Bruce Damer, Terence And Virtual Worlds

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

This is Lorenzo, and I'm your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

And this week, I'd like to begin by thanking three fellow salonners who have sent in donations

to help offset some of the expenses here in the salon.

And those fine salonners are Chris T., UNM, who actually has sent in two donations this past month.

And we also received a very generous donation from an anonymous Norwegian donor.

And I should note that a part of all your donations this past month are going to be sent to the fund

to help out Jonathan Ott, who I'm sure is also very grateful for your support.

Now today, and next week, I should add, I've got something for you that I'm sure you haven't heard before.

Today, it features two favorites here in the salon, Bruce Dahmer and Terrence McKenna.

We'll begin with a reminiscence by Bruce Dahmer about how he came to know Terrence McKenna,

and then follow that with a recording of one of the last conversations Bruce and Terrence had

at Terrence's house on the big island of Hawaii.

Now, one of the reasons I think it might be interesting for you to hear this conversation

is to get a little feel for what it was like to hang around with Terrence.

Now, while you might think that he maybe did most of the talking,

you'll find that the opposite is true.

And much like Aldous Huxley, Terrence did a lot of questioning and listening.

It wasn't only from books that those guys acquired their particular views of the world,

just like you and I, I guess, huh?

So, let's begin now with Bruce Dahmer telling the story of how he came to know Terrence McKenna.

I knew Terrence McKenna personally for a scant three years before his death in 2000.

I was introduced to Terrence by John Wentworth,

who at the time worked deep in the bowels of a Silicon Valley corporate new media laboratory,

which was surrounded by huge projection screens.

One day, John spirited me into the lab,

where I beheld the surreal scene in which a 3D disembodied head seemed to be hanging in space,

mouthing away in a tinny but strangely entrancing voice.

Surrounding this apparition was a virtual room full of avid avatar listeners.

John explained that he was playing a recording of one Mr. McKenna

through his disembodied avatar to the other heads present.

It was an auspicious first encounter with Mr. McKenna.

In the late summer of 1997, Terrence and I finally made direct personal connection through email.

We hit it off and conspired to make a tantalizing exchange.

At the time, I was very engaged in the birth of virtual worlds housing the aforementioned avatars,

graphical depictions clothing real internet users.

It was an exciting new frontier that took over from the earlier virtual reality,

which had consisted of mostly single-user head-mounted display experiences in shaky polygonal worlds.

Terrence had been very attracted to VR in the early 1990s

and was keen to actually experience firsthand how its successor,

internet-based virtual worlds, could relate to his internal worlds of the elevated mind.

In exchange for guiding him into this new cyberspace,

Terrence was to introduce me to his worlds of the accentuated mind.

As it turned out, Terrence's ulterior motive in exploring these worlds was to kick the tires on them

as a potential new medium for him to reach distant audiences.

As Terrence remarked to me at the time,

I get on jumbo jets to fly to speak to audiences of 40 people.

He felt that there had to be a better way.

In November of 1998, just after I had bought the farm,

Ancient Oaks Farm, that is, here in the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains next to Silicon Valley,

Terrence, his son Finn, and longtime trial logger Ralph Abraham

arrived for a personal introduction to the virtual world's medium.

I sat them down, with Terrence centered in front of a large monitor,

set on a round glass table in our Fabric-Dedect center room.

I started Terrence's journey in Traveler, the aforementioned Big Talking Heads world.

I knew that Terrence would relate to this world

because he could use a microphone to speak directly into it with his oh-so distinctive voice.

He got a serious kick out of the other geometrically-headed users talking right back.

After a while in this space, I knew Terrence had caught my drift,

so we journeyed on for a time into the huge user-built landscapes of active worlds

and other 3D and 2D spaces.

I must have sold Terrence on the whole experience

because he talked to Finn about buying and bringing a Windows box to the house in Hawaii

where we would reconvene for some serious experimentation.

Terrence's Mac couldn't run virtual worlds.

I hope Ralph found the experience interesting as well

because I knew that he was into 3D representations

at his Vismath Institute down in Santa Cruz.

Finn seemed very into it.

After leaving the farm, Terrence was off to other ports,

including Extraordinary, and to my mind, his peak,

performances overtoning with the band Lost at Last,

and then swiftly on to the annual Entheo Botany Conference in Palenque, Mexico.

We agreed to reconvene in Hawaii after that.

A dream was about to be realized as me and my friend Jim Essex,

a long-time Terrence-ophile,

arrived in South Kona in late February of 1999.

The road up to Terrence's place on the Hui,

which is a kind of shared multiple occupancy land space found only in Hawaii,

was so hellacious that we had to park the rental car on the highway

and be driven by four-by-four over boulders

past dripping vine-entwined rainforest to Terrence's house.

The house was a recently finished two-story wonder

with a huge library up a rope-lit spiral staircase.

Terrence and family had moved in a couple of years before,

but there was obvious lingering delight with the new settings.

After hanging out and getting to know everyone better

and walking through the forest with Finn and Terrence's partner, Christy Silmas,

we went into serious overdrive on the effort.

The deal was to really give Terrence a deep dive into the medium of virtual worlds,

connecting him into this newly birthing realm at the same time

as we set the stage for him to host a gathering,

an event with 30 to 40 of his fans.

We decided to call this the virtual alchemical powwow.

Despite the remote locations and the sometimes shaky electrical situation,

go and pull start the generator, will you, please,

Terrence would say as the screens dimmed,

we powered up Avatar cyberspace on multiple computers

up in Terrence's library perch.

A magical, psychedelic virtual world called Pollen

had been pre-built for the occasion

by a very skilled user of the Active Worlds platform.

Finn was right in there,

and I watched the two of them together.

Finn was visibly enthused to work with his father

to make this thing come off.

After days of training everyone,

nights of intense conversation,

and some respite walking through the jungle scape of Terrence's land,

we finally awoke,

fired up the generator,

and the high-bandwidth dish on the roof came alive,

giving us a 40-megabit connection

beamed across a 40-mile line of sights

to Terrence's ISP in Kona.

Or maybe Kailua, I can't remember.

The dish was a trip, too,

because it was of military origin,

which amused Terrence endlessly.

