Expanding Mind With Erik Davis - Dennis 08-30-09

understanding mind i'm your host eric davis and the show explores the culture of consciousness

and when you're looking at the many domains of the mind and experience and particularly when

you're a modern person wrestling between often reductive accounts of of our experience in terms

of neurons and genetic programming and compounds and patterns of physiology on the one hand and on

the other hand the sort of inherited wisdom traditions that are now pouring in on us from

all directions throughout time and space the kind of alexandrian library of sacred and religious

traditions and the evident fact that religion and spiritual seeking does not go away it's often

hard to figure out exactly how to integrate these two a lot of folks fall on one side or the other

i tend to believe that the the action lies in the space in between the liminal zone the crisscrossed

ways between uh body and spirit and mind and uh the mystery and one of the sort of main routes or

objects of interest in that middle zone are psychoactive substances visionary compounds and

and other transformative compounds have been with human beings for quite a long time as far as we

can tell and probably back to um to time immemorial as they say i mean we've discovered uh shamans with forms of

cannabis buried with them as part of their mojo strains of cannabis that were undoubtedly uh cultivated for

their psychoactive properties rather than for their uh other uses um and the record on some psychedelic

substances also goes very very far back there are uh snuff pipes from south america that were used

to imbibe a dmt a substance we'll be talking about a little bit more later in this program uh that are

thousands of years old so human beings and psychoactive substances go way back and they continue to

influence the modern world and the ways in which people think about consciousness and think about

spirituality um in the modern world um in the modern world they've often been a vehicle for awakenings and

for people to uh open up to a deeper or at least different sense of what uh the human mind and the human

soul are capable of and it's stirring all sorts of uh of debates and of course generally scheduled nature uh

of these one of the most interesting things about uh thinking and and talking about psychoactive

substances is the way in which they themselves are are a bridge uh between the scientific world of

of reductive materialism and and scientific explanations and the worlds of the spirit of dream of vision of

synchronicity of the deeper regions of mind because it's quite evident from their functioning that they

are material substances that affect material transformations of the body and the mind working on the nervous system

working uh with the the mystery of of chemicals and neurotransmitters and yet at the same time they

open up uh profundity and bizarreness that few people can walk away from without uh being changed and it's

that tension that makes them in some ways uh particularly interesting as a as a an aspect of uh the culture of

consciousness uh today's guest is is a perfect person to talk about these issues with um i first

uh met dennis mckenna through his uh brother terence mckenna who was the celebrated sort of mushroom bard of

the uh 1990s a fascinating man that i that i was very blessed to get to know not just in terms of the

things he talked about but the way he talked about him and his ability to be a smart funny incredibly eloquent

uh working in the the margins of psychedelic consciousness and and talking to uh young

people and and people from all sorts of aspects of the world rather than uh being stuck in some ivory

tower and uh terence's adventures with his brother go way back into the uh well since they were kids

they go back to the beginning but it even in terms of the psychedelic uh explorations back to the early

70s uh at least and they wrote a book together uh invisible landscape a fascinating dense uh and marvelous

text which you probably can still still find online uh anyway and i got to get get to know uh dennis a bit

after that and uh dennis in addition to being an explorer and a thinker about these realms is also a

uh a botanist and ethnobotanist and a a uh a man of great strong scientific temperament and so he really

uh crosses that line as well in his own work and studies and various teaching gigs so i'm very happy

to have uh dennis on but before that i'd just like to introduce my co-host um maja daou expanding

minds esoteric librarian how you doing maja good eric how are you so what about this topic of

uh of ayahuasca that's the visionary substance that we're going to be talking about the most the

south american brew containing dmt and uh harmeline like substances maoi inhibitor what what what what

what does this stir for you well for me when i think about these things uh one of my favorite words

that's used for uh you know ayahuasca and beta carbines and mao inhibitors was one that was made in

