I'm going to do a metadose in a shamanic situation and now I'm not advising this.
 This I do not advise, but this is how I do it. I do it alone.
 I have never understood the obsessive need people have to take drugs in groups.
 It just makes my flesh crawl.
 And the only time I've ever been able to do it comfortably
 was with Amazonian people and Mestizo people where there was a language barrier.
 But if I take a psychedelic with somebody, then I just listen to them breathing
 and I hope they're alright and I get all tangled up with "are they alright?"
 and "should I say something?" and "should I not say something?"
 and it just turns into this mother hen thing that I can't stand.
 And often when I take psychedelics alone, I pass through a place where I say to myself
 "boy, I'm sure glad there's nobody else here because I think this would really alarm them."
 At this point, people would be reaching for 411 and since I can't,
 it's not going to turn into an embarrassment for me.
 So I think committed dose, silent darkness, empty stomach, lay down, shut up, be still.
 Keeping still, the I Ching says, it's all in keeping still.
 Okay, so far to set and setting.
 The last thing that I wanted to mention in this context is that from my own experience,
 there's more than just this set and setting and dosage
 which has to do with the cleaning of the gates of, how do you say, doors of perception.
 Because in my own case and again what I saw with many other people happening is
 that if you still have some narcissistic patterns in your system, in your psyche,
 you first of all will have difficulties to stay in a place like you can do that.
 And what happened to many people is that they either got difficulties to handle that situation
 and would do all kinds of things that would damage themselves
 or if they would go through, they would run around with some kind of omnipotent feelings.
 I mean there is serious research being done about the fact that Hitler has taken mescaline
 and got some of his visions, so not through his dark and deep wounded soul other than he did.
 Well, eventually it becomes an aesthetic question.
 I mean, you know, the trick with psychedelics as with life generally is to be in good taste.
 I mean it is not tasteful to vomit on your partner or declare yourself the world messiah.
 This is embarrassing and it's happening but it's inappropriate.
 I just think, you know, the rules don't change when you take psychedelics.
 You still, there's no license to be a jerk.
 The thing about narcissistic hang-ups and stuff like that,
 usually I just feel that the person hasn't done enough
 and that sometimes you really have to clobber people that the dose is insufficient.
 That's a good response too.
 Let me just briefly ask in terms of your basic question on how to Terence's suggestion
 which centered mostly on dosage and setting factors, practical down to earth physical factors,
 I would emphasize the factor of intention, i.e. set, more than he has.
 And to me, actually, intention is the single most important criterion for a productive kind of experience.
 And Terence is basically assuming a clarity and authenticity of intention.
 And many people who experiment and dabble in psychedelic drugs, as he was saying,
 do it for all kinds of reasons such as being able to say that they've taken it once
 or because their friends suggested it
 or because they want to be less insecure about their sexual hang-ups or whatever it may be.
 And the intention, whatever your intention is in going in,
 the entire flow of the experience will be a response to that.
 You may not understand what the hell it means or what the significance really is
 and that's your challenge then to try to figure out.
 And that may take you years and months.
 But for some people, one psychedelic session was in fact enough,
 not because they were afraid to repeat it.
 Quite the contrary, that was the thing that connected them to their source.
 They got their instructions and they can live with that the rest of their lives.
 Other people make a specialty of exploring various other areas
 and exploring the possibilities of tools and applying them in various contexts
 such as healing or creativity.
 I also feel that in a way we're in a much more experimental age
 and that ties back then the traditional shamanic societies were.
 While I personally lean towards testing out and working as much as possible
 with the tried and true ways, not because they're shamanic but because they've been tried.
 They have in fact worked.
 They've demonstrated their ability, but that does not preclude the possibility
 that there may be new ways of working with these medicines
 that still have integrity in relationship to the basic evolutionary purpose
 of how you're approaching it, but that may be completely new.
 Such as, for example, and that could apply even to--
 equally to synthetics or semi-synthetics like LSD or plant substances,
 to use them in combination with techniques of yoga, with techniques of birth.
