Mc Green 6-6

Mystic Fire, video and audio, proudly presents Terence McKenna.

History ends in green.

This is tape six of a six-cassette series.

Well, what else is hanging for anybody this morning?

How about healing using mushrooms?

Well, shamanism, we tend to lose sight of the fact that for the people who actually practice shamanism as a day-to-day thing,

healing is what it's always all about.

And the shaman isn't making these journeys for his own education or so forth.

It's always to heal.

So, I don't really see the mushrooms as specifically a cure in the ordinary sense for X, Y, or Z condition.

It's more that in the psychedelic state, this is kind of hard to articulate and sounds like mumbo-jumbo, and maybe it is.

But I've noticed that in the psychedelic state, it's as though within the parameters of the body, the ordinary laws of physics are somewhat in suspension.

And there is a great deal to be learned by somebody about touch and light and sound, especially sound, I think.

Sound, to me, is the key to understanding and going deeper with the psychedelic thing, not only in the healing modality, and in that case it's about sound directed into the body.

Because we do have extraordinary senses on psilocybin and on these other tryptamines.

And I'm not mystical or woolly-eyed about this, and I don't make any claims about what senses.

But if you sit down with a person or a watermelon, for that matter, when you're stoned and sing into it, the quality of the hallucination is such that there is a way of thinking about it where you could say this is an acoustical hologram of the interior of their body.

I don't say that. I just say, my goodness, isn't it strange that I seem to be able to see the inside of the watermelon when I'm doing this?

Touch. I'm not an aura man under ordinary circumstances. I'm not sensitive to these things that you have to be sensitive to.

If you have to be sensitive to something, that's not for me, because I'm basically insensitive.

But nevertheless, there do seem to be qualities of density to the energy around the body.

And I suppose, see, I'm not really an experimentalist in these areas.

Like, I don't immediately grab somebody and start kneading them and working them over.

I tend to just sit and watch. But I do see all these possibilities.

Sound has such, I mean, sound does pierce, you know, non-dense objects and return an echo.

And we may have neurological processing capacity that we're unaware of or that is ordinarily suppressed.

For instance, I am very able, I have quite a good ability to navigate in darkness.

I always have been able to do this. It doesn't seem that strange to me.

I mean, I'm pretty good at it to the point where there have been times in the Amazon when I've gone for water at night

and literally forgotten to take the flashlight and gotten there and gotten halfway back before I noticed that, you know.

And it's a combination of projective memory, so forth and so on.

I noticed in the Amazon when I was quite keyed up that I had a sense that I've never heard anybody talk about.

It was a kind of geometric sense that told me the shortest distance between any two points in terms of energy expenditure.

And it was something which I could see that Aboriginal people would just absolutely have to have.

It's a whole thing about following the edges of ridges and never descending unless you have to and always keeping to the high ground.

And my mind would just tell me this stuff, draw these lines through space.

The fact that ayahuasca, which makes possible, you know, this visual language that seems to me the evolutionary compass for language and culture,

the fact that the compounds which allow that occur in the ordinary brain suggest, you know,

that we're just, we could be as much, as close as a one gene mutation away from different styles of neural processes,

and, you know, we don't know to what degree technology pushes these things around.

Did the people of manuscript culture have the same serotonin ratios as we have?

How much, to what degree, is culture a chemical feedback mechanism operating on us as a species?

I mean, we're like fish trying to discover water.

These are fairly, fairly subtle issues.

But the payoff is being able to design our way toward a more humane culture.

Because what the psychedelics are teaching on one level, I think, is that we are, that our prison and our palace is language.

And that today, we have just allowed it to grow like topsy, because it was like an unconscious function.

But it no longer need be an unconscious function.

After all, we are now writing languages like crazy for computers, defining for them what concepts they can and can't think,

what forms of logic, what algebras shall and shall not be permitted.

We need to also think about, you know, taking control of the design process of language.

Up to this point, the only people who have gotten onto this principle have been fascists of one sort or another.

Either Joseph Goebbels and his crowd, or advertising weasels, or people like that.

But everyone else has been sort of the victim of the linguistic agenda of those cliques.

You know, it's like the Bob Dylan song, the strong men make the rules for the wise men and the fools.

Well, if the rules are syntactical rules, then nobody even realized, acted and held up.