Another delight was that in the morning

you had to wait until the dish did its pop-pop,

heating up in the sun

to take the right shape

for the bits to start zipping off the volcano.

It was February 25th, 1999.

All was set.

We were all in place,

and worlds lit the screens.

Fans from Terrence's mailing list

was called ee at paganpaths.org,

and the novelty list

were already lingering in-world

by Finn's nifty entry portal area,

as we were still eating our light breakfast.

Terrence's usual unhealthful bacon and eggs.

In the early afternoon,

Terrence sat down,

donned his avatar,

which he named Zone Ghost,

which was appropriately

an olive-eyed grayed gray alien.

We had a webcam on Finn's PC

that protected low-res still images

every couple of seconds

onto a webcam wall

inside the virtual world,

so the attendees could see Terrence's avatar,

read his chat,

and catch freeze frames of his face.

It was a compelling bit of presence

despite the crudity of the tech.

At fun points throughout the afternoon,

we all joined Terrence on camera

waving to the assembled multitude.

After quite a bit of initial milling around

of avatars

and positioning of our little away team,

Terrence has started to engage the group

with his brand of hunt-and-peck typing.

There was no way

that we could try the voice interface

with the dish's network latency.

It was amazing to me

how authors can write whole books this way,

but I guess it gives the brain

a bit more time to think

in between keystrokes.

The central activity of the event

was to guide groups of avatar users

so they could flow in and out of the portals

in the gateway world

that Finn and I had put together.

This was called the Terrence Test world,

sort of in a sense like the acid test.

The main attraction was a portal

to the entheogenic garden world named Pollen.

It was an impressive achievement

for the late 1990s,

complete with shimmering multifaceted landscapes

and truly odd avatars

such as something that looked like

a Volkswagen Beetle on DMT.

As users entered Pollen,

they donned one of the avatars

available in the Pollen reality.

Christy was also a skillful player

in this drama

and the whole shebang was captured on video

by a hovering James Essex.

This whole escapade

was called the Virtual Alchemical Pow-Wown

and is described on the web

You can find a few photos grabbed

from the video for your interest.

Everyone present both physically in South Kona

and virtually felt that the trip that day

was a big success.

Let us now leave the Virtual Alchemical Pow-Wown

with an excerpt of chat

wherein Terrence, as Zone Ghost,

was commenting about the experience

and I, as Digi-Gardener,

was bopping it back to him.

Zone Ghost,

yes, my faith is that we can use

these kind of technologies

to eventually share with each other

the contents of our heads,

our dreams and visions.

Zone Ghost,

so listen,

we're going to try to take a trip together

into Pollen.

Problem is,

we don't know the capacity of the world, so...

Digi-Gardener,

welcome to the trip.

Zone Ghost,

I'm now in Pollen.

How did we do?

Zone Ghost,

amazing, ain't it?

Zone Ghost,

I am walking around dazzled.

Zone Ghost,

I am back from the trip to Pollen.

Digi-Gardener,

like DMT?

Zone Ghost,

not unlike DMT.

Zone Ghost,

here is Bruce D.

on the screen.

Zone Ghost,

special thanks to Bruce

for making this party possible.

Zone Ghost,

the alchemical conference

in September

is going to be a gathering

of the community of psychedelic arts

who are out of the closet.

We hope to have the conference

in Hawaii or Mexico

with a big virtual annex

right where you are standing.

Zone Ghost,

let me thank everyone

for coming to our event.

At one point,

we had nearly 40 folk

in the world,

thanks to Bruce,

my son Finn,

to Jim Essex,

and Christy Silnes,

my companion.

We want to spend more time

with all of you

in virtual space.

Zone Ghost,

and until we meet again,

this is ratty dog

Terrence McKenna

saying happy trails.

Later,

Terrence fan

Kathy Livett

contributed

the following recollection

in her

trip report.

The simultaneous conversations

were hilarious,

witty and urbane,

kind of like a psychedelic

Dada-esque group

mind meld.

Wow,

it felt like

a historic moment to me,

the way that the first

transcontinental phone call

must have felt.

This medium

has vast possibilities

for connecting minds.

Just as with this list,

there's a sense

of emotional connection

within the discovery

and exploration

of a new medium.

There's a shared dimension

beyond the worlds

and pixels on the screen.

Saying goodbye

in deep dialogue

after two hours,

fans keep arriving

from this mailing list

well into the night.

I think we'll be seeing

more of this.

During those wonderful

days and nights,

Terrence and I

and everyone

sat around on mats

on the floor

of the library upstairs

and spoke of all things.

Life in the universe,

space travel,

my newest ballywick

as I just started

working with NASA

at that time,

the fantasy

of the singularity,

the big volcano

we were sitting on

and much, much more.

We also delved

into Terrence's ballywick,

talking of trip spaces,

their inhabitants,

and how they related

to the new

low-resolution avatar

inhabited worlds

of the very late

20th century.

With a wink,

I asked him

pointed questions

about his 2012

prognostications,

as both of us

were scholars

to a sort

and to a large extent

skeptics.

Terrence's answers

were revealing

in the light of

today's 2012 mania

and worth retelling here.

As far as I can recall

from that day

over a decade ago,

Terrence made the remark

that people shouldn't

take this all literally.

It's just a metaphor.

We had talked earlier

about Y2K

and I had said

that in my nerd judgment

it was an overblown fakery

that some people

were pulling in piles

of profit from.

I sensed that Terrence

was worried

that his date

for techno-bio-infinite

novelty curve blower

must would be turned

into some kind

of new age Y2K.

Little did he know

I am certain

that if he had lived

he would be railing

against the current

crop of 2012 opportunists

as intensely

as he had bit

into the UFO believers

for more than a decade.

Remember

unannounced visits

by pro-bono

proctologists

from other star systems.

Terrence was cognizant

that his own byline

they have to be subject

to the same rules

of evidence

as everyone else

also applied to himself.

Recently Terrence's

brother Dennis

has come out

publicly questioning

his own brother's

common sense

in tying the I Ching

to concepts

of a historical time wave

all wrapped up

with questionably

qualified mathematics.

