[00:00:00 - 00:00:09] We are called to higher things and are passing through a series of bootstrapping self-transitions [00:00:09 - 00:00:14] that are synergized by the psychedelic plants in our environment and whose end state is [00:00:14 - 00:00:23] anticipated in each of us as a microcosm when we surrender our egos and submerge ourselves [00:00:23 - 00:00:30] in the great raging mystery of being that is all around us all the time everywhere. [00:00:30 - 00:00:31] Oh. [00:00:31 - 00:00:36] We have a little time. [00:00:36 - 00:00:45] Wait, let me try and see somebody. [00:00:45 - 00:00:49] I can't remember that you were current. [00:00:49 - 00:00:50] Yes. [00:00:50 - 00:00:55] Earlier you mentioned some people doing work with ayahuasca. [00:00:55 - 00:01:00] Currently now in the accident I guess therapeutic work is also not over. [00:01:00 - 00:01:02] Detail? [00:01:02 - 00:01:04] Who are they? [00:01:04 - 00:01:05] How will it go back? [00:01:05 - 00:01:12] Okay, the question is that I mentioned that there is therapeutic work going on with ayahuasca. [00:01:12 - 00:01:21] It's very much underground and hush-hush because the legal status of these things has never [00:01:21 - 00:01:22] been defined. [00:01:22 - 00:01:24] Let me make that clear. [00:01:24 - 00:01:28] They should be, but ayahuasca is neither illegal nor legal. [00:01:28 - 00:01:34] There has never been a case involving it in the United States, so it's in a kind of limbo. [00:01:34 - 00:01:40] And we should all be discreet about it and let these therapists do their work. [00:01:40 - 00:01:43] Eventually of course it will be defined. [00:01:43 - 00:01:49] If you're interested in more information about that kind of thing, why write me, but I will [00:01:49 - 00:01:55] say about it that there's no preconception here of a psychoanalytical theory. [00:01:55 - 00:02:00] What I really respect in these therapists is that they are doing it as closely to the [00:02:00 - 00:02:03] way that it's done in the Amazon as they can. [00:02:03 - 00:02:12] And really often in the Amazon the brew is watered or they pull punches on the dosage [00:02:12 - 00:02:18] because they don't want crazy gringos running amok and blowing their minds. [00:02:18 - 00:02:26] So the search for ayahuasca can be pursued perhaps now in North America with the even [00:02:26 - 00:02:29] greater hope of success than in South America. [00:02:29 - 00:02:35] But we always have to be referent back to the shamanic forms because that's the only [00:02:35 - 00:02:37] guidance we have. [00:02:37 - 00:02:42] I mean they may not know everything about it, but they do have a thousand or more years [00:02:42 - 00:02:44] of tradition that can be our guide. [00:02:44 - 00:02:50] Now when you actually deal with these ayahuascaras you discover they're not like priests. [00:02:50 - 00:02:52] They are not dogmatic. [00:02:52 - 00:02:58] They're open to experimentation too and you can suggest things and they know the chemicals [00:02:58 - 00:02:59] lie behind this. [00:02:59 - 00:03:04] They're not naive, but they also know that the spirit lies within it. [00:03:04 - 00:03:08] They are also not naive in the way that we are naive. [00:03:08 - 00:03:13] So it's a tremendously fertile partnership to deal with these shamans. [00:03:13 - 00:03:22] They will share their knowledge and we need not come to them as inferiors or uninitiated [00:03:22 - 00:03:23] people. [00:03:23 - 00:03:25] What they really respect are peers. [00:03:25 - 00:03:28] And this is what everybody really respects. [00:03:28 - 00:03:35] This is why I think the guru-cela relationship is so damaging because in the first place [00:03:35 - 00:03:42] nobody knows enough to be a guru and nobody knows so little that they should define themselves [00:03:42 - 00:03:43] as a follower. [00:03:43 - 00:03:45] It just doesn't work that way. [00:03:45 - 00:03:46] Back at home. [00:03:46 - 00:04:11] [Question] [00:04:11 - 00:04:15] Well my political agenda is much more modest than that. [00:04:15 - 00:04:20] I am just interested in keeping the dialogue going. [00:04:20 - 00:04:28] Meeting with groups of people like this and knowing because we have the support of institutions [00:04:28 - 00:04:33] like Ovi that we can meet and discuss this. [00:04:33 - 00:04:41] There does seem to be apparently this drug issue is going to be a big deal and lies directly [00:04:41 - 00:04:47] in front of us and what we are being asked to decide in this presidential election upcoming [00:04:47 - 00:04:56] is do we want to go full steam ahead into total fascism in order to solve the drug problem [00:04:56 - 00:05:04] or are we willing to think of, God forbid, legalizing some of these things and ceasing [00:05:04 - 00:05:10] to beat upon each other because of the issue of drugs. [00:05:10 - 00:05:19] I think that the whole thing which is holding back legalization is the Judeo-Christian uncomfortableness [00:05:19 - 00:05:27] with the notion that somebody might have fun in a way that you disapprove of because drugs [00:05:27 - 00:05:34] like heroin and cocaine are certainly a social scourge but on the other hand so is valium [00:05:34 - 00:05:42] and alcohol and to hold your nose at one and condone the other is just total cultural schizophrenia. [00:05:42 - 00:05:50] So I think what we need to do and this may be coming out of necessity is entirely disconnect [00:05:50 - 00:05:56] the drug issue from morality. [00:05:56 - 00:06:02] The notion that people who do certain drugs are bad and people who do or do not do certain [00:06:02 - 00:06:07] other drugs are good is infantile and preposterous. [00:06:07 - 00:06:14] What needs to be done I think is to first of all legalize all plants. [00:06:14 - 00:06:16] That's very simple. [00:06:16 - 00:06:19] Legalize all plants. [00:06:19 - 00:06:25] Okay then what are we going to do about these synthetic addictive hard drugs like heroin, [00:06:25 - 00:06:28] cocaine, alcohol, so forth. [00:06:28 - 00:06:38] They should be decriminalized and if we're going to sell alcohol in this society, if we're going to peddle valium [00:06:38 - 00:06:46] then we should sell all the rest and tax them very highly and if there's a price to pay in addiction [00:06:46 - 00:06:56] as we go through the process of educating people the taxes from these substances will be used to pay for that education [00:06:56 - 00:07:11] and those addiction centers because the cost in destroyed lives and ruined societies will be far less, far less. [00:07:11 - 00:07:16] Coca was no problem in South America for centuries. [00:07:16 - 00:07:20] Now the Coca trade is just screwing up everything. [00:07:20 - 00:07:30] I cannot go to my favorite areas of the Amazon and botanize because missionaries who grow cocaine have given orders [00:07:30 - 00:07:35] to their Indian slaves to shoot anybody who comes into those areas. [00:07:35 - 00:07:43] This is a totally culturally corrupting force and it is money, not drugs, money that is corrupting it. [00:07:43 - 00:07:53] And the major problem is as I said a couple of days ago the addiction on the part of governments and intelligence agencies to funny money. [00:07:53 - 00:07:55] That's what's going on. [00:07:55 - 00:08:06] The whole Vietnam War was a front for a junk running scheme, a junk running scheme which made a huge amount of money for a lot of creeps [00:08:06 - 00:08:14] which destroyed the political will of the ghettos to seek social justice in America. [00:08:14 - 00:08:16] That all just fizzled out. [00:08:16 - 00:08:21] They killed Martin Luther King and everybody else and then flooded the ghetto with junk. [00:08:21 - 00:08:26] The cocaine thing is a direct replay. [00:08:26 - 00:08:33] You know Ronald Reagan is tiptoeing around whether or not he should be friends with Mikhail Gorbachev [00:08:33 - 00:08:41] when look who he is friends with, the utter scum of the earth, the most outrageous ragtag bandit, [00:08:41 - 00:08:47] the most outrageous gangsters you've ever seen, the real subhuman filth. [00:08:47 - 00:09:01] They call them authoritarian regimes and make a distinction between them and communism and say well these authoritarian regimes at least they're not communist. [00:09:01 - 00:09:09] Well I'm telling you it's just a scam to addict a whole bunch of people to drugs [00:09:09 - 00:09:16] and then get the money to support wars in isolated and forgotten parts of the world. [00:09:16 - 00:09:26] So very noticeable in my own area was for years we couldn't get hashish in the Bay Area [00:09:26 - 00:09:34] or when somebody had it you know it was a crumb and suddenly about seven years ago there was all the hashish you wanted [00:09:34 - 00:09:39] and people were quoting prices on tons and then mega tons. [00:09:39 - 00:09:43] Well this doesn't mean some hippies broke through. [00:09:43 - 00:09:54] This means, you know what it means, it means that the Mujahideen needed money to support a war of national liberation against the Soviet occupation [00:09:54 - 00:09:56] and they had no hard currency. [00:09:56 - 00:10:03] All they had was hash and so the hash