Hofmann Foundation
Terence McKenna opens the inaugural Albert Hofmann Foundation event, held in Los Angeles before roughly two thousand attendees. The ceremony, at the Scottish Rite Temple, marked the 50th anniversary of LSD synthesis and launched a major archive for consciousness research. McKenna delivers an eloquent argument for consciousness exploration as humanity's birthright and critiques the suppression of psychedelic research in American science. He honors the pioneering researchers - Hofmann, Wasson, Schultes - who discovered the molecular keys to expanded consciousness. The address stands as a landmark statement on the intellectual, spiritual, and social stakes of psychedelic science at a threshold moment for its legitimization.
transcriptmachine-transcribed, unedited
Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.
This is Lorenzo, and I'm your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
And today I've got what I consider to be a real treat,
some new mind candy that was sent to me by our fellow salonner, Gary Eisenberg.
In fact, Gary sent me several interesting recordings that you'll be hearing this week and next.
And here's a description of the event where this recording was made.
And by the way, Gary, what a thrill it must have been to be there in person.
Maybe some of our other fellow salonners who were there will also let us know about it.
Anyway, this is the description that I found on the subgenius.com website,
which actually was a repost from the old Usenet news group,
which was one of the tribe's first stops on the net before the World Wide Web made its appearance.
I'm sure you remember it. You know the one, alt.drugs.
And as a little aside, if I'm not mistaken,
it was John Gilmore who has been with us here in the salon a couple of times,
who is the person who actually originated, or invented, I guess you'd say,
the alt news groups in the early years of the net.
And if you were already on the net back in the 80s,
I'm sure that you remember well how exciting it was to watch the words tumble onto your screen
through that wonderful little 300-baud dial-up modem.
Anyway, here's what one person who attended the event had to say about it in a Usenet posting.
I attended the Albert Hoffman in America,
celebrating 50 years of consciousness research event in Los Angeles,
and I'm forwarding some of the information because I know some of you would want to hear it.
The event featured lectures by Terrence McKenna,
Stanley Krippner,
Andrew Weil,
John C. Lilly,
and Albert Hoffman himself.
Unfortunately, Laura Huxley could not attend.
There was also live music.
A staggering 2,000 or so people filled the hall at the Scottish Rite Temple in Los Angeles.
It was also the inauguration of the Albert Hoffman Foundation,
an archive and information center dedicated to the scientific study of human consciousness.
And now, thanks to fellow slawner, artist, and all-about-Renaissance man, Gary Eisenberg,
we are going to revisit that historic occasion.
And, Gary, I can't thank you enough for these recordings.
I've really enjoyed previewing them,
and I'm looking forward to listening again right now.
As you'll hear in just a moment,
the recording begins with an introduction by Robert Zanger,
who I think was the first president of the newly formed Albert Hoffman Foundation.
Sadly, although there have been many generous donors over the years,
the Albert Hoffman Foundation has now fallen fallow
and exists primarily as an old text-based website.
However, if you're interested in all things psychedelic,
particularly from the scientific point of view,
I think you'll find a visit to www.hoffman.org,
and he spells his name H-O-F-M-A-N-N,
one F, two M's, in case you're wondering.
I think you'll find the visit there quite worthwhile.
And should you go there,
I recommend that you begin with the What's New link,
as it now serves more or less as a table of contents.
But I should also note that all of those boxes containing thousands of papers
that you'll hear talked about have now been scanned
and are available for you to read at www.erowid.org,
E-R-O-W-I-D, www.erowid.org.
It's an amazingly valuable resource for psychedelic researchers,
and there's a link to that collection at the beginning of the program notes for this podcast,
which you can get to via psychedelicsalon.org.
But right now, let's join Robert Zanger as he introduces the evening's Master of Ceremonies,
a fellow you may have heard of before.
His name is Terence McKenna.
My name is Robert Zanger, and I'm president of the new Albert Hoffman Foundation.
This is indeed a historic occasion for modern consciousness research for a number of reasons.
This year marks the 50th anniversary of the first synthesis of LSD
by Dr. Hoffman in 1938.
It also marks the inauguration of the new Albert Hoffman Foundation,
which will be dedicated to preserving the psychedelic research
that's been done over the last 50 years.
And for a third reason, because just a few weeks ago,
LSD has been legalized in Switzerland for use in psychotherapy.
This is something that Dr. Hoffman will be telling you more about himself
later in the program when he gives his presentation.
At this time, I'd like to introduce our first speaker of the evening
and our emcee for the rest of the program.
He's a lecturer, an extremely articulate and poetic speaker, as many of you know,
a shamanologist, an expert on psychoactive plants and medicinal plants
from around the world, director of the Botanical Dimensions Foundation in Hawaii.
Please welcome Terence McKenna.
Well, it's very heartening to see so many people here tonight
to celebrate an event like this.
Talking about 50 years of consciousness research in America
reminds me a little bit of the story that's told of Mahatma Gandhi
when he was asked, what did he think of Western civilization?
And he said, it sounds like a good idea.
Because, as a matter of fact,
consciousness research in America
has been severely stifled
over the last 35, 40 years.
Science is invited to look deeply into all aspects of nature
except the nature of the self.
And yet, clearly, a crowd like this, an event like this,
indicates that this issue will not die.
This issue is not going to go away.
And so, it's wonderfully fitting, I think,
that we bring Dr. Hoffman
from his bastion in neutral Switzerland
to the city of lost angels
to celebrate what was one of the great seminal events
in the history of the 20th century.
You know, Newton was asked of his theory of gravitation
how could he ever have made this leap of imagination?
And Newton said, it was very easy.
I stood on the shoulders of giants.
And everyone who has done psychedelic research,
research on consciousness in America,
has stood on the shoulders of giants.
People like Robert Gordon Wasson,
the discoverer of the magic mushrooms in Mexico,
the man who propounded and founded the field of ethnobotany.
People like Richard Evans Schultes,
who is an advisor to the Hoffman Library,
and the great ethnobotanist of the 20th century.
And without doubt, people like Albert Hoffman,
people who, laboring in the confines of their laboratories,
have thrown open the doorway to new worlds of possibility
for the human spirit.
Tonight, as Dr. Hoffman was receiving the accolades of the crowd
for the invention of LSD,
I couldn't help but think to myself
that he probably never dreamed
that the search for a better vaginal constrictor
would carry him so far.
So, I'm going to keep my remarks brief this evening.
I think a visit by Albert Hoffman to America,
the foundation of a library that bears his name,
that will serve as an archive for the research
that has been locked away in filing cabinets
and packing boxes for 30 years.
And in concert with the political situation
in the society, the larger society around us,
is a sufficient reason for pausing for a moment
and actually considering what is the psychedelic experience,
what promise does it hold for a sane future
for our planet and our children,
and what is it about it
that kindles the kind of loyalty
that I feel coming from the people in this room this evening.
And I submit to you that it is nothing less
than the rebirth of a voice
that has been silent for at least a thousand years,
the still small voice of the logos of the planet
You know, the Old Testament says
you don't have to study the difference
between good and evil.
You know it.
The still small voice in your heart
elucits the correct way to live.
And in Western culture,
this still small voice has been stilled
for over a millennia,
and we have operated in a world
that is reductionist,
objectivist,
materialistic,
secular,
male-dominated,
stressing stasis,
stressing the minute particulars
in favor of the great overarching picture.
And in some way,
we have lost our way.
And it remained for giants
of 20th century thought
like Freud and Jung
to announce the startling fact
that there was a human unconscious.
And then it took
still a different generation of researchers
with a different set of analytical skills
to take the concepts of the unconscious
and turn it in
to a frontier full of challenge,
to a topological manifold
that courageous minds
could sail out into
to map and to explore.
And squarely then,
in the path of the materialist,
reductionist,
crypto-fascist dreams
of high-tech industrialism,
there emerged
a mystery,
the last thing
you would expect,
a true mystery.
Now, Dr. Hoffman
has been lauded here
this evening
for his invention of LSD.
Certainly,
this is what
he will be remembered for
over the long centuries ahead.
But as a matter of fact,
he is a thinker
of extreme breadth
and depth.
It was he working
with Carl Ruck
and Gordon Wasson
who proposed
that it was actually
psychoactive ergot alkaloids
that lay behind
the Ellicinian mysteries
and thereby
rubbed the nose
of classical scholarship
in the fact
that the foundation
and the wellspring
of the Western imagination,
which was the mystery cults
of ancient Greece,
that that foundation
is firmly rooted
in a psychedelic experience,
that when we leave
these things behind,
we leave behind
our cultural birthright,
no less than when
the Amazonian Indian
deserts his home village
for the sawmills.
We, too,
were once
tribal people
who lived
in the light
of mysteries
that came to us,
mediated by shamans
and created
out of the magic
of the natural world.
It was Albert Hoffman
who synthesized
psilocybin
for the first time
and described
its absolute
structural characteristics.
This is a man
who is astride
both the synthetic
and natural product
chemistry
of the 20th century
like no one else.
His research
has revealed
the unexpected fact
that there are
biodynamic alkaloids
in our environment,
in our food chain,
indeed,
in our history,
that argue
that we
are the bearers
of a great promise,
that the future
of consciousness
can be
endlessly bright.
In any age,
this message
would have
tremendous impact,
but it is
particularly
poignant
in our own age
because we live
in an age
of global crisis.
And the crisis
is not
that there is
not enough food.
There is.
The crisis
is not
that we
are victims
of warfare
and propaganda.
We are.
But the crisis
is rooted
in our own minds.
It's a crisis
of point of view,
a crisis
of psychology,
a crisis
that requires
a new look
at the human
enterprise.
And I submit
to you
that there is
no faster,
clearer,
and cleaner way
to get a new
look at the
human enterprise
than by
availing yourself
of the tools
and the compounds
which men
like John Lilly,
Albert Hoffman,
Richard Schultes,
Gordon Wasson,
Oscar Janiger
have placed
before us.
Don't let anyone
tell you
that we're not
living in an age
of heroes
because we are.
