[00:00:00 - 00:00:09] I'll have to begin by correcting Rob. Actually, Jonathan Off wrote Hallucinogens of North America. [00:00:09 - 00:00:16] I wrote Psilocybin, the Magic Mushroom Growers Guide, in corroboration with my brother. [00:00:16 - 00:00:28] I was originally going to call this talk "Monkeys Discover Hyperspace," but I decided that that was a little outrageous, [00:00:28 - 00:00:33] and I settled on Hallucinogens Before and After Psychology. [00:00:33 - 00:00:44] So before I dig into that subject, I'll say a bit about how I come to have an interest in these substances and their very peculiar effects. [00:00:44 - 00:00:58] Years and years ago, after an LSD trip, I imagined that I perceived a relationship between the LSD experience and the motifs of Tibetan religious art. [00:00:58 - 00:01:05] And accordingly, I went to Nepal and took up residence in a village of Tibetan refugees. [00:01:05 - 00:01:14] And I quickly learned that the shamanism that I wanted to study was inaccessible for reasons of language, [00:01:14 - 00:01:26] for reasons such as that the Buddhists who were teaching me Tibetan looked askance at the shaman that I wanted to associate with. [00:01:26 - 00:01:39] And I realized then that the association between shamanism and Hallucinogens is such that both, in a way, are taboo. [00:01:39 - 00:01:48] And when you deal with pre-literate cultures, you discover that the shaman is a very peculiar figure. [00:01:48 - 00:01:58] He is critical to the functioning of the psychological and social life of his community, but in a way he's always peripheral to it. [00:01:58 - 00:02:07] He lives at the edge of the village. He is only called upon in matters of great social crisis. [00:02:07 - 00:02:18] He is feared and respected, and this might be a description of these Hallucinogenic substances. [00:02:18 - 00:02:24] They are feared and respected. They are misunderstood. [00:02:24 - 00:02:36] They are only called upon often in moments of great crisis, and they are a persistent but always peripheral part of the community. [00:02:36 - 00:02:46] And I saw this in Nepal among Pungpo Tibetan shamanism, which is a non-Hallucinogen based shamanism. [00:02:46 - 00:02:56] I saw it in Indonesia where techniques had been developed to induce trance that were non-chemical techniques, [00:02:56 - 00:03:00] specifically dance in the case of Bali and Lompok. [00:03:00 - 00:03:08] And I saw it finally in the Amazon where I think I contested the primal shamanism. [00:03:08 - 00:03:19] As you know, there's a division of opinion on the matter of whether narcotic or, as I call it, Hallucinogenic shamanism is decadent or, in fact, primary. [00:03:19 - 00:03:25] And Mr. Liad took the position that Hallucinogenic shamanism was decadent, [00:03:25 - 00:03:45] and Gordon Watson very rightly, I believe, contravened this view and held that actually it was very probably the presence of the Hallucinogenic drug experience in the life of early man that laid the very basis for the idea of the spirit. [00:03:45 - 00:03:59] Well, as I made my way through these various cultures and various Hallucinogenic substances, it came to my attention that in my opinion, [00:03:59 - 00:04:06] and I believe in the opinion of Gordon Watson and other scholars, Henry Munn comes to mind. [00:04:06 - 00:04:16] He wrote a marvelous essay called The Mushrooms of Language that in the minds of those who associated themselves with the mushroom, [00:04:16 - 00:04:30] there were certain assumptions about psilocybin that were different from the mythos that was arising around some of the other Hallucinogens. [00:04:30 - 00:04:44] Psilocybin, I think, of the more commonly available Hallucinogens is the most visual, and it is certainly visual if it is done in the traditional manner. [00:04:44 - 00:04:53] And I'm always amazed at how little understood or practiced the traditional manner is, so I'll sketch it for you. [00:04:53 - 00:05:06] The traditional manner of taking psilocybin is to take a very healthy, effective dose in the vicinity of 15 milligrams on an empty stomach in total darkness. [00:05:06 - 00:05:13] You've been there. [00:05:13 - 00:05:28] And in that situation, which is in a sense a situation of sensory deprivation, the psilocybin is able to exfoliate itself to the fullest degree and to show you what it is, [00:05:28 - 00:05:40] not against the background of the reality that ordinarily surrounds us, but against the background of darkness so that the pure essence of the thing can be shown. [00:05:40 - 00:05:50] And it is extraordinarily bizarre, extraordinarily difficult, I believe, to assimilate into your worldview. [00:05:50 - 00:05:58] And this is whether you're a BORA youth undergoing initiation or whether you're a college student or a research chemist. [00:05:58 - 00:06:05] These things do not lend themselves well to integration into language. [00:06:05 - 00:06:14] If they did, they wouldn't occupy this peripheral position after 10,000 years of human culture. [00:06:14 - 00:06:31] But above and beyond the visual intensity of psilocybin, the thing that sets it apart, I believe, is a phenomenon that might be described as an induction of audio hallucination. [00:06:31 - 00:06:48] But in fact, to describe it that way is to fall back on a kind of medical jargon reductionism, because what it really is is a voice in the head that is separate from the perceived ego function. [00:06:48 - 00:06:57] In other words, a voice speaks. You hear it and it seems to be operating independent of the ego. [00:06:57 - 00:07:12] It operates in a psychopompic role as a teacher, as the narrator of the vision which is revealed much in the same way that Virgil led Dante through the circles of hell. [00:07:12 - 00:07:24] And the modern intellectual equippage is not capable of assimilating this. This is the sort of thing that we associate with psychopathology. [00:07:24 - 00:07:33] We can hardly imagine anything more alien to modern consciousness than a disembodied voice in the head. [00:07:33 - 00:07:52] However, if you familiarize yourself with Western thought on a scale of millennia, you discover that not only is this not an alien phenomenon, but for much of human history it has been inimical to the human experience. [00:07:52 - 00:08:00] And it is called, relying on the