[00:00:00 - 00:00:19] Well it's a pleasure to be back with all of you. I feel like this is the home parish so to speak. [00:00:19 - 00:00:27] This seems to be the place where I see the most number of faces that I recognize. [00:00:28 - 00:00:35] So it's sort of like a family meeting. The formal title of the lecture is "Nature is [00:00:35 - 00:00:41] the center of the mandala" and this is really basically simply a [00:00:41 - 00:00:54] structure to work off of to anticipate and discuss where nature lies in the future, [00:00:54 - 00:01:00] the cultural future that is unfolding in front of all of us. [00:01:00 - 00:01:05] And to background my thoughts on this matter a little bit. [00:01:05 - 00:01:12] I have always had a relationship to nature which I pretty much took for granted but [00:01:12 - 00:01:19] perhaps it was more intense and somewhat unique than most peoples. [00:01:20 - 00:01:27] I grew up in a small town in Colorado. I was very early into being a rock hound [00:01:27 - 00:01:35] and then a butterfly collector. I had no interest in stamps or baseball cards or anything like that. [00:01:35 - 00:01:46] It was always natural objects and the attraction of tropical butterflies was the exuberant [00:01:47 - 00:01:57] expanse of color, the affirmation of the pattern richness of the universe that was [00:01:57 - 00:02:03] seemed to be thrown out like a spark by these things. And eventually I pursued it quite far [00:02:03 - 00:02:12] and was for some time a professional butterfly collector in tropical Indonesia in a pre-Buddhist [00:02:12 - 00:02:26] incarnation. And this search for iridescence thrown off by nature seen first in the glint of metallic [00:02:26 - 00:02:35] ore crystals and then in the colorful expanse of butterflies and then in tropical fish [00:02:36 - 00:02:46] reached a kind of apotheosis with the discovery of the psychedelic plant hallucinogens where suddenly [00:02:46 - 00:02:54] the color, the flash, the iridescence was not two or three dimensional but it was multi-dimensional. [00:02:54 - 00:03:01] It was inside one, outside one. It was like the ultimate tropical aquarium, [00:03:01 - 00:03:12] the ultimate butterfly cabinet, the ultimate mineral show. And it led me to travel then [00:03:12 - 00:03:19] and to place the particular experience of nature in the wider context of place. [00:03:19 - 00:03:27] And I traveled in Indonesia as I mentioned where because of glaciation [00:03:29 - 00:03:36] and the shallowness of the oceans, evolution has been preceding at different rates on different [00:03:36 - 00:03:42] islands relative to the depths of the separating channels. So as you go from island to island in [00:03:42 - 00:03:52] Indonesia it's like stepping into 10 different bedrooms all by the same interior decorators [00:03:52 - 00:03:59] but all slightly different, different because of the context in which the evolution took place. [00:03:59 - 00:04:07] And these times spent and then of course there were the times in the Amazon which most of you [00:04:07 - 00:04:13] have heard me lecture on where the pursuit of psychedelic plants was really in the forefront. [00:04:14 - 00:04:27] But I came to see nature as experienced meaning as it hits you when you walk around in it [00:04:27 - 00:04:38] and pick at it and carry it with you that this kind of nature had been read out of the repertoire [00:04:38 - 00:04:49] of images that most people bring to bear on their reality. And consequently the reality is de-spirited. [00:04:49 - 00:05:01] The spirit resident in nature is not visible when these mechanistic grids are laid over it [00:05:02 - 00:05:10] sort of by a kind of anticipatory osmosis we called our company which has existed now [00:05:10 - 00:05:19] 10 years or more Lux Natura. Lux Natura means the light in nature. The Lux Natura is the [00:05:19 - 00:05:27] salvational radiance that can be found in the organic kingdom. It's a term of parasalysis [00:05:27 - 00:05:37] and it has slipped from the grip of modern human beings except in case special cases where it is [00:05:37 - 00:05:48] cultivated as in a sensitivity or where it is pursued in the guise of an aspect of the psychedelic [00:05:48 - 00:05:58] experience. So what is nature and what's so great about it that it should be the center of the [00:05:58 - 00:06:13] mandala? Well it seems to me that it is a sight in a way that has become occluded by the perverse [00:06:13 - 00:06:24] development of language so that what we take to be exterior to ourselves and sustained by the laws [00:06:24 - 00:06:32] of physics which do not arise out of the human mind is in fact not that at all but a kind of [00:06:32 - 00:06:42] stratum of expectation that has been laid down by the human journey through time. Now granted [00:06:42 - 00:06:48] there are aspects of nature which are not part of the human journey through time but they are [00:06:48 - 00:06:57] occult from our point of view. They are not expressed except perhaps through the demonic [00:06:57 - 00:07:10] artifice of an instrumentality and this has been the course of the strategy of science is to use [00:07:10 - 00:07:18] an instrumentality to reveal the mechanics of the occult side of nature. The problem is that this [00:07:18 - 00:07:30] occult side of nature once explicated does not yield a satisfying reflection of ourselves. [00:07:30 - 00:07:38] It yields instead a very unflattering reflection of ourselves if any at all. [00:07:38 - 00:07:46] So you know in Hawaii sitting on the mountainside you think that you are like [00:07:46 - 00:07:53] Lenin in Germany or something and you have to politically think it all through so that [00:07:53 - 00:08:01] to whatever degree one's voice is heard mistakes are not made because it seems to me clear that [00:08:02 - 00:08:13] a small miracle is taking place. It is that and I was saying this to Roy today it is that our point [00:08:13 - 00:08:22] of view is actually gaining ground. The thing which we least expected to happen I think that [00:08:22 - 00:08:31] all this new age hustle and bustle though granted that 95 percent of it is just intellectual noise [00:08:32 - 00:08:39] and efforts to that fail efforts to coin the perfect analogy that fail. Nevertheless there [00:08:39 - 00:08:49] is a residual five percent that appears to have become the cutting edge of the guiding image of [00:08:49 - 00:08:59] this mega culture. So it becomes important then for people who identify themselves with the human [00:08:59 - 00:09:08] potential movement spiritual development the rebirth of intuition all of these things to make [00:09:08 - 00:09:17] a place in the plan for the role of nature and different responses have gone on to that the Gaia [00:09:17 - 00:09:27] response which claims nature as a stabilizing feminine force which I'm all for that. I think [00:09:27 - 00:09:36] that's definitely the image that has to emerge that the recognition of the presence of control [00:09:36 - 00:09:45] mechanisms which are not coercive but which are Taoistic is a way of coming to terms with nature [00:09:45 - 00:09:52] that we have resisted. This is you know it's a simple idea it's just the idea that before [00:09:52 - 00:10:03] technology people had to store firewood for in the autumn for the winter and in the spring they had [00:10:03 - 00:10:10] to sharpen tools for the late spring planting and this sort of thing that there was an implicit rhythm [00:10:10 - 00:10:19] laid down by nature that entered the human cosmos at every level and then was reflected in the [00:10:19 - 00:10:27] poetry the culture building the language evolution etc and between urbanization other factors [00:10:27 - 00:10:36] removed the influence of these rhythms ending in the final culmination of the modern city where [00:10:36 - 00:10:44] life under electric life goes on 24 hours a day there's then a flattening of the human dimension [00:10:44 - 00:10:55] there is no more a sense of being embedded in flux there is instead the myth of the eternal culture [00:10:55 - 00:11:00] it's like woody allen you know his comment that he didn't like to go to the country [00:11:00 - 00:11:05] because you see all these screen doors with cobwebs in the corner well [00:11:10 - 00:11:18] you got to come to terms with this kind of thing because [00:11:18 - 00:11:28] there is no question that that there is a deepening ambiguity in the present moment there is [00:11:28 - 00:11:40] a something stealing over global civilization i