ships were allowed to unload the mega tons of hash [00:10:03 - 00:10:06] and the money was turned into weapons. [00:10:06 - 00:10:14] The weapons buyers, the weapons dealers from Israel and South Africa and the United States cashed in and made fortunes [00:10:14 - 00:10:18] and perhaps it was a just war in Afghanistan. [00:10:18 - 00:10:26] I love hash, I'm not knocking that but I'm pointing out that that was their way of supporting the Mujahideen [00:10:26 - 00:10:32] was to just institute this smuggling thing and this has been done again and again [00:10:32 - 00:10:43] and they make no distinction between a harmless drug like hashish and truly horrible, truly horrible drugs such as heroin. [00:10:43 - 00:10:46] I mean heroin is really I think a dubious drug. [00:10:46 - 00:10:52] I think I talk to a pretty white squeaky clean kind of middle class yuppie crowd [00:10:52 - 00:10:57] but I've known junkies, lots of junkies and it would stand your hair on end. [00:10:57 - 00:11:04] Here's a drug which turns human beings into cockroaches literally before your very eyes [00:11:04 - 00:11:15] and you know you don't need that, it's insectoid programmed unexamined machine like behavior raised to a degree that's just horrifying. [00:11:15 - 00:11:25] So for us as a psychedelic community we're going to have to mind our P's and Q's because the issue isn't about us. [00:11:25 - 00:11:30] The government isn't trying to get rid of drugs because it doesn't want people jumping out of buildings. [00:11:30 - 00:11:37] It doesn't want people making mega fortunes that it's not getting any tax revenue out of. [00:11:37 - 00:11:41] So psychedelics have never been big money makers. [00:11:41 - 00:11:46] Nobody is getting rich off psychedelic drugs that I know of. [00:11:46 - 00:11:55] I mean maybe a few people are having modest lives lived in fear that at any moment a man will kick down the front door [00:11:55 - 00:11:58] and drag them away in front of their wife and child. [00:11:58 - 00:12:01] But nobody is getting rich on psychedelic drugs. [00:12:01 - 00:12:05] That's all going on in another domain. [00:12:05 - 00:12:10] So our problem is a more serious problem. [00:12:10 - 00:12:14] It's that the psychedelics are deconditioning agents. [00:12:14 - 00:12:20] This is the real, I don't want to use the dominator metaphor, [00:12:20 - 00:12:27] but the real knife poised at the heart of the establishment is the deconditioning potential of psychedelics. [00:12:27 - 00:12:31] That's what made the 1950s such a tumultuous thing. [00:12:31 - 00:12:34] The CIA didn't care that people were selling acid. [00:12:34 - 00:12:38] They cared that LSD was changing people's minds. [00:12:38 - 00:12:46] And so the reason I keep speaking and keep talking and hope that you all will keep thinking and speaking and talking [00:12:46 - 00:12:54] is because we have to build a community that understands itself, that understands its members, [00:12:54 - 00:13:01] that understands where we stand because eventually psychedelics will have to be dealt with [00:13:01 - 00:13:04] as all these other drug issues will have to be dealt with. [00:13:04 - 00:13:12] So now for us is a period of getting to know each other, recognizing who we are, [00:13:12 - 00:13:20] empowering ourselves, getting our wraps straight, knowing where we stand on these various issues that will be thrown at us, [00:13:20 - 00:13:26] and then speaking and being exemplars. [00:13:26 - 00:13:32] I mean, I wish that the people who are so concerned to ban drugs could see this group of people. [00:13:32 - 00:13:35] And I think we're quite presentable. [00:13:35 - 00:13:37] We're making a contribution to society. [00:13:37 - 00:13:46] We are good citizens were it not for this one issue, which then makes us, of course, a hated outlaw minority. [00:13:46 - 00:13:56] And I invite each of you to look around you, at the people near you, and realize this is your affinity group. [00:13:56 - 00:14:03] These are the people who can help you, and these are the people who can really blow it for all the rest of us. [00:14:03 - 00:14:08] So partnership for us is no abstraction. [00:14:08 - 00:14:13] As Ben Franklin said, if we don't hang together, we'll all hang separately. [00:14:13 - 00:14:19] This is Ben in the blue jacket. [00:14:19 - 00:14:23] I wasn't here in the other days, and you may have covered it. [00:14:23 - 00:14:35] When you take the substance in a silent, dark place, I wanted you to go into it a little further from that point on. [00:14:35 - 00:14:46] When I took acid years and years ago, I had one different trip, and I heard that there were people around me jumping buildings trying to fly. [00:14:46 - 00:14:56] Could you get into the process of how you deal with anything that might be uncomfortable? [00:14:56 - 00:14:58] You mean what actually happens? [00:14:58 - 00:15:00] Yeah, I mean from your experience. [00:15:00 - 00:15:08] Well, the model is basically the same for all of these things. [00:15:08 - 00:15:12] You fast for six hours until you have an empty stomach. [00:15:12 - 00:15:14] It isn't really even fasting. [00:15:14 - 00:15:21] It's really emptying your stomach, and then you take it in silent darkness. [00:15:21 - 00:15:23] I always smoke cannabis. [00:15:23 - 00:15:32] If that's not your thing, you should have some other means of slightly steering the situation. [00:15:32 - 00:15:35] It can be singing. [00:15:35 - 00:15:38] It can be a meditation. [00:15:38 - 00:15:48] Whatever it is that you need to have a small bore that you can dip into the psychic water if you need to shift the tone of things a little bit. [00:15:48 - 00:15:53] I don't do anything the first hour. [00:15:53 - 00:16:01] I just sit there and worry, basically, about what is about to happen. [00:16:01 - 00:16:13] I don't know whether it's harder for me, but what I always think about is my public image. [00:16:13 - 00:16:21] Because I say, "You're Mr. Big Shot. You're Mr. Psychedelic, and now it's coming at you." [00:16:21 - 00:16:27] You're always telling everybody how they should do it, how to bore the cabbage, and how it's this and it's that. [00:16:27 - 00:16:31] But you know that you don't know jack shit. [00:16:31 - 00:16:39] You also know that now it's just between you and me and it's coming at me. [00:16:39 - 00:16:46] I think about all of this, and then hopefully I get it squared away. [00:16:46 - 00:16:50] Usually it just comes down to, "Well, it's too late." [00:16:50 - 00:16:58] "And thank God nobody is here to see whatever is about to happen." [00:16:58 - 00:17:06] Then I just sit and it comes in a wave. It comes in waves. [00:17:06 - 00:17:14] Sometimes it's gentle. If it's going to be a moderate trip, the waves will begin just like incoming surf. [00:17:14 - 00:17:26] But sometimes you realize, you see it coming at you, and you realize that it's a thousand miles wide and ten miles high, and there's nowhere to run. [00:17:26 - 00:17:31] It's just like the rolling shockwave of an atomic blast. [00:17:31 - 00:17:35] You just lay down and hope. [00:17:35 - 00:17:50] Many, many times on these psychedelic trips I find clarity and courage, empowering it in each other, giving permission for it in ourselves, [00:17:50 - 00:17:58] and looking toward a future that is endlessly bright with the possibility of human transformation. [00:17:58 - 00:18:01] It is in our hands. That's not a metaphor. [00:18:01 - 00:18:15] It's literally going to belong to those people who most earnestly and courageously define the limits of what is possible for the human mind and body and community. [00:18:15 - 00:18:18] So you are that. [00:18:18 - 00:18:26] I salute you, and I thank you, and I hope to see you all soon somewhere else. [00:18:26 - 00:18:38] [Applause] [00:18:38 - 00:18:47] This is KPFK Los Angeles. [00:18:47 - 00:19:05] We have been listening to Terrence McKenna and with him, Rhianne Eisler, the author of The Chalice and the Blade, in a June 1988 seminar at the Ojai Foundation in Ojai. [00:19:05 - 00:19:17] If you didn't hear the whole thing, which we've just concluded, it's on five cassettes, and you can get the five cassettes for $40 from the Wild Store at the Ojai Foundation. [00:19:17 - 00:19:28] Again, the seminar is entitled Men and Women at the End of History with Terrence McKenna and Rhianne Eisler, [00:19:28 - 00:19:36] and that's available from the Wild Store, box 1620. [00:19:36 - 00:19:47] Multi-colored, highly polished, contorting, filled with intent never previously seen, and profoundly other. [00:19:47 - 00:19:49] And yet, isn't it interesting? [00:19:49 - 00:19:53] This is the commonest of all the hallucinogens in nature. [00:19:53 - 00:20:03] This is the one that is most like what is happening in the metabolism of the ordinary human brain. [00:20:03 - 00:20:12] So, to me, DMT is a very interesting and profound kind of thing because it's like a super-convincer. [00:20:12 - 00:20:21] This is for people who think that people who talk about the power of psychedelics are soft-headed, you know. [00:20:21 - 00:20:31] You can invite any critic