Conversations At The Edge Of Magic

Thank you for trying AudioCorder.

What I'll do today is I assume most of you are not familiar with my work,

but I also assume you're intelligent,

so I'm not going to give an introductory talk.

I'll just cut to the chase.

And if you don't understand what's said,

at least you have the satisfaction of knowing nobody talked down to you, right?

Okay.

It's very hard to know where exactly to slice into this pie.

I mean, I am an advocate of the psychedelic experience

for personal growth work, for shamanic exploration,

as an enzyme for the imagination,

as a force that forces us to grow up and to clean up.

However, what I want to talk to you today about,

because this is a pagan community

and because I think the argument,

if it's not understood here, won't be understood anywhere,

is I want to talk about the social impact

of psychedelic plants on human consciousness,

both in the present and in the remote past.

Because my approach to psychedelics is not to see it

as a religious freedom issue

or a personal self-exploration issue.

That's all there.

But I believe that we cannot really understand

what it is to be a human being

and how we came to be human beings

without factoring into our explanations

this most taboo of all subjects

for the Western dominator mind,

the subject of boundary-dissolving,

consciousness-expanding plants.

And so every point of view has a cosmology,

a myth of its meaning.

And as quickly as I can,

I want to tell you the myth

that to my mind unites paganism,

psilocybin, sexual freedom,

the peril to the earth,

and the hope for the future

all into one very nice, neat package.

And it requires a kind of an anthropology lesson.

First of all,

our fellow Voyagers along the way,

the scientists,

have created, as you all know,

the theory of evolution,

which has been the great crowning achievement

of biology over the past hundred years.

First, the Darwinian understanding

of natural selection and random mutation,

then Mendelian genetics,

the discovery of the particulate nature of the gene,

then, still later, molecular genetics,

the elucidation of DNA,

so forth and so on.

The theory of evolution

has been very successful

in explaining the state of nature

on this planet

with one tremendously embarrassing exception,

which is ourselves.

Biological evolution cannot account

for a phenomenon

like minded human beings

involved in the building and maintenance

of global, electronically sustained societies.

How do we do it?

Well, we do it because we have

a vastly superior cerebral architecture

to any other organism in nature.

And the interesting thing

about that architecture

is that it sprang into being

in the blink of an eye,

geologically speaking.

The human brain size doubled

in less than two million years.

This is the most dramatic expansion

in the size of a major organ

of a higher animal

in the entire fossil record.

It would be,

under any circumstances,

an embarrassment

to the theory of evolution.

But notice that the theory of evolution

was generated

by the very organ

we're discussing.

So it is doubly embarrassing.

Now, obviously,

we are the inheritors

of extraordinary circumstances.

Higher animals have existed

on this planet

for 200 million years

in all kinds of forms.

Reptilian life, amphibian life,

avian life, mammalian life.

And never,

so far as the geological history

of the planet can tell us,

never did machine-building,

language-using,

technology-producing societies arise.

Some extraordinary interaction

in our early history

is responsible

for our circumstance

as language-using,

technology-producing creatures.

Okay.

End of introduction.

Here's the scenario,

and I hope it has special resonance

for this community.

All animal species

tend to evolve

into an ecological niche

and stabilize themselves there.

Ants and termites

have been at equilibrium

for hundreds of millions of years.

Our remote ancestors

also were on a direct course

toward that kind of dynamic equilibrium.

We were evolving

toward being fruit-eating,

canopy-living,

insectivorous primates

with an advanced repertoire

of pack signals.

and this was apparently

to be our evolutionary destiny.

Were it not for the fact

that sometime in the last

five million years or so,

the African continent,

which was the site

of our environmental proto-system,

began to dry up.

And the forests

that had always been

our arboreal home

began to shrink.

And what this spelled

for our remote

proto-hominid ancestors

was nutritional pressure.

There wasn't enough food.

Our remote ancestors

began descending

from the canopy

and exploring

the new environment

that the aridity

was bringing into existence,

a grassland environment,

an environment

of limited numbers

of plant and animal species

relative to the climax

tropical rainforests

that were in retreat.

Now, the reason animals

specialize their food supply

is to avoid contact

with mutagens

in the environment.

If you begin experimenting

with foods

and begin eating everything,

you will produce

more children

with mutations.

