Mckenna & Metzner

of hardness, darkness, Saturnian, kind of lead is the heaviest, darkest metal,

symbolizing the heavy, dark, leaden, depressive kind of consciousness that we can get into

if we don't bring consciousness to bear on it.

If we bring the fire of attