and flexibility that you assume.
 Most orthodoxy is run by committees.
 This is a phenomenon that couldn't be run by a committee, in my opinion.
 Well, but you are not... you haven't looked into brainwashing, disinformation programs,
 manipulation of mass perception of reality,
 and these are the specialties of governments and intelligence agencies,
 not your specialty, their specialty.
 Well, let's say that this is an excellent theory,
 and it's not appropriate really to give probability to it at this time.
 I think Lupert's plan for a research project is very exciting,
 and the idea of publishing the trap theory in the seriologist, I think, is an excellent plan.
 It wouldn't take long to write this up as a letter to Jean-Michel.
 A possible supplement to the research program for grassroot science would be
 to do some survey research of the British population before and after the competition,
 and see as a matter of fact what effect the competition has on the credibility or gullibility of that.
 Well, even ahead of that, it's probably already been looked at,
 the rate at which pagan ideas are spreading in England,
 what percentage of the population ten years ago...
 You're saying fairies.
 Not fairies, that's a general folk belief in England, not really a fair test,
 but the abandonment of orthodox Christianity for the New Age,
 for new metaphysical positions, channeling, so forth and so on.
 It is on the rise, is it not?
 I mean, isn't Glastonbury the center of all this, and it's spreading and spreading?
 If you're a straight person in England, you must view this with considerable alarm.
 I don't think that straight people in England view that with a great deal of alarm.
 I think they're more alarmed by cocaine, crime in the inner cities, and that kind of thing.
 I don't think that New Age phenomena are particularly alarming in Britain.
 There's a long tradition in Britain of interest in these kinds of things.
 Prince Charles is an establishment representative of this particular point of view.
 Well, in this country it's quite the other case.
 Religious fundamentalists have for years been denouncing the New Age as Satan's legions, expanding their base.
 The popularity of goddess workshops at the Omega Foundation and here at Essendon is on the increase,
 and I don't think that's created a great wave of paranoia in government or the military.
 That would be far-fetched in the United States.
 Well, but England is a more pagan country.
 It's more delicately balanced than the United States in these matters.
 I think there's a special opposition that is more agreeable to people there.
 And also, there's not a sharp polarization.
 And if you take the Church of England, I mean, after all, I'm a...
 There's not a sharp polarization between Christians and paganism?
 No.
 Well, I speak as one myself.
 I'm a communicating Anglican, a loyal member of my parish congregation.
 Well, so when they start burning pagans at the stake, where will you stand?
 I shall... My position is one of Christian animism.
 I believe that the true base of Christianity is to be rooted in the land.
 I think that the actual position of many Anglicans in Britain
 is to appreciate the sanctity of the sacred places, like the cathedrals, the churches and so on.
 The revival of Marian religion is fairly well established.
 Pilgrimage is on the increase.
 The idea that sacred places have ancient roots in the land,
 and that Christian cathedrals and churches are built on ancient pagan sacred sites,
 appeals to many Anglicans. They don't dismiss this.
 I try these ideas out on vicars and members of congregations.
 Most of them really like them.
 I've never encountered any opposition to this approach in my conversations quite widely.
 Well, the reason those churches were built on those pagan sites
 was not an appreciation of telluric energy.
 It was to appropriate those sites and utterly obliterate the pagan temples that were there.
 It was in fact a program of ideological genocide that was carried out.
 You can look at it that way, but that's the way you can look at it too.
 I'm sure that's how the pagans looked at it.
 I think that the way that the...
 When in the Celtic Church in Britain,
 the pagans willingly accepted Christianity as they did in many cases in Ireland and Iona and places.
 They did so partly because they assimilated it to their world view.
 And they were able to assimilate it by including Christian shrines in their sacred sites.
 So you could say that what's happened in...
 You could look at it from both points of view.
 One, an incorporation of Christianity into a pagan system.
 And the other way, the incorporation of the pagan system into Christianity.
 But both are true.
 And both these attitudes coexist.
 And it's by no means the simple idea of total obliteration by conquering it.