was at a conference recently where someone proposed [00:11:40 - 00:11:47] the notion that our time is not special but there is nothing unique about this moment other than that [00:11:47 - 00:11:56] it is presently occurring i think nothing could be further from the truth and that actually [00:11:56 - 00:12:04] the deepening ambiguity of the historical experience which registers in all of us as [00:12:04 - 00:12:11] a sense of how weird it is how compressed time is how complicated the interconnections are [00:12:11 - 00:12:18] is a real phenomenon which eventually will be elucidated in other words it will be recognized [00:12:18 - 00:12:26] as a phenomenon eventually there is going to be a break with the with the prevailing paradigm [00:12:26 - 00:12:32] of historical process in case you're not aware of the prevailing paradigm of historical process [00:12:32 - 00:12:42] is the script is the one which calls itself the trendlessly fluctuating theory and it says we [00:12:42 - 00:12:50] trendlessly fluctuate and to search for a trend is to just be drawn into a kind of cultural hysteria [00:12:50 - 00:13:01] the fact of the matter is that uh standing outside the cultural hysteria the trend is fairly clear [00:13:01 - 00:13:11] it is a trend toward temporal uh compression and the emergence of ambiguity how is it possible [00:13:11 - 00:13:18] you know you look at something like common ground or even the shared visions newsletter and you say [00:13:18 - 00:13:26] you know apparently the major commodity moving on world markets is ambiguity the voices which [00:13:26 - 00:13:36] whisper to us from crystals herbs and housewives the uh the invisible fields from all dimensions [00:13:36 - 00:13:42] which impinge upon us the imagined histories and futures which intersect the present moment i mean [00:13:42 - 00:13:50] if all of these models or even a small portion of them are given credence then the density of [00:13:50 - 00:13:57] the human experience is uh is uh considerably decent i mean how many past lives can you keep [00:13:57 - 00:14:04] track of how many extraterrestrial channels can you have open before you begin to realize that [00:14:04 - 00:14:09] you know you're not living in the kind of society like mom and dad were used to [00:14:12 - 00:14:20] so back to the theme of nature nature anticipates all of this and anchors this [00:14:20 - 00:14:30] nature is actually the goal at the end of history we're getting closer and closer to the end of [00:14:30 - 00:14:39] history and we will not go past it with a moment of blindness it is there will be vouched safe [00:14:40 - 00:14:47] intuition about the emerging structure of the other into which culture is being subsumed [00:14:47 - 00:14:54] you're all familiar with the image of the aura boros the snake which takes its tail in its mouth [00:14:54 - 00:15:05] well the end of history which you've heard me talk about as as an archaic revival is that's true an [00:15:05 - 00:15:13] archaic revival but the the ground of being in which the original archaic renaissance occurred [00:15:13 - 00:15:22] was nature so in terms of the expression of design elements in terms of the expression of human [00:15:22 - 00:15:33] relationships political agendas uh all of these things the economies of nature are going to set [00:15:33 - 00:15:41] the guiding images it's very interesting i read stephen jay ghoul's book biophilia in which he [00:15:41 - 00:15:53] describes his work with ants in suriname and how um there are ants which grow fungi in their nests [00:15:53 - 00:16:03] they chew up they cut leaves off trees and chew them up into this mash which they then store in [00:16:03 - 00:16:12] rooms underground and they bring the right spores to it and grow it there and and it produces a [00:16:12 - 00:16:21] sugar which the ants then eat and they tend the fungal garden they actually remove foreign spores [00:16:21 - 00:16:29] and this sort of thing and the whole symbiosis goes on well it's a symbiosis between a social [00:16:29 - 00:16:40] organism the ant and a fungal organism which is able to provide an enzyme sugar which drives [00:16:40 - 00:16:50] the ant society to a greater state of activity activity being the bottom line in an insect economy [00:16:50 - 00:16:56] where how much you can get done determines your how well you survive provided the [00:16:56 - 00:17:01] preodes of getting done are well established well this provides [00:17:01 - 00:17:13] a curious analogy to the situation that exists in human societies vis-a-vis hallucinogenic plants [00:17:13 - 00:17:25] hallucinogenic plants uh act as enzymes which stimulate imagination and imagination [00:17:26 - 00:17:33] having a practical side to itself is usually reconnected to this process in a feedback loop [00:17:33 - 00:17:39] that asks the question how can we make more of the hallucinogenic plant which is giving us all [00:17:39 - 00:17:49] these great ideas so then you get uh initially the invention of agriculture and but one can't [00:17:49 - 00:17:57] grow all plants in one place as we learned even about hawaii so then uh the imaginary the feedback [00:17:57 - 00:18:04] loop in the imagination driven by the presence of the hallucinogen in the diet asks the question [00:18:04 - 00:18:10] how can we get the plants that we can't grow and the answer is networks of trade and systems of [00:18:10 - 00:18:20] barter and behind that lies the need for language similar sorts of things these kinds of symbiotic [00:18:20 - 00:18:27] processes are implicit in the human experience some of you have heard another lecture i give [00:18:27 - 00:18:34] which goes into this in great detail where i actually try to show that the presence of uh [00:18:35 - 00:18:42] uh mushrooms in the dung of ungulate animals on the veldt of africa 150 000 years ago [00:18:42 - 00:18:51] drove a set of processes which resulted in self-reflecting human beings i won't recapitulate [00:18:51 - 00:18:57] that now except to say that that process didn't end with the invention of language or the [00:18:57 - 00:19:05] domestication of cattle it it continues right up until the present day it really is as though [00:19:05 - 00:19:16] from a planetary point of view what has happened is an enzyme system called the human species [00:19:17 - 00:19:28] was deputized into an information gathering mode sent out as a kind of prodigal subsystem [00:19:28 - 00:19:37] a kind of epistome of the social environment to cognize the organization of the natural world [00:19:37 - 00:19:44] through a process called human history or the historical advance of understanding [00:19:44 - 00:19:55] toward a sufficiently complete modeling of the ground that the that closure could occur and that [00:19:55 - 00:20:04] is now i think what is happening that the human species which was deputized for gaia into the fall [00:20:05 - 00:20:15] the fall into profane time the time of non-participation in the immediacy of the dow [00:20:15 - 00:20:22] through a series of successive linguistic declensions that's what it was i mean this [00:20:22 - 00:20:29] begins to sound almost biblical because what we're saying is there's a fall and then and the fall is [00:20:29 - 00:20:37] somehow related to a confusion of languages not one from another but from the object of experience [00:20:37 - 00:20:47] and as the language became less and less natural the world of the species using this language became [00:20:47 - 00:20:55] less and less natural because the evolution of symbols became toward the abs move toward the [00:20:55 - 00:21:04] abstract became the realization of ideals notice that as early as as platonic philosophy and i'm [00:21:04 - 00:21:13] not sure well no even in pre-socratic philosophy you get the enunciation of abstractions great [00:21:13 - 00:21:23] overweening concepts which subsume large sets of particulars underneath them and this this ability [00:21:23 - 00:21:30] to subsume the particulars under a name which is a class name is the beginning of this process [00:21:30 - 00:21:37] of replacing the natural language with the symbolic structures that then interfere between [00:21:37 - 00:21:48] soul and nature the reason for for this process we can really only guess that it seems as though [00:21:48 - 00:21:57] nature requires this reflection upon itself that the completion of nature is somehow in the hands [00:21:57 - 00:22:07] of a single target species which acts as an enzyme within the global the global organism