I joined with Dennis

and enter my own

flee to the seekers

to move beyond

the apocalypses

on Tuesday fixation

and get on

with good visionary works

not pegged

to an arbitrary square

on the calendar.

At the end

of that conversation

with Terrence

back in 1999

I still felt

a hope lingering

within him

that he would be

around to experience

what through all

of his conflicted

skepticism

he still clung to

the ultimate trip.

All of this

is by way

of introduction

to the piece

you will hear

at the second half

of this podcast.

In it I gave Terrence

a pretty major

dump of goods

off the shelf

of my own novelty

general store.

Luckily Jim Essex

had his Hi-8

video camera running

and this picked up

the audio

of this conversation

complete with

a solid chorus

of generator noise

removed recently

by audio engineering

genius and neighbor

Amara.

Jim also shot

a video of much

of our preparations

for the virtual world

experience I just described.

Terrence and I

concluded this good work

by planning to do

a joint workshop

at Esalen

in the spring of 2000.

Little of any of us

know that Terrence

was only weeks away

from a personal

volcanic eruption

of epic proportions

with the arrival

of his first major

seizure that indicated

the large living tumor

growing in his brain.

Upon our arrival

in Hawaii

Jim Essex

and I had both felt

that Terrence

looked pale and unwell

over our previous

encounters

and he himself

admitted to us

that he was having

dreams that even

he couldn't explain.

After Terrence's

diagnosis and prognosis

the Alchemical Arts

event which had

been planned

for September of 1999

still went ahead

and in fact

became the goodbye

event for Terrence.

It was an exquisite

event in a resort

hotel scheduled

for demolition

so our group

was possibly the last

to inhabit the place.

Constance Demby

arrived with her

hammered dulcimer

and played

the whale sail.

Alex Gray gave us

a personal triptych

of his becoming

an artist.

Tom Robbins revealed

how his offbeat

writing style

came to be

and many others

shared how Terrence

and his world

irrevocably

changed the creative

course of their careers.

True to our

earlier commitment

my team ran

a virtual version

of the conference

with the main focus

being a walkable

art gallery

that was projected

on screen

for all to see

and interact

with users

around the world.

I recall

a poignant moment

when all of us

there were invited

to get prone

on the floor

with Terrence

in the middle.

We were free

to project

healing energy

conjure visions

or do anything

we wished

vis-a-vis Terrence.

As I have a kind

of hypercharged

3D imagination

hence my profession

in virtual worlds

my brain

immediately popped

into gear

and started rendering

a vivid scene

behind my closed eyes.

Overhead

from a crystal blue sky

an ovoid form

was descending

and as it came closer

a whir-whir-whir

sound became audible

and I noticed

with some glee

that it was

a bejeweled

Fabergé egg

complete with

unseen driver

and plush red

seating in the rear.

It whirred

to a stop

next to a vision

of the lone

prone Terrence.

His ghostly

lanky form

then became upright

and he stepped

deftly

into the egg mobile

and the unseen

pilot shifted

some gears

and up went

the vehicle

till it was

not even a dot.

Later

I shared

this vision

with Terrence

and his

immediate retort

was

Ah!

The getaway car!