It's just that, you know, you can't think any other way, so why do you have this itch that you can't seem to ever scratch?

Well, it's because, you know, it's freedom calling out to you from the unconscious.

I'm not, I don't really talk about all this with any sense of urgency.

One of the issues that sometimes comes up, often comes up in these groups is, you know, am I saying it's all okay?

Is it all okay?

Is there a political agenda?

What should be done?

And, you know, it was Mahatma Gandhi who said,

And what you do has very little importance, and it's very important that you do it.

And I think that's how we have to act.

We have to each choose a small area,

and then act in that limited area with all the existential commitment we can muster,

but not with anxiety, you know, anxiety.

The Wee Po Yang, the Chinese Taoist alchemist, said,

worry is preposterous.

Worry is preposterous.

You don't know enough to worry, you know.

Do liver cells worry?

Do skin cells worry?

It's just a complete waste of metabolic energy.

The better thing is to function well in place, and then to wonder, you know.

Wonder is sort of worry without animal anxiety,

but it's living in the light of non-closure.

That, you know, we're not going to get this thing wrestled into a box.

Not positivism, not Islam, not the Kabbalah, no, no.

All these things are very good tries, nice efforts.

We set them on their pedestals in a long row in the Museum of Noetic.

Good tries.

But it isn't in that.

It's in the moment, in the recapturing of direct experience.

My publisher in New York for this new line of books he's bringing out

has coined the battle cry,

take back your mind.

And I think that's a pretty good way of putting it.

Take back your mind.

Because we have transferred our loyalty to mythical structures,

you know, structures about sexual politics,

about what a man is supposed to be,

what a woman is supposed to be,

how much money a person is supposed to have,

how much art they're supposed to produce,

how many times a week they're supposed to get laid.

We have all these images that we're supposed to live up to.

Very complex, all being sold down to us

through a culture whose motivations are very murky and highly suspect.

I mean, culture is not your friend.

You know, all these people who want you to smell good

and drive the right car

and have your extra facial hair removed and all that,

these are not your friends, these people.

And it pays to remember that, you know,

that there's a struggle on for loyalty,

that you are much more,

you look much better to the institutional structure

if you work hard, consume quietly,

choose from the political menu without a lot of fuss

and that sort of thing.

But, in fact, you know,

this kind of business as usual

has led to the sort of lethal crisis we're in.

Our real problem,

well, it's two things

which are two sides of the same coin.

It's ego

and an inability

to emotionally connect

with the true outline of the situation

because the true outline of the situation

is fairly horrendous.

It's that

somewhere around 1945,

or you name it,

but that seems all right,

we began to loot the future

as a strategy

for survival.

Some kind of ethical norm

was shattered

in the same way

that in late,

well,

in early mercantile civilization,

there was this horrifying moment

when even though slavery

had been dead for a thousand years,

they realized

that if they brought back

this wholesale

sale and transport

of human beings,

they could make millions

in sugar.

And it was like

the heart of darkness

reared up

and

they went for it.

And

our circumstances

is somewhat similar.

We have embarked

on

a similar

kind

of

descent

into an ethical

dark dimension

by

looting

the future.

And this is going on

at a faster

and faster rate.

I mean,

this current situation

in the Middle East,

much could be said

about it,

but

you know,

any moral justification

seems preposterous.

I mean,

what's happening is

8% of the world's people

use 35%

of the world's petroleum

and are ready

to blow

everybody off the map

to keep it that way.

I mean,

this is nothing more

than a manifestation

of junkie psychology

on a mass scale.

It's,

you know,

we're addicted,

they've got it,

we're happy to pay for it,

but if they won't sell it,

we'll break into their house

and take it

because by God,

it will go into

our good right arm.

That's the plan

and,

you know,

it's,

it's the culmination

of the,

the whole machine age

metaphor.

I mean,

this is the golem

of metropolis.

This is the robot

mind run amok.

This is Frankenstein.

This is brave new world.

It's a world

where lethal,

habitual activities

can nevertheless

not be controlled

and it's a perfect example

of a culture

with lockjaw

of the mind.

I mean,

we're just going to march

off the edge of a cliff

apparently.

Three days ago

in the New York Times

the American estimates

of casualties

in the first 30 days

of successfully invading

Kuwait and Baghdad

were published.