 I personally know of many instances where these breathing techniques
 that are known as the name of rebirthing have been very effectively combined
 with low doses of MDMA, where the MDMA adds a kind of a catalyst,
 making that kind of technique much more effective,
 or conversely during an MDMA experience where a person gets stuck in a certain way
 then using a breathing technique that they've already learned
 to dislodge them from that stuck place.
 So I think the possibilities of--
 Also I think the thing Tara says about the totally committed dose, the full trip, yes.
 I think there are also possibilities of low dose kinds of experiences
 that allow a certain different kind of entry and access to the other worlds,
 not as radical, not instead of, or not that one is better than the other,
 but it's another dimension.
 I feel about these plants that they are allies,
 I mean they're tools, but they're more than tools,
 because along with the tool comes a living intelligence,
 someone that you can respect and communicate with,
 and so it's more appropriate to call it an ally in your work, in our work,
 of fostering the evolutionary process on this planet.
 And so the only reason I continue to work with it
 is because I've encountered the allies, unexpected, unexpected.
 I didn't know that when I was in graduate school,
 much less even undergraduate or college or high school,
 that I would one day be working with teaching plants
 that can tell us about what it is like to be a human being
 and what the proper role of human beings on this earth is
 and what we are to do.
 Nothing could have been further from my imagination.
 And yet it's presented and I've come to accept the arrival of a new tool
 or a new ally, such as one of these plants,
 as a sign almost that I'm on the right track,
 and approximately I'm on the right track.
 Suddenly you meet somebody who's like a powerful,
 I say, "I know where you're going, I know how you're trying to get there,
 and this will help you."
 I say, "Thank you very much."
 I mean, respect and honor that.
 And try to understand as much of what's going on,
 knowing that we'll never know everything there is to know.
 There are things that--
 the interesting distinction Terrence was talking about, the mystery,
 and I think this is the key to it.
 It's being open to the mystery
 and maintaining our openness to the mystery.
 If we close ourselves off to the mystery,
 if we have answers, we're lost, we're dead.
 Or as punk gangsters now say to one another,
 "You're history, man!"
 They've done something that's offensive to them,
 this is the insult, "You're history, man!"
 So if we close ourselves off to the mystery, we're history.
 The backwaters, bye-bye, humans.
 And that's happened before, according to the records.
 And so anything we can do to keep ourselves open to that mystery,
 and also recognizing that there'll be some areas that we'll never know.
 The mystery itself has this allure,
 it has a magnetic attraction for us, we want to explore it.
 It draws us out of ourselves.
 And yet there are also realms that--
 and Castaneda talks about that in one of his last books--
 that are not only unknown, but unknowable.
 Unknowable, in principle, we will never know.
 And to recognize the difference between those two realms
 can save us a lot of time and trouble.
 Because if we try to go into the realms that are, in principle, unknowable,
 we're likely to get very, very confused.
 [unclear dialogue]
 Say something or ask directly about the subject of how to,
 which you've been discussing.
 And I'll say it in as quickly a way as possible,
 so you can put your answer together the way you want.
 Potential problems in taking this.
 I've said to people, "Have you taken a lot? Have you ever seen this stuff?"
 And they haven't quite been in the dark.
 I've gone out, and it's hard to find a place that's dark.
 There's a lot of lights everywhere.
 Well, no, you don't go out.
 You just close the door and turn out the light.
 Then the question is-- I talked to Kat a little about this,
 and she said, "No, don't do it in the city.
 You're absorbing all the vibes of everybody around you."
 Well, it's true. We live in the country.
 But it doesn't have to be pitch.
 You just take your cone tent and go out to Joshua Tree and up a canyon.
 So you agree with the thing about not-- of taking it in the city.
 No, I think it's totally weird to take it in the city.
 But as long as-- before we move on,
 one thing I'd like to say about technique,
 it may seem small here, but it someday may save you
 great wear and tear in a tight situation.
 And that is, if you get into a place in the psychedelic that is difficult,
 Western people seem to freeze at the controls.
 And what you need to do is sing
 and recognize that sound is a tool for pushing energy around.
 And you can just move past an unpleasant exhibit
 by chanting your way through it.
 And all the things that we are taught as spiritual tools--
 mantra, yantra, mudra--
 all these things which never work worth a damn most of the time
 work perfectly in that state.
 In fact, that's probably what they were designed for.
 I mean, I have no-- all these things are totally frustrating to me.
 But in the psychedelic state, yantra, mantra, chanting, singing,
 drumming, as advertised, can move you through these spaces.
 Let's give somebody else a chance.
 A woman back here, either Zhizhi or the lady in the--
 It's not on.
 It is.
 I just had a question about ritual.
 You mentioned the Terence method and everything.
 Disgraceful, but yes.
 Well, it's good advice.
 So I was wondering what other rituals you do repetitively
 other than just like the normal brushing your teeth kind.
 You mean in my personal life?
 Yeah. Is there anything that you do every day or every other month that you just--
 I spend as many hours a day as I possibly can smoking cannabis.
 This is a practice that--
 This is the secret of McKenna's philosophy.
 Thank you very much.
 This is a practice that I've adhered to since my 17th summer.
 And God knows if I put in the same amount of time on yoga or writing plays,
 I also throw the I Ching at the new and full moon.
 What are you doing to decriminalize it a lot?
 What am I doing to decriminalize it?
 A lot of--
 Well, I always talk about it whenever anybody asks.
 It's funny how rarely the subject comes up, even in groups like this.
 It's almost as though marijuana is the poor country cousin.
 We're all here talking about 5-methoxyhydroxy, this and that.
 And the lowly cannabis weed, which has been with us since before the Vedas
 were a gleam in some Indo-European warlord's eye.
 It's very interesting how the metaphors of cordage are also the metaphors of creativity,
 that we weave a story and we spin a yarn.
 And the connection between fibers and cognitive processes has always been well understood.
 I think cannabis has a bum rap.
 What I'm doing to decriminalize it is being fairly out front about my devotion to it.
 I just think it's trivial and silly, and it's like trying to outlaw masturbation or something.
 It has to do with having a torqued notion of human nature.
 These things exist--
 I mean, I'm not recommending that for everyone,
 but when I was young I was what's called a nervous child.
 And the first time I had a hit of cannabis,
 I realized that I could self-medicate myself to normalcy and be just like everybody else.
 And so I did that.
 And I don't know if it's the proper place to tell it,
 but once I became concerned that I did too much smoking,
 and so I decided I would quit.
 First of all, I wanted to see if I could quit,
 and then I wanted to see how much of my interior life was actually riding on this ocean of cannabis ingestion.
 So it so happened that the conditions for the experiment were perfect
 because I was arriving on a small desert island in the Seychelles group in the Indian Ocean,
 and had rented a house on this island in order to write a book.
 So I had this mombasin bomber weed, a lid of it,
 and I just rolled it up and nailed it above my kitchen door
 and decided that I would not smoke until I had finished writing this book.
 And was relieved to learn that I had enough self-control that this was possible.
 I mean, I didn't sleep a wink for eight nights,
 but I did not resort to breaking my pledge.
 And I slowly realized it was all right.
 What it seemed to do was I spent a lot more time reading and had much more interesting dreams,
 and otherwise it didn't seem to be any big deal.
 And I wrote this book then, and it took me about six weeks.
 And I promised myself that when the book was finished,
 I would then allow myself to smoke up this lid of weed before I left this island.
 So finally I finished, and I was very diligent.
 I wrote every day at 8 a.m. till noon.
 I typed, and then I would take my dogs and explore this island.
 I had this very set regimen.
 And finally the book was finished.
 And I rolled these huge bombers and dragged my lawn chair out under the coconut palms
 and waited for the sunset to get really going.