to invest five minutes in informing themselves on the facts of the matter. [00:20:31 - 00:20:39] I mean, they may have an excuse for why they can't spend nine hours with you, but five minutes? [00:20:39 - 00:20:45] I'd say DMT is different from the effect of 5-MEL DMT. [00:20:45 - 00:20:50] Well, whenever you ask someone a question like this, what you're going to hear is a subjective answer. [00:20:50 - 00:20:58] The question was, "How does 5-MEO, 5-methoxy DMT, differ from DMT?" [00:20:58 - 00:21:10] I've seen people using 5-MEO DMT therapeutically go through what must have been extremely profound inner dynamical fluxes. [00:21:10 - 00:21:16] My own experience with 5-MEO is it's exactly like DMT except that you don't hallucinate, [00:21:16 - 00:21:22] which is like saying it was exactly like an Italian dinner except there was no Italian dinner. [00:21:22 - 00:21:26] [laughter] [00:21:26 - 00:21:39] So what you have with 5-MEO DMT is you have this enormous emotion, this, you know, I think it's called boundary dissolution. [00:21:39 - 00:21:55] All boundaries dissolve and there is this enormous emotion of relief, of acceptance, of melting into some kind of unspeakable unitary state. [00:21:55 - 00:21:57] But that's all. [00:21:57 - 00:22:04] [laughter] [00:22:04 - 00:22:13] It makes sense that if you're great for the onslaught of the tidal wave of alien hallucinations, you may be sort of, "What? What?" [00:22:13 - 00:22:20] You know, because this large emotion comes and goes. It blows through you like a wind. [00:22:20 - 00:22:29] I am interested in 5-MEO. There's a fact, and since it's a fact, I think I should share it with you, [00:22:29 - 00:22:35] that you should know about 5-MEO, which is when you give it to sheep, they drop dead. [00:22:35 - 00:22:41] [laughter] [00:22:41 - 00:22:46] So I guess the moral of that is if you're a sheep, you better not do this. [00:22:46 - 00:22:48] Are we sheep or are we men? [00:22:48 - 00:22:50] Are we sheep or are we men? [00:22:50 - 00:22:53] [laughter] [00:22:53 - 00:23:02] But you know, staggers is a thing that ranchers, sheep ranchers, have to be aware of because they come upon their sheep [00:23:02 - 00:23:06] with their little cloven hooves in the air trembling. [00:23:06 - 00:23:13] Well, that's from eating Phalaris arundinacea, which is a range grass that contains 5-MEO-DMT. [00:23:13 - 00:23:21] And these tryptamines are highly psycho and physiologically active. [00:23:21 - 00:23:26] It's thought that it's tryptamines that control heart rate, not psychoactive tryptamines, [00:23:26 - 00:23:32] but an entire other family of tryptamines that are being secreted in the neurospinal fluid. [00:23:32 - 00:23:40] So there's a lot about this that isn't understood, and work goes forward, but not on the psychedelic tryptamines. [00:23:40 - 00:23:42] That is, of course, a no-no. [00:23:42 - 00:23:50] One of my gripes that I don't know if I got around to in this weekend is the fact that science prides itself [00:23:50 - 00:23:59] on its open-minded impartiality, and yet psychedelic research is utterly forbidden. [00:23:59 - 00:24:06] You can research any horrible thing you want, how much ethyl xylene it takes to create tumors and rats [00:24:06 - 00:24:16] and all this horrible stuff, but there is no human research being done by or on human beings on this planet [00:24:16 - 00:24:21] to speak of because it's professionally the kiss of death to become involved with this. [00:24:21 - 00:24:28] To my mind, this is like possessing the telescope and refusing to reform astronomy. [00:24:28 - 00:24:37] We come upon these things, they are gifts of knowledge, and we need to integrate them into our growing paradigm, [00:24:37 - 00:24:42] or else our paradigm will become just another story. [00:24:42 - 00:24:44] Back here, yes. [00:24:44 - 00:24:50] Does the CIA have extensive data on the surrogate acid? [00:24:50 - 00:24:54] The question is, does the CIA have extensive data on the surrogate acid? [00:24:54 - 00:24:59] Well, they had a program in the '50s and '60s called MKUltra. [00:24:59 - 00:25:07] They amassed vast amounts of detail and data on these compounds, but we don't really know what they concluded. [00:25:07 - 00:25:19] I think that the psychedelics are surprisingly slippery in the hands of the managers of dominator institutions. [00:25:19 - 00:25:25] You know, when they first had LSD, they thought, "Oh, this is a truth serum. [00:25:25 - 00:25:33] We'll give this to our agents so that they can extract information from people they meet in foreign locations." [00:25:33 - 00:25:42] Well, then six months of that theory, they changed their mind and said, "No, what it is is it's the antidote to a truth serum. [00:25:42 - 00:25:46] Give this to somebody, and they can't tell you what they know. [00:25:46 - 00:25:52] So we'll make all our agents take it when they're captured so nobody can get information from it." [00:25:52 - 00:25:57] And then they decided, you know, that it was neither, and it was a this, and it was a that. [00:25:57 - 00:26:04] I have asked this question because I'm concerned about it, of the voice in the mushroom, the question being, [00:26:04 - 00:26:10] "What if these things fall into the hands of people who are not well-intended?" [00:26:10 - 00:26:13] And I can only tell you what the mushroom said. [00:26:13 - 00:26:24] It's not entirely satisfying to me as a paranoid rationalist, but what it said was, "This is not your concern. [00:26:24 - 00:26:33] These things are of the good, and the good, the light cannot be corrupted by the darkness. [00:26:33 - 00:26:38] The darkness passes right through it. It's as though it didn't even exist." [00:26:38 - 00:26:41] And I think there's truth to that. [00:26:41 - 00:26:46] People are always asking me, "Why is it that I'm not dragged away kicking and screaming?" [00:26:46 - 00:26:53] It's because it's utterly unimportant what I'm doing from the point of view of anybody in any position of authority. [00:26:53 - 00:26:58] We are all labeled flakes. We are all seriously deluded people. [00:26:58 - 00:27:04] But as long as we remain less than 5% of the total population, there is no problem. [00:27:04 - 00:27:07] You know, I mean, democracy is very tolerant. [00:27:07 - 00:27:14] It tolerates all kinds of cults, belief systems, sexual orientations, and so forth. [00:27:14 - 00:27:23] As long as we don't threaten the power structure in ways that it can recognize, that's the truth. [00:27:23 - 00:27:30] As long as we don't threaten the power structure in ways that it can recognize, I don't think there's any problem. [00:27:30 - 00:27:33] And I ask you not to worry. [00:27:33 - 00:27:35] Yes? [00:27:35 - 00:27:50] [inaudible] [00:27:50 - 00:27:53] To talk about peyote a little bit? [00:27:53 - 00:28:00] Well, I mean, this is a...pardon me? [00:28:00 - 00:28:02] You mean, what are they doing? [00:28:02 - 00:28:04] What it's all about. [00:28:04 - 00:28:13] Well, wherever there's plant, hallucinogenic plant use in a traditional culture, there's shamanism. [00:28:13 - 00:28:20] The shamanism of the American Southwest is a complicated study. [00:28:20 - 00:28:26] It's not clear how old the use of peyote is. [00:28:26 - 00:28:31] We might like, without examining the facts, to think that it's millennia old. [00:28:31 - 00:28:43] The evidence seems to be that thousands of years ago, the hallucinogen or the empathogen of choice was sephora secundifolia, [00:28:43 - 00:28:48] which comes closer to being an ordeal poison. [00:28:48 - 00:28:54] If you're not familiar with the concept of an ordeal poison, there are traditional groups of people in the world [00:28:54 - 00:29:05] whose path of transformation leads them not through hallucinogens, but through plants that you take them and you think you're going to die. [00:29:05 - 00:29:12] And you have all the convincing symptoms of the immediate onset of death. [00:29:12 - 00:29:14] And then you don't die. [00:29:14 - 00:29:21] And you're so damn relieved that you straighten out your life and behave like a decent person. [00:29:21 - 00:29:29] So this is the ordeal poison approach, and it's very highly evolved in Madagascar and Malaysia and places like that. [00:29:29 - 00:29:33] Sephora secundifolia was a kind of ordeal poison. [00:29:33 - 00:29:41] And apparently in the last thousand years, which isn't that long, it has been replaced by peyote, [00:29:41 - 00:29:49] probably coming out of the Tarahumara, who carried it then to the plains Indians generally. [00:29:49 - 00:29:59] If you're interested in this, a major landmark in ethnobotanical publishing in the last two months was the publication of Omar Stewart, [00:29:59 - 00:30:04] who's an old botanist, very well thought of guy. [00:30:04 - 00:30:12] Omar Stewart's life work, The Peyote Religion, has just been published by the University of Oklahoma Press. [00:30:12 - 00:30:16] Beautiful book. I urge you to take a look at it. [00:30:16 - 00:30:19] It's called The Peyote Religion by Omar Stewart. [00:30:19 - 00:30:20] Yes? [00:30:20 - 00:30:31] I'm interested in, I