Mysterium Conjunctiones, or Eye-On, and this is where the real skinny is held. I don't
 think you can read a better book on the psychedelic experience than Mysterium Conjunctiones. And
 it doesn't mention psychedelics per se, but it deals with the motifs of transformation.
 And no, I think that if there's a relationship between psychotherapy and psychedelic shamanism,
 it's that psychotherapists must apprentice themselves to psychedelic shamans and must
 learn what they're doing, because they're doing better than one-third get better, one-third
 get worse, one-third stay the same. Neurosis in extremely shamanically oriented societies
 with a tradition of psychedelics is almost unknown. And I saw these people work in the
 Amazon and their intuition and their perspicacity in dealing with human situations was clairvoyant,
 you know? I mean, they just could go right into it. And so I think the relationship between
 psychotherapy and psychedelic shamanism should run the other way. To my mind, and I've made
 this metaphor many times, but it gives the right feeling to it, psychedelics are to the
 study of consciousness what the telescope in the 16th century was to the science of
 astronomy. And, you know, the telescope was suppressed. I mean, Galileo had to humble
 himself. Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake. Now they want to suppress the inner
 telescope, the telescope that brings the stars and galaxies constellated in the human
 psyche up for close inspection. Well, I suspect they shall have the same fate as they had
 with the suppression of the telescope. They will just be looked at as pedestrian plebeian
 Philistines and the people who had the good sense to advocate this, people like Ralph
 Metzner, will be hailed as forward-looking visionaries.
 The only thing I would add to that analogy, I think, of the telescope is that, because
 the telescope, after all, is used by astronomers, a rather select, elite group of people. The
 average man probably never in his lifetime looks through a telescope. The significance
 of the psychedelic drug, in terms of enhancing our perception, expanding our consciousness,
 in addition to that, it does it for, has a potential for doing it for anybody, not everybody,
 but anybody who wants and needs it, who feels drawn to it. And so it's a tool that's unique.
 And this ties back to the theme I mentioned at the beginning. You know, the age of shamanic
 experts is over. That was the old age. I mean, there will be experts, of course. There are
 people who are more practiced and skilled and experienced at it. The elders, the ones
 who have done it the longest time, are the ones you go through for guidance and training
 and so forth. But it's everyone has to make their own discoveries. Everyone has to explore
 their own psyche. Nobody else can do that for you.
 And I wanted to say one other thing in relationship to your question. And I don't want you to
 take this in any way critical of your asking of the question, but I wanted to actually
 have you think about the assumption, the presupposition that underlies that question. Because you're
 asking us, in a way, you asked something like, should people who take psychedelics be required
 to undergo therapy? That's asking a question about who should or should not ingest certain
 substances. It's a control question. And I understand your intention is protection of
 people flipping out and all of that. But we shouldn't be asking anybody that question.
 We shouldn't be asking ourselves, basically, or anyone else that question, looking for
 those kind of criteria. We should take responsibility for our own path. And that will serve as an
 example to other people. Everyone has to find their own way. Psychedelics is not the way
 for everybody. There are many people who never "should" use it and who never will, and who
 don't need to, and who will get, quite possibly, to the same spaces as we get without that
 way. And my all-the-standard answer when people start asking questions about, how do I actually
 get there? How do I actually make that connection? Well, Terrence has given you an actual practical
 hint. Grow your own mushrooms. That's certainly a way to go. I tend to give a more evasive
 answer, which I really mean in all sincerity, which is that if the psychedelic visionary
 plants is going to be a part of your way, your path, you will find your way to them
 at the appropriate time, when needed, no sooner and no later. If your intention about it is
 clear and good, and that's not to say you may not make false starts and you may have
 some trips and decide it's not for you, that's okay, too. There's no requirement. It's everyone
 for himself, and yet we're all for each other at the same time. And if you're clear about
 your own intention and you take responsibility and inform yourself and be discriminating,
 do the best you can, that, by example, will spread to others. Your friends and associates
 and people you come into contact with will follow your example and won't need to follow
 your advice. But before we leave it, I have to tell a wonderful story about the telescope,
 which relates to what we've been talking about. The telescope seems to be a good metaphor
 for psychedelics. When Galileo discovered the telescope, he was not immediately slapped
 down by the church. It took a few months for them to even sort out what the issue was here.
 And then, of course, eventually he had to recant. But in the year preceding his trial,
 Galileo was, of course, before the invention of the telescope, well known in influential
 circles in Rome as an inventor and scientist, natural scientist. So in his apartment on
 the rooftop, he set up his telescope and would hold small garden parties for influential
 Roman citizens, among them great cardinals and princes of the church who were involved
 in deciding the issue of whether or not he was dabbling in heretical material. So one
 evening he had Cardinal Roncalli of the Holy Office, which is the keepers of the doctrine
 of the faith, and had him to dinner and said, "Excellency, would you care to look through
 my telescope?" And the cardinal allowed as how he would like to look through the telescope.