 And then I just flared and consumed about three of these things in about five minutes.
 And I was just waiting for this sense of relief and accomplishment and clarity to sweep over me.
 And this thing began to happen.
 And I pushed it away, and then it came back, and I pushed it away.
 And finally I realized I had to look at what this was,
 that it was just becoming overwhelming.
 And then I looked at it, and what it was was it was the incontrovertible, instantaneous, deep,
 unarguable realization that this book I had written was dog shit.
 And I was just frozen there, just sitting in this chair, quaking with this realization.
 And up to a half an hour ago, I had this vision of myself returning triumphantly to Berkeley
 like Lenin entering Moscow with the tome raised high.
 Don't worry, brothers and sisters, it's all figured out.
 And I realized that it was a catastrophe, an abortion, a monstrosity.
 So I just was really set back.
 So then I just shrugged my shoulders and said, "Oh, okay, I will smoke day and night
 until I can try and save this thing, if it can be saved."
 And I did smoke day and night, and I did struggle with this thing.
 And it was not possible to breathe life into that corpse.
 This book, I'll just tell you the title in order to convince you that this thing should have died a-burning.
 It was called, I blush to tell you, it was called Crypto-Wrap, Meta-Electrical Speculations on Culture.
 Terrible, terrible.
 So I realized then at that point that I was a fool to try to navigate life without cannabis
 and that it would just get me in terrific trouble and that I lost my way and couldn't make judgments
 and had no discrimination and so forth and so on.
 Anybody? Yes, sir, you've been struggling mightily to be heard.
 I've taken LSD over a thousand times, and I've taken psychedelic plants a couple hundred times.
 And I agree that plants are superior and I prefer them over LSD.
 However, real, true LSD, such as orange sunshine, is a phenomenal mystery in my experience
 compared to the rinking-dink acid that's going around these days.
 But to the guy who was talking about LSD, I wanted to say that LSD is not confusing.
 It's the environment and the accumulative unconscious mind, the things that your unconscious mind has collected, that is confusing.
 It's the environment and society and what they program into your computer that is confusing, not good, true LSD.
 But on one level, LSD is confusing, which is that when you buy it, you don't know what you've got.
 That's truly confusing.
 If you buy it from people who don't chant mantras and aren't into a high state of spiritual awareness and vegetarianism.
 I get it from people who chant mantras. Listen, I know weasels who chant mantras every day.
 And they have to know chemistry. I know where I get it. I know where I get it from.
 But see, that's too much to ask of most people. I recall a conversation I had once with a psychotherapist about MDMA.
 And he said, "It doesn't matter that it's toxic at twice the ordinary dose, because I would never give somebody twice the ordinary dose."
 I said, "But X, you don't understand. People pop this stuff like pretzels down on Sunset Strip."
 So you have to think of the fool. The fool is always with us.
 I've eaten a whole sheet of 100 doses of LSD.
 Well, maybe the fool is not always with us with an attitude like that.
 No, but the thing about LSD that's confusing is the difficulty to tell what you've got until you're out in it.
 Xi Xi, what was your point?
 Being that you're both in many ways a master of words, I want to go back and pick up on this fine line that you admittedly are walking
 in describing the plants as an ally and at the same time describing them as a tool and continually talking about use.
 I find also in the questions using the word "take" a lot, which is our common language around this.
 People have asked some questions about the ritual.
 And also, Ralph, I was glad to hear, brought up intention.
 I'm curious, knowing that in the Native American traditions, there are very simple teachings that respect the exchange when you interact with a plant,
 whether you pick a piece of sage, you give a giveaway at that point, whether it be some saliva, whether it be something that you offer,
 that in the traditions that you have been working with, if either within the intention or within the rituals,
 there are these kinds of giveaways and exchanges, and you might comment some more on those so that they can sort of fill our body in this way.
 Or you might share also some of your own if you carry that deep sense of ally.
 Well, it's hard to describe a ritual, and they are not only the rituals.