Greek, the logos. The logos is a voice heard in the head. [00:08:00 - 00:08:16] And the logos with the hand on the rudder of human civilization for centuries, up until in fact the collapse of the ancient mystery religions and the ascendancy of Christianity to the status of a world religion. [00:08:16 - 00:08:34] I'm sure many of you are familiar with the story in Pithos of the fisherman who heard the great noise and saw something fall into the sea and heard a voice in the sky saying that great Pan was dead. [00:08:34 - 00:08:53] That, in other words, the ancient gods had been eclipsed. And in fact, in Jungian terms, the ancient god, by falling into the sea, had been submerged in the sonic unconscious and disappeared from the experience of ordinary people. [00:08:53 - 00:09:08] From that period on, it was the 15th to 17th centuries while Christianity worked out the implications of this message, while science spun away from Christianity and created its own set of modes. [00:09:08 - 00:09:20] The new world was discovered, reason was enthroned, scientific method was enthroned, and the civilization that we know arose around us. [00:09:20 - 00:09:33] But then, in 1953, Valentina and Gordon Watson went to Guadalupe de Jimenez in the Sierra Mazatec of Oaxaca and they discovered this mushroom cult. [00:09:33 - 00:09:55] And it's my belief that to this day we do not know what exactly it was that they stumbled upon. Mushroom, drugs, cult, all of these ideas about what it was rest on the assumption that we know what we're talking about when we talk about mind. [00:09:55 - 00:10:05] And in fact, everything that has been said at this conference has rested on the assumption that we know what we're talking about when we invoke a concept like mind. [00:10:05 - 00:10:25] But the truth of the matter is, ladies and gentlemen, that after 2000 years of grappling with the problem, scientists cannot even tell you how you can form the conception that you will change your open hand into a closed fist and it will happen. [00:10:25 - 00:10:36] This is an intervention of mind into the world of matter that no philosopher has been able to give a satisfactory account of. [00:10:36 - 00:10:50] Now with the hallucinogens, this intervention of one realm into another, of mind into matter or matter into mind, is raised to a pitch of excruciating intensity. [00:10:50 - 00:11:12] And it's my belief that one of the unconscious reasons which underlies the odd attitude of the establishment toward hallucinogens is the fact that they bring the mystery to the surface as an individual experience. [00:11:12 - 00:11:20] In other words, you do not understand the psychedelic experience by getting a report from Time magazine or even The Economist. [00:11:20 - 00:11:26] You only understand the psychedelic experience by having it. [00:11:26 - 00:11:45] And therefore, to understand this is to embark on a course of action of self-education outside the context of your culture, because your culture has no answers about what this thing might be. [00:11:45 - 00:12:04] Okay, so much for that, but psilocybin and BMT to a lesser extent, although it is so brief and so intense that it's sometimes hard to sort these things out, invokes the logos or reintroduces the phenomenon of the logos into the experience of modern people. [00:12:04 - 00:12:08] So what can we make of this? [00:12:08 - 00:12:13] I think we have to take it very seriously. [00:12:13 - 00:12:34] I think that the culture crisis that we are involved in has to do, and by that I mean the entire global cultural crisis leading possibly to the extinction of the species, has to do with the fact that our models developed over the last 500 to 1000 years have played us false. [00:12:34 - 00:12:36] They aren't working. [00:12:36 - 00:12:49] And the cultures that we have conquered with capitalism and technology, we have repressed their connection into these intuitive realms. [00:12:49 - 00:13:06] We have established one method for the arbitration of truth and everything that does not pass through that narrow gate is relegated to the realm of mythology or worse, cultural immaturity. [00:13:06 - 00:13:10] And yet we are the culture that is in crisis. [00:13:10 - 00:13:19] When you go to the rainforest, you don't find cultures in crisis except to the degree that they are being impacted by us. [00:13:19 - 00:13:36] So I believe that it is no coincidence that in this moment of maximum cultural crisis, which we call the 20th century, the hallucinogens, the amphiogens have emerged in Western culture. [00:13:36 - 00:13:44] It is no accident that Watson made his trip to central Mexico and contacted the mushrooms. [00:13:44 - 00:14:00] What he discovered in the mountains of Mexico was nothing less than an Eero sleeping but alive, the body of Osiris preserved over an entire astrological age, metaphorically speaking. [00:14:00 - 00:14:17] In other words, that to take the mushroom was to transcend the cultural momentum of the past couple of millennia and return to a world where the logos was a realized phenomenon. [00:14:17 - 00:14:21] And we heard from Carl Ruff last night about the hallucinogenic. [00:14:21 - 00:14:24] This was not a minor phenomenon. [00:14:24 - 00:14:33] Over a period of 2000 years, everyone who was anyone made the pilgrimage to elucid and had the experience. [00:14:33 - 00:14:41] And it put the stamp on Greek drama, Greek philosophy, later Roman politics. [00:14:41 - 00:14:45] All of these things were influenced by the hallucinogenic experience. [00:14:45 - 00:14:51] So our culture, seriously, has played the role of the prodigal son. [00:14:51 - 00:15:05] We, for reasons of ideology, the panical geography, other factors have not had visionary static hallucinogens installed in our culture. [00:15:05 - 00:15:12] As we perhaps should have over the last several hundred years. [00:15:12 - 00:15:14] Now that is changing. [00:15:14 - 00:15:28] And in order to understand what the change means, you have to look further back in time, in fact, past history to prehistory, again to the model of the shaman. [00:15:28 - 00:15:36] Not the shaman as anthropologists describe him, but the shaman as shaman dream him. [00:15:36 - 00:15:55] Because every shaman looks back toward an archetypal first shaman who was superhuman, who did go