Some of these mutations

will be positive.

Most will be lethal.

When our remote ancestors

came under nutritional pressure,

they began expanding their diet.

This was the moment

when we became

partially carnivorous,

when we became omnivores.

And had I more time,

I would lay out

many examples

of specific plants,

such as plants

that contain birth control,

alkaloids,

and things like that,

specific plants

that would have impacted

early human emergence.

But I want to concentrate here

on one plant,

and that is

the psilocybin-containing

mushrooms

that grow

in the dung

of cattle.

Because I think that

if we're looking

for a missing link,

it isn't a transitional skeleton,

it isn't meddling

by extraterrestrials,

at least not of the overt

thousand-ton

beryllium ship

variety.

It has to do with the fact

that we began to allow

into our diet

an exotic pseudo-neurotransmitter

that was part of the native flora

of the grassland.

And I believe that,

you know,

in the next ten minutes,

I can at least make it seem plausible

to you

that this mushroom

was the triggering factor

that moved us

from being an advanced hominid,

an advanced animal,

to being, in fact,

a conscious,

self-reflecting,

caring,

thinking,

dreaming,

striving human being.

And here is

my answer

to this riddle,

where did human consciousness

come from?

It begins like this.

In that foraging phase

where we were testing

all kinds of plants

on the grassland,

small amounts

of psilocybin mushrooms

would have naturally

been eaten

in the process

of eating corms

and things like that.

I personally

have seen baboons

in Kenya

investigating cow paddies

on the savannah

because they know

that bug pupa

will be under

the cow paddies.

So the cow paddies

are already set up

as vectors

for possible sources

of nutrition.

So there is no question

that these protohominids

would have eaten

psilocybin

in small amounts.

And by small amounts,

I mean amounts

so small

that if you were

to eat that much,

you wouldn't feel

nothing.

but this dose level

has been studied

and it causes

increased acuity

of vision.

You can actually

give people

small amounts

of psilocybin

and then give them

eye tests

and they do better

if they're slightly

intoxicated

than if they are not.

The guy who proved this,

the Viennese psychologist

Roland Fisher,

when he described

these experiments

to me,

he said,

and so you see,

my young friend,

here we have a case

where the use of drugs

actually introduces us

to a more true vision

of reality

than if we have

avoided the drug.

Scientific proof

that the drug

is telling you

more about reality

than if you had

refused it.

All right.

Now,

what kind of

visual acuity

is it

that is being improved?

Well,

it turns out

it's what's called

edge detection.

In the grassland environment

where the movement

of small animals

means dinner

and the movement

of large animals

means you become dinner,

a plant

which confers

increased visual acuity

is going to

immediately confer

an adaptive advantage

on those members

of the group

that let it in.

Those members

of the group

that refuse it

out of aesthetic

or gastronomic reasons

will tend

to be outbred

because the psilocybin

using members

of the species

will be more successful

at obtaining food

and at surviving

to raise their own children

to reproductive age,

which is the name

of the game

in evolution.

So,

that's step one

of a three-step process

that leads

to the explosion

of consciousness

in the hominid brain.

Step two,

which should have

special appeal

for this crowd,

is that when you take

slightly larger doses

of psilocybin,

not religiously

profound doses,

but doses

which you definitely feel,

psilocybin is what's called

a CNS stimulant,

a central nervous system

stimulant.

What it causes

in animals

is what

neurophysiologists

call arousal.

And in highly

sexed animals

like primates,

arousal

means

in the male

erection.

So,

what,

and an animal

then,

which is

allowing

what is essentially

a sexual stimulant

or an aphrodisiac

to enter

into the diet,

there will be

more instances

of what

anthropologists

call

successful

copulations.

And God knows

we need that.

So,

if you have

more successful

copulations,

you have

more pregnancies.

You have

another,

a second factor,

outbreeding

the non-psilocybin

using member

of the population.

Now,

something really

important

here

that is my,

well,

this whole thing

is my theory,

but here's the part

of it that I like

the best.

All primates,

all primates

have what are called

dominance hierarchies

or male dominance

hierarchies.

This goes right back

clear to lemurs

and the old world monkeys

which are much more,

I mean,

yes,

the new world monkeys

which are more primitive.

All primates

have this dominance hierarchy

and what it means is

the sharp-fanged,

hard-bodied young males.