of gaia [00:22:07 - 00:22:13] from the point of view of an extraterrestrial looking down on the surface of the planet [00:22:13 - 00:22:23] there are not uh discrete organisms there is simply a gene swarm and through transmission of [00:22:23 - 00:22:32] viruses and numerous uh non-genetic ways in which genes are transformed the previously imagined sharp [00:22:32 - 00:22:39] declensions between species are actually somewhat illusory so that really uh [00:22:41 - 00:22:49] within the confines of my body the unfolding of gene expression and the molecular assembly of [00:22:49 - 00:22:55] enzyme systems and proteins and that sort of thing is simply under a tighter [00:22:55 - 00:23:03] regimen of control than are the same kind of processes which are going on between people [00:23:04 - 00:23:15] we are really a loosely regulated organism that has a tendency to ever tighten the control between [00:23:15 - 00:23:22] its subunits so that you can see the evolution of language the evolution of technology and [00:23:22 - 00:23:31] its being at the service of media the rise of cities oral poetry all of these things we seem [00:23:31 - 00:23:39] to strive for greater and greater cohesion greater and greater free flow of thought among ourselves [00:23:39 - 00:23:51] and what we're looking toward is a moment when the artificial language structures which bind us [00:23:51 - 00:23:59] within the notion of ourselves are dissolved in the presence of the realization that we are [00:24:00 - 00:24:09] a part of nature and when that happens the childhood of our species will pass away and we [00:24:09 - 00:24:19] will stand tremulously on the brink of really the first moments of coherent human civilization and [00:24:19 - 00:24:28] when that happens the noise which haunts our social systems our inability to couple things together [00:24:28 - 00:24:36] so that they work will begin to evaporate this i think is already beginning to happen [00:24:36 - 00:24:45] it's a slow process but it's a kind of cascading phenomenon such that once it begins to happen [00:24:45 - 00:24:48] it happens faster and faster and [00:24:56 - 00:25:06] the mirroring of psyche that was always the glamour if you will which stood behind nature [00:25:06 - 00:25:17] is correctly perceived with greater and greater clarity as this process proceeds and this correct [00:25:17 - 00:25:29] perceiving of nature's relationship to self and language is the essence of all of these cultural [00:25:29 - 00:25:38] vectors that are converging feminism the exploration of space the perfection of the [00:25:38 - 00:25:49] thinking machine or of the human machine interface the mysterium tremendum at the core of the [00:25:49 - 00:25:59] psychedelic experience all of these things are i think going to be seen as anticipations of this [00:25:59 - 00:26:09] post-historical state which lies beyond the the working out of the themes that have been set in [00:26:09 - 00:26:17] motion by materialistic science in other words the forces that are being set in motion and sustained [00:26:17 - 00:26:26] by so-called new thought new age thinking this is why because this seems to be happening because it [00:26:26 - 00:26:36] seems that we and by we i mean all of us did in fact identify early on a trend in society which [00:26:36 - 00:26:47] is now going to have enormous repercussions that there is a responsibility to clear thinking about [00:26:47 - 00:26:55] what this thing is and how it works there seems to be a kind of a rush to get in line with the [00:26:55 - 00:27:04] sloppiest metaphor as quickly as possible so that you know and there have been a number of let's say [00:27:04 - 00:27:13] syncretic fates or new myths that have arisen and competed with each other with greater and lesser [00:27:13 - 00:27:21] degrees of success i suppose this is a healthy thing except that it gives such comfort to the [00:27:21 - 00:27:27] people who think we're all their heads you know i mean they observe all this and it confirms to them [00:27:27 - 00:27:32] that it's a hopeless loss nevertheless um [00:27:32 - 00:27:43] so so i guess what i want to say about that is that the everybody has their own version of what [00:27:43 - 00:27:50] is the mistake which is being made right so here's my version of what is the mistake that's being [00:27:50 - 00:28:01] made it's that there is a confusion between scientific materialism and reason science [00:28:01 - 00:28:11] has set itself up as a kind of new pontificate and brooks no challenge it expects to [00:28:12 - 00:28:21] make judgment on any idea emerging from any realm of human endeavor it has set itself up as judge [00:28:21 - 00:28:28] and jury the fact of the matter is that this is only by virtue of its spectacular acts of [00:28:28 - 00:28:39] technological prestidigitation that it's able to uh presume to do this because really what science [00:28:39 - 00:28:48] is most successful about in telling us about our realms which none of us have ever penetrated nor [00:28:48 - 00:28:58] are ever likely to i mean how much do you wish to know about the rings of neptune or the the quark [00:28:58 - 00:29:07] we are continuously sold the line that somehow when the metaphors of consciousness [00:29:08 - 00:29:16] are fully mapped onto quantum physics and biology that a great step forward will have been taken [00:29:16 - 00:29:23] it seems to me that since the information coming out of quantum physics and molecular biology [00:29:23 - 00:29:30] is so removed from the realm of common experience that if we succeed in mapping mental phenomena [00:29:30 - 00:29:38] onto those realms we will have succeeded in the final act of alienation because we will have at [00:29:38 - 00:29:49] last totally removed our experience of ourselves from the realm of felt cognition so i think that [00:29:49 - 00:30:00] instead of the idea that there needs to be a kind of uh direction of an overarching metaphor from [00:30:00 - 00:30:07] the physical sciences into the social and psychiatric sciences instead there should be [00:30:07 - 00:30:16] the recognition and celebration of mystery that in fact we are an intelligent species [00:30:16 - 00:30:24] caught in a historical process no generation which preceded us knew what was going on and there is no [00:30:24 - 00:30:29] reason to assume that we know what's going on or that the generation which follows us will know [00:30:29 - 00:30:37] what's going on and what kind of trip is it anyway to insist on knowing what's going on [00:30:37 - 00:30:49] it's a highly unlikely enterprise i mean look at the data sample the data sample is your lifetime [00:30:49 - 00:30:59] on one planet in one tiny corner of the universe and from this via the fallacy of induction [00:31:00 - 00:31:07] certain principles of uniformity are extended to the far-flung corners of the cosmos in space and [00:31:07 - 00:31:15] time then a bunch of fancy metaphors are built up that nobody can check on anyway and then this is [00:31:15 - 00:31:24] called understanding you see it isn't understanding understanding issues into appropriate activity [00:31:26 - 00:31:33] and you know a model of the universe which doesn't issue into appropriate activity in the here and [00:31:33 - 00:31:40] now is a curious model indeed after all appropriate activity in the here and now i would [00:31:40 - 00:31:51] think would be the sine qua non everything else is an unconfirmed rumor so nature is the visible [00:31:51 - 00:32:00] manifestation of this mystery it entirely surrounds and completes us it is there to be beheld and [00:32:00 - 00:32:08] imbibed in it is simply that one must either replace the sterile language of scientific [00:32:08 - 00:32:16] materialism or one must bring no language whatsoever to it so that it speaks for itself [00:32:17 - 00:32:24] i've noticed with ayahuasca this south american visionary vine that's a hallucinogen [00:32:24 - 00:32:34] unlike the mushroom it does not speak it shows its language is visible a fractal hieroglyphic [00:32:34 - 00:32:43] surface of the intermediate dimensions that contains an endless unfolding of phenomena [00:32:43 - 00:32:50] at level after level apparently you know who knows down into the micro physical realm this is [00:32:50 - 00:33:02] a correct seeing of what is the the mystery is co-present with its denial it is a matter [00:33:02 - 00:33:12] of changing points of view and changing points of view is a matter of retooling language [00:33:13 - 00:33:17] if nature is sighted then [00:33:17 - 00:33:28] so is the uh auto poetic [00:33:28 - 00:33:38] self-reflecting cloud of cognition that manifests as language it is partly based [00:33:38 - 00:33:45] in the structure of matter it is partly based in the implicit syntax of the perceiver [00:33:45 - 00:33:53] it is partly an interference pattern between the two but it is as close to the ground [00:33:53 - 00:34:05] that one can approach without uh theory which brings me then to the last point that i want [00:34:05 - 00:34:22] to make about this which is the key to the forward-looking expression of the archaic revival [00:34:22 - 00:34:34] the key to making the new age fulfill its best hope and not fall into a kind of uh crypto fascism [00:34:34 - 00:34:44] of paradigmatic warfare is to enunciate two principles which are really two ways of saying [00:34:44 - 00:34:55] the same thing they are the primacy of experience and the toxic nature of ideology these this to me [00:34:55 - 00:35:03] is the core and if if the new age the archaic revival whatever if it can exemplify these two [00:35:03 - 00:35:12] principles we will navigate past the dangerous shoals that inevitably rip any social point of [00:35:12 - 00:35:21] view that grows that attempts to leave its cult status and enter the mainstream uh the primacy [00:35:21 - 00:35:29] of experience means i connect it to heidegger's notion of what he called care for the project [00:35:29 - 00:35:38] as being the primacy of self-experience it begins with a notion as simple as be here now but it [00:35:38 - 00:35:50] takes that further and says you know we must take ourselves more seriously more likely and [00:35:50 - 00:36:01] more seriously at the same time we are not at the bottom of a pyramid of goods and information [00:36:01 - 00:36:12] production where we pay the suckers price for everything as it's handed down through a series of [00:36:12 - 00:36:21] intractable pieces of cultural machinery that we have no effect on that is the myth that is being [00:36:21 - 00:36:31] promulgated by those very institutions the myth of the hapless consumer the myth of uh the meaning [00:36:31 - 00:36:41] of fadism that there is in fact a meaning to switching from one ideology to another ideology [00:36:41 - 00:36:52] the way uh hemlines and perfumes and and decorator colors come and go this kind of allowing ourselves [00:36:52 - 00:37:00] to be self-victimized you know i mean god forbid i'm now at an age where three times in my life [00:37:00 - 00:37:11] i've seen good ideas emerging on the fringes of american culture end up as slogans for madison [00:37:11 - 00:37:17] avenue you know first with the beats then with the hippies i'll never forget the day i first [00:37:17 - 00:37:24] confronted a billboard which talked about the dodge rebellion i mean rebellion was our word [00:37:24 - 00:37:34] not their word and here they were you know our word selling this piece of tin junk so you know [00:37:34 - 00:37:42] the co-option that comes from disempowering yourself with regard to what you view as important [00:37:42 - 00:37:52] which is more important to you your opinion or uh or uh ted kaufold's opinion it's got to be your [00:37:52 - 00:37:58] opinion you know because these other things are just chimeras they're they're myths in the electronic [00:37:58 - 00:38:08] night the other side of that is the toxicity of ideology the ideology itself is poisonous that [00:38:08 - 00:38:19] um in the you know in the 15th and 16th century it's like 120 years of intermittent religious war [00:38:20 - 00:38:27] because people were so uptight about whether or not you were a catholic or a huguenot or a walloon [00:38:27 - 00:38:34] or you know all this stuff which were these were life and death issues and finally people just [00:38:34 - 00:38:44] became sick of it and i i hope i choose to believe that we may be approaching such a watershed with [00:38:44 - 00:38:52] the social ideologies that have just been dinging themselves into the global population for the past [00:38:52 - 00:39:00] hundred years they are extremely bankrupt the notion of any kind of serious competition between [00:39:00 - 00:39:11] marxist leninism and capitalist democratic techno fascism or whatever it is is ludicrous [00:39:13 - 00:39:20] neither system works in the presence of the need to wage ideological warfare against the other [00:39:20 - 00:39:28] and yet it's fairly clear that each society could function quite well if it didn't have that burden [00:39:28 - 00:39:37] and similarly in many microcosms of that situation around the world it's clear that ideology has [00:39:37 - 00:39:47] become some kind of anachronism it's a kind of lack of good taste it's like being a nut [00:39:47 - 00:39:56] you know so that you you come on with some ideology and and people just look at their plate [00:39:56 - 00:40:06] they're they're embarrassed for you and well they should be because that that butter is no bread [00:40:06 - 00:40:15] that's just a big pain in the neck uh the ideology which naturally claims our attention [00:40:15 - 00:40:22] is uh is pretty well understood you know it's like uh it's like it says in the old testament [00:40:22 - 00:40:30] you can know the truth the truth is the still small voice in your heart we don't have to [00:40:30 - 00:40:38] take courses in theology and ethics to get all this down the political agenda is fairly clear [00:40:38 - 00:40:47] you know you feed people you cure disease you anticipate and solve social problems having to do [00:40:47 - 00:40:55] with sewage disposal uh distribution of land and wealth so forth and so on i mean who's kidding [00:40:55 - 00:41:02] who none of this stuff is controversial unless you're living inside a locked ward which we seem [00:41:02 - 00:41:15] to be doing so uh more and more this anti-ideological position has to be articulated it's no big deal [00:41:15 - 00:41:23] about how you cause language to evolve you cause language to evolve by saying new and intelligent [00:41:23 - 00:41:29] things to each other and then other people say oh well so this thing that i've always thought [00:41:29 - 00:41:34] that never felt like saying is actually legitimate and okay and i can say it and i will say it [00:41:34 - 00:41:43] and then it begins to move like a wave through society i mean you will be told that for me to [00:41:43 - 00:41:54] advocate the poisonous nature of ideology without calling it anarchy is to peddle my own private [00:41:54 - 00:42:00] ideology but this is absurd it's like saying if someone tells you not to drive that they're [00:42:00 - 00:42:08] advocating a certain style of driving that isn't it at all you know it's a translation of level [00:42:08 - 00:42:17] it's it's something entirely different both of these things the toxic nature of ideology and the [00:42:17 - 00:42:28] importance of the felt presence of immediate experience can be brought together under the [00:42:28 - 00:42:38] notion that we cannot afford the continued existence of what has been called throughout [00:42:38 - 00:42:47] most of the 20th century the unconscious that the unconscious is actually a kind of [00:42:47 - 00:42:58] neurotic excuse for not getting our act together as a species it is a kind of infantilism a [00:42:58 - 00:43:08] a self a giving of permission by each of us to all of us to not get our act together and the [00:43:08 - 00:43:20] the way in which the unconscious is eliminated is by the by turning the language machinery back [00:43:20 - 00:43:28] upon itself and reflecting on the process of attention this is what buddhism is all about [00:43:28 - 00:43:36] attention to attention awareness of the modality of the cognitive process don't be fooled by yourself [00:43:36 - 00:43:48] don't be made a sucker of by yourself just uh rise above that possibility by paying attention [00:43:49 - 00:43:59] attention to attention causes the light of language to fall into these dark and unilluminated corners [00:43:59 - 00:44:09] where infantilism is tolerated in the individual personality doing that to oneself has a kind of a [00:44:09 - 00:44:16] morphogenic field effect a kind of chain reaction which sweeps through society this is like this is [00:44:16 - 00:44:24] believe what all these gurus are always trying to say in a somewhat i don't know more uh [00:44:24 - 00:44:34] concrete and and therefore somewhat less convincing fashion but it's simply that [00:44:34 - 00:44:40] the act