[00:00:00 - 00:00:07] So, I won't repeat, but we do Earth Trust speakers program seminars here once a month. [00:00:07 - 00:00:11] In addition to the speakers program that you guys are familiar with, this is one of the [00:00:11 - 00:00:18] events, we also work with projects around the world dealing with the environment and [00:00:18 - 00:00:23] social justice. I wanted to tell you for just a couple minutes about some of those so you [00:00:23 - 00:00:28] know that by coming here all the proceeds from the speakers program go to fund those [00:00:28 - 00:00:35] projects. So, by coming today you're part of something global. [00:00:35 - 00:00:39] Just two quick examples and then you can see on our literature on the table that we have [00:00:39 - 00:00:46] about nine other projects. But just to let you know what we're part of here, one of the [00:00:46 - 00:00:52] projects we fund is in Papua New Guinea where the, is one of the largest remaining rainforests [00:00:52 - 00:00:56] in the world. It's estimated to be, at current rates of cutting it will be the third largest [00:00:56 - 00:01:01] rainforest by the end of the century. It shouldn't be that way, it's a small island, but at current [00:01:01 - 00:01:08] rates of cutting in Brazil. What's happening is that the multinational companies are eyeing [00:01:08 - 00:01:13] Papua New Guinea, have already begun clear cutting, but are really drooling over these [00:01:13 - 00:01:19] pristine rainforests. And there's been a, Papua is an unusual place, it's one of the [00:01:19 - 00:01:23] few places in the world where the indigenous people have land rights, legally they have [00:01:23 - 00:01:28] to say what's going to happen on the land. And it's more or less followed, although manipulated [00:01:28 - 00:01:33] by the government and the multinational lumber companies. So what we're working with, there's [00:01:33 - 00:01:37] a man named Glen Berry who has worked with the Madang people and now is working with [00:01:37 - 00:01:42] a number of other indigenous groups to organize efforts to educate their people about the [00:01:42 - 00:01:47] dangers of clear cutting. They're offered bribes, you know, monetary bribes, the companies [00:01:47 - 00:01:50] come in and say we'll build you a school, we'll build roads. They do build a building [00:01:50 - 00:01:55] and roads and as soon as they take all the lumber out, the roads are stopped being kept [00:01:55 - 00:02:00] up and they have an empty building. So that's what they get out of it. What this project [00:02:00 - 00:02:06] does, what was organized by the Madang people is to do educational campaigns into the areas [00:02:06 - 00:02:12] to warn them about the dangers of clear cutting and then also to provide economic development. [00:02:12 - 00:02:18] They're very poor people and their culture is being rapidly disintegrated. So they need [00:02:18 - 00:02:24] economic support and so they've developed their own walkabout sawmills, which is a small [00:02:24 - 00:02:28] cutting. They can cut, you know, a few forests and still keep the lumber going because it's [00:02:28 - 00:02:33] unrealistic to think that they should just stop clear cutting and live, just live. They're [00:02:33 - 00:02:39] going to be bribed by the money. So this provides, they also are doing butterfly farming, which [00:02:39 - 00:02:45] I don't know quite how that works. Interesting concept of rounding up the butterflies. And [00:02:45 - 00:02:51] cassowary and crocodile farming, all trying to get development. So it's a project that [00:02:51 - 00:02:57] one is saving the environment. Last year they were able to save 255,000 hectares of rainforest [00:02:57 - 00:03:02] from what would have been complete clear cutting and immediate mulching into cardboard boxes. [00:03:02 - 00:03:06] They don't even use it as hardwood. So that's ongoing. It's still urgent. The companies [00:03:06 - 00:03:11] are really moving in. And so we raise funds. We've helped Glenberry with his projects. [00:03:11 - 00:03:16] We're now doing propaganda posters to put up in the villages to help people understand [00:03:16 - 00:03:19] the dangers. So that's one of the kind of projects we do, which tries to support the [00:03:19 - 00:03:23] efforts of, you know, multi-level, try to support the efforts of the, to keep the indigenous [00:03:23 - 00:03:29] cultures alive. Also support, save the environment that they're living in. So another quick one [00:03:29 - 00:03:35] is we support village banking for women in Central America in a number of countries, [00:03:35 - 00:03:39] Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, and just starting now in El Salvador. And that's a project to [00:03:39 - 00:03:47] get marginalized women access to small loans, which are normally frozen out of loans. So [00:03:47 - 00:03:52] they can keep their, start income generating businesses. And these are ways to help organize [00:03:52 - 00:03:58] the women, strengthen the community. The profits go most quickly to the children and improve [00:03:58 - 00:04:03] problems with malnutrition and, you know, strengthen the self-sufficiency efforts of [00:04:03 - 00:04:08] those people. So if you want to know more about these kind of Earth Trust projects and [00:04:08 - 00:04:12] there's others, there's literature or talk to me, talk to Andrew, talk to Georgianne, [00:04:12 - 00:04:16] Shiva, Elizabeth, and we can direct you and, you know, if you want to get involved and [00:04:16 - 00:04:21] work with us, please do. So that's Earth Trust. Again, thank you all for coming. A couple [00:04:21 - 00:04:26] logistical details. The bathroom is through, one bathroom is through that door and back [00:04:26 - 00:04:29] in the back corner of the house. Another one is at the front corner of the house. You may [00:04:29 - 00:04:36] have found outside. I think that's it. So I'll introduce Georgianne, who's the director [00:04:36 - 00:04:41] of the speakers program and is responsible for all the, getting all the speakers and [00:04:41 - 00:04:54] all the publicity. So, and you'll introduce Terence. [00:04:54 - 00:05:00] Well first I want to welcome you all to this program. This is such a beautiful location [00:05:00 - 00:05:04] to hold a Spirit of Nature program. It couldn't be more perfect. And I hope actually during [00:05:04 - 00:05:09] lunch or during some of the breaks that you'll explore outside, there's some paths leading [00:05:09 - 00:05:17] down to some benches down there where you can sit and contemplate the ocean and whatever. [00:05:17 - 00:05:21] We've created this Spirit of Nature program basically to explore the intrinsic connection [00:05:21 - 00:05:29] between spirituality and nature. And with that awareness, basically seeing how that [00:05:29 - 00:05:37] then promotes the idea of stewardship of the earth and sanctity towards the earth. We've [00:05:37 - 00:05:42] gathered about eight speakers and Terence is the second speaker of this program. And [00:05:42 - 00:05:47] I'd like to just tell you a little bit about who else will be here. The next speaker will [00:05:47 - 00:05:55] be Mark Gurzon, who will be here the end of October and he'll be presenting a talk on [00:05:55 - 00:06:03] spirituality and nature in midlife and following a spiritual path in midlife. And then after [00:06:03 - 00:06:11] him we have brother David Standelrast, who is a Benedictine monk. And I have to read [00:06:11 - 00:06:18] just a little bit about what he'll do. His presentation is "Belonging to the Universe." [00:06:18 - 00:06:23] And then on December 4th we have environmental activist, Australian environmental activist [00:06:23 - 00:06:29] John Seed, who will be presenting the Council of All Beings. And he's developed this work [00:06:29 - 00:06:36] along with Joanna Macy, if any of you know Joanna Macy. And on February 5th, a wonderful [00:06:36 - 00:06:41] woman who I've been very inspired by named Sister Miriam McGillis, who many people don't [00:06:41 - 00:06:46] know but she has a wonderful tape out called "The Fate of the Earth." And it's just riveting [00:06:46 - 00:06:53] if you've ever heard it. She gave this presentation in 1986 and I just, what she has said is just [00:06:53 - 00:06:59] applies sort of timelessly now and forever I feel. So she's something I really want to [00:06:59 - 00:07:04] tell you about if you don't know about her. And her presentation is "Dreaming the Sacred [00:07:04 - 00:07:10] Community." So she'll be speaking in terms of the Earth community and particularly our [00:07:10 - 