They control

the women,

the children,

the elderly,

all sexual minorities.

Everybody is under the thumb

of the alpha males.

And as we sit here today,

though this community

may strive

to be an exception,

as a society,

male dominance

is an enormous dilemma

for us

and an enormous

distorting factor

in our politics

and in our lives.

So my notion is

that psilocybin,

by promoting

this polymorphic

sexual style,

actually acted

as an inoculation

against monogamous

sexual styles

of bonding,

you see.

And it isn't that

the monogamous style,

the dominator style,

disappeared.

It was simply

medicated out of existence

for perhaps

a hundred thousand years.

It was medicated

out of existence.

Now,

and what it promoted,

this arousal,

this psilocybin taking

around the African campfires

by these primitive

nomadic pastoralists,

what the social change

that came with it

was

was an orgiastic

sexual style,

a style where

everybody would get

loaded around

the campfire

and then hump

in an enormous

writhing heap.

Now,

yes,

now,

besides the fact

that this is

a great deal

of fun,

it has a very,

very profound

social effect,

which is

in societies

which allow

orgy,

men cannot trace

lines of male paternity.

Men cannot trace

lines of male paternity.

What does this mean?

It means that

men do not identify

with children

as property.

It means that

the men

of that kind

of a social group

can only think

in terms

of our children,

we,

the group,

our children,

and it creates

an immensely

cohesive social glue

that I believe

held these

societies together

for millennia.

And I believe

that during

this period

of pharmacological

suppression

of male dominance,

we became

human beings.

Theater,

poetry,

magic,

art,

altruism,

dance,

symbolic

and cognitive

activity

of every sort

was born

in that window

of opportunity

when there was

simultaneously

a chemical suppression

of male dominance

and consequently

an opening

to Gaian intentionality,

to the intent

of the larger

biological systems

in which the human

system

was embedded.

And a kind

of paradise

came into existence.

There were actually

two phases,

one from about

40,000 to 30,000

years ago

in the interglacial

and in that early phase

human beings,

cattle,

and mushrooms

were sort of

all swirling together

there on the

African grassland

in contact

but not yet

a coherent

triad.

The second

partnership

paradise

arose at the

last glaciation

at the melt

during the

last glacial melt

and lasted

from about

20,000 years ago

to perhaps

as much

as recently

as 10,000

years ago.

And it was

in that

later phase

that

the

Magdalenian

explosion

occurred

and the

social forms

were put

in place

that

Hellenistic

paganism

was looking

back at

with a

nostalgic

and barely

cognizable

memory.

There was

an old,

old memory

of a kind

of paganism

that was

old

5,000 years

before

Eleusis

laid its

cornerstone.

I wrote

a book

called

The Archaic

Revival

in which

I tried

to say

that the

entire

cultural

impulse

of the

20th century

beginning

with Freud

and Jung

discovering

the unconscious

beginning

with Picasso

dragging back

primitive

West African

masks

to Paris

and inserting

them into

his paintings.

Dada,

pataphysics,

jazz,

abstract

expressionism,

even phenomena

like national

socialism,

all of

these various

impulses

in the

20th century,

some positive,

some negative,

all have

a common

theme,

archaism,

a nostalgia

for a

state

before history.

And as

this

tendency,

this nostalgia

has been

sorted out

over the

last hundred

years by

generations of

scholars,

beginning with

Freud and

Jung and

Blavatsky and

Crowley and

then coming

up through

all the

folklorists

and

deconstructionists,

as this

thing has

been teased

apart,

it has become

clearer and

clearer that

the paradigmatic

figure in

any archetypal

revival is

the maker

of magic,

the shaman,

the wizard,

the seeress,

the person

who is in

control with

invisible

forces.

And as

I have

lived my

life and

explored these

things for a

long time,

I've come to

the conclusion

that the

shaman,

without the

hallucinogenic

plants,

is well on

the way to

becoming

priest or

priestess,

well on

the way to

being downloaded

into a

fixed canon,

a moral

vision,

a societal

religious

structure,

which is not

what shamanism

is about,

it's about

discordian

ecstasy,

it's about

the felt

presence of

immediate

experience in

the absence

of theory,

that's what

it's about.

so this,

well, and

then I want

to go back

to our

little process.