1979 it's the word entheogen and a lot of people have heard that word but um to me the meaning of

it is so descriptive of these substances it literally means to create or generate god within and to me that

says so much because these substances have that alchemical effect of releasing the spirit from

matter and it's like you were mentioning earlier how you know it's that liminal space where spirit and

matter meet and there's something about these chemical constituents that have that ability to really

potentiate that expression they really have a physical manifestation of that alchemical pursuit to

release the spiritual from matter through a chemical you know reaction it's it's pretty amazing and that's

one of my favorite things when thinking about these things that it is and has been found to have these

mystical effects on the physical body through a very chemical way

yeah we'll uh be bringing dennis on in just a second but i wanted to say one thing about

ayahuasca in particular when we're talking about entheogen or talking about the religious or spiritual dimensions

of psychedelics um you know in some context they have them in some context they don't

uh in in in in some ways um there is pretty clear evidence that uh psychoactive mushrooms you know

the magic mushroom we're familiar with were actually rather extensively found throughout the world but

that in most cultures we have no real evidence that they were used some people like to speculate that

they've been used as part of um experience you know experiences through time immemorial but uh in a lot of

places it's pretty clear that while those substances were around it didn't actually become incorporated into the

spiritual pharmacology and yet in other situations they clearly have these incredibly deep uh healing

and even kind of cosmic dimensions and one of the most interesting things about ayahuasca today

is the way in which even as it spreads uh into uh the developed world into you know anglo-american

world is the one that i know uh know the boat the best but it's also quite uh popular throughout europe

um there people go down to to peru there are underground networks of people uh taking these

substances but even as ayahuasca spreads through the developed world it has retained its religious form

yes exactly it's still it it's almost entirely taken in a in a sacred context of religious intention

unlike almost every other psychoactive drug which you can name which while it may have

a history or prehistory of sacred use once it meets the hungry ravenous world of the west it

becomes sort of a weird you know party drug or or or novelty or or just intensifier so there's something

very special uh about about ayahuasca yes so dennis how are you doing i'm doing well eric good to be here

so much for being on the show it's a pleasure to be here so i'm wondering what what are you working

on now are you uh are you uh uh doing scientific work are you teaching i know you've you've worn

many hats over your career and i'm curious what one you're wearing now well it's true i wear a number

of hats uh well right now i'm i'm in the academic mode i've just uh i've been teaching a course in

ethnobotany and ethnopharmacology in the ecuador over the summer uh for arizona state uh field studies

program uh i was teaching with uh cat harrison who as you know is uh terence's ex-wife so i guess she's

still my sister-in-law but we uh we teach together we together we've been uh teaching courses for the

university of minnesota in hawaii every january called plants and human affairs and uh this uh

this summer gig if you want to call it that was kind of a version of that but we transplanted it to

the ecuadorian amazon so that's what i've been doing with my summer uh just trying to stay employed

and and then uh in the fall i'm teaching uh several courses here at the university of minnesota one in

uh ethnopharmacology one on uh botanical medicines and and a new course uh in the college of liberal

arts which i haven't taught before but it should be fun it's called uh cross-cultural perspectives on

drugs so that's uh that's what i'm doing these days excellent now when you uh you know were a young

man was did your interest in ethnobotany or botany or the science of of uh of pharmacology and biology

did that emerge from an earlier interest in uh in visionary plants and experiences or was it or was

it vice versa no i'd have to say my interest came out of our early experiences uh many of which my

brother and i shared a fascination really with uh altered states uh and especially the psychedelic dmt

uh we were children of the 60s i guess you could say and you know my brother was uh in school at berkeley

at that time and i was still in high school but i visited him over the summers and uh you didn't

encounter dmt very much it was kind of rare uh but we did encounter it uh in a synthetic form and we

were fascinated by it we thought that dmt in some ways is the was the quintessential

in theogen or psychedelic and we determined to follow up on that and we didn't really know

how to do that but uh i think when we discovered shamanism and initially i guess that was through

uh carlos castaneda's first book the teachings of don juan uh and then we understood that there is a

whole tradition of using these visionary plants in the shamanic context and so that gave us a lead

uh a direction in which to explore it and then shortly after that we discovered the work of uh

ari schultes the famous harvard ethnobotanist who spent years in the amazon uh collecting plants but

also exploring and discovering all of these many psychoactive plants that are used in south america and

he's uh you know deservedly known as probably the world's expert on uh hallucinogenic plants i mean

unfortunately he left this realm in i think 1998 or somewhere around there but uh really it was his

writings that inspired us initially to go to south america and and you know he's been a

a hero figure a very admired mentor for many people in the area of ethno-pharmacology and it's really

you know in in some ways it's because of schultes that i keep going back to south america i just can't

stay away from it and so uh you know that led us into you know kind of the the path that we got on that

we talked about in the invisible landscape and and my brother's book uh true hallucinations which is a much

more sort of accessible narrative of what led us to go down there in 1971 and uh get into a whole lot

of things that we really had no idea what we were getting into but but that was it that's what got it

started and then you know when i came back from that experience i realized that i had to learn a lot

more science i had to learn neuroscience and botany and pharmacology and that's sort of what got me on

the path to uh becoming scientific about it can i ask you did you find uh it was frustrating in your

scientific pursuits trying to talk to other scientists about this stuff i mean were you well

received i know you still teach in you know academic uh you know context so have you found that it's just

a battle trying to deal with some of these people because i did biochemistry as well and i found that

you know even trying to talk about that kind of stuff to most scientists they get really bummed out so i

was just wondering if you had positive experiences with that or if they were negative well yeah it's it's

kind of a tough road to hoe uh in some ways it is but you know i mean what what you find is that even in

the academic context you know there are a lot of pretty open-minded people and if you and you find that

you can connect with them i mean they may not be very uh up front about their interests uh but they are

there and i guess what makes me different is you know i don't know when to shut up i mean i don't

i'm not the kind of person to sit down and and stop making noise you know and i've this has fascinated

me all of my life and uh i've gotten some breaks you know i've been able to continue in this work i mean

maybe if i'd gone a more conventional academic route i'd be a you know distinguished professor somewhere

instead of simply uh assistant professor in a marginal department but the point is that uh

you know you do find the opportunities uh to to work on these things and you know in the field of

neuroscience for example i think you know although they're reluctant to talk about it if you talk if you

can make personal connections with many people in that field you know you find that very often what

motivated them initially to go into the field was a desire to you know investigate these kinds of

things to look into the neuroscience of altered states whether through psychedelics or other other

technologies you know and then people become faced with the realities of they have to stay employed they

have to get grants they have to do all these things and so you know it is politically incorrect

uh but in some ways i think not to acknowledge your interest is intellectually dishonest and so i

i've tried to remain honest to my sort of original mission yeah i think it's that your career is an

example of that i've been thinking a lot about integrity lately and how uh integrity kind of keeps

its own momentum going like there are so many rational reasons for you i'm sure over many years for

you to pull back on your your interest in your background for the sake of you know less anxiety

for your family for your gig whatever it is and and yet it seems like by staying kind of true and

honest in that deeply scientific in an ethical sense way uh about just being clear and honest about

what's what's what's what's going on before you uh it seems like you've you've developed a certain uh

you know momentum or uh coherence about about your work that really uh that really comes through

talking you know a few weeks ago we had uh mike jay on a british historian of of of science and of drugs

and he's new book uh the atmosphere of heaven is about uh the origins of the pneumatic institute and the

discovery of nitrous oxide and one of the um one of the things he talks about in that book that's so

fascinating that we talked about a little bit on on air was uh the fact that in in those days if you

were a scientist exploring compounds poisons uh anything that affected the mind it was completely

routine to take it on yourself and humphrey davy who's like one of the great scientists of of british

history of early 19th century who was one of these people who first explored the psychoactive

properties of nitrous oxide in fact in fact became quite a fan of it um was was legendary for for taking

audacious risks in terms of self-experimentation the self-experimentation was once part of the

nobility of the scientists and then at some point in the 20th century it gets it gets split so much so

that it's almost forbidden to mention subjective experience or personal uh experience that that

there has to be this rigorous divide between the two and it's it's really unfortunate it does seem

like that there's some uh integration happening these days at least a little sense of return

do you have a sense that there's there's a there's a way in which that that paradigm of the total split

between objective and subjective is is breaking down a bit well yes i think so i think it's i think it's

i think it's a slow process but i think what you say about self-experimentation is is you know quite

right i mean back in the day when humphrey davies and william james and people like this were exploring

all this you know not only was it accepted to self-experiment it was expected that that's what

you do that's you know i mean that the mission was to investigate these altered states and it was

not ethical not to experience them yourself uh i think in the modern era the a person that exemplifies

that very much is the chemist alexander shulgin uh who many of your listeners may know about he uh

was a pharmacologist and a chemist working for dow chemical back in the 50s and he got interested in

what pharmacologists call structure activity relationships uh which are the relationships

between the structure of a molecule a drug and its activity its pharmacological activity

well he uh had a profound uh experience with peyote early in his career and so he got very interested

in mescaline and decided to do structure activity work with mescaline and went on to make over 300

different mescaline analogues all of which he tested on himself you know in a very serious careful way along