to the stars, who could go to the bottom of the ocean, who could move through the gates of death and return with a lost soul. [00:15:55 - 00:16:15] Now it seems to me when you pull back to the perspective of several thousand years, all of history can be seen as an adumbration on this wish, expectation, hope for a superhuman condition. [00:16:15 - 00:16:28] For a transcending of the laws of gravity, of the laws of life and death into a superhuman condition that was solitary for mankind as a whole. [00:16:28 - 00:16:33] In other words, the shaman of the archetypal perfected man. [00:16:33 - 00:16:46] Now, the fact that you heard Mechner refer to alchemy as one of the reflections of this concern with the perfection of the spirit. [00:16:46 - 00:16:52] It is about the projecting of a perfect substance, which is the self, purified. [00:16:52 - 00:16:59] But it also led to the rise of modern science, basically through a misunderstanding. [00:16:59 - 00:17:20] Now it seems to me what's happening now is that what Mathéliade called the human desire for self-transcendence expressed through the motif of magical flight has been taken up by the technological society as the idea of space flight. [00:17:20 - 00:17:25] And I'm sure if Tim Leary were here he could speak to this more eloquently than I can. [00:17:25 - 00:17:32] Space flight is nothing less than the exterior metaphor for the demonic void. [00:17:32 - 00:17:37] In other words, in our terms, for the hallucinogenic drug experience. [00:17:37 - 00:17:49] This is the way that engineers get high. They go to the moon. [00:17:49 - 00:18:06] What we need to do to transcend our cultural schizophrenia and to heal the rift between spirit and soul or world and self is to realize something which we all pay lip service to. [00:18:06 - 00:18:15] At least I'm sure all the people in this room pay lip service to, which is the idea that the inside and the outside are really the same thing. [00:18:15 - 00:18:21] But I don't think the cultural implications of that have been clearly drawn. [00:18:21 - 00:18:31] What it means really is that all our dreams of transformation have to be realized at the same time. [00:18:31 - 00:18:49] And that we cannot go to space with our feet in the mud, nor can we in fact turn ourselves into an echo sensitive hallucinogenic based culture on earth unless we fuse these dichotomous opposites. [00:18:49 - 00:19:02] It is only in a coincidentia positorum, a union of opposites that does not thrive for closure, that we are going to find cultural sanity. [00:19:02 - 00:19:19] And this is the thing that the entheogens, the hallucinogens deliver with such clarity and regularity. They raise paradox to a level of intensity that no one can evade. [00:19:19 - 00:19:34] And in doing that, they set the stage for turning yourself into the kind of person who does not insist on having it either or black or white. [00:19:34 - 00:19:43] And a culture composed of those kinds of people will be a culture more civilized than any that we have seen so far. [00:19:43 - 00:19:51] If I can paraphrase Teilhard de Jardin for a moment, he said, or I will paraphrase him this way, [00:19:51 - 00:20:01] "When the human race understands the potential of the hallucinogenic drug experience, it will have discovered fire for the second time." [00:20:01 - 00:20:19] And this is what we're waiting for. We are waiting for the discovery of fire so that we can transcend the monkey dougness and get on with the grape dougness of inhabiting our own imagination. [00:20:19 - 00:20:34] And it's impossible to take that position without someone saying, "Manateean, duelist, enemy of the body." Perhaps, but since the very beginning of culture, [00:20:34 - 00:20:49] what we seem to be are animals which take in raw material and freeze it and print it with ideas. And we do this on a larger and larger scale, [00:20:49 - 00:20:57] looking for the day when all physical constraints can be lifted off of us as they are in our imaginations. [00:20:57 - 00:21:09] And we can erect the kind of civilization that we want to erect. And this vision was anticipated by no less a sphere than James Joyce. [00:21:09 - 00:21:14] He said, "If you want to be phoenix, come and be polished." [00:21:14 - 00:21:32] Up in the Yen's prospector, here in Moy-Cain we slop on the steamy side. Moy-Cain is the red light district of Dublin. But up in the Yen's prospector, you sprout all your worth and whoop your wing. [00:21:32 - 00:21:50] This was part of his program. He hoped that man would become dirgeable, as he put it. And he didn't live to see the revolution of the hallucinogens, but I think had he, he would have felt that man was well on his way to becoming dirgeable. [00:21:50 - 00:22:08] And it seems to me that we stand at an enormous threshold. The future of the human mind must loom large in the future of the human species. [00:22:08 - 00:22:16] If it doesn't loom large in the future of the human species, then we are in very big trouble. [00:22:16 - 00:22:29] Now a term that has been applied, or was early on applied, though I haven't heard it used at this conference, to hallucinogens was "consciousness expanding drugs." [00:22:29 - 00:22:40] And this may not be automotopoeic, but it's certainly phenomenologically accurate and neutral. They are consciousness expanding drugs. [00:22:40 - 00:22:49] And the question "What is consciousness?" cannot be divided away from the question "Is man good?" [00:22:49 - 00:22:58] And this is a question that we have to answer for ourselves, because I believe that we are not going to extinguish ourselves. [00:22:58 - 00:23:12] We are going to evade the many obstacles that are so obviously ahead of us in the next few years. We are going to reach the threshold of the galaxy. [00:23:12 - 00:23:26] But in what form? And in order for the form in which we reach the edge of the galaxy and present ourselves to the hegemony of organized intelligence that must exist there, [00:23:26 - 00:23:36] in order for that form to be worthy, we are going to have to go with our minds fully illuminated in front of us. [00:23:36 - 00:23:49] And that means that we can have no more trust with the idea of an unconscious, of an inaccessible and dark part of the human psyche that cannot be controlled. [00:23:49 - 00:24:02] That is