50,000 American casualties

in the first 30 days

if we win.

This is the number

of people

who died

in the Vietnam War

over the whole stretch

of the war.

Well,

so then,

if you win

means,

you know,

standing in the middle

of a sea of fire

with 550 million

enraged Arabs

looking to cut you down.

It's a,

it's a complete,

it's a complete

misunderstanding

and I mention it

not only because

it looms large

in our future.

I mean,

I think,

you know,

we're arranging

the deck chairs

of the Titanic

sitting here

talking about this.

It's basically

June of 1939

and everyone's

planning their

summer vacation

in the Catskills.

But it's also

an example

of how these

institutions

can't save themselves.

I mean,

everybody knew

in 1973

that this moment

would come,

that policies

needed to be put

in place,

a dollar a barrel

tax on oil,

some minor,

minor thing.

But no,

it's just a mindset

that is self-destructive.

And,

you know,

the fundamentalists

are in anticipation

of

the end of the world

and so forth

and so on.

There isn't going

to be any end

of the world.

There's no easy way

out like that.

even,

and you're hearing

this from

the prophet

of 2012,

all of these

fantasies,

all of these

infantile fantasies

will be acted out.

So,

you know,

if you want

your mini apocalypse,

you know,

you can have it

and we can

bomb Baghdad

and gas Tel Aviv

and fire the oil sands

and kill millions

of people

on both sides.

And you know what?

It ain't going

to bring the guy

from Galilee

and it ain't going

to bring friendly

flying saucers

from our tourists.

All it's just going

to bring is a deeper,

bigger mess

for the human race

to try and clean up.

Anybody who thinks

that,

you know,

you're going to

save the world

by setting it on fire

is going to be sadly

did,

uh,

it's a,

it's a rare moment

for the collectivity

to try to anchor itself

in larger,

uh,

visions.

You know,

the reason

human society

is haunted

by messiahs

and tin horn visionaries

preaching

on every corner

and people waving

little books

of different colors

is because

there is no,

uh,

there is no,

uh,

full development

of the individual

there's this kind

of arrested

prolonged adolescence

and it's,

it's created

through institutions.

Institutions are

a demonic force

in human life

because they give

permission

for us

to cease developing

and to put

our loyalty

behind some

weird

creed

that has been

worked out

usually by a bunch

of guys

wearing dresses.

and then

they,

you know,

hand it down

to the rest

of us.

Anarchy

and chaos,

you know,

anarchy is always

just,

that's,

you know,

surely not,

my dear fellow.

That's so awful

to contemplate.

But,

what it's coming

down to

is,

uh,

a real

make-or-break

revelation

on what is

human nature.

You know,

the French cartoonist

Mobius

asks the question

in one of his books,

is man good?

And he answers it,

sufficiently seasoned

and marinated,

yes.

But,

you know,

we're actually going

to get the chance

to answer

this question

because all barriers

to the expression

of our will,

our vision,

our dream

is falling away.

And,

you know,

are we

some kind

of,

uh,

of,

uh,

anti-life,

sadomasochistic,

suicidal

contradiction?

Or,

you know,

can we break

through

the millions

of years

of primate

programming

and alpha-male

hierarchical

dominance

and so forth

to actually

uncover

the angelic

force

that we glimpse

within ourselves,

that we glimpse

with high definition.

I mean,

it's really there.

There,

if there is a demon

in human nature,

there is surely

equally

an angel

of equal power.

Uh,

so then it's just

about breaking

this free.

And I don't think

it can happen,

uh,

in the monkey body

on the surface

of this planet.

Somehow

there has to be

an act of

surrender

to our own

nature

and,

and then

concomitant

with that

a kind of,

uh,

a kind of

making of a

peace

with nature

as it is.

And I don't

know how to

envision the future.

In the past year,

you know,

there's been a lot

of flack

about virtual reality.

And does this

hold any hope?

And,

you know,

if we think of

the virtual reality

thing as a wave,

six months ago,

I would say it was

very up.

Now enough people

have done it

to be disappointed.

And a bunch of

people are saying,

holy shit,

you must be

kidding.

This is going

to save us?

Because it is

hokey

and,

and crude

and mechanistic

and,

you know,

surrounded by

a clique

of visionary

weirdos

with a strange

light in their

eyes that

you probably

wouldn't want

to leave alone

with your chickens.