00:07:16] local community. She was very aware of the LA riots when she came up with this theme. [00:07:16 - 00:07:23] And then on February 28th we have Matthew Fox, who as you may know was silenced by the [00:07:23 - 00:07:29] Vatican for his controversial views on feminism, sexuality and the priesthood. And I heard [00:07:29 - 00:07:36] recently, I'm not sure of the full ramification of this rumor, but he was, something happened [00:07:36 - 00:07:44] where he was expelled from his order because of these views. So this is a recent thing. [00:07:44 - 00:07:48] I think the LA Times, if any of you know about it, would be interested to hear what the rumor [00:07:48 - 00:07:56] is and the truth is. And his theme is "Awakening the Cosmic Tree," the tree being the symbol [00:07:56 - 00:08:03] of regeneration and of life. And the last person that we have is Charlene Spretnak, [00:08:03 - 00:08:10] who's an author, an eco-theologian and feminist. And her theme is "States of Grace." So any [00:08:10 - 00:08:14] of these people that you're interested in, you can ask us about. There's flyers over [00:08:14 - 00:08:21] there on the table and we'd love to see you at these events. Now I'd like to just introduce [00:08:21 - 00:08:27] Shiva Ray Bailey, who's our administrator, and she'll just say a few things about today [00:08:27 - 00:08:35] before I introduce Terrence. This is just very short because I know you're probably [00:08:35 - 00:08:42] restless to hear our great speaker here today. We are very excited to have you here. I wonder [00:08:42 - 00:08:47] if you could just help us for a moment to help us find out how we got in contact with [00:08:47 - 00:08:52] you. So how many people came here through the Earth Trust brochure, if you could just [00:08:52 - 00:09:00] raise your hand? That's great. How many people came here through the Albert Hoffman Foundation [00:09:00 - 00:09:10] mailing? Yeah, the postcard, the second. Green, acid green, yeah. Great. Okay. What about [00:09:10 - 00:09:16] the LA Weekly ad? Did anyone see that? Great. And what about just word of mouth? Great. [00:09:16 - 00:09:26] Okay. Well, thank you. So welcome and we hope to see you again. Also, there are lunches [00:09:26 - 00:09:42] for those that paid for lunches, we'll have a lunch break. Do we have any extra? Yeah, [00:09:42 - 00:09:46] and there will be, if you need to get a lunch, there are some restaurants that we can tell [00:09:46 - 00:09:52] you about on PCH towards Topanga. Is that right, Andrew? Yeah, towards Topanga. There's [00:09:52 - 00:09:59] many restaurants along the way there. Now to Terence McKenna. Terence McKenna doesn't [00:09:59 - 00:10:04] really need an introduction. If you heard him last night, he certainly doesn't need [00:10:04 - 00:10:09] an introduction. But for those of you who don't know him, I will repeat a little bit [00:10:09 - 00:10:18] of what I said last night. Terence is essentially an anarchist and an interdimensional explorer. [00:10:18 - 00:10:25] He's a shamanologist and he is an author also. He has many books out, three of which we have [00:10:25 - 00:10:30] here today for sale. The Archaic Revival is one of his most recent books and Triologues [00:10:30 - 00:10:37] with Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph Abraham co-authored and Fruit of the Gods, the Search for the [00:10:37 - 00:10:44] Original Tree of Knowledge also we have here, as well as others. And Terence, as I said, [00:10:44 - 00:10:48] is an interdimensional adventurer with an understanding of nature from the depths of [00:10:48 - 00:10:54] the Amazon to the most current scientific breakthroughs. He is a shamanologist who traverses [00:10:54 - 00:11:02] the worlds of the psyche and the spirit, bringing back startling visions of the nature of existence. [00:11:02 - 00:11:07] Simply put, he takes enormous chances, breaks all the rules and comes back with pearls. [00:11:07 - 00:11:07] Terence McKenna. [00:11:08 - 00:11:17] [applause] [00:11:18 - 00:11:24] [inaudible] [00:11:44 - 00:11:49] In case we get into something really heavy, I'll have a pen ready. [00:11:49 - 00:12:08] How many people were at the event last night? Oh, so practically a clean sweep. Well, as [00:12:08 - 00:12:15] you know then, I am an inveterate talker and it doesn't take much to set me off and it [00:12:15 - 00:12:23] takes quite a bit to turn me off. So it seems to me these things are always more interesting [00:12:23 - 00:12:30] if they're driven by the concerns of the audience. And if the concerns of the audience aren't [00:12:30 - 00:12:37] sufficient to fill the time, well then I have a whole laundry list of obsessions that we [00:12:37 - 00:12:47] can work our way through until the last syllable of recorded time, since that's not far away [00:12:47 - 00:12:59] in my opinion. Very little of what I planned to say last night got said because whenever [00:12:59 - 00:13:06] I discovered I'm going to have to stand at a podium rather than sit in a chair, I can't, [00:13:06 - 00:13:13] because of my contact lenses glance down at my notes comfortably. So instead I just sort [00:13:13 - 00:13:21] of rave. So I appreciated the enthusiasm of the audience last night. My personal assessment [00:13:21 - 00:13:31] of the talk was that it was an even more than usual meandering diatribe. And a critic who [00:13:31 - 00:13:40] charged me with a basic incoherence would probably get my blushing acquiescence. Maybe [00:13:40 - 00:13:46] we can do better today. Are there questions from last night? [00:13:46 - 00:13:56] At the time I wasn't aware of any kind of discontinuity, but I was thinking about it [00:13:56 - 00:13:57] later. [00:13:57 - 00:14:01] Me too. [00:14:01 - 00:14:12] I wanted to know what's the continuity between what you were saying at the beginning about [00:14:12 - 00:14:16] changing the way we are in relationship to the earth and consuming less resources, and [00:14:16 - 00:14:21] then what you were saying toward the end about the coming of the millennium and moving out [00:14:21 - 00:14:24] of the birth canal into a new reality. [00:14:24 - 00:14:32] Right. No, I think that there is, if not a contradiction there, at least it's some kind [00:14:32 - 00:14:42] of coincidence of opposites. What I don't want to say is that there's nothing to be [00:14:42 - 00:14:48] done, that there is no moral or political imperative and that we can just continue with [00:14:48 - 00:14:56] this mindless potlatch civilization until everything is ruined, because I don't believe [00:14:56 - 00:15:04] that, and I think it's socially irresponsible to say that. On the other hand, what I don't [00:15:04 - 00:15:11] want to fall too much in the other direction toward is saying that it all depends on us [00:15:11 - 00:15:19] and that we must raise enormous levels of anxiety in ourselves and act as though the [00:15:19 - 00:15:29] salvation of the planet depended on us. What more is happening is that the most important [00:15:29 - 00:15:37] political work that needs to be done is for each of us to raise our own consciousness [00:15:37 - 00:15:48] about these issues and then to create a community based on the sum total of our personal acts [00:15:48 - 00:15:58] of reformation. It is very important to bring help to people in the third world who are [00:15:58 - 00:16:06] struggling to raise families and preserve their environments and this sort of thing. [00:16:06 - 00:16:14] If I were a rationalist, I would be completely despairing. So we are more in the role of [00:16:14 - 00:16:24] like midwives of this new order. I guess it's useful then to return to that birth metaphor. [00:16:24 - 00:16:33] The birth of the new humanity and the new earth is going to happen, but in the same [00:16:33 - 00:16:42] way that a midwife or an obstetrician can ease a birth, make it smoother, make it less painful [00:16:42 - 00:16:54] for all concerned, that's the role that political activism needs to take. So I think we should [00:16:54 - 00:17:02] act as though the salvation of the earth is on our shoulders, but feel as though it is [00:17:02 - 00:17:12] an automatic unfolding that we need not have anxiety about. The Chinese philosopher Wipo [00:17:12 - 00:17:26] Yang said, "Worry is preposterous." I think that's true. We don't know enough to worry. [00:17:26 - 00:17:34] To worry is in a sense that kind of act of hubris because you are claiming complete knowledge [00:17:34 - 00:17:42] of the situation and then you worry. So what is much more empowering and what makes the [00:17:42 - 00:17:52] process of