remember your experience of having a very deep insight and then coming back into my life and feeling like you've veiled it, [00:30:31 - 00:30:39] which is very different, and having a different inspiration for the various things into my life. [00:30:39 - 00:30:48] And I'm wondering how you talk about that or approach that in your current work in the psychedelic field. [00:30:48 - 00:30:55] So the question, as I understand it, is how do you hang on to what you learned in these peak experiences? [00:30:55 - 00:30:56] Or give it up. [00:30:56 - 00:30:57] What? [00:30:57 - 00:30:58] Or give it up gracefully. [00:30:58 - 00:31:06] Well, or give it up gracefully, although I'm more in sympathy with the questioner. [00:31:06 - 00:31:13] I've always thought of the psychedelic experience as like ocean fishing from a boat. [00:31:13 - 00:31:18] And the idea is to let down your net and to bring up something useful. [00:31:18 - 00:31:21] And the nights spent on the empty ocean are beautiful. [00:31:21 - 00:31:27] But if you return with empty nets, then what have you done for your tribe? [00:31:27 - 00:31:33] But on the other hand, sometimes you let down your nets and something the size of a freight train goes down. [00:31:33 - 00:31:40] And that's just row for shore. [00:31:40 - 00:31:44] But there are the intermediate catch. [00:31:44 - 00:31:52] And I think that this question that you ask is very important, that this -- and I don't really have an answer. [00:31:52 - 00:31:54] I have techniques. [00:31:54 - 00:31:58] But the goal is always to bring back as much as possible. [00:31:58 - 00:32:08] Because at the peak of, say, a six or seven gram mushroom trip, you cannot believe what you're seeing. [00:32:08 - 00:32:15] And you cannot -- even in the act of beholding it, you cannot imagine what you're seeing. [00:32:15 - 00:32:18] I mean, finally it actually goes off the scale. [00:32:18 - 00:32:26] And you say, you know, all veils have been ripped away, all truths revealed, this is it, you wanted it, you've got it. [00:32:26 - 00:32:35] But then, you know, you have to work your way down from that summit over hours and bring back snapshots of it. [00:32:35 - 00:32:44] And the only thing I can say is it's a matter of repetition and persistence and using every trick you can think of, [00:32:44 - 00:32:49] including voice-operated tape recorders, note-taking. [00:32:49 - 00:33:01] And when I really have what I think is a slam-bang insight, I repeat it to myself, like, every 20 minutes for the next few hours [00:33:01 - 00:33:09] as I navigate through successively diminished states of higher consciousness until finally I emerge [00:33:09 - 00:33:16] and I still have understood the mystery of why my little finger exactly fits my nostril. [00:33:16 - 00:33:29] [ Laughter ] [00:33:29 - 00:33:34] In the back. [00:33:34 - 00:33:46] [ Inaudible ] [00:33:46 - 00:33:49] What is it? [00:33:49 - 00:33:51] Well, I'm not -- [00:33:51 - 00:33:55] [ Inaudible ] [00:33:55 - 00:33:58] Oh, it's a drug. [00:33:58 - 00:34:00] Well, hush my mouth. [00:34:00 - 00:34:02] [ Laughter ] [00:34:02 - 00:34:05] To be public humiliated. [00:34:05 - 00:34:10] [ Laughter ] [00:34:10 - 00:34:16] How many times in my life will this happen before I finally shuffle off the stage? [00:34:16 - 00:34:20] [ Laughter ] [00:34:20 - 00:34:22] 2CB, here. [00:34:22 - 00:34:25] Oh, it's 2CB. Okay. [00:34:25 - 00:34:31] Well, first of all, to your question about ayahuasca, which requires some explanation for some of the other people here, [00:34:31 - 00:34:42] ayahuasca is a fascinating, combinatory, hallucinogenic substance that is made in the Amazon over a very wide area. [00:34:42 - 00:34:50] And what it is is it's the monoamine oxidase inhibiting harmine from a very large woody vine [00:34:50 - 00:34:55] combined with the DMT that occurs in Socotria viridis. [00:34:55 - 00:35:03] So it's interesting immediately because it's a combinatory shamanic hallucinogen. [00:35:03 - 00:35:06] There are very few of these in the world. [00:35:06 - 00:35:18] Notice that with peyote, vatura, mushrooms, iboga, morning glory seeds, it's one plant, and the process is to eat it. [00:35:18 - 00:35:26] But with ayahuasca, it's two plants, and the first thing is they must be correctly combined and cooked in certain proportions [00:35:26 - 00:35:30] by a person of good heart and clear intent. [00:35:30 - 00:35:40] So unlike any of these other things, they bear very intimately upon themselves the stamp of the human being who created them. [00:35:40 - 00:35:47] And it's a very intense experience because it not only is a full-fledged visionary hallucinogen, [00:35:47 - 00:36:02] but it's also a strong purgative and emetic so that you are being cleaned from stem to stem while you are watching these visions roll by. [00:36:02 - 00:36:16] And it's taken in the upper Amazon in a ritual setting on a weekly basis among the mestizo populations there. [00:36:16 - 00:36:25] And when made right, it's an extremely powerful, lovely experience. [00:36:25 - 00:36:31] It's interesting to contrast it with the mushrooms because the mushrooms have this eerie, [00:36:31 - 00:36:38] "we came from outer space" kind of global science fiction overview. [00:36:38 - 00:36:42] Ayahuasca is entirely of the mother. [00:36:42 - 00:36:54] It is grounding, it is of the earth, the flowing rivers, the dark banks, the jungle, the people, the small malocas. [00:36:54 - 00:37:01] It just carries you out into the world of the earth and the people upon it. [00:37:01 - 00:37:11] But the hallucinations can build so that they have a quality of intensity and concreteness so that you would swear that you had smoked DMT. [00:37:11 - 00:37:19] It's just that it took you three or four hours of careful manipulation of breath and attention to reach where DMT puts you, [00:37:19 - 00:37:22] whether you want it or not, in about 30 seconds. [00:37:22 - 00:37:25] But this is perhaps a better way to go at it. [00:37:25 - 00:37:34] I'm very interested in ayahuasca and how it has formed culture and civilization in the Amazon. [00:37:34 - 00:37:41] It's unusual that you ask the question even because so few people have heard of it. [00:37:41 - 00:37:50] But it is beginning to be used in psychotherapy in this country in a ritual context very discreetly. [00:37:50 - 00:37:53] I think it holds out great promise. [00:37:53 - 00:38:05] The reports coming out of these small groups of people who take it reverently and ritually are of tremendous healings [00:38:05 - 00:38:10] and reorientations of neurotic personality structures and that sort of thing, [00:38:10 - 00:38:15] which is exactly how it works in the context of the Amazonian situation. [00:38:15 - 00:38:17] Over here. [00:38:18 - 00:38:21] The revelations of Philip K. Dick. [00:38:21 - 00:38:34] By the revelations of Philip K. Dick, do you mean the incidents that happened to him that spawned books like "Valus" and "The Divine Invention"? [00:38:34 - 00:38:39] Well, I won't spend too much time on this because I don't know how many people know who Philip K. Dick is. [00:38:39 - 00:38:45] I think it was Robert Anton Wilson who coined the term "chapel perilous." [00:38:45 - 00:38:52] This is when something happens in your life and it all begins to fit together and make sense. [00:38:52 - 00:38:54] Too much sense. [00:38:54 - 00:39:00] Because it's coming from the exterior and it seems to either mean that you're losing your mind [00:39:00 - 00:39:11] or you are somehow the central focus of a universal conspiracy that is leading you towards some unimaginable breakthrough. [00:39:11 - 00:39:13] I don't know what that's about. [00:39:13 - 00:39:15] But I've experienced it. [00:39:15 - 00:39:28] Maybe anyone who leads a long and eccentric life has these periods where they seem to have caught the wave [00:39:28 - 00:39:36] and are being carried toward unimaginable revelations and situations quite beyond their will. [00:39:36 - 00:39:38] This is what happened to Dick. [00:39:38 - 00:39:44] And the explanation for these kinds of things would lead us quite far afield. [00:39:44 - 00:39:59] I would just say, briefly and bravely, that I think vortexes of connectedness seem to haunt time like ghosts. [00:39:59 - 00:40:04] And they're not material objects, so they're too subtle for science to pick up. [00:40:04 - 00:40:12] There's something known to shamans, poets, gamblers, people like that. [00:40:12 - 00:40:18] And these vortexes of coincidence and connectedness can work either for or against us. [00:40:18 - 00:40:26] And if you don't have a model that contains the possibility of these things, then when they come upon you, [00:40:26 - 00:40:32] you will become highly agitated and think you're losing your mind or you're being contacted by aliens [00:40:32 - 00:40:34] or something like that. [00:40:34 - 00:40:39] I call it, and I don't think I'm the first, but I call it the cosmic giggle. [00:40:39 - 00:40:43] And it comes after you sometimes. [00:40:43 - 00:41:01] And you just have to be able to wrestle with that particular angle [00:41:01 - 