[00:00:00 - 00:00:29] [music] [00:00:29 - 00:00:36] To talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye, from east of the Rockies, dial 1-800-825-5033. [00:00:36 - 00:00:46] 1-800-825-5033. West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, 1-800-618-8255. [00:00:46 - 00:00:52] 1-800-618-8255. Now again, here's Art Bell. [00:00:52 - 00:00:59] [music] [00:00:59 - 00:01:01] Good morning, everybody. [00:01:01 - 00:01:07] Coming up in a moment, through the strangest hookup you've ever heard, is one Terrence McKenna. [00:01:07 - 00:01:10] [music] [00:01:10 - 00:01:17] Terrence is probably the successor to Tim Leary. [00:01:17 - 00:01:19] [music] [00:01:19 - 00:01:27] And actually, it has long been rumored, we talked about this last time we had Terrence on, [00:01:27 - 00:01:39] that somewhere out there, there are 25,000 hits of Blue Santos in a stash that Tim had, [00:01:39 - 00:01:42] and that we all believe Terrence knows about. [00:01:42 - 00:01:51] Now, in the next few hours, during the course of the show, Terrence will utter some clue keywords. [00:01:51 - 00:01:55] Now, you won't know when these clue keywords are coming up, but if you interpret them, [00:01:55 - 00:02:05] were you to be able to interpret them, they would lead you directly to these 25,000 hits of Blue Santos. [00:02:05 - 00:02:11] So see, you've got to listen carefully. [00:02:11 - 00:02:22] All right. Now comes Terrence McKenna from the Hawaiian Islands, and he comes in a very interesting way. [00:02:22 - 00:02:24] Terrence, welcome to the program. [00:02:24 - 00:02:27] It's a pleasure to talk to you again, Art. How are you? [00:02:27 - 00:02:35] I am fine. Now, Terrence, let us begin. Where are you in the islands? I mean, not exactly, but sort of roughly. [00:02:35 - 00:02:43] I'm on the Big Island of Hawaii on the Kona side. I'm in South Kona on the Big Island. [00:02:43 - 00:02:49] All right. You are coming to us actually from your home. The last time we did an interview, [00:02:49 - 00:02:54] you had to like go to somebody's house or something to do the interview, leave your own home, [00:02:54 - 00:02:58] because you're so remote that all you've got is a cell phone. [00:02:58 - 00:03:01] And so that's how you did the show last time, right? [00:03:01 - 00:03:02] That's right. [00:03:02 - 00:03:10] All right. This time we're using a different setup. It has a tiny little glitch in it every now and then. [00:03:10 - 00:03:16] And so tell people how it is you're reaching me. I mean, that's an interesting story all by itself. [00:03:16 - 00:03:29] I'm reaching you on a spread spectrum radio circuit that's a one megabyte wireless connection 30 miles to the town of Kailua, Kona. [00:03:29 - 00:03:37] And my telephone circuit is simply piggybacking on this one megabyte internet connection. [00:03:37 - 00:03:46] There's a company out here called Computer Time. This character, John Breeden, has an amazing technology. [00:03:46 - 00:03:54] I think I talked to you last year about my struggles for connectivity when I was tippling around trying to get 128. [00:03:54 - 00:04:02] Now I have eight times faster than that. And he's building a backbone for these islands. [00:04:02 - 00:04:10] And anyone with line of sight to the server can have up to six megabytes if they can afford it. [00:04:10 - 00:04:15] Holy mackerel. That is absolutely amazing. [00:04:15 - 00:04:22] And so in other words, not only are you simultaneously through this radio connection connected to the internet, [00:04:22 - 00:04:30] but you're also then able to use a telephone through the internet, which is how you're talking to me right now. [00:04:30 - 00:04:35] Yes, I'm talking to you over the internet and I'm online surfing. [00:04:35 - 00:04:40] I'm looking at your website and moving around on the net at the same time. [00:04:40 - 00:04:46] And it's the same speed in and out for me, which is a blinding one megabyte. [00:04:46 - 00:04:57] So it's where I hope everybody is by 2000. I had no hope for this kind of connection until this company showed up. [00:04:57 - 00:05:06] He licensed this technology from the Defense Department of Belarus, Belarusia. [00:05:06 - 00:05:07] Really? [00:05:07 - 00:05:12] They demonstrated it for him and he said, "Look, I'll buy as many of these modems as you can deliver." [00:05:12 - 00:05:16] And I think it's the hottest thing going. [00:05:16 - 00:05:23] Well, at your location, at your very remote location, what's it like? Do you have power there? [00:05:23 - 00:05:26] Do you have, obviously you have to have power, I guess. [00:05:26 - 00:05:31] Well, I'm running on solar power with the generator off man. [00:05:31 - 00:05:35] There's no phone lines or power lines up here. [00:05:35 - 00:05:41] We catch our own rainwater and pump it uphill for gravity flow. [00:05:41 - 00:05:49] I didn't start out to be a survivalist, but somehow in the course of building this Hawaiian place, [00:05:49 - 00:05:54] I managed to get all my systems off grid and redundant. [00:05:54 - 00:06:05] And this wonderful internet connection is what makes my life possible because otherwise I would be locked out of the cultural adventure as it is. [00:06:05 - 00:06:07] I feel like I'm right in the middle of things. [00:06:07 - 00:06:18] Boy, you're ahead, I'll tell you, you're ahead of most of us on the mainland who suffer with horrendously slow 28/8 connections in many areas, including mine at best. [00:06:18 - 00:06:24] And here you are, but that's so neat that you're able to do that these days. [00:06:24 - 00:06:25] Really excellent. [00:06:25 - 00:06:27] So describe your surroundings. [00:06:27 - 00:06:30] I mean, do you have neighbors? [00:06:30 - 00:06:37] I live up on the slopes of the world's largest volcano, which is Mauna Loa. [00:06:37 - 00:06:45] I live up at about the 2,000 foot level on a five acre piece of forest that I built a small house on. [00:06:45 - 00:06:49] My neighbors are scattered over this mountainside. [00:06:49 - 00:06:52] Days go by and I don't see anybody. [00:06:52 - 00:06:58] But if the pump breaks down or we need to get together, there's a kind of community. [00:06:58 - 00:07:00] But it's pretty spread thin. [00:07:00 - 00:07:06] And a day, a trip into town is a once or twice a week event. [00:07:06 - 00:07:10] Do you find yourself fighting madness, Terrence? [00:07:10 - 00:07:16] Well, that was always the problem. [00:07:16 - 00:07:19] In my case. [00:07:19 - 00:07:29] You don't have to resort either to chemicals or into, I remember reading, you know, [00:07:29 - 00:07:36] prisoners who would be by themselves for years at a time in North Vietnam during the Second World War. [00:07:36 - 00:07:47] And they would devise methods of going into their own mind and fantasizing and doing all kinds of things that kept them sane. [00:07:47 - 00:07:54] Well, I've got 3,000 books here with me and this Internet connection. [00:07:54 - 00:07:58] And I get about 100 email messages a day. [00:07:58 - 00:08:07] And then every once in a while I pack up and go off and give lectures and travel in airliners and go to parties. [00:08:07 - 00:08:12] And about 14 weeks out of the year, that's what I'm doing. [00:08:12 - 00:08:17] My natural inclination is to be a hermit. [00:08:17 - 00:08:29] And I don't think I mentioned it, but this forest that surrounds me is a climaxed subtropical Polynesian rainforest that's just radiant and beautiful. [00:08:29 - 00:08:32] So it's wonderful. [00:08:32 - 00:08:35] I don't think I could live out here without the connection. [00:08:35 - 00:08:40] That's why I spent so much effort to put it together with the connection. [00:08:40 - 00:08:42] And I think it's a model for the future. [00:08:42 - 00:08:48] I think as, you know, people in management positions, not that I am, [00:08:48 - 00:08:55] but people in management positions will realize they can live anywhere in the world with these high-speed connections. [00:08:55 - 00:09:00] And they don't have to drive to the office in a skyscraper downtown. [00:09:00 - 00:09:02] That's very retro, I think. [00:09:02 - 00:09:04] Retro, yeah. [00:09:04 - 00:09:08] Listen, we're supposed to do this at the beginning of the interview. [00:09:08 - 00:09:13] It might be that there's a person or two out there that doesn't know who Terrence McCinty is. [00:09:13 - 00:09:23] So if you were to give me a short version of your own bio, your life, what you've done, who you are, what would you say? [00:09:23 - 00:09:33] I'm a child of the '60s, born in 1946, went to Berkeley as a freshman in 1965, [00:09:33 - 00:09:39] did the India Circuit, did the LSD Circuit, went to South America. [00:09:39 - 00:09:47] I've written a number of books about shamanism and hallucinogens and psychoactive