historical ending easier, I think, is to act from your heart and to individual [00:17:52 - 00:18:01] acts of caring are more important than giving your energy to grandiose political schemes. [00:18:01 - 00:18:11] It almost comes back down to the gospel admonition to heal the sick, clothe the naked, visit [00:18:11 - 00:18:18] the imprisoned, bury the dead, but there's nothing there about grandiose political reform [00:18:18 - 00:18:26] and all that sort of thing. That I think arises out of the zeitgeist of the collectivity. [00:18:26 - 00:18:33] And I'm very hopeful. People have a sort of hear my rap differently. I mean, I've had [00:18:33 - 00:18:41] people after what I thought were inspiring panegyrus come up to me and say, "But it's [00:18:41 - 00:18:50] such a dark and horrifying vision." It means that I failed as a communicator in that situation [00:18:50 - 00:18:58] because I'm the gaunest and most irrational hope freak I've ever met. I mean, I think [00:18:58 - 00:19:06] everything is fine. Everything is going toward the purpose for which it was intended, but [00:19:06 - 00:19:12] it's an act of conscious awareness on the part of each of us that carries us toward [00:19:12 - 00:19:21] that. So, often in what I say, there is, if not the fact of contradiction, then the appearance [00:19:21 - 00:19:31] of contradiction. This is because to my mind, life is complicated enough to admit of contradiction. [00:19:31 - 00:19:41] Was it Oscar Wilde or who was it who said, "I contradict myself." I contradict myself. [00:19:41 - 00:19:50] Logical consistency is one of the prejudices that we've inherited from the scientific attempt [00:19:50 - 00:19:59] to describe the world. But in fact, even science at its basic level has now abandoned that [00:19:59 - 00:20:07] as an ideal. In quantum physics, the way it's done mathematically is you have an ordinary [00:20:07 - 00:20:17] causal logic and if-then logic. But in order to handle what quantum physics is attempting [00:20:17 - 00:20:26] to describe, you also have to have what are called islands of Boole or islands of Boolean [00:20:26 - 00:20:34] logic, which is embedded in the standard logic and which is a logic of both and. You cannot [00:20:34 - 00:20:42] reduce this to a non-contradictory description. The great thing about the rational program [00:20:42 - 00:20:51] of science is pushed far enough, it reveals the irrational foundations of nature. That's [00:20:51 - 00:20:58] really what the crisis in science now is. The cutting edges of physical science have [00:20:58 - 00:21:06] contacted the Heisenberg uncertainty principle in the '20s, the anthropocentric principle [00:21:06 - 00:21:16] in the '80s and '70s. We are realizing that somehow the notion of an observer outside [00:21:16 - 00:21:25] the system with a godlike objectivity and zero input into the situation, that was a [00:21:25 - 00:21:34] necessary fiction for the more naive program of description of nature. But as we move into [00:21:34 - 00:21:41] the more sophisticated description of nature, we have to place the observer in the picture [00:21:41 - 00:21:52] and then there is going to be a reverberation of contradiction that probably can't be gotten [00:21:52 - 00:21:58] rid of. I mentioned the-or I referred to this in the talk last night where I said we shouldn't [00:21:58 - 00:22:06] push for closure. We should accept that it is in principle mysterious and so we are never [00:22:06 - 00:22:13] explaining life or relationships or economies or whatever we are looking at. We are describing [00:22:13 - 00:22:23] them with ever more prescient accuracy but we cannot eliminate the unknown. One of my [00:22:23 - 00:22:32] teachers years ago, West Churchman, wrote a wonderful book called Planning on Uncertainty. [00:22:32 - 00:22:37] We all need to plan on uncertainty and it is the one thing that is left out of most [00:22:37 - 00:22:42] models because the model builder has such faith in the model that he would never build [00:22:42 - 00:22:49] in a trap door into the realm of uncertainty and yet life is composed almost entirely of [00:22:49 - 00:22:56] these kinds of trap doors you see. Does that do it? [00:22:56 - 00:23:06] So do I understand then that in your vision we really don't know anything about what [00:23:06 - 00:23:10] it is going to look like once we are out of the birth canal but what we can do now is [00:23:10 - 00:23:14] behave with integrity toward the world that we are in today. Is that right? [00:23:14 - 00:23:21] That's right and it is not that in principle we can't know what it is like out beyond [00:23:21 - 00:23:29] the birth canal. It is simply that it is too early. I used the metaphor last night that [00:23:29 - 00:23:37] the transcendental object is below the event horizon. It is and so all we can see is the [00:23:37 - 00:23:48] rosy glow of its promise at this point but give us ten years and the actual edge of the [00:23:48 - 00:23:54] transcendental object will rise above the event horizon. I mean I don't think that we [00:23:54 - 00:24:09] are marginalized or part of fad and fashion. I think this is actually the rising modality [00:24:09 - 00:24:14] necessary for the future if we are going to make it through. In other words I suspect [00:24:14 - 00:24:19] that ten years from now, fifteen years from now the things we are talking about today [00:24:19 - 00:24:28] will be the general metaphors and concerns in society because I just have a very strong [00:24:28 - 00:24:39] intuition based on a lot of journeying into those hyperspatial modalities that this is [00:24:39 - 00:24:45] the path and I am sufficiently convinced of that to submit it to a kind of intellectual [00:24:45 - 00:24:53] plebiscite. I mean I believe that ideas compete with each other the way animals compete in [00:24:53 - 00:25:03] an environment and that the best ideas, the most fitting ideas for the human adventure [00:25:03 - 00:25:12] will eliminate their competition and that is what we are experiencing now in the political [00:25:12 - 00:25:21] domain is the competition between ideological systems roughly comparable to dinosaurs and [00:25:21 - 00:25:30] mammals and you can decide which is which but the two are incommiserate and one is in [00:25:30 - 00:25:38] the act of eliminating the other and so it is a matter of observing this process, understanding [00:25:38 - 00:25:46] it and being comfortable with it. If you are right I don't think you need to feel any urgency [00:25:46 - 00:25:54] because that will quite naturally percolate out in the mix. Many of you have heard me [00:25:54 - 00:26:02] quote William Blake, it is always worth repeating, he said if the truth can be told so as to [00:26:02 - 00:26:11] be understood it will be believed. In other words understanding compels belief. You don't [00:26:11 - 00:26:18] have to hammer on somebody, your task is to refine your message into an understandable [00:26:18 - 00:26:28] form and then let the dynamics of intellectual competition decide what is the best model [00:26:28 - 00:26:36] to follow. I had a question related to what you were just saying and then I had a chemistry [00:26:36 - 00:26:45] question. What keeps me optimistic is that information seems to be spreading more rapidly [00:26:45 - 00:26:51] and some futurists have said that by the year 2011 that information will be doubling every [00:26:51 - 00:26:59] second. I was wondering if you could comment on that. Well, yeah. Part of what I was going [00:26:59 - 00:27:10] to talk about last night and didn't get to is I am the purveyor of a very formal mathematical [00:27:10 - 00:27:18] theory about how history unfolds itself and what time is and to your great good fortune [00:27:18 - 00:27:26] you are not going to be exposed to this today had we two days I would flay you with it on [00:27:26 - 00:27:35] the second day. But here is the thing that is going on. Since the very first moments [00:27:35 - 00:27:45] of the universe's existence, novelty as I call it or complexity as someone else has [00:27:45 - 00:27:55] called it or connectedness has been increasing so that the early universe was very simple. [00:27:55 - 00:28:03] It was a plasma free electrons. There were no laws of molecular physics, still less laws [00:28:03 - 00:28:12] of biology or gene segregation or something like that. As the universe has aged it has [00:28:12 - 00:28:22] become more and more complex. We represent the culmination to the present moment of that [00:28:22 - 00:28:28] process. Well, I don't think that is particularly big news. It is