We've now

covered step

one, better

vision through

mushroom taking

leads to

better diets

and healthier

children.

Bigger doses

lead to an

end to

monogamy, a

dissolution of

pair bonding,

and a

replacement of

monogamous

anxiety with

polymorphic

amorousness or

whatever you

want to call

it, then

that's only

the second

step.

The third

step is

when you

double the

polyamorous

dose and

now hunting

is out of

the question

and even

fucking is

out of the

question

because you

are nailed

to the

ground

somewhere off

at the edge

of the

firelight

wrestling with

a mystery

so profound,

so bizarre,

that even as

we sit here

with Husserl

and Heidegger

and Heisenberg

and all these

clowns under

our belts,

it is still

absolutely

mysterious,

appalling,

challenging,

boundary-dissolving

and unavoidably

ecstatic.

It is

the living

mystery and

I don't know

how many of

them there

are in the

world but

for my money

there only

has to be

one to

rescue the

entire concept

from, you

know, the

dirty claws of

the reductionist,

the materialist,

the christers,

the nothing-butters,

the merely

this and the

simply-that-ers.

Yeah, I know

I'm preaching

to the converted

but if I

preached to the

unconverted

I'd be hung

from the

yardarm.

So, you

may say to

yourself, well

this is all

very interesting,

this guy has

some kind of

anthropologically

revisionist theory

and, you know,

that's all well

and good.

In other words,

so what?

What does it

have to do

with us?

Well, what it

has to do

with us

is we are

in a state

of enormous

dysfunctional

anxiety

as a result

of the fall

into history

which has

caused us

to have to

compromise

our sensuality,

our connection

to the

Gaian goddess,

our polymorphic

sexuality.

all of these

things have

been poured

into a new

set of social

institutions

that derive

essentially from

the invention

of agriculture

which is where

I think the

shit hit the

fan.

I mean, I'm

fairly radical

on that.

I think that

agriculture is

the end

because it's

incredibly

successful as a

strategy for food

production.

Well, what does

that mean?

It means you

can't be nomads

anymore.

Oh, no.

You have to

build a stone

tower to put

the grain in

and you have to

make sure you

can haul large

rocks up on

top of your

tower to drop

on people whose

grain crop

wasn't as big

as yours was.

We see this

at Jericho.

The most

advanced building

in the world

of 10,000 B.C.

was the grain

tower at

Jericho

and it was

defensive and

it bespeaks

the primal

paranoia.

Once people

stopped moving

across the

land, once

they violated

it with the

blade of the

plow, then

you get

sedentary

populations,

the division

between the

profane world

of the city

and the

wilderness

outside.

That's the

moment when

the division

between the

unconscious

and the

conscious mind

comes into

play and

an entire

set of

institutions

arise then.

Male

kingship,

standing

armies,

role

specialization,

slavery,

women as

chattel,

so forth

and so on.

I mean,

we are the

unhappy

inheritors of

this hideous

plunge into

dysfunctionality.

Now, why

is it such a

hideous plunge

into dysfunctionality

to live

without

psilocybin

or close

relatives

thereof?

The answer

is that

this thing

which to now

I've described

as male

dominance

and a tendency

to form

dominance

hierarchies,

we can

describe another

way and

bring much

closer to

home by

saying it

is the

interriving,

very tenuous,

highly

uncertain

of itself

social

structure

that has

taken root

in the

human psyche

like a

tumor,

like a

growth

of some

sort.

It is

the leftover

of this

primate

dominance

complex

and the

way it

manifests

itself

is by

the

establishment

of

boundaries.

First

of all,

this is

my

body,

do not

touch

it.

Second

of all,

these are

my

weapons

and

agricultural

tools,

do not

touch

them.

This

is

my

woman,

these

are

my

children,

I

hunt

there,

so

forth

and

so

on.

It's

this

division

of the

world

that

allows

the

illusion

of

the

ego

to

come

into

existence.

Now,

what do

psychedelics

do

and

why

are

they

such

social

dynamite?

The

answer

is,

it's

not a

health

issue,

it's

not an

addiction

issue,

it's

not,

I mean,

that's

preposterous,

it's

about

boundary

dissolution.