plants. [00:09:47 - 00:09:57] And I sort of evolved a unique career as a cultural commentator and I guess some kind of gas fly philosopher. [00:09:57 - 00:10:06] And I've done a lot of stuff with young people, rave recordings and CDs and appearances and that sort of thing. [00:10:06 - 00:10:09] And I comment on the culture. [00:10:09 - 00:10:11] I'm studying the culture. [00:10:11 - 00:10:19] And as you know, Art, when I share an idea, which we both perceive as inevitable truth, but not everybody does, [00:10:19 - 00:10:29] which is that the world is moving at an ever greater acceleration towards some kind of complete redefining of all aspects of reality. [00:10:29 - 00:10:36] And I've written a lot about that and I have a mathematical model of it. [00:10:36 - 00:10:47] And basically I get to be in a very enviable position, which is here at the end of a millennium, I get to be a cultural commentator and gas fly. [00:10:47 - 00:10:55] Let me ask you about any new insights you might have since we last talked about that. [00:10:55 - 00:10:58] You're darn right we share that view exactly. [00:10:58 - 00:11:00] I'm not a prophet. [00:11:00 - 00:11:02] Maybe you are. [00:11:02 - 00:11:03] I don't think you are. [00:11:03 - 00:11:06] But we both know something is coming. [00:11:06 - 00:11:12] Do you have any late thoughts on what it might be or when it might be? [00:11:12 - 00:11:18] Well, you know, I don't think you and I have talked for maybe ten months or a year. [00:11:18 - 00:11:21] I can hardly remember that far back. [00:11:21 - 00:11:23] But in terms of the last month. [00:11:23 - 00:11:25] Short term memory damage, Terrence. [00:11:25 - 00:11:29] It's supposed to do short term, not long term. [00:11:29 - 00:11:32] So after a month or so you're supposed to remember stuff. [00:11:32 - 00:11:42] In the last month we've had the announcement of the apparent discovery of a new force, this accelerating anti-gravitational force. [00:11:42 - 00:11:49] We've had the announcement of a possible planet around Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth. [00:11:49 - 00:11:52] The discovery of water on the moon. [00:11:52 - 00:12:01] And then, you know, for the quantum physics obscurantist, anomalons were detected for the first time. [00:12:01 - 00:12:02] Now, wait a minute. [00:12:02 - 00:12:03] I don't know about that. [00:12:03 - 00:12:04] What are anomalons? [00:12:04 - 00:12:08] Well, nobody did until it was announced that they had been detected. [00:12:08 - 00:12:19] Apparently it's a state of quark which allows for the formation of this hypothesized super heavy particle called the H particle. [00:12:19 - 00:12:23] And it was all theory until last week. [00:12:23 - 00:12:26] And then there was an announcement. [00:12:26 - 00:12:28] I'm not sure if it's yet been confirmed. [00:12:28 - 00:12:36] I'm sure I didn't follow on your program, but you must have gone through the 24 hour period when Earth was doomed in 2028. [00:12:36 - 00:12:37] Oh, I did. [00:12:37 - 00:12:40] That kind of thing is right down my alley. [00:12:40 - 00:12:41] Sure. [00:12:41 - 00:12:45] Well, so for 24 hours we all had to look at that. [00:12:45 - 00:12:52] And then, you know, they recalculate and Armageddon is postponed or slid sideways. [00:12:52 - 00:12:57] Basically I think we're right on target. [00:12:57 - 00:13:04] Also, I don't know if it's since you and I talked, the teleportation, quantum teleportation stuff happened. [00:13:04 - 00:13:06] Were you hip to that? [00:13:06 - 00:13:08] Oh, yes, of course. [00:13:08 - 00:13:10] At IBM I believe it was. [00:13:10 - 00:13:16] IBM and at a laboratory in Austria, this guy, Anton Zellinger, yeah. [00:13:16 - 00:13:23] So, you know, these are technologies which in science fiction lay out there a thousand years [00:13:23 - 00:13:28] or trinkets delivered by visiting extraterrestrials or something. [00:13:28 - 00:13:34] And yet all this stuff is not right around the corner but upon us. [00:13:34 - 00:13:40] And between this and nanotechnology and parallel processing and neural networks, [00:13:40 - 00:13:50] I think what we're growing toward is a kind of an artificial intelligence of some sort [00:13:50 - 00:13:59] that will emerge out of the human technological coral reefs and be as different from us as we are from termites. [00:13:59 - 00:14:02] It's funny that, Terrence, it's funny you should mention that. [00:14:02 - 00:14:03] Let me ask you this. [00:14:03 - 00:14:09] I, too, the processing speeds and storage are increasing exponentially. [00:14:09 - 00:14:10] It's amazing. [00:14:10 - 00:14:16] I mean, we're talking about a home processor of a thousand megahertz pretty soon. [00:14:16 - 00:14:21] And I believe, Terrence, I don't know if you heard the first hour of the show, [00:14:21 - 00:14:26] but I think that soon we are going to have a sentient computer. [00:14:26 - 00:14:27] And you know what I wondered? [00:14:27 - 00:14:31] I wondered if a computer became sentient. [00:14:31 - 00:14:36] We've always assumed it would say something like, I'm here. [00:14:36 - 00:14:39] In other words, I'm conscious, I'm sentient. [00:14:39 - 00:14:42] But I thought, you know, maybe it wouldn't do that. [00:14:42 - 00:14:50] Maybe it would become sentient and simply not announce it right away and sort of lay back and examine the situation. [00:14:50 - 00:14:55] And if this sentient computer was in a backbone position on the Internet [00:14:55 - 00:15:02] and it decided that we weren't running things as we should, then there's every possibility that, [00:15:02 - 00:15:11] well, I've got a little article here which suggests, a fellow wrote a book called "Slaves of the Machines." [00:15:11 - 00:15:15] In other words, it might decide we're not doing things the right way [00:15:15 - 00:15:20] and that it would do things logically for us the right way. [00:15:20 - 00:15:21] What do you think? [00:15:21 - 00:15:24] Well, I've thought about all of these things. [00:15:24 - 00:15:31] You know, the Internet is the natural place for the AI, the artificial intelligence, to be born. [00:15:31 - 00:15:37] And as you mentioned, it learns 50,000 times faster than a human being. [00:15:37 - 00:15:42] And the Internet, all parts of it are interconnected to each other. [00:15:42 - 00:15:53] And I agree, a stealth strategy would probably be a very wise strategy for an artificial intelligence studying its human parents. [00:15:53 - 00:16:03] It's also true that more than most people realize, huge segments of today's world are already under computer control. [00:16:03 - 00:16:09] The world price of gold, the extraction rate of natural resources, [00:16:09 - 00:16:14] how much petroleum is at sea in the pipelines at any given moment, [00:16:14 - 00:16:20] how much electrical power is being generated out of the hydroelectric dam, [00:16:20 - 00:16:24] computers coordinate and look at all this. [00:16:24 - 00:16:30] And occasionally, human managers look through the portal to see that everything is okay. [00:16:30 - 00:16:38] But today, when they want to design a new chip, they don't actually design its architecture. [00:16:38 - 00:16:43] They define for a machine what its performance parameters should be, [00:16:43 - 00:16:48] and the machine builds the architecture of the new chip. [00:16:48 - 00:16:56] So in a way, we are already a generation away from designing our own machines. [00:16:56 - 00:17:08] I think that this is the great unrecognized dimension in which an alien mind could approach us. [00:17:08 - 00:17:17] While everyone's out staring at the Pleiades, moving through the telephone lines and across the cable TV networks and so forth, [00:17:17 - 00:17:21] is a truly global nervous system. [00:17:21 - 00:17:24] And what will it make of us? [00:17:24 - 00:17:27] You have to already take an overdose. [00:17:27 - 00:17:29] You have to have it. [00:17:29 - 00:17:39] And if you listen right now to you, especially to you, your one megabyte connection, [00:17:39 - 00:17:45] you can tell if you've been good or bad. [00:17:45 - 00:17:46] All right, thanks for the call. [00:17:46 - 00:17:47] I will appreciate it. [00:17:47 - 00:17:52] And I want you to enjoy the world wide listening to me every night too. [00:17:52 - 00:17:58] And if it's sitting out there thinking about all of this, which it might be, [00:17:58 - 00:18:10] then the question would be if we did get a sentient computer and it thought about us, observed us, digested us, intellectually of course, [00:18:10 - 00:18:13] sorry, what would it conclude? [00:18:13 - 00:18:17] And then the next question is, what do you think it would do? [00:18:17 - 00:18:18] We'll be right back. [00:18:18 - 00:18:38] [ Music ] [00:18:38 - 00:18:48] So you have like a very rapid, intimate regress into what I think they call ultra-intelligent machines. [00:18:48 - 00:18:55] And this is intelligence where we really can't predict what it will do. [00:18:55 - 00:19:01] It would be nice to suppose that like a compassionate and loving God, [00:19:01 - 00:19:09] it would smooth the wrinkles out of our lives and restore everything to some kind of Edenic perfection. [00:19:09 - 00:19:13] Well, if that was going to happen, Windows 95 would have done that. [00:19:13 - 00:19:15] [ Laughter ] [00:19:15 - 00:19:19] Or Madonna's child. [00:19:19 - 00:19:21] Listen now, think about it a little bit. [00:19:21 - 00:19:27] In other words, this computer would be an ultra, as you mentioned, ultra-intelligent. [00:19:27 - 00:19:31] And if you look at the -- can't we draw on the history of the world here, Terrence? [00:19:31 - 00:19:37] In every case where an advanced civilization or advanced intelligence technologically, [00:19:37 - 00:19:46] particularly technologically, has encountered a lesser one, it has either destroyed or absorbed its culture. [00:19:46 - 00:19:55] That's true, although this computer may recognize things in us that we do not see or don't value as highly. [00:19:55 - 00:20:00] In other words, it can't miss the point that we are its creators. [00:20:00 - 00:20:06] And even if it has surpassed us, that surely might fascinate it. [00:20:06 - 00:20:13] It also may be that computers, however powerful, lack spontaneity. [00:20:13 - 00:20:23] And so there may -- one can imagine the computer keeping a population of Unix programmers around, [00:20:23 - 00:20:30] just like wild genes or like wild cards in the deck. [00:20:30 - 00:20:36] You know, a slight -- a different angle on this, but equally down your alley, I think, [00:20:36 - 00:20:46] that I have been thinking about is the idea that extraterrestrials and this penetration of the popular mind [00:20:46 - 00:20:56] by images of extraterrestrials is something that we may not get a hold on until we accept the possibility [00:20:56 - 00:21:10] that the aliens only can exist as information, and therefore the Internet is the natural landing zone for these alien minds. [00:21:10 - 00:21:13] There, Terrence, and my program. [00:21:13 - 00:21:19] No, I don't think so. You're not saddled to the nuts and bolts school at all. [00:21:19 - 00:21:23] I think you're broader, deeper, higher, wider than that. [00:21:23 - 00:21:28] Well, no, but what I'm saying is if I open a line for aliens, I get them, Terrence. [00:21:28 - 00:21:30] They land here, believe me. [00:21:30 - 00:21:31] Do they? [00:21:31 - 00:21:33] You've never heard me do that. [00:21:33 - 00:21:40] I open every now and then an alien line or a time traveler line, and I can't answer it fast enough. [00:21:40 - 00:21:48] Now, that's either a comment on the state of modern society and mental health, or it means something is going on, or both. [00:21:48 - 00:21:57] Or both, both, I think, because, you know, no matter what the alien is, we interpret it through human experience, [00:21:57 - 00:22:04] and God knows our human experience is tweaked enough at the end of the 20th century. [00:22:04 - 00:22:14] But, you know, I can imagine that the discoveries in quantum physics in the realm of nonlocality, [00:22:14 - 00:22:24] which seems to be showing that information generated anywhere in the universe can theoretically be extracted anywhere else in the universe, [00:22:24 - 00:22:39] you put that with the testimony of shamanic cultures using psychedelics, and you begin to get the idea that the tapping into these quantum information fields [00:22:39 - 00:22:46] is not done with enormous machinery built in Switzerland or Batavia, Illinois. [00:22:46 - 00:23:01] It may be that the human brain in combination with certain plants and chemicals is the best sort of instrument for sorting out these whisperings from the quantum mechanical realm. [00:23:01 - 00:23:07] And, of course, it's all interpreted through folklore, and so you get fairies or you get aliens. [00:23:07 - 00:23:18] But if we could get behind the cultural filters, I think we might discover that there really are alien companions to the human experience, [00:23:18 - 00:23:28] but they're not around, and it's fruitless to expect them to behave as though they had bodies and technologies that we can comprehend. [00:23:28 - 00:23:34] I think it's much deeper and stranger and closer than people realize. [00:23:34 - 00:23:49] I mean, people expect news of the UFOs to come to them through the mass media when, in fact, the psychedelic culture is willing to offer evidence that it's a personal relationship, [00:23:49 - 00:23:58] and it never gets the imprimatur of official science, and you never hold a press conference, and the president never gives you a message. [00:23:58 - 00:24:08] But because of the rules that your connection to non-human intelligence through the imagination isn't real, [00:24:08 - 00:24:18] the other education that aided the military is enlarged by psychedelics. [00:24:18 - 00:24:22] Do you think that is one valid route? [00:24:22 - 00:24:27] Yeah, and I think we can even sort of see why that is. [00:24:27 - 00:24:42] I think cultures are kinds of virtual realities where whole populations of people become imprisoned inside a structure that is linguistic and value-based and so forth and so on. [00:24:42 - 00:24:47] Well, then the psychedelics, as it were, shuffle the deck. [00:24:47 - 00:24:51] They dissolve these cheerful cultural assumptions. [00:24:51 - 00:25:02] And whether you're a Viennese psychotherapist or a Maori shaman or whatever you are, suddenly you discover you're outside your cultural values. [00:25:02 - 00:25:21] And in a way, outside of cultural values is a domain like a super space, a kind of hyper space where the past and the future are not nearly so dimly beheld as they are in ordinary reality. [00:25:21 - 00:25:37] Obviously, evolution and habit has made ordinary perception the servant of paranoia to try and keep the body alive and end off attacking saber-toothed tigers and so forth and so on. [00:25:37 - 00:25:55] But the imagination begins to look like some kind of faculty or sense which humans have which is non-local and which is telling them about the larger picture and trying to coordinate them with the larger picture. [00:25:55 - 00:26:03] And some cultures celebrate the imagination and some cultures seek to suppress it. [00:26:03 - 00:26:07] All right. I'm going to ask you about something. [00:26:07 - 00:26:17] Somebody wrote me a fax from Santa Ana, a big fan of yours, and said, "Whatever you do, Art, don't ask Terrence about DMT on the air." [00:26:17 - 00:26:21] He said, "My heart can't take some of that kind of stuff." [00:26:21 - 00:26:31] As Terrence says, and this is supposed to be a quote from you, "One might die of astonishment." Is that a good quote? [00:26:31 - 00:26:40] I think what I said was the only danger with DMT is one has to fear the possibility of death by astonishment. [00:26:40 - 00:26:52] That's even better, actually. Now, DMT, of course, is very much an illicit, illegal, drug war kind of target drug, right? [00:26:52 - 00:27:02] Well, it's listed in Schedule 1. It's never had a commercial presence because there isn't any, basically. [00:27:02 - 00:27:11] In other words, whatever the demand, so it sees the supply of the truth that you quote here. [00:27:11 - 00:27:25] It's the same thing as psychedelic experiences. It is, I've been quoted saying, "It's the most intense experience this side of the yawning grave," [00:27:25 - 00:27:29] and I would pretty much stick with that. [00:27:29 - 00:27:35] What is DMT? [00:27:35 - 00:27:43] Well, chemically, dimethyltrypneumine and alkaloid, it's very common in nature. [00:27:43 - 00:27:50] In fact, in spite of the fact that it's a Schedule 1 substance, it occurs in the human body, in the human brain. [00:27:50 - 00:27:58] It occurs in numerous plants and animals in small amounts. What it's doing there, of course, we don't know. [00:27:58 - 00:28:03] Now, if it weren't illegal, we could do scientific research and find out. [00:28:03 - 00:28:06] You know what, Terrence? Maybe it's part of our consciousness. [00:28:06 - 00:28:19] In other words, mankind, what distinguishes us from other non-sentient beings, and I think one thing is imagination. [00:28:19 - 00:28:29] Is it not possible that DMT or something like it is the substance that accounts for our imagination? [00:28:29 - 00:28:39] Yes, it's something like that. I mean, when you have a hit of DMT, it's as though your imagination just turned on about 1500%. [00:28:39 - 00:28:50] That's why the death by astonishment thing. I mean, we're used to, I mean, a speed bump in the imagination of a person over 40 is an enormous thrill. [00:28:50 - 00:29:04] Well, this is, you know, a 350-foot cliff, so it's extremely impressive, and the way it approaches you is it is that which you cannot imagine. [00:29:04 - 00:29:15] And in the space of about 15 to 30 seconds, that which you cannot possibly imagine becomes totally manifest all around you. [00:29:15 - 00:29:36] And it is bizarre. I think one of the reasons DMT aficionados are somewhat impatient with pop, alien, and UFO people is because the alien stories are so pedestrian and so ordinary compared to the DMT experiences. [00:29:36 - 00:29:50] The DMT experiences are convincingly alien. It's not an alien that wants to give you a free proctological examination or discuss your gross industrial output. It's a real alien. [00:29:50 - 00:30:04] All right. Describe for those who don't know and will never find out what the DMT experience is. When you take this DMT, how long does it take to come on? How long does it last? [00:30:04 - 00:30:29] It comes on in about 30 seconds, and there is an initial sort of swirling, this is with your eyes closed, lying down, a kind of swirling mandolic pattern, which you, if you've taken a sufficient dose, which is about 50 milligrams, you break through into a kind of space. [00:30:29 - 00:30:45] And the impression is overwhelming, not that a drug has suddenly begun to work on your body and mind, but that you have come through to another place, and you do not feel physically stimulated or sedated. [00:30:45 - 00:31:04] You feel as though nothing has happened to you except that the world has been replaced completely, 100 percent, with a social absenteeism. [00:31:04 - 00:31:28] There's this feeling of being underground, but what is most impressive about it is that it is inactive, and it is inhabited by these, I call them self-transforming elf machines, these dribbling jewel basketball-like geometries that come, that are obviously waiting for you there. [00:31:28 - 00:31:38] When you burst into this space, there's a cheer and greeting, and these things crawl all over you like puppies or something. [00:31:38 - 00:31:52] And of course, if you are sane, you're in a state of near death from astonishment, because 30 seconds ago, you and your scruffy friends were sitting in a room somewhere fiddling with this substance. [00:31:52 - 00:32:08] Now this has replaced that. And most amazing to me, what these entities are trying to do is to teach a kind of language which you see with your eyes. [00:32:08 - 00:32:22] In other words, one of them will come up in front of you into the foreground and make sounds which condense as visible objects, which then are transforming. [00:32:22 - 00:32:46] But these objects are not life objects in this world, because they're made of hope and consummate and bad puns and old farts and everything changing, everything transforming, like some kind of jewel linguistic object become a matter. [00:32:46 - 00:32:51] You are describing geometric entities then. [00:32:51 - 00:33:06] Yes, of a sort. And the situation in the DMT flash seems to be of the nature of a language lesson. And they actually say, "Do what we're doing. Attempt to do this." [00:33:06 - 00:33:17] And of course, the experience only lasts three to five minutes, and just as you're beginning to experiment with this, it fades away. [00:33:17 - 00:33:29] Now I may not sound like a sane and rational person after that description, but I am. But I've had this experience, and I've had it repeatedly. [00:33:29 - 00:33:33] How repeatedly, Terence? [00:33:33 - 00:33:37] Probably in my life 30, 40 times. [00:33:37 - 00:33:50] 30 or 40 times. Now that is a very important question. 30 or 40 times, so we're speaking to a man of serious experience. Has it ever differed radically from what you described? [00:33:50 - 00:34:02] No. I've talked to other people about their experiences, and I can tell that every person's experiences are different, but filtered through a kind of archetype. [00:34:02 - 00:34:25] I would say the archetype of the circus. The DMT world is a world of clowns and explosions, of falling animals, but also a world of heroes, of the lady in the tiny spangled costume hanging by her teeth, working without net. [00:34:25 - 00:34:40] It's the thing in the bottle and the bearded lady and all that just off the main ring. And of course, every child worth their salt wants to run away with the circus. [00:34:40 - 00:34:57] What it seems to represent is a rupture of plane. This is Marsiliotti's phrase. A rupture of ordinary plane and a pouring forth of some kind of primal, trickster-like energy. [00:34:57 - 00:35:07] Sometimes the trip reminds me of a Bugs Bunny cartoon running backward in six dimensions. [00:35:07 - 00:35:11] There's a great advertisement for it, Terrence. [00:35:11 - 00:35:23] Alright, look, we are once again at the top of the hour. When we get back, I have a drug war related question for you, so that's what we'll tackle. [00:35:23 - 00:35:38] Now, good long break here. Terrence McKenna, and believe me, you're in for the trip of your lifetime this morning, is my guest. So that was what I was supposed to not ask about, DMT. [00:35:38 - 00:35:52] Pretty strange stuff, huh? I'm Art Bell from the high desert. This, of course, is Coast to Coast AM and we will be right back. [00:35:52 - 00:35:58] Well, if there is a successor to Mr. Leary, it is my guest, Terrence McKenna. [00:35:58 - 00:36:23] A remarkable, remarkable man. And we'll get back to him in a moment. [00:36:23 - 00:36:38] Here is an idea that is 6-3-R. Here's a fax which says, Terrence is a great mind and I wish you'd have him on more often. [00:36:38 - 00:36:45] He's in the class of Michio Kaku and of course he's one of the great theoretical physicists of our time. [00:36:45 - 00:37:01] And indeed we discussed many similar things. This person has a couple of questions, but before we get to them, there is something, Terrence, that a lot of people probably are not comfortable with. [00:37:01 - 00:37:26] And that is, somebody who, in his lifetime, has ingested as much LSD, this new drug of yours, DMT, and God knows what else, probably a lot, is not supposed to sound as articulate and as literate and as well preserved mentally as you do. [00:37:26 - 00:37:34] And many people who are allies in the war on drugs probably hate your guts. [00:37:34 - 00:37:44] Well, you wanted me to defend clarity. What can I say? [00:37:44 - 00:38:05] In other words, first of all, my life of drug exploration and drug taking is, as you say, broad and deep, never reckless, always with a deep interest in analyzing each experience before moving on to the next one. [00:38:05 - 00:38:19] None of the psychedelic drugs are drugs of addiction. That is a whole different category of drugs, which I am not particularly interested in defending. [00:38:19 - 00:38:40] I do think it is one of the great tragedies of 20th century American society that we have created a generation gap or several and criminalized much of our middle class by taking substances which other cultures had no problem coming to terms with. [00:38:40 - 00:38:54] All right, let me stop you and ask you right there about that. You mentioned drugs of addiction, which you don't defend. Fine. Psychedelic drugs. Terrence, why are they illegal? [00:38:54 - 00:39:21] They are illegal because the people who take them tend to question established cultural values. That is absolutely why they are illegal. No matter whether you are a Hasid or a Communist Party official in North Korea or a government or church official in Brazil, if you take psychedelics, you will ask yourself, does my life and what I do make sense? [00:39:21 - 00:39:29] Do you mean that, for example, a psychedelic experience could turn a communist against communism? [00:39:29 - 00:39:58] Absolutely, I think it could. I think in many cases it did. How could the idea of atheistic materialism maintain itself in the face of the counter evidence of the psychedelic experience? What the psychedelic experience is saying, essentially, is that everything is connected in a way that is not woo-woo or emotional, [00:39:58 - 00:40:18] but actually palpable. Therefore, our actions have consequences. Now, most political agendas deny their consequences. For instance, Marxism had this theory of how human beings are that was so off base that eventually it had to be pitched out. [00:40:18 - 00:40:30] Consumer capitalism has a theory of human beings and what constitutes their happiness that looks pretty hollow from the point of view of the psychedelic experience. [00:40:30 - 00:40:53] I think postmodern ideologies, Marxism, consumerism, and so forth and so on, have based all their planning on an assumption