 I think Terrence and I share an abiding interest in the rituals surrounding these plants in traditional cultures.
 And at the same time, I feel, and I think he probably agrees too, that it's not a matter of copying the Indians.
 We live in a different time and a different place.
 So I see a lot of very fruitful experimentation going on.
 Experimentation is not just random, and it's informed by clear intention and by deep study and reflection and grows organically.
 So I see people have numerous groups and circles of people that have worked with these substances,
 both the synthetic and the plants, do have serious intentions and bring to bear a certain creativity that emerges out of those experiences
 onto how best to utilize the experience while--and it is a matter.
 I mean, the plant itself is the thing that you take.
 But it's the meaning behind it, the spirit behind it, that's really significant.
 The significance of the psychedelic movement is not the drugs.
 It's the experience that was facilitated by the drugs.
 And that in itself then makes the plants or drugs significant.
 I mean, it's a kind of a paradoxical thing.
 I don't know if I'm getting at your question.
 So I think there are rituals, and one of the basic rituals that I have become most familiar with then is adapted from--
 I know groups that use some of these substances in a ritual that's adapted from the Native American church,
 and yet it's not a Native American church ritual.
 I would not presume to try to run, for example, a Native American ritual or try to direct one
 because that's something that's taught by those who have been initiated in that way and it's passed on that way.
 But some of the basic core features, such as sitting around in a circle around either a fire or in darkness
 and having something like a talking staff, which is a ritual that comes very strong in the North American--
 Northwest American Indians, Northwest Coast, the talking staff often used in councils
 and also in the peyote church, that's the staff and rattle are passed around for people to sing during the ceremony,
 which allows each individual who is participating in the circle experience, group experience,
 to express some part of their own visions through their song or their statement.
 And yet each person's own individual vision and journey is honored.
 In other words, you don't react to it, you don't respond to it, you don't give encounter group challenges,
 questions, arguments, and so forth.
 Is that getting at what you're asking? I'm not sure.
 I'll just add two things about it.
 I'm not looking for a description of the whole ritual per se,
 as much as I'm tracking what you brought up earlier in the week about--
 or the week, the weekend--
 about this memory that was way before, that there's some relationship with the plants that in our modern time
 and even in the traditional societies perhaps has been overlooked or forgotten or shifted.
 And I'm curious about the experience of giveaway, the experience of exchange,
 which is part of this relationship with plants, which very quickly gets lost in our language
 and in some of our modern usage of them as tools.
 So I was looking for any sort of traces of that in your own sort of use, relationship with them.
 And also curious, because this topic has come up in terms of the cultures in which these plants are called from or visited,
 that these are also the cultures which seemingly are having a great deal of difficulty holding on to their plants.
 In other words, the destruction of the rainforest, etc.
 And what is that all about in terms of this allyship?
 I'll just say briefly and then you--
 Yeah, go ahead.
 What I get from that was that--
 You're asking, what are we giving the plant in exchange for what it's giving us?
 That's what I hear you saying.
 What's the giveaway?
 The giveaway is the exchange.
 And what I've learned from the plants is an understanding of our proper role,
 and my particular role in life on this planet.
 That's the whole notion, this whole thing of this Gaia Conference, the Green Earth work that I was mentioning to you.
 That's what I learned from the plants.
 That's what was emphasized, and that's what I've learned from previous non-drug, non-plant-involved shamanic kinds of experiences,
 vision quest or however induced, similar kinds of communication with animals.
 I've had dreams with animals like whales and dolphins or plants, these plant spirits telling me,
 "Okay, here's what the situation--you understand the situation."
 Once you understand the situation that we find ourselves in, once you really face it, as Terence said,
 there is only one course of action that's possible for all of us.
 I'm convinced.
 I mean, it has many different forms.
 Realizing the Gaia, the place of the Earth that we're at and what we're doing in our blindness and stupidity is a tantamount, in a way, it's another aspect.
 It's the reverse side of this vision that Terence is talking about.
