Gnostic Media - Podcast #26 - Plant Intelligence - Dr. Dennis 04-12-09

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Welcome to Gnostic Media Research and Publishing's online podcast with your host, Jan Ervin.

Here we investigate the religious, the mysterious, the entheogenic, the shamanic, and the Gnostic

with a small g.

If you haven't heard it someplace else, you'll likely hear it here.

So sit back and relax.

Take a trip through time and a journey through your mind as we investigate the ancient mysteries.

Welcome to Gnostic Media Research and Publishing's podcast number 26.

I'm your host, Jan Ervin.

Today's guest is Dr. Dennis McKenna.

Today we discuss ukuhe, ayahuasca, habit and novelty theory, Terence McKenna, plant communication,

and the future of psychedelic research.

For the last 30 years, Dennis McKenna has pursued the interdisciplinary study of ethnopharmacology

and plant hallucinogens.

He is the co-author with his brother Terence McKenna of The Invisible Landscape, Mind,

and the I Ching, a philosophical and metaphysical exploration of the ontological implications

of the psychedelic drugs which resulted from the two brothers' early investigations of Amazonian

hallucinogens in 1971.

He received his doctorate in 1984 from the University of British Columbia.

His doctoral research focused on ethnopharmacological investigations of the botany, chemistry, and

pharmacology of ayahuasca and ukuhe, two orally active tryptamine-based hallucinogens used by

indigenous peoples in the northwest Amazon.

Following the completion of his doctorate, Dr. Dennis McKenna received his post-doctoral

research fellowship in the Laboratory of Clinical Pharmacology, National Institute of Mental Health,

and the Department of Neurology, Stanford University School of Medicine.

In 1990, he joined Shaman Pharmaceuticals as director of ethnopharmacology.

He joined the Center for Spirituality and Healing at the University of Minnesota in 2001,

and as senior lecturer and research associate.

He is a founding board member and vice president of the Hefter Research Institute,

a non-profit scientific organization dedicated to the investigation of therapeutic applications

for psychedelic plants and compounds.

He was a primary organizer and key scientific collaborator for the Huasca Project,

an international biomedical study of Huasca, a psychoactive drink used in ritual context

by indigenous peoples and syncretic religious groups in Brazil.

He has conducted extensive ethnopharmacological fieldwork in the Peruvian, Colombian, and Brazilian Amazon.

He has served as invited speaker at numerous scientific congresses, seminars, and symposia.

Dr. McKenna is author or co-author of over 40 scientific papers and peer-reviewed journals.

His publications have appeared in the Journal of Ethnopharmacology, European Journal of Pharmacology,

Brain Research, Journal of Neuroscience, Journal of Neurochemistry,

Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders, Economic Botany, and elsewhere.

Upcoming shows, Professor Marlene Dobkin de Rios, I plan to have on hopefully for next week,

at least that's what's planned.

Following that, on the 27th, will be Dr. Marguerite Rigoglioso.

And she is the author of The Cult of Divine Birth in Ancient Greece, and hang on for that one.

That's one you're not going to want to miss.

And she's got some mind-blowing information in her new book, so I can't wait to have her on to discuss that.

Also coming up will be Wolfgang Bauer, the German co-author of Der Flagenpils.

And after Wolfgang Bauer, I hope to have Dr. Neil Goldsmith on,

and we'll be discussing psychedelics and psycho-spiritual development.

And as an update, I expect to have the Spanish subtitle version of the Pharmacratic Inquisition DVD

released tomorrow on the PharmacraticInquisition.com website.

Also coming up in the next week or two will be the release of the Russian subtitle version of that.

And I also hope to have a Polish version out and available of that soon, too.

And if you're listening to this show and can help with German or French editions and possibly Arabic,

I would love to add those shows to the DVD and online versions of the video.

So if you can help with that, please contact me.

And if any of you out there listening can help with audio transcriptions, we would appreciate that as well.

We still have a few shows left that need to be transcribed, and I can use all the help on that I can get.

It's a big project.

I'd like to get all of the interviews transcribed.

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Still have copies of the new version of Astro Theology and Shamanism available.

And the DVD is also available.

Also still available are the brand new color edition of the second edition of Astro Theology and Shamanism,

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Thanks for listening and stay tuned for my interview with Dr. Dennis McKenna.

So how are you doing today?

Oh, pretty good.

Pretty good.

There's a big snowstorm on the way.

And so, you know, I'm bummed about that.

I thought we might get a little spring here, but I guess not.

You know, so I've just been working on my lecture for my next class and reasonably productive day so far.

How about you?

Mine has been reasonably productive, although I could get a lot more accomplished.

But working on this book project and getting all of you guys into it, I think, will serve the field in the long term hopefully very well.

So I've got a lot of big names like you in this.

So I really appreciate you taking part in it.

And, you know, so anyway, you know what I'm saying.

I know what you're saying.

Okay, so let's go.

All right.

Let's start off.

Why don't you tell me who Dennis J. McKenna is or Dr. Dennis J. McKenna?

Okay, well, I'm still working on that.

I guess you could say, you know, professionally, I guess I can cop to being an ethnopharmacologist.

I've been studying, you know, ethnopharmacology is the study of the relationship between people and biologically active substances.

And so that's a broad field.

And I've been working.

I've been preoccupied with that for many years, both sort of on a personal level and professional level.

So that's, I guess I can cop to saying I'm a psychopharmacologist, I'm an ethnopharmacologist.

So I became interested in this, really, because, you know, I was, I guess, a child of the 60s and interested in psychedelics.

And that's really what led me in this direction.

But early on in my work with psychedelics, I sort of became aware of, you know, I was immersed in the cultural context of my time.

But I became aware through the writings of Carlos Castaneda and others that there was a whole other context for the use of these plants and substances outside of our cultural context.

And so I was very interested, I became interested in studying, you know, their use in, in the context of cultures that had, that possibly knew something about them, which our culture really didn't.

So that's kind of how I was led into this.

And, you know, I've been, you know, I've been working in various aspects of this field ever since.

Where did you grow up?

Well, I grew up in a small town in Colorado called Paonia, Colorado, on the western slope, not too far from Aspen.

Both my brother and I grew up there.

I spent the first 17 years of my life there.

And, you know, it was a nice town.

But at the time, of course, I didn't think so.

I didn't have sense enough to realize that it was a pretty nice place, really.

Just a typical small Colorado town.

And that's where I grew up.

And I went to, initially, I went to the University of Colorado and Colorado State University for a while.

And then I, you know, sort of began my graduate career.

I went to the University of Hawaii and studied for a master's in botany, in botanical sciences.

And then I ended up at the University of British Columbia, studying under Dr. Neil Towers in the botany department.

And he was really the mentor that got me started on my, you know, serious study of psychopharmacology, or I mean ethnopharmacology and psychopharmacology for that matter.

With his encouragement, I changed my graduate direction, the direction of my studies, and ended up going to South America to investigate ayahuasca.

And, you know, that's been kind of a focus of my research and professional interests ever since, really.

I mean, I have to credit ayahuasca in some ways, you know, which encompasses a whole bunch of different interests.

I have to credit it into really it's been sort of a continuing carrot that's led me down my professional path and also, you know, my own personal path of interest in these things, you know, shamanic states of mind and people's relationships with psychoactive plants and altered states of consciousness.

And all of that.

You have a doctor's degree too.

What, what, where did you get your doctor's degree?

Well, my doctor's, I'm not a real doctor.

I'm a PhD.

I'm not a medical doctor.

Yeah, yeah.

Well, I got my, I got my PhD at the University of British Columbia.

You know, I got a master's at the University of Hawaii and my PhD at UBC.

And my, my thesis project was a kind of an interdisciplinary investigation of ayahuasca and, you know, chemistry, botany, pharmacology and social context.

But it was also a comparison of ayahuasca, which is a orally active tryptamine hallucinogen.

That's of course, as you know, very important in, in Amazonian, um, shamanism, but it was a comparison of that with, uh, with another, um, South American hallucinogen.

I'm much less known, uh, called, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, with total, uh, preparation from Verola, which is another, um, which is a species of trees in the nutmeg family.

And Verola, uh, also contains tryptamines.

Uh, usually it's used as a snuff.

Um, but some tribes, including the Witoto use it as an orally active preparation.

And that's essentially what my thesis was, was a comparison, uh, kind of, uh, of the chemistry and pharmacology of ayahuasca and Verola, um, or ayahuasca and this, this specific preparation, which the Witoto called Ukuhei.

And you worked for some, uh, interesting companies and you, and you've held some, uh, pretty interesting positions in those companies.

Could you talk about your role in the development of natural products?

Well, yeah, um, I, uh, after I finished my, uh, thesis work at UBC, I, I sort of became a, you know, the world's longest, uh, unemployed postdoc.

I did three different postdocs, um, trying to pursue this interest, uh, in hallucinogens.

Um, um, one of them was at the, uh, National Institute of Mental Health, uh, in Bethesda, Maryland.

I got a two year fellowship there.

And then I went to, uh, after I finished that, I did another postdoc at, uh, Stanford, uh, in the neurology department.

And all of that was, uh, directed at, uh, looking at serotonin receptors and, and actually trying to map out and, and characterize, uh, hallucinogen receptors.