00:41:04] when it turns up on your doorstep. [00:41:04 - 00:41:07] Yes, this lady. [00:41:07 - 00:41:13] Can you conceive of people that might be able to have these kinds of experiences, [00:41:13 - 00:41:21] types of experiences, as well as enlightening kinds of experiences without drugs? [00:41:21 - 00:41:27] The second part of my question is, is it possible to have, if you run into anyone, [00:41:27 - 00:41:34] so sensitive to substances, be they hallucinogenic substances or just plain food, [00:41:34 - 00:41:43] or substances that they can't tolerate or would be way over the mark if they were to take such a thing? [00:41:43 - 00:41:45] Oh yes, absolutely. [00:41:45 - 00:41:49] I mean, you meet people who are extremely delicately poised. [00:41:49 - 00:42:00] There are people who, well, consciousness can be just synergized into all kinds of tizzies [00:42:00 - 00:42:05] by things other than these overt hallucinogens. [00:42:05 - 00:42:12] I am somewhat thankful that I'm cut from more lumpenstock [00:42:12 - 00:42:19] because I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I began to have a hallucinogenic experience [00:42:19 - 00:42:22] not in the presence of a hallucinogen. [00:42:22 - 00:42:28] The states of mind that I'm interested in that come out of these shamanic plants [00:42:28 - 00:42:34] are so radically different from ordinary states of consciousness [00:42:34 - 00:42:41] that I wouldn't care to access them except through the technology of the plants. [00:42:41 - 00:42:45] And I often get asked this question, are there other ways to do it? [00:42:45 - 00:42:51] Certainly claims abound, you know, and you meet people who say, I don't need drugs, [00:42:51 - 00:43:01] I'm seeing little dancing mice and I close my eyes and say, congratulations. [00:43:01 - 00:43:07] But I've never been entirely convinced, you know. [00:43:07 - 00:43:14] It's really hard to convince yourself that we're all talking about the same thing. [00:43:14 - 00:43:19] That's why I perhaps rattle on more than I should. [00:43:19 - 00:43:25] I've had the unsettling experience of, and I won't use any names, [00:43:25 - 00:43:30] but meeting someone who had done research on psychedelics for 20 years [00:43:30 - 00:43:36] had given it to over 500 people who had taken it over 150 times. [00:43:36 - 00:43:41] And I said, we discussed the possibility that they were professionals, [00:43:41 - 00:43:44] so they had always had off-the-shelf chemicals. [00:43:44 - 00:43:50] And I said, well, you should try fresh mushrooms and see if you think there's a difference. [00:43:50 - 00:43:57] And they created the 1960s in large measure with their rhetoric about psychedelic drugs. [00:43:57 - 00:44:00] So I had no idea. [00:44:00 - 00:44:07] And so we have to keep leaning on each other, we have to keep comparing notes [00:44:07 - 00:44:09] and make sure we're talking about the same thing. [00:44:09 - 00:44:17] We're not talking about, I mean, on the way to the mystery, along the way to the mystery [00:44:17 - 00:44:28] lie the realms of loving everybody, moving fields of geometric color, past lives, you name it. [00:44:28 - 00:44:31] But these are just milestones on the way. [00:44:31 - 00:44:37] When you finally get to the thing, the way you will know that you've arrived [00:44:37 - 00:44:45] is that you will be struck dumb with wonder, that you will say, my God, this is impossible. [00:44:45 - 00:44:48] This is inherently impossible. [00:44:48 - 00:44:52] This is what impossible was invented to talk about. [00:44:52 - 00:44:54] This cannot be. [00:44:54 - 00:44:58] And it's then we're in the ballpark. [00:44:58 - 00:45:03] Then we're in the presence of the true coincidencia plausitorum. [00:45:03 - 00:45:09] There are all kinds of drugs and techniques and hot water and massage and this and that [00:45:09 - 00:45:16] and vitamin therapy that moves you all over the map, makes you feel all kinds of different ways. [00:45:16 - 00:45:23] And you see people experience all kinds of personal breakthroughs under massage and rebirthing [00:45:23 - 00:45:27] and all these things, but I don't think that's what we're talking about. [00:45:27 - 00:45:37] I think we're talking about something profoundly other, that it is very hard to get this thing out into the mainstream [00:45:37 - 00:45:40] because literally words fail us. [00:45:40 - 00:45:43] It is a translinguistic object. [00:45:43 - 00:45:49] It is the most, it is, if a flying saucer were to land in Central Park tomorrow, [00:45:49 - 00:45:58] it would be not as mysterious and challenging to our conception of ourselves as this psychological state is, [00:45:58 - 00:46:04] which lies at the center of all this shamanic dancing around and probing. [00:46:04 - 00:46:12] There is something profoundly bizarre, accessible to us here and now. [00:46:12 - 00:46:18] And it's a complete puzzle to me why there is so little talk about it. [00:46:18 - 00:46:23] We live in a society completely obsessed with sensation. [00:46:23 - 00:46:30] You know, people shoot cocaine, jump out of airplanes, go on tiny rafts across the Pacific, [00:46:30 - 00:46:35] cross the North Pole on a roller skate, whatever it is. [00:46:35 - 00:46:39] And yet, all in the name of adventure. [00:46:39 - 00:46:45] Well, you know, by God, if you want adventure, there's adventure out there. [00:46:45 - 00:46:51] There's adventure that will sink you to your knees with tears of joy streaming down your face. [00:46:51 - 00:46:53] It isn't far away. [00:46:53 - 00:46:58] It isn't for people you never heard of or universities, so you don't need a lot of funding. [00:46:58 - 00:47:00] You don't have to be a professional. [00:47:00 - 00:47:08] All of this stuff, I mean, everybody talks about the mystery within and how it's all right here, [00:47:08 - 00:47:14] but I don't think people realize how literal all this stuff is. [00:47:14 - 00:47:21] The world is not only stranger than we suppose, it's stranger than we can suppose. [00:47:21 - 00:47:29] The weirdest, wildest, most bizarre and earthly thing you can imagine in your most demented state of fantasy [00:47:29 - 00:47:35] falls far short of the beginnings of the truth. [00:47:35 - 00:47:37] I don't know. [00:47:37 - 00:47:39] Sure. [00:47:39 - 00:47:41] Speaker? [00:47:41 - 00:47:43] The question is, how do you do it right? [00:47:43 - 00:47:45] I've talked about shelf life. [00:47:45 - 00:47:46] I've talked to people recently. [00:47:46 - 00:47:48] I said, have you taken five grams of mushroom? [00:47:48 - 00:47:51] Yeah, I walked around a dead show and saw a cartoon. [00:47:51 - 00:47:55] No one has said yes except for one friend of mine. [00:47:55 - 00:47:57] Yes, I saw voices. [00:47:57 - 00:48:00] Yes, I saw an alien landscape. [00:48:00 - 00:48:11] Well, I think the way to do it right and self-serving advice, but nevertheless, if not me, who? [00:48:11 - 00:48:20] Is to grow it, to grow your sacrament, because then a whole bunch of imponderables are removed. [00:48:20 - 00:48:30] The bad karma of dealing with some form of criminal syndicalism, the uncertainty of not knowing what it is you actually have on your hands, [00:48:30 - 00:48:37] how old it is, what conditions of care and attention it was created under, plus the discipline. [00:48:37 - 00:48:41] And now I'm speaking of mushrooms, which is what I know very well. [00:48:41 - 00:48:46] The discipline of growing mushrooms will itself prepare you to take them. [00:48:46 - 00:48:56] If you can grow them, you need be a lot less concerned about whether or not you can take them than the person who simply buys them and takes them. [00:48:56 - 00:49:08] Because to grow them, you must be clean, conscientious, punctual, attentive, self-disciplined, [00:49:08 - 00:49:18] cheerful, able to face adversity, willing to take chances, full of courage. [00:49:18 - 00:49:21] These are qualities necessary to grow the mushrooms. [00:49:21 - 00:49:22] And never leave home. [00:49:22 - 00:49:32] And of course, never leave home. Sedentary, permanent life, in love with isolation, perfectly content. [00:49:32 - 00:49:38] So if you're all those things and you will not succeed in growing mushrooms unless you are, [00:49:38 - 00:49:43] well then you've already passed through a great initiation. [00:49:43 - 00:49:49] And anyway, the living world, the satisfaction of working this alchemy, [00:49:49 - 00:49:54] I call it the changing of rye into mold. [00:49:54 - 00:50:00] And cynical souls have suggested yes, and from mold into gold. [00:50:00 - 00:50:03] But I wouldn't advocate that step. [00:50:03 - 00:50:07] What you don't use, you can give to your friends. [00:50:07 - 00:50:11] But the growing is a real partnership. [00:50:11 - 00:50:16] You will be amazed at the productivity of this organism. [00:50:16 - 00:50:18] I mean, what a workhorse. [00:50:18 - 00:50:34] You give it 112 grams of rye in a jar and it will produce close to 45 dried grams of mushrooms. [00:50:34 - 00:50:39] That's a conversion rate of close to 30%. [00:50:39 - 00:50:44] That's an unheard of level of efficiency in a biological