with uh he had a trusted group of of uh human guinea pigs basically friends of his who were

you know psychotherapists doctors pharmacologists you know pretty serious people and they all carefully

evaluated you know his compounds they kept careful notes and they produced uh a tremendous body of knowledge

uh you know about these things about structure activity relationships of these psychedelics but uh alec

but sasha shulgin everyone calls him sasha he paid a price for his intellectual honesty you know he

didn't keep his job at dow chemical he became an independent consultant and he was able to continue his work

uh legally he had permission from the dea to you know continue his work as a research scientist but he never

sort of achieved the the academic cachet that he might have if he backed off from that you know but he

continued to work and in my opinion uh you know the man should have been given the nobel prize i mean he

is he contributed more to an understanding of what you might call the brain mind relationship really than

than anyone else of of his day and yet he's been sort of you know in some way stigmatized as as some kind

of you know wild-eyed um irresponsible person and that's just not the case so i guess sasha and i are on

the same wavelength although you know i don't aspire to come to his level of accomplishment but that's an

example um you know and and that that sort of relates to this whole issue about you know what is

science really supposed to be about i mean in its purest form science is supposed to be about exploring

the unknown it's about discovering new knowledge and uh you know in its sort of idealistic embodiment

it's it's the search for truth and you know i think that you know these aspects of science fade into the

background because we live in an era of big science and science is an expensive proposition you know it's

funded by largely through government subsidies and so that really puts a lot of restraint on a lot of

constraints on what people can do in the context of of big science you know and i think a lot of scientists

lose sight of this fact uh you know what is science about the search for truth no it's about publishing

papers and having graduate students and getting grants and and playing the whole game and you know the

search to uncover knowledge somehow you know it gets overlooked in all this activity so that's unfortunate

yeah the the ironies that surround this issue of big science or institutional science grow even greater

when you start talking about psychoactive because of course while we can say psychoactive and think of

uh scheduled substances popular scheduled scheduled substances like cannabis or lsd or cocaine that

of course psychoactive substances are also an enormous industry and there's this exploding metastasizing

world of a prescription pharmaceutical psychoactive that are you know being sort of like this large scale

experimental project on the the global population right um so that a lot of the same issues about

subjective subjectivity the relationship of agency to uh drugs the you know the the nation relationship of

identity and experience to different uh neurological systems or neurotransmitters like all of these things

are very much in the air they're very much big business so that that the in the contradictions

of our real of our relationship to psychoactives and also within science between this sort of

you know deeper truth and surface truth uh become even greater when you look at these these substances i

mean how do you i mean from where you stand and with your with your you know you're very planted in uh you know biological

pharmacology and ethnopharmacology as opposed to uh you know synthetic production of of psychoactives but

how does that whole world look like to you as a as a scientist and as someone who's um well i i think it

i think it leads to a certain cognitive dissonance and it certainly leads to

a mixed message you know when you're trying to speak to young people for example about drugs and about

their relationship to drugs because you know on the one hand you have this whole uh sort of as you say

the psycho-pharmaceutical industry and this notion that you know we can engineer personality

essentially and it's perfectly okay to give uh young people all these drugs for adhd and for depression and

now that the atypical antipsychotics are becoming quite popular and and basically these are band-aid

you know solutions for deep uh i think crises of the spirit and yet on the other hand you've got the

the the shamanic plants the the psychedelic plants or theogenic plants if you prefer and the tradition

of shamanism which is practiced uh in other parts of the world it's practiced in most of the world but

it's it's utterly forbidden uh in this country and it's become an underground thing uh and yet i think

that especially the young people i speak with you know there's a sense that you know this is essentially

a hypocritical situation many of the uh students that i teach seem to have been on one or other

psychopharmaceutical at some time during their career it's quite common i would at a guess i'd say

probably 40 of the students in my classes you know have been treated with one or more psychopharmaceuticals

during the course of their high school and early college careers and so then there is that expectation

that this is perfectly all right many of them confided me yeah of course i smoke pot it it has

less side effects than the drugs you know they want to prescribe me and that kind of thing so there is an

element i think in this in this use of these so-called you know prohibited drugs or these these drugs that

are not accepted there's a certain effort going on to essentially self-medicate uh or to find some kind of

a spiritual uh reward that you know that that the modern the current sort of biomedical approach to

to personality what i what i call chemical personality engineering uh is not providing yeah i often think

about the the western uh psychopharmacology is kind of like lame shamanism that we're well if if we

we tend to

you

I hear that shamans are like bad doctors,

or from a traditional Western perspective,

it's like they're acting like doctors,

but they don't really know what they're doing.