 The power of these sites...
 I think if you had been there...
 I mean, I don't know that much about the coming of Christianity to the British Isles.
 But where I do know something about it,
 it was always a bloody nightmare, such as in Mexico or South America.
 I just did this cheerful story of how these happy pagans...
 I think we're rambling too much here.
 And maybe we could bring it back to corn circles.
 Or in the trap theory, we could say the Church is more on the pagan side, actually,
 than on the side of science and the military and the social complex.
 Certainly. I've never...
 You know, I go to church every Sunday. I've had lots of sermons.
 I read things about religious columns in newspapers and that kind of thing.
 I've never heard any denunciation of crop cycles from any credible Christian.
 No, but denunciations of paganism...
 I've heard almost none of those.
 The entire history of Western civilization is a frantic effort to stamp out paganism.
 It's taken them 2,000 years, and they're still at it,
 still invading against witchcraft, sorcery, scrying, all of these things.
 I mean, this cheerful story you tell about this land of happy men is nonsense.
 We're talking about the fate of Western civilization.
 And if you don't think people will defend their vision of it
 with disinformation programs, propaganda, lying, trickery, and manipulation,
 and if that doesn't work, canon, then you just haven't read Western history.
 I don't think the Church is involved in the conspiracy, if there is one.
 I think orthodoxy is defending itself against unorthodox forces.
 It doesn't have to do with Church.
 Yes, only 2% of the population.
 Time to fight back, I dare say.
 It's very, very unlikely that orthodoxy in Britain is any longer identified
 with the official Christian point of view.
 Secondly, I don't think orthodoxy in Britain, as represented by the Conservative government,
 has any axe to grind for scientific orthodoxy.
 They've done more to set back the cause of science in Britain than any government in history.
 They've cut funding, they've demoralized scientific institutions.
 The Thatcher government has closed down lab after lab.
 The scientific community in Britain, almost to a man, is anti-government to the depth of their being,
 because never before has the scientific community been so demoralized and humiliated.
 Well, then ready to lash out by any means necessary.
 Time for wild schemes.
 If they're that demoralized, if their backs are that much to the wall,
 then it seems the absolute precondition for them to undertake an operation like this.
 There's no evidence of conspiracy between the Church and the military, or between the Church and the industry.
 I'm not claiming that.
 Or between the scientific community and government.
 I'm not claiming that. I'm claiming that orthodoxy is defending itself against magic.
 It's a war between reason and magic, and you can talk about whether the Thatcherites are on one side or the other,
 or where does the Church of England come down.
 It's a desperate struggle between rational orthodoxy and magic.
 And magic is being led into a trap.
 These assertions should probably be posed as questions for grassroots social science research.
 Questionnaires that clergymen could be asked for their attitudes and clever ways about different things.
 Well, I think you need to ask the whole population of England and see to what degree is loyalty being transferred from reason to the occult.
 And what does reason think about that? And what does the occult think about that?
 Well, I think that's an important question that could be approached by survey sampling research.
 And that would sort of give us an idea how we're doing.
 And I'm not sure if there has been any such survey in Britain or in the United States on these questions.
 We constantly speculate about them in all our talks, and there's been no objective measures.
 This is a very good grassroots project. Simple to do. Yes.
 So why don't we let it lie at that?
 Yes. All right?
 Good.
 You're listening to the Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
 Well, that was what Rupert Ralph and Terence thought about crop circles back in 1991.
 And I thought it was telling that at one point Terence said he thought the phenomena would eventually be exposed as a government information study.
 However, 16 years have gone by since he made that statement.
 And if anything, the picture is even less clear today than it was back in 1991.
 While I applaud Terence for refusing to believe that crop circles are created by non-human energies until he sees one being made.
 I wonder how he would react today to the news that at least some of the crop circles that have been seen in the past 10 years or so have essentially, how shall I say it, laid down in a matter of moments.
 There are a number of cases where this has been documented, but the one that hit me most forcefully was the circle that appeared in under an hour's time and in full daylight.