 So Galileo pointed it at the full moon, which was rising over the city, and the cardinal
 peered into the telescope and Galileo said, "And so, Excellency, as you see, there appear
 to be oceans and range of mountains on our sister world." And the cardinal looked for
 a long time and said, "Yes, but, Signor, surely we can agree among ourselves that this
 is only a hallucination." Well, it turns out they couldn't agree among themselves that
 it was a hallucination, and I don't think that we can agree with our establishment that
 what we perceive is only a hallucination. It is, and yet it isn't. It is a true hallucination.
 I remember once in the Amazon, a very bizarre incident. I was lying with a fever in a hut
 and stomach, some horrible thing had happened to me. Anyway, I was in a terrible state,
 and I heard these children singing outside in Spanish. And the song that they were singing,
 as I slowly and painfully translated it, I could hardly believe my ears, the song was,
 "Behold, behold, the final illusion, at last, at last, the final illusion." And this is,
 I think, from the point of view of historical society, what we are looking at. We are looking
 at the final illusion. The body of Eros, expelled from Greece, burned at Eleusis, driven out
 of the European mind by busy and pesky celibates, denied, repressed, cut apart, lay in wait
 in the mountains of the New World for the European civilization that would eventually
 conquer the New World. And as it burned and pillaged and raped its way deeper into the
 interior of the new continents that it proposed to put under European sway, at last, at last,
 in 1953, Gordon Wasson glimpsed the final illusion. It lay like the body of Osiris,
 like the body of Eros, lost since the fall of paganism, but waiting there to spread back
 through this proud, vain, scientific, paternalistic, male-dominated society, and to lay the seeds
 of its undoing, to lay the seeds of an archaic revival, of a return to the way we lived when
 the glaciers were melting and the game was plentiful, the way we lived when there was
 partnership and goddess worship and ecstasy and a sense of community and globalism. And
 this is what we have found. We, you remember I said yesterday that the archetype of Western
 society is the prodigal son, the wanderer who leaves his birthright, who leaves the
 comfort of the village and the bride who was planned for him, and goes out and does
 something tremendous and ambiguous and unimaginable and returns with the gift difficult to obtain,
 returns with the healing plant, the magic word, the jeweled crown, and lays it at the
 feet of the mother so long parted from, and by that act creates a historical closure.
 You'll recall at the beginning of this weekend I talked about the hexagram that had been
 thrown for the fate of our planet, "Work on what has been spoiled." Through the line,
 "Work on what has been spoiled by the father." And what has been spoiled by the father is
 the feminine and the planet as the exterior manifestation of the feminine, leading to
 the change, which is the cauldron, the alchemical vessel, the theater and laboratory of the
 witch's magic, the potion that transforms. And in the act of transforming nature through
 cooking, in the act of transforming human nature through the cooking of the historical
 process, we have made ourselves unrecognizable to our ancestors, even as we shall be unrecognizable
 to our children. But, ladies and gentlemen, this souffle is done. This pie is cooked.
 It's time to take it out of the oven, give the oven a rest, and spread the board. You
 know, with the passing of the patriarchy, I recall that wonderful line in Finnegan's
 Wake where Joyce says, "Grandpapus has fallen down, but Grinnie spreads the board, sunny
 side up, with care. If you want to be parked, if you want to be phoenixed, come and be parked,
 because upnayent, prospector, you're going to sprout all your worth and woof your wings."
 And so that's what I invite you to do, to woof your wings.
 Woof your wings.
 Woof, woof.
 Woof, woof.
 That's all I've got to say. Ralph's got to catch a plane.
 I'll give you one footnote to the word hallucination and hallucinogenic. Hallucination, we generally
 think means seeing something that isn't really there. So then Terence talks, "Well, but what
 about these hallucinations that are really there?" And long ago, we used to say, in the
 60s, we used to say, "Well, hallucinogenic is not a good name for the psychedelic drugs
 because it's not a matter of seeing something that isn't there. It's a matter of seeing
 something that is there, but that you normally don't see."
 And then I looked up the original etymology of the word hallucination and found, to my
 interest and delight, that it comes from Latin, hallucinare, which means to wander in your
 mind. It has nothing to do with illusion. A hallucination is your experience in wandering
 through the psyche. A hallucinogenic substance or plant is one that induces you to go on
 a journey in your mind. And that's a very appropriate term for that. And whether what
 you see is an illusion, a falsehood, a mask, or what it is and what it means, that's up
 to each one to find out.
 The greatest adventure still lies ahead.
 [end]


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