 It's the vision that once you see it, it's incontrovertible, and it's inescapable, and you know what has to be done.
 And it's just a matter of time and having the grace then to not get caught in despair or cynicism,
 all of which are possible outs that we've all used, despair, cynicism or escape, blotto, denial, burying ourselves in Korea, blah, blah, blah, whatever,
 and just getting on with it, clean up our act.
 Clean up our act.
 Over to you, sir.
 Well, I think what a person who has a relationship with an ally plant gets out of it is an enriched and balanced inner life.
 What the plant gets out of it is a human being with an enriched and balanced inner life, and that feeds back then into stewardship and inspiration for caring.
 We then notice that we have this partner, and agriculture was the first great example of human-plant symbiosis, and it was very important to the plants involved.
 They went from being rare grassland endemics to being great monocultural crops.
 And orthodox biologists say that successful reproductive strategy signifies successful evolution.
 So you can say what people got out of taking mushrooms in ancient Africa was increased visual acuity, better sex, and ultimately a rich inner life of cognition.
 But what the mushroom got out of it was cultivation, and by being associated with cattle, becoming like an episode on the main genetic heritage of human beings.
 Because when we finally do go to Aldebaran and Procyon, we will take cattle with us, and presumably we will take beans and peas and hemp and spinach.
 They are the cloud of genes that have managed to insinuate themselves into a relationship with human beings, so that our fate is their fate.
 And if the sun gutters out and is left behind by us as we radiate out through the galaxy, we will take with us dogs, cats, goldfish, runner beans, morning glories, ayahuasca, but not everything.
 And is that your finding, both of you, in terms of that being the ideal or that being the sense that you personally carry?
 Is that your finding in the people that you work with, this birth of feelings of stewardship?
 Yes, I think so.
 That you can't take these things without facing the facts of the historical crisis, our legacy, our bad behavior, so forth.
 And that when you face that, then you have to have recourse to some kind of stewardship.
 I don't know people who are seriously into psychedelics who don't want to change things.
 I don't know of anybody who says, "I take psychedelics and I'm perfectly contented with the world the way it is."
 Then I wanted to say something else about ritual, and here again I take a controversial position.
 And it never would have occurred to me to take this position, except that the mushroom told me this.
 This is straight from the shoulder, said, "Ritual is a substitute for understanding."
 It's exact words, and I said, "I don't quite get it."
 It said, "If you understand, you have no need of ritual. Ritual is like a demonic device for touching something deeper, which is in danger of being lost."
 So I recall a situation where I was in the Amazon and we were collecting ayahuasca plants, myself and a young botanist who was Peruvian but very westernized.
 And we chopped through the ayahuasca bush, and we hadn't talked for a long time.
 And then as we were chopping it up and putting it into the bags to carry it out of the forest, he said to me, "Don't you think that we should have done a ritual and blown tobacco smoke over it and asked the plant permission to cut it?"
 None of which we had done. But as we had cut the plant, this had all been going through my mind, and I felt that the moment was so intense that ritual would have been a trivializing of it.
 And so then I realized that what ritual is for is to ignite attention. That's all.
 And you must have attention. And Ralph was very good to bring up intentionality, which is a state of attention to what you're doing.
 And when you incinerate a bud of cannabis or cut an ayahuasca plant or gather mushrooms, it's not necessary to perform a ritual, but it's an abomination to have an empty head at that moment.
 I mean, you must feel what you're doing. You must be aware that a gift is coming to you, that a life is being sacrificed so that you can deepen your experience.
 So I don't know if this goes to your question. Ultimately, the give/take question, I think, can be dissolved in that it really is an in/out question.
 What do I take? What do I give?
 The planet is a gene swarm, and there is only one destiny for life on this planet. It is the destiny of all of it.
 And when we take these plants, we are synergized to higher states of intellectual activity.
 This creates redistributions in the patterns of propagation and growth of the plants. We are inside some kind of huge natural control mechanism.