sort of a stating of the obvious [00:28:28 - 00:28:36] that the universe has grown more complex through time. But what is interesting is that each [00:28:36 - 00:28:44] advancement into complexity that has built on the previously established foundation of [00:28:44 - 00:28:53] complexity occurs more rapidly than the stages which preceded it. So if you were to draw [00:28:53 - 00:29:02] a diagram of that it would be an involuting spiral so that after the big bang and things [00:29:02 - 00:29:08] settled down after the first few nanoseconds of the universe's existence, well then for [00:29:08 - 00:29:18] a long time it was very boring and all that happened was the temperatures fell very gradually. [00:29:18 - 00:29:26] Eventually they fell to the point where atoms could settle down into stable orbits around [00:29:26 - 00:29:35] nuclei. Then as the temperature fell still further eventually these atoms could aggregate [00:29:35 - 00:29:43] into molecular structures. Again, each advancement into novelty preceding more rapidly than the [00:29:43 - 00:29:51] stage which preceded it. Well, that is why to my mind human history is not a radical [00:29:51 - 00:30:03] break with primate biology. It simply represents an acceleration of primate behavior into a [00:30:03 - 00:30:17] more compacted temporal domain and high technology, electronic data transfer, the erection of [00:30:17 - 00:30:25] global society which has built on the previous levels of cultural attainment has happened [00:30:25 - 00:30:34] even more quickly so that these eras or epochs you could almost think of them as of complexity [00:30:34 - 00:30:41] are now of such short duration that instead of taking millions of years or perhaps billions [00:30:41 - 00:30:50] of years to transit through one of these we now are moving through them at the rate of [00:30:50 - 00:30:58] one or two a decade and beyond that one or two every two or three years and beyond that [00:30:58 - 00:31:08] one or two every few months. I see no elegant reason for assuming that this process will [00:31:08 - 00:31:16] ever cease its asymptotic acceleration. Well then if you picture what I'm describing it's [00:31:16 - 00:31:24] a funnel of some sort which begins with an extremely wide mouth but which has now narrowed [00:31:24 - 00:31:35] to an extremely small and fast moving kind of situation and this is why history is a [00:31:35 - 00:31:47] self-limiting process. It isn't that we have broken away from the slow moving processes [00:31:47 - 00:31:56] of ordinary nature. It's that we represent nature at a different time frame and I think [00:31:56 - 00:32:02] this is why history is ending because it's going so much faster than it used to go that [00:32:02 - 00:32:11] it's going to finish very soon. There may be as much experience ahead of us as there [00:32:11 - 00:32:21] is behind us but we're moving through it so much faster than we used to that we are literally [00:32:21 - 00:32:28] approaching the end of time at a faster and faster speed and this is something built into [00:32:28 - 00:32:36] the structure of the cosmos. It's the answer to the question where did we come from? We [00:32:36 - 00:32:45] were called forth out of biological organization by the continued acceleration of the expression [00:32:45 - 00:32:54] of novelty and this is why I count myself as a proponent of what I call the big surprise [00:32:54 - 00:33:03] rather than the big bang. The big surprise lies ahead of us, not billions of years or [00:33:03 - 00:33:11] millions of years or thousands of years in the future but within our lifetimes potentially [00:33:11 - 00:33:19] and it's interesting, I think I said this last night, the people who run the world now [00:33:19 - 00:33:25] possess curves which when they draw these curves and try to extrapolate them 50 years [00:33:25 - 00:33:34] into the future it makes no sense at all. You cannot extrapolate the ozone hole, the [00:33:34 - 00:33:40] AIDS epidemic, the spread of plutonium, you cannot extrapolate these things 100 years [00:33:40 - 00:33:45] into the future because they all go asymptotic and reach infinity so it means the oceans [00:33:45 - 00:33:51] boil, the atmosphere blows off, everybody dies and that's the end of it but I don't [00:33:51 - 00:33:59] think that's what's happening. I think novelty is the saving grace and that we are, the historical [00:33:59 - 00:34:06] adventure is essentially coming into the finale of the third act and it is our great good [00:34:06 - 00:34:16] fortune to be spectators and participants in the phenomena that for all preceding generations [00:34:16 - 00:34:27] could only be anticipated and prayed for. It's a screwy position, I understand, I mean [00:34:27 - 00:34:34] boil down to a bumper sticker, it's a bearded guy on the corner with a sign which says "repent [00:34:34 - 00:34:40] for the end is nigh" or maybe just "the end is nigh" but I think all the evidence [00:34:40 - 00:34:51] is that the soul is about to collectively leave the body. The human imagination married [00:34:51 - 00:35:01] to technology has become a force too powerful to be unleashed within the fragile ecosystem [00:35:01 - 00:35:11] of this planet so we must either carry ourselves elsewhere or the planet's homeostatic drive [00:35:11 - 00:35:19] to preserve ordinary biology will eliminate us through epidemic disease or climatological [00:35:19 - 00:35:26] upheaval or you know there are many possibilities. So I think we are being propelled somewhat [00:35:26 - 00:35:37] reluctantly into a new human modality that is as radical a shift as birth is to the individual [00:35:37 - 00:35:45] or as the original entry into history was for our species. History cannot be conceived [00:35:45 - 00:35:55] of as preceding another thousand or ten thousand years. I mean it just can't be so it must [00:35:55 - 00:36:03] be that it's a self-limiting process and it only lasts 25,000 years. I mean if you go [00:36:03 - 00:36:11] back 25,000 years the earth was in eco-dynamic balance, human beings were fully established [00:36:11 - 00:36:19] as intelligent, as caring, as creative as you and I. Theater, poetry, dance, love, hope, [00:36:19 - 00:36:30] tragedy, religion, all these things were in place but history represents Gaia hitting [00:36:30 - 00:36:39] the fast forward button on the evolution of the primates and it seems of long duration [00:36:39 - 00:36:47] to us because we at the level of the expression of the individual phenotype are as ephemeral [00:36:47 - 00:36:55] as mayflies. You know a person lives 70 years, 90 years and then they're gone but on a scale [00:36:55 - 00:37:03] of 25,000 years clearly what is happening on this planet is the emergence of an entirely [00:37:03 - 00:37:11] new kind of order within the natural order. It is natural but it is new. There is no contradiction [00:37:11 - 00:37:20] in this. Once atoms were a new invention, once molecules were a new invention, once [00:37:20 - 00:37:26] polymers were the cutting edge of what's happening. Now the cutting edge of what's happening [00:37:26 - 00:37:34] is large scale primate machine integrated societies based on the movement of information. [00:37:34 - 00:37:39] Did that do it? Yeah, yeah. Oh you want to follow on? [00:37:39 - 00:37:42] No, a quick chemistry question. Oh yeah, I'm sorry. [00:37:42 - 00:37:52] Is 5-methyl oxyn-n-dimethyltryptamine crystalline legal to possess and would one, if one was [00:37:52 - 00:38:03] going to mix it would one mix it with harmine, harmelo, haroline or haralene or harmelene? [00:38:03 - 00:38:14] That was a word salad. Well I think you're asking about 5-meo-DMT, 5-methoxy-dimethyltryptamine, [00:38:14 - 00:38:23] the toad foam of recent fame. As far as I understand I think that it's legal. However [00:38:23 - 00:38:30] it would probably depend on the length of the fangs of the local DA because there is [00:38:30 - 00:38:36] what's called the cogeny law which says that structural near relatives of hallucinogens [00:38:36 - 00:38:47] can also be prosecuted as illegal compounds. As far as the question about the harmine alkaloids, [00:38:47 - 00:39:00] harmine, harmelene, tetrahydroharmane, harmelo I think is apocryphal species. But the notion [00:39:00 - 00:39:08] which must lie behind your question is harmine alkaloids inhibit monoamine oxidase which [00:39:08 - 00:39:20] is an enzyme system in the human gut that tends to inactivate amines, monoamines of [00:39:20 - 00:39:29] which these hallucinogens all, most all fall into that category. You could attempt