Those were

pretty much

my last

spoken words

with Terrence

In the days

leading up

to Terrence's

passing

on April 3rd

we held

vigils

at the farm

to tie

into support

for him

where he

was being

tended to

by family

up in

Occidental

California

years

years after

that

I sat

both

upright

in bed

saying

Terrence

you left

too soon

I'm bringing

you back

I therefore

took on the

task of

working with

Lorenzo

Haggerty

of digitizing

as much

of Terrence's

voice and

thoughts as

possible

from cassette

tapes

thanks to

Ralph Abraham

we were

loaned the

complete set

of

trial logs

tapes

which were

digitized

by myself

and Lorenzo

in one

furious

weekend

Lorenzo

has launched

his

psychedelic

salon

podcast

from the

Palenque

lecture series

that were

being held

at Burning

Man

and called

Palenque

Norte

so this

material

stoked

that channel

one day

in February

Terrence's

entire

physical

library

notes

papers

photos

butterflies

and everything

else

from that

glorious

room

upstairs

in the

house

in Hawaii

went up

in smoke

as the

Esalen

Institute's

offices

in Monterey

burnt to

the ground

so from

that point

I realized

that in fact

Terrence

would only

now exist

in cyberspace

apart from

his published

books

the only thing

left would

be his

voice

digitized

and wending

its way

around

the ether

today

through the

good works

of Lorenzo

and many

others

that those

familiar with

Terrence's

thought

vastly

outnumber

his fandom

at the end

of the last

century

let's now

take on

the question

of this

singularity

of the

that came

into Terrence's

mind

sometime in

the 70s

or 80s

and his

idea of

increasing novelty

going to some

kind of

infinity point

and his

idea that

somehow

technology

will create

some kind

of intelligence

and singularity

in a short

period of

time

well my

take on

all of

this

both from

the conversations

with Terrence

and my own

experience

in technology

over the

last

20-25

years

is that

in fact

what was

really going

on

was that

Terrence's

own life

was accelerating

and in fact

if you look

at

recordings

of Terrence

in the

maritime hall

doing

overtoning

and the

poetry

and the

riffs

and the

raps

with the

band

Lost

at Last

in December

of 1998

you could

see that

he was

peaking

that

all of

the novelty

of his

ideas

the fact

that he

was now

becoming

a performer

not just

a speaker

the

acceleration

of his

life

the house

in Hawaii

the trips

the success

of the

books

multimedia

projects

everything

his life

was in

this

incredible

acceleration

so perhaps

Terrence

it was

Terrence's

idea

that

hey

if I

was around

to 2012

and my

life kept

accelerating

like this

I don't know

how this

could even

be possible

so in

some sense

it was

Terrence's

personal

eschaton

his personal

and

sadly

the

acceleration

perhaps

of his

thought

and the

pulling

together

of this

crazy

ideas

and

accelerating

pace

might have

had something

to do

with the

tumor

that was

growing

inside

of him

and perhaps

that tumor

was

his

singularity

who's to

say

it's just

an idea

but perhaps

what it

might teach

us

is that

we shouldn't

sit here

and worry

about a

single date

that will

affect

every human

being

we should

look at

the course

of our

own life

the pace

the pulse

the accelerations

the novelty

in our own

lives

and say

you know

maybe

we're headed

each one of us

is headed

towards some

kind of

personal

revelation

personal

breakthrough

personal

breakdown

a personal

that doesn't

happen to

be in a

date on

the calendar

in 2012

it's all

about the

personal

eschaton

the personal

singularity

so that's

just a

thought for

everybody

as a little

bit of an

intermission

in this

little broadcast

so why

this obsession

with a

truly odd

bearded

elven

Irishman

of

Coloradan

origins

is it

his thought

his

Copernican

journeys

into the

mind

his

mesmerizing

performative

voice

or just

simply

his

special

and

precious

weirdness

on

April

3rd

of

this

year

of

we

held

the

first

annual

Terence

day

on the

10th

anniversary

of his

passing

in the

very room

where

in

Finn

Ralph

and Terence

came to

journey

into my

worlds

I do

miss

him

had the

chance

to have

another

decade

of

exploration

with

him

on

all

subjects

and

spaces

today

I say

to Terence

you did

leave

too darn

soon

but you

found

your

personal

eschaton

and well

you should

now enjoy

the many

luxuries

tended to

by machine

elves

in their

glimmering

invisible

resort

scape

so let

me

now

wrap

this

all

up

and

let

you

listen

to

that

conversation

back

in

February

of

one

final

thought

though

the

essence

of

Terence's

dream

his

ultimate

trip

seemed

to be

embodied

by

the

ultimate

merger

of

humans

their

technological

creations

and

the

sublime

constructions

of

visible

language

the

cyberspace

is rendered

in

computers

and

trip

spaces

conjured

out of

the

human

brain

those

February

days

of

delightful

exploration

clothed

in

our

avatars

while

corporeally

inhabiting

a

pole

house

on

the

site

of

the

world's

largest

volcano

possibly

represented

Terence's

closest

approach

to

this

dream

but

who's

to

say

what

Terence

experienced

at the

moment

of

his

passing

on

April

3rd

after

his

last

words

it's

all

about

love

and

keep

breathing

people

keep

breathing

what

kind

of

trip

did

Terence

then

embark

upon

calling

all

little

green

men

calling

all

little

green

men

and

the

bejeweled

Fabergé

egg

went

whirr

and took

him

deep

through

the

crystal

blue

veil

and

now

I'd

like

to

and

by

the

way

if

you

would

like

to

hear

Terence's

presentation

at that

in

Theobotany

conference

in

Palenque

that

came

between

their

first

meeting

and

the

conversation

we're

about

to

hear

you

can

hear

it

in

my

podcast

number

two

which

came out

about

five

years

ago

but

it's

still

very

much

worth

listening

to

I

think

Terence's

part

that

is

personally

I

can't

stand

to

listen

to

any

of

earlier

podcasts

they're

really

kind

of

embarrassing

but

the

talks

in

them

are

still

worthwhile

I

think

and

so

I

left

them

up

there

for

a

little

while

longer

now

anyway

let's

get to

the

conversation

between

Bruce

and

Terence

that

Bruce

described

just a

few

When Bruce first sent me this recording to play, I told him that as much as I'd like to.

It really wasn't listenable.

Just that loud generator hum was too much for me.

But not to be deterred, Bruce enlisted the aid of our friend Amara,

who, among many other talents, is a world-class recording engineer.

And somehow, magic I think it was, she was able to salvage it for us to hear.

So now let's listen to a casual conversation among some very interesting people.

Including Bruce, Terence, Finn McKenna, Christy Silnes, and the man to whom we owe this recording,

the man who just happened to have his camera rolling at the time, Jim Essex.

So if you want to render that, this asteroid will be converted into basic elements of Delta.

And this fact would be a kind of lichen that uses solar energy.

And the cone with the light that occupies that space, it starts to manufacture, absorb the asteroid.

And then it produces pollen, which goes out and it's networked pollen.

So, it's a New York cloud, it's pretty good, it's pretty good, it's pretty good.

And then life is off to the Earth, and it's a very different kind of life.

It's certainly not sentient, but it's very effective.

Some of the spores that get sort of stuck in universal space at times, of course, they need atoms,

at least as far as we know, to actually have a matrix of living.

And are they very ordered atoms?

So, in the long view, it's, you know, where the ladder life is trying to climb out.

And along the way, we'll get great care for others who will make lots of living space outside of the Earth.

But do you think, you don't sound like you're of the school that thinks that we're close to some kind of AI,

and that when it goes over the threshold within a matter of hours, it will just inflate into some kind of thing

that can't, we can't even relate to and we'll be of known truth to?

Um, no, I really, I think, of course, it's hard, you know, to find intelligence and consciousness.

Like, I think that people underestimate the trial and error, the error-proneness of living processes.

But on the end of the end, the iteration speed of these machine life is so stagnant.

But the, the, there's a difference, the ecosystems that they're living in are extremely errant.

They're basically life living in these very narrow tubes connected by very chance of processing.

You mean the wires?

The wires, you know, and the servers and things, if that's how it stays.

And, whereas, an ocean, you know, an ocean with a billion trillion parallel processes and black smokers

and superplumes going up and carrying hydrons is a massively different emphasis,

where you can have a lot of things happening at once and seeing these, a lot of reactions that happen.

I think the error rate is going to be, is always the crippling factor.

But why, for instance, we invent, you know, all the science fiction, we invent something that eats all silicon

and it comes down to the earth and it eats all carbon-based lives and we're all gone.

I think it doesn't happen because, um, general purpose things are hard to, they're, they're, they're really, uh, ill-seated for survival.

And then when your specific purpose, you're, you're, you're prone to lots of errors.

So I don't think there isn't the planet-eaters any time soon.

I don't think it was the planet-eater scenario so much as the idea that once something became sentient,

it would immediately design something beyond itself and that you would get a cascade of self-perfecting machine intelligences,

would, would leave your, go over the horizon before you knew what was going on.

I think that, and this is the theme of the next bioconference, we're completing the sponsorship in Holland, Australia,

it's symbiogenesis.

that every life form is, contains the code, the breeze, mums and mud,

it's like the cell-absorbing.

The mitochondria.

And the things are, are built that way.

And so, for instance, human, human life is an organism, you know, is, is, is a bolus of biological organisms

surrounded by, and meta-biological forms called culture and, and medicine.

That is, in fact, there's a new way to regenerate a Frankenstein that's separate from all that.

It's always going to contain the errors and the powers of the previous.

Now, of course, if we generate nanite lichens, you know, code base that are only in the sources,

it would be so simple, it would be like a slime bag.

Right.

Um, and won't, wouldn't achieve consciousness complexity.

They would achieve the ability to survive on an art cloud surface.

And evolve, you know, through error and process over probably tens of thousands of years.

Reach a certain, but they may be evolved to become giant coral-like slime molds

and just simply consuming resources.

Because that's what life seems to do when it enters a new ecosystem.

Consuming life.

But doesn't it also tend to modify the ecosystem to make it easier on itself?

And that when, that at a thousand megahertz for 10,000 years, you don't really know what you're

going to come back and find.

Yeah, I guess I agree.

And I think that what would happen in around 2,050, the transmissions between the organisms,

the bios, suddenly will not be interpreted anymore.

And for the first few years, they will be spreading across objects.

Even on asteroids and bits and pieces of dust this day is enough for a colony.

As long as it's got certain ingredients and it's facing the sun.

So you'll be able to actually track and understand.

And then suddenly the messaging that, like Tom raised here, will get something you can't

understand anymore.

And there's no way for anyone to interpret what communications about.

They'll understand fundamental sort of operating system calls.

That the organs will be making kind of housekeeping, but there will be a mecca language that evolves.

That will be contextualized for the organs.

Yeah.

And it'll be like bird calls that evolves.

And that will be the moment where we have first contact.

In two weeks, there's a conference called Contact 16, which is the 16th Annual of Jim Fenero's conference.

It's anthropologists and space scientists and science fiction writers that meet every year

and talk about this kind of stuff.

This is what I'm going to talk about.

Where will it be him?

It's in San Jose.

And they have NASA aims one day for the whole name in San Jose.

And I'm going.

You're going.

Three, the three NASA guys came out.

I was so impressed.

I had to come to a set up.

I cleaned up everything right.

And he was over at our neighbors, right?

And he lives behind steel gates.

And this guy is a community that's visiting and generating money to it for people.

And we've been meeting for four hours.

We took a phone call.

NASA, we're coming.

We sent the email.

We said we weren't coming.

But we're not coming.

We're glad to be there.

And I said, oh, God.

You can't leave steel gates and drag them back if they show up.

And he came back before.

And those guys were so tough.

And Dominic, he said, at least those guys have got their head detectors off.

You know what I mean?

And he said, this is what it is.

Well, there's a lot of study going on of the genetics that controls birdsong.

And how it localizes and what's actually going on.

And it begins to look like there's a pretty seamless process right straight through to complex language.

That it's just a mutation of this signal generating impulse.

I think language will tell us today.

And we have something not necessarily sentient, but something that is no longer of anything we can understand.

And it will be, from that point on, an attempt to contact this mass, this bolus, that will be in the ring around the solar system.

And it will be tracked.

And it will become the second Terran ecosystem.

And a lot of the work to support us.

We'll go render down comments and feed mass drivers or whatever this is.

And then we'll do the billions.

Like any good farmer with his seeds and his crops, there will be a lot of unpredictability of where they're going.

These nano-colonizations of earth cloud material, that originally is established for mineral recovery?

Probably for fuel construction.

Why the outer solar system?

Why not the asteroid like that?

There's not enough elements, a variety of elements.

I think the Jovian system is going to be interesting.

That's where the action is.

So many interesting satellites and so much incredible electrodynamics and magnetodynamics in that system.

If you want to do anything to Mars, you've got to drop a whole lot of water onto it.

But they're obsessed with Mars for some reason.

I think it's a mistake.

NASA, again, I think if you picked any planet that was reachable in reasonable budgets and spacebar sizes,

Mars is it?

I mean, Venus is kind of a lost cause.

No reason to go there.

They mapped it to the radar map.

Mercury is too strange and small.

It's basically a moon.

It has an atmosphere that forms in 2 to 20 seconds when the sun comes up.

Yeah, so it's 4 inches high and it phases on the other sun and it's a 4 hour day.

So Mercury's not...

But it is tidally locked to the sun.

So you do have this interesting zone, right?

Yeah, the sun's half the size of the sky.

Right.

But Mars has got enough stuff.

It's got volcanoes and all the oceans, I guess, and ice caps.

And the next one out is Jupiter and it's too hard to get to work.

And the workplace.

They're gonna drop Galileo into the Ionian atmosphere in August.

Are they?

What do you mean by that?

Well, it's a really crippled space.

Actually, Galileo has an example of early bio.

It's a model.

They launched...

I remember seeing Galileo being packaged to go...

to be launched on the shuttle.

And this is the shuttle after Challenger.

So it never shipped out to JPL.

And I remember seeing...

I went to JPL to see the space prep created out.

And the high-gain antenna, which is this great big mesh,

and it's like a TV satellite dish.

It's all folded out.

And when they did launch it three years later, it never opened.

So instead of huge bit stream and bandwidth and all kinds of power,

they had to work with some...

A low-gain antenna size of a pizza pie.

Well, they had to slingshot around...

I think the big one just didn't work.

You're right.

They had to slingshot around...

Well, the mistake was the following.

You should understand.

When the shuttle blew up, Nassik was no longer permitted to carry

liquid-fueled upper stages in the cargo bay.

We could consider two dangers.

They had to carry a solid fuel.

It's safer, but it packs very little punch.

Well, it doesn't do very much.

It's thrust about a third.

So they had to design a new way to get to Jupiter.

They would go around Venus twice and steal some of the angular momentum

of Venus by slingshot around it,

coming back again and getting faster.

They're stealing from the planets.

And then they passed the Earth twice.

And on the way into the Sun,

the high-gain antenna, which was still wrapped up,

got heated and flexed and shrunk,

and flexed and shrunk.

It was never designed to be going to the inner solar system.