It's almost the reverse when you start dealing with issues of mind and body,

where it's like, on some level, it's all shamanism.

They do it very poorly, and it's very expensive.

Well, I mean, I would agree with you that it's lame.

I don't agree with you that it's shamanism.

In fact, this is the problem.

They've taken exactly that element out of it, you know,

and the notion most doctors who prescribe these things are not even psychiatrists.

They're not even that qualified to provide any kind of, you know, other support.

Well, the way in which I think it is like shamanism is that it's a cultural narrative about efficacy.

You grow up in a culture where the shaman is the guy who's got the power.

I'm not talking about specifically ayahuasca shamanism,

but just that there's a sort of traditional healer and they have the power,

and that part of their efficacy is the fact that that's the story that we believe.

I mean, there is a way in which there are elements of,

I'm not saying that shamanic pharmacology is all placebo effect,

but there's an element of kind of performativity and sort of agreement

that lays the groundwork for real healing in traditional situations.

And I think that in many ways when you look at the statistics on SSRIs, for example,

that they're actually not very efficacious,

but they're just enough over the line to make them be passed off as being powerful,

and they're not even that powerful.

And a lot of what people are actually doing is just it's their own decisions,

it's their own will, it's the theater of the drug or the pill,

the idea that the pill has an answer, that is producing a lot of some of the effect.

And so that's the way in which I mean that it's another theater of medical healing,

but it doesn't really pour away.

And much of the efficacy to the degree that there is efficacy with these things comes from the placebo effect.

And I think that what shamans, I mean, if ever psychedelics are going to be used in a therapeutic context,

in a biomedical context, and there are now signs that that's beginning to come back.

But what therapists have to understand is you cannot separate the pharmacology from the context.

I mean, we knew this from the earliest days of Leary and Metzner and these people.

Set and setting is everything, you know.

And what the shamans do is they create a context to allow these experiences to unfold in a safe environment

and an environment where they, the shamans, know what the person is going through.

They're usually going through it with them, and they can provide some modulation of the experience

in order to guide the person through it by using, you know, Icaro's magical songs, music, different kinds of cleansing.

In other words, they set up an environment that's, well, it's not exactly psychotherapeutic, but the effect of it is the same.

It provides a context in which the person can let this stuff come out, let it unfold, and then integrate it.

That's what's lacking in psychopharmacology.

It's not about letting things unfold.

It's about repressing it.

It's about damping it down and essentially putting a Band-Aid over all of these unconscious processes.

So, yes, the person appears normal and can function, but in some sense, you know,

none of the problems that led them to that state in the first place are really addressed by these psychopharmaceuticals.

Well, that's a great segue.

I want to talk a little bit more about ayahuasca.

Before I do that, I want to let people know that you can call in and ask a question of Dennis at 888-873-4643.

It's a toll-free call, and you can also e-mail your questions to mind at technosis.com, T-E-C-H-G-N-O-S-I-S.

That's also my website, www.technosis.com.

And before we go back to Dennis, I just want to play a recording of a shaman in Colombia that was recorded in 1976.

It's from a really excellent, fairly obscure CD called Yagi Pinta, and these are psychedelic shaman songs of Santiago Mutamba Joy.

So this is the real deal.

This was recorded on a cheap tape deck in an ayahuasca ritual setting, and I just want to play a little bit of this track.

This is the real deal.

This is Santiago Mutamba Joy, and the CD's called Yagi Pinta.

It's on the Locust label.

It's fascinating because it's totally raw.

And even one of the things I like about it is it's not really music, at least the way that we normally think of music.

I mean, they're clearly songs, but the way they're sung, the vibration, the nasal quality, the repetition, the way they start and stop, and you hear some noise and a few sounds.

And it's a really remarkable performance that keys us into one of the most powerful dimensions of the traditional ayahuasca ceremony, which is the way that music and sound organize the experience.

You know, Dennis, I know you had a lot of experience in ayahuasca circles.

Can you talk a little bit about the way that the ayahuasca function, even from a more neurological perspective as well as a ritual one?

Sure, sure.

Well, actually, what he's singing and what's known in Mestizo and in Amazonian shamanism, these magic songs are called Icaros, I-C-A-R-O-S.