These people
have set
a standard
that will be
difficult to follow.
These people,
when it was,
for God's sake,
controversial
to be a communist,
dared to give
people LSD,
dared to suggest
that a new world
of the mind
might lay right
ahead of us.
And so
I think
it's very fitting
that the
Albert Hoffman
Library
be an ongoing
project,
a project
that the
community
can rally
around
and see
itself
reflected in.
We're living
in an age
where people
who have
an interest
in these things
are marked
as escapists,
pariahs,
cultural anarchists,
ne'er-do-wells,
hedonists.
Look at
the people
around you.
Did any of you
watch the
Republican
Convention?
So I submit
to you
that what we
represent
is a fifth
column,
a fifth
column
that represents
the best
aspirations
that human
community
is capable
of,
a fifth
column
that is
willing
to look
at the
structure
of the
psyche
in contrast
to the
mess
of society
and willing
to dream.
I'm reminded
of William
Faulkner
in his
Nobel
Address.
He said,
man will
not simply
endure,
man will
prevail.
Now,
of course,
he should have
said humanity,
but this was
years ago.
But the
thought is
there.
We have
the tools,
the intellect,
the will
to create
a caring
global
culture.
It isn't
going to
come without
a recognition
of the
power of
the psychedelic
experience.
The psychedelic
experience is
the birthright
of every
human being
on the
planet.
It is
as much
a basic
part of
each and
every one
of us
as our
sexuality,
our
national
identity,
our
consciousness
of self.
And any
society
which
attempts
to hold
back
or impede
this
dimension
of self
expression,
when the
history of
that society
is written,
it will be
called
barbarous.
The movement
toward
legitimizing
psychedelics
I see
as part
of the
broader
movement
throughout
human
history
that gave
us the
Magna
Carta,
the Bill
of Rights,
women's
suffrage.
In the
future,
it will be
unimaginable
that governments
once regulated
the substances
that people
use to
explore
personal
growth.
It is
the mark
of a
barbarous
culture.
And we
are here
to raise
a light
to say
truth
is not
so easily
swept
aside.
One
doesn't
just
say
no
to
truth.
Truth
requires
engagement,
it requires
courage,
it requires
a sense
of where
we have
been
and of
where
we are
going.
And what
is preached
all around
us is
the quick
fix,
the fast
buck,
the temporary
solution,
the throw
away and
disposable
culture
that ends
up throwing
away and
disposing
of human
lives.
And what
we place
against
that
is a
humanism
that does
not rise
out of
theory,
it's a
humanism
that rises
out of
experience.
The
experience
that
informed
the
great
mystics
of
every
religion
is
not
something
that
we
strain
for
throughout
a
life
of
self-discipline
and
self-subjugation.
That
isn't
it,
it is
our
birthright.
Each
of us,
Dr. Hoffman
and his
discoveries
place this
dimension
within the
reach
of all
of us.
Dr. Hoffman
and his
discoveries
place this
dimension
on a
social
agenda
that
cannot
be
denied,
that
will
not
wait.
If
not
now,
when?
If
not
us,
who?
It's
that
simple.
We
are
moving
now,
I
think,
unfortunately,
into yet
a darker
political
night in
terms of
the
larger
society
around
us.
And
I
make
an
analogy
to
the
coming
of the
dark
ages.
But
what the
dark
ages
promoted
that is
going to
work in
our
favor
were
monastic
gatherings
of
like-minded
people
who
preserved
information
through the
time of
darkness and
social ignorance
toward a new
day when it
could be
utilized to
mitigate the
suffering of
men and
women
everywhere.
LSD
LSD is
to my
mind
first and
foremost
the
greatest
medical
discovery
of the
20th
century.
And I
use it
in the
sense
of
ameliorating
pain,
creating
caring,
promoting
unity,
healing not
so much
of the
individual
psyche,
although
certainly
its impact
in that
dimension
is
tremendous,
but
ultimately
as a
deconditioning
agent
allowing us
to move
beyond the
confines of
historical
society
to see
what we
could be,
what we
have been,
and what
in fact we
have the
energy to
be in
the future.
Thank you
very much.
So I'm
doing double
duty up
here tonight
as MC
as well,
and I
want to
introduce the
next speaker.
He's an
extremely
eminent
psychologist,
researcher,
long on
the scene,
there at
the beginning.
His work
with
dreams
at
Maimonides
Hospital
set him
on a
lifelong
course of
the study
of consciousness.
He has
published
extensively
on
shamanism.
He is
a teacher,
lecturer,
mentor,
and all
around
great guy.
Please
welcome to
the podium
Dr. Stanley
Krippner.
Thank you
very much,
Terrence,
and thank
you very
much for
such a
brilliant
introductory
talk.
Well,
some of
you remember
that when
Albert Hoffman
wrote his
autobiography,
he called
it LSD,
my problem
child.
I have
news for
you,
Albert.
LSD was
not your
only
tonight,
and I
think you
will be
very
proud of
us
before
the
night
is
over.
Now,
I'm
going to
discuss
the way
that
Albert
Hoffman
and his
work
have
influenced
the
whole
field
of
consciousness
studies,
and I'm
going to
use the
term
consciousness
to refer
to a
person
or
other
organisms
pattern
of
perceptual,
cognitive,
affective
functioning,
either
the field
of
consciousness
studies
includes
descriptive,
experimental,
theoretical
approaches
to the
investigation
of these
patterns
of
functioning.
Emphasis
also is
placed on
relating
phenomenological
techniques
to the
measurement
of
externally
observable
behavior
as well
as to
abstract
model
building.
At
Saybrook
Institute
Graduate
School
where I
teach,
we have
one of
the few
carefully
thought
out
sequences
of
courses
in
consciousness
studies
at any
accredited
university
in the
United
States.
And
Albert,
you'll
be happy
to know
that at
Saybrook
we don't
keep
interest
in
psychedelics
in the
closet.
Students
write
dissertations
on the
topic,
they
write
papers
on
the
topic,
they
contribute
articles
and chapters
to
monographs
and books,
and you
are certainly
to us
at Saybrook
a great
cultural
and scientific
hero.
Now
consciousness
studies
were neglected
by most
psychologists
for several
studies,
but they
began to
emerge
under the
impact of
developments
in
psychopharmacology
such as the
discovery of
LSD and
related compounds,
but also
developments in
neuropsychology,
engineering
psychology,
sensory
deprivation
studies,
and the
discovery that
rapid eye
movements during
sleep were
quantitatively
related to
dream reports.
The latter
investigations
demonstrated
that objective
and subjective
methods could be
combined in
consciousness
studies.
Research in
hypnosis,
meditation,
and mind-altering
drugs suggested
ways in which
changes in
sensory processing
and cognition
could be
investigated in
laboratory
settings.
Biofeedback
terminology and
technology
demonstrated that
many internal
states could be
monitored and
could be
regulated
voluntarily.
Transpersonal
approaches to
psychology have
brought
Eastern models
consciousness to
the attention
of Western
investigators.
As a result of
these wide-ranging
developments, a
new introspectionism
emerged in the
study of
spontaneous fantasy,
daydreaming,
imagery, and
creativity.
Data from
studies of
memory, attention,
learning, and
cognitive styles
indicated the
need to determine
how awareness
influences sensory
input and
motor output.
Neuropsychological
research produced
data concerning the
functioning of the
two-particle
hemispheres, as
well as the role
played by
neurotransmitters
in regulating
behavior.
As the
scientific study
of behavior
experience and
intentionality,
humanistic
psychology has
assisted in the
rediscovery of
what William
James called the
stream of
consciousness as a
proper area of
investigation.
The groundwork
was prepared for
the advent of the
scientific exploration
of consciousness five
decades ago when
Albert Hoffman
synthesized a
lysergic acid
compound known as
LSD-25.
Initial trials were
disappointing.
It did not seem to
have any medical
use and did not
appear to have
psychoactive
properties with
animals.
But there was
something puzzling
and curious about
LSD-25, and in
1943, Hoffman
investigated again.
He accidentally
absorbed some of
it through his
skin and had
what he later
called a dreamlike
but not
disagreeable
experience.
Albert always has
the talent for
understatement.
Three days later,
Hoffman arranged to
take what he
believed to be a
very weak dose.
He tried to take
notes in his
laboratory journal,
but after a few
pages, found out
that he could not
write anymore.
So he headed for
home on a bicycle.
Why?
Because automobile
use was restricted
in Switzerland during
the Second World War,
which was then
raging through most of
the rest of Europe.
Even though aspects
of his bicycle ride
were terrifying,
Albert realized that
he had made an
important discovery
because no known
substance in the
world would have
any effect at all
in such a small
dosage, one quarter
of a milligram.
Hoffman called a
physician, but by
the time the good
doctor arrived, he
had begun to enjoy
the experience.
The endless variety
of colors, the
happiness, the
rapture, and the
feeling that he had
come back to life.
Eventually, Albert
Hoffman decided to
explore the new
drug in a setting
outside the
conventional laboratory
and had what he
considered to be the
first psychedelic
LSD experience in
1951.
Joining him were
the pharmacologist
Herbert Nazet and
the novelist
Ernst Jünger.
Again, he took a
low dose of the
substance, but found
himself transported
to North Africa
among the Berber
tribes, enjoying
beautiful landscapes and
exotic oases, while
a Mozart record
played music from
above.
And sometime
later, Albert had
his first religious
LSD experience, having
a confrontation with
death and feeling that
he had left the
ordinary world forever.
Fortunately for us,
he came back.
Hoffman became
convinced that LSD
could be important
for psychotherapy, for
treating the
terminally ill, for
brain research, and
as an adjunct to meditation.
But he also concluded that it should only be given
to people who were prepared for it,
to people who had strong psychological structures.
He once commented, and I agree with him,
I thought of LSD as being appropriate for an elite,
for artists, writers, and philosophers.
Hoffman's work with LSD was responsible
for an invitation to investigate
the pharmacological properties of the Mexican mushrooms
used in sacred rituals before the arrival of the Europeans.