to inhibit [00:39:29 - 00:39:39] your MAO with a harmene, with a dose of harmene or harmelene and then smoke 5-meo-DMT but [00:39:39 - 00:39:46] I don't recommend this unless you are a pharmacologist with hours and hours of psychedelic flight [00:39:46 - 00:39:55] time on your log. This is certainly nothing for the ingenue to attempt. Once you get out [00:39:55 - 00:40:02] into the realm of synergies that means what happens when you run two metabolically active [00:40:02 - 00:40:08] compounds at the same time and some people do three and four and five, you know you are [00:40:08 - 00:40:15] definitely on your own because pharmacology doesn't study drugs like that. They study [00:40:15 - 00:40:24] them in isolation, their activity and you know some people say of the smokeable tryptamines [00:40:24 - 00:40:32] they are so quick that wouldn't it be logical to inhibit your MAO in order to freeze frame [00:40:32 - 00:40:37] the experience and instead of having it last three minutes have it last 30 minutes. Yes [00:40:37 - 00:40:43] that's a fine idea but what if it lasted 30 hours instead. I mean you don't you know a [00:40:43 - 00:40:52] miss is as good as a mile in this game so you should be, have your mantras ready, you [00:40:52 - 00:41:01] know push off into that. While we are on the subject of chemistry I have a quick and easy [00:41:01 - 00:41:08] question. Okay I imagine psilocybin is probably you know pretty common in pretty common use [00:41:08 - 00:41:14] and I'm sure that the people around here are pretty aware of malathion spraying is going [00:41:14 - 00:41:19] on and I've always been curious I'm not a chemistry student but since psilocybin does [00:41:19 - 00:41:26] have a phosphorus in it and I know most of the malathion and most of the other chemicals [00:41:26 - 00:41:32] like it are organophosphates and they react synergistically. Is there a possibility of [00:41:32 - 00:41:43] a synergistic toxicity when you get you know a dose of malathion and you are using psilocybin? [00:41:43 - 00:41:51] Well every once in a while these kinds of questions come along and the answer is always [00:41:51 - 00:41:59] since research with psilocybin is illegal or and even in rats counterproductive to your [00:41:59 - 00:42:12] career nobody knows. You mentioned the phosphorus group in psilocybin. Psilocybin is 4-phosphoryloxy-N-and-dimethyltryptamine. [00:42:12 - 00:42:19] This is very interesting to me because we don't spend too much time on this but it's [00:42:19 - 00:42:29] the only 4-substituted indole in nature on this planet. The only 4-substituted indole [00:42:29 - 00:42:36] in nature on this planet. Well this is suggestive to me of a possible extraterrestrial origin [00:42:36 - 00:42:44] for this molecule because the way evolution works is from one structure you elaborate [00:42:44 - 00:42:51] another structure and then near cousins of that appear and so forth and so on. The phosphorus [00:42:51 - 00:42:58] group in the 4 position on psilocybin sticks out like a sore thumb when you look at the [00:42:58 - 00:43:12] structure of organic nature. Too much that malathion is a phosphorylated compound. I [00:43:12 - 00:43:19] was interesting I noticed in Hoffer and Osmond's hallucinogens malathion is occasionally there [00:43:19 - 00:43:32] are known cases of human abuse of malathion. Is there a bigger debt to pay at the dose [00:43:32 - 00:43:41] where it does that? Not by the aerial spraying but accidentally working with it and fairly [00:43:41 - 00:43:47] concentrated. I've gotten it on my skin and for several days I had very disturbed dreams [00:43:47 - 00:43:54] and broken sleep and I think that's pretty well recorded that's not uncommon at all. [00:43:54 - 00:44:01] Well that's very interesting because it's a neurotoxin it also creates a neural disturbance. [00:44:01 - 00:44:11] I'm willing to buy into the notion that all drugs are poisons at certain doses. All substances [00:44:11 - 00:44:19] are poisons at certain doses. You can kill yourself with common salt if you eat 3 pounds [00:44:19 - 00:44:26] of it that's all she wrote for you. Always what you're doing is you're perturbing the [00:44:26 - 00:44:36] dynamic of ordinary functioning and then what you're watching is the chemical cascade that [00:44:36 - 00:44:53] returns you to equilibrium. I don't think many cultures actually would posit that. Jimson [00:44:53 - 00:44:57] we for instance is an enjoyable high. So it may give you a psychedelic experience and [00:44:57 - 00:45:01] making you vivid dreams but it's not something that many people would volunteer to take. [00:45:01 - 00:45:10] Yeah well that's something worth talking about and certainly I found it true. The notion [00:45:10 - 00:45:22] of intoxication is an incredibly culture bound idea and what one culture considers an acceptable [00:45:22 - 00:45:33] intoxication another culture just regards as an incredibly unpleasant experience. Alcohol [00:45:33 - 00:45:41] in high doses is not something most rational people would care to repeat I think unless [00:45:41 - 00:45:48] there were cultural conditioning pushing you toward that or tobacco. I mean essentially [00:45:48 - 00:45:58] that's an experience of toxicity and until you build up tolerance to the more toxic aspects [00:45:58 - 00:46:06] of tobacco every time you smoke it you turn green and become nauseated. We had the experience [00:46:06 - 00:46:16] in the Amazon there was for years my brother and I pursued a hallucinogen called ukuhe [00:46:16 - 00:46:23] that was in use in a very restricted area by three tribes of Indians and the reason [00:46:23 - 00:46:29] we were interested in it is because the ethnographic literature said that the shamans used it to [00:46:29 - 00:46:37] talk to little men and because we had encountered in the DMT flash these things that I've called [00:46:37 - 00:46:45] self-transforming machine elves we were interested in an aboriginal hallucinogen that would let [00:46:45 - 00:46:53] you talk to little people of some sort and the chemistry of these things was known of [00:46:53 - 00:47:00] the ukuhe gradually became known in the 70s and it was made from the resin of a certain [00:47:00 - 00:47:08] tree which elaborated not only DMT which is a clean fast acting psychedelic tryptamine [00:47:08 - 00:47:15] but also a number of other tryptamines and you know after immense expanse and physical [00:47:15 - 00:47:23] wear and tear we on the upper Yaguas Yasu drainage in Peru we actually contacted people [00:47:23 - 00:47:30] who knew how to make this hallucinogen and you know we thought it was going to hurl open [00:47:30 - 00:47:38] the doorway to the golden realm and when we finally got to the bioassay of it which is [00:47:38 - 00:47:48] a term which means getting loaded on it it was really tough to take this stuff and you [00:47:48 - 00:47:53] know your heart felt like it was just going to hammer its way out of your chest and there [00:47:53 - 00:48:01] were sweats and there was hallucination but my god you were monitoring so many other physiological [00:48:01 - 00:48:12] systems going into crisis that you know it seemed almost ancillary so then you know live [00:48:12 - 00:48:20] through it the next morning troop down to the shaman's hut and say you know listen basilio [00:48:20 - 00:48:30] we have to talk and and then him saying well yeah it takes getting used to and you know [00:48:30 - 00:48:38] that's why our shamans don't live very long and and so then you you realize aha what we're [00:48:38 - 00:48:46] dealing with here is a culture that has sanctioned this experience and projected a lot of cultural [00:48:46 - 00:48:55] baggage onto it but that if you're the unsold customer you say you know I think once is [00:48:55 - 00:49:01] enough thank you for that a more familiar case that I think is similar although some [00:49:01 - 00:49:07] people rise up in holy wrath and we get into great arguments about this but my personal [00:49:07 - 00:49:16] opinion is that amanita muscaria do you all know what that is it's the red mushroom of [00:49:16 - 00:49:24] european folk mythology in german it's called the fliegen pils it's it's atropenic too well [00:49:24 - 00:49:33] a lot of people who never got loaded on it spewed a lot of scholarly argument about how [00:49:33 - 00:49:40] this was a wonderful shamanic intoxicant but i submit to you in most cases it comes closer [00:49:40 - 00:49:51] to being an ordeal and it it may be that because of genetic variation seasonal variation individual [00:49:51 - 00:49:58] variations