obviously a description of the childhood of an intelligent species. And I believe that these hallucinogens signal the end of that childhood. [00:24:02 - 00:24:15] There have always been individual shamans who have made that transition. And in that sense, the present of hallucinogens is an unhistorical phenomenon. It has always been going on. [00:24:15 - 00:24:25] But the idea of psychedelic society is something new. And it doesn't necessarily mean that everyone takes the drug. [00:24:25 - 00:24:44] It merely means that the complexity and the mysteriousness of mind are centered in the consciousness of the civilization as the mystery which it comes from and which it must relate to in order to be relevant. [00:24:44 - 00:24:51] So I'll take a couple of questions. [00:24:51 - 00:25:07] [wind blowing] [00:25:07 - 00:25:21] [inaudible] [00:25:21 - 00:25:40] Well, I guess the question is, is there any advice vis-a-vis utilization of material that would allow you to hang on to whatever perceptions I may have triggered in you? [00:25:40 - 00:25:51] I wouldn't presume to answer that question, but I'll answer another one that might relate to it. Because I think that when you take hallucinogens, you should take an effective dose. [00:25:51 - 00:26:02] And I can't stress enough the importance of lying down and being still in darkness on an empty stomach. [00:26:02 - 00:26:16] I mean, if you want an oral empowerment, that's it. Nothing could be simpler. And yet you would be amazed at the number of people who, when you mention psilocybin, the first question that occurs to them is, will I be able to drive? [00:26:16 - 00:26:28] [wind blowing] [00:26:28 - 00:26:36] One more. [00:26:36 - 00:26:43] With regard to what? [00:26:43 - 00:27:06] Well, MDA, the word empathogen seems to me very appropriate. It is not a powerful visual hallucinogen. I'm very interested in the visual hallucinogens because it seems to me they pose certain fundamental questions about information theory and that kind of thing. [00:27:06 - 00:27:20] For instance, where do these hallucinations come from? These extremely intricate, far more intricate than any visual scene that your eyes falls upon in ordinary reality. [00:27:20 - 00:27:37] [inaudible] [00:27:37 - 00:27:57] And you just tune down the dial and here's a desert world in a triple star system. And here is a city somewhere inhabited by insectile creatures with a machine symbiosis. Here is something else. And it's just flipping by. [00:27:57 - 00:28:21] I would prefer to believe that the human imagination is the holographic organ of the human body and that we don't imagine anything. We simply see things so far away that there is no possibility of validating or invalidating their existence. [00:28:21 - 00:28:23] One more. [00:28:23 - 00:28:44] [inaudible] [00:28:44 - 00:29:01] No, I think it certainly has a profound and lasting effect. The very brevity of it serves to convince you that it isn't a drug at all, but that it's carried you into another dimension and back again. And that alone is something to ponder. [00:29:01 - 00:29:12] Well, I thank you for your attention. [00:29:12 - 00:29:21] I was in a meeting last year when Dr. Hoffman came and his opening sentence was, "You expected a shaman, you're going to get a chemist." [00:29:21 - 00:29:42] When I was first asked by Dr. Gordon McCutcheon to come here tonight and talk about whatever I wanted to do, my first impression, as long as I allowed my first impression, was to decline. After all, I am a student of chemistry and of pharmacology and not really a student of philosophy and religion. [00:29:42 - 00:29:55] And I felt I had probably contributed as much as I could last year when I took chalk to blackboard and drew hexagons and tryptamine rings and gave my impression of what on a molecule caused it to do what. [00:29:55 - 00:30:00] But my wife intervened. "Why not tell them just why you do what you do?" [00:30:00 - 00:30:08] It got me lost into an interesting question. I never had actually spoken to myself and said, "Why do you do what you do?" [00:30:08 - 00:30:16] The flip and answer is always at hand. Well, one does it because it's there to be done. The Mount Everest routine. I climb the mountain because it's there to be climbed. [00:30:16 - 00:30:21] But that is, of course, not the research I do. [00:30:21 - 00:30:30] Whenever this question would come up in a seminar or during a panel discussion, I'd place special emphasis on the word psychotomimetic. The word has been used quite a bit today. [00:30:30 - 00:30:44] A term that is usually used by the scientific community when they wish to speak about the psychedelic drugs. The term psychedelic does not find a good audience in the psychiatric or in the chemical or in the medical literature. [00:30:44 - 00:30:55] It carries a meta-message of drug use, drug encouragement, drug proselytizing, and as a result, the word is not often encountered. [00:30:55 - 00:31:04] In its origin, as was pointed out, it comes from psychoto, meaning in essence psychosis, and mynesis, meaning the imitation of. [00:31:04 - 00:31:21] And this indeed is the term that very early in the work in this area, there had been given these materials because they had been cast in the role of causing syndrome, causing symptoms that would reflect the character of mental illness. [00:31:21 - 00:31:37] And it's felt by studying the effects of these materials in normal subjects, you might be able to glean some insight as to the mechanisms or at least the descriptions and definitions of this syndrome when seen in people who are spontaneously ill. [00:31:37 - 00:31:57] This explanation, the search for new psychotomimetics for materials that would be more exact in the definition of psychosis, is completely logical in that all the hallucinogenics, the psychedelics that are known, can be classified into materials that are indoles, and there are many in this area. [00:31:57 - 00:32:13] The tryptamines, the more convoluted carbamines, LSD as an ergot type indole, or it can be classified as phenethylamines, and there are perhaps some three or four scores on this classification. [00:32:13 - 00:32:27] The analogs of mesclun compounds that have been mentioned several times, or the substitution of variants of mesclun, or the alpha methyl compounds