By this time, Hoffman was director of research
for the Sandoz Pharmaceuticals Department of Natural Products.
Chemical studies of the mushroom by French and American firms
had ended inconclusively,
so Hoffman was eager to accept the challenge.
And this and other stories come through in his book,
Plant of the Gods, Origins of Hallucinogenic Use,
co-authored with Richard Evans Schrutis.
Well, Hoffman was later to note
that the earlier investigations had used animals as subjects.
But Hoffman, having learned that humans have a greater sensitivity
to psychedelic substances, ate the mushrooms himself.
See, this was very radical at this time,
to try something out on yourself.
Who would have thought of that?
Who would have thought that that would be science?
In 1958, he reported the results of his studies,
having isolated the active ingredients of the sacred mushrooms,
two new substances, which he named psilocybin and psilocybin.
And a few years ago,
Walter Houston Clark was with us tonight,
and I and some other people went to Mexico
for an interview with Maria Sabina
in the last few years of her life,
and saw firsthand the setting
in which some of the early explorers
like Wasson and Hoffman
had observed firsthand
the workings of the sacred mushrooms.
Well, Hoffman was later to synthesize
the active ingredients of rye ergot,
squill, psychoactive morning glory seeds,
and rewolfia.
These investigations led to the production
of several important medicines.
He also made a retrospective study
of the Elusenian mysteries of ancient Greece,
producing compelling evidence
that a psychoactive substance,
probably rye ergot,
was used at the climax of the initiation,
and this is described in his book
The Road to Elysius,
a thrilling detective story
on how this discovery was made,
which had eluded humankind
for thousands of years.
Albert Hoffman has had an important effect
upon consciousness research in several ways.
His synthesis of LSD-25
provided humankind with an incisive tool
for the investigation of perception,
cognition, affect, creativity,
imagery, and imagination.
The difficulties that science,
medicine, and society at large
have had in making full use of this gift
suggest that, alas,
LSD was probably a premature discovery,
at least in industrialized countries.
In native societies,
they have known for thousands of years
how to use wisely these compounds.
And I've seen Albert over the years
on both sides of the Atlantic.
One of our meetings was in the Austrian Alps.
We were there for a conference of shamans.
And we both gave our talks,
but the real stars were the traditional healers
from North America,
South America, from Asia.
One of them, Don Jose Rios,
also known as Matsua,
a Huichol shaman,
who at that time was 107 years of age
and who was still going strong,
was flown to Europe for this trip,
and we were all worried about
how he would take that transatlantic crossing.
And at the airport,
we're saying,
Don Jose, Don Jose,
how did you do it?
How do you feel?
At your age,
were you able to make that crossing?
He said,
Well, I just took a little peyote
before I got on the airplane,
and I'm still flying.
Well, we can learn a lot
from these native practitioners.
I've certainly learned a lot in my day.
Albert as well.
Hoffman has contributed
to the development
of methodological advances
in consciousness research.
Obviously, he is a first-rate chemist
who has been awarded
honorary doctorates
from the University of Zurich
and the Stockholm Pharmaceutical Trust.
But he has also pioneered
in the study
of participant observation techniques,
using himself
as a human laboratory
for the study of drug effects.
In addition,
he is engaged in field research,
visiting remote parts of the world
to observe the use
of psychoactive plants
in native settings.
All of these research approaches
are approaches
that we endorse
and use at Saybrook,
and this is why Hoffman
is such an important figure
to our graduate students.
Also, incidentally,
a few weeks ago,
some of us,
including Andy Weil,
who were here in the audience,
were in the Soviet Union
for a conference
on hidden reserves
of the human psyche
in Moscow.
And one of the discoveries
that I made
was that in the 1930s
and 1940s,
Soviet researchers
were using mescaline
and other psychedelic substances
for self-experimentation.
Now, they didn't dare
write this up
because this was
in the days
of the Stalinist terror.
But they kept journals,
and now, finally,
those journals
are being carefully collected
and hopefully
will be published.
And let me tell you,
this is an important
piece of data
that I hope we can get here
for the Albert Hoffman Library,
these journals from Moscow.
Finally, Albert Hoffman
has never hesitated
to consider
the ethical implications
of his discoveries.
He has made known
his opposition
to the casual use
of LSD
and similar substances.
But he has also been open
in discussing
the philosophical implications
of his work.
He has spent time
with numerous visitors
discussing their LSD-induced
mystical and religious experiences.
He has written and lectured
on such topics
as appearance and reality,
the connections between
humans and the environment,
and the presence
of a creative force
in all living things.
In his autobiography,
Albert Hoffman wrote,
what is needed today
is a fundamental re-experience
of the openness
of all living things,
a comprehensive reality,
consciousness,
that will evermore
infrequently
develop spontaneously,
the more the primordial
flora and fauna
of our Mother Earth
must yield to a dead
technological environment.
That's something
that my shaman friends
would say,
and Albert said it
just as eloquently.
When the history
of consciousness research
is fully written,
the stature of Albert Hoffman
will be obvious
to the historians.
They will write
that here was a man
who was a brilliant scientist
and an innovative researcher,
but more important,
one who accepted
the responsibilities
accompanying his discoveries.
Unlike many other scientists
of the 20th century,
he did not separate science
from ethics.
He behaved responsibly
with commitment,
accepting the burdens
as well as the joys
of his mission.
Our tributes to him tonight
only foreshadow
the accolades
that will accumulate
in time
from a new psychology,
a new medicine,
and a new science
of consciousness
that will freely acknowledge
that they will always be
in Albert Hoffman's depth.
Thank you.
Before I introduce
this next speaker,
I should say
it's a great honor
for me to be asked
to make these introductions.
I am definitely
the new kid on the block
and quite in awe
of these characters,
let me tell you.
Our next speaker,
a figure known
to many of you,
I think I first
became aware of him,
I don't know exactly,
probably it was
fall of 65 or 66,
there was a magazine
called Ramparts
which has been defunct now
for many years,
but they printed
an extract
from the natural mind
and my friends
and I
who were just beginning
to smoke marijuana
and use LSD
avidly studied
the pages
of this Ramparts article
for it purported
to represent
different drug states
on each page
of illustration
and I think
the natural mind
which was later
superseded
by chocolate
to morphine
which had
to my mind
indubitable honor
of being banned
in Florida.
These publications
which I'm sure
are familiar
to all of you,
countless publications
in ethnomycology,
a man
with a great
enthusiasm
for the mushroom
foray,
the long conversation,
scholar,
physician,
social theorist,
your friend
and mine,
Andy Weil.
Hi.
It's good to be here.
It's always good
to be among friends.
I have to do
a lot of work
in the course
of an average year
and a lot of that
is going out
into the cold
and not being
among friends
and trying
to talk the message.
In this past year
for example
I had to go
and give a number
of all-day workshops
on consciousness
and drug policy
in the Iron Range
of Minnesota
at a number
of community colleges
that keep asking me
to come back
and do that.
I had to talk
to a number
of audiences
of psychiatrists
in medical schools
and hospitals
giving grand rounds
on such subjects
as the nature
of the placebo response.
It's hard.
It's nice
to be among friends.
Now,
I wish I could tell you,
I wish I could join
in all the warmth
of this occasion
to tell you
that the revolution
in consciousness
is moving right ahead
and that we are
about to transform
government
and external reality
as a result of that.
But, you know,
it ain't so.
And I say that
as somebody
who goes through
the Iron Range
of Minnesota
and passes through
airports and looks
around me.
And I have to tell you
that I feel
that the majority
of human beings
that I encounter
operate mostly
out of fear,
guilt,
and when people
operate from
those emotions
they are dangerous
to themselves
and to others.
We are a very
small minority.
A very small minority.
And have no illusions
about that.
And whether
our minority
will grow
fast enough
and be able
to influence
humanity
fast enough
to avoid
the catastrophe
that is certain
to come
if we persist
in the ways
that we now persist,
I don't know.
And if we can't,
if it may be
as it appears
that our ability
to manipulate
the environment,
our technological
ability,
is so disparate
with our ability
to control
our own emotions,
that may be
a fatal flaw
of our species.
It may be.
If it is,
that has to be
all right too
because I feel,
and this is based
on a lot of my
experiences
with substances
that we all
know and love,
that deep down
everything is all right
and it's the way
it's supposed to be.
And there may be
a lot of drama
in between,
but it's all all right.
I upset people
a lot
when I say,
but this is true,
that I am not
a human chauvinist.
If our species
destroys itself,
which is a possibility,
I don't think
there's any way
that we can destroy
life, by the way,
or the life process,
or consciousness,
which I think
preceded life
and preceded
the human organism
and the human brain.
if that happens,
it's okay with me
if something else
gets a chance.
If the life force
experiments with
another form,
that's fine.
That's okay too.
I mean,
I hope that doesn't
happen.
I will work to try
to keep it from happening,
but either way,
it's all right.
Now,
if there's any hope
of keeping that
from happening,
it has to involve
basic change
at the level
of consciousness.
And particularly,
it has to involve
basic change
in the nature
of science
and technology,
which has become
the religion
of our society.
Medicine,
which is an arm
of that,
really,
I think,
has taken the function
of religion
in traditional societies,
and physicians
fulfill the roles,
although not very well,
that priests have
in traditional societies.
When people
in traditional societies,
when something happens
that's never happened
before in a traditional society,
you go to the shaman
for an interpretation
of whether it's
good or evil.
In our society,
we go to doctors,
and we ask whether
it's good or bad
for our health.
Now,
that is our modern
version of all this.
But medicine
and science
do not fulfill
this magical
religious role
well.
There has to be
a change
in that area.
And some of what
I'd like to say
to you tonight
is about
the nature of science,
the problem
of studying
consciousness,
and some of the
lessons that
I have learned
from having
the privilege
of knowing
Albert Hoffman
and having
seen him,
although infrequently,
at gatherings
of this sort.
There are some
inherent problems
in studying consciousness,
and they should not
be belittled
because you can't
make them go away.
The first is
that consciousness
is not material.
Our science
is materialistic.