It was supposed to be straight on the express.

And when they tried to open up on the second time,

it came out like this.

It was a screw-up.

It was a huge screw-up.

And so the machine planner said,

it's $2,000 down to when you play congressional hearings

and then scrapped it,

and we figured about something else.

So on the way to Jupiter,

they re-did its brain,

because it has an operating system,

and software is very comfortable.

And they changed Galileo's brain to think differently,

process differently, and see differently,

and hear it differently.

And by the time it got to Jupiter,

it moved this tiny little pizza pie dish.

It had a re-entry vehicle,

this sort of saucer-like claw

that would be dropped into the Jovian atmosphere.

They'd never be able to do that in their lifetimes.

One would like to lose that.

And they got to the Jovian system,

and by that time,

they would learn to see in these jail bar method,

that it would take strips out of the sky,

and then the ground controllers would say,

look, there's more rings going across,

or now take smaller strips,

and compress them as much as you can,

and then send them and trickle them to us.

And so they could change the hardware,

but they could change the software.

And Galileo was sort of a very early 20th century

metaphor of the visual bio,

moving out, being transmitted massless,

more of all, into a receiver.

It was smarter when it got there.

Smarter when it got there when it left.

So then it all made it?

Yeah, it's been in orbit for two and a half years.

But they had to stream these pictures back

instead of in real time.

It takes months for the data to come back.

Yeah, it's like,

it's on eight bits of news.

It's something crazy.

But they've done fantastic science.

They dropped the probe,

they ran the recorder,

and they recorded it.

The probe went down

into the jogging atmosphere,

down the level now,

like that,

and collapsed,

because of the pressure.

It was on the chutes.

And now they're getting,

they're going to do a close approach.

It's only four times higher

than the highest volcanic plume above island,

because island sulfur volcanoes.

They're going to do only four times

and then graze the top

of the volcanic plume

and it may not survive.

But they're going to try

as much as they can

and get the best.

It may just sort of burn it, destroy it.

But it's like journey from being,

by go to being burned,

is all taped,

and that comes back.

Bit by bit.

And it's been in orbit.

And the Jovian system

is like its own solar system.

It's been in orbit

for three years,

three and a half years.

Just sweeping by different moons.

But what you really need

up there is several tons

of state of the art

imaging equipment

and all kinds of fancy

steering engines.

And what an interesting system.

Yeah.

This mission to Saturn

is pretty ambitious.

Cassini in the world.

Yeah.

Cassini is the last big

heavy mission.

Six tons

of the spacecraft waves.

And it's going to drop

a thing over the atmosphere

of Titan

that will land

on the surface.

And it's Titan

in Saturn.

Titan has the only room

with an atmosphere.

There may be methane,

hydrocarbon ocean

with outside

tar blocks

on the moon.

And the greatest surfing

in the solar system.

600 foot

It's like Solaris Titan.

It's a really strange world.

Yeah.

It's an odd ball.

And yet,

the funny thing,

all of it,

our moon,

we're an odd ball.

Our moon is way

out of proportion.

It's way too big.

That's why they think

now that our moon

isn't here

because of the massive collision.

There's no way

the Earth could capture

something inside

the moon,

so we have to have

a very bad hair day.

A Mars-sized object

crashed into the moon.

And it separated.

Melted it.

Now we're yesterday.

And now.

Duffed up into orbit.

And then it...

Condensed into this kind of system.

And where we're going

hopefully in...

Can't start until I'm in.

Yeah.

The biotic group

goes back through time.

We go to fossil sites.

We went to the Cambrian fossils

in Persia Shell,

which were the first weird creatures

that had body parts.

And then we saw the human fossils

in the Cambrian,

human,

you know,

the professors

in the modern day.

And the next trip

we're going to go back

to 3.5 billion years ago

to Western Australia

where you have

two interesting things

that are the oldest

evidence of life

is certainly...

The stromatolites.

The stromatolites

and bacterial

chemical traces.

But the stromatolites

are these towers

that were the smokestack

polluters

that we came here.

And they...

They're colonial forms

of mushy tops

that have

glucone and algae

on top.

That...

Because if you went

back to the Earth

then you'd have to

very space it

because there's no oxygen.

And...

So these things

lived around all the

continental margins

of these towers

and they pumped

oxygen

out of the oxygen.

It was very poisonous,

very toxic substance.

And in Sharp Bay

at Hamlin Pool

if you lie down

at night

next to where

the stromatolites

are

you'd get high

in the oxygen

and you know

so much.

There's a living colony

as a living colony.

There's a living colony.

And what are its size

made of?

It's all algae.

It's as hard as rock.

And what happens

is the top

is this mushy layer

of frozen

sizes up to

3 billion individuals

per square inch.

And then underneath

there's...

Yeah, it's colonial.

It would have been

the only thing

that you could see

with your eyes.

It was obviously alive

for 2 billion years

and underneath

there's chemosynthetic stuff

that basically

the stromatolites

sucked iron oxide

and calcium

out of the atmosphere

and built...

These towers

are below it.

The ocean levels

rise and fall

in these tides

and these towers

supported the top

of the pond.

And their heart

is rock.

And half the iron ore

in the world

is stromatolites.

They're like bodies.

Life made the continents.

So life,

the earliest life

on earth

built the American

railroads.

That's right.

That was a biological

process.

It was not a...

The accretion of iron.

Iron.

And not oxidized iron.

Uh huh.

So what happens

is the stromatolites

pumped and pumped

and pumped.

Elbow mats

is what they're called.

These are mats

on a stick.

And they

pumped and pumped

and pumped

and pumped.

And then 1.8 billion years ago

this sudden

fantastic thing happened.

The oxygen holocaust.

Where the oxygen levels

just

climbed

into this atmosphere

and

poisoned out.

Well,

earth's been through

many mass extinctions.

Well, this one

is a real horrific one

because

any cell,

single cell organism

that could not

handle

incoming high densities

of O2

which is very poisonous.

basically ripped the cells

apart.

And so there was this mass

extinction.

And there were a few cells

that had observed

e-synchal mitochondria

that could absorb

the oxygen

that turned it into

an energy factory.