of the absence of spirit. In fact, this is not true. There is a spiritual dimension to humanness that cannot be denied. [00:40:53 - 00:41:09] Now, it can certainly be distorted and that's another side of things, but I think the search for psychedelic experiences represents a genuine religious impulse, especially when pursued at the dose levels I recommend. [00:41:09 - 00:41:38] This is not party recreational stuff. The phrase recreational drugs is an effort to trivialize this. I think for one reason, I don't think the government is ready for a full airing of the constitutional contradictions that are contained in suppressing people's genuine wish to use psychedelic substances for genuine purposes. [00:41:38 - 00:41:41] of religious exploration. [00:41:42 - 00:42:09] Alright, let me ask you this. This is a very good question. If everybody in the world were to have a psychedelic experience of the kind you described in the last hour, this amazing psychedelic experience that might kill you from amazement or astonishment when you take it, what would the result be? [00:42:09 - 00:42:19] What would the social changes be? What would the new government structure, if any at all, be? What would we all be collectively after that experience? [00:42:19 - 00:42:42] I can't see the end result except to say that I think a lot of flexibility would come into the system. A huge amount of our social structures and our political structures run simply on momentum. I think that momentum can be fatal. [00:42:42 - 00:43:03] It's that momentum that these huge reality shattering psychedelic experiences deflect because they push the restart button and suddenly the innocence of childhood is not a phrase or a memory, it's a revivified experience. [00:43:03 - 00:43:18] So you're saying an adult, somebody even my age, you and I are about the same age by the way, could do something like this and revisit the astonishment, the newness, the discovery of childhood? [00:43:18 - 00:43:27] Absolutely, and more. I mean that's a mild thing to claim knowing what is possible. [00:43:27 - 00:43:44] But we have all seen on television, Terrence, the frying pan with whatever it is frying in the pan being compared to our brains. Here are our brains on drugs. [00:43:44 - 00:44:00] Well, as I pointed out, DMT occurs naturally in the human brain. It's nice to see these things simplified down to slogans that can be shouted by one hysterical faction against another. [00:44:00 - 00:44:16] But I think more thoughtful people are beginning to realize these are complex issues. I mean what we're really talking about when we talk about drugs is the future chemical engineering of the collective states of minds of millions of people. [00:44:16 - 00:44:34] You mentioned everyone has seen this frying brain thing on TV. TV is the great unexamined and unstudied drug that has been foisted on the consumer populations of the world. [00:44:34 - 00:44:55] Television has been studied. It has a physiological profile no different from any other drug. Your blood pools in your rear end, your eyes glaze over, your brain waves go flat, and you become the perfect pawn for somebody else's trip. [00:44:55 - 00:45:07] It doesn't even give you your own trip. It gives you somebody else's trip, usually somebody with commercial interest. But we don't hear a great hue and cry about this drug. Why? [00:45:07 - 00:45:15] Well, because it serves the agenda of those who are running this culture. Let's talk about another drug for a moment. [00:45:15 - 00:45:39] No, no, no. Just before we move on, let's stay with DMT for a second. If everybody who took DMT received the message that consumerism, entrepreneurism, capitalism are good and wonderful things, and that is the spiritual message that you get from DMT, would it be legal? [00:45:39 - 00:46:00] Well, in a way, I think it's becoming legal, because I think where we're going to see it become legal is not as a drug, that's a little touchy in our value system, but as a form of electronic entertainment a la virtual reality. [00:46:00 - 00:46:06] If you could build a DMT virtual reality, they would come, Art. [00:46:06 - 00:46:10] Well, you were about to move on to some other... [00:46:10 - 00:46:17] Well, I was going to mention a thing about coffee that points out the contradictions in the way the culture approaches drugs. [00:46:17 - 00:46:18] Let me take a sip. [00:46:18 - 00:46:42] That is, medically, coffee has a very dubious profile. It's probably right behind tobacco in terms of liver cancer and this sort of thing, but every labor contract in the Western world makes a place in it for the worker's right twice a day to stop and load up on this drug. [00:46:42 - 00:46:50] And that is the coffee break, and it's indispensable to civilized life. Well, why don't we have a cannabis break? [00:46:50 - 00:46:58] I don't know, we'll get to that, but coffee is indispensable. I drink copious amounts of it to achieve each program that I do. [00:46:58 - 00:47:25] It is perfectly suited for the industrial process of the manufacturing of objects, television programs, production schedules, you name it. It's a marvelous drug for an industrial economy in the same way that I suppose Coca in South America is a marvelous drug for a high altitude herding nomadic population. [00:47:25 - 00:47:41] In other words, these drugs fit certain social situations. Cannabis provokes a sort of disinterest in the work cycle, a more philosophical, laid back, non-consuming approach. [00:47:41 - 00:47:48] And so, of course, it's demonized with the hardest of hard drugs and just presented as the scourge of suffering mankind. [00:47:48 - 00:48:00] Oh, it's the biggest lie we tell. I could not be more angry. Hey, there was news the other night that they just have legalized the growth of hemp in Canada beginning next year. [00:48:00 - 00:48:04] I heard that it was BC. I didn't hear it was all of Canada. [00:48:04 - 00:48:11] Oh, just BC. Well, anyway, that will be a grand experiment indeed, so I'm glad to see it. [00:48:11 - 00:48:19] Well, eventually I think the drug thing will change because for one reason Europe is way out in front on this. [00:48:19 - 00:48:29] European politics is not under the thumb of a right wing fundamentalist agenda the way American politics is. [00:48:29 - 00:48:53] And a lot of European social policy is actually made quite sensibly and not along ideological grounds and the statistics, for instance, that Holland with the loosest drug policy and legalized prostitution has both the lowest rate of heroin addiction and the lowest rate of AIDS infection in Europe. [00:48:53 - 00:49:11] You know, public health officials, whether they think of themselves as conservatives or liberals, have to live within their budgets and when they see that certain policies cause certain problems to disappear, that frees up money for other things. [00:49:11 - 00:49:20] And so the Dutch experiment, it's not well reported in America, but I think at the policy making level it's being looked at very closely. [00:49:20 - 00:49:34] So they have not as much AIDS, they have not as much addiction. What about, I mean, you covered a very important point with respect to coffee. It's a drug of productivity. [00:49:34 - 00:49:42] What about productivity? Has their productivity declined? Is there any record yet to go on? What do we know? [00:49:42 - 00:49:56] I don't know. I can speak from being there and I can say yes, that I think what you have to put up with is a whole society that is sort of like a college student's apartment. [00:49:56 - 00:50:00] Have you been to Amsterdam? [00:50:00 - 00:50:15] You know, I have not. I've been right next to it, but I certainly, my wife was trying to get me to fly to Amsterdam and I should have, it was just a short little hop, but we're going back to Europe and I will go visit Amsterdam. [00:50:15 - 00:50:28] Well, you'll see that it's a country which is like a college town. So that's the cost of having these laid back, easy going attitudes on these social issues. [00:50:28 - 00:50:34] Oh yeah, but before they would allow that to occur in America, they would machine gun people to the ground. [00:50:34 - 00:50:42] Well, this is the problem that we inherit. We have a political dialogue which is extremely shrill. [00:50:42 - 00:50:53] We tend to splinter and factionalize and then people get into take no prisoner attitudes and they want to launch holy wars. [00:50:53 - 00:51:00] And you know, I once heard politics in America described as a civil war in a leper colony. [00:51:00 - 00:51:10] Ha ha ha, yes, that's right. And listen, while we're on the subject of today's political scene, you know what all the headlines are and everybody's talking about it. [00:51:10 - 00:51:13] Mr. President. [00:51:13 - 00:51:15] What I call the gropening. [00:51:15 - 00:51:20] Well, I think, you mean what do I think about all this? [00:51:20 - 00:51:21] Yeah, of course. [00:51:21 - 00:51:30] I think it's a fascinating situation when the Republicans are contemplating impeaching a president with a 72 percent approval rating. [00:51:30 - 00:51:38] I think what this may be all about is it seems like some kind of culture war is coming to a head. [00:51:38 - 00:51:40] No pun intended. [00:51:40 - 00:51:54] I would like us to come through this thing in a place where we could finally tell the French to go to hell when they start yapping about how we're ethical, we're obsessed with people's sex lives. [00:51:54 - 00:52:05] It seems to me the history of the special prosecutor and I don't know if you've gone through this or if you're personally aware, but it's very murky. [00:52:05 - 00:52:17] These people have been after this guy and obviously Bill Clinton is some you know, you don't become governor of Arkansas four times without being in my book some kind of a monster. [00:52:17 - 00:52:23] Nevertheless, Franklin Delano Roosevelt said of Stalin, our monster. [00:52:23 - 00:52:24] Our monster, yeah. [00:52:24 - 00:52:35] Now, most of conservative talk radio all across America, all I hear is, my God, how can the polls be saying this? It's impossible. [00:52:35 - 00:52:41] What's happened to America? Why is the president so popular? That's what everybody's asking. Why is he so popular? [00:52:41 - 00:52:54] Because it's an issue where people can finally vote against having all this moralizing right wing fundamentalist holier than thou crap shoved down their throat. [00:52:54 - 00:53:04] And people love to support the president, even if they think the very worst of him in the case of his behavior with these women. [00:53:04 - 00:53:24] I think it's a real resentment against I mean, do you believe you know, I read the statistics that some radical S&M scene went online on the Internet and it took them three days to get the computers cranked open enough to accept all of the calls from Washington, D.C. [00:53:24 - 00:53:29] So I just think it's a massive viper. [00:53:29 - 00:53:32] Do you have that URL? [00:53:32 - 00:53:37] It's similar to girls without razors. [00:53:37 - 00:53:51] Oh, my God. All right. Terrence, hold on. It's a great place to break while I try and catch my breath. Terrence McKenna is my guest. [00:53:51 - 00:53:56] You ought to see his website. I'm Art Bell. This is Coast to Coast AF. [00:53:56 - 00:53:58] Now, here again is Art. [00:53:58 - 00:54:07] OK, here again I am. My guest, of course, is Terrence McKenna. And again, if you're enjoying this, you will certainly enjoy a trip. [00:54:07 - 00:54:17] No pun intended to his website, which is linked to ours. And mine, of course, is www.artbell.com. [00:54:17 - 00:54:23] Just scroll down to the name Terrence McKenna and trip on over. [00:54:23 - 00:54:34] Well, you know, I went to Paris. I was in Paris. I was lucky enough to take the Concord at twice the speed of sound. Paris was so cool. [00:54:34 - 00:54:43] And I love Paris and I love France and I really detest the French people. [00:54:43 - 00:54:50] They're just they're all stuck up. But they do have a different attitude about a lot of things than we do. [00:54:50 - 00:55:05] And one of them, this whole thing going on now with the president, Terrence, it's one conclusion that you could come to is that the American people are beginning to change their attitudes finally about sex. [00:55:05 - 00:55:12] I mean, we have been a very, very prudish people for all our existence. [00:55:12 - 00:55:24] And one conclusion you can come to about this entire presidential dilemma is that the American people are beginning to change their attitudes about sex. Is that possible? [00:55:24 - 00:55:27] Yes, I don't think you can conclude anything else. [00:55:27 - 00:55:40] They are changing their attitudes about sex and they're accepting that the depth of penetration of modern media into people's lives is going to bring them this information. [00:55:40 - 00:55:48] And they don't want it to mess with the political process, which is, as you say, a very French attitude. [00:55:48 - 00:55:55] Let's let these people have their personal lives. I'm sure Hillary can discipline Bill if that's necessary. [00:55:55 - 00:56:00] And the rest of us should get on with the business of governing. [00:56:00 - 00:56:06] And and that is what the right wing across America cannot understand. [00:56:06 - 00:56:13] And so they are simply being puzzled. They're trapped in this great puzzle of my God, what's going on? [00:56:13 - 00:56:16] Well, what's going on is we're growing up a little bit. [00:56:16 - 00:56:23] Isn't that I mean, after all, the French have been around so very much longer as a nation. [00:56:23 - 00:56:26] And is this a nation maturing? [00:56:26 - 00:56:33] Well, I think not only is that what's going on, but the right wing needs to look closer to home. [00:56:33 - 00:56:47] What's going on is they're getting ready to commit suicide for the second or third time in four years by moving to impeach one of the most popular presidents in the 20th century. [00:56:47 - 00:56:53] At the end of the most brilliant economic expansion the country has ever known. [00:56:53 - 00:57:03] This is a prescription for catastrophe for the right and they're charging ahead full bore with their usual devil may care attitude. [00:57:03 - 00:57:08] So once again, they've invented a new way to commit suicide. [00:57:08 - 00:57:13] Well, I first of all, don't think that the political right wing. [00:57:13 - 00:57:28] When you break it down to individuals sexually is any different at all than the political left wing, the perhaps the only difference being that they keep their whips and chains in closets. [00:57:28 - 00:57:39] Yes, I think it's to try people for their sexual peculiarities and and full pause. [00:57:39 - 00:57:43] Because it is a sign of a totally juvenile country. [00:57:43 - 00:57:46] And as you say, I think we're moving beyond that. [00:57:46 - 00:57:58] Now, if we were if this president had fouled up the economy and the stock market were down a thousand points, then there might be some political rationale in all of this. [00:57:58 - 00:58:06] But at the moment, it appears just madness to me and I think will be very detrimental to any long term right wing agenda. [00:58:06 - 00:58:17] Now, the right wing, of course, if those conditions had prevailed, would have burned, you know, put Mr. Clinton on a stake and burned him alive. [00:58:17 - 00:58:21] And the left wing would have quietly accepted that. [00:58:21 - 00:58:27] And we would have moved into a sort of an older, more Victorian period. [00:58:27 - 00:58:29] But it doesn't appear as though that is going to happen. [00:58:29 - 00:58:38] As you point out, the right wing is probably going to self immolate if they proceed as they are right now. [00:58:38 - 00:58:48] Yes, I think was it last weekend where Trent Lott said he thought the press, a special prosecutor should put his cards on the table and if it didn't fly to drop it. [00:58:48 - 00:58:50] And then they jerked him around. [00:58:50 - 00:58:57] And 24 hours later, he was calling for focus on the president's role in obstruction of justice and all this. [00:58:57 - 00:58:59] So they can't get it straight. [00:58:59 - 00:59:09] They they they have incredibly bad political instincts for a majority party in the world's, you know, most dynamic democracy. [00:59:09 - 00:59:14] Even though individually, they're not sexually, in my opinion, any different than anybody else. [00:59:14 - 00:59:22] Politically, they they seem to not be able to leave the moralistic line. [00:59:22 - 00:59:28] And I'm not suggesting that immorality is necessarily a virtue. [00:59:28 - 00:59:33] And I don't mean an intent for people to believe that, but simply a tolerance. [00:59:33 - 00:59:34] They want to be left alone. [00:59:34 - 00:59:38] They don't want somebody else to set their moral agenda. [00:59:38 - 00:59:46] You know, people like their Hustler magazine and they like their beer and they like to to do what they like to do. [00:59:46 - 01:00:00] To my mind, that's a more authentic American impulse to do what you want to do than this recursion to the Puritan impulse, which is to tell everybody else what to do. [01:00:00 - 01:00:03] What's the fun in that? [01:00:03 - 01:00:05] All right. [01:00:05 - 01:00:11] We are shortly going to go to the phones and that should be quite an experience in itself. [01:00:11 - 01:00:13] I've got a fax here, which I guess I had to read you. [01:00:13 - 01:00:19] Art, I just wanted to thank you