How do you study,
by methods
looking at
the material world
something which
is fundamentally
not material?
This is why
research on hypnosis
is so awful.
It's why
hypnosis,
for however many
years it's been
around,
remains something,
has an unsavory
scent about it
to scientists
and medical doctors.
Why it has always
had an uneasy
relationship
to medical science.
And even though
the effects are
dramatic and obvious,
I once saw a woman
have a baby
by cesarean section
under hypnosis
anesthesia.
She was fully
conscious and
was asked to look up
and watch when
the baby was delivered
and so forth.
What more could you
ask of in the way
of a dramatic
example of how
consciousness can
change physical
reactions?
And yet despite this,
research in this area
is just awful.
The reason is simply
that when someone
is in hypnosis,
there is no
objective way
that you can
document that fact.
There is no
objective reproducible
change in the
physical sphere
that is a marker
of that altered
state of consciousness.
And if your science
is totally materialistic,
how can you
make sense of that?
And if you can't
make sense of things
as a scientist,
what are you
going to do
about that?
The first thing
you can do
is try to ignore it
because it's a threat
to your worldview
if there's something
out there
that you can't
explain.
And if people
won't let you
ignore it,
then you can
make fun of it
or belittle it
or treat it
as if it's a joke
or something irrelevant.
And if you
can't do that
and somebody
continues to
force you
to look at it,
you can get mad
at the person
and punch them out.
And you see
all these range
of responses
in this field
of consciousness
research.
And the second
problem is
that consciousness
is rooted
in experience.
And here,
it seems to me,
is the fundamental
absurdity of the way
that our science
has developed.
The most obvious
fact of our existence
is that we are
of our existence.
How can you
construct a worldview?
How can you
construct a system
that tries to
explain the universe
and leave that out?
And yet,
that is what
our science tries
to do.
It tries to act
as if consciousness
doesn't exist
and to construct
mechanistic explanations
of phenomena
without reference
to that.
And that gets us
in a lot of trouble.
It leads us
to come up
with some very
implausible mechanisms
and explanations
for phenomena.
And it also
leaves us unable
to explain
a lot of things
out there,
like hypnosis,
that may be
very important to us.
Now, I am
particularly conscious
of this because
I work as a physician.
I practice
general medicine.
And I practice
medicine based
on the assumption
that consciousness
is central to any
theory of health
and healing
and illness.
And that when
anybody comes to me,
whether they're
well or sick,
I am always
paying attention
to their state
of consciousness
as well as
to their state
of the body.
And often,
I find,
in my experience,
that changes
in the realm
of consciousness
must accompany
physical treatments
if the physical
treatments aren't
to work.
That is my experience.
And I go
by my experience.
I see all the time
one of the saddest
things that I see
in my practice
is vast numbers
of people
who come to me
who have been
inadvertently hexed
by their encounters
with medical doctors.
You know,
there's a very well-known
phenomenon of hexing
that has been described
by anthropologists
and psychologists.
There's a little bit
of medical literature
on this as well.
There was an article
in the AMA Journal
in this past year
reported without comment
of a woman
here in Southern California
who had an advanced
case of lupus,
systemic lupus,
a major and serious
autoimmune disease.
She was examined
in a university hospital
here,
put on massive doses
of steroids
and immunosuppressive drugs,
did not respond.
She was Filipino.
And after a period of time,
she told her doctor
that she was certain
that the disease
was the result
of a curse
that had been placed
on her by a witch doctor
in the Philippines
and that she could not
be helped unless
she went back there
and had that lifted.
So she went back there
and had a good witch doctor
lift the curse
and she came back cured.
She was off all medication
at that point
and this was reported
in the AMA Journal
without comment
as an example of hexing
in medicine.
So they can see
that kind of thing
but don't know
what to make of it.
But what I see
is the creation
of disease by doctors
or the perpetuation
of disease by doctors.
And this is done
with verbal magic.
If I were king,
I would require
in medical schools
a course
in the power of words
and the importance
in being very
the importance
of being extremely careful
about the words
you choose
in speaking
to a sick patient
and a patient
who has come to you.
Most medical doctors
have no sense
of their power
as priests.
They have no sense
of their power
to create expectation
in somebody
who comes to them
in that role
and they abuse
that all the time.
Occasionally this happens
consciously.
Sometimes I see cases
where doctors
dislike patients
and say nasty things
to them in anger
but that's quite rare.
Much more often
these things are said
unconsciously
and unthinkingly.
A doctor makes
some idle remark
and years later
this remark
burns like a red hot coal
in that person's memory
and is a principal obstacle
to healing
or any change
in their physical condition.
Let me give you
a very gross example.
A patient came to me
this past year
from Finland
the woman from Helsinki
who was in her mid-30s
and had had multiple sclerosis
for the past five years.
She was on large doses
of toxic drugs
steroids
and immunosuppressive drugs
which she did not need
and were doing
her only harm.
She was very depressed.
The thing that most
alarmed me about her
was that her emotional reaction
to her illness
was completely wooden.
She talked about it
as if it were happening
to someone else.
I thought that was
a very alarming
state of consciousness
to be in about
having a devastating disease.
I worked with her
over the period of a month
and got her connected up
with, I put her
on a good diet
and I gave her
some herbal medicines
to take
and I got her connected up
with a visualization therapist
and with some good
exercise physiology people
and a lot of people
who had very positive attitudes
and over the space
she saw the possibility
that she could affect
the course of this disease
that she was not simply
a passive victim
of some outside force
operating on her
and the day before
she was to go back
to Finland
we were sitting together
and she was laughing
and joking
and she said to me
you know you wouldn't believe
what those doctors
did to me in Helsinki.
She said that the neurologist
at this hospital
that had taken a while
to make the diagnosis
her main symptom
was dizzy spells
and there had been
endless testing
and finally they had made
the diagnosis
of multiple sclerosis
and when they did
the chief neurologist
called her into his office
and told her she had
this disease
and then he said
wait here a minute
and he went out
and brought in a wheelchair
and asked her to sit
in the wheelchair
and said that he suggested
that she sit in a wheelchair
for one to two hours a day
to practice
wheelchair practice
I say that's a gross example
but I see many
many many examples
of this kind of thing
and it comes from ignorance
it comes from not seeing
the importance
of states of consciousness
of the non-physical realm
of medicine and treatment
and interaction
of people
of thinking that
everything is material
and I must also tell you
that in my time in medicine
I got my medical degree
in 1968
20 years
this has gotten worse
not better
for example
when I was in medical school
ulcerative colitis
was considered
one of the classic
four psychosomatic diseases
one of the four diseases
that all doctors recognized
had a mental emotional component
medical students today
are not taught that
they're now taught
all about elaborate mechanisms
in the colon
and interactions
with bacteria
and biochemical things
in the colon
and I presented them
a case
the way I discovered this
I had a fascinating case
of a man
who was a heavy smoker
in good health
in his 50s
who quit smoking
and three months later
out of the blue
developed the symptoms
of ulcerative colitis
he went to a
chief of gastroenterology
at a university hospital
was put on a lot of drugs
that did him no good
they did not tell him
not to drink coffee
he was drinking
three cups of coffee
in the morning
which is poison
for anyone with colitis
after several months
of getting in
worse and worse relations
with the gastroenterologist
he had an intuition
that if he started smoking again
his colitis would go away
so he did
and it did
very rapidly
and when he came to see me
he had been through this cycle
two more times
with the same results
except that each time
the colitis had appeared faster
after he stopped smoking
and took longer to go away
after he started
and when I saw him
he was terrified
that he was going to wind up
both being an addicted smoker
and have ulcerative colitis
this year
at the beginning
in the middle of last year
an article appeared
in the New England Journal of Medicine
reporting an increased incidence
of ulcerative colitis
in ex-smokers
not in current smokers
and the article went through
all this biochemistry
about nicotine
and so forth
and the conclusion was
we can think of
no possible mechanism
by which cessation of smoking
could result in
an increased incidence
of ulcerative colitis
I mean how dense
do you have to be
to see that mechanism
smoking literally
burns up nervous energy
that's one reason
why people get sucked into it
and if you shut that door
that energy is going to go somewhere
why in one person
it goes down
and causes this problem
in the colon
and why in another person
it may do something else
I don't know
and I have no problem
saying I don't know
about things either
the reason that's not
anyway
I presented this case
to a group of second year
medical students
at the University of Arizona
they had not been taught
that ulcerative colitis
was a psychosomatic disease
they had not heard that
the most important
single fact
about ulcerative colitis
because that's the sphere
through which you can
influence it most
not mentioned
so in 20 years
I don't see progress
I see things going
in the other direction
now
one of the most
obnoxious traits
of modern science
is its tendency
to negate our experience
I mean there is nothing
more obnoxious
than to tell a scientist
that you have experienced
something
and the scientist
tells you
that no you haven't
because we can demonstrate
objectively
that that didn't happen
and science does this
all the time
science does it
very frequently
in the area
of psychoactive drug research
there are an awful lot
of researchers
who have never
taken a psychoactive drug
and are studying
things like marijuana
or LSD
and have not tried it
themselves
how can you
how can you do that
there was a period
when I
there was a period
when I got asked
a lot to testify
as an expert witness
in various drug cases
and when these
would go to juries
you know in front
of judges
the prosecutors
are usually reasonably
well behaved
but when you get
in front of a jury
it's no holds barred
and so they start
right in with
well Dr. Weil
have you ever
taken this drug
yourself
and I did this
recently with
a peyote case
in Arizona
in a Mormon area
of Arizona
which didn't look
great
and the chief
of pharmacology
who is a
hard core
scientific materialist
at my medical school
and we don't get
along very well
we nod to each
other in the hall
but we think
very differently
was the chief
witness for the
prosecution
who tested
about
talked about
giving mescaline
to cats
grinding up
their brains
and looking
at degenerative
changes
I said
what I knew
about peyote
and the prosecutor
a woman
then lit
into me
and started
with
well Dr. Weil
have you ever
taken peyote
and I said
of course
I had taken
peyote
that I wouldn't
consider myself
an expert
on peyote
if in addition
to whatever
else I did
I haven't
taken it
myself
and she said
and what other
have you taken
this
and have you
taken that
and I said
look I can
save you time
I have taken
every drug
I have ever
written about
and I wouldn't
do it otherwise
and she said
well have you
gotten legal
permission
to do this
I said
well I don't
know who
you apply to
for a permit
to take
nutmeg
for example
anyway
the jury
acquitted
the man
they said
this was
an unlawnded
invasion
of freedom
of religion
by the state
of Arizona
great
good
and when
talked to
afterwards
by lawyers
they said
a major
reason
was the
contrast
between
this pharmacologist
who testified
at great length
and talked
down to them
and made them
feel as if
they didn't
know anything
and couldn't
understand
science
and somebody
who talked
from their
own experience
now
this is a
real problem
because science
and its
products today
are very toxic
in our world
a lot of
the problem
that we have
is the way
that science
and technology
are going
Albert Hoffman
is to me
a model
for what
science can be
he has operated
from intuition
he has operated
from his own
experience
he is a good
scientist
he combines
the best
of experience
of intuition
and intellect
that to me
is a model
for what
science should be
and he's come up
with very good things
and I want to make
one other comment
about him
that I find
another area
in which I
am very impressed
by him
and this I say
as a medical doctor
he ages
terrifically well
when I first
met him
years ago
he presented
himself
as a very
formal
Swiss
chemist
but I noticed
that he twinkled
and I still
see that twinkle
about him
and his
presence
is much younger
than his
chronological age
that to me
is very interesting
I have a lot
of old people
in my medical
practice
a lot of people
in their 70s
and 80s
and a lot
of people
ask me
what is the
secret of
growing old
well
the materialistic
scientist
says it's
to choose
your parents
right
you know
that it's
all genes
well I don't
believe that
because that's
not my prejudice
I look at
the other side
of things
and I think
that mental
state
and mental
attitude
are the key
to that
and there
is something
to me
that I
connect
that fact
of twinkling
and youthfulness
not equivalent
to chronological
age
so I think
in both
of those areas
he is a teacher
for me
and an inspiration
for all of us
and I'm delighted
to have been asked
here to talk
about him
thank you
Well, Andy will be a tough back to follow, but we have just the man.