And while he was singing, I was just looking at iTunes here to see what they have.

They actually have quite a list of Icaros, so your readers might check it out if they're interested in more of that.

I'm not really here to plug anybody's Icaros, but there's quite a few of them out there.

But the Icaros are one way, as you say, to modulate this setting, this sensory, oral environment.

And it has a lot to do, I think, with synesthesia, which is one of the things that psychedelics facilitate,

the translation of one sensory modality into another.

And, for example, you see music or, you know, you hear colors, this kind of thing.

And this is a common experience on psychedelics, and most people don't experience it any other way.

So the shaman can use the Icaros in some ways to modulate and guide what the person is seeing.

They can actually, you know, influence their vision.

And within the context of ayahuasca ceremonies, it's not uncommon for everyone to be having a similar experience.

I don't know if you want to call it telepathy exactly, but it's something.

Well, telepathy is good because they used to call some of those substances telepathines, right?

Indeed, indeed.

When harmine was first isolated from banisteriopsis back in the 30s, it was called telepathine.

And then only later was it called harmine because they found that it was identical to an alkaloid that had already been discovered in Paganum harmilla,

which is a shrub that's native to the Mideast and which may have also been used either as an MAO inhibitor in some Middle Eastern preparation,

such or whatever, but harmine, because it was discovered earlier, it was named after Paganum harmilla,

and then they found that telepathine was a chemical compound.

And so then that earlier name took precedence.

But, yeah.

Did you ever have, like, telepathic experiences that you experienced with other people at the same time?

Have I?

Mm-hmm.

Yes.

Yes, absolutely, both on ayahuasca and mushrooms.

It's not really that uncommon.

Well, and one other thing, actually, I was been dying to ask you about, Dennis,

along those lines is one of those shared experiences on these substances regarding the self-transforming machine elves.

And I wanted to ask you if you had any particular experiences with these guys.

They're like these kind of, you know, anthropomorphic creatures that many people experience when they go into these states.

And I personally have experienced them also.

I was dismembered by them in the experience that I had, and that's very common.

You know, Marcea Eliade talks about that.

And I know when you're in Terrence's book, The Invisible Landscape, you guys mention it,

but I was just curious if you had had any, like, particularly mind-blowing experiences with the self-transforming machine elves.

And I also just like to say that name a lot.

Yeah.

Well, the experience you had of being dismembered and put back together, I mean, that's classical shamanism.

You know, that goes on.

That's part of shamanic initiation virtually in every shamanic tradition that's practiced the world over,

and whether or not facilitated with psychoactives.

But the self-transforming machine elves, I mean, yeah, it's a great phrase.

I don't, to be honest, I don't get self-transforming machine elves, or at least I wouldn't call them that.

But I definitely get a sense of entities or, you know, there's another intelligence over there,

wherever over there is on the other side of this membrane in this parallel reality.

And you could call them, you know, jeweled basketballs or intelligent self-transforming machine elves or something,

but they definitely have a sense, one has a sense, that they are separate from you,

and they're not, you know, I mean, common sense tells you that they have to be some other part of your brain

that's presenting itself as different than yourself, but who really knows.

But they do have this sort of, you know, on the DMT experience, they do have this sort of, you know,

almost comical aspect to them.

They're very excited.

They're very enthusiastic.

They want you to pay attention to what they're showing you.

With ayahuasca, you don't get that so much.

Ayahuasca is DMT, but ayahuasca is DMT, it's pharmacokinetics.

It's instead of being compressed into 10 minutes or so, it's stretched out over four hours or so.

So it presents itself in a different kind of way.

But the sense of and other, the sense of connection with entities that the ayahuasca girls might call spirits,

you know, and you certainly have that sense, is something that's very common in these tryptamine states.

Psilocybin is a tryptamine, ayahuasca, and DMT all sort of share the same, if you want to say,

phenomenology or their different ways to access a similar dimension that you might call the tryptamine dimension.

And actually, there's a very interesting book just that's been out maybe a year that some of your readers or listeners might be interested in.

It's called Inner Paths to Outer Space.

And it's an anthology edited by Rick Strassman, who is the MD that was the first person to achieve FDA approval to do a clinical study with DMT back in the early 90s.

And his work, we wrote, his earlier book was called DMT, The Spirit Molecule, which is actually also very interesting.