Every

society,

from

the

classic

Maya

to

Fujiwara

Japan

to

the

France

of the

Bourbons,

every

society

establishes

a set

of

boundaries,

which

it

then

calls

reality,

and

woe

betide

you

if

you

go

across

the

boundary,

because

then

you

are

outcast,

outclass,

outlandish,

and the

full

fury

of the

community

can be

turned

against

you,

and

we

invader,

and

that

it

will

continue

to

strengthen

and

perpetuate

itself

as

long

as

we

do

not

institute

either

as

groups

or

within

our

relationships

or

as

individuals

a

regular

ritual

encounter

with

the

forces

which

dissolve

these

boundaries.

And

the

only

force

I

know

that

works

are

these

plants.

And

as I

say,

I'm

not

interested

in

arguing

whether

there

are

other

methods

or

not.

God,

I

would

hope

so.

But

anything

I

ever

looked

into,

and I

shopped

the

spiritual

supermarket

from

stem

to

stern,

was

horseshit

as far

as I

could

see.

Now,

I am

not a

sensitive.

Let me

say that.

People

say,

well,

but what

about

Ramana

Maharshi

and what

about

Yacob

Burma?

And,

hey,

it's

great

for

those

folks.

I

applaud

arhats

and avatars

and so

forth and

so on.

But what

I'm

interested in

is

democratic

ecstasis.

this.

it should be for the most lumpen among us it is it is not to be attained by an

act of dietary control sexual abstinence or you know whatever it should be it is

a human birthright it is a human birthright to touch the incorporeal body

of the goddess it isn't something so you know well let's see where can we go

from here I I say all this if you're interested I say it better than I'm

saying it here in my book food of the gods which was not written for you

people it's an argument for people who do not know a great deal about drugs may

never have taken drugs but through some miracle have managed to maintain an open

mind all you know and and I don't know how much you know about my stick and I

can't get into it now but for me these things are more than tools for exploring

the Freudian their union unconscious I mean I journey to inhabited worlds that

are there are echoes in elf land and fey but you know as a rationalist as a as a

aspiring astronautical engineer at age 13 it's astonishing to me that I could

validate the mystery through doubt through doubt the truth does not require your

belief the truth is real you can beat it on the ground you can rip it apart you can

look inside it nobody needs to guard the truth from inspection nobody needs to tell

you that you know you can't look behind the stage and so my motivation is to try

to number one bring people to the realization that the spiritual path if you want to think

of it that way that is a real thing and it will carry you to the real thing all spiritual disciplines

that I know except for psychedelics put a great deal of emphasis on putting the pedal to the metal

push push push you know meditate make offerings do mantriana do pranayama do puja push push push with

psychedelics suddenly there's a very deep interest in and where are the brakes you see you're no longer

pushing once you get to the psychedelics seeking is an attitude which ill becomes

you you have found it you have found it now what in the hell are you going to do with it and and this

is a great dilemma for for anyone who goes into this I mean I am I am as I see myself I'm I'm a preacher

in the marketplace but I know and I'm sure most of you know that I could walk out of here you could walk out

of here and you could go as far as your courage would carry you there is no barrier there are no more

barriers you can go as far as your fucking courage will carry you and at that point you have to ask the

question you know do I want to be the mad monk of cold mountain do I want the villagers to down in the

valley to say oh yes we see him occasionally up in the mist naked flying with the eagles because you can be

be that person you know you don't have to go back to your job as ad exec stockbroker or or whatever it is and

so we stand on the edge of being able to leave history we can leave it you know we tend to forget

because our lives are so brief that what we call the psychedelic experience is very very new on the plate of

western occultism and science I mean hashish did not make great inroads into medieval Europe that all

came later in the 18th and 19th century chloroform ether these things don't cut it mescaline was

synthesized for the first time in 1888 these things had to compete with many other interesting areas of

scientific exploration in the 20th century we have not come to terms with what they mean and what they are

and it's a curious area because the counterculture whatever that may mean knows a great deal more about this

than science I mean science does not explore this area because it senses enormous danger for its ontological

machinery it probably couldn't survive the encounter and therefore it's just said well it's psychology

it's marginal it's fleeting it's non-irreproducible and so forth and so on this is all nonsense you can

by unplugging the telephone by fasting for six hours and by taking five dried grams of strophari cubensis in

silent darkness you can go up to the great simulacra of human explorers hypathea maria newton davinci you can

take that ride i have the feeling that when we go into those psychedelic spaces we not only see things no

one has ever seen before we see things no one will ever ever see again okay one one last thought i want to

put out and then i'll try for some questions i have a sort of a rational mind in that i like things to

make sense i don't mean experimental sense but i mean if you can build a verbal metaphor to get from one

thing to another then you understand it much better and so i the magical dimension is real it isn't

psychological it isn't based on the strength of will it's as real as mars in its orbit i mean there's

real estate out there folks it's that real and so then uh the question becomes uh how to

vivify it and the answer is by creating a consensus in language by having it made illegal it's like where

sex was with the victorians you know everybody was inventing the wheel over and over again what we have

to do is begin to build a consensus about this realm and uh you know this may be heresy in a community

as oriented toward tradition as this one seems to be but and the generally pleasant position

to take is that everybody has a piece of the action you know the hasids know something the buddhists know

something the book of mormon there's something there the mushroom was incredibly ungenerous on this point

it said nobody knows jack shit about what is going on so it is for you with your body as laboratory

and your mind as worker in that laboratory to find the way to reflux the alchemical gold the only experience

which counts which counts is your own experience everything else is somehow handed down through

social structures and political structures it's irrelevant if flying saucers were to land on the

south lawn of the white house tomorrow it would not matter to you as much as smoking dmt would if you did

that tonight because that's your experience your conviction you see and i believe that the rebirth of paganism the

rebirth of archaism the rebirth of psycho psychedelic shamanism is coming at this moment because we are going to be

be involved in a historical meltdown which will be the equivalent of a species deep shamanic crisis

in which as a collectivity we are going to have to make the journey to the well of worlds and recover and

cleanse the collective soul of humanity we have lost touch with our moral compass because we have lost

touch with the guy in mind and this is not a metaphor if you if if you take these neurotransmitters these exo

pheromones that connect you up with the natural environment the gaian intent becomes known it's an act of

feeling if we could feel what we are doing we would stop doing it but we live in a realm of abstraction

excuses incredible wealth incredible levels of pampering and softness lie between us the upper five

percent of the intellectual and material elite on the planet and the problems i mean how many of us have

been to bosnia or rwanda or somalia these things are only images on a dehumanizing screen if we could feel

what we are doing we would awaken to the mystery of each other and to the mystery of the historical

process of recovering what was lost we don't need this material civilization we don't need five billion

people on this planet we have to think very very radically about how we are going to change ourselves

or we are not going to make the cut and orthodoxy is utterly and completely bankrupt all it can do is

suppress they suppress they suppress they suppress but there's only one argument that will forgive suppression

deliverance and they can't give us deliverance all they can give us is the menendez trial

oj baby m the skaters klaus von bulow horseshit horseshit horseshit we are locked inside

uh a nightmare a nightmare a nightmare of contaminated and toxic imagery that is designed to disempower you

and make it impossible for you to think straight and the way out is straight back to the reality of the

vegetable gnosis it is there it has always been there the societies that never broke the connection

live in dynamic and loving balance with each other and the planet today were it not for the input of our

disruptive social and economic systems so i talk to all kinds of people who i see as part of my community

but it stretches from virtual reality to the radical gay movement to the house movement to the pagan movement

to the younger molecular pharmacologists to the radical art historians and psychotherapists all of these

communities are fragmented and suspicious of each other and this is precisely what orthodoxy

enjoys if all of these countercultural impulses could make common cause we would probably discover that

we're 65 to 70 percent of the population and so what is needed is a spirit of boundary dissolution

between individuals between classes sexual orientations rich and poor man and woman uh intellectual

and feeling toned types if this can happen then we will make a new world and if this doesn't happen nature is

fairly pitiless and has a place for us in the shale of this planet where so many have preceded us

well i think that's the basic rave it raises a lot of issues if somebody's burning to ask a question

uh yes burning to ask well i think that it's very hard to find pristine

quote pseudo paleolithic or pseudo neolithic culture even the amazon where i've spent a lot of time

tribes that were nomadic at the time of of contact are now agriculturalists simply because missionary

medicine has swollen aboriginal populations to the point where they can't be nomads as they used to be

so you're right there are some psychedelic using cultures that are pretty uh uh unappealing although

actually i can only think of one that i find politically very unappealing and i don't want to

knock them because i haven't lived with them so i may be misled but i think that uh it's not simply to

take psychedelics but it's also to decondition oneself to the notion of ego and all the concepts which

constellate around that such as place property ownership and stability you see the idea that we have

inherited from western religion and science is the idea that things should be stable this is a very male

dominant notion the wish for stability eternity when in fact the message life hands you over and over again

is nothing lasts nothing lasts not what you love not what you hate

not your enemies your friends not even your dear dear self nothing lasts and the ego goes mad

in the presence of that truth it it it can't swallow it and so we have anxiety of death need to dominate

people need to possess property uh terror of illness uh resentment of fate because we are not in the flow

and i think what these psychedelics do is they put you very much in the here and now and it's nothing more

than that i mean obviously i'm an egghead and an abstract thinker and i hope to make my reputation in

mathematics but feeling is the primary validator of existence i mean if you don't know that you you've got

to go back to square one and these things empower feeling they are catalysts for the imagination i mean

you may not like what psychedelics do to you they may terrify you but if it terrifies you then surely

it must have catalyzed your imagination or you wouldn't have known that terror so catalysis of the

imagination in a fairly loving and yet ruthless way is what the psychedelics deliver anybody who calls

this escapism is sitting on their thumb i mean they don't know what they're talking about reality is for

people who can't handle this stuff i do want to say one thing it almost slipped my mind and for those of

you have your hands up i apologize but i think this needs to be said and i don't know how many of you know

it but this comes under the uh this this is head this is a news flash folks we interrupt this program to

bring you a special announcement a new psychoactive substance has been discovered a very powerful

psychoactive substance the most powerful since the discovery of lsd a substance so powerful that 300

micrograms is the dose that means one gram will dose seven thousand people this compound comes from a plant

the plant is and i hope you're paying attention the plant is legal the compound is legal you can possess it

you can manufacture it you can transport it across borders you can give it away you can sell it and you

can do it on stage and it comes from a plant and the plant is also available and and i want to tell you

about this because okay no shoving no shoving all right the not to keep you in suspense any longer uh the plant

is salvia divinorum salvia divinorum which some of you who are real mavens of this stuff have know it it's

been in the books for 30 years the problem was nobody knew how to get off and so it was always carried

in these lists as suspect hallucinogen the thing is any scientist confronted with a plant where somebody

says it's a hallucinogen will test to see if it's an alkaloid all hallucinogens almost all are alkaloids

so salvia divinorum negative for alkaloids doesn't matter it has a new unknown compound in it now known

salvorine alpha and the interesting thing about salvorine alpha is we have in this country what's called

a structural near relatives or cogener law which says if a compound is a structural near relative

isomer and anti-amer or stereo isomer of an illegal compound then it too can be made illegal salvia divinorum

doesn't fit this description that means that in order to make this stuff illegal the government will have

to present medical data showing there is something wrong with it and at this stage nobody on earth knows

the real pharmacological parameters of this compound so here's the deal you can grow this plant in a window

box in your apartment in your backyard it looks like joe plant there is nothing particularly distinguishing

about this plant and if you have three or four cuttings in six or seven months you will have more

than you know what to do with the and and then i'll just describe how i do it i have not i'm slightly

chickenshit to do the pure compound which by the way you do 300 micrograms understand that what that looks

like is a grain of salt a small grain of salt is a human effective dose it comes on so fast that you have no

impression of it coming on at all you do it and then after a while you notice that for a long time you have

been staring at something incomprehensible well let me here's how i recommend that you do it while we get

the chemical things sorted out because the chemical it could be dangerous it would be very easy to overdose

by a factor of 10 20 30 and you would still just be doing a smidgen so i say let's honor the plants

let's not hand the government a bunch of casualties that it can cluck over and put on national tv you

know the bibble bibble bibble show let's use the plant and the way you do it is you grow up a batch of this

stuff and get between 15 and 20 leaves remove the mid vein with your fingernail just to lower the mass

fold it all into a little pile put it in your mouth and 20 leaves is a whopping mouthful so basically

as much as you can get in your mouth put it in your mouth lie down in silent darkness and squeeze this

stuff with your jaws taste like it's horrible it's not as bad as ayahuasca but it's horrible but you could

acquire a taste for it so lie down in darkness where you can see a digital watch of one of these red flashing

jobs like the k-mart deal and and then let it don't swallow it but just squeeze it and masticate it

at 15 minutes by the clock spit it out into a bowl or a kleenex or something and then just lie there lie

still in the darkness with your eyes closed and look and this is almost the key empowerment though it's

idiotic people fail to do it look at the back of your eyelids with the expectation of seeing something

and when you do that after just three or four minutes there will be what uh we professionals call

streaming which means amoeboid lights of after image colors the chartreuse and purple flowing by

and about three minutes after that it will deepen very very quickly into extraordinarily bizarre uh dare we

say it fairly dmt like hallucinations and it it it builds fast i mean so fast that you there is this

wonderful moment in it where you actually know real fear which shows you that it's working i mean i really

believe if if you're if if you take a psychedelic and you're not afraid you did too much you didn't do enough

the experience then will unfold over about 45 minutes and just lie there and look and it is beautiful it is

beautiful i mean i'm a a connoisseur of hallucination and the the beautiful these deep indigo blues these these

cerulean blues against blackness that are like neon and these amorphous eve tongue gay kind of shapes

that are moving and transforming themselves i mean i was amazed i couldn't believe it i was saying my god

this is legal this is legal and it's working it's working and i am i am the hardest of the hard heads i

mean i know people say you know here's target this lucidum this will get you off here's this smoke this

knick and nick this something no no no uh-uh no that it doesn't it's not like that these things are rare

but this one works and i commend it to your attention and your friends attention and anyone with shamanic

intent as i say it's perfectly legal to possess advocate the whole bit yes salvia it's in the genus salvia

that's the mint family sacred to pagans for millennia salvia salvia and then divinorum d-i-v-i-n-o-r-u-m the

diviner's mint it there's well yes let me say something about this that's very interesting

pardon me well that's what i was going to talk about it's native from mexico so it has no common name in

english in spanish it has a very interesting common name it's called ojos de la pastora now

the eyes of the shepherdess what a strange name think about it for a moment first of all notice that

in christian iconography there are no shepherdesses period not one we got shepherds you got your

shepherds there christmas night shepherdess no so it's called ojos de la pastora well then the

anthropologist who studied this brett blasser to whom we all owe a great debt hail brett

naturally these people are tzatzil and sotil they're in the mountains of oaxaca and so he said to them

well yes ojos de la pastora very interesting but what do you call it in your language what do you call it in

tzatzil and they said well well we we have no name for it in our language this is very very

interesting and if any of you have any thoughts or want to work on this it's

inconceivable if these people had used this for centuries that they would not have a local

tzatzil name for it so he said why don't you have a name for it and they said because

our grandfathers were the first to use it and this we do not know what to make of it because salvia

divinorum is known only from this very indemnified locality in the sierra mazateca where did it come

from has it always been there but these indians only discovered it 200 years ago did it come from

somewhere else and if so where because it's never been located anywhere else on the planet

so this is a great puzzlement and i think if we move fast enough we psychedelicos we pagans we

neuronauts we magicians if we move fast enough this will just be moot and this is a far more powerful

thing than can

Cannabis I mean not if you've never smoked cannabis, and then you sit down and smoke the best staff there is

But as we all know after a while cannabis loses its ability to really catapult you into the unspeakable

The the salvia divinorum every time I have taken it. It's gotten better and stronger and weirder

So I think it is sent from the goddess at this time eyes of the shepherdess

These are the eyes we should be looking through

Okay, I think several people at once asked where do you get it?

You must each have your own favorite rare plant dealer. I

Don't work for any rare plant dealer and every time I mention one

Thousands of dollars flow into their coffers, which leaves me feeling slightly weird

nevertheless of the jungle P.O. Box

Sebastopol, California

Somebody sitting next to you already knows this so I'm not going to repeat it. That's the one and a

Harvesting question

Well, we're learning we're learning and so far we've been

Fairly careful to eat it just as it's approaching flowering

Right, but you do know don't you that it's an it may look like an annual, but it's a perennial

You can clip it off above a node and it will grow more

Yeah, no seed is a pain is a pain try and do it with cuttings

That's about all I can say about it

All right, I'm gonna knock off. Thank you very much