But before I introduce him, some of you may wonder why Laura Huxley is not here tonight.
She had a crisis in her family that arose rather close to this date, and so she was unable to be here tonight.
It's a great pity because she was to represent femininity and the goddess, which is certainly a central concern for anyone who is sensitive to the psychedelic issue.
In fact, one way of looking at what psychedelics do is they simply dissolve the male ego and allow a more natural constellation of the psyche to show through.
You're listening to The Psychedelic Salon, where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
And who is this just the man to follow Andy Weil, you may ask?
Well, my guess is that it's John Lilly.
But I actually haven't had a chance to listen to the next part of this conference yet, and so can't say for absolute certainty that that's who it is.
What I can say for sure is that you'll find out in my next podcast.
And also, I think we'll be hearing directly from Dr. Hoffman himself.
Now, I'd be remiss if I didn't point out something that you already know, but maybe you didn't think about when you heard Dr. Andrew Weil just now say,
We, meaning the psychedelic community, we are a very small minority, a very small minority, and have no illusions about that.
As you know, he made that statement in 1988, and I guess in the context of six and a half billion people on Earth, that may be so.
But I can promise you that there must be many millions of us today, because just for this podcast alone, there have been downloads from over a million unique IP addresses,
which may only translate into a few hundred thousand people, but this is only one of many, many podcasts that focus on the worldwide psychedelic community.
What wasn't expected in 1988 is this thing we call the Internet.
It's brought about more rapid change in this world over the past 20 years than the entire amount of change our species has experienced in hundreds of generations.
At least, that's my humble opinion.
This is it, in case you missed the memo, by the way, this is the big one, the quantum change that Terence sometimes called the end of history,
but what I think may be more accurately called the beginning of the history of a global species of constantly interconnected, communicating beings.
Maybe it's even the awakening of the Neosphere, as Teilhard once proposed.
Or, of course, we can still blow it, and the tipper of the last tipping point may just be you.
So, I'm going to be really nice to you, and encourage you to stay calm and keep on an even keel, so that you can tip us in the right direction.
Right now, every single woman, child, and man on the planet stands to be a pivotal figure in their immediate surroundings,
which means that you and I had better take a little break right now, maybe have a bag of vape, turn on some good music, and get up and dance.
For life is ultimately a dance, you know.
The point isn't to get somewhere, it is simply to dance, to enjoy the dance of life.
Who knows? This could be your last life, so why not make it enjoyable?
Well, that's a little more philosophic than this old carnival barker should be waxing,
and so I'd better close today's podcast by reminding you once again that this and most of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon
are freely available for you to use in your own audio projects under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Like 3.0 License.
And if you have any questions about that, just click the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,
which you can find at psychedelicsalon.org.
And if you're interested in the philosophy behind the salon, well, you can hear all about it in my novel,
The Genesis Generation, which is available as an audio book that you can download at genesisgeneration.us.
And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
Be well, my friends.
Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.
This is Lorenzo, and I'm your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
And with me today, well, at least virtually,
are some fellow saloners who send us some of their hard-earned cash to help offset some of the expenses here in the salon.
And those fine people are Garth A. and Rob P., both of whose names you've heard several times here before in the salon.
And also, we received a really nice donation from Ben P., along with a very generous donation from my longtime friend, Paul W.
And I should point out that it was Paul, who is one of my beautiful young gay friends,
who advised me to not let the establishment's prejudices keep me from naming this little project the Psychedelic Salon,
rather than the entheogen something or other.
He based his advice on the fact that the gay community recaptured the use of the word queer.
And, of course, we know, listening to Cat Williams and other great black comedians,
that the black community, at least within itself, has taken back the N-word.
And as Paul said, if you just change the word, they'll try to take that away from you, too.
So why not just put it out there where they have to deal with it?
And I still think that was among the best advice I've received.
So thank you very much, Paul.
And also, thank you, Garth, Rob, and Ben, for helping to keep these podcast fires burning during these summer months
when a large part of our audience is out in the world having all kinds of great experiences.
And it turns out that even some of our non-saloner friends may also be getting a taste of the salon,
because here's what Ben P. said when he sent in his donation.
Well, hey, it's nice of you to say that, Ben, but as we all know, I'm just the carnival barker
and all the actions in the tent were you and also, I guess, your taxi passengers now.
Well, you guys are all in the center ring.
My only job is just to tell you there's something going on in there, and then from there on, it's up to you.
And we're now just about to experience two more excellent talks that may give you something new to think about.
One is by Dr. John Lilly and the other by Dr. Albert Hoffman.
And we have Renaissance man Gary Eisenberg to thanks for sending these talks to me to play for you today.
As you know from my last podcast, the talks we're about to hear were recorded at an event that was also titled Albert Hoffman in America.
And it was to celebrate, among other things, the 50th anniversary of the first synthesis of LSD-25.
Now, one of our other fellow salonners, Niles Clifton Smith, was also there.
And here's what he posted in the comment sections of last week's podcast notes.
My t-shirt from this event is worn to near transparency, but still occupies a treasured place in my closet.
Looking back, this was one of the most formative events for my present life path.
I thank you for all the talks you have posted here, but for this one, most of all,
pro-noically, Niles.
Well, Niles, you and Gary were certainly at one of the most historic psychedelic lecture events of the last century.
And I'm very pleased that both of you are also with us here in the salon each week.
It gives me a feeling of continuity in our community in some strange way.
But enough of my chatter.
Let's get back to the events at the Scottish Rite Temple in Los Angeles, California.
It was the night of November 2, 1988, and let's hear what the leading lights of psychedelic research at the time
had to say about how things appeared back then, a little over two decades ago now,
and see if we think that we've maybe made a little headway in the struggle to reinstate our sacred medicines
back into the culture where they once held a very significant place in the lives of us humans.
And speaking of natural, I now want to introduce a man who it was always my great fear I might someday have to introduce.
A man who is a legend in his own right.
A man who speaks across the species line to the denizens of the deep sea
and across the stellar barrier to the denizens of distant stars.
Like myself, an altar boy in his youth.
A man who has given new meaning to the concept, enfant terrible.
We can say of him they threw the mold away before they made him.
No, I love to tease him, I love to watch him, the Obi-Wan Kenobi of psychedelic research, John C. Lilly.
Dominus Fobiscom.
Ite Misa Es.
Go, the mass is over.
My psychedelic experience had started about age seven, when I had visions of God on his throne, angel choir and so on.
And I told her nothing about this in the Catholic school I was attending.
And she said, oh, but only saints have visions.
And she abolished me being a saint, which was a good idea.
It wasn't until about 1953, when I was at the National Institute of Mental Health,
and the LSD pushers got after me, that I heard about LSD.
So I read all the literature, and I invented the isolation tank in 1954.
And I was floating around in the tank, people wanted me to take LSD,
and experience what that was like in the tank.
And I said, no, I have to get a physiological baseline, being a proper scientist.
A physiological baseline on me as an observer.
So I floated around for ten years, in spite of the pushers on both coasts.
And in 1964, I finally decided, well, it's time to take it.
So I came to California, had two trips, and then got Sidney Cohen to give me some.
And I went to St. Thomas, the Virgin Islands, and floated in an isolation tank there.
It was an eight-foot cube of seawater.
I was scared stiff.
Absolutely terrified.
And I injected 300 micrograms of Dr. Hoffman's elixir, intramuscularly, and floated in the tank.
And suddenly I was precipitated out to the farthest reaches of all the universes that exist.
Well, I didn't, I didn't, I didn't mean human at all, and I stayed out there for about six hours.
And then I was squeezed back into the body that was lying in the tank, and I cried.
I couldn't stand it.
Why should this happen?
Why become so limited as being a human?
Well, since then, I've spent many years trying to be human.
And some women think I'm successful, and others do not.
And I'm still trying, at age 73, to get my feet on the ground and my torso in the bed.