that have given rise to materials that are lumped chemically together as the amphetamines. [00:32:27 - 00:32:36] And there are two principal neurotransmitters in the brain. One is an indole, and this is serotonin. One is a phenethylamine, namely dopamine. [00:32:36 - 00:32:48] And it's very desirable from the point of the neurochemist to find piggings holes that can classify things. Here we have a group of psychedelics that are all indoles, and we have a neurotransmitter that's indolic, serotonin. [00:32:48 - 00:33:00] Here's a group that are all phenethylamines, and we have a neurotransmitter that's a phenethylamine. All we have to do is understand why all of these work here, and all of those work there, and we now know how the neurotransmitters work in the brain. [00:33:00 - 00:33:10] Unless we know that, we'll be able to cure mental illness. Well, it's an appealing, and has not been a particularly rewarding classification. [00:33:10 - 00:33:20] And the explanation, besides being logical, is quite safe, because it's an unthreatening explanation. It's easily accepted by the academic and administrative community. [00:33:20 - 00:33:30] But the explanation is still not the explanation of why I do what I do. My work is indeed dedicated to the development of tools, but tools for quite a different purpose. [00:33:30 - 00:33:48] And here is where I want to get quite a way from chemistry and into some of my own personal thoughts. I'd like to lay a little background, establish a framework for these tools, and in part to define them, and in part to give emphasis to an urgency that I really feel associated with them. [00:33:48 - 00:34:08] First, I am a very firm believer in the reality of a balance in all aspects of the human theater. When there seems to be a development of move that away, somehow, very shortly, almost in concert, there is a move this away that keeps things in some delicate balance. [00:34:08 - 00:34:20] If there must be a dichotomization of concepts into good and evil, then all good seems to contain its unexpressed evil, and all evil is unexpressed good. [00:34:20 - 00:34:40] In the human mind, there coexists the eros, the life-loving, the self-perpetrating force, with the thanatos, the self-destructive death wish. Both are present in each of us, but are usually separated by a very difficult wall, a very difficult to penetrate wall, the unconscious. [00:34:40 - 00:35:00] One definition of the tools I seek is that they may allow words of a vocabulary, a vocabulary which might allow each human being to more consciously and more clearly communicate with the interior of his own mind and psyche. This may be called a vocabulary of awareness. [00:35:00 - 00:35:18] A person who becomes increasingly aware of, and so begins to acknowledge, the existence of the two opposite contributors to his motives and decisions may begin to make choices which are knowledgeable, and the learning process that follows such choices is the path that leads to wisdom. [00:35:18 - 00:35:34] But just as there is a balance within the mind that needs establishment, there is an interesting record of balances of the same sort in society. Let's look for a few minutes at some of the coincidences that have kept our human race in a rather precarious balance. [00:35:34 - 00:35:48] Throughout the early centuries of the current millennium, there were carried out some of the most viciously inhuman wars that were known to man, all in the name of the forces of religion and the horrors of the Inquisition, with its lethal intolerance of heresy. [00:35:48 - 00:36:00] And yet, it was during these dark years that the structure of alchemy was established. Not to change base metals into noble ones, as is often thought, but to acquire knowledge through the study of matter. [00:36:00 - 00:36:12] The work of the alchemist extended up to the age of enlightenment, with the urges of rationalism and of skepticism. And it was always directed toward the learning process. [00:36:12 - 00:36:34] The reward of alchemistic effort has been simply stated as the effort to achieve the transmutation of base metals into gold. But as Ralph pointed out just a bit ago, this is not the actual reward. The value was the doing and the redoing and the redoing of the process of distillation, of sublimation, of condensation, of precipitation. [00:36:34 - 00:36:46] It was a continual, ever more exact effort to understand these processes, that from the learning of the process, one would be able to find a unity between the physical and the spiritual world. [00:36:46 - 00:36:52] It was the doing and the redoing itself that was the reward. [00:36:52 - 00:37:05] The last hundred years or so, this learning process has evolved into what we call science. However, there has been a subtle shift in the goal, from the process itself to the results of the process. [00:37:05 - 00:37:23] In this age of science, it is only the end result, the goal, that really matters. It is not the act of achieving, but the achievement itself that brings one the acknowledgement of his peers, that brings recognition from the outside world, that results in wealth and influence and power. [00:37:23 - 00:37:39] And these end achievements, these results, show the same dichotomy of directions which was so evident in the previous centuries. For years, there had been no separation of values. Neither direction had taken the colors of good or for evil. [00:37:39 - 00:37:58] Still, there were incredible coincidences of timing. For example, in 1895, Wilhelm Conrad von Lenken observed that when electricity was applied to an evacuated tube containing certain gases, a nearby plate covered with barium platinocyanide emitted a visible glow. [00:37:58 - 00:38:10] And the next year, in 1896, Antoine-Henri Becquerel found that these same metal-producing emanations were being emitted from uranium. Radioactivity had been discovered. [00:38:10 - 00:38:23] But it was just the following year, at 11.45 a.m. on the 23rd of November of 1897, that Arthur Hefter consumed an alkaloid that he had isolated from the peyote, dumpling cactus. [00:38:23 - 00:38:39] Brought to the Western world by the irrepressible pharmacologist Thierry Levine. As Hefter wrote in his notes, and this is a quotation following 150 milligrams of mescaline, "From time to