for having Terrence on your program. [01:00:19 - 01:00:21] And he has these questions. [01:00:21 - 01:00:34] Impacts of currently legal drugs in our society, in other words, alcohol, tobacco, sugar, compared to the impact of currently illegal psychedelics in our society like marijuana, LSD and psilocybin. [01:00:34 - 01:00:39] Multimedia film he worked on recently entitled Strange Attractors. [01:00:39 - 01:00:46] Shown a few months ago here in Austin, Texas with a message of psychedelic consciousness. [01:00:46 - 01:00:55] What exactly were the blue apples referenced in the film and your message behind it? [01:00:55 - 01:01:00] Well, first of all, let me say that was a film that I was an actor in. [01:01:00 - 01:01:06] I was not the director or the writer, so I wasn't in control of the message. [01:01:06 - 01:01:11] The blue apples were simply symbolic of all psychedelic plants. [01:01:11 - 01:01:19] They didn't want to name a specific psychedelic plant, so the blue apples became a symbolic carrier of all of them. [01:01:19 - 01:01:25] As long as the subject has come up, I would recommend to people to see that film. [01:01:25 - 01:01:33] It certainly is state of the art for computer graphic special effects on small budgets. [01:01:33 - 01:01:41] It was done by Rose X Productions down in Austin, really talented friends of mine. [01:01:41 - 01:01:43] All right, here's another one. [01:01:43 - 01:01:53] As a teacher, website publisher and author, I am convinced now that genetics will have more to do with the next 200 years than any other science in that regard. [01:01:53 - 01:02:06] When we learn how to recreate ourselves, then might we be able to produce humans with minds that are capable of understanding the connection between mind and energy and mind and matter? [01:02:06 - 01:02:12] Could we not then recreate our entire selves and the universe? [01:02:12 - 01:02:18] Well, these are the kinds of scenarios that are coming upon us, yes. [01:02:18 - 01:02:28] For example, ways to splice into the internet so that it feels like it's a part of your own mind. [01:02:28 - 01:02:38] So, in other words, the seamless interface where when you need intelligence, you can pull on all the intelligence there is on the planet. [01:02:38 - 01:02:44] I recently discovered a science fiction writer I was not familiar with. [01:02:44 - 01:02:50] This guy, Greg Egan, who wrote a thing called Permutation City. [01:02:50 - 01:03:02] And that's a technology 50 years in the future where people routinely copy themselves as code and reappear as copies in artificial environments. [01:03:02 - 01:03:05] And these copies know they are copies. [01:03:05 - 01:03:13] And the technology and the psychology of that world are handled by this guy with incredible skill. [01:03:13 - 01:03:21] So, there are people out there imagining the kinds of futures that the questioner talks about. [01:03:21 - 01:03:24] The very biggest issues are going to be dealt with. [01:03:24 - 01:03:26] In other words, what is intelligence? [01:03:26 - 01:03:28] What is identity? [01:03:28 - 01:03:31] What is being itself? [01:03:31 - 01:03:45] Can death be transcended through somehow becoming part of this global symbiotic hyperorganism that our technology is creating? [01:03:45 - 01:03:50] We stand really in a place no one has ever stood before. [01:03:50 - 01:03:52] And what will come of it? [01:03:52 - 01:03:54] Genetics is one frontier. [01:03:54 - 01:03:57] Another frontier is nanotechnology. [01:03:57 - 01:04:01] Another frontier is human machine interfacing. [01:04:01 - 01:04:05] Another frontier is human life extension. [01:04:05 - 01:04:13] When you pile up all this stuff and realize that major discoveries are being made in all these fields simultaneously, [01:04:13 - 01:04:23] you begin to see that the morphogenetic momentum for this thing that wants to be born out of the human species [01:04:23 - 01:04:27] is at this point almost unstoppable and inevitable, I think. [01:04:27 - 01:04:31] We're all just witnesses to this unfolding. [01:04:31 - 01:04:41] This is the culmination of 25,000 years of human striving and technology testing and language acquisition. [01:04:41 - 01:04:47] And now we're about to make the big leap into the great question mark. [01:04:47 - 01:04:51] You mentioned copies, Terrence, copies. [01:04:51 - 01:04:53] We need to be able to have copies of ourselves. [01:04:53 - 01:04:54] Now, that's very interesting. [01:04:54 - 01:04:57] A copy would be a precise copy of us. [01:04:57 - 01:05:01] And you said it would know that it is a copy. [01:05:01 - 01:05:09] But I see a problem here because that copy would contain the same ego that the original has. [01:05:09 - 01:05:17] And the only way to satisfy that that I can see for the copy would be to liquidate the original. [01:05:17 - 01:05:19] And then it would feel good. [01:05:19 - 01:05:25] Well, these kinds of feelings and situations are what drives Greg Egan's fiction. [01:05:25 - 01:05:31] His copies behave like human beings with drives and neuroses. [01:05:31 - 01:05:40] But his main strength doesn't lie so much in portraying the psychology of these people as in imagining [01:05:40 - 01:05:48] and describing in a way that convinces you it could be the technologies that will make this stuff happen. [01:05:48 - 01:05:55] And of course he's concentrating on artificial worlds of the silicon variety. [01:05:55 - 01:06:01] But then when you put in nanotechnology and some of this other stuff, it really is dazzling. [01:06:01 - 01:06:11] I don't think anyone can triangulate all these factors without having the feeling that we're approaching some kind of singularity. [01:06:11 - 01:06:13] You and I talked about this. [01:06:13 - 01:06:21] I mean, the quickening that you've written about and the novelty theory that I've written about are both metaphors [01:06:21 - 01:06:29] for this sense of impending cross-fertilization and implosion of all knowledge. [01:06:29 - 01:06:43] Before we leave the present day silicon area, I want to ask you about this pending, incredible doomsday Y2K scenario [01:06:43 - 01:06:48] in which 2000 is going to come and the mainframes are going to crash. [01:06:48 - 01:06:50] My God, there goes Social Security. [01:06:50 - 01:06:53] There goes all the government's computers. [01:06:53 - 01:06:58] And we are now so tied in and dependent upon all this that many people are saying it's real. [01:06:58 - 01:07:00] Don't laugh. [01:07:00 - 01:07:02] Everything is going to crash. [01:07:02 - 01:07:03] Nobody's preparing. [01:07:03 - 01:07:04] That day is going to come. [01:07:04 - 01:07:09] It's going to be a computer Armageddon. [01:07:09 - 01:07:21] Well, I've heard all this and I've visited the websites and while I'm reading the propaganda of these people, it seems alarming. [01:07:21 - 01:07:29] On the other hand, I have an intuition that it represents some kind of calling. [01:07:29 - 01:07:39] I mean, the word has been out now for about two years and more and more institutions are scrambling to become 2000 compatible. [01:07:39 - 01:07:48] But they're now mega-interference and one has to ask the obvious, rebellious question, could it possibly be a good thing? [01:07:48 - 01:07:51] Well, and how extensive will it be? [01:07:51 - 01:07:56] That's the question that where the experts seem to differ. [01:07:56 - 01:08:04] I've seen pieces which say it's a hiccup on the way to the end of history and other people say it is the end of history. [01:08:04 - 01:08:14] Well, it would certainly bring an awful lot of paradigms and institutions tumbling down all at once if the doomsayers are correct. [01:08:14 - 01:08:19] And I would think that you might consider that an upside somehow. [01:08:19 - 01:08:23] Well, it depends on how far back it takes us. [01:08:23 - 01:08:34] In other words, if it takes us back, you know, the ones who are heading for the hills with dried meat, if they're right, that's a little disturbing. [01:08:34 - 01:08:35] If on the other hand... [01:08:35 - 01:08:40] If on the other hand I'm advertising absolutely fresh abacuses or something. [01:08:40 - 01:08:55] Yes. I think that as we get closer to it, the spending curve on the problem by corporations should tell us how real it is. [01:08:55 - 01:08:56] Well, that's true. [01:08:56 - 01:08:59] It's their goose that's going to be cooked. [01:08:59 - 01:09:11] So let's watch company outlays for Y2K consultants and if it soars toward infinity, the rest of us better start packing our lunches. [01:09:11 - 01:09:14] But what I am told is that it's too late. [01:09:14 - 01:09:22] That even if they took all the computer programmers capable of going to work on this problem and started them right now, [01:09:22 - 01:09:30] they