One in trillions of cells.

Yeah.

But they then

all present life

was traced back

to the survivors

of that challenge.

When you go jogging

or something

and suddenly

your body runs out

of oxygen

and the cells

and your muscles

switch back

to the old system

of metabolizing

kemosynthetic

to you.

You get

lactic acid

and it makes you sore

because you're going back

to the ancient system

before mitochondria

to get energy

quick.

But at a price.

And so

stromatolites

is this tiny

pond they found

that's very saline

and they're there.

They're there

and they're 3 billion years old.

3 billion years

in the same time.

They're just fine.

Thank you.

And we're going to go there

and save...

And these are...

And this is first...

This is first life.

This is...

This is the first...

Well...

The first significant...

Well...

It's a colony.

It's not even a saline.

Okay.

And stromatolites

go back to 3.5 billion years

and the earliest evidence

of life was 3.8

6 billion years

so they're very close to...

And the impacts...

the meteorite impacts

stopped

on about 3.9.

So life actually popped up

pretty quickly after the...

Pretty quickly.

Within a hundred million years

after the cometarian fall

cease.

So waters...

Water...

And we didn't have

the surface of the Earth

getting all molten

every once in a while.

That's something

I hate it to happen.

But we're going to

thank the stromatolites

for giving us oxygen

and apologize for the fact

that we're putting

all the CO2 back.

But plants like CO2.

Yeah.

And Earth...

Earth of 2 billion years ago

was really weird

because chances are

the oceans were brown

because they were full

of incredible...

The continents had no

plants to hold the land

together.

So the outwash

was eight times higher

or more.

Huge river systems

of braided river systems

pouring off the mountains.

The brown oceans...

The Himalayas and the Rockies

are mountains that will

never appear again

because there's never going

to be that kind of deposition

again.

They're unique.

They're creations of...

The fact that...

Well, they're full of life

and they're finding more

and more now that life

and water are the reason

we have plate tectonics

in the first place

and that we have mountain ranges.

Why do life and water

drive plate tectonics?

They think that...

Well, there's...

The simple sort of

interlocking factors.

One is that...

Water lubricates.

It allows this...

this kind of...

continuous movement.

Water also observed

a lot of the crap

that came through volcanism

early in the Earth's history

maybe for common impacts

for the oceans

and that was a big sponge

that damped up

all this horrible,

junky toxic stuff

coming out of the...

the bottoms of the oceans.

So it created...

It created a cleaner...

not a clean,

but a cleaner atmosphere

which in turn supported rain

which in turn supported

all the...

the outwash

and life sealed the continents

in this hyper-sea of roots

coming in the ocean

and sealed all that land in

so that the outflow

and the erosions

and all of it used to be.

So future generations

of mountains will be

quite different.

But now they...

in the last two years

they've discovered

it's fantastic.

They've discovered

these black smokers

in the mid-80s

with huge hot water

full of sulfates

and stuff

pouring out of the bottom

of the ocean

and there's tons of life

on it

and eating chemicals

not needing sunlight.

Bacteria.

And two worms

and crabs

and...

Two worms

up to six feet long.

Oh yeah.

And that's even

the pollution.

It's even the pollution

and...

They were always wondering

how did...

if life evolved

around one black smoker

they don't last long.

They kind of go out

and how did it get

all across the planet?

Because all the black smokers

have about the same kind

of life.

And they found

these things called

superplumes

which are underwater

Mount St. Helens

that happen in water.

So think of Mount St. Helens

as a massive ash thing.

What happens under the ocean

too?

You get this blowout

that happens in hot water

that's the same as a

pyroclitic ash explode

and it comes out into

roughly 12 to 15 miles across

the boluses of hot water

that's very hot.

And they come blowing off

as a mushroom cloud

out of the ocean

and then they get

caught by waves

like the currents

and carried for hundreds

of miles

over a thousand miles

and they're full of

life forms

that have been carried

in this express bus

system.

And then they're

raining back down.

On other plumes.

So this kind of plume

super plume system

may have been

the engine that

created

and sort of

transported life

out around constantly.

Volcanoes

and underwater

volcanoes

are roots.

That's why we like

decreases.

And they'll change.

Underwater volcanoes.

Yeah.

The world's largest

underwater volcano

is about 22 miles

that way.

Yeah.

And the world's

largest earthquake

in 1998

was an 8.1

earthquake on that mountain.

When they went down

with bathyscapic stuff

afterwards

they said that

the entire

area had been totally

rearranged.

That they couldn't

recognize it.

It's only 2,000 feet

below the surface there.

Having risen

12,000 feet.

The ocean is 16,000

or 14,000 feet deep.

If you ever go to Mars

and see the great

granddaddy

long

solar system

volcanoes.

Olympus 1

is 80,000 feet.

The top

sticks out

of the atmosphere.

So

that's

here in the caldera

is different.

And now the land

emission

in there

or something.

I didn't realize that.

It's a giant.

Yeah, the Hawaiian

shield volcanoes

are the closest

thing to it

on the earth.

I've heard that

when I was at

Volcano Park

the volume encompassed

by my loaves

is

you could fit all

the serum of

Einstein.

So

in effect

it's the single

largest structure

on the planet.

It was created

by one process.

Yeah.

It's the world's

largest mountain

by volume

and if you measure

it from its

seabed floor

it's the world's

tallest mountain

because it's

13,000 feet above

the sea

but 16,000 feet

it rises

from the ocean

there.

The living ones

are great

and there's a

theory now

as to why

there's a hot spot

over here

it's some kind

of a harmonic

constructive

harmonic

that's going

on.

It's actually

breaking up

the crust

and there may

be one

on the other

side

over here

and that's

why

it's

like

what

it's

creating

sort of

the greatest

products

that their

imagination

is it

to help

ourselves

or is it

to...