time, dots with the most brilliant colors floated across the field of vision. [00:38:39 - 00:38:48] Later on, landscapes, halls, architectural scenes also appeared." Mescaline had also been discovered. [00:38:48 - 00:39:03] During the 1920s and 1930s, both worlds, that of the physical sciences involving radiation and that of the psychopharmacological sciences involving psychotropic materials, continued to develop without any clear sense of polarity. [00:39:03 - 00:39:13] Without the "mine is good and yours is evil" duality that was soon to come. Radioactivity and radiation were becoming the mainstays of medicine. [00:39:13 - 00:39:25] X-ray photography was invaluable in diagnosis and radium therapy was broadly used in treatment. Controlled and localized radiation could destroy malignant tissue while sparing the host. [00:39:25 - 00:39:37] And in the area of psychology, there were parallel developments. The theories of Freud and Jung were being developed into increasingly useful clinical tools and approaches to mental illness. [00:39:37 - 00:39:43] And in the basis of experimental psychology was laid in the pioneering studies of Pavlov. [00:39:43 - 00:39:51] Another coincidence in timing, which in retrospect started a dividing of science on a separate path, occurred during World War II. [00:39:51 - 00:40:03] In the late 1942, Enrico Fermi and several other scientists at the University of Chicago demonstrated for the first time ever that nuclear fission could be achieved and could be controlled by man. [00:40:03 - 00:40:11] The age of unlimited power and freedom from dependency upon our dwindling fossil reserves had begun. [00:40:11 - 00:40:21] Just the next year, at 420 PM on the 19th of April, Albert Hoffman consumed a measured amount of a compound which he had first synthesized some five years earlier. [00:40:21 - 00:40:34] As Hoffman subsequently reported, as a quotation following 250 micrograms, "After the crisis of confusion and despair, I began to enjoy the unprecedented colors and plays of shapes that persisted. [00:40:34 - 00:40:44] Collideoscopic, fantastic images surged in on me, alternating, variegated, opening and closing themselves in circles and spirals." [00:40:44 - 00:40:47] LSD has also been discovered. [00:40:47 - 00:41:03] But then, still, and up until the last decade, it was the rich promise of the nuclear age, first with the power and potential of fission, and later with the virtually limitless potential of fusion energy that carried the banner and the hopes of man. [00:41:03 - 00:41:11] And the area of hallucinogenics was categorized as negative, psychosis imitating, psychotomimetic. [00:41:11 - 00:41:24] It was not until someone in the 1970s, sometime in the 1970s, that a strange and fascinating and rather frightening reversal of roles took place. [00:41:24 - 00:41:36] The knowledge of nuclear fission and fusion took on a death-loving aspect, with country after country joining the fraternity of those skilled in the capacity for the eradication of the human experiment. [00:41:36 - 00:41:44] And to have such power leads to the threat to use such power, which in time will actually lead to its use. [00:41:44 - 00:41:51] But, as I said earlier, when one thing develops, there seems to spring forth a balancing, a compensatory counterpart. [00:41:51 - 00:41:55] This balance can be realized with the psychedelic drugs. [00:41:55 - 00:42:09] What had been simply tools for the study of psychosis at best, or for escapist self-gratification at worst, suddenly assumed the character of tools of enlightenment and of some form of transcendental communication. [00:42:09 - 00:42:32] If man's alter ego, his thymacos, had been entrusted with the inter-perpetual knowledge of how he can completely destroy himself, and this extraordinary experiment, then some development must occur at the eros side of his psyche that will and must afford the learning of how to live with this perpetual knowledge. [00:42:32 - 00:42:39] It is a communication between these two sides of the mind that requires an extraordinary vocabulary. [00:42:39 - 00:42:43] Where do these words come from, the words of this vocabulary? [00:42:43 - 00:42:50] All depend upon an intimate insight into the working of the human mind, but this can be approached in many ways. [00:42:50 - 00:42:57] The study of religion, of meditation, of self-yielding, provides a peace. [00:42:57 - 00:43:02] But in my mind also tends toward a retreat, and hence a capitulation. [00:43:02 - 00:43:17] The efforts to amalgamate the two sides of the mind as seen in the Tao of physics, and the rich findings of parallelisms between the Eastern and Western philosophies, may eventually explain all, and allow some unification for the human purpose. [00:43:17 - 00:43:25] But I feel, along with many others, that the efforts being invested in the technology of destruction does not allow sufficient time. [00:43:25 - 00:43:36] It is possibly only with the psychedelic drugs that words of vocabulary can be established which might tunnel through the subconscious between the conflicting aspects of the mind and psyche. [00:43:36 - 00:43:43] It is here that I feel my skill lies, and this is exactly why I do what I do. [00:43:43 - 00:43:46] Where do we stand as of today? [00:43:46 - 00:43:53] In the last handful of years, the forces of government and nationalism have amassed an unprecedented arsenal of destructive power. [00:43:53 - 00:44:06] The power is in the current arsenals of the world, if restructured into Hiroshima-strength weapons, to detonate one bomb every minute, on the minute, for the next two years. [00:44:06 - 00:44:13] And the rationalized need to do so is becoming manifest at a frightening pace. [00:44:13 - 00:44:19] But in the last handful of years, a number of tools of communication have increased at a like rate. [00:44:19 - 00:44:28] There are currently nearly 200 psychedelic drugs known and described, some touching at one, some at another, as the fibers that unify our minds. [00:44:28 - 00:44:38] By learning each of their structures of sensory communication in turn, we might find a form of communication that would disarm our destructive compulsion. [00:44:38 - 00:44:42] And indeed, what form of tools are now available to us? [00:44:42 - 00:44:53] Some of the tools that are