in the expression of its genome edaffic factors meaning the soil that it grows [00:49:58 - 00:50:05] in the nature of its mycorrhizal relationship and in other words we've staked out here about [00:50:05 - 00:50:13] an eight variable equation relative to amanita muscaria that sometimes it's wonderful but [00:50:13 - 00:50:20] unless you have always been in that area and can draw on the shamanic lore of great tradition [00:50:20 - 00:50:26] about it i think just going out into the woods and faunching down on the first amanita muscaria [00:50:26 - 00:50:32] that you come upon is probably a ticket to the emergency room if you're if you're not [00:50:32 - 00:50:43] very careful in madagascar there are no palisade as we would understand it but there are what [00:50:43 - 00:50:52] are called ordeal poisons this is an entire category in madagascan aboriginal shamanism [00:50:52 - 00:51:02] what's going on here there is there are these plants which that you take them and you at [00:51:02 - 00:51:09] first assume you're going to die because you feel so bad and then you feel so bad that [00:51:09 - 00:51:17] you beg to die and then you don't die and you recover completely within 10 to 12 hours [00:51:17 - 00:51:24] and you are so damn glad to be alive that this has all the characteristics of a psychedelic [00:51:24 - 00:51:31] experience i mean you come down a kinder gentler more attentive more decent human being but [00:51:31 - 00:51:38] it's only because you've been hurled into the jaws of death itself and then brought [00:51:38 - 00:51:49] back that will work folks but so my my interest has always been to to squeeze the definition [00:51:49 - 00:51:57] of psychedelic to narrow it to make it more precise i mean sometimes people say well you're [00:51:57 - 00:52:03] you're it's about altered states well there are all kinds of altered states thousands [00:52:03 - 00:52:12] of altered states without even talking about drugs we can talk about uh being in love being [00:52:12 - 00:52:23] abandoned in love uh being jealous being anxious about your financial situation uh suddenly [00:52:23 - 00:52:32] seeing the your roots in high atlantis these are all altered states none of them are psychedelic [00:52:32 - 00:52:40] well then you move into the realm of drugs there are as you mentioned atropine states [00:52:40 - 00:52:52] tropane induced uh deliriums the uh ketamine type states states on the edge of anesthesia [00:52:52 - 00:53:00] states of extraordinary agitation brought on by the whole amphetamine family all of [00:53:00 - 00:53:07] these things are altered states pharmacologically achieved and to my mind they are not truly [00:53:07 - 00:53:15] psychedelic what psychedelic means to me is in structural terms a very small number of [00:53:15 - 00:53:27] compounds all based on uh on uh indole the indole hallucinogens are the true psychedelics [00:53:27 - 00:53:35] and let's see what are they there aren't that many uh there's lsd which is a semi-synthetic [00:53:35 - 00:53:44] made in the laboratory but from organic precursors usually lsd uh ibogaine about which not much [00:53:44 - 00:53:51] is known because it has never achieved much currency in the underground in this country [00:53:51 - 00:54:03] psilocybin dmt um and the beta carbolines which are monoamine oxidase inhibitors but [00:54:03 - 00:54:12] only hallucinogens at close to the toxic dose and that's it peyote is an interesting uh [00:54:12 - 00:54:20] is an interesting edge situation because mescaline is not an indole it's an amphetamine and if [00:54:20 - 00:54:27] you look at the the chemical pharmacological profile on peyote it's uh different from all [00:54:27 - 00:54:34] these others first of all an effective dose of mescaline is according to the to the literature [00:54:34 - 00:54:42] 700 milligrams that's a pile of white powder in the palm of your hand in other words it's [00:54:42 - 00:54:50] it's a it's a an inefficient drug it puts a lot of strain on your system there are different [00:54:50 - 00:54:58] ways to think about toxicity one way is to ask how much of this compound do you have [00:54:58 - 00:55:05] to take to experience an effect if you have to take 700 milligrams then it's a pretty [00:55:05 - 00:55:14] crude uh drug because that's a lot on the other hand you know lsd is at the other end [00:55:14 - 00:55:26] of the spectrum you can feel quite strongly 50 gamma 50 micrograms of lsd uh help me out [00:55:26 - 00:55:36] here what is that five ten thousandths of a gram is 50 gamma that is to a pharmacologist [00:55:36 - 00:55:44] the fact that a human being can feel 50 micrograms of a compound is like a miracle i mean to [00:55:44 - 00:55:50] give you an analogy so you can understand that that's like having one red ant tear down [00:55:50 - 00:55:59] the empire state building in 30 minutes i mean that that's what it looks like when 50 [00:55:59 - 00:56:10] gamma of lsd enter your body so so lsd has an incredibly low toxicity by that measure [00:56:10 - 00:56:19] you see well then psilocybin falls in the mid-range uh it it requires about 15 to 25 [00:56:19 - 00:56:26] milligrams and uh and this is an acceptable uh situation the other way of talking about [00:56:26 - 00:56:36] psychedelics rather than structurally or in terms of dose dependent profile is it's a [00:56:36 - 00:56:47] specific altered state it is first of all i like the word hallucinogen or hallucinogen [00:56:47 - 00:56:54] see i grew up in a cattle town in colorado and i haven't shed quite all of it but hallucinogens [00:56:54 - 00:57:00] because i was always fascinated by the idea of hallucination the to me for some reason [00:57:00 - 00:57:07] the idea of seeing something which is not there just became the holy grail for me because [00:57:07 - 00:57:15] that was so challenging to my notion of what is possible and uh so then when we lay these [00:57:15 - 00:57:23] indole psychedelics out in front of us and are trying to make decisions uh many people [00:57:23 - 00:57:32] have a great enthusiasm for lsd because it empowers thought and stirs the engines of [00:57:32 - 00:57:40] cognition but it only reluctantly compared to these other things is a strong visionary [00:57:40 - 00:57:47] hallucinogen you usually have to synergize it with cannabis or mescaline and then those [00:57:47 - 00:57:53] combinations are highly visionary what i love about psilocybin is that it causes you to [00:57:53 - 00:58:03] hallucinate so effortlessly at relatively low doses and without a lot of accompanying [00:58:03 - 00:58:10] you know sweating or tremoring or physical discomfort and dmt is even more powerful as [00:58:10 - 00:58:17] an inducer of visionary states now people who have never had a hallucination and if [00:58:17 - 00:58:26] you read the literature think that a hallucination means little traveling lights or colored lines [00:58:26 - 00:58:32] or the kinds of things you see when you press on your closed eyelids those are not what [00:58:32 - 00:58:40] i'm talking about that kind of thing is called hypnagogia hypnagogia also includes chorus [00:58:40 - 00:58:48] lines of dancing mice little round candies falling leaves snowflakes in other words the [00:58:48 - 00:58:55] flotsam and jetsam of the mental ocean which is generally no more interesting than the [00:58:55 - 00:59:06] flotsam and jetsam of of the oceans of three space what i'm interested in are full field [00:59:06 - 00:59:20] 360 degree visionary scenarios of jungles deserts ice fields ruined cities machinescapes [00:59:20 - 00:59:25] and a whole bunch of other stuff which is not so easily dropped into any category of [00:59:25 - 00:59:33] experience that we're familiar with but highly organized three-dimensional self-sustaining [00:59:33 - 00:59:39] transformed modalities that you cannot pour language over i mean when you try to say what [00:59:39 - 00:59:47] it is all you can say is what it isn't and i find that tremendously affirming because [00:59:47 - 00:59:54] to me and i guess this is important to me that is the experience which proves that this [00:59:54 - 01:00:02] is not self-generated when i take a plant and it shows me something i could previously [01:00:02 - 01:00:09] not have imagined then i know i am in the presence of the other because it couldn't [01:00:09 - 01:00:17] have come out of me i mean if you insist that the volleys that the niagara of hallucination [01:00:17 - 01:00:24] caused by psilocybin is generated out of the dynamics of your own psyche if you insist [01:00:24 - 01:00:30] that that's true then