It's fun.
And all I can say is that anybody that uses the word drug, drugs, ought to have their heart and their soul examined.
There's no such thing as drugs.
There's no such thing as illegal drugs.
They're only chemicals.
They can change the molecular configuration within the brain itself,
and hence change who you are, and where you're going, and where you've come from.
Now, this is a profound experience.
I've written up as much as I can in books, but I'm only as much as it could be published.
Please speak louder.
We can't turn the mic up any higher.
He has a boss.
Well, the DEA ought to know about this meeting tonight, and rounds you all up and puts you in jail.
The drug enforcement agency is staffed by lawyers and ex-judges and so on, and I don't think they know what the score is.
Somebody said on TV the other day, the drug problem ought to be turned over to the Surgeon General and taken away from the Attorney General.
I think that the laws ought to be changed in the light of new knowledge, of new views, such as all of you experience,
and we ought to pressure these people to get educated in what it is to take LSD, what it is to take cocaine, and so on.
None of these substances have been treated as the way a proper researcher would treat them, working on himself.
I was brought up by a student of J.B.S. Halden, who laid down to his students that if you are going to do experiments on any human subject,
you must be your first subject.
So I went through various things like explosive decompression and so on, and I started my LSD work alone, and I continued my work with ketamine alone.
The isolation tank is a marvelous place for the scientific observer to look at the chaos within himself and not attribute it to something else.
However, I wish to point out also that I've experienced intelligence as far greater than mine or any human, and I call them the Earth Coincidence Control Office, ECCO, ECCO.
They're very profound, and they're monkeying around at everybody, and me especially, and taught me many, many things, whether I like it or not.
For example, when I take ketamine, or have taken ketamine in the past, they take charge, and I went to the UCLA Medical Library and read up on the psychotherapeutic use of ketamine, a psychedelic anesthetic.
And there's a uranium paper, and there's a uranium paper, in which they treated a hundred subjects in the hospital, and they all got out of the hospital with one trigger.
They used what was called anxiety provocation.
They'd give the person the ketamine and then scare them to death.
And, of course, they abandoned their neuroses, their psychoses, or whatever.
Well, I read that one afternoon, came home, and lay down on a mattress in my living room, and took 200 milligrams of ketamine, which is a fairly large dose.
And, suddenly, the Earth Coincidence Control Office precipitated me into the Earth 3000, and they removed my penis, my bloodless methods, and handed it to them.
Well, I screamed in terror, and my wife, Toni, came in from our bedroom and said, oh, it's still a task, look.
So, I looked up at the ceiling, and I said, who's in charge up there, like the psychotic kids?
And then she came back, no, you were over at UCLA today reading about anxiety provocation in order to cure one of an unconscious conflict.
That was your unconscious conflict, and we brought it out for you.
This isn't being used in psychotherapy, the way the OSD has been.
And, I suspect it's because psychotherapists don't like to be scared to death, or don't like to see people being very badly frightened.
And, they also don't like to see them get well, because then they lose their income.
I learned long ago that one is a psychotherapist until one is cured of one's own diseases.
I'm still not cured.
Well, I must say, I want to tell you a story that I told this afternoon about me and Albert Hoffman.
I first met him in 1977 at the University of California at Santa Cruz.
He gave a night lecture, and the student cheered everything he said, including when he said,
I'm not a guru, I'm a Swiss chemist.
After his talk, they had a reception, and with my knees shaking and sweat breaking out of my brow,
I walked through the line and reached out to shake his hand, and I said, I'm John Lilley.
He grabbed my hand with both of his, and he said, you are?
I just finished Santa the Cyclone, and our experiences were very parallel.
And I thought to myself, God bless it, I wish you had written that up in 1943, and he would
say there's a lot of trouble.
Now, we know that if you've been doing your homework, then, on average, this group has
slightly weaker kidneys than the normal American population.
So, we are going to call a 20-minute intermission, and then we'll have a musical interlude, and then
Dr. Hoffman's keynote address for the evening.
Will the volunteers who are helping with the event please come up to the stage, and we'll
meet back here, everybody, in 20 minutes?
At this time, I'd like to turn it over to Terrence McKenna again, who's going to encourage you
to donate freely to our foundation.
So, here's Terrence.
And thank you all very much for being here tonight.
Oscar.
Excuse me, I want to introduce very briefly Oscar Janiger, I got out of order here.
I'd like you all to give him a very, very warm welcome to make this foundation a reality.
Oscar.
Thank you very much.
I've been practicing in the last hour to twinkle since I heard Andy Weil.
I don't know how successful I am, but maybe you and Shrunk Rose will let me know.
This is the culmination of a long journey for me, which began in April of 1954, when I first
had my encounter, as many of you have, with these extraordinary medicines.
And I did many years of research, about 10 years, and then, as we put it, the troubles began.
Not the troubles for everybody, but for some of my researchers, so that we could not simply
continue the work that we did before.
Those following years are too well known to bear any repetition, for those of you who lived
through it, and what we have now is a memory in the general public of all of the evils and the problems
of these drugs that accrued from its use at that time, illegal use of LSD.
It was done prior to that time by a lot of very serious people who were working very hard
to understand this civility extraordinary.
We'd like to be able to bring that forth and to let people know and pierce the obfuscations
in the fogs, and what happened in the labbing years, and begin to see what the basis of further research
on LSD might really entail.
And in order to do that, we have to collect all that material, and put it together, and codify it,
and make it available to the public, and to researchers, and investigators.
And also, by the way, the future historians, who I would like to believe will find this a remarkable
watershed time in the history of the study of consciousness.
So, in order to do this, we've gotten a number of people together, and quite remarkably so,
because in a movement, this potent, this cultural movement that was so stirring,
we still have a good number of people who were part of the original group.
That's quite unusual, and just the impression of cultural time.
And so, what we would like to do is collect all this, have it available,
and really give people some understanding, and some insight, and education into the use
of the materials, and to me, that would be the greatest effort that we can make to legitimately
bring this back, and to use it promptly, as we would all like to do.
In order to do that, we sincerely need your help, and your response tonight indicates that there is a
a good deal of enthusiasm and interest in doing this, but remember, we have to have the education,
we have to have people know what this drug has done, and how we have looked at it, and the care we've given
to try to understand it.
And also, I might add that probably the street laboratory was not an entire chaos.
There's probably a good amount of data that could be collected on personal accounts and things
that happened over those years.
We'd like to bring those in, and also review those as well.
Keep in mind that, when we talk of consciousness, and however you want to interpret that,
the organization will also look at all the other methods.
We're not focused on LSD alone.
LSD was a tool that happened to be placed in our hands fortuitously at this time.
So, we want to use that, the organization as an umbrella, for all of these things that
are going on, and give a further emphasis to these studies.
We need your help, and Terence is going to tell you how we can get it.
Thank you very much.
Well, I think you can probably tell for yourselves, when you listen to Os Janiger talk, that you're
listening to a man discuss his dream.
Os mentioned to me several years ago that he had the notion for an archive of psychedelic
material, and took me on a tour of his house to look at the filing cabinets, the packing boxes,
filled with his own immense collection of material relating to creativity and LSD, and as we surveyed
his library, we talked of the many other libraries that researchers like Wasson and Hoffman have
gathered together over the years.
This is a priceless informational research repository.
One of the largest libraries devoted to this kind of material is the Fitzhugh Ludlow Library,
which currently is in storage in a use store in Santa Rosa.
Now, this is no place for these kind of collections to languish.
They should be available to the new generation of graduate students, historians, social commentators, who
will rescue psychedelics from the opprobrium that was heaped upon them by a hysterical government
in a hysterical era, now thankfully, let us hope, behind us.
Os is an extremely modest man, always willing to let somebody else stand in the spotlight.
Well, you know, it's an old saying that the way to get things done is to not care about who gets the credit.
So tonight, when I was urging him to stand before you, I said, Os, you just have to let the people of this town have an opportunity to show you how much they love you.
Well, an Irishman giving advice to a Jewish psychotherapist doesn't get very far.
But I want to join with you in saluting Oscar Janeker, a pioneer and a giant.
We have to move along here. It's a school night for some of us.
I have a couple of announcements.
Tonight's program will be heard tomorrow night at midnight on the most intellectually far-reaching and deep voice in the media,
Roy of Hollywood's show, What's Happening, on KPFK.
Roy and Diane are here tonight. There they are.
Another example of modest, self-effacing people who know how to get things done and who have an enormous impact on what gets thought in this town.
I've also been asked to say that those of you who are suffering with the heat, the air conditioning has failed.
It isn't your imagination. And for that, we apologize.
It must be something about Switzerland.
I don't know how many of you know who Brother Klaus is, probably not more than a half a dozen.
Carl Jung wrote about the visions of Brother Klaus.