So, uh, in, in, in the brain, mostly in, in, in rats brains.

Uh, but you know, you gotta start somewhere.

And so I was very lucky that, uh, I was able to, to pursue that work.

Um, and at the end of my, my postdoc at Stanford, um, there was a new, uh, company startup pharmaceutical company, uh, starting up in, in California called Shaman Pharmaceuticals.

And they were, uh, going to, uh, you know, rediscover or discover all those unknown remedies in the rainforest that we keep hearing about.

And, um, so for me, it was a good chance to kind of take what I learned in my, in my sort of detour out of, uh, ethno pharmacology into, into neural pharmacology.

It was a chance to utilize that knowledge and reapply it to natural products, supply it to the investigation of, uh, some of these traditional medicines.

So I joined them, uh, in 1990, I believe.

And, uh, as director of ethno pharmacology, which was a fancy sounding title, but, but on the ground, it was basically, uh, you know, my job was to set up, uh, screening protocols for, uh, variety of neural receptors.

Um, there, they had a small, uh, a small part of their resources were devoted to the discovery of new, uh, CNS active drugs.

Uh, and as it turned out, uh, I have, uh, just came fresh with these skills from my postdoc.

So I was a good match for what they needed.

And, uh, uh, so I worked for shaman for about two and a half years.

And then I, uh, I, I, I, I came out here to Minnesota to work for, uh, a Veda corporation, uh, which, you know, is a cosmetics company.

And, uh, at the time, um, they offered me a better job in terms of salary.

And they offered me a challenge, which is that they wanted to set up a program in ethno pharmacology.

Uh, and, uh, it, it seemed attractive.

And, and so I came here and I worked, uh, I worked for a Veda for another two and a half years.

Um, mostly in the area of developing dietary supplements.

Back at this time, uh, the, the laws, uh, regulating the sale of dietary supplements to shea is what they're called.

The dietary supplement health and education act was passed in 1993.

And suddenly, uh, following that the herbal products industry kind of took off.

So it was a good opportunity, uh, to come to a company like a Veda and, and start to develop some, some products.

Um, but after a couple of years, I, uh, I, I sort of decided that it wasn't really a good match for me.

Um, in some ways, uh, it was, it was a, you know, it was disappointing.

And, and I, I sort of slowly came to realize that I probably can't, couldn't work for any corporation, at least not as an employee.

Um, so I left a Veda and I ended up working as a consultant, um, independent consultant is, I guess, another way of saying unemployed.

But actually I wasn't unemployed because I had lots of, I had lots of consulting by that time.

So I ended up working as an independent consultant for, uh, a variety of, uh, dietary supplement and herbal products companies, uh, throughout the nineties.

And, uh, so that kept, you know, food on the table and gave me a certain independence and, uh, and that continued.

And then, uh, in 1999, uh, my brother, um, uh, came down with, uh, a brain tumor.

And, uh, which was shocking to everyone, to us, to him, especially.

And, uh, so I basically, you know, I, I spent the next year being there for him.

I, I, I more or less gave up my consulting work and, uh, and we spent the next year trying to figure out what we were going to do about this, what we could do about it.

Um, and of course there's very little that, uh, that could be done about it.

It's it, she, he had the most virulent form of brain cancer that you can have.

And the usual diagnosis is you live about a year after you're diagnosed, you know, and it's 98%, uh, mortality.

Um, so we did everything he, we could to try and find a solution to that.

He ended up taking, uh, an experimental gene therapy, uh, University of California, San Francisco.

Uh, we sorted through many options and because I was the scientist of the family and had some background in pharmacology and biology and, and neuroscience and this and that, I sort of became the person that had to, you know, sort through the science and figure out if there were any good options, uh, for treatment.

Um, and we settled on, on this gene therapy, um, which was carried out, but it, it didn't work, obviously.

Um, he, he died in April, uh, of 2003.

Um, in fact, uh, in a couple of days, it'll be the ninth, uh, anniversary of his death.

Yeah.

He died in April.

You mean 2000.

I'm sorry, 2000.

Yeah.

He died in April, 2000.

So it's been almost exactly, uh, uh, uh, nine years this week.

Almost exactly nine years this week, you know, which is rather amazing when I think back on it.

It, it, it certainly doesn't seem that long, but, uh, but it was.

And so at the end of that time, I, uh, uh, was, uh, well, when you're a consultant and you're not out there getting business, you know, your consulting business goes away.

You have to keep, keep getting it.

And so at the end of that time, after his death, I was pretty much bereft.

I had no job and no real work, uh, at least no chance to reconstruct my consulting business.

So, um, at the time, uh, I had just completed it, uh, uh, massive reference book on herbal supplements, along with some colleagues.

We've done it, um, as a contract for a company, but then they relinquished the rights to it.

And it, it was, you know, we were negotiating for a publisher and, uh, this, uh, you're talking about the book, botanical medicines, the desk reference for major herbal supplements.

That's right.

Eventually, the work we've done for this company was revised and published as that book.

And, uh, uh, about a few months after Terrence had passed on, uh, that, uh, work came to the attention of, um, some people at the center for spirituality and healing at the university of Minnesota, which is, uh, the alternative.

The alternative or complimentary medicine program there.

And, uh, as it happened, they were looking for someone to, uh, teach a course in ethnobotany and, and, or in, uh, herbal medicines.

And so they were impressed with the book and it seemed like a good match.

And so that was my first, uh, sort of penetration into academia was when I went to work for them to initially to teach, uh, a course that I developed called ethno pharmacology.

Uh, called formerly called people, plants and drugs, an introduction to ethno pharmacology.

And, uh, that was the beginning.

And then later I developed a course on, uh, botanical medicines.

And I still teach both of those at the university, uh, plus a couple more.

So it was good.

It was a, it was a, uh, it was an opportunity to kind of, uh, well, find employment again, which was, which was good thing.

But also I found that I really enjoyed the, uh, you know, the opportunity to teach.

Um, so I guess I was more suited to be an academic perhaps than a corporate, uh, corporate researcher.

So I think we can all understand that.

Yeah.

Still plugging away.

Well, um, you, uh, you know, well, it sounds like you've got a pretty well rounded background in sciences as, as well as, uh, obviously philosophy and things like that, that many have heard you talk about.

Um, many of us have heard your, uh, brother's wild stories about taking morning glories as a boy and doing things like that.

Um, you know, and you talked about a little bit about your involvement as being a sixties child, but what was the, the trigger that, uh, led you to the path?

Were you sipping, uh, morning glory, morning glory tea with your brother or how did that happen?

Well, no, not exactly like that.

Although, although he was certainly a very formative influence on my development.

Uh, there's no doubt about that.

Um, we, he was the older brother.

He was four years older than I was, than I am.

And, uh, he, uh, went early on.

He left, uh, Paonia early while he was still in high school and went out to California to live with my aunt and uncle to finish school.

Um, he hated Paonia even worse than I did and badgered my parents, uh, to leave and, and eventually they did give in and let him go.

So after he graduated from high school, he went to Berkeley, to the university of California at Berkeley.

And that was right at the time when the free speech movement was, you know, just over.

There was a lot of political and cultural ferment and there was, you know, and the sixties were in full swing and he got into it.

Uh, you know, with both feet and, uh, you know, and, and, uh, you know, so he, he would come home on, uh, at Christmas and in the summer and so on.

And, and, and we would hang out together and it was really our, I guess our shared interest in, in science fiction that really, uh, sort of in some ways was the theme, uh, of our common interests.

So at least when we were, when we were younger, you know, I mean, if we were both kind of nerdy, I guess, both kind of intellectual or at least had pretensions to be.

So, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh, uh

That's right and you know, we were interested in in odd things

And of course drugs are some of the oddest things so in you know in Terrence's

experience at Berkeley he quickly came in touch with

you know all these different

psychedelics cannabis and and different psychedelics which is pretty much what was happening at that time and

He came back one summer and

And you know turned me on to cannabis for the first time. I think when I was 15

It was a very different

kind of

Environment then I mean we simply you know went over to the city park

We lived across the street from the city park and sat down and you know

He pulled up the pipe and you know

We fired up and that was my first introduction to any of these

psychoactive drugs and

And then in the summer of 67 I went out to California and this was the summer of love and and all that the summer

You know the hippies were at their height

But I guess what really

Impressed us or sort of you know where our interest kind of went

in some unique directions was

Was when we found out about

DMT and we got interested in DMT

Which was very rare even in in the 60s it was almost never encountered it was not a drug that was common, but it was around

uh and

And uh and he got some and we both thought it was kind of the

You know the quintessential psychedelic in some ways. I mean we were very impressed with how

Strange it was how overwhelming it was and

And we were fascinated by that and even more so when we found that it was you know found in many plants

And that it was really the basis of a lot of shamanic

Plant-based

Practices in in South America and so that was really the hook

That led us to to eventually go to South America, but it was trying to find a better

Form of BMT

um

I wanted to ask you if you were familiar with

Rick Simpsons work using cannabis to treat cancer

um he's got he's done some very fascinating research he's out of

Saskatchewan Canada and I had him on the show a couple of months back, but I was wondering if you had heard of his research and his treatment methods

Sure

Yeah, I am not familiar

with Rick Simpsons work on cancer

um and

Using cannabis to treat cancer I have

Followed a little bit some of the research in this area. There's some evidence

apparently that cancer

May in fact inhibit the growth of brain tumors

um and

And in fact that came to light when terence was still sick and as terence used to say well

You know if cannabis cure brain tumors, we wouldn't be having this conversation

But

Well, it didn't work for him

Let's put well

Let's put it that way

What they they don't use it by smoking it but what they do is they create a tar

Basically the essential oils of very strong indica buds

Oh, yeah and then you consume this essential oil

And

What he does is is basically you're consuming a pound of this stuff over a two to three month period in this high?