process. [00:50:44 - 00:50:50] This stuff loves to work with four human beings. [00:50:50 - 00:50:57] And it's a tremendous insight into natural processes if you're alienated from all that. [00:50:57 - 00:51:00] And people say, oh well, it's terribly technical and this and that. [00:51:00 - 00:51:06] It isn't technical. It's no more technical than canning jam. [00:51:06 - 00:51:08] It's about at that level. [00:51:08 - 00:51:15] It involves hot water, pressure cookers, gas heat, standing around, that kind of thing. [00:51:15 - 00:51:19] But it is the reenactment. [00:51:19 - 00:51:22] It's a real shamanic empowering. [00:51:22 - 00:51:26] It's a calling forth of the ally before your eyes. [00:51:26 - 00:51:30] And then you see it and then you have it and then you're beholden to no one. [00:51:30 - 00:51:36] Plus you've empowered yourself by learning that you could do this thing. [00:51:36 - 00:51:38] Someone who hasn't overheard. [00:51:38 - 00:51:40] That was actually the question I wanted to ask more or less. [00:51:40 - 00:51:46] But short of that, are there other ways to not growing it yourself that you can properly prepare yourself for them? [00:51:46 - 00:51:51] I gather shamanistic cultures, they have a long experience of proper preparation. [00:51:51 - 00:51:56] Well, that was the question, how do you obtain it in good karma? [00:51:56 - 00:52:00] You're asking the question, how do you take it in good karma? [00:52:00 - 00:52:04] The advice is pretty straightforward and simple. [00:52:04 - 00:52:14] First of all, obviously you have to have an intent to use it properly for spiritual growth and self exploration. [00:52:14 - 00:52:18] I think that goes without saying in talking to a group like this. [00:52:18 - 00:52:23] But then the practical and operational question is, how do you do it? [00:52:23 - 00:52:26] Well, here's how you do it. [00:52:26 - 00:52:34] You take it on an empty stomach in silent darkness in a place where you are comfortable. [00:52:34 - 00:52:37] Now, people don't like this advice. [00:52:37 - 00:52:39] It's very simple advice. [00:52:39 - 00:52:49] And the number of people who will come to me and say, I remember what you said, but I took it at nine o'clock in the morning and I wanted to listen to Mozart. [00:52:49 - 00:52:53] And there were people moving around in the house. [00:52:53 - 00:52:55] Forget Mozart. [00:52:55 - 00:53:00] You know, Mozart is great without the adjunct of these things. [00:53:00 - 00:53:02] Mozart can stand on his own. [00:53:02 - 00:53:11] My notion of what you're trying to do when you take one of these things is you want to see the quintessence of what it is. [00:53:11 - 00:53:13] You want to see what it is. [00:53:13 - 00:53:20] So put darkness behind it so that everything you see is only it. [00:53:20 - 00:53:27] Put silence behind it so that everything you hear is only it. [00:53:27 - 00:53:30] And then pay attention and sit still. [00:53:30 - 00:53:32] And that's all there is to it. [00:53:32 - 00:53:38] Sit and watch the back of your closed eyelids with the expectation of seeing something. [00:53:38 - 00:53:41] I mean, you've all meditated. [00:53:41 - 00:53:44] Oh, God, that's the most boring thing on earth. [00:53:44 - 00:53:58] This is exactly like that. This is exactly like meditation except instead of that dark, ochre background that settles in with the little phosphenes floating by, [00:53:58 - 00:54:05] instead of that is a Niagara of transcendental imagery. [00:54:05 - 00:54:09] So I would say that meditation is a great model for it. [00:54:09 - 00:54:19] Sit down, shut up, breathe deeply, and look with attention at the back of your closed eyelids. [00:54:19 - 00:54:26] And I guarantee you it will come. It will manifest. [00:54:26 - 00:54:31] I don't know. I feel like everybody should get a chance. [00:54:31 - 00:54:33] Bertha, you haven't got a question. [00:54:33 - 00:54:42] On your ayahuasca trip, Chris, have you seen any of the archetypes that Baba Yogananda has described? [00:54:42 - 00:54:44] Yes, good question. [00:54:44 - 00:54:53] One of the mystique of ayahuasca is that there are certain very tightly defined motifs that occur in it, [00:54:53 - 00:54:59] and these are being swallowed by an enormous serpent, [00:54:59 - 00:55:12] and then somewhat unpredictably, since it's a South American drug, the presence of black people and the jaguar motif, those three. [00:55:12 - 00:55:17] The serpent, the jaguar, and the black person. [00:55:17 - 00:55:24] And the answer is yes, very strongly, not only myself but other people. [00:55:24 - 00:55:30] This is really interesting to me because I'm interested in where are these images? [00:55:30 - 00:55:35] That's what I've always asked. That's why I'm so interested in the hallucinations. [00:55:35 - 00:55:43] You'll hear spiritual teachers say, "Well, hallucination is a distraction, and that's all lower bardo stuff, [00:55:43 - 00:55:47] and you quickly get past hallucination." Not me. [00:55:47 - 00:55:53] I'm fascinated by hallucination because I want to know where it's coming from. [00:55:53 - 00:56:00] How can it be that in sitting in silent darkness by myself for a half an hour, [00:56:00 - 00:56:07] I can see more art than the human race has produced in 15,000 years? [00:56:07 - 00:56:13] That's not trivial. You can't dismiss that as an impediment to spiritual progress. [00:56:13 - 00:56:18] That's a mystery and a miracle. Where are these images coming from? [00:56:18 - 00:56:23] If they're coming from us, why don't we recognize them? [00:56:23 - 00:56:29] Why is the main quality about them something which astonishes? [00:56:29 - 00:56:39] I could never have thought of that, and yet you're seeing it. It's filling your head. [00:56:39 - 00:56:45] And so I wonder about the images in ayahuasca. Are they in our bones and our genes? [00:56:45 - 00:56:51] Or is it a morphogenetic field of the local area? Where do these things come from? [00:56:51 - 00:56:59] Naranjo, Bertha referred to him in her question, did experiments with urban Chileans who had never been to the jungle. [00:56:59 - 00:57:06] They also got jaguars, black people, and giant serpents. [00:57:06 - 00:57:16] I've taken ayahuasca in Northern California, and the blackness is the most puzzling to me, [00:57:16 - 00:57:22] because the jaguar and the serpent, these are power animals. [00:57:22 - 00:57:30] But why blackness? And not blackness as honkies. Imagine it. [00:57:30 - 00:57:38] I'm convinced it's blackness as black people experience it. I mean, it's this wonderful... [00:57:38 - 00:57:44] It's very alien to an Irish lad like myself. I mean, it's like going to the Apollo. [00:57:44 - 00:57:56] It's what it's like. It's like being at the Apollo. It's this tremendously warm, open, funny, smart, savvy thing. [00:57:56 - 00:58:04] Why? Why should it be there, embedded in that experience over and over again? I don't know. [00:58:04 - 00:58:11] Why should the experience of the alien be embedded in the psilocybin experience? [00:58:11 - 00:58:19] The sense of this thing which can communicate, but which is not human and from another whole order of nature [00:58:19 - 00:58:24] and with an entirely different conception of time and destiny and history. [00:58:24 - 00:58:31] Who are these... What are these channels out there? It's a very interesting question. [00:58:31 - 00:58:38] To me it implies what I talked about this morning, the existence of another dimension, [00:58:38 - 00:58:48] a dimension so vast that it will completely dissolve the concerns of industrial, male-dominated scientific civilization. [00:58:48 - 00:58:56] We've gone as far as we can with that, and we're coming back now to really facing the mystery [00:58:56 - 00:59:00] with the things we learned on the peregrination through history. [00:59:00 - 00:59:06] And we're better equipped than ever before to understand these things, but nevertheless, [00:59:06 - 00:59:14] as the thing begins to lift the veils, you realize that it is still as mysterious as it ever was. [00:59:14 - 00:59:24] In the 60s, MDA was thought to maybe help enhance community. [00:59:24 - 00:59:34] Can any of these drugs that you're talking about be used as a tool to help accelerate the partnership spirit [00:59:34 - 00:59:38] in family, in a community, and in larger groups? [00:59:38 - 00:59:46] Good question. Do these natural hallucinogens, can they be used to facilitate the formation of partnerships [00:59:46 - 00:59:48] and partnership societies? [00:59:48 - 00:59:55] Well, the answer is certainly. Ayahuasca is a good case in point. [00:59:55 - 01:00:06] The way ayahuasca is used in the Amazon among the very traditional off-river tribes is it's used to create states [01:00:06 - 01:00:14] of group-mindedness among the elders of the tribe to make social decisions for the group. [01:00:14 - 01:00:22] In other words, before, when ayahuasca was first encountered, the chemical in it was named telepathyne. [01:00:22 - 01:00:24] This is what these European chemists named it. [01:00:24 - 01:00:32] Later it was discovered that it was the same