 I can't remember which crop circle video had this clip on it, but a commercial pilot who took tourists for rides out to see Stonehenge by air showed some footage of a circle that appeared during the time that it took him to return to the airport, refuel, and pick up another load of tourists.
 After a return flight, not far from Stonehenge, and directly on the flight path that he had just completed, suddenly there was a big crop circle that had simply appeared in a very short time and in full daylight.
 Now I don't mean to diss Terence here, but after all, he's the one who once said, "The problem is how do we know an alien intelligence when we encounter it, because after all, it is alien."
 Now maybe he had that thought later on, I really don't know, but it is at least something to consider, don't you think?
 Communicating with an alien species is a tougher problem than you might think until you work on it a bit.
 If you've ever tried to train an animal, you know what I mean.
 You can talk and talk and talk, and your dog will just sit there looking at you, seeming to understand every word you're saying, yet we know that they don't have a clue what all those funny little mouth noises we're making are all about.
 And so they tilt their head and give you this quizzical look, kind of like the way we must tilt our heads and look at crop circles, if you think about it.
 So maybe someone or something, whether you call it Gaia or think of it as an extra-dimensional entity, may have opened a communications channel and is actually sending information.
 Not noise, as Terence suggested, but real information that we haven't yet been able to decode.
 Which boils down to Ralph's approach of keeping our minds open until there is a clear, agreed-upon understanding of the phenomenon.
 Now that I've seen a half-dozen or so films about crop circles and read a few books as well, I'm no closer to forming a solid opinion about them than I was when I began.
 And unless I ever have the opportunity to walk in several crop circles myself, I don't expect to come to any final conclusions.
 But for what it's worth, I'll at least give you my working hypothesis about crop circles.
 And while this is meant to be tongue-in-cheek, the way it resonates with those I tell it to makes me think that maybe there actually is something to this crackpot idea.
 Here it is.
 If you've ever been to one of the large cities in the U.S., you've probably seen graffiti painted all over the place, particularly in areas where youth gangs are active.
 And there you'll see young men, primarily young men with paint cans in their hands, running around tagging any available space with their gang symbol.
 Now, stretch your mind a bit and try to imagine the same type of behavior on the part of beings that exist in other dimensions.
 Once you're with me on this, you can see that it's no stretch to imagine young beings in higher dimensions who are still not very civilized for their level.
 And so they sneak back down to this dimension and tag parts of the land that their young spirits claim.
 So there it is. Lorenzo's theory of crop circles is that they're nothing more than the graffiti tags of adolescent ghosts.
 Well, it's not much to go on, I admit. But hey, I'm just the carnival barker here.
 If you want to see the real action, just take a look in the big tent we call the Internet. And there you can find some excellent sites that deal with the crop circle phenomena.
 And where you can also follow up on the project that Rupert proposed among many more current topics.
 There are seven sites about crop circles that I'd like to recommend, along with as many videos.
 But rather than read them all out here as site names and URLs right now, I'll just add them to the program notes for this podcast so you can click right through to them.
 Two other good places to visit on the net, but which aren't focused exclusively on crop circles, are our own notes from the Psychedelic Salon, which you can find at psychedelicsalon.org.
 And there you'll find a wide range of comments that are posted under the various podcast program notes, as well as other posts from fellow salonners.
 And then there is also the Psychedelic Salon forum over on thegrowreport.com, where you'll find items like the question Dutch boy posed asking where to find more biographical information about Terrence McKenna.
 One of the people who answered that question, by the way, was Max Freakout, the host of Psychonautica, a podcast that you can find over on the Cannabis Podcast Network at dopefiend.co.uk.
 In fact, that is also where you can find BB's Bungalow, hosted from Down Under by Black Beauty, whose lovely voice you heard right after today's trial log.
 While I'm at it, I guess I should also mention Lefty's Lounge, The Grow Report, and the Cornerstone Podcast, the Dopecast by the Dope Fiend, coming to us from the UK.
 And in case you haven't heard of Dopecast yet, just start with his most recent one.