Concentrated extract form and he's he as well as a couple of other people who have administered it and

Have also done it have reported back to me that they've had

Significant results so what I'll do is a you know after the show

I'll send you an email with his information and exactly how he's going about it because I would love to

Get your feedback from a scientific perspective on what he's doing there

Yeah, I'd like to hear more about it

so

Many of us have read terence's account of your experience in his book true hallucinations

Would you care to discuss your experience there and this blue or green ooze that?

He discussed in that book

Well, yes, and oh

I I have discussed it many places and

You know and every time it it's

I sort of approach it with hesitation because for one thing it makes it sound like you know

You know

I'm a complete nutcase and

You know for another

It's very hard to explain it succinctly

Well, that's a great caveat to start off with

Yeah, I mean one of the things

You know I

Those are those people who are familiar with true hallucinations

You know know the story but I I guess briefly

You know one of the I

Mean what what originally motivated us to go to South American in 1971

Was this effort to?

Find this drug who who who who hate?

This with total drug which we had read about in the Harvard Botanical Museum leaflets and

You know we thought that this might be this orally active form of DMT

Because DMT is not normally orally active you have to the synthetic compound you have to smoke it

In a pipe and it produces a very

Rapid very overwhelming but very rapid psychedelic experience and

You know and that had been our experience of it but the problem with that is it's difficult to

Retrieve much from it it happens it's overwhelming and it's all over in 10 minutes

so

We were interested in maybe

In this orally active form because we thought it would be a chance to spend

More time in that place and actually kind of get a better handle on just

What the hell was going on when in the so-called DMT dimension

So that was our motivation for going to South America

And was to find a an orally active form of DMT and

We were we were led to go to luxury era

Because that was the ancestral home of the which hotel that's how we ended up there and

When we got there

Well, you know the story is told in truelist nations but basically when we got there

We became distracted in some ways by the fact that the psilocybin mushrooms

Psilocybin cubensis were literally everywhere in in this little village that we come to it was a capuchin mission

Settlement

And the the forest around around the settlement had been cleared and there were pastures and

And they had put in Cebu cattle

Well

Cylocybin cubensis likes to grow on the dung of Cebu cattle more than any other substrate

So they were around all over the place and we

You know we knew what they were

We had enough ethnobotanical savvy to sort of know what they were

And but we didn't really take them seriously, you know, we started eating them

More or less as a recreational

You know activity and we

You know we thought that ukuhe must surely be the real mystery

But we couldn't you know we were inhibited from just going in and asking around

We had sort of had to wait for it to come to us

And eventually we did find it proved to be quite disappointing

But by that time we were already

You know well into the mushrooms and you know and the the

You know one of the phenomena that

Terence experienced

When smoking DMT which he describes in in true loose nations

Was this experience of you know in a in a hyper

DMT state

Some kind of a substance or a what he calls the violet psycho fluid or something

Appears to come out of his body

And you know I mean this is not a reliable

Function of DMT I don't think everybody has that effect

But it happened to him and he describes it and it wasn't clear what it was

But as we looked into the anthropological literature we found something very analogous to that

That that the he varro shamans for them now called properly called the schwar

Take ayahuasca

On our you know almost constant basis or they use it a great deal

It's it's the basis of all of their magic and all of their all of their moho in a sense

Is ayahuasca one of the

Modalities that comes up in schwar shamanism is the shaman will

Cough up or produce out of his body a substance

That has magical properties

Seems trans dimensional in some way something that

They can spread out in front of them on the ground and actually

Look into and use for divination

Not unlike they can see the future they can use it diagnose illness

They can you know do all that stuff

And not unlike the

You know it's it's an app that's really to the way that the alchemists

Talked about a scribe stones or an alchemical mirror something

Not unlike a crystal ball I suppose except that

You know this was this was a fluid thing

And you know it had these properties so that that is really

The basis of this of this psycho fluid or this this magical substance which we ended up calling

Trans linguistic matter and you know for lack of a better name you know we thought that it was

You know I mean something that you could actually

Produce out of your body under the state of tryptamine intoxication

And one of our preoccupations became how to

How to actually exteriorize this material and fix this material in some way

So that you know it wasn't

You know so that somebody else could see it I mean you know and and that was really the whole basis of the experiment

A large rare you know but the well it's difficult to to describe it

Because in the act of describing it you know you have to

You know I mean I mean it just sounds absolutely crazy

And I'm not you know I mean I mean it's not clear whether we were deluded or whether we really ought to something

You know I mean so we devised this idea about how you could fix this material and you could produce it

And actually nail it down in some ways you know much like the alchemists

Talk about the notion that you have to you know in order to build the philosopher's stone you have to

You know you have to fix it you have to fix the mercury they conceive of a similar substance to what we thought

As mercury mercury of course is a fluid it's mercurial by definition part of what the alchemical process is all about is the effort to

Fix the mercury in a form that can be

You know held in the hand and manipulative and this is this is really what we were trying to do at lecture

Looking back on that now what do you think of that substance that you're working with then do you still think there's something worthy of

Investigation or have you moved beyond it today?

Well, I don't know if I move beyond it

I mean if such a thing could be could be invented

It would be a fantastic thing I mean it would be in fact as we said it would be at that time it would be the ultimate

Ultimate artifact because it would be a an artifact that combined the properties of mind and the properties of matter in

You know in conjunction with each other so

You know it would be an amazing thing but I think it's very hard to sort out I think that

We we were majorly diluted in some ways

You know by taking the mushrooms

You know it was suggesting these ideas and we were trying to devise an experiment

But I wouldn't really call it an experiment. It was more like a ritual than anything else

I mean, you know having said that if you look

You know we're not the first ones to conceive of such a notion

I mean the the alchemists were

Were on this you know have been on it for hundreds of years this idea

That you can create some kind of an artifact that has the properties of both mind and matter

You know that idea it has been around for a long time or in in contemporary

In in contemporary context that the notion of a of the UFO which is

You know again, I think just a metaphor for this ultimate artifact

You know this thing that can essentially do anything because it is it is made of imagination

So it can respond to your imagination

It can do whatever you tell it whatever you couldn't dream up for it to do

Well, you know, I mean I mean

If I wasn't a little skeptical about it at this point in my life, you know

I should probably get some psychiatric help

You know I mean I I don't know it's a fascinating idea

There are aspects of it that are

You know still very appealing I mean some of what we postulated what's going to happen has

You know since found some valid validation in in biophysics and this sort of thing

But in general it's still a pretty wild it's still a pretty wild notion

And you know I I mean what we postulated was going to happen when we tried to create this thing

Obviously didn't and in fact couldn't because it violated all kinds of physical laws

But other things did happen and you know not the least of all what happened was our kind of simultaneous

Psychosis you could say you could characterize it as that or you could

You could be more kind and characterize it as a more like a shamanic election

I think we got ourselves into a place where we were absolutely convinced that

Something was was going to happen and something

You know earth shattering or history shattering was going to happen

And so when we performed this experiment what we predicted would happen didn't happen but other things did happen

And not on a global basis obviously but but very much between us between my brother and myself

You know and we went on this shared

A sort of psychonautic odyssey I guess you could say that lasted about 14 days and

That was kind of the you know triggered by by our attempt to

Shatter space and time and bring history to an end

Not that we weren't ambitious or anything you know right I mean that was the agenda

I noticed you still wear glasses I think you had thrown your glasses off and said you wouldn't need them anymore at that point or something

Yeah, well that was my first mistake

Yes, I do wear glasses

Yeah, it did not transform me into a

Superman

Which was which was one of the things we postulated just just

Just just not even the goal of the thing that's a sort of a side effect of the whole thing was that you know

We would have superconducting DNA and we would be you know essentially these immortal beings

But what you basically did

What you basically it sounds like what you had happen which is typical on many people's experiences and has been documented clinically like by Stan Grof was

Sounds like you had a pretty major telepathic experience between yourself and and Terence

We did yes

We did have a strong telepathic experience

Even beyond that a little bit we had

You know what appeared to be access to some kind of

I don't know what you would call it some sort of Akashic record

Some sort of some sort of cosmic database in a sense where all

Knowledge and knowledge that would not particularly be available to us seem

To be available and you know we did query

You know it the thing

Whatever it was this this thing that we this tiger that we had by the tail

We could ask it questions and they would come back with answers

The problem you know you could in the Amazon you could pick up a plant and say you know what is the name of this plant?