But nevertheless,

I count myself

one of these

people,

so.

But,

um,

still,

there are some

interesting ideas.

the,

the thing is,

there is going

to be some

kind of fusion

of technology,

spirit,

and mind.

I mean,

the drugs of the

future will be

more like computers.

The computers of

the future will be

much more like

drugs.

And we're

beginning to see

this.

When you crawl

inside a virtual

reality rig

and discover,

you know,

that it's taken

$200,000

worth of equipment

to make you

think that

you're walking

around in an

unfurnished office

of a third-rate

bureaucrat

somewhere,

it looks pretty

grim.

But on the other

hand,

when Henry Ford

built his

automobile,

the main

objection people

have as to

why it would

never catch on

was,

there are no

roads,

you know.

and he admitted

this was a barrier

but clearly had

a grander vision

than everybody

else he was

talking to.

Maybe this is

where we should

sort of lead the

discussion and

then leave it

because I think

this is the

toughest issue

for groups like

this.

This is where

we sort of

divide and it's

not easy to hold

it all together.

And that is,

you know,

is the

psychedelic agenda

somehow the

preservation,

nurturing,

caring for,

and completion,

and even

reconstruction and

recovery of what

we have destroyed

and ravaged and

mauled to get

where we are at

this moment?

Or are we

stuff of a

different nature?

And is our

destiny to

weave webs,

you know,

that hang between

the stars and

leave forever

behind this

small, wet,

humble, life

infested place

and go and

live in the

constructs of

our imagination

forever in

silicon and so

forth and so

on?

And this is,

you know,

at least in my

personality,

these things are

almost equally

balanced.

I mean,

I feel very

torn.

I don't like

the Gnostic,

Manichaean need

to say,

well,

there must be a

total split,

that man and

nature cannot

coexist.

Man,

for the sake

of humanity

and for the

sake of

nature,

must go

into our

own dimension,

that the

imagination is

our cosmos

and we are

to inhabit it.

I don't know,

I'd be interested

in what people

think.

The psychedelics

go both ways.

There seem to

be psychedelics

that vote one

way, like the

mushroom, which

has a vast

extraplanetary,

almost galactic

scale vision of

interrelated

intelligences and

information transfer

between species

and a scale

of time

where the

coming and

going of

suns is

just something

which is

going on.

Ayahuasca, on

the other

hand, like

claims you

for your

humanness,

pours you into

your body and

puts an oar in

your hand and

sets you out on

a black river in

the middle of the

night to hunt

catfish, you

know, and you

just feel

life, human

life, what

it is to be

born, to

die, to

have

relationships

with people,

to make

and lose

fortunes, to

have and

lose dreams,

all of this

tremendously

emotional stuff,

and then

there's a

gradient in

between.