I think

it's kind

of a semi-conscious

push

or

the drive

that human beings

have had

to build

to make things

make life

and create

and they're

creating

tool-making

things

perhaps they don't

align

but they'll make

the next phase

and they'll make

the next phase

and they'll make

the next phase

yeah

I'm telling Dave

the maker of the world

that you were

impressed

yeah we were

greatly impressed

thank him very much

and telling me

that we'll have a go

and hope to see

them

the next to you I'll

gosh I saw it

where the guy could just with the speech

it should in my

and pay man was

incredible and you can edit and then I can

he only paid like 500 dollars for this camera which is what I

for mine a few years ago and it doesn't give shit

where it is with this stuff in the speed of computers now you can't really run

for your sound video so you just gotta do segments

right there's a point of segments the dialogue can be patched in and you get

different angles and stuff like that

it's interesting that's what's called

church service

church service family in the lives of people in the country

virtual christianity

virtual religiosity

you're listening to the psychedelic salon

where people are changing their lives one thought at a time

ah good old terence

don't you just love it

virtual christianity a new time religion

well I'll bet we both could do a few good riffs on that topic

but in the interest of time I think we'd better pass on to other things just now

again I

want to thank Jim Essex for

capturing this and other conversations with Terence for us

we really appreciate your work on this Jim

also I want to thank once again

Amara Angelica

and for more than just the superb job of getting rid of the generator hum in today's program

you see it was in an article that Amara wrote for Mondo 2000 a long time ago

that for the very first time I learned about this guy named Terence McKenna

had Amara never written that article or had I not come across it

there's a good chance that you and I wouldn't be here in the salon together right now

so we both have more than one reason to send Amara our thanks and love for all she's done to keep the world on its toes

and I should also mention that she's also a close associate of Ray Kurzweil's

and so you've most likely been exposed to her work in other areas as well

and how can we ever thank Bruce Dahmer for all he's done and is continuing to do to preserve a record of some of the early psychedelic pioneers in the new psychedelic renaissance

and by the way if you happen to live in or near London and would like to meet Bruce in person and exchange some ideas with him

you'll find him on the evening of July 13th

that's 2010 by the way

at the October Gallery at 24 Old Gloucester Street in London

his talk for the evening is titled Terence McKenna's Elves

Eckhart Tolle's Egos

and Bruce Dahmer's Avatars

New Tools to Forge or Forgo a New Earth

and here's a summary of how Bruce plans on pulling these seemingly diverse topics together

on this the tenth anniversary of the passing of Terence McKenna

we can now look back at his Capernian explorations of the mind with some hindsight and ask many questions

what were his voyages into deeper conscious states all about?

do the machine elves really exist?

how do his warnings about the current state of humanity play out today?

but perhaps the most powerful insight gleaned from McKenna's many journeys

might be related to the more recent work of Eckhart Tolle and others on the ego

McKenna and Tolle both describe mind states in which the ego may be sensed briefly as a separate entity from oneself

providing momentary release and the sense of exquisite presence of the unencumbered self

for Tolle the recognition that the ego is an interactor with an agenda

is the key to the transformation of the individual and of planetary civilization

McKenna clearly describes the ego manifesting itself within elevated mental states

providing a possibly unique opportunity to understand and deal with it

then and later in normal states of mind

if this is in fact a common experience it could in combination with regimens proposed by Tolle and others

give us a new vital tool to forge a new earth

Damer will also bring into this mix the newly pressing issue of humanity's increasingly intense exposure to technology

especially digital screens and how that may be affecting a planetary change in mind state

loading more of ourselves into avatars, social networks and endless update interrupt streams

may be dissolving or may be enhancing a species consciousness millions of years in the making

the future of us and our world is at stake in this giant unplanned experiment

so if you're in the London area on the night of July 13th

you might want to take a spin around the October gallery and meet Bruce Damer

now there's one more mutual friend of Bruce's and mine who has a new book out

and his name is one that you've probably not heard unless you've been paying very close attention

but Ken Symington is one of the pivotal figures in the psychedelic community

for it was Ken who was the true heart and soul of the legendary and theobotany conferences

that took place in Palenque, Mexico for a decade or so

the same conference in fact that was mentioned in today's podcast

now I could go on about Ken for hours for days actually

but for now I'll just say that in all my years on this planet

I've never encountered a wiser or more completely together person than Ken Symington

he's he's my ideal man

and for many years now Ken's friends have been pressing him to write down some of the teaching tales

that he has regaled us with over the years

but he wouldn't even let us record them saying that we'd learn better if we had to completely focus on the parable

while it was being told

fortunately though Ken has relented and taken pen in hand and recorded some of these little gems

the name of the book is HypoNemata

stories, fables, memories

now I may be mispronouncing the first word in that title

HypoNemata

it's spelled H-Y-P-O-M-N-E-M-A-T-A

but after trying to find a pronunciation guide in a half a dozen online dictionaries

I discovered that Ken not only used a word that's hard to pronounce

it's also not even in most of the big dictionaries

which is pure Ken

always making you dig a little bit for the answer

but as I'm sure you already knew

it simply means a book of notes and memories

let me just read a few of the titles of some of the little pieces in this collection

one is Guided Tour Through the Deceptions

The Importance of Cats in Meditation

and one of my personal favorite Ken stories

How the World Became Sinful

better known as The Invention of Sin

and you can read these and dozens of other little fables in this great little book

that is filled with treasures that you can use to entertain your friends for many years to come

and besides being available on Amazon you can also get it directly from Ex Libris

the publisher

and by the way in another week or so

the notes from the Psychedelic Salon blog will be operational once again

and I'll be posting show notes for the dozen or so podcasts I haven't documented yet

along with links to Ken's book and things like that

for those of you who have offered to help me with the site

again thank you very much

and I should let you know that after a lot of deliberation I decided to simply rebuild it

and keep it strictly for podcast show notes and save my other postings for the other blogs I keep

so if you want to get a look at my progress before I repoint the PsychedelicSalon.org URL to the new site

you can just go to matrixmasters.net slash salon

it's not very graphically fancy and it doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles

but I think it'll still serve its purpose

well that should do it for now

and so I'll close today's podcast by reminding you once again that

this and most of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are freely available for you to use in your own audio projects

under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 3.0 License

and if you have any questions about that just click the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage

which you can find at psychedelicsalon.org

and if you're interested in the philosophy behind the Psychedelic Salon

you can hear all about it in my novel The Genesis Generation

which is available as an audio book that you can download at genesisgeneration.us

and for now this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space

be well my friends