And you know it would immediately come back the problem is

We have no idea if we you know any of this was true or not

You know no way really to verify that

Well you know I've had a very similar experience or two what I call the pool of knowledge

Or something like that where I could basically just

And in this vision I had I had a metal camping cup with me

And I took this metal camping cup off my belt and I started just drinking from this pool of knowledge

In this trip and all of these ideas and and everything

Starting started pouring into me but

One thing I've found over the years that's that strikes me especially interesting though is the

Telepathy experiences because many of them that I've had I've been able to directly verify I mean

Oh about five years ago I was on an ayahuasca experience with a friend of mine and he was in we were at his place and he was in a separate room with the door closed and we had total telepathy

And then he came out of the room and we verified the entire conversation that we had just had via telepathy

So and that's not you know the only time I mean you know there's been dozens of similar type experiences that I can think about over over the years

But I certainly understand where you're coming from on that I think

Right I mean these things do go on

You know and I think that some of the telepathic experiences that we have been and then some I've had like yourself similar to some that you've had

You know, I mean they they seem to be valid, you know, and I I think that

Well, it's just very tricky to get a handle on this

I mean you can go into this with a complete

You know sort of

Stance of reductionism and skepticism

You know and you can think well, it's it's all in your head and and all your

Experiencing is you know that it's all about your your brain physiology and it has nothing to do

With the with the real world or there's nothing paranormal here, but I think by taking such a

Narrow view of it you risk missing something important

And I and at the same time if you take a completely uncritical

View then you know

You sort of give up that faculty and you just accept whatever and

That gives you no real basis for understanding

So I think it is it is this dynamic and the the being willing to

Sort of acknowledge that we don't know very much. We really don't know that much about

Our consciousness our brains

Experience what are the limits?

You know of human experience and you know I mean with all we know about

Neuroscience and all of these fancy tools that we have for study in the brain and

You know all of these developments that have taken place in the last 30 years

Nobody can still say what consciousness is

And yet, you know, I mean we know it exists because we all experience it as part of our everyday life

But who can nail it down and say well consciousness?

You know is

This who can

Give it some some reductive

Explanation

It's just one of those aspects of reality

That we have to admit we're still in the dark about you know and we may be in the dark about it for

For for quite a long time

What is this idea of a hyper carbolation that you had during this experience?

I know you mentioned just a few minutes ago this idea of interlocking or coming together with DNA

Could you talk about your your concept there and what you think of that today?

Well, yeah, I mean the hyper carbolation was a term that we that we coined

To describe

Excuse me to describe

This experiment that we were trying to do and we had this idea

That you know on high doses of DMT and also on high doses of mushrooms

But more commonly with DMT you can hear a sound if you're in a completely quiet place

And if you listen very carefully you can hear a sound inside your head which some people have

Described as a buzzing sound or other people have said it's like crackling cellophane or whatever

But what we found and this is what happened?

With Terence when he first produced this violet fluid out of his body

Back in Kathmandu before any of this had happened he found that by listening to the sound and imitating the sound

You could sort of lock on to it and you could start, you know with your voice

You could start singing and imitating the sound

Eventually the sound would take over and it would just pour out of you

And we found that on high doses of mushrooms this was a pretty repeatable phenomenon

So we didn't really know we hypothesize that what this sound was was the electron spin resonance of the molecules in our neurons

Now you know this was

We're not biophysicists. I'm not a biophysicist now

But I know enough about biophysics to know that this was a completely, you know, incorrect notion

But we didn't know that at the time so, you know, we were not inhibited

But we thought well if we could imitate this sound in a certain way that we could actually cause the

We could excite the harming in our bodies and to intercalate into DNA in such a way that it would produce a

A standing wave form superconducting

Essentially hologram of

Of DNA that would that would reflect the information that was in DNA

and

You know that was what we were trying to do that would be the artifact that it would become visible

It would be something that would you know, you would both see it and be it at the same time and

It would respond to the vibrations of thought and it would be able to manifest

You know any information

Now you know this idea that we had is so

You know, I mean it's it's got it's full of holes in so many different ways that I can't begin to tell you

You know what what a whack notion this was

But you know, I mean looking back of it from relative

Sanity and 30 almost 40 years later

Looking back on it. I have to think boy these guys were

You know completely nuts and

And

Maybe so but you know, I mean I'm certainly willing to

Admit that we were we were

In a seriously altered state of

Of reality and we were we were divorced from

From ordinary reality

But in our state of mind

These ideas seem to make perfect sense and they seem to make

You know not only perfect sense but but they seem to you know the mushroom or whatever it was this entity

That we felt we were in touch with was

You know the mushroom or whatever it was

You know, kind of downloading the blueprints to us in what seemed like, you know, a very clear way, more or less downloading the instructions. Here's how you do this thing. Here's how you build this translinguistic matter or, you know, the philosopher's stone or whatever you wanted to call it.

And so in some ways we were just it was like it was like channeling. It was like automatic writing or something. We were just all this information was being downloaded and we seemed to know what to do. And and so we went ahead and did it. And, you know, when it didn't work, but they didn't work in the way that we said it was going to work.

But it worked in certain other ways. I mean, I guess one thing that came out of this was my brother's, you know, invention of the time wave based on the I Ching.

I mean, that is something that came out of all this that, you know, clearly a result of our attempts. And, you know, it's a mathematical system based on the I Ching, which he postulated was something that describes the structure of time.

And again, I don't buy it now, but I do think it's a very interesting thing just its own merits, you know, that he was able to construct this thing.

And so that is something that came out of it. Yeah, I don't know.

That's I mean, one of the one of the long term effects for me, you know, from from this was the understanding essentially of how little I knew.

And, you know, and, you know, after the experiment, my brother, you know, was ready to essentially abandon science and say, well, science cannot explain any of this.

But I was not so quick to do that because I, you know, my feeling was, well, we're not scientists.

We, you know, we don't understand science. We need to, or at least I needed to study science before I was ready to dispense with science.

And so in some ways, that experience really sort of changed my own direction in terms of my own learning and all that.

So, you know, I felt like in order to, you know, if you're going to be a critic of science, you have to understand science.

Yeah, that's a good point.

How it's work, how it works, you know.

So we that sort of triggered a lot of reading on both our parts into things like Alfred North Whitehead, you know, general systems theory, you know, kind of the whole philosophical scientific tradition that has to do with, you know,

the study of consciousness and biological systems and, you know, sort of the self-organizing systems, which, if you think about it, are still pretty unlikely.

I mean, consciousness, nobody knows what that is, but we know it exists because we, presumably each of us has one most of the time, you know,

and life itself, you know, is a pretty unlikely proposition when you think about it, you know, and we don't really understand what that is.

And yet we're surrounded by it.

We are living things.

And is it, you know, is it something that just happens given the right conditions or is there something more to it?

You know, I mean, these are big questions and questions that I don't, I don't pretend to have the answer to, you know, I mean, if, if psychedelics have taught me anything and my whole life experience really has taught me anything,

it's that, you know, I mean, as a species, especially scientists, I think are particularly sort of prone to arrogance, you know, to the notion that they really know a lot.

And actually, I think they really don't know much, you know, science is a very good tool for understanding and examining in minute detail, tiny slices of reality.

You know, you can understand the structure of a cell or, you know, some process in great detail where science isn't good.

And so far it falls down when it comes to trying to, you know, fit all this together into a comprehensive map of the world and the way the world really is.

I don't think we're there yet.

I don't think we have anything like a, you know, comprehensive scientific understanding of, you know, of the way it is, you know,

or what my grandfather used to call, used to say, how the boar ate the cabbage, you know, we don't know how the boar ate the cabbage.

And, you know, I think it's a part of the human conundrum is that, you know, we, as, as human beings, we long for an answer.

You know, we long for things to make sense.

We long for there to be meaning and science alone doesn't give us that.

And so people tend to turn to spiritual practices or religions or whatever.

And maybe on some level they derive some satisfaction from that.

But it also seems to me that, you know, most religions don't have any answers either.

I mean, I haven't found one gap that really, but they're more than willing to tell you they do have the answers.

And I think that's very dangerous, you know, and science is the same way.

I mean, the scientists are, you know, priests of their own type of religion, and they're ready to tell you they have the answers too.

And, you know, as I've gotten older and more curmudgeonly, I've sort of decided that, you know, anybody tells you they've got the answers, they're full of shit, basically.

Because I don't think anybody's got the answers.

Well, one thing you learn doing research over your life is the more research you do, the more you realize you don't know much.

Right, exactly.

You know, and it's like that's the never-ending battle.

But you talked about time wave zero and the habit novelty theory there briefly.

You said today you didn't buy it.

Could you discuss that?

What led you to discount your own theory?

Well, it's not really.

It was never really my theory.

It was my brother's theory.

And, you know, he developed this, and I was always pretty skeptical about the whole idea.

I think that in some ways it's a very interesting thing.

I think that he, you know, whether on purpose or by accident, I think that he probably rediscovered an ancient Chinese calendar.

I buy it that far, you know, in that it can be used as a perfect 13-month lunar calendar.

It can be used to predict astronomical events and all this type of thing.

Just a minute here.

My wife just came home.

Sure.

Yeah.

Do you hear me?

Can you hear me?

Yeah, I'm back.

Okay, great.

Yeah.

Yeah, I just want to let her know I was doing an interview down here.

And she's like, oh, no, not another one.

That's like my wife, too.

You know, I do almost as many interviews as I, or I give almost as many interviews as I take.