available, or rather that have been available, are the widely publicized drugs of psychopharmacology, such as Mesclif, psilocybin, VOM, LSD. [00:44:53 - 00:45:05] These drugs played a role in defining the transition between drugs as entertainment, escape, turn on, and drugs as instructive vehicles for learning, enlightenment, and insight. [00:45:05 - 00:45:07] But at quite a price. [00:45:07 - 00:45:15] They had a high profile at the time that the scheduled drug laws were written, and thus were made illegal and are not available. [00:45:15 - 00:45:23] However, in their place there are now many, many other materials, some more limited in their instructive capacity, and some perhaps even richer. [00:45:23 - 00:45:26] And for every one today, there will be ten tomorrow. [00:45:26 - 00:45:32] Let me describe a small sampling of the recently born materials a bit more in detail. [00:45:32 - 00:45:51] These are examples with subtle quotations in some instances of experiments in which there have been actually definitions of some aspect of sensory teasing apart of the complex sensorum attack and effects that these materials can have. [00:45:51 - 00:46:06] DIPT is an abbreviation of NN-diastropopryl cryptamine, a drug unique among the psychedelics in that it expresses a distortion in, or to an extent, a synthesis with the process of auditory interview. [00:46:06 - 00:46:11] It is perhaps one of the less available senses to be teased apart for special study. [00:46:11 - 00:46:22] Many of the close relatives, as you well know, deal with the visual process and in some way will change or synthesize or modify the visual integrity. [00:46:22 - 00:46:39] But a rather interesting distinction between the drug-induced psychosis and endogenous schizophrenia is that very often in the latter, the primary sensory character that is affected is the auditory influence. [00:46:39 - 00:46:43] A quotation following 20 milligrams of DIPT. [00:46:43 - 00:46:52] "The telephone sounds partly underwater. Here are signs of a pitch change on radio. The absolute pitch down a major third. [00:46:52 - 00:47:05] Chord on the piano sounds out of tune, quite flat. Music terrible, unlistenable. The other senses seem to know we affected. If I were deaf, I would have thought this an inactive drug." [00:47:05 - 00:47:13] Several hours after ingestion of the material, this note, "Hearing normal, piano back in tune." [00:47:13 - 00:47:19] MDMA, or MDA, is abbreviation for 3,4-methylenedoxy-methemphetamine. [00:47:19 - 00:47:27] It's a tool of communication that has shown in recent years an extraordinary utility in opening communication between individuals. [00:47:27 - 00:47:36] This has promoted its use in psychotherapy, but has given promises well as a vehicle for interpersonal communication. [00:47:36 - 00:47:43] This particular drug has been used clinically in many applications and these today in probably number in the thousands. [00:47:43 - 00:47:47] And it has commanded a remarkably good record of positive results. [00:47:47 - 00:47:50] A quotation following 120 milligrams. [00:47:50 - 00:47:56] "We kept up a lively conversation covering many interesting aspects of our various family relationships. [00:47:56 - 00:48:01] The conversation was unusually insightful and free of defensiveness." [00:48:01 - 00:48:09] And following a 40 milligram supplement at the two hour point, "Gene glowed with energy, became very beautiful. We talked freely and openly. [00:48:09 - 00:48:19] Every bush and plant looks utterly alive. I'm entranced by a large rock. As I look at its surface, I see the surface of a planet with mountains and valleys. [00:48:19 - 00:48:23] Little crystals of mica are like jewels." [00:48:23 - 00:48:31] Another material, 2C-B, is the abbreviation for 2,5-dimethoxy-4-bromophenethylene. [00:48:31 - 00:48:39] A tool and a word of vocabulary which ties the mental process directly and constructively into the physical soma. [00:48:39 - 00:48:46] The analgesic effects experienced with many, if not most, of the psychedelic drugs are not present with 2C-B. [00:48:46 - 00:48:56] On the contrary, there is an increased body awareness of every kind, including skin sensitivity, heightened responsiveness to smells, tastes, to sexual stimulation. [00:48:56 - 00:49:05] One experiences increased consciousness of physical health and energy, or, on the other hand, sharpened awareness of any body imbalance or discomfort. [00:49:05 - 00:49:13] 2C-B allows rich visual imagery and intense eyes-closed fantasy without cluttering up of the mental field of too many elaborations. [00:49:13 - 00:49:17] A quotation following 20 milligrams. [00:49:17 - 00:49:24] "Along with the awareness of the body and the ability to deeply enjoy the fact that one is a physical as well as a spiritual being, [00:49:24 - 00:49:29] the experience of 2C-B allows exploration as far as one needs to go. [00:49:29 - 00:49:39] There is at all times full connection with all parts of oneself, the emotional and the intellectual, the intuitive and the instinctual. [00:49:39 - 00:49:49] It is a superb tool for learning and for growth, and 2C-B allows one to recover baseline within six to eight hours using a maximum dosage of 25 milligrams, [00:49:49 - 00:49:53] usually lower in the area of 18 to 20." [00:49:53 - 00:50:04] Another drug mentioned earlier, ketamine, is abbreviation for 2-orthochlorophenol-2-methylaminocyclohexanone, the antithesis of 2C-B, [00:50:04 - 00:50:07] in that it effectively separates the mind and the body. [00:50:07 - 00:50:13] This allows the mind a separate and constructive state apart from the physical groundings of the body. [00:50:13 - 00:50:18] Although the primary clinical application of ketamine is as a dissociative anesthetic, [00:50:18 - 00:50:26] an increasingly important direction of study is now being directed to the psychological loosening that it allows. [00:50:26 - 00:50:32] MAL and CPM are abbreviations of the compounds that are fascinating analogs of mescaline, [00:50:32 - 00:50:39] namely 4-methyl-3,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine and 4-cyclopropylmethyl-3,5-dimethoxyphenethylamine, [00:50:39 - 00:50:43] two compounds that activate opposite sides of the sensorium. [00:50:43 - 00:50:51] The former provokes an intense visual distortion at the retinal