So, the

psychedelic

quest then, or

the psychedelic

life, becomes

ultimately a

meditation on

what is human

nature, you

know, is it

these titanic

aspirations to

the

techno, organo,

metallo, immortal

kind of

existence, or is

it some kind of

Tao-like, zen-like

acceptance of

place and

position and

destiny, or can

it be both, you

know, I mean, I

have fantasies

where I see a

world, and I

don't know how we

get there, I

mean, don't ask

me how we get

there, but a

world of many, many

fewer people, and

people live

basically as

people lived

25,000 years

ago, basically

naked, except

that everybody

has a little

thread, like

Brahmins have

in India, a

little thread that

goes around your

shoulder and

around your

waist, and on

this thread are

you could get

maybe a couple

of thousand small

beads on this

thread, well, each

one is essentially

a menu, an

interface into a

piece of software

which is hidden

in hyperspace, and

by just moving

this thread around

and touching these

beads, you

navigate into

mental dimensions,

I mean, I can

imagine the

person of the

future would look

like a rainforest

primitive, but

when they closed

their eyes, there

would be menus

hanging in

space, and

you select and

navigate and

move through

these things, but

you know, then

there are issues,

different aspects

of the same

issue of the

human split with

nature, you

know, what do

we do with the

human body, monkey

body, is it a

monkey animal body

that drags us

down into

territoriality and

violence, or is

it somehow, you

know, the glory

and the

purpose, how

do you, where

do you put the

body in a

psychedelic value

system, if we're

talking about more

and more

ephemeralization,

depersonalization,

decentralization,

electronic

diffuseness, well

then where is

sexuality in all

that, still

more where is

biology in all

that, it's

very, you

know, we are

the generation

of people who

actually will

take the

reins of the

human dream in

a way that it's

never been taken

before, as

recently as a

single generation

ago, there

were like

insoluble

problems of a

technological and

resource delivery

type, now it's

basically, I

think I began

this weekend by

saying this, it's

all dimension, all

problems have

become problems of

human psychology,

everything can be

done, it's all

about how do you

convince people in

a democracy to

pay for it, how

do you convince

people in a, you

know, whatever to

follow along, it's

all problems have

achieved a human

dimension, the

state of the

atmosphere, it's a

human problem, you

know, the

temperature of the

ocean, human

problem, everything

has to do with

changing and

re-engineering the

human mind, now

the real barrier to

doing this, as I

see it, is the

cultural momentum

of the past, and

that's a very nice

and sanitized way

way of saying

fundamentalist

religion, fundamentalist

religion goes into a

tizzy when you

start to, they

would say, tamper

with human nature,

this is why drugs,

abortion, homosexuality,

notice that what

these things all have

in common is they

slightly seek to

tweak or define

human nature, and

you know, this is

extremely unwelcome,

but, you know, if

we're all God's

chillin', how come

we've rigged the

earth with dynamite

and are, you know,

flipping coins to

see who gets to

set it off?

This concludes

Side A.

We have been

infected with the

idea of original

sin, and this is

part of what keeps

us infantile.

We actually

believe, I think,

every single one

of us at some

level, that we

are flawed, unfit,

and this is

paralyzing, because

if we start

talking about

redesigning human

nature, people

say, oh, wow,

you know, this is

what Hitler was

talking about.

As soon as you

start redefining

human nature, you

redefine it worse, the

beast returns, it

means, you know, we

have no faith

whatsoever, and we

believe, you know,

that the given

situation is the best

of all possible

worlds, is what

that's saying, and I

don't believe that.

I agree there have

been horrendous

misapplications of

the wish to

redesign human

nature, but on the

other hand, the

style which lets it

just develop like

an untended

weedy lot, has

produced a fairly

weedy lot of

leaders, with no

great apparent

commitment to the

salvation of the

human race, either.

What it comes down

to is responsibility.

Politics without

responsibility is

fascism, and

politics responsibly

practiced is, you

know, the only

other option

available.

All this goes

back to this

theme of the

primacy of

experience,

recapturing the

primary importance

of yourself,

first of all,

and then your

affinity group,

the people

around you.

McLuhan said that

this would happen

naturally, and

I, from what I

see over the past

few years, it

seems to me this

is so, that he

called it electronic

feudalism, and

said that the

nation-state would

dissolve under the

impact of electronic

media.

His timetable was a

little too short.

This is really a

problem for

profits.

But he was

perfectly right.

I mean, what

happened in

Tiananmen Square,

what happened in

Eastern Europe, was

entirely the

product of

information

technology, just

conveying images,

just conveying

images from the

West, dissolved

the whole myth of

Marxism, which

relied on, you

know, a false

view of reality.

The thing is, these

images are value

neutral.

They're corrosive

wherever they move.

The same forces that

destroyed the

Communist Party in

Eastern Europe will

destroy the ruling

families of the

Arabian Peninsula with

equal ease, because

what it is, is it's

an anti-oligarchic

virus that has

gotten loose in the

language ocean of

the planet.

I mean, the thing

that happened in

Tiananmen Square,

you could feel

every government on

Earth heave a

sigh of relief when

they got that under

control, because the

nightmare of every

government on

Earth is a million

peaceable people

assembled in the

main square of

your capital city

demanding that you

pack up for

Switzerland.

I mean, that is

it.

And if it happens, if

it happens in

Bucharest, you go.

If it happens in

Tehrania, you go.

If it happens in

Washington, you go.

Nobody says no to

a million people in

the streets.

That's what the

Shah of Iran found

out.

I mean, he made a

decree that if more

than three people

gathered in any

place, they would

be shot dead.

The next day, two

and a half million

people marched

screaming beneath his

window for his

head.

So let's go.

Next is the