You know what I mean?

Right, right.

You know, December and January for us, I had an interview pretty much every other day there for, you know, it was getting pretty ridiculous.

In fact, I've had two this week.

What can you say, in your opinion, is the legacy of, or what can you say of Terrence's legacy today?

And in your opinion, what was his most important contribution?

Oh, boy.

Well, you know, the thing is, I mean, to go back to the time wave for a minute, I think that, you know, it was a very interesting mathematical construct.

I think that, you know, where he overstepped the bounds in some ways was in his postulation, his notion that somehow the wave described the structure of space, of time, rather,

and, you know, had this predictive quality, and described, you know, what he called the ingression of novelty into the continuum, and it didn't really provide evidence for that.

And there are a lot of, you know, there are a lot of reasons to think that it doesn't.

I mean, there's no real evidence for it.

You know, the problem with the time wave, as far as I see it, was that, you know, if it was being put forth as a theory, you know, theories have to be disprovable.

So, you know, this is one thing that my scientific training has taught me, you know, if you're going to postulate a hypothesis, you have to define what will invalidate it, or, you know, all scientific models are provisional.

And you have to, you know, test them against reality, and either they stand up, or they have to be revised, or they have to be thrown out completely.

Terence never really did that with the time wave theory.

You know, he never was able to define the criteria that would invalidate it, you know.

And so it became, you know, not useful, you know, really.

He was the only person that could actually interpret it, you know.

So in some ways, I think that he was forced to be, in some ways, intellectually dishonest with himself and with, you know, the people in his fans, if you will,

or other people that were interested in this theory, because, you know, he was unable to really objectify it or provide any criteria that would, you know, determine what would disprove it.

It's hard to say what Terence's legacy was, you know.

You know, I think, in some ways, I mean, I think, you know, having dumped all this criticism on the time wave,

I now turn around and say, in some sense, he was right in, I think, that his notion that we are accelerating towards some kind of historical singularity,

you know, you know, was probably right on.

I mean, you don't need the time wave to tell you that things are getting stranger and stranger and seem to be going faster and faster.

And just the rate of change that is affecting our country, you know, it seems apparent that things are, you know, headed somewhere, you know, towards some sort of critical event.

But whether that's going to be, I mean, I do not believe it's going to be a single event, you know, on 2012, you know, December 21st, 2012.

Well, I don't think, I do not believe that novelty really ingresses into the continuum that way, you know.

But I do believe, and I think if you look back at the last decades, I do think novelty is a real thing, and it does ingress into reality.

And I think maybe Terrence's chief legacy was to sort of make people aware of that, you know, and even know that, yes, things are changing, things are stranger, you know, not only than you think they are, they're stranger than you can possibly imagine.

And, you know, to quote John Haldane, I think, wasn't that John Haldane that said that originally?

Yeah, JBS Haldane, right, exactly.

That was what he said.

You know, Terrence, you know, I mean, he was a complex guy, and he was, I mean, I think his legacy is that he led people to think about things that they would never otherwise think about.

You know, it never would have occurred to them, all these crazy, wacky notions, and he was such a, he was a bard in some ways.

He was so articulate, and people enjoyed listening to him, and he could say the craziest things in such a way that it made, it seemed to make sense, you know, and people were accepting of it.

And without too much critical thought, in fact, he used to hate for me to come to his seminars, you know, because I would never, I would challenge him, and, you know, I would say, well, you know, what you said didn't make any sense, you know, and it contradicts what you said 20 minutes ago, and that didn't make any sense either.

So, you know, where's the sense in this, but he didn't, but it was okay, because he said it so well, you know, and I really think that was it.

I mean, he could have said just about anything, and, you know, having grown up with him, you know, I know that, I mean, one of the things that he always liked doing is making provocative statements.

And in some ways, I mean, he was kind of like, you know, I mean, he enjoyed shocking people with these radical statements, but in a way, it was like a wake-up call for many people.

It's like, oh, yeah, you know, I never really thought about that before, so I really think that was his, you know, that was his legacy in some ways, that he created a context where people really wondered, you know, about who are we, what is our place in the universe, you know, we're surrounded by mystery.

We don't really know very much, and yet, you know, here we are in our existential situation, you know, we're living organisms on a planet that, you know, we appear to have intelligence, we appear to, you know, be part of this system, and how common is that?

How, you know, is that something that's totally unique, or is that something that's just kind of ho-hum, run-of-the-mill, you know, we don't really know.

So, I think that was, in some ways, you know, his real legacy was to just make people think, you know.

I originally, I remember when he was just beginning to sort of talk publicly, and wasn't really well known, but he would go to a few seminars, and occasionally he'd be on the radio, and so on, and one of his fans said, you know,

I just love hearing you talk, because, you know, at the time, you remember, I don't know if you remember, back in the 80s, do you remember Sing Along with Mitch?

I don't think I do.

Yeah, I don't think I remember that.

Do you hear me?

Well, he was a guy on television.

He was, you know, and he had, like, a folk song-type show, and he had a guitar, and he'd come on, and everybody would sing along with Mitch, and one of Terrence's fans said, you know, you're just like Sing Along with Mitch, except it's Think Along with Terrence.

I thought that got it pretty well.

Yeah.

He made people think.

He stretched people's imagination, and I think that's his real legacy, and that's always a good thing, you know, just to exercise your imagination.

Because of this thing, as we were just discussing, the world is almost certainly stranger than you could possibly imagine, so, you know, we're free to speculate, and speculation is fun.

Right.

And maybe even useful.

Maybe.

What do you feel about the 2012 movement that's risen up today in large part because of Invisible Landscape?

Well, again, I'm kind of, I am actually a skeptic about the 2012 movement for all the reasons that I just said in my criticism of the time wave.

I'm sort of, you know, I'm sort of unsympathetic to it because I think that, you know, I mean, I think, as I say, in some broader context, we're right.

You know, Terrence was right, we are headed towards some sort of, you know, singularity, some sort of radical change in the way we live on the earth.

But I think in some ways it's irresponsible to, you know, to tie all your hopes and all your expectations to one year or one particular event.

You know, I mean, if you look at the history of prophecies, you know, if you look back, one thing you can say about the history of prophecies is they have always failed.

There hasn't been a single one that's ever come true, right?

I mean, I can't think of one.

Y2K is a perfect example of that.

And, you know, to me, it almost seems like.

Y2K is a perfect example.

Well, to me, to me, it's always seemed like the whole 2012 thing is sort of a neo-pagan repackaging of the Christian apocalyptic theme.

Well, I completely agree.

Yeah.

I mean, it's exactly.

That's what it is.

And, again, people, you know, I mean, it is exactly that.

You know, the expectation that Jesus is going to come and save us or, you know, the alien space brothers are going to show up in their mile-wide ships and save us.

You know, and what I tell people is forget it.

You know, this is an excuse for not taking responsibility for yourself.

You know, Jesus ain't coming.

I'm sorry.

You know, the aliens ain't coming.

I'm sorry.

It ain't going to happen.

You know, we're in a pile of shit here.

And it's up to us to get out of it.

It's up to us to take responsibility.

So, in some ways, I mean, this has sort of become my latest rant.

I'm sort of saying, you know, don't expect anyone to come along.

You know, as a species and as individuals, you know, we're more than ready to give up responsibility.

You know, we want wisdom dispensed from a guru or a priest, you know.

Yeah.

We want salvation to come from outside.

You know, we want some cosmic force, you know, to intervene in history and save us from ourselves.

I think that the whole 2012 meme is unhealthy, in a sense, because, again, it just provides an incentive for people to not take responsibility and to sort of, you know, hope that, you know, well, after 2012, it'll all be good, you know.

But, no, I mean, there's no reason to think that.

Are you?

And so, you know, I mean, the thing is, and it encourages us to, you know, put it off.

And we may not have it until 2012, you know.

Yeah, exactly.

Things are going to take a little handbasket.

And we need to get on it, you know, and not wait around for some postulated salvation.

Well, were you familiar with the fact that I did a couple of podcasts?

I did a couple of podcasts with Professor John Hupps from Kansas University and John Major Jenkins regarding debunking the whole 2012 thing.

And we called it just that, the 2012 meme.

Yeah.

No, I wasn't.

I wasn't.

But, well, John Major Jenkins.

I'm not familiar with Professor Hutt's work.

Is he a Mayanist?

Yeah, he is.

He's an anthropologist.

He's director of the global, I think it's, I think it's Global Indigenous Studies Program out of Kansas University.

But, yeah, he's an anthropologist, Maya scholar, graduated from Harvard.

And I've been in touch with him for a number of years.

We've had many, many great conversations.

And, you know, he has always separated Jenkins' work out from the rest of the 2012 group.

And he wants Jenkins to submit his research for peer review.

And so the interview was twofold.

It was John Hupps coming on to attack the 2012 movement, dissect it, show where it originated in the original books that it came out of, like Michael Coe and Jose Arguelles and Terrence McKenna's work,

and that there was no citations beyond Michael Coe to any actual archaeological evidence.

And then John Major Jenkins came on to defend a couple of points that Hoops attacked his work on, defended them very well, in my opinion.

And then just he also has, you know, really despises the 2012 movement, but he's found himself caught up in it to his own angst, you know.