level with consequential bizarre interpretations. [00:50:51 - 00:50:57] The latter displays defectiveness in the fantasy counterpart, seen only with the eyes closed. [00:50:57 - 00:51:06] Following 65 milligrams of MAL, a quotation, "Within two hours intense effect, beautiful diuretic, [00:51:06 - 00:51:10] good connections between parts of myself, continual fantasy and imagery, [00:51:10 - 00:51:18] lovely experience of the erotic with husband, around 12 hours excellent solid sleep with clear balanced dreams." [00:51:18 - 00:51:25] Following 70 milligrams of CPM, a two-hour strong effect but no visual, wonderful locking into music, [00:51:25 - 00:51:36] deep loving, erotic, very good, with eyes closed, intense colorful fantasy, much like LSD at times, no sleep before 18 hours. [00:51:36 - 00:51:42] Thus anyone should have the impression, by the way, that research in this area leads always to God and to insight [00:51:42 - 00:51:44] and to deeper experiences and loving. [00:51:44 - 00:51:52] Let me mention an example of a compound called 4-TASB, which is 4-thioethyl-3-ethoxy-5-methoxyphenethylamine. [00:51:52 - 00:52:01] Following 100 milligram exposure, "At about two hours, pleasant and positive, peaceful feelings, very good humored. [00:52:01 - 00:52:06] Later, sleep impossible until early morning, and then only about two hours. [00:52:06 - 00:52:08] All next day could not rest or sleep. [00:52:08 - 00:52:16] Feeling of nerve endings raw and active, anxiety over heartbeat, frightening effects on nervous system, depression, [00:52:16 - 00:52:18] back of neck sore from tension. [00:52:18 - 00:52:25] My first experience of being able to detect what felt like continual electrical impulses between nerve endings. [00:52:25 - 00:52:32] Had the impression that if I allowed the wrong sequence of images to flow in my mind, I might experience some sort of convulsion, [00:52:32 - 00:52:37] or might at least a kind of mental shock or sorting out. [00:52:37 - 00:52:42] When I tried to sleep, eyes closed fantasies became intensely negative and threatening. [00:52:42 - 00:52:45] I could not smooth out the nervous system, felt very vulnerable. [00:52:45 - 00:52:47] Do not repeat." [00:52:47 - 00:52:50] [laughter] [00:52:50 - 00:52:54] Alpha-O-DMS is abbreviation of 5-methoxy-alpha-methyl-cryptamine, [00:52:54 - 00:53:02] an analog of a neurotransmitter serotonin that has been tailored chemically to allow it to enter into the CNS, into the brain. [00:53:02 - 00:53:09] There's a very potent endo-psychedelic that touches closely on those areas involved with primal energies. [00:53:09 - 00:53:14] Several researchers experienced dreams of catastrophic events after exploring this material. [00:53:14 - 00:53:19] One researcher, however, had a dream which involved a complete science fiction scenario. [00:53:19 - 00:53:24] He found it absolutely enjoyable and is still thinking of writing it up and sending it into a publisher. [00:53:24 - 00:53:32] These are only about a half a dozen or so of many scores of fascinating compounds that are now available for the study of this developing vocabulary. [00:53:32 - 00:53:38] This is where we are at the moment. Some materials show incredible promise and some suggest caution. [00:53:38 - 00:53:41] But what might we expect to emerge in the future? [00:53:41 - 00:53:45] Let's look at the past history of other areas of psychotropic chemistry. [00:53:45 - 00:53:52] A few decades ago, it was marveled at that drugs such as the opiates, including morphine and heroin, [00:53:52 - 00:53:56] and meparodine could have such an exacting influence on the brain's integrity. [00:53:56 - 00:54:01] Then it became known that there were natural factors in the brain that had these actions [00:54:01 - 00:54:06] and that there were specific sites in the brain that were pre-designed to respond to them. [00:54:06 - 00:54:11] There were the enkephalins and their fragmented portions known as the endorphins, [00:54:11 - 00:54:15] which were derived from the cephalic process and related to morphine. [00:54:15 - 00:54:19] These met a person's need for the suppression of pain. [00:54:19 - 00:54:26] Perhaps there are entadelics from the psychedelics and specific enescalins from escalin yet to be discovered [00:54:26 - 00:54:32] that might relate to these communicative factors, which might be the natural connect-- [00:54:32 - 00:54:41] which might be connected and eventually related to the natural receptor sites in the brain for transcendental communication. [00:54:41 - 00:54:45] Their structures may someday be known. Their functions may someday be understood. [00:54:45 - 00:54:51] There are a multitude of tenuous threads that tie together the fragile structure of the human spirit. [00:54:51 - 00:54:56] The life-giving with the death-demanding side, the exalted voice with the mundane, [00:54:56 - 00:55:01] the strongly centered self with the drive toward dispersion and loss of center. [00:55:01 - 00:55:07] These all coexist in all of us, but there is an essential blockade between these inner worlds, [00:55:07 - 00:55:12] which I truly feel can be penetrated only with the words and the tools and the understanding [00:55:12 - 00:55:16] that may be most easily obtained through the area of psychedelic experiences. [00:55:16 - 00:55:20] William Blake said in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell," [00:55:20 - 00:55:26] "Man has no body distinct from his soul, for that called body is a portion of soul," [00:55:26 - 00:55:28] discerned by the five senses. [00:55:28 - 00:55:35] The chief inlets of soul in this age, energy is the only life and is from the body, [00:55:35 - 00:55:39] and reason is the bound or outward circumference of energy. [00:55:39 - 00:55:42] Energy is eternal delight. [00:55:42 - 00:55:49] These are responses to a heartfelt need for some vocabulary to allow the establishment of a dialogue [00:55:49 - 00:55:53] that might diffuse the accelerating mad moves toward extinction. [00:55:53 - 00:55:58] My personal philosophy might well be lifted directly from Blake. [00:55:58 - 00:56:04] I must create a system or be slaved by another man. [00:56:04 - 00:56:09] I may be wrong, but I must do what I'm told. [00:56:09 - 00:56:13] And I will do what I can to satisfy them. [00:56:13 - 00:56:41] [wind blowing]