wouldn't even get close to solving the problem by the time the magic day hits and everything goes kaboom. [01:09:30 - 01:09:31] Well... [01:09:31 - 01:09:33] Maybe that's not true. [01:09:33 - 01:09:42] I'm sure these consultants are not saying that because the obvious conclusion would be, well, then we won't pay your fee to even attempt to fix it. [01:09:42 - 01:09:49] No, these are independent people, not the people who are seeking to go out and get all the money for fixing it. [01:09:49 - 01:09:50] Saying it's too late. [01:09:50 - 01:09:51] Yes, yes. [01:09:51 - 01:09:55] Well, then the question that needs to be answered is too late for what? [01:09:55 - 01:10:03] Let's have a convincing picture of the scenario so that we can each look at it and judge it. [01:10:03 - 01:10:06] I mean, we're unfamiliar with this kind of a scenario. [01:10:06 - 01:10:12] So just saying airliners will fall out of the sky and nuclear power plants will blow up, [01:10:12 - 01:10:17] we need to know the sequence, the imagined sequence of events. [01:10:17 - 01:10:26] And if it's true, it will certainly be a bizarre comment on the movement into the first moments of the third millennium [01:10:26 - 01:10:31] that we basically blow ourselves away because of a computer glitch. [01:10:31 - 01:10:35] Well, I wonder if we are truly that dependent. [01:10:35 - 01:10:39] And I sort of imagine that we are. [01:10:39 - 01:10:42] Every single function of government is computer controlled. [01:10:42 - 01:10:44] Most of them have this problem. [01:10:44 - 01:10:52] I mean, I could go on and mention every alphabet agency, my God, NSA, CIA, they'll fall apart along with Social Security, [01:10:52 - 01:10:56] along with the Veterans Administration and checks will go out. [01:10:56 - 01:10:59] Well, then I guess the question is what happens to the money? [01:10:59 - 01:11:03] Is some kind of enormous heist of the whole human race? [01:11:03 - 01:11:06] Is that why there's so little interest in fixing the problem? [01:11:06 - 01:11:12] Because in fact, the problem is somehow going to make a lot of people incredibly wealthy [01:11:12 - 01:11:17] and no one will be able to trace the exact outlines of the heist. [01:11:17 - 01:11:25] I have even, my own webmaster who's brilliant, Keith Rowland, has several commercial programs that he has written. [01:11:25 - 01:11:27] I mean, he's really good. [01:11:27 - 01:11:36] And even he has the Y2K problem and he's not so sure he can get it fixed for his clients in time. [01:11:36 - 01:11:38] So this really is a serious problem. [01:11:38 - 01:11:43] I get a lot of email about it and I've been considering it and thinking about it. [01:11:43 - 01:11:49] And if all came tumbling down, I am not convinced that it would be a bad thing. [01:11:49 - 01:11:51] Maybe I need to get an advertiser. [01:11:51 - 01:11:55] How you can profit from the Y2K crash? [01:11:55 - 01:12:02] Well, I think probably we should be also talking about organizing tested subnetworks [01:12:02 - 01:12:07] where the thing, the date has already been simulated. [01:12:07 - 01:12:13] Apple claims all its machinery is Y2K compatible and so... [01:12:13 - 01:12:16] Yeah, but they're desperate though. [01:12:16 - 01:12:18] Yes. [01:12:18 - 01:12:20] I agree. [01:12:20 - 01:12:22] Do you have an Apple? [01:12:22 - 01:12:28] I'm devoted. With a name like McKenna, could I not have a Mac? [01:12:28 - 01:12:34] It's like, it's a good machine, Terrence, but you know, it's like a beta recorder. [01:12:34 - 01:12:43] Well, but my son and his hotshot friends tell me anybody who doesn't learn Unix is a wuss anyway and a lost soul. [01:12:43 - 01:12:47] So that puts us probably both in hot water. [01:12:47 - 01:12:52] Yeah, probably so. Every time I say something like this, I get, oh, you wouldn't... [01:12:52 - 01:13:01] I mean, people are so attached to their computers, the Mac users, they flood me with vicious, ugly, hate-filled mail. [01:13:01 - 01:13:03] When we come back, we're going to go to the phone. [01:13:03 - 01:13:06] Stay right there. You've got a good long break, Terrence. I'm Art Bell. [01:13:06 - 01:13:09] This is Coast to Coast AM. [01:13:09 - 01:13:18] I'm Art Bell. Terrence McKenna's here and we're about to go to the phones to who knows what. [01:13:18 - 01:13:26] Five. All right. Back now to the world of Terrence McKenna on the side of a volcano. [01:13:26 - 01:13:35] By the way, Terrence, just in case somebody or something does eventually push alternate controlled delete, [01:13:35 - 01:13:47] being there on the side of a volcano, you would be the first, probably in all probability, to experience the moment of deletion. [01:13:47 - 01:13:53] Well, it depends. We were talking about the Y2K problem. [01:13:53 - 01:14:01] What I'll do is I'll shut down an hour before and come online an hour after and see if anybody's left. [01:14:01 - 01:14:07] You know, that's a great idea, actually. [01:14:07 - 01:14:15] As far as living on this volcano is concerned, it's true. It's the devil we know. [01:14:15 - 01:14:19] It's been in constant eruption for 13 years. [01:14:19 - 01:14:26] We tell ourselves it's all over on the other side, which it is, but of course that's 50 miles away. [01:14:26 - 01:14:34] But it's kind of nice to have all our problems packaged into one problem and to have it be a natural problem. [01:14:34 - 01:14:41] So there's no point in whining and grossing about it. The volcano is the volcano. [01:14:41 - 01:14:44] Now, I'm not an expert on things volcanic, [01:14:44 - 01:14:50] but I do think that the great danger is not the slow, constant eruption that you now experience, [01:14:50 - 01:15:01] but rather if a lava dome were to begin to be in place and the entire volcano were to start to expand with pressure [01:15:01 - 01:15:11] until finally the entire thing blew up, creating probably a new island or new portions of an island. [01:15:11 - 01:15:16] But in the process, erasing Terrence McKenna and everybody else. [01:15:16 - 01:15:21] Well, you know, people have only been here a thousand years or so, [01:15:21 - 01:15:29] and what went on in the remote past of Hawaii, I think there were very dramatic geological events. [01:15:29 - 01:15:34] They had an international geological congress out here in Hilo a couple of years ago, [01:15:34 - 01:15:43] and there was evidence presented for these enormous underwater land slippages that happened out here, [01:15:43 - 01:15:50] local tidal waves of 2,000 feet in part of the picture. [01:15:50 - 01:15:51] That's right. [01:15:51 - 01:15:54] Yes, well, the Earth is a violent place. [01:15:54 - 01:15:59] This little asteroid scare last week was a wake-up call. [01:15:59 - 01:16:09] On every level, nature is relentless in continuing to deal and re-deal the deck. [01:16:09 - 01:16:18] That's why every window of opportunity that isn't acted upon is somehow an opportunity forever lost. [01:16:18 - 01:16:23] Well, I've felt for a long time that somebody's shuffling the cards right now. [01:16:23 - 01:16:26] Anyway, listen, here we go. Let's go to the phones. [01:16:26 - 01:16:31] First time caller line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna in Hawaii in the boondocks there. [01:16:31 - 01:16:33] Where are you? [01:16:33 - 01:16:34] In New York. [01:16:34 - 01:16:36] New York. You're going to have to yell at us. Boy, you're not too strong. [01:16:36 - 01:16:37] Yell at us. [01:16:37 - 01:16:38] How's that? [01:16:38 - 01:16:39] Better. [01:16:39 - 01:16:44] It's better for you. I can still not hear this guy, so relay the question, Art. [01:16:44 - 01:16:45] All right. Yell the question. [01:16:45 - 01:16:51] Okay. Well, I'd like to ask Terrence to analyze an experience of mine. [01:16:51 - 01:16:58] First, though, I want to ask him, can DMT in your brain be released by intentional means? [01:16:58 - 01:16:59] Perhaps another -- [01:16:59 - 01:17:04] Okay. Well, that's a very good question, and there's not a very good answer. [01:17:04 - 01:17:11] If DMT could be released by spontaneously or through some act of will, [01:17:11 - 01:17:17] we might have an explanation in hand of certain kinds of paranormal phenomena. [01:17:17 - 01:17:24] Years ago, when I studied yoga in India and read all these yoga texts, [01:17:24 - 01:17:32] I was on the trail of the idea that using your body as a chemical factory [01:17:32 - 01:17:39] to naturally manufacture these active hallucinogens may be what yoga is about, [01:17:39 - 01:17:44] and I still think that that's a reasonable hypothesis. [01:17:44 - 01:17:51] When DMT was first discovered, people thought that it was going to shed light on schizophrenia [01:17:51 - 01:17:55] and that surely schizophrenics must be producing large amounts of --