compound as had already been isolated from the giant Syrian roux [01:00:32 - 01:00:39] called harmin. So the rules of nomenclature meant that harmin would be preferred over telepathyne. [01:00:39 - 01:00:48] But these states of group-mindedness are very, very real, and they occur on psilocybin, in my experience, as well. [01:00:48 - 01:00:57] I didn't talk about it too much this morning in my anthropological wrap, but you can imagine the power [01:00:57 - 01:01:05] that a kind of group telepathyne would have in ensuring the survival and cohesion of a primitive group [01:01:05 - 01:01:12] experiencing great pressure from the environment. So, in a sense, that's what these things may be good for. [01:01:12 - 01:01:20] It's possible to suggest that our ability to use language with something originally synergized out of our [01:01:20 - 01:01:28] animal organization by environmental pressures in the presence of hallucinogens. [01:01:28 - 01:01:36] There is something about communication, and I think, this leads me to a favorite subject of mine, [01:01:36 - 01:01:46] I think that the ways in which we communicate with each other are still evolving, and still can gain energy [01:01:46 - 01:01:57] from being explored with psychedelic compounds. Some of you, I'm sure, know my notion about what I call [01:01:57 - 01:02:04] "visible language," and I referred to it this morning when I said how many could see what I was saying. [01:02:04 - 01:02:16] Visible language is the notion that language need not be something heard through the ears. [01:02:16 - 01:02:25] Language sufficiently empowered might be beheld with the eyes. This is what great poets are able to do, [01:02:25 - 01:02:33] and great singers of song, and tellers of stories. They're able to use language so creatively that [01:02:33 - 01:02:41] without noticing that anything has happened to you, the listener, you begin to see what is intended [01:02:41 - 01:02:51] rather than to hear it. And I take this very seriously because on psilocybin I have actually both beheld [01:02:51 - 01:03:00] the intent of other people and also been able to cause them to behold my intent. It's what Philo [01:03:00 - 01:03:09] Judeus called the "more perfect logos." He said the more perfect logos is a logos which goes from being [01:03:09 - 01:03:20] heard by the ear to being seen by the eyes without ever crossing over a quantized moment of transition. [01:03:20 - 01:03:29] So imagine how much, you know, we always think that telepathy would be a situation in which I would think [01:03:29 - 01:03:37] something and you would hear what I was thinking. But what if telepathy were that I would say something [01:03:37 - 01:03:45] and we both would see what I mean and could just walk around and look at it. And I think we unconsciously [01:03:45 - 01:03:55] anticipate this in the ways in which we talk about communication because we say, "She spoke very clearly. [01:03:55 - 01:04:04] I see what you mean. He painted the picture for us." In other words, we always reach into the domain of [01:04:04 - 01:04:14] the visual metaphor when we wish to indicate a higher order of clarity in speech. And I think from [01:04:14 - 01:04:23] taking ayahuasca in the Amazon with these shamans that what we take to be beautiful shamanic songs [01:04:23 - 01:04:32] are for the people who are intoxicated on the hallucinogen, not songs at all, but works of visual art [01:04:32 - 01:04:41] that are seen, that are looked at. Again, the visual metaphor, we talk about a tapestry of sound. [01:04:41 - 01:04:49] These really are, these Icaros, these magical songs, they really are tapestries of sound. And when you use [01:04:49 - 01:04:57] the psilocybin, you can experiment with your own voice and discover that a certain sound is actually the color [01:04:57 - 01:05:06] violet and another sound is, you know, chartreuse shading into lemon yellow. I mean, in a way, I'm trivializing [01:05:06 - 01:05:14] it because it's much more complex than this. But what you discover is that sound can be seen and that thought [01:05:14 - 01:05:23] can be beheld. I think our brain, the evolution of our brain chemistry hovers just under the threshold of [01:05:23 - 01:05:30] this thing becoming explicit. And it's a hard thing to talk about, obviously, because we're talking about [01:05:30 - 01:05:43] speech and communication intent itself. But again, by looking back into the past, we can obtain an image [01:05:43 - 01:05:51] that maybe helps us. How did language as we know it and as I am using it at this moment come to be? [01:05:51 - 01:05:59] Must this not have been something which was for thousands and thousands of years just under the surface [01:05:59 - 01:06:08] of our ability to take hold of it and cognize? And then suddenly it gelled. There was a phase transition [01:06:08 - 01:06:18] and people got the idea that you could signify with sound, that you could cause an image of a thing not [01:06:18 - 01:06:29] present to come into the mind of your hearer by naming it. And this is a tremendous, almost a miraculous [01:06:29 - 01:06:39] ability. And people talk about gorillas and dolphins and chimpanzees and there is language there. But the [01:06:39 - 01:06:48] miracle of human language, the things that we can do with it, the way that poetry can set armies marching [01:06:48 - 01:06:58] and the way messiahs take control of the destiny of whole millennias of people, it's all through the spoken [01:06:58 - 01:07:07] word, it's all through the power of images beheld in the privacy of the individual mind, somehow linked to [01:07:07 - 01:07:16] little mouth noises. And these little mouth noises go across space and enter through the ear of the hearer. [01:07:16 - 01:07:26] The hearer consults his or her dictionary and reconstructs a blueprint of the intended thought. And this very [01:07:26 - 01:07:35] crude process is what holds us together, our religions, our governments, our hopes, our fears. So a transformation [01:07:35 - 01:07:45] in the linguistic domain would create a great cohesion. And I believe that the proper view of these psychedelic [01:07:45 - 01:07:55] compounds is as enzymes. If you're not entirely clear on what an enzyme is, an enzyme is an organic catalyst. [01:07:55 - 01:08:04] Now what is a catalyst? A catalyst is a compound which causes a certain chemical reaction to progress at a [01:08:04 - 01:08:13] faster rate without the catalyst itself being consumed. In other words, it drives the chemical process. And [01:08:13 - 01:08:23] these hallucinogens in the natural surround drive and catalyze and synergize the process of consciousness in [01:08:23 - 01:08:30] our species. And what it comes down to in practical terms is the synergy of language emergence. We cannot [01:08:30 - 01:08:40] move into the future any faster than the rate at which we transform our language. And language transformation [01:08:40 - 01:08:48] and evolution has up until the present moment been left pretty much to find its own way. There has never [01:08:48 - 01:08:57] been really a culture with a conscious intent of transforming its language. Yes, here. [01:08:57 - 01:09:02] I agree with you and I think there's another aspect of it that I've observed in communication and that is [01:09:02 - 01:09:08] listening to Buckminster Fuller is an interesting process for me. I've listened to him lots of times in my [01:09:08 - 01:09:17] early childhood. And sometimes when I just don't try to understand his words, I switch into another mode. I've [01:09:17 - 01:09:22] had tons when I could understand everything he said without understanding his words, some of his words. So I [01:09:22 - 01:09:27] think there's a lot of communication that goes on in that other place that I think we all have to develop to [01:09:27 - 01:09:35] get beyond the words. I agree. In the realm of sound, at times, I mean, sometimes people criticize me and [01:09:35 - 01:09:44] say, "You use too many big words." You would communicate with more people if you used simpler words. Well, [01:09:44 - 01:09:50] first of all, I love words. And second of all, it's always been my faith that if you pronounce the word [01:09:50 - 01:09:59] clearly, it will be understood. And I don't know if it's working for you or not, but it's how I learned all [01:09:59 - 01:10:07] these big words is somebody said them to me and I knew exactly what they meant. So I think we need to fully [01:10:07 - 01:10:17] empower language. We get along in day-to-day affairs on probably 10,000 words. English has 500,000 that we [01:10:17 - 01:10:26] would all probably recognize. So we really need to experience and experiment with empowered speech and [01:10:26 - 01:10:33] what it can do. Isn't it interesting that we have millions and millions of words for things like leptons [01:10:33 - 01:10:44] and quarks and ratchets and these kinds of things. We have about five words for emotions. We have love, hate, [01:10:44 - 01:10:57] disgust, and then a few others. But if you will still your mind for a moment and direct your attention to your [01:10:57 - 01:11:07] heart, you