 I just listened to number 108 yesterday, and once again I'm impressed with the quality of the information and the level-headedness of the host who goes by the handle Dope Fiend.
 And if you're a parent that is looking for some drug information you can trust for your teenager, I highly recommend the Dope Fiends Podcast.
 And my guess is that your kids will not only get a lot of good information from them, they're also going to thank you for treating them like adults and putting them in touch with the truth about cannabis.
 Because they already know that the schools that they're going to aren't teaching them the truth. They know that from their peers.
 It's an interesting and fun podcast that I think you'll find quite compelling, so you might want to check it out for yourself.
 And now they've added several other podcasts to their lineup over at dopefiend.co.uk.
 And unless I missed my guess, you're going to find more than one podcast over there to interest you.
 And hey Lefty, I hope you're feeling better these days, my friend.
 And I don't want to forget KMO's podcast from the Sea Realm, which you can find via kmo.livejournal.com.
 If I'm not mistaken, I think KMO is conducting an interview today with our friend Matt Palomari for one of KMO's upcoming podcasts.
 You'll remember Matt from several of our Ayahuasca podcasts. I think their numbers 80 and 89, in case you haven't heard them yet.
 Matt, or Casowak as I call him, has a new book out that I'll be talking about in a future podcast myself.
 It's a memoir, and I'm here to tell you that it reads like a page-turning novel.
 Right now, I don't want to say anything more about it until after KMO podcasts his interview, and I'm sure that's going to be quite interesting.
 And speaking of interesting, I was out of town for a while over the recent holidays, and after I returned home, it took me a bit to get back up to speed.
 And while I still haven't actually caught up with all of the posts on our forum over at the Grow Report, all I can say is, wow, activity there has really picked up these past few weeks.
 For example, topics like "Don't Depotentiate the Psychedelic" and "Best Terrence McKenna Podcast for a Newcomer" have already gathered between 40 and 90 replies.
 And a lot of it's not only great information, much of it is also new to me as well.
 So if you want to keep up with some of the latest buzz on the street about the psychedelic community, you might want to take a look at the wide range of forums over there.
 Besides the salon, KMO has a forum there, as do all of the podcasts from dopefiend.co.uk.
 And for the medical marijuana growing community, the growreport.com should probably be one of your first stops if you want to learn more of the best ways to tend to your crops.
 I doubt if you're going to find any better advice than you can get for free from Zandor and Mrs. Zandor and their podcasts and on their forums.
 We all owe a great big thank you to the two of them for all they do for our community.
 So on behalf of our fellow salonners, thanks again for all you do, Zandor and Mrs. Z. The world is a much better place for having you here.
 And while I'm talking about the growreports forums, I particularly want to mention the thread on our salons forum that's titled "A Thread of High Art" where you can find some of the art created by our fellow salonners.
 There are images posted there as well as many links to other sites where their work is posted.
 And I'm really happy to see this thread get started so we can all share in the wonderful creative energy of this community.
 Before I go, there are two other brief announcements I should make. And that is, for those of you who have signed up for the Blanque Norte mailing list, or the Matrix Masters mailing list, or tried to link to the salon as a MySpace friend,
 well, I'm sorry to have to say that the mailing lists and our MySpace account are all inactive now.
 As you know, MySpace simply deleted our account a few months back and I'm not willing to waste my time arguing with them and setting it up again.
 And as for the mailing lists, they kind of went by the board when I started podcasting back in 2005.
 My thought was that rather than clog your email inbox with more stuff to read, I'd just limit my communications to these podcasts and our blog and to the psychedelic salon forum.
 So if you've been wondering why your subscription never resulted in a newsletter showing up, well, now you know why.
 Hopefully you won't be too disappointed.
 Other than that, I should mention that this and all of the podcasts from the psychedelic salon are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 3.0 license.
 And if you have any questions about that, just click the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the psychedelic salon webpage.
 Well, thanks for being here with us again today. And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from psychedelic space.
 Be well, my friends.
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