Well, yeah, I'm more familiar with, I'm a little more familiar with John Major Jenkins, and I'm in agreement with this other professor.

I respect his work more because, you know, it's more focused on the astronomical side of it.

And there's no doubt, you know, that that's real.

I mean, there are some very interesting astronomical alignments, this conjunction of, you know, the solstice point with the galactic equator and the ecliptic and all this.

I mean, it's all that's pretty much, you know, built into celestial mechanics.

So, you know, these conjunctions will take place, no doubt about it.

But does it have a significance as far as events on Earth?

I just, you know, I just don't think so.

I mean, I mean, maybe on a symbolic level, but it's sort of like the harmonic convergence.

Well, I would argue it's more like, I would, I would argue that it's more like December 21st and, or I'm sorry, December 31st and January 1st.

You know, it's symbolic.

Yeah, okay, it's the new year.

Yay, whoopee.

And that's about the extent of it.

That's about it.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

So, I'm kind of with their, with them on that.

I mean, yes, it is the end of the Mayan calendar.

And what does that mean?

Well, you know, a lot of Mayanists will tell you that, well, the whole thing resets at that point and life goes on.

Exactly.

You know, I mean, what I tell people is, you know, we can all hope for something to come in 2012 or whatever and save us from ourselves.

But I wouldn't count on it.

And I don't, I haven't canceled my appointments for 2013.

And, you know, I don't think anybody should.

I mean, I think, you know, and, you know, and I would love nothing more.

I mean, I would love to have to eat a huge plate of crow over this, you know.

Oh, me too.

But in the meantime, all of those people that think it's the end of the world, they can just give me the keys to their house and their nice cars and everything else.

And, you know.

Right, right.

And so often, I mean, that's the thing with all these millenarian and apocalyptarian movements.

This is what, you know, this is what you see.

You see the leaders of these things, you know, have a vested interest in having a flock that believes in this.

And, you know, it's a waste of time.

It's another excuse for not taking responsibility for yourself.

I totally agree with you.

And, you know, the whole 2012 movement and they're charging $350 a ticket and all of these sort of things.

I'm sure you've heard some of the stories.

But, you know, it's all just, to me, you know, for those who are the serious anthropologists and the people that are serious about ethnopharmacology and everything,

that sort of stuff really, I think, gives the whole rest of this field a black eye or a bad name.

Yeah, I tend to agree.

Are you talking about the upcoming event in Boulder Creek or Boulder Mountain in Utah?

Or even the one that was in L.A. last February or the one that was in San Francisco, I don't know, six months ago, four months ago, whenever it was, all of the above, I suppose.

Right, right.

Well, I didn't go to either of those two, but I am going to the one at Boulder Mountain.

And, you know, I was invited to go.

And it's a paid gig, so, okay, you know, I'm there.

I don't know what they expect me to say, but basically what I'm going to say is pretty much what I've said to you here.

So I may be – there may be a few rotten tomatoes thrown.

I don't know.

It may be your last invite.

It may be my last appearance, right.

But really, I think this is the thing, you know, I think that the – you know, I mean, I really think –

we have to be talking about reason and you know taking responsibility thinking

critically for ourselves not accepting all this crap you know that and the new

age community is as guilty of that as the most the most fundamental fundamentalist

you know I mean and and it's this it's the same dynamic it's that somebody wants somebody else to

tell them what think you know they need that base they need their big mommy and daddy government God

figure you know they need George Bush or Obama to hold their hand and and we're quickly finding out

that Obama is reneged on what all of his campaign promises already just oh last week they said no

more raids on California medical marijuana clubs and and on the 25th they started rating them again

not even a week later so you know it's just the same old same old and until like you said until

people start standing up and taking responsibility for themselves and taking action themselves you

know it's gonna continue like this yeah it's going to continue and so so that's that needs to be the

message I think I mean for you know and and the thing is there's always somebody who's willing to

step in to the breach and say yes you know I have the answers I'm enlightened or whatever follow me and

and so you know there are the credulous masses that are just looking for somebody to follow somebody to

to you know give them answers and and always someone who is more than willing to say yeah I'm the one I have

the way the truth and the light and you know this has been the dynamic throughout history and I think we've

got to we've got to get away from that you know we're totally lost I mean it's kind of like religion

you know I mean I fundamentalism as I call it sometimes you know simple answers for simple people

you know and they the answers are not simple you know and people are not simple and they shouldn't assume

that they are you know I mean there may not be any one answer I mean I can kind of answer to what you

know this is string theory yeah this is just the ontological situation that we find ourselves in you

know so I I don't know I've got to say I'm the end of the day I don't know I mean this is where the

theater you know command here in a sense because I like you know at the end of the day I think nobody

knows very much about what is what is going on and well I it's funny that you said that because what I

was just going to suggest is that we change gears and in the course of this interview and get into some of

your other areas of research because you know what I'd like to bring up is you know as I mentioned to you

before is where can we go in this so I'd like you to if you wouldn't mind talk about your work with the

Hefter Research Institute and you know what what type of plant medicines you've helped develop and you know I'm especially interested in your thoughts on the state of

Martin Martin excuse me modern pharmacology so you know if you wouldn't mind starting to head that direction let's do that sure sure well yeah I mean the

Hefter Institute is it's a nonprofit organization and basically we founded it in 1993 and it's it's basically an organization of

people in various disciplines ranging from psychiatrists to chemists to neuroscientists to to myself I guess I represent the ethno-pharmacology

there but we all have a common interest in in fostering scientific research using psychedelics I mean that's that's the basic mission you know and our mission

statement says well to relief relief human suffering which sounds good but but our preoccupation is psychedelics and we basically think that psychedelics are you know have great potential both for sort of the study of consciousness and basic neuroscience and also for therapeutic uses for clinical applications for you know

you know a variety of different disorders essentially to be used in in healing for things like post-traumatic stress syndrome and this sort of thing now at the you know as as the Hefter Institute has evolved we're still doing work in basic neuroscience but where the the funding you know seems to be available for the

more is when you know is when you know is when you know is when you've got a specific you know therapeutic application that you can that you can present to people to you know treat something like post-traumatic stress

syndrome or anxiety and cancer patients or this sort of thing so so we've really kind of emphasized a lot in our fundraising the use of psychedelics in a therapeutic manner such as MDMA studies for PTSD and things like that that have been going on through maps and that sort of thing similar yeah I know yeah dr.

Charles grove was on the show back oh six months ago five months ago and I believe he's a part of the Hefter Institute as well isn't he yes he's also on the board he's he's like me he was there from the start and yeah and and and I

well you know we're similar to maps it's just that we're a lot smaller than maps and sort of less

political in some ways I mean maps is a much larger organization and they've pretty much staked out the

the MDMA post-traumatic stress territory but I admire what they're doing there I mean our goals are very similar to maps

it's just we do it more quietly and with less we do it better I'm kidding

necessarily bet but I was kidding but what talk about plant medicines that you've helped develop

well I I don't know if I can really point to any specific plant medicines maybe other than

ayahuasca I mean you know my my chief contribution to this whole area has been in in

1993 and 1990 actually starting in 1991 I I helped organize a excuse me a bio bio medical investigation of

ayahuasca in South America Charlie Grove was also on that project this was really pre hefter this was

about the time hefter was was for me weren't Marlene de Rios and Michael Winkleman a part of that too or was that before

well that that came later oh I see a much much later there was a follow-up study

years later

looking at the use of

ayahuasca or wasca is the UDP call it

among adolescents but our original study was conducted in 1993

Charlie Grove Jace Calloway myself

clockus Brito who was a Brazilian doctor and it was really an international collaboration and it was not

really looking for any therapeutic application it was really an observational study just data gathering

because nobody had ever really collected information on ayahuasca but out of that came

uh we I think we published about about six peer-reviewed papers

that came out of that work uh and really the chief

sort of uh finding I guess you could say that that pointed to a possible therapeutic use of ayahuasca was

that in in the subjects we looked at these members of the UDP who had all been members for at least 10 years

some of them as long as 40 years

all of them more or less had been quite dysfunctional before they joined

the UDP and their their primary problems were

usually alcoholism or other forms of substance abuse or other forms of dysfunctional behavior and

they all pretty much change

their lives around after they joined the UDP and they had these experiences

uh initially they they we did conducted psychiatric interviews with all of the

all of the subjects and they described kind of their life story you know how they

came to join the UDP and the influence that's been in their lives and so on

excuse me and they all pretty much told the same story that they uh you know their lives were out of

control before they joined the church and they joined the church their initial experiences were quite

terrifying and it usually kind of showed them where they were headed if they didn't get straightened out

and they got straightened out and they changed their behavior and they

they credited not simply ayahuasca not simply the tea

that they drank but also the

the context of being in the UDP and they all said you know we couldn't do it without having been in the UDP

which is to be expected i mean any good

church member is going to say that right and and i'm quite certain that the community did supply

a lot of support and encouragement for people that were trying to you know change their their lives

what we also found that was interesting was that uh the the uh the tea appeared to elicit a long-term

uh neurochemical effect in that it modulated the uh it raised the density of uh serotonin

transporters in the brain and this was not an acute effect this was a long-term effect that actually made