But this later book kind of addresses the issue of, you know, is there a reality out there?

Is this just an aspect of the self or is there really another dimension?

Well, that relates back actually to something we had talked about a few shows back, Eric,

on the I Ching show about coming into contact with something outside of yourself.

And I just think it's kind of interesting, and I'll just say this as a little bit woo-woo,

because there are actually 64 beta-carbolines that we have discovered so far.

There's also 64 hexagrams in the I Ching and, of course, 64 base pairs in DNA.

So I just think that's kind of interesting when you're considering if there's some kind of,

is it outside, is it inside, is it the same thing?

64 beta-carbolines, you say.

Oh, that's a new one.

I hadn't heard that.

I wanted to ask you also, when you're either, you know, in the throes of experience

or contemplating some of these more outside questions about the nature of entities,

the nature of consciousness, how does consciousness fit in the cosmos,

is there a certain point where you feel your kind of more traditional scientific training

and questioning sort of drops off?

Or do you feel like you're actually able to go into the heart of these experiences

and these questions with a somewhat different angle or strategy than people who are not really that,

who don't really know science, who are not practitioners,

who don't really understand that kind of thinking or that kind of approach?

Well, that's a good question.

No, I think it's, I think, again, I think you walk a fine line.

I think that, I think that the scientific sort of stance and kind of a healthy skepticism

and an emphasis on empiricism, you know, what is it you're experiencing, you know,

is a good stance to take.

But I think, I mean, initially it helps keep you grounded.

But I think also it's very important to recognize the limitations of science.

And these psychedelics, for me, if they do nothing else,

they're a constant reminder of how little we know, you know.

And science tends to arrogate to itself the idea that, you know,

we pretty well understand how the world is made up.

We, you know, there's a little mopping up left to be done,

but basically we've got it figured out.

No, we don't have any of it figured out.

We have such a tiny slice of reality figured out that we need to cultivate humility.

And we need to remember how little we know, really.

I mean, science, science is inherently limited

because science works on what you can physically measure.

And science is very good at taking very tiny pieces of reality,

very tiny slices of reality,

and dissecting them in detail and describing them in detail.

But when it comes to the big picture,

how does all this fit together?

Science is not so good, you know.

I mean, there is no overarching scientific paradigm that explains, you know,

the very odd situation that we find ourselves in, you know, in the universe.

Just the fact that we're minded entities with a subjective world that, you know, mind is real.

We know it's real because we live inside minds.

You know, we are minds.

And this is why science is so uncomfortable in some way, I think,

when it comes to trying to develop paradigms that explain consciousness.

You know, they wish it was all neurochemistry.

They wish it could all be explained in terms of brain electrical activity and this kind of thing.

But I don't think it can be.

And I think, you know, any scientific paradigm that purports to explain consciousness

that doesn't take account of these realms of experience is doomed to be incomplete.

And this is why, you know, the conversation gets a little uncomfortable when you confront neuroscientists with this.

You know, what about this, doctor?

You know, how does this fit into your reductionist paradigm?

And the fact is, it doesn't because I think, you know,

I just think our understanding is very limited in some ways.

Great.

That's an excellent answer.

Hey, we have a caller from Arizona.

I have a question for Dennis.

I've read True Hallucinations,

and I was just wondering if you could say anything about the relationship between the Icaros and your experiments.

Well, yes, yes and no, because given limited time, I mean, we've almost eaten up the whole hour here.

I'm not going to go into hypercarbulation in any detail.

But this idea that, you know, we could use sound to actually affect chemical reactions

or affect physiological transformations on the molecular level is not so far from the notions,

from the ways that Icaros and these sorts of things might be used in traditional ayahuasca healing.

I mean, much of ayahuasca usage, shamanically, is about healing.

And the shaman, the ayahuascaro, has various tools that he can use, and one of them is sound.

You know, I mean, there are songs that can be used for healing.

There are stones that can be used for healing.

There are, you know, these magical things called virotes,

which are conceived as little darts that can be sort of psychically transferred into a person to cause harm to them,

but also to counteract these malevolent forces.

So this is all sort of grades over into the area of, you know, psychic healing.

I mean, much of what the shaman does in disaltered states is to look inside the person,

and using a kind of psychic X-ray in some ways, they can tell where the problems are, you know,

and what to do to fix them.

And it's not exactly a, it's not a diagnostic, you know, procedure like a doctor might carry out,

because the understanding is that almost all illness and, you know,

almost all illness comes from magical forces.