Carl Jung was another switch.
with a deep love of country Paracelsus the great 16th century alchemist was
born in Switzerland so this tiny country with a tradition of human freedom and a
tradition of deep involvement with spiritual transformation has given us
in the 20th century in the late 20th century the heir to Carl Jung the heir to
Paracelsus the heir to brother Klaus Albert Hoffman alchemist philosopher
chemist human being a man of whom it might be said as was said of Giordano Bruno
and Galileo in the 16th century they brought astronomy of age what the
telescope was to astronomy in the 16th century the psychedelic compounds that
dr. Hoffman has discovered could be should be to 20th century psychology
psychology without psychedelics is pissing into the wind and I think we've had
quite enough of it it's time for a deep serious revisioning of what notions like
human potential consciousness expansion contact with the world soul time for a
deep revisioning of what these concepts can mean for us you know it was the great
French sociologist Jacques Ellul who said there are no political solutions only
technological ones the rest is propaganda and if you include in the definition of
technology a revivifying of the ancient technology of shamanic ecstasy through
the use of psychedelic compounds then I think you will have to agree and Andy
hinted at this we are not going to save the monkey unless we can shed the monkey
and the greatest impetus the greatest inspiration to the expression of our higher
selves comes in the confrontation with psyche that occurs in the psychedelic
experience ladies and gentlemen meet the man who made the 20th century that we all
know can be a model for all future time here from Basel Switzerland dr. Albert
Hoffman the father of psilocybin and LSD impressed by the warm reception which I
received here in California I thank you so much I am sorry I must apologize that I
must rely my book on my paper speaking a foreign language the announced topic of
this meeting embarrasses me to some extent first because it puts me too much in the
center of the event inauguration of a library dedicated to preserve and make
available the legacy of consciousness research of the last 50 years to this
research I made only a substantial contribution substance is the true
sense of this work namely in the form of two substances which became influential
second I am embarrassed because you may expect from me a survey of 50 years of
research of research in consciousness but this research is the domain of
psychologists psychiatrists and philosophers being a chemist I am not competent to present
such a survey what I can tell you are only my personal experiences and ideas precisely
50 years ago in 1938 I synthesize the substance which had an at that time unexpected influence on my life and
which led to influence and change the life of many others I mean the
the
to you the whole story this evening. I am often asked what has made the deepest impression
upon me in my LSD experiments, and whether I have arrived at new understandings through
these experiences. Of greatest significance to me has been the insight that I attained
as a fundamental understanding from all my LSD experiences, that what one commonly takes as
fear reality, by no means signifies something fixed, but rather something that is ambiguous.
That there is not only one, but there are many realities, each compromising a different
consciousness of and also of the ego. One can arrive at these insights through scientific
reflection. The problem of reality is and has been from time immemorial a central concern
of philosophy. There is, however, a fundamental distinction whether one approaches the problem
of reality rationally or if one obsludes from this problem emotionally through an existential
experience. The first planned LSD experience was therefore so deeply moving and alarming because
of everyday reality which had until then been considered to be the only one reality dissolved and
an unfamiliar ego experienced another unfamiliar reality. Another problem also appeared that concerning the
the innermost self which itself was able to record these external and internal transformations.
How could some strange changes in the experience of reality be explained? Evidently, the outer, objective,
material work did not change during the time I was under the influence of LSD. Therefore, something
inside me in the experiencing subject must have been altered. These reflections led me to conceive
reality as a product of a transmitter, the material exterior, exterior world, and the receiver, our consciousness,
the inner spiritual centre of a human individual. In order to describe the mechanism by which reality comes into being
clear. Through the interaction of these two factors, transmitter and receiver, one can use the main cover of
TV broadcasting. Evidently, both transmitter and receiver are needed to produce a TV picture. If either of one is
lacking, the TV screen will remain blank and there will be no sound.
correspondingly, if only the material world existed without conscious humans or vice versa, no human
reality would exist. Let us now examine what we know about what comprises human reality. Still using the
transmitter-receiver metaphor. First, what is the fundamental difference between transmitter and receiver?
Whereas there is only one transmitter, one outer material world. There are as many receivers as there are human beings. And whereas the
outer material world exists objectively, human consciousness is a subjective spiritual entity. All that we know objectively about the exterior world, about the
transmitter, has been revealed by a scientific research. All that can be discerned objectively in the exterior world is matter and energy. Matter occurring in innumerable, inorganic forms, the stars, the earth, with its oceans and mountains, with its
with its organisms, with its organisms of the plant and animal kingdoms, with the products of human creativity, cities, objects of our daily life and of arts, we are surrounded with matter and are matter ourselves with our bodily existence. The science which is involved with
The science which is involved with investigation of matter is chemistry. The other component of the outer world which can be objectified is energy. Energy occurring as radiation, heat and kinetic energy. So much for the transmitter. Now, what do we know about the receiver?
The human consciousness?
The human consciousness. Consciousness defies scientific definition. For it is what I need to contemplate what consciousness is. Our inability to grasp the very nature of consciousness can be illustrated by this metaphor. You can pull yourself into the
air by the air by clicking on your own head. That tends to define consciousness. Consciousness can only be described as the receptive and creative spiritual center of the ego. As the very core of what we call I. Consciousness remains a mystery. It's a very central mystery of our existence. It's a very central mystery of our existence.
This becomes even more evident. This becomes even more evident if we examine its role as the
thinking. This becomes some менее. It's very central elements. The human artificial intelligence.
The antennae of the human perceives are formed by this is a celestial intelligence. And because of our
its universe is recognized by this atom and its object on the outer world. The antennae of the human receiver are formed by this
Force of our five sensory organs. The antennae of the human perceives are formed by our five sensory organs. The antennas of the optical images, the eye, the eye is capable of receiving electromagnetic waves and projecting a picture onto the retina that coincides with the object of the
checked from which those waves emanate. It is important to realize that the human eye
can only receive a very small band of the immeasurable spectrum of electromagnetic waves
traveling through the universe, namely only waves measuring 0.4 to 0.7 thousandth millimeter.
Within this small section, our eyes and the receiver, our consciousness, are capable of differentiating
between different wavelengths and recording them as different colors. In connection with our reflections on reality,
it is important to note that colors do not exist in the exterior world. Most people are not aware of this basic fact,
even though it can be looked up in every textbook on physiology. That actually, objectively, exists in the outer world
is matter. Matter transmitting energy, transmitting electromagnetic oscillations of varying wave lengths.
If an object reflects or transmits electromagnetic waves with a length of 0.4 thousandth of a millimeter,
same we say that it is blue. If it transmits waves with a length of 0.7 thousandth millimeter,
same we describe the object as being red. This means that the perception of color is a purely psychological
and subjective event, taking place in the inner space of an individual. The brightly colored world, as we see it,
does not exist on the outside. It exists only on the screen inside of every individual.
Regarding the acoustic world, there is a similar relationship between transmitter and receiver. The antenna for acoustic signals,
the ear displays a similar limited breath of reception in its function as part of the receiver.
Unlike colors, sounds do not exist objectively. What does exist objectively are, once again, waves,
wave-like compressions and expansions of the air, which are received by the ear, registered by the hymphonic membrane,
and transformed into the sensation of sound in the hearing center of the brain. Also the other aspects of reality,
sounds are made accessible, which are made accessible by the remaining three senses,
sounds of taste, smell, and touch, are created by the interaction of transmitters in the outer world and receivers in the inner world.
Just like sound and colors, touch, smell, and taste don't exist objectively.
The two represent purely subjective phenomena occurring only in the inner space of individual humans.
The metaphor of reality as the product of transmitter and receiver clearly illustrates that the seemingly objective picture of the world surrounding us,
that which we call reality is actually a subjective picture. This basic fact signifies that the screen is not outside, but inside of every human being.
We all carry inside our own personal image of reality, created by a private receiver.
Understanding reality as a product of transmitter and receiver takes on an especially important meaning, which could existentially alter our daily life.
When we consider the power that each receiver, each individual human, plays in the role of the formation of reality.
We become fully aware of the world creating power vested in every human being.
Understanding makes us aware of the fact that each individual is the creator of his or her own world.
For it is in each individual mind and only there that the world and the abundance of life it contains, that the stars and the sky become real, become human reality, become human reality.
Our real, true freedom and responsibility is formed in our ability to create our own individual world.
Once I have recognized what part of reality is objectively on the outside and what is subjectively taking place within myself, then I am more aware of what I can change in my life.
Where I have a choice and thus what I am responsible for, conversely, I become aware of what is beyond my willpower and has to be accepted as an unauthorable fact.
This clarification of my potential and my responsibility can be of invaluable help.
I have the ability to choose what I want to receive from the endless infinite program of the great transmitter from creation.
That means that I can let those aspects of the cosmos that make me happy enter into my consciousness and thus imbue them with reality.
Or I can let in other aspects, those that depress me.
It is I who create the bright and the dark picture of the world.
It is I who invest the objects that are only shaped matter in the outer world, not only with their color, but with my affection and my love, also with their meaning.
This applies not only to my inanimate surroundings, but also to the living beings, to the plants, the animals and to my fellow humans.
With this insight, the full creative power of love becomes evident.
Just as I am the receiver for messages from my fellow man, I am in turn a transmitter for him.
Since I am materially located in his outer world, I can only convey my messages, my desires, even if they are purely spiritual, an idea or my love.
Only through that will characterizes the transmitter, namely via matter and energy, an understanding expressed by a dance or a light touch.
Even this can only be conveyed by material fingers, material eyes, by the material bodies of a learning couple.
This shows that communication would not be possible without matter and energy.
The transmitter-receiver metaphor for reality reveals another basic fact, the fact that reality is not a fixed state.
Rather, it is the result of continuous input of material and energetic signals from the outer world and that continuous decoding and transformation into inner conscious experience, into inner conscious experience.
This demonstrates that reality is a dynamic process, being created anew at each moment.
The actual reality exists in the here and now, in the moment.
This explains why a child, living in the given moment, much more extensively than an adult perceives a real image of the world.
It lives in a world permeated with more reality, more truth than that of the adult.
To experience true reality in the moment is one of the main concerns of mysticism.
That is where childlike a mystical experience meets.
If reality were not the result of continuous changes but a stationary condition, there would not be no experience of the moment, there would not be even any time.
Since the sensation of time is only possible through the perception of change.
The dynamic character of reality creates time.
The transmitter-receiver concept of reality also impacts the insight into the essence of time.
This metaphor of reality would appear to correspond to a dualistic concept of the world.
External space, internal space, objective transmitter, subjective receiver.
But reality, everyday reality, can be experienced and imagined only as a totality of transmitter and receiver.
There would be no picture or sound on the TV screen if either one were missing.
This example makes it evident that transmitter and receiver are nothing other than constructs of our intellect.
Useful, valuable, even necessary means for a rational understanding of the mechanisms by which human reality exists.
Dualism is but the construct of our intelligence, which leads us to believe that the so-called objective exterior world stands in opposition to our inner subjective spiritual world.
The failure to grasp that there is no dualism is one of the main reasons, if not the main reason, of the tragic catastrophic developments in our world.
This dualistic worldview, so dominant in Western culture today, has its roots in Greek presocratic philosophy, and in the Judeo-Christian belief, makes earth your servant.