you are unable to explain what your own psyche is in other words you [01:00:30 - 01:00:37] become unrecognizable to yourself in that case and if you are unrecognizable to yourself [01:00:37 - 01:00:45] you are not yourself in some sense so i prefer to believe that it's coming from the outside [01:00:45 - 01:00:53] that mind is a field into which we dip the dipstick of observation but it's not being [01:00:53 - 01:00:58] generated in the neurons of the brain yeah this guy's been waiting patiently or perhaps [01:00:58 - 01:01:07] impatiently i have a question about one other position again i haven't heard much about [01:01:07 - 01:01:12] since the late 60s and i think the fda took it out of the marketplace it was the hawaiian [01:01:12 - 01:01:21] woodrobes well you know anything about that sure yes hawaiian woodrobes argeria nervosa [01:01:21 - 01:01:29] the argeria refers to the the silvery hairs on the underside of the leaves it turns out [01:01:29 - 01:01:39] that in the higher plants you see lsd or its near relatives occur in ergot and are made [01:01:39 - 01:01:46] from ergot it doesn't occur in ergot but it's made from ergot ergot is a fungi an entirely [01:01:46 - 01:01:54] different order of life than higher plants but in the higher plants in the convolvulaceae [01:01:54 - 01:02:03] the morning glory family there are a number of different genera that contain alkaloids [01:02:03 - 01:02:15] that are milligram effective cousins of lsd and argeria nervosa is the best known of these [01:02:15 - 01:02:24] it's also probably i would estimate gram for gram probably the most concentrated natural [01:02:24 - 01:02:33] hallucinogen on this planet because half a teaspoon is an effective dose where people [01:02:33 - 01:02:38] get in trouble with baby hawaiian woodrobes is they think oh well it's a plant and plants [01:02:38 - 01:02:44] are always weak so let's do a half a cup or something like that and then you know you're [01:02:44 - 01:02:53] begging for mercy in a hurry there are 13 species of argeria all natives of asia distributed [01:02:53 - 01:03:00] from the base of the himalayas to western polynesia and argeria nervosa is simply the [01:03:00 - 01:03:06] best known now the problem with it is that and this is something you always have to be [01:03:06 - 01:03:18] aware of with with plant hallucinogens is that cardioactive compounds occur in argeria [01:03:18 - 01:03:25] as well and so if you miss dose even slightly it will put your heart through changes that [01:03:25 - 01:03:31] will stand your hair on end and i've never heard of anybody dying on it but i've heard [01:03:31 - 01:03:39] of people you know laying down and making their peace with their maker because they [01:03:39 - 01:03:44] figured that they were probably going to die now there are other now an interesting thing [01:03:44 - 01:03:52] about argeria nervosa is so far as we know from the ethnographic work that's been done [01:03:52 - 01:04:00] it is unclaimed by any aboriginal group unless we count the surfers of maui as an aboriginal [01:04:00 - 01:04:11] people and this is fascinating to me you know certain plants have great antiquity of use [01:04:11 - 01:04:20] and other plants equally psychoactive are ignored and you know we tend to believe that [01:04:20 - 01:04:28] aboriginal people don't miss a trick but occasionally it seems like they're as obtuse as we are [01:04:28 - 01:04:38] i mean a couple of examples will make the case clear as you all probably know there's [01:04:38 - 01:04:46] quite a complex of psilocybin containing mushrooms in central mexico used by the sea by the mazatecan [01:04:46 - 01:04:53] and mixtec and people there and they seem to have exploited these mushrooms for millennia [01:04:53 - 01:05:02] however on the northwest coast of north america washington and british columbia where you [01:05:02 - 01:05:10] get the northwest coast indian groups the shim sham quokkutl and tlingit language areas [01:05:10 - 01:05:18] this is the densest concentration of psilocybin containing species of mushrooms on this planet [01:05:18 - 01:05:25] and so far as we can tell they never used them i mean somebody will say well they used [01:05:25 - 01:05:31] them but they never told you in the shaman but listen you know a huge amount of ethnography [01:05:31 - 01:05:36] has been done in that area and there is not the slightest indication that these people [01:05:36 - 01:05:42] ever utilized these mushrooms even though they had an advanced shamanism plant-based [01:05:42 - 01:05:49] shamanism they seem to have overlooked this another example that may have practical implications [01:05:49 - 01:05:56] for some of the more astute among you is in the past two years it's been realized that [01:05:56 - 01:06:07] a plant which grows as a weed in the midwest of north america called illinois bundle weed [01:06:07 - 01:06:16] desmanthus illinoisensis is in fact the most concentrated source of natural dmt in the [01:06:16 - 01:06:25] world on the root scraping of the root and now this one is perhaps suspect and maybe [01:06:25 - 01:06:32] more ethnographic work seems to be done the straight story is that the indians of the [01:06:32 - 01:06:40] great plains never knew about this and never utilized it my question is if that's so then [01:06:40 - 01:06:47] why is it called bundle weed because that seems to imply to me a medicine bundle and [01:06:47 - 01:06:55] and so perhaps further ethnographic excavation will show that this was used but it could [01:06:55 - 01:07:03] be the basis for a whole family of visionary hallucinogens that apparently were never utilized [01:07:03 - 01:07:12] yeah you yeah i like to pull back a couple of conversations to what over the years i [01:07:12 - 01:07:17] felt has been the focus of some of your most of your work which is essentially this realm [01:07:17 - 01:07:25] you talk about pushing through into this visionary world it's a little bit it feels to me when [01:07:25 - 01:07:30] you talk about it's a little bit like taking the the glove and turning it inside out that [01:07:30 - 01:07:39] possibly your your your premises is that the universe itself is the illusion and that this [01:07:39 - 01:07:47] visionary world is the reality that we may well be going back into that it's this material [01:07:47 - 01:07:55] world and all the universe and all the material experience that we have is really the the [01:07:55 - 01:08:06] other side well yes i mean i i i regard myself as basically an explorer and a researcher [01:08:06 - 01:08:15] i have a lot more questions than answers the thing that has made me be what i am and do [01:08:15 - 01:08:28] what i do is because uh the the what they're telling you about these states of mind are [01:08:28 - 01:08:35] is a whitewash in that they say oh it gives you and these are the pros the people who [01:08:35 - 01:08:41] are for hallucinogens say it's a form of instant psychotherapy it's great for straightening [01:08:41 - 01:08:47] out your relationship it's if you're an architect you can visualize buildings in 3d they present [01:08:47 - 01:08:57] it as a tool for understanding this world its relationships and its you know interconnection [01:08:57 - 01:09:04] what i've observed is that at high doses and with sufficient intentionality one seems to [01:09:04 - 01:09:12] break through into what can only be honestly described as a parallel universe of some sort [01:09:12 - 01:09:20] that has such existential presence and immediacy that it's hard to squeeze it down to being [01:09:20 - 01:09:28] a mental construct generated temporarily in your mind through pharmacological means because [01:09:28 - 01:09:39] it seems much more like a place and this is incredibly challenging to our way of thinking [01:09:39 - 01:09:49] about reality because we deny the existence of these kinds of mental realms it seems almost [01:09:49 - 01:09:56] as though or or here is a model for how it might be it seems that reality is a series [01:09:56 - 01:10:04] of heavily compartmentalized universes of some sort and under extraordinary situations [01:10:04 - 01:10:15] of mental perturbation achieved by any means these membranes that keep these worlds mutually [01:10:15 - 01:10:23] exclusive and sequestered from contamination by each other just simply dissolve and you [01:10:23 - 01:10:29] experience what mercilio called the rupture of plane and the rupture of plane is just [01:10:29 - 01:10:39] like poking a hole in nearby space and then lo and behold you know the utterly unexpected [01:10:39 - 01:10:48] is found