the members who had been drinking it regularly different from from controls who did not drink it

and you know that was one of the sort of basic questions we wanted to ask when we got into this

study was the simple naive question you know is there anything biochemically different about drinkers is

there any uh biochemical marker of any kind that we can point to that says yeah you know these people

are different in in some way and we didn't really know what we were looking for but when we found this

difference we were surprised to find that there was this difference in a transporter serotonin transporter

and we didn't really know what it meant but when we uh got into the literature um we found that there was

actually quite a lot of literature on deficits in serotonin transporters uh in other words abnormally low

levels of these serotonin transporters and those were correlated with guess what alcoholism or so-called

type 2 alcoholism which is alcoholism with a tendency to violence uh certain kinds of depression certain

kinds of suicidal or homicidal behavior in other words certain kind of dysfunctionalities uh that people

have and there was a remarkable uh similarity to a lot of the pathologies that the udp members were

describing to us particularly the alcoholism the tendency to violence and this kind of thing so we

thought aha you know here we have on one hand we've got the psychiatric data you know their own testimony

that they changed their lives and we've got this interesting biochemical correlation this biochemical

marker that you know looks like maybe they had these transporter deficits and maybe drinking the ayahuasca

over time uh has actually you know reversed that deficit has actually raised the the level of these

transporters so you know it seemed like a very neat correlation um and there needs to be follow-up on it

you know i mean that would be the basis for doing a more uh controlled kind of clinical study of ayahuasca

in the right population you know that you could screen ahead of time uh for um you know for these deficits

and then follow them over time and see you know did do the long-term changes in the brain correlate with the

changes in behavior or are there changes in behavior of course there's problems with studying ayahuasca you know in that

context it problems with doing it in this country anyway but that that's probably you know in the whole

realm of i guess ethno pharmacology or ayahuasca i guess that's in some ways my my best claim to fame

because i you know i did play a pretty significant role in in organizing that study and finding the money

for it and so on even though i wasn't the principal investigator i was the i was the participant but

you know for a clinical study you've got to have a you have to have a physician you have to have an md

and charlie was willing to do it and he's the perfect person for that so i was there but i was

not running the study uh under so beyond that um

well you know not too much in terms of developing products i've i've usually i mean i have worked for

as i say various supplement companies uh on various projects i've advised them on formulations

and ingredients and that sort of thing but i i can't really point to any one thing

you know and say you know this is dr mckenna's elixir of life or anything like that

you know i i i have advised people i i advised uh odwala for example on some of their uh juice

formulations um maybe one of my contributions not really in the area of psychedelics uh exactly but i've

uh i've uh i i've been interested in kava for uh a number of years and uh i helped get funding actually

through the hefter um kind of a sidetrack for us but we were we were able to get the grant i i uh

found funding and and helped participate in a study

uh of kava of the hawaiian varieties of kava so it really wasn't a therapeutic study at all it was

trying to get a handle on what is the chemical variation in the hawaiian kavas and that was neat

that was interesting to the industry at the time there was great hope that kava was going to become the

next new natural anxiolytic and then it got some bad press over the potential to cause liver damage

and it pretty much the kava market pretty much fell apart but in fact it doesn't cause liver damage this

was junk science basically but you know kava was a significant uh competitor with uh with prescription

anxiolytics especially in europe so i have the feeling that there was probably some you know effort

to discredit it because it was pharmaceutical yeah pharmaceutical companies scam they don't do that

stuff do they uh-oh i lost you again hello lost you again that's been the pharmaceutical cartel you know

yeah yeah you know well well let's do this um you know i i really don't want to let you go before i

get to uh what i really wanted to interview you about oh which was about plant intelligence and

plant communication are you still good to do a little rap about that before we wrap things up

uh well sure sure yeah i can i can do that um you know that the issue around uh plant intelligence

really has to do with plant communication and uh uh you know i mean plants communicate with their

their environment through chemistry this is the thing plants are photosynthetic so they can make

simple organic compounds from sunlight water and carbon dioxide right this is the trick

that they have mastered that we have yet to master and as a result of that they make

this sort of vast array of chemical compounds this is one of the things that that separates plants from

everything else everything else in the biosphere is essentially a parasite on plants we we and everything

that is not autotrophic that doesn't make its own food depends on these autotrophic photosynthetic

organisms to sustain life on earth and that's how you know people don't or maybe they do but i think

people overlook in some ways what a what a miracle photosynthesis is because photosynthesis is the way

that energy comes into the into the planetary ecosystem from outer space and is actually captured and

runs the whole shooting match runs the biosphere everything directly or indirectly depends on

the plant kingdom and plants well a famous botanist once said plants have substituted biosynthesis for

behavior which i think is an interesting way to put it in other words animals react to their environment

through behavior the fight or flight reaction for example you know uh you respond to a threat by either

running away or defending yourself or whatever well plants don't have the option to run away

you know but they also have to interact with their environment and so they do so through through chemistry

essentially through biosynthesis the the you know the same molecules that might interact with the

nervous systems of primates you know like us you know the curious ape whatever might also serve the

plant in a number of different ways uh you know at every level of organization plants communicate with other

organisms in their environment including animals including other plants including uh

you know insects this is very well established in insects the uh symbiotic relationships that exist between

insects and plants are entirely mediated through through chemistry and so i think that is the basis of

plant intelligence you know they have uh they have uh figured out in a way how to create this vast

sort of uh diversity of uh messenger molecules that's really what all these secondary compounds are

they're messenger molecules in some ways either uh molecules that may have a very simple message might be

stay away you know so if it's toxic that might be a repellent or it might be a fragrance that would attract a pollinator

or a color of a fruit which is still a pigment essentially to attract something to consume the fruit and then

disperse the seeds now it gets more interesting when you're talking about you know these neurotransmitter

like molecules that plants make that are similar to the neurotransmitter molecules that uh you know mediate

consciousness in you know our overdeveloped brains um but it i think it's all part and parcel of that you know that we

you know i mean i mean plant messages that that might to any uh other animal might be a signal to

to stay away or avoid eating the plant because it's toxic might to a primate you know who is blessed

cursed curiosity uh might actually be a signal to be attracted to it you know because they like the feeling

that it induces you know oh yeah you can maybe you can smoke this you know and so

that type of mediation that that type of exchange that goes on between the plant excuse me i'm getting

a little horse here and a complex organism like us gets much more complicated because then you get into

uh aspects of symbiosis and you know it's in the plants to form a symbiosis with other species especially

with us you know the whole process of a plant domestication essentially is you know us the primates

taking the plant under its wing and in some ways insulating it from from having to compete out in the

wild with everything else so as long as you know we can keep that domestication going it's good for us

because the plant produces something that you know we value whether it's a medicine or a nutrient or a

pigment or a perfume or whatever we might might be getting from it and it's useful for the plant because

you know you've got this species that's going to nurture it propagate it spread it all around and that is

really you know the the sort of that is the goal of the plant is to you know be fruitful literally and

multiply and and that's pretty much you know constitutes evolutionary success as far as the plant is

concerned so by forming these alliances that are chemically mediated you know the plant is

very clever in some sense i mean that is plant intelligence that's one form of plant intelligence i

mean there are many other forms uh as well but that's that's an idea you know i did we talk before did you

mention let me talk before did you talk about uh steven buehner yes indeed yeah it was yeah his his work on

uh i had him on to discuss his work in sacred and herbal healing beers which i think is a

a huge area in the field of ethnobotany that doesn't get much coverage so that's true great but are you

familiar with his other book uh well i guess he's written one but this book he's written i think 12 or

15 books i think but no i'm not i've only read that one of his well the his book the only one i'm familiar

with really is the lost language of plants but i was very impressed by it and uh and in that book he

talks about about this about you know how the language of plants is a is a chemical language this is how

plants you know communicate with the environment and in some ways regulate the environment it's through

the these complex webs of chemical communication that ecosystems are stabilized and in his book

the reason it's the lost language one of the things about his book one of the main themes in his book

is how these webs of chemical uh equilibrium are becoming disrupted through pollution especially

pharmaceutical pollution and the excretion of all these pharmaceuticals into the environment

is very dangerous in his view and also in mine because it disrupts these homeostatic mechanisms

that's keep that are keeping everything stable and although the the tonnage of pharmaceuticals that

are excreted is is small compared to the tonnage of other types of pollutants but potentially much more

dangerous because pharmaceutical drugs are you know targeted at specific receptors and they are designed

in such a way by medicinal chemists they're designed in such a way usually to work at extremely low concentrations

like micromolar or nanomolar or even sub nanomolar concentrations they're also usually designed to

have long half-lives so in other words they're not easily broken down once they get into the environment

they persist and you know what we're seeing going on with things like neuroendocrine the endocrine

disruptors and this kind of thing uh you know that's changing the the sex ratios of frogs and this kind of

thing and this is only the tip of the iceberg uh there's a lot more uh things going on and you know

you can pick up pharmaceuticals in the groundwater of any major city so the question is what are the long-term

effects of this not only on us you know to be exposed to these low levels of these synthetic compounds that

you know we haven't co-evolved with in the way that we've co-evolved with plant compounds and in a larger

sense what are the environmental ecological effects of these things you know being diffused into the

environment so you know uh i i i greatly admire his book and i think he raises some issues that

you know uh really we really

need to be paying attention to. What do you feel about Jeremy Narby's research in this area and

his notions of DNA emitting light frequencies that possibly we pick up on? Jeremy Narby, yeah. I mean,

I think, again, you know, there is this intuition that people have and I think there's a basis to it

that maybe in these shamanic states, you know, maybe you can actually look into cellular processes,

you know, and maybe that is what is going on when you see double helix. I mean, you know,

the shamans aren't the only one. You're probably familiar with Kerry Mullis's recollections about

his discoveries and he attributes that to LSD. He's quite upfront about it.