The experience of the world as matter, as an object to which man stands opposed, provided the philosophical basis for the development of modern natural sciences and technology.
With this science and technology, man has changed the world, has subdued nature.
Its wealth has been exploited in a manner that may be characterized as plundering.
And the sublime accomplishment of technological civilization, the comfort of Western industrial society stands face to face with the catastrophic destruction of the environment.
Our objective intellect has progressed even to the heart of the matter, to the nucleus of the atom and its splitting, and has unleashed energies that threaten all life on our planet.
This misuse of this knowledge could not have emerged from a consciousness of reality in which human beings perceived themselves as an integral part of living nature and the universe.
All of today's attempt to make evidence for the damage by adopting environmental protection.
objective measures will remain futile, or superficial patchwork, if no change of the dualistic worldview ensues, until it is replaced by an existential experience of a deeper reality.
The experience of such an all-encompassing reality is impeded in an environment rendered dead by human hands, such as we find in our great cities and industrial districts.
Here the contrast between self and outer world becomes especially evident. It is these sensations that impress themselves on everyday consciousness in western industrial society and everywhere where technological civilization extends.
It is also these morbid sensations that strongly influence modern art and literature. In a natural environment there is less danger that a split reality experience will arise.
In fields and forests, and in the animal world shelters therein, indeed in every garden a reality is perceptible that is infinitely more real, older, deeper, and more wondrous than everything made by man.
A reality that will endure long after the inanimate, mechanical, and concrete world has vanished, become rested, and fallen into ruin.
In the sprouting, growth, blooming, fruiting, death and regeneration of plants, in their relationship with the sun, whose light they are able to convert into chemically bound energy in the form of organic compounds,
out of which all that lives on earth.
Out of which all that lives on earth is built, in the being of plants, the mysterious, inexpressible, eternal life energy is evident, the same that has brought us forth and takes us back into its swamp, and in which we are sheltered and united with all living things.
We are not leading to a sentimental enthusiasm for nature to go to nature in Jacques Rousseau's sense.
That romantic movement which sought the idyllic in nature, which can also be understood as a reaction to humans' kind feeling of separation,
of separation from nature.
What is needed today is a fundamental existential experience of the oneness of all living things, of an all-encompassing reality.
But this happens less and less as the primordial flora and fauna of Mother Earth must yield to a dead technological environment.
The experience of reality as the ego opposed to the outer world has already begun to form itself during Greek antiquity.
As I mentioned before, no doubt at that time people already knew the suffering connected with the dualistic consciousness of reality.
The Greek genius tried to cure this disease by supplementing the objective Apollonian worldview with the Dionysian world of experience, in which the split was abolished in ecstatic inebriation.
It is remarkable what the German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche wrote about this in his book, The Geburts der Tragöne, The Verse of Tragedy.
We can read there.
It is either through the influence of narcotic potions, of which all primitive peoples and races speak in hymns, or through the powerful approach of spring, penetrating with joy all of nature, that those Dionysian stirrings arise,
which in their intensification leads the individual to forget himself completely.
Not only does the bond between man and man become to be forced once again by the magic of the Dionysian right, but alienated, hostile and subjugated nature again celebrates her reconciliation,
it is her vertical son with man.
So far, Nietzsche.
The Dionysian cult was closely connected with the mysteries of Eleusis.
The most important mysteries of the antique world, which were celebrated annually in the fall over a span of about 2,000 years.
These mysteries were established by the goddess of agriculture and grain, Demeter, as thanks for the recovery of her daughter Persephone, whom Hades, the god of the underworld, had abducted.
A first offering of thanks was the ear of grain, which was presented to Tryptolemus, the first high priest of Aduces.
The cultivation of grain was then disseminated of the whole world.
Persephone, however, was not allowed to always remain with her mother.
She had to return for a part of the year to the underworld.
During this time, it was winter on earth.
The plants died and withdrew into the ground, only to awaken to new life early in the year with Persephone's journey back to earth.
The myths of Demeter, Persephone, and Hades formed, however, only the external framework for the events as the mysteries.
The climax of the ceremonies, which began with the procession from Athens to Eleusis, lasting several days, was the concluding ceremony of initiation.
The initiates were forbidden by penalty of death to divulge what they had learned and beheld in the innermost holiest chamber of the temple, the Teresirium.
Not one of the multitude that were initiated, ever divorced.
Parthenius, Plato, Roman emperors like Hadrian, Marcus Aurelius, many others known figures of antiquity, were part to this initiation.
It must have been an illumination, a visionary glimpse of a deeper reality, an insight into the true basis of the universe.
We can deduce this from the initiate's own statements about the value and the importance of the vision.
For example, it is reported in a hominic hymn,
Blissful is among men on earth who has beheld that.
He who has not been initiated into the holy mysteries remains a corpse in gloomy darkness.
Pindar speaks of the Eleusian benediction with the following words.
Blissful is he who, after having beheld this, enters on the way beneath the earth.
He knows the end of life as well as its divinely granted beginning.
Cicero, also famous initiate, said about the splendor that fell upon his life from Eleusis.
Not only have we received the reason there that we may live in joy, but also besides that we may die with better hopes.
How could the mythological representation of such an obvious occurrence which runs its course annually before our eyes,
the seed grain that is dropped into the earth, diced there,
prove to be such a deep, comforting experience as that attested by the cited reports.
It is traditional knowledge that the initiates were furnished with a potion, the kikeon, for the final ceremony.
It is also known that barley extract and mint were ingredients of the kikeon.
Scholars of mythology, like Karl Kereni, are of the opinion that the kikeon was mixed with a hallucinogenic drug.
I was associated with Kereni in the sixties, doing research on this mysterious potion, an investigation as to what kind of hallucinogen could have been contained in the kikeon.
A reference of this collaboration is made in Kereni's book Eleusis, which was published 1977 in New York.
And it is from that text that the preceding statements on the illusion mysteries were taken.
Later in the seventies, I was again engaged in the investigation of the hallucinogen in the kikeon.
This time I worked in collaboration with Gordon Lawson, the famous ethnomycologist with whom I had worked in the research of magic plant, Mexican plants,
to sell a pseudocybin mushroom and on New York.
And Karl Ruck, professor at Boston University, who was a classical scholar specialized in Greek ethnobotany.
We published the results of our studies in the book entitled The Road to Eleusis, which was published in 1978.
In that publication, we put forth the hypothesis that the kikeon's effect could have been due to an LSD-like preparation of ergot.
From investigations in the Sandbox research laboratories on all the various species of ergot fungus, I knew that ergot growing on the wild grass,
which was passed, which is widespread in the Mediterranean region, contains the same alkaloids that we had found in the ancient Mexican drug oloductum,
namely lysergic acid amide and lysergic acid hydroxyamide, closely related to lysergic acid diethylamide, to LSD.
The high priest of a youth had access to this hallucinogen just in front of the temple.
They just had to collect the infected grains of past ballonisticum growing there, grind them, and put the powder into the kikeon in order to have a perfect hallucinogenic potion.
If they really did so, of course, must remain a hypothesis.
But a hypothesis with a high degree of probability.
And Demeter was the goddess of grain.
The culturally-historical meaning of the mysteries that produces their influence on European intellectual and spiritual history can scarcely be overestimated.
The hallucinogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogenogen
to be separate from the outer world, we need to be healed from a dualism which had and
still has such catastrophic consequences as expounded in the preceding reflections.
Insights into the essence of reality which I tried to provide using the transmitter-receiver
metaphor could help us to overcome this dualistic worldview.
However, insights that are solely the result of rational reflections are not effective enough
to become decisive factors in our lives. Only when accompanied by an existential emotional
experience do they grow strong enough to be able to influence an older overview of life.
Such an emotional confirmation of an insight of the truth can be achieved through meditation.
I see the true importance of LSD, the cucune of our time in its ability to provide a pharmacological
approach to meditation, aimed at the experience of a deeper, all-encompassing reality. A reality
in which the outer material and the inner spiritual world's transmitter and receiver are experienced as one.
I thank you for listening.
You're listening to the Psychedelic Salon where people are changing their lives one thought at a time.
Well, what can I say after that? Other than I think that I'll go back yet one more time and
re-listen to Dr. Hoffman's words of wisdom. Just now on my second listen I heard him say a couple of things
that I missed the first time because probably I was thinking about what he just said and didn't keep up with the next thought he was sending our way.
I think there may be a lot more in this talk than a single listen can provide.
Also, I'd hoped to post a picture of the flyer that was used for this event, but the only place I could find that had a copy
was in the Allen Ginsberg papers at Stanford where flat box 6 folder 2 allegedly holds a poster that's labeled
Albert Hoffman in America, poster 1988, October 2nd. So now we have yet another date, October 2nd. We've had November 2nd,
November 4th, and in a minute I'll tell you yet one more date. So anyway, if you happen to be in the Stanford neighborhood,
maybe you can take a look for yourself someday and let us know what it looks like.
Also, there was one other recording that Gary sent me, but I'm not going to play it here in the salon because I'm not quite sure about the copyright on it.
But what it is is a recording of a radio interview that Dr. Hoffman gave on KCRW, I think a day or so before the talk we just heard.
At least I think it was recorded in November, although the file name on it says April 1988.
So all we know for sure is all these talks took place in 88 sometime.
But in any event, it's really an interesting recording because Dr. Hoffman is heard answering questions from the interviewer
without having to read his lecture notes and so he's much more spontaneous and just sounds great.
So should you want to listen to it, I've posted it with the program notes for this podcast and you can download it directly from there if you want to hear it.
And I'll leave it up there until somebody says I can't have it and have to take it down.
Well, that's going to have to do it for today.
And so I'll close today's podcast again by reminding you that this and most of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are freely available for you to use in your own audio projects
under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 3.0 license.
And if you have any questions about that, just click the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,
which you can find at psychedelicsalon.org.
And if you're interested in the philosophy behind the salon, you can hear all about it in my novel, The Genesis Generation,
which is available as an audio book that you can download at genesisgeneration.us.
And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.
Be well, my friends.
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