to be alive and well right here right now i mean it and i can't stress enough how [01:10:48 - 01:10:55] real this is and how confounding it is i mean i may not be the brightest person around but [01:10:55 - 01:11:02] i certainly have assimilated you know the basic shtick of what western civilization [01:11:02 - 01:11:09] is supposed to be about and there is no place in the western model of reality for the idea [01:11:09 - 01:11:21] that just you know 20 heartbeats and 70 milligrams of dmt away is an elf infested uh mega space [01:11:21 - 01:11:30] of archaeology of of archaeology sized dimensions in which non-material beings made not of matter [01:11:30 - 01:11:38] but of syntax are merrily pursuing uh their own goals and possibilities i don't know what [01:11:38 - 01:11:46] to make of that and i also almost equally puzzling as the existence of such a place [01:11:46 - 01:11:53] is our lack of knowledge about it when i and hundreds of other people in my experience [01:11:53 - 01:11:59] and presumably millions of people throughout history have known that you could use plant [01:11:59 - 01:12:06] hallucinogens to break into that world we're living in a fool's paradise trapped inside [01:12:06 - 01:12:12] the assumptions of linear materialism and rationalism that's the most seductive and [01:12:12 - 01:12:19] delicious aspect of your thesis is that my god there is a reality somewhere beyond that [01:12:19 - 01:12:24] membrane and then you compound it with with the exploration of logic or rationale where [01:12:24 - 01:12:29] you present as the possibility that the big bang is the biggest is the most ludicrous [01:12:29 - 01:12:34] thing to combine with rationality as could possibly be imagined and then i've even heard [01:12:34 - 01:12:40] people address well how is it possible that the vanity of the individual human being could [01:12:40 - 01:12:45] think that he's so important that the rest of the the galaxy the universe out there that [01:12:45 - 01:12:51] we should be at all significant whereas you say well hell that's all mindscape it doesn't [01:12:51 - 01:12:57] exist or it feels like you say well it's a mindscape you know it isn't it's an invention [01:12:57 - 01:13:04] well what i'm really saying is we know a lot less than we assume we know i mean if someone [01:13:04 - 01:13:12] tells you that we live around a typical star at the edge of a typical galaxy strewn through [01:13:12 - 01:13:18] a mega space trillions of times larger i mean they don't know what they're talking about [01:13:18 - 01:13:26] that's just the cheerful assurance of modern astronomy based on a bunch of fishy formulas [01:13:26 - 01:13:32] that were cooked up within the confines of the 20th century i mean the stars that shine [01:13:32 - 01:13:39] down at night could be painted dots on a scrim for all we know i mean i'm not saying that's [01:13:39 - 01:13:47] the case but what i am saying is i think that the greatest disservice that science has done [01:13:47 - 01:13:55] to humankind is the marginalizing of our own importance if we even let's take an objective [01:13:55 - 01:14:04] measure uh of come and i think complexity if you look around at nature at the fossil [01:14:04 - 01:14:13] record at the human family uh complexity is clearly something very dear to nature nature [01:14:13 - 01:14:21] preserves it nature works through it nature builds upon it well uh we're told we're a [01:14:21 - 01:14:26] minor this in orbit around a minor that in a typical that and so forth and so on but [01:14:26 - 01:14:35] if you will look at the human cerebral cortex what you discover is the most densely complexified [01:14:35 - 01:14:42] matter known to exist in the universe the human cerebral cortex contains more connections [01:14:42 - 01:14:50] per cubic centimeter than any form of matter known to exist in this cosmos if that's true [01:14:50 - 01:14:58] suddenly our marginality is completely obviated and it's clear that no we are not marginal [01:14:58 - 01:15:07] observers of a vast cosmic drama we are at the cutting edge of the development and conservation [01:15:07 - 01:15:14] of complexity and it is our mind which gives us these scenarios of our of our position [01:15:14 - 01:15:22] in space and time it may well be that the human mind is very very important the human [01:15:22 - 01:15:28] mind represents the culmination of biology which is another phenomenon that these astrophysicists [01:15:28 - 01:15:34] always love to marginalize and say oh well biology it's going on on one planet as far [01:15:34 - 01:15:39] as we know it could be a fluke it may have happened once and it'll never happen again [01:15:39 - 01:15:49] but you know the life of most stars is on the order of 500 million years we happen to [01:15:49 - 01:15:56] have the good fortune to be in orbit around a very slow burning stable star and so we [01:15:56 - 01:16:02] have ignored the fact that most stars last less than half a billion years we can dig [01:16:02 - 01:16:11] into the gunflint church of south africa and bring up fossils of soft-bodied creatures [01:16:11 - 01:16:20] that are close to three billion years old six times the life of most stars in the universe [01:16:20 - 01:16:25] so when somebody's trying to tell you that what the universe is about is the life and [01:16:25 - 01:16:33] death of stars they're ignoring the fact that biology is a phenomenon as persistent as any [01:16:33 - 01:16:38] phenomenon known to exist in the universe and biology is not a static phenomenon it [01:16:38 - 01:16:47] isn't an endless recycling of fishnable materials the way star life is biological life has been [01:16:47 - 01:16:54] steadily complexifying itself over the entire time span of its existence so life is not [01:16:54 - 01:17:01] marginal mind emerging out of life at its more complex levels of organization is not [01:17:01 - 01:17:08] marginal and we are not marginal we are i think tremendously important in the cosmic [01:17:08 - 01:17:13] drama and that a rational analysis of the situation will support that yeah you comment [01:17:13 - 01:17:19] in that regard you comment on the healthy question that i had earlier lin margolis's [01:17:19 - 01:17:24] theory that fact that all all of life all of plant life is a reorganization of bacteria [01:17:24 - 01:17:28] and all of animal life is a further reorganization of bacterial life just to get bacteria to [01:17:28 - 01:17:34] move around from place to place and the cerebral cortex is just a lot of that modified spirochetes [01:17:34 - 01:17:39] that have organized themselves in a certain way and then in that in my reading of her [01:17:39 - 01:17:44] the the way you put human beings in this picture is that we're just an experiment in the way [01:17:44 - 01:17:49] station of bacterial life which may or may not work in other words our destiny is not [01:17:49 - 01:17:55] really in our hands to think that we can control our faith is really hubris or illusion well [01:17:55 - 01:18:00] it's certainly illusion i mean it's pretty clear we don't control our faith yes you see [01:18:00 - 01:18:07] one way of looking at evolution i mean i just offer this as a heuristic insight is that [01:18:07 - 01:18:17] life achieved absolute perfection with the first organism and then this first organism [01:18:17 - 01:18:25] underwent mutation that's a kind of damage which it then repaired the mutation through [01:18:25 - 01:18:31] a strategy of complexification and then there was more mutation and more repair through [01:18:31 - 01:18:40] complexification so what we represent is a massive chunk of scar tissue the combination [01:18:40 - 01:18:48] of billions of years of repairing the perfect first life form and all this complexity that [01:18:48 - 01:18:54] has been added on since the first achievement is simply a response to the damage done to [01:18:54 - 01:19:01] it by incoming cosmic radiation i don't believe that you see that's a theory where you assume [01:19:01 - 01:19:11] everything is driven by the past i think that that what is really hanging up modern biology [01:19:11 - 01:19:19] is its absence its unwillingness to entertain the possibility that life is driven by purpose [01:19:19 - 01:19:27] this is an old chestnut in the philosophy of science it's called the issue of teleology [01:19:27 - 01:19:36] teleology is a fancy word meaning purpose and the what happened you see is it's just [01:19:36 - 01:19:43] simply a legacy of our intellectual history when darwin developed the theory of evolution [01:19:43 - 01:19:44] in the 19th century