will see that your heart is as busy giving out complex vibrations as your mind is. The vibration, [01:11:07 - 01:11:14] the complex vibrations given out by your mind, you can usually transduce into speech and start saying, [01:11:14 - 01:11:21] I want, I think, I know, I know this and that. But when you turn your attention to your heart, most of us are [01:11:21 - 01:11:29] totally inarticulate. And even the most articulate among us in matters of the heart still inherit a [01:11:29 - 01:11:37] tremendously impoverished vocabulary. It's very hard to say what you really mean when you're talking about [01:11:37 - 01:11:46] your feelings because they're such feathery, delicate creatures. And the words that convey them are such [01:11:46 - 01:11:55] sledgehammers of statistical averaging and crazy misunderstanding. So this is another dimension. [01:11:55 - 01:12:07] You know, out of the 60s come concepts which are always ridiculed by the orthodox concepts like the vibes [01:12:07 - 01:12:15] and laying an ego trip. But what this is is the first faulting steps toward creating a new language about [01:12:15 - 01:12:22] emotion and feeling. And it's too bad that it was broken off or that it didn't proceed at the rapid rate [01:12:22 - 01:12:32] that it can. Because we cannot, really the way I see moving into the future, it isn't a matter of time [01:12:32 - 01:12:40] passing, it's a matter of stretching the envelope of language. We can only progress as quickly as we can [01:12:40 - 01:12:46] describe to each other where it is we want to go. This is again like restating the idea that the best [01:12:46 - 01:12:56] idea will win. What we need to do is all hone our ideas, clarify our thoughts and then dialogue with each [01:12:56 - 01:13:05] other. This was the Greek technique which created the first philosophical breakthroughs that were the entire [01:13:05 - 01:13:13] basis for our culture, our culture and much of the rest of world culture. So it's always about stretching [01:13:13 - 01:13:21] the envelope of language, seeking to say yet more clearly what we mean, to adumbrate and refine and [01:13:21 - 01:13:29] indicate nuance with ever greater clarity. That is what communication is and when it's done perfectly, it [01:13:29 - 01:13:38] becomes a true partnership in art. One example you used before, Terence, is the octopus that you were [01:13:38 - 01:13:45] mentioning changes its body and communicates physically without verbal connection. As a dancer, I appreciate [01:13:45 - 01:13:49] that and I thought maybe you could make a comment on that. This is the part of the evening where we start [01:13:49 - 01:14:04] requesting our favorite song. The octopus blues briefly. I talked about visible language a little earlier [01:14:04 - 01:14:13] and John reminds me of a wonderful metaphor and insight into all of this which is nature always provides [01:14:13 - 01:14:25] models for what we want to do no matter how advanced or unadvanced nature always provides the model. So I [01:14:25 - 01:14:31] had this idea about visible language years and years ago but in the past couple of years I've discovered [01:14:31 - 01:14:39] everybody seems to discover mind in the water. For Lily it was dolphins, for other people it's been whales, [01:14:39 - 01:14:47] and for me it was octopi, cephalopods, and I'll talk about them a little bit. First of all, they have extremely [01:14:47 - 01:14:55] well evolved eyes. They have eyes as good as human eyes and in fact it's always held up as a great example [01:14:55 - 01:15:02] of parallel evolution that these two utterly unrelated organisms could have eyes that on the dissecting [01:15:02 - 01:15:09] table you cannot tell a human eye from an octopus eye unless you're an anatomist. So, but who would want to? [01:15:09 - 01:15:22] Octopi are cephalopods, they're mollusks, they're related to escargot and banana slugs. The evolutionary [01:15:22 - 01:15:32] distance between them and us is tremendous. I mean their line and our line divided about 780 million [01:15:32 - 01:15:38] years ago compared to dolphins. Dolphins are like the boy and girl next door compared to this organism. [01:15:38 - 01:15:46] This is an alien organism. Okay, so it's been known for a long time that these octopi could change color [01:15:46 - 01:15:53] and it was always thought that this was simple camouflage, that they change color to match their background, [01:15:53 - 01:16:01] but observation being the key to scientific advance, people noticed that they don't match their background. [01:16:01 - 01:16:12] They generate polka dots and traveling bars and what are called blushes and striping and all of this sort of [01:16:12 - 01:16:20] thing. So then it was realized they are communicating with each other. This is how octopi communicate. [01:16:20 - 01:16:31] They are actually almost like creatures turned inside out because they have a tremendously advanced nervous [01:16:31 - 01:16:39] system which is on the surface of their skin and this nervous system controls these specialized cells [01:16:39 - 01:16:50] called chromatophores which change color so that what an octopus thinks is how an octopus looks. [01:16:50 - 01:16:59] In other words, they are their own thoughts. They are like a naked nervous system. They are pure linguistic intent [01:16:59 - 01:17:05] and when you see them, they not only are able to change their color but because they're soft bodied, [01:17:05 - 01:17:14] they can fold and unfold and reveal so they're like a semantophore. They are pure linguistic intent [01:17:14 - 01:17:24] and I think where this reaches its most psychedelic extreme is in the benthic octopi, the very rare deep water [01:17:24 - 01:17:32] octopi that live below 1500 meters in the deep ocean where no light ever penetrates and how have they [01:17:32 - 01:17:41] continued their dialogue into this abyssal darkness? It's by evolving light organs all over their bodies [01:17:41 - 01:17:50] equipped with eyelid like membranes so that if you see films of these things, they are psychedelic [01:17:50 - 01:17:57] idea complexes, transforming themselves, lighting themselves, sending traveling lines of lights and [01:17:57 - 01:18:09] stripes and dots. Well, to me, this is a model for the human future of communication. If you think of the way [01:18:09 - 01:18:18] we seem to require titular animals, for instance, the titular animal of 19th century industrialism was [01:18:18 - 01:18:28] the horse realized as the locomotive which was measured in thousands and thousands of horsepower. [01:18:28 - 01:18:36] That was very impressive for the 19th century mentality. The 20th century mentality realizes its titular [01:18:36 - 01:18:44] animal which is I think the hawk, the soaring raptor which is definitely a dominator symbol is realized in [01:18:44 - 01:18:54] high performance fighter aircraft. That is to be like a gigantic bird of prey. The titular model, the titular [01:18:54 - 01:19:02] animal for the future is I would suggest the octopi because it is probing the frontiers of communication [01:19:02 - 01:19:11] and self-reflection. In fact, the octopus may contain the hint of what this great phase transition we're [01:19:11 - 01:19:22] approaching is to be. It is actually I think an effort to turn ourselves inside out, to objectify the mind [01:19:22 - 01:19:32] so that it can be beheld and freely seen so that we can each see the soul of the other and then to interiorize [01:19:32 - 01:19:40] the body so that it is a freely commanded object in the imagination. That's I think what we're headed toward [01:19:40 - 01:19:48] and it is anticipated by the psychedelic state and will be hardwired through the feminization of cybernetics [01:19:48 - 01:19:59] and it will release from us the tremendous pressure of limits. That's what we really feel is limits and we [01:19:59 - 01:20:08] sense that in the imagination there are no limits. We just don't know how you get a 145 pound or 220 pound [01:20:08 - 01:20:17] body into the imagination. Well, I think the process is a historical one. It's a cultural transformation. [01:20:17 - 01:20:25] We have to exteriorize our minds, interiorize our bodies and create a psychedelic cybernetic partnership [01:20:25 - 01:20:32] collectivity that lays the basis for a new self-image of what humanness can be. This is what I call [01:20:32 - 01:20:41] shedding the monkey. We are destined for grander and higher things. The promise has always been there [01:20:41 - 01:20:49] in the orgasms which we experience in distinction to most other animals, in the religions which we generate [01:20:49 - 01:20:58] in distinction to most other animals, in the great collective works of art and social dreams that we generate [01:20:58 - 01:21:06] in distinction to most other animals. We are called to higher things and are passing through a series of [01:21:06 - 01:21:14] bootstrapping self-transitions that are synergized by the psychedelic plants in our environment and whose end state [01:21:14 - 01:21:21] is anticipated in each of us as a microcosm when we surrender our...