Yeah, he used to. I used to know Kerry.

Oh, yeah. Well, so he's the character, right?

Yeah, definitely.

But also a brilliant guy who made this discovery and finally after many years, even I think,

was it Francis Crick finally came out, finally came out of the closet and allowed us how, yes,

a lot of his insights into the discovery of DNA was, you know, was attributable to LSD.

So, you know, I mean, I mean, Terrence used to say, you know, one of the most interesting

things about psychedelics is they make you have funny ideas, you know, and funny ideas are

both dangerous and in some ways creative. I mean, you know, what is a funny idea at one time,

you know, in one instance is, you know, a major breakthrough, a major discovery in another context.

If people didn't have funny ideas, you know, nothing would go forward.

This is how knowledge advances, I think.

Right.

And so any agent that can facilitate funny ideas, so what? 98% of them are crap, you know?

It doesn't matter.

But when you get one that lands you the Nobel Prize like Harry Mollis or Francis Crick,

then it changes the world.

Right. In any field of intellectual inquiry, most of the ideas are crap. Most of them have

no validity. But occasionally you stumble on a gem. And, you know, I think anything that

can facilitate that is worth looking into. And that's another thing about the psychedelics.

They give us tools, you know, to examine things like, you know, these concepts. They can be applied

to problem-solving issues. They give us tools to, you know, to experimentally in some ways approach

things like mystical states of mind or transcendent states of mind, as, you know, Roland Griffiths'

work at Johns Hopkins with psilocybin has pretty well demonstrated. You know, I mean, I don't know

if you're familiar with those studies. Are you? You studied?

Yeah, definitely. I've interviewed Roland Griffiths. He's a part of this little project as well.

Okay. Well, I think that's a major, I mean, that's actually a very important study because,

you know, one of the chief findings that came out of that study was, you know, for those people who

were not psychedelic inclined, but interested in, you know, religious matters and philosophical matters

and so on. But, you know, 37% said it was the most significant experience of their lives.

You know, well, my God, if we have a pharmaceutical that can elicit the most significant experience of

your life, you know, I think we ought to be looking into that. I mean, because I think that is largely

in some ways, you know, our spiritual or cultural crisis is that life has become bereft of meaning

for people. And, you know, I mean, the religions, the established religions are not delivering anymore.

You know, they've become hollowed out. They've become as much as they've become political bludgeons,

basically, to, you know, browbeat people into and just accepting the way things are. And,

you know, and here's a tool that could actually help people connect with, you know, a sense of a real

mystery, real significance in their life. And, you know, that's worth looking into, I think, you know,

and this is why, you know, psychedelics are very promising and, and at the same time, you know, very

dangerous. I mean, dangerous, not in the sense that it's dangerous to take them, but it's dangerous

because they make you have funny ideas and funny ideas are dangerous, particularly to the established

power structures. You know, that's what it's really about. That's the danger.

Right. And I think there is a danger when people don't know of the potential dangers of facing their

own psychological stuff that can cause bad experiences and things that unless they're aware

of and have foreknowledge about, they can get themselves in bad spots and do stupid things

like jump off a bridge that gets mushrooms banned in Holland, you know.

Right. Right. Well, this is why, you know, as elders and people that have been into this for a long

time, we need to, you know, we need to counsel common sense and sensible use, you know, and things that

Leary and Messner and people like that said from the first, it's all about set and setting, you know,

this is why in indigenous cultures where these things are used, it's, you know, it's the shamanic,

the shamanic setting that the shaman sets the stage for it to happen, creates a space for the experience

to unfold that's basically safe and that he or she can exert a certain amount of control in terms of how the

experience is going to unfold. I mean, I think in, you know, in counseling young people or advising

young people who want to do this, I think this is the main thing, you know, set and setting, you have to pay

attention to set and setting, you know, what set being, of course, who you are and what you bring

to it and what your expectations are and essentially everything that you bring to the experience,

setting being the circumstances under which you can do it. And some circumstances are, you know,

not appropriate. I mean, I mean, the Hollywood freeway at rush hour is probably not when you want

to be smoking DMT, you know, or taking some of these things, but, you know, so you have to pay

attention to the circumstances. And I think that's, that's where most people who are inexperienced get

into trouble. They don't, they don't pay enough attention and they don't have anyone there who's

able to, you know, look after them if that's what they need. So what do you feel is the, you know,

and I know you talked about a little bit earlier, I've, I think I've got some idiot outside my window

here revving his motorcycle, but what do you feel is the most important area requiring further research?

Well, I don't know. I mean, it's hard to say. I think that we should, I think that we should continue

looking, you know, at the potential therapeutic uses of these psychedelics. I think that's very

important. I think they, I think we've barely begun to explore that, you know, but at the same time,

I don't think we should become preoccupied with that to the extent we should not overlook the fact

that that's a small part of the total sphere of things that these things touch on. I think that as

tools for exploring and understanding consciousness and exploring consciousness, which after all is all

we have, right, I mean, every buddy lives in their own three pound universe, everyone lives in their

own, you know, constructed reality, our own hallucination, if you will. And these psychedelics are important

tools for kind of pushing that envelope for actually tweaking the envelope to see what is possible,

you know, in terms of conscious perception. So I think, I think there is the whole realm of,

you know, the kind of stuff you can do in the laboratory, you know, with, with these things,

fMRI and, and even less, you know, sexy tools, I mean, fairly simple tools, but you can learn a lot.

If you look at the work of Franz Wohlenfeiter, you can learn a lot about basic processes that govern

consciousness by using psychedelics in conjunction with some pretty simple types of perceptual tests.

So I really think that the, ultimately, I think that they're, you know, their, their value is medicines is

important for therapeutic uses. I think their value is even more important as tools in basic neuroscience to try to

understand this, you know, what is quickly emerging, I think, is probably the major scientific mystery of the 21st

century, which is consciousness, which is consciousness, the mind body relationship, the relationship between

consciousness and the brain. I mean, this is, this is the cutting edge of human understanding. And I think that, you

know, any model of human consciousness that does not take into account, the kinds of phenomena, the kinds of experiences that

can be elicited by psychedelics is incomplete by definition, you know, psychedelics can do these

things that no other thing can do. If you want to have a comprehensive model of, of mind, you have to account

for this. And so, you know, you've got to come to grips with that. So that's where I think the real frontier is,

because, you know, in the future, I mean, and we are already in the future, you know, but in the next 10 to 15

years, you know, we're, I mean, not me, probably not you, but as a species, you know, we're going to be trying

to, you know, we need to have an understanding of consciousness, we're going to be building machines that

essentially are conscious, you know, and, uh, things like this, you know, uh, I mean, true artificial

intelligence, this kind of thing, it's going to impact our lives greatly. And it's very important

that we understand a lot more about consciousness than we understand now.

in both in order to be able to build these things, if that's what we decide we want to do,

and also cope with that, once that does come up. What's the most important thing that you would like,

uh, people to remember about this interview?

Uh, uh, that that's difficult to say. I mean, I, I guess, I don't know, not a fair question.

No, I mean, I, I just hope that they, if, if they come away with anything, I, you know, I hope it's

been stimulating for them. Mostly if they come away with any, any one take home lesson, it is the notion

it is to remember that, you know, we don't know very much and, you know, we don't know much. And yet what

we do know is, is pretty amazing. So, you know, don't forget to be astonished. I guess that's

probably the, the take home lesson, you know, the world's a marvelous place. We don't know very much

about it at all, which means that, you know, the challenge for us is, is to learn as much as we can. And,

you know, to, well, I don't know. I mean, I don't want to get into cliches, but I, I think the wonder

and the ability to be astonished is, uh, a very valuable human trait. And if, if we are able to

hang on to that, we won't be bored and, uh, we might learn something. So I guess that's it.

All right. And, um, would you like to give the name of your, uh, books or other projects,

websites, contact information, anything you would care to let people know and give out as we, uh,

wrap this up? Well, uh, yeah, uh, sure. Um, well, yeah, the books people know about, um, I haven't

really set up a website yet. Uh, I, I can, uh, uh, well, those that want to contact me can,

can do so by email. Uh, my email address is, uh, uh, DJ McKenna at Mac.com. All lowercase,

all one word, please don't all 42,000 people write me immediately. That's all I asked, but that's

where I can be, uh, reached. All right. And this is the end of Gnostic Media podcast number 26.

You've been listening to Dr. Dennis McKenna. Dennis, thank you so much for being on the show.

And, uh, uh, I really appreciate your time and dedication and, uh, putting up with all of the,

the phone disconnects and things like that. Yeah. Yeah. Well, thank you, Jan. It's been a pleasure.

Thank you.