of conscious self-inspection creates more conscious people which create a more conscious [00:44:40 - 00:44:48] society which erodes the possibility of the poisonous and toxic effects of ideology this is [00:44:48 - 00:44:57] what psychedelics were and are about in terms of their social position and their legal position in [00:44:57 - 00:45:04] society psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump [00:45:04 - 00:45:12] out of a third story window psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures [00:45:12 - 00:45:21] and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing they open you up to the [00:45:21 - 00:45:29] possibility that everything you know is wrong and uh you know government and society society spend a [00:45:29 - 00:45:41] lot of money educating you into being a loyal worker consumer debt payer and citizen so [00:45:41 - 00:45:50] if anarchy is to have a meaning and i think it is the great the great future for human society [00:45:50 - 00:45:58] because what it means is only responsible human beings can exist in an anarchistic society to the [00:45:58 - 00:46:09] degree that people are responsible we will have anarchy and the reason america i believe historically [00:46:09 - 00:46:17] has been so successful is because it's really a place where you can almost get away with anything [00:46:18 - 00:46:28] and if that is lost if the uh if if monolithic ideologies uh uh throw a damper on that then [00:46:28 - 00:46:35] cultural momentum will pass to other cultures in fact to some degree i see this coming we [00:46:35 - 00:46:44] had a conversation with a prominent politician recently and he pointed out that uh japan is now [00:46:44 - 00:46:55] the leading western country this indicates a cultural crisis of some depth for uh the ideals [00:46:55 - 00:47:01] of the american constitution my brother is the brain scientist at the national institute of [00:47:01 - 00:47:08] mental health in bethesda maryland the crown jewel of american brain science everybody there [00:47:09 - 00:47:17] is a japanese graduate student doing work on a two-year three-year scholarship so uh [00:47:17 - 00:47:27] but i don't see or hear a new age voice coming out of the japanese i think this is the cultural model [00:47:27 - 00:47:38] that the west is uniquely able to promulgate and perfect because it comes out of a rejection [00:47:39 - 00:47:46] of the tradition of scientific materialism that we are responsible for and that we are most [00:47:46 - 00:47:53] sophisticated about where for instance japan has come fairly recently to high tech and mass [00:47:53 - 00:48:02] industrialization so i i just basically want to leave you with that the the notion is that nature [00:48:04 - 00:48:11] which is the topological the linguistically expressed topological manifold of the sci-fi [00:48:11 - 00:48:21] is the an historical object that is pulling us forward and that when we actually cross into [00:48:21 - 00:48:30] the eschatology that appears fairly eminent we will find it to have been anticipated by the [00:48:30 - 00:48:40] human relationship to nature the embedding of psyche in nature through the mysterious relationship [00:48:40 - 00:48:55] mediated by language and the key to uh to unfolding a same society in my single humble opinion is [00:48:57 - 00:49:04] an obligation to reason that clearly distinguishes between reason and science an obligation to [00:49:04 - 00:49:14] self-involvement in immediate experience and that means psychedelics sexuality and what i call time [00:49:14 - 00:49:21] but what i really mean is a kind of deep literary involvement with the felt presence [00:49:22 - 00:49:29] psychedelics sexuality and time to empower the individual to make the individual [00:49:29 - 00:49:43] naturally responsible to create then the basis for a caring global society that will transcend [00:49:44 - 00:49:52] the historical cultures as though we were just moving very naturally out of winter and into [00:49:52 - 00:50:02] spring no apocalypse no millennium no rescue by flying saucers no mayan return simply the unfolding [00:50:02 - 00:50:10] of understanding in a program of mutual caring and responsibility this is the highest aspiration of [00:50:10 - 00:50:18] a new age and i feel that it is attainable so let's break and then we'll have questions [00:50:18 - 00:50:29] thank you very very much [00:50:33 - 00:50:43] okay is there any kind of response to this evening's talk wonderful yes in my family life [00:50:43 - 00:50:50] i can do a yoga practice and i can maintain a certain amount of purity of perspective through [00:50:50 - 00:50:56] diet and through meditation things like that and if i take a psychedelic drug it makes it very [00:50:56 - 00:51:06] difficult to make it function in the world because almost too much information is coming in and out [00:51:06 - 00:51:13] so your question is how do you integrate taking psychedelics into an ordinary workaday existence [00:51:13 - 00:51:23] well well i don't know that it is easily integrated i mean i'm not sure whether you mean [00:51:23 - 00:51:28] you can't function while it's happening or you can't function three weeks afterwards [00:51:28 - 00:51:41] the with the psychedelics it's not a matter of high frequency i think the good trips are usually [00:51:41 - 00:51:51] good for plenty of rumination for a long time the harder the hit the longer you want to ponder it [00:51:51 - 00:51:59] before you go that route again it isn't like a practice it isn't like something you do daily [00:51:59 - 00:52:10] it's more like a unique act of courage that arises out of the of the substratum of ordinary [00:52:10 - 00:52:18] daily existence whether it be profane or or sacral there really isn't an answer to your question as [00:52:18 - 00:52:26] long as we're part of the worker anthill or living in a society which makes tremendous demands on us [00:52:26 - 00:52:32] it's going to be a problem the way to take psychedelics is [00:52:32 - 00:52:42] you must have seen these t-shirts which say i take drugs seriously well that's the way to take them [00:52:42 - 00:52:49] which means rarely and that and that substantially challenging doses [00:52:49 - 00:52:57] and in an atmosphere where there are no distractions and by that i mean other [00:52:57 - 00:53:06] people will say something different but i mean no light and no sound including music unless you're [00:53:06 - 00:53:13] a musician or you have some special relationship to music but really what you're trying to see is the [00:53:13 - 00:53:24] the the surface of the brain mind interface and to the degree that you can create a situation of [00:53:24 - 00:53:31] sensory deprivation you will have a greater expectation of succeeding some people wouldn't [00:53:31 - 00:53:39] dream of tripping without music but i find that you know it becomes the trip the whole thing then [00:53:39 - 00:53:48] becomes about that piece of music where in silence it would have been equally audibly interesting [00:53:48 - 00:53:54] so it isn't the the early model of the psychedelic experience was sort of that you [00:53:55 - 00:54:06] eat an orange and look at art books and listen to box coral preludes but that art historical [00:54:06 - 00:54:12] approach to it doesn't give enough credit to the power of the substance i mean it can lift [00:54:12 - 00:54:20] veil after veil in silent darkness to just catapult you into endlessly undulating [00:54:21 - 00:54:29] tapestries of organic beauty and there need be no sensory input in fact shouldn't be for this to [00:54:29 - 00:54:36] happen you had a question i was wondering about practical sort of tips like how do you take [00:54:36 - 00:54:40] something back it's sort of like going to a magic kingdom and wanting to take back a gold [00:54:40 - 00:54:46] golden piece with you or a key or something because i lose it you know and i well i think [00:54:46 - 00:54:53] i sort of touched on this obliquely tonight that attention to attention or paying attention to the [00:54:53 - 00:55:02] nuances of cognition is a psychedelic way of being i mean if any of you are familiar with [00:55:02 - 00:55:10] marcel proust's recherche de tempere do he didn't take drugs except for laudanum and valerian and [00:55:10 - 00:55:23] alcohol and absinthe and tobacco and things like that so he was drug free and he he he managed to [00:55:23 - 00:55:32] refine you know this art of just the awareness of the tensions and nuances in the moment