 We cannot fail to be endowed, but we can fail to recognize that we're endowed. And so it's always a task of bringing back attention and reclaiming a feeling of authenticity in the moment.
 I guess I would reformulate your statement about ritual being a substitute for understanding in two ways.
 One is that I see ritual as a framework for communication and a framework for structuring your intention.
 The kind of ritual you perform comes out of your intention. So if your ritual is empty, a ritual empty of intention or consciousness is just that, an empty substitute for the real thing.
 And I also realize that, especially if you're alone, going through that kind of experience, as long as you are clear about your intention and you're going about what you're doing with the maximum of consciousness that you can,
 you are in fact doing a ritual. You're doing the essence of ritual.
 And when you're out in the wilderness and you do everything with as much consciousness as you can, every morsel that you eat, when you take a shit, everything,
 when you breathe, when you brush your teeth or sweep your campsite, everything becomes a ritual, which means simply that you have clear intention and clear maximal awareness.
 Your attention follows your intention. If you think about it. What your intention is determines what you're going to attend to.
 And so I think the ritual has its place and it has to be recognized for what it is and it has to be imbued with your awareness and your intention so that it doesn't become empty.
 And we all know numerous empty rituals. The churches, the organized religions are full of them. And they are harmless or not so harmless diversions.
 Other considerations. Yeah. Oh, take the mic, please.
 Getting back to the taking of such substances. Dr. Israel Rigardi, who is the last in the original lineage of the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn out of England.
 Boy, I'll bet there's somebody who will contest that. But go ahead.
 He was the last living English. He was in that lineage anyway.
 And he'd made the statement that he would not accept a probationer into or a neophyte into for initiation until they had undergone 100 hours of psychotherapy, because he had seen how imbalanced people could become through the work of high magic.
 Do you think that applies to the use of psychedelics?
 Do I think psychotherapy should be a precondition to the use of psychedelics? Is that the question?
 God, let's hope so. I mean, I hope that's the question.
 That's the question. Veiled by -- which veils, excuse me, which veils do you think that people should, who do not have knowledge of how the psyche operates, have not really investigated their own psyches,
 should then take psychedelics, take large doses of them?
 Well, I don't know. Certainly I don't think psychotherapy is a precondition to taking psychedelics.
 I mean, psychotherapy is, you know, probably the kindest thing you can say about it is that it's a scam.
 Certainly a person should be sophisticated about the dynamics of psyche.
 And I would -- if Ralph's prescription to have clear intention is followed, I don't think a person would arrive at the brink of a psychedelic experience.
 If you needed psychotherapy instead.
 If they didn't have a healthy interest in the dynamics of the psyche. Most psychotherapy as it's currently practiced is, I think, just -- well, as I said at the Albert Hoffman thing, psychotherapy without psychedelics is pissing into the wind and has done a lot more harm than good.
 What is clear about psychotherapy is that its efficacy depends entirely on the psychotherapist.
 Freudians, Jungians, Reikians and what have you-ites all get the same results, which are one-third get better, one-third get worse, one-third stay the same.
 So, clearly method is useless in psychotherapy. It's something about a bonding between two people to sensibly discuss hang-ups.
 What I think is generally felt to be true among psychedelic researchers is that early psychedelic trips tend to have a personalistic cast to them, tend to address one's hang-ups, problems in relationships, difficulty in coming to terms with parents and loved ones and so forth.
 But that people who persist with psychedelic experimentation quickly burn through that.
 One of the objections that I always sort of had to LSD was that I call it abrasively psychoanalytic.
 This seems to be a compound that only wants to talk about what are basically therapy issues. It wasn't like that for everybody, I gather, but it was certainly like that a lot for me.
 I mean, I stuck with psychedelics basically because I was so puzzled by what other people were saying about it.
 Psilocybin, on the other hand, doesn't seem, at least in my experience, to work that way.
 It immediately dresses this transpersonal, cosmic, planetary level.
 So, my own exposure to psychoanalytic literature and therapy and that sort of thing was I read all of...
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