Even if it's a physical illness, it's because somebody put the whammy on you.

And so you have to address, you know, you have to address it on that level,

and then the physical illness will resolve.

Dennis, we have another question, although we don't have that much time.

It's a big one.

This is an e-mail question from Jay at Arthur Magazine.

And he was just wondering about how you feel about Terrence's 2012 theories.

You know, just in a nutshell, he came up with this idea of the time wave

that posited a kind of great end of the cycle at this date in December of 2012

and sort of linked it with the I Ching.

And it was kind of a very esoteric, kind of prophetic idea.

But these days, of course, it's gained a lot of currency.

The 2012 idea is very popular.

How do you feel about it now from where you sit?

Well, it's hard, again, hard to answer that question in a short time.

But basically, my take on 2012, at least on Terrence's time wave theory,

is I've always been very skeptical about the time wave theory.

And basically, because it's not a theory, you know, it can't be disproven.

And a theory to be a good theory, you have to articulate what will disprove it.

And Terrence never really did that.

But now, of course, 2012 has emerged as a cultural meme

because of the whole Mayan calendar thing.

And when it comes to 2012, I tend to, again,

I tend to retreat back into my scientific stance and say,

well, nobody really knows, you know, but let's wait and see.

You know, I mean, I guess we're close enough

that all we have to do is sort of keep our skeptical powder dry

and just say, well, we'll see.

But we should also remember that, you know,

no prophecy has ever come true, you know.

So based on that, I'm not canceling my appointments for 2013.

You know, and I'm just sort of, and in some sense,

I think that the whole 2012 expectation,

particularly to the degree that it's linked to a particular day,

you know, is unhealthy.

I mean, it's a way of shirking our responsibility, you know.

I mean, hell, we may not make it to 2012 the way things are going, you know.

So we can't afford to sit around and wait for 2012,

and after that it'll all be good.

You know, we need to get to work right now to save our butts,

if I can use that term.

You know, we, you know what I'm saying?

I mean, you know, the space aliens are not coming to save us.

Jesus is not coming to save us.

The only people that are going to save us is ourselves.

You know, we've got to get ourselves out of this mess we're in.

And I think that all of this focus on 2012 is in some way just another way

to shirk our responsibility and not face up to, you know, what we're faced with.

How do you see ayahuasca playing into this issue of the urgency of our situation?

Well, I think that ayahuasca, I think what's happening with ayahuasca

and the way that it is sort of, you know, in a way it's emerging out of the Amazon

and it's going global, and some people have decried this,

but I actually think it's a very hopeful thing,

and I think it's essentially a further unfolding of this evolutionary,

co-evolutionary relationship that we have with these plants.

I think that an ayahuasca in some way is now, you know, leading the charge,

but we've had these relationships with these plants.

The problem is that on an evolutionary time scale,

these things unfold, you know, over millennia, over sometimes millions of years,

now, you know, with the acceleration in the global crisis

and the impending planetary disaster, you know, in some ways, you know,

if these psychedelics are in some ways, you know, the biosphere or Gaia

or however you want to formulate it trying to get us to wake up, you know,

then that's all to the good.

I don't know if you know I wrote an essay a few years ago called

Ayahuasca and Human Destiny that kind of addresses some of this.

Is that online, Dennis?

It is somewhere.

I can send it to you, and you're welcome to post it.

And there's always Google.

And there's always Google, right.

It's there somewhere.

I haven't posted it, but I'd be happy to have you put it on your site if you'd like.

Well, Dennis McKenna, thanks so much for joining us here on Expanding Mind.

You've expanded my mind.

It seems like we barely have it here.

Yeah, it's amazing how quickly an hour goes when you're having a good conversation.

Thanks, Maja.

I wanted to announce next week we'll be having Jeff Warren,

who's a remarkable Canadian science writer who wrote a marvelous book about the mind

and consciousness called The Head Trip.

And he's a very energetic, very entertaining fellow.

I'm sure we'll have a great chat.

And once again, you've been listening to Expanding Mind on the Progressive Radio Network.

Any last words, Maja?

I think I hate having last words because that means I can't talk anymore,

but I want to say have a good time.

All right.

Thanks again.

Okay.

Eric and Maja, great to talk with you.

Maybe we can circle back sometime and revisit some of this stuff.

Okay.

Good afternoon.