for really [00:55:32 - 00:55:40] what i have come to believe about the psychedelic experience is that it is simply a compressed [00:55:40 - 00:55:50] instance of what we call understanding so that living psychedelically is trying to live in an [00:55:50 - 00:56:02] atmosphere of continuous unfolding of understanding so that every day you know more and see into things [00:56:02 - 00:56:12] with greater depth than you did before and this is a process it's a process of education what the [00:56:12 - 00:56:19] psychedelic experience is is it's the process of education so compressed that it has become a [00:56:19 - 00:56:30] cascade of actual visual images which rather than a kind of slow unfoldment of linked perceptions [00:56:31 - 00:56:41] but really attention to attention and appreciation of the immediate i always think when this comes up [00:56:41 - 00:56:50] of william blake's advice blake was as you know a great mystical visionary english poet who spoke [00:56:50 - 00:57:00] with angels and had these wonderful visions of the of the angelic world and he was asked what was the [00:57:00 - 00:57:10] secret of his angelic poetry and he said attend the minute particulars that's all just attend [00:57:10 - 00:57:20] the minute particulars that the and what he meant was to focus attention in the moment not to not to [00:57:20 - 00:57:30] betray attention into expectation born of abstraction or regret born of misplaced assumption or of [00:57:30 - 00:57:40] remembrance born of boredom and alienation in the moment but just to attend the minute particulars [00:57:40 - 00:57:47] it's a way of training it's like yoga people think that psychedelic psychedelics are somehow the easy [00:57:47 - 00:57:55] way out this is what people think who wouldn't dare dream of taking one and it's not because it's the [00:57:55 - 00:58:03] easy way out it's because they sense that the reality of it the reality of the fact of it and [00:58:03 - 00:58:15] the challenge of assimilating it i mean uh it's very real it's not a metaphor it's not an analogy [00:58:16 - 00:58:24] it's not a dramatic reconstruction it is not a simulacrum it is not a model it is the pith [00:58:24 - 00:58:33] essence of the thing itself it's uh it's real and i don't know how many things can make that claim [00:58:33 - 00:58:43] i mean everyone has a different set of experiences my own experiences have of the other of the [00:58:43 - 00:58:52] transcendent naked beauty of truth have almost all entirely come out of the psychedelic realm [00:58:52 - 00:59:00] or out of involvement with the viscerality of my emotions you know the death of my mother the [00:59:00 - 00:59:15] birth of my children the act of marrying someone not not else but those so i think it's uh it's [00:59:15 - 00:59:21] about attending the minute particulars as a kind of practice it may not get you anywhere for several [00:59:21 - 00:59:32] years but if you attend the minute particulars cultivate an ongoing stream of self-description [00:59:32 - 00:59:40] telling yourself what is happening get used to the idea that mind can penetrate the immediate [00:59:40 - 00:59:50] surface of being and reveal the tactile density of it as a manifold whose measure cannot be [00:59:50 - 00:59:58] immediately taken by the eyes that it's deep it's connected it's complex everything holds within [00:59:58 - 01:00:06] itself the anticipation and the memory of everything else yes i guess i don't feel so optimistic [01:00:06 - 01:00:15] well it's hard to feel optimistic sometimes it's uh but it's an almost like an obligation [01:00:16 - 01:00:22] and i think there's enough evidence around to support it um [01:00:22 - 01:00:34] if ronald reagan is going to begin the process of the dismantling of strategic nuclear stockpiles [01:00:34 - 01:00:42] then you know what would the civilized and humane political leader be doing in this context [01:00:43 - 01:00:52] so on one level i'm fairly cynical i see you know uh people whose major life's work has been [01:00:52 - 01:01:02] banditry and bloody rampage getting into the history books as great peacemakers nevertheless [01:01:02 - 01:01:10] i love the fact that the constraints of the situation have forced these clowns into this [01:01:10 - 01:01:19] position that's what i mean when i say you know that no political group no faction has its hands [01:01:19 - 01:01:27] on the tiller of history there is uh an invisible hand which seems to be channeling the life of [01:01:27 - 01:01:42] these institutions toward uh what we deem progressive ends and not not because these [01:01:42 - 01:01:50] people have converted to altruism and reason and sweetness and light but because it's a way for them [01:01:50 - 01:01:58] to save their political ass so it has become expedient peace has become politically expedient [01:01:58 - 01:02:07] consequently we shall have it i think in a big hurry now granted it doesn't address starvation [01:02:07 - 01:02:19] sexism uh abuses of propaganda torture uh all all of these things but i i feel like [01:02:19 - 01:02:30] that there is a kind of a log jam in human affairs that formed in the late 60s where we all looked [01:02:30 - 01:02:43] over into the future and saw what it was and the governing agencies froze with terror [01:02:44 - 01:02:52] and attempted to halt the on-rushing momentum of the 20th century to not only make psychedelic [01:02:52 - 01:02:59] drugs illegal for the public but to actually end scientific research into them this is phenomenal [01:02:59 - 01:03:06] scientific research is supposed to be freely pursued in any field that's the banner under [01:03:06 - 01:03:13] which science rides its horse but apparently this doesn't apply to hallucinogens uh [01:03:14 - 01:03:22] uh freezing all dialogue on disarmament freezing all dialogue on the retraction of [01:03:22 - 01:03:31] imperial the projection globally of imperial power and strategic stockpiles all this was frozen in [01:03:31 - 01:03:40] place in the late 60s and it's only now beginning to give way the future has a momentum that no [01:03:40 - 01:03:51] institution can deny and the 25 years of constipated dithering that we have just come [01:03:51 - 01:03:58] through has only meant that now the transition into the new order will be that much more sudden [01:03:58 - 01:04:09] and that much more complete um so i guess i am uh i am optimistic in the micro i see many causes [01:04:09 - 01:04:15] for pessimism but generally i think things globally are working out fine now it may be [01:04:15 - 01:04:24] and i addressed this tonight in the talk a little bit it may be that a sane humane and well-fed [01:04:24 - 01:04:34] uh world is coming into being but it may not be led by the united states of america we [01:04:35 - 01:04:41] muscle bound with strategic arsenals unable to produce things which the rest of the world wants [01:04:41 - 01:04:51] to buy entertaining a massive trade deficit tolerant of reactionary pseudo-religious [01:04:51 - 01:04:59] forms of political crypto-fascism we are uh i hope no one's offended by that we [01:05:01 - 01:05:10] are not exactly in the best position to uh to lead the charge into this great and glorious future [01:05:10 - 01:05:18] a society with a tradition of resource management like japan is perhaps in a much better position [01:05:18 - 01:05:24] although then there are other problems japan speaks a language no one understands it's going [01:05:24 - 01:05:31] to be quite a world if the power of the projection of the japanese cultural self-image is to become [01:05:31 - 01:05:39] so overwhelming that japanese is to become the dominant language of the west although this is a [01:05:39 - 01:05:46] possibility certainly if any of you are familiar with the fiction of william gibson uh and if you're [01:05:46 - 01:05:52] not i urge it upon you this is some of the most exciting science fiction being written he pictures [01:05:52 - 01:06:00] a world where japanese cultural dominance i would say is a primary factor so yes i'm optimistic [01:06:01 - 01:06:10] we have to be it's the only game in town and look at the opportunities it's simply a matter of [01:06:10 - 01:06:18] insisting on human values garnered from the felt experience of the moment and holding back the toxic [01:06:18 - 01:06:26] effects of ideology in other words this anarchic prescription that i sort of put forth this evening [01:06:26 - 01:06:34] mainly holding back the toxic effects of ideology because then we can create a sane world if we just [01:06:34 - 01:06:43] recognize that pragmatism love for each other and a reasonable amount of goodwill [01:06:43 - 01:06:52] will do quite nicely i think if the shriller voices the ideologically driven voices can be [01:06:54 - 01:07:01] made uh de class say not repressed just simply recognize this tasteless [01:07:01 - 01:07:06] anything else yes [01:07:06 - 01:07:14] could you just uh reflect on what culture will be like after the end of time [01:07:14 - 01:07:19] and what what the end of time has to do with what you said tonight [01:07:21 - 01:07:27] and a different kind of time or well yeah certainly i've reflected on what it's like it's [01:07:27 - 01:07:33] sort of a blank screen on which to project your mind what will it be like once we pass the omega [01:07:33 - 01:07:41] point i'm not really sure i mean it you can take two approaches to it you can take the sort of the [01:07:41 - 01:07:48] deus ex machina approach which means we can't know what it is because it's going to be so wonderful [01:07:48 - 01:07:54] it's going to be like uh uh the descent of the flying saucers and we will all march into the [01:07:54 - 01:08:03] forgated city and that will be it or you can take a more conservative approach and say well maybe [01:08:03 - 01:08:10] there's something going on in the trends around us that we can extrapolate to try and understand [01:08:10 - 01:08:17] the world beyond the end of time taking that approach what i think is happening and it's been [01:08:17 - 01:08:28] happening for a long time and it's very interesting is that culture culture is another dimension that [01:08:28 - 01:08:37] and perhaps properly so in the early part of my talk i talked about how culture had [01:08:37 - 01:08:44] subsumed the position of nature so that we had lost sight of nature by erecting culture through [01:08:45 - 01:08:53] erecting these linguistic structures but i noticed that and not only linguistic structures but [01:08:53 - 01:09:00] architectural structures the infrastructure of our society that is what culture is the way we [01:09:00 - 01:09:09] differ from the we toto is all the stuff that we have bound into ideas and excreted through our [01:09:09 - 01:09:24] engineering processes to surround ourselves with uh this this dimension which is culture is becoming [01:09:24 - 01:09:32] ever more all-inclusive at the same time that it's also becoming strangely enough ever more [01:09:32 - 01:09:40] ethereal ever less material a perfect example of this i don't know how many of you are [01:09:40 - 01:09:48] familiar with it but if you deal with the macintosh computer the operating system of the mac [01:09:48 - 01:09:56] is the genius of it and what makes it the best in the biz is that it attempts to trick you into [01:09:56 - 01:10:02] believing that you're dealing with ordinary three-dimensional space you know you don't [01:10:02 - 01:10:10] type in commands you don't choose printed options you move in a symbolic representation of [01:10:10 - 01:10:17] three-dimensional space well again to mention william gibson and his novels what he imagines [01:10:17 - 01:10:27] is simply a larger version of this conventionalized uh symbolic representation of three-dimensional [01:10:27 - 01:10:34] space so that you enter in his novels his characters enter into a world where the bank [01:10:34 - 01:10:43] of america database is perceived as a huge red rectangle hundreds of feet in height in a certain [01:10:43 - 01:10:54] spot in the memory of this global computer and and yes it's cyberspace and near it is the memory bank [01:10:54 - 01:11:00] of wells fargo or something else so that when you enter into cyberspace ordinary reality is replaced [01:11:00 - 01:11:10] by a symbolic representation of the informational content of ordinary reality well this is in fact [01:11:10 - 01:11:17] happening uh it's happening at a very rapid rate so the dimension which we call culture [01:11:17 - 01:11:24] which we have previously uh erected in the three-dimensional world around us through the [01:11:24 - 01:11:31] intercession of what we call manufacturing and architecture is very rapidly being internalized [01:11:32 - 01:11:40] and erected as cyberspace this alternative dimension to ordinary three-dimensional space [01:11:40 - 01:11:49] in which our minds are able to move like fish in water what i think lies beyond uh the end of time [01:11:49 - 01:12:00] is a very concrete realization of this other dimension that's why things like the time [01:12:00 - 01:12:07] waves that i've developed and some of these other projections run off the scale the world beyond [01:12:07 - 01:12:15] the end of history is literally not mappable in the lower order set of mapping that are applicable [01:12:15 - 01:12:25] to history so it is like being downloaded into circuitry uh it's possible to conceive of the [01:12:25 - 01:12:38] entire human species fitting into the area of a large refrigerator in in cyberspace so that the [01:12:38 - 01:12:49] goal of history is the creation of a mirror image of culture in the cyberspatial dimension so that [01:12:49 - 01:12:59] culture in the dimension of nature can be slowly retracted slowly retracted into the compressed [01:12:59 - 01:13:07] quintessence you can almost think of this as an alchemical process we're talking about forging [01:13:07 - 01:13:17] a philosopher's stone out of a hyperdimensional medium which is composed of energy and language [01:13:18 - 01:13:26] and into which we can all cast ourselves at will it is you know plato said if god didn't exist [01:13:26 - 01:13:39] man would invent him her it well it may well be that the pilot's seat pilot's chair of the flying [01:13:39 - 01:13:50] saucer is empty it awaits mankind it is the condensed expectation of complete inner penetration [01:13:50 - 01:13:58] of all of us through each other and our cultural artifact in a mode that we cannot even imagine [01:13:58 - 01:14:05] at an earlier talk at wills here a couple of years ago i did a talk called shedding the monkey [01:14:06 - 01:14:15] which i talked about dropping uh the primate image that is projected onto the human soul [01:14:15 - 01:14:24] through through the accidents of biological evolution that as we take control of our genetic [01:14:24 - 01:14:32] heritage as we take control of the process of manufacturing culture we are going to become [01:14:32 - 01:14:41] what we dream we are and we have never really explored consciously what it is we dream we are [01:14:41 - 01:14:49] but very shortly this will become a major part of the cultural agenda because we are going to be able [01:14:49 - 01:14:59] to do anything and with that kind of power again recurring to the theme of the evening [01:14:59 - 01:15:09] i think we have to anchor ourselves in nature so sort of my apotheosis or my vision of how this [01:15:09 - 01:15:20] should come to be is that everyone is given uh you know their own 500 acres of paradise in the chip [01:15:23 - 01:15:34] and that is your heritage your space your right place to be and out of the melancholy [01:15:34 - 01:15:41] which accrues only to the very wealthy which we will then each and every one of us fall into that [01:15:41 - 01:15:50] category we will be able to return to the dimension of the limited pie and very decorously and [01:15:50 - 01:16:00] thoughtfully apportion it out in a sane and rational manner so manner so uh and it's very [01:16:00 - 01:16:08] very tricky see this rush toward the ability to completely realize the self-image in hyper state [01:16:08 - 01:16:15] my mother used to say to me when i was a small child if wishes were horses beggars would ride [01:16:16 - 01:16:26] and i think that that's the dream to turn wishes into horses that beggars may ride and it's that [01:16:26 - 01:16:34] world where we each get our own horse or when our ship comes in that lies beyond the historical [01:16:34 - 01:16:43] dimension because it's where we in effect each becomes all and then is freed into the imagination [01:16:43 - 01:16:52] of the over soul to create whatever castles in the imagination seem most pleasing it's the triumph of [01:16:52 - 01:17:04] art art in the imagination and reverence for nature in the in the placental dimension which [01:17:04 - 01:17:13] is the life support system but this fantastic indulgence in the in the expression of the [01:17:13 - 01:17:26] imagination yeah culture and the toxicity of ideology i'm an educator i educate young children [01:17:27 - 01:17:37] and i just want you to address what we can do uh or what your ideas about what society can do so [01:17:37 - 01:17:45] that we don't have to undo it at some point i mean most of us here have to kind of undo what we went [01:17:45 - 01:17:52] through as children in public education anyway so that we at least come to some level of awareness or [01:17:54 - 01:18:03] people within ourselves what is the positive side of it what is your uh well in hawaii this past year [01:18:03 - 01:18:10] we home schooled our children and we also coincidentally rented office space from a [01:18:10 - 01:18:16] major company which creates home schooling curriculums and on their letterhead they have [01:18:16 - 01:18:28] the motto you are your child's best teacher and we found out how hard it is to live up to that ideal [01:18:28 - 01:18:37] and yet in a way we also found out how rewarding it was to attempt it uh when we return to northern [01:18:37 - 01:18:46] california our children will go to public school uh i think basically you have to just you have [01:18:46 - 01:18:58] to not leave it up to the school you have to check in on what's going on and to input into the process [01:18:58 - 01:19:03] i don't i don't feel that i can give a very deep answer to this i think it's one of the most [01:19:03 - 01:19:11] perplexing problems one thing i think that's terribly wrong with education is that there is no [01:19:11 - 01:19:21] sense of history instilled in people and uh history has almost as bad a rap on it as mathematics [01:19:21 - 01:19:31] and yet these are the two modes of thought which i think would do the most to anchor us because they [01:19:31 - 01:19:41] both are about uh different forms of grounding one grounds in eternal demonstrable principles [01:19:41 - 01:19:51] mathematics and the other uh dissipates amnesia it's a very weird thing that somebody can't tell [01:19:51 - 01:20:00] you isn't quite clear on whether event x happened in the 13th of the 16th century i mean after all [01:20:00 - 01:20:09] 13th 16th 19th how would you like to be uh you know so imprecisely perceived in somebody's mind [01:20:09 - 01:20:17] that they couldn't get within 300 years of where you lived and died uh so the lack of a sense of [01:20:17 - 01:20:27] history makes us really prey to manipulation that's why i i am cynical enough to believe that [01:20:27 - 01:20:33] the de-emphasizing of history that's gone on in american education over the past 30 years is [01:20:33 - 01:20:42] almost the equivalent of a plot the notion you know even as recently as when i graduated from [01:20:42 - 01:20:49] the university and it took me 12 years so i didn't graduate until 75 but the idea was that [01:20:49 - 01:20:59] if you went to a university you emerged a liberal gentle person in well informed on the accomplishments [01:20:59 - 01:21:06] of your culture its history its aspirations its ways of governing itself its ways of resolving [01:21:06 - 01:21:13] conflict and so on now i think people emerge these things have become gigantic trade schools [01:21:13 - 01:21:20] and you are not you are expected to learn to do a job and when not doing your job [01:21:20 - 01:21:30] malls have been provided for you to shop in and tell 240 channels of garbage have been [01:21:30 - 01:21:39] piped into your home for you to keep up on what it is that is all quran to go out and buy and this [01:21:40 - 01:21:49] creation of this historyless uh mindless consumerist person at the expense of the [01:21:49 - 01:21:57] democratic of the ideal of the democratically informed citizen is going to wreck great havoc [01:21:57 - 01:22:08] in our society people often compliment me on you know the my enchanting command of these various [01:22:08 - 01:22:15] subjects and so forth and so on and i'm amazed because what's being sold to you here tonight [01:22:15 - 01:22:21] ladies and gentlemen is nothing more than the fruits of a liberal college education you know [01:22:21 - 01:22:30] you go to college you learn about narcissism platonic philosophy or you once did but no more [01:22:30 - 01:22:36] apparently so it can be sold as the most far out fringy thing in the new age [01:22:36 - 01:22:47] this is this is his this is amnesia on on quite a scale so uh and the other thing i would say [01:22:47 - 01:22:58] in answer to your question about education is uh is uh separating physical culture from competition [01:22:59 - 01:23:09] that the notion of physical culture and by that i mean gym class and competition is one of the i [01:23:09 - 01:23:16] mean i i now i feel the bile rising this is uh we're talking serious here now but saving people [01:23:16 - 01:23:27] from the grief of p.e is i think a major way to heal the culture when when we were living in hawaii [01:23:28 - 01:23:37] uh kath asked our son how did he think of himself and he said he thought of himself as an artist and [01:23:37 - 01:23:44] an athlete and i thought that this was just an amazing breakthrough because i thought of myself [01:23:44 - 01:23:56] as uh uh you know a sort of 95 pound weakling and the notion that my son could be physically [01:23:56 - 01:24:03] just like i was at his age and yet conceive of himself as an athlete and have this balanced view [01:24:03 - 01:24:14] of our athlete junior scientist and so forth meant we must be doing something right and what it is [01:24:14 - 01:24:21] is stressing physical culture being in the ocean hiking running skateboarding biking all these [01:24:21 - 01:24:29] things without the notion of males crashing against each other for the purposes of racking [01:24:29 - 01:24:37] up points with females and elders to lay the groundwork for the whole imposition of the alpha [01:24:37 - 01:24:46] male primate hierarchy that makes society such a mess so that's that for education [01:24:47 - 01:24:52] maybe one more question if there is one yes you mentioned the question [01:24:52 - 01:25:04] i think i must have mentioned ayahuasca well i'll briefly mention it again if any of you [01:25:04 - 01:25:10] are interested in ayahuasca the standard reference work is that's in print is called [01:25:10 - 01:25:16] hallucinogens and shamanism edited by michael karner there are i think about three articles [01:25:16 - 01:25:26] in there on ayahuasca ayahuasca is a combinatorial preparation of beverage made by boiling down the [01:25:26 - 01:25:34] bark of a jungle liana which contains harming and other monoaminoxidase inhibiting compounds [01:25:34 - 01:25:45] and adding uh the dmt which occurs in the psychotria viridis a plant related to coffee [01:25:46 - 01:25:55] and and it's generally by the people there viewed as a tonic purgative something which keeps the [01:25:55 - 01:26:04] society in equilibrium also been written about by marlene dotton de rios and others and i understand [01:26:04 - 01:26:16] there are uh there are therapists in the bay area working very quietly to create an awareness of its [01:26:16 - 01:26:25] potential impact on psychotherapy which we can personally uh attest that it has a great potential [01:26:25 - 01:26:34] we saw uh physical symptoms relieved in the amazon we saw uh neurotic behavior uh [01:26:34 - 01:26:45] neurotic behavior patterns dissolve and it's just one of many shamanic uh [01:26:45 - 01:26:54] devices plant hallucinogens that have not been studied by medical science and will not be [01:26:54 - 01:27:02] studied as long as the current hysteria about psychedelic drug research represses the scientific [01:27:02 - 01:27:10] community from having anything to do with these things nevertheless you know it's uh it's history [01:27:10 - 01:27:19] as a curing agent among these tribes goes back uh to at least pre-conquest times and it has a [01:27:19 - 01:27:28] reputation for inducing states of group mindedness which approach the level of being uh almost uh [01:27:28 - 01:27:38] telepathic so it's being used in the amazon to regulate social processes as well as the health [01:27:38 - 01:27:45] of individuals so it's very very interesting in the way that it seems to be a kind of pristine [01:27:45 - 01:27:54] model of the many ways that a psychedelic compound can have a a healing effect in a society [01:27:54 - 01:28:03] well i think that's about it for this evening it's 10 30 thanks i want to thank you all very much [01:28:03 - 01:28:13] it's good to be back [01:28:13 - 01:28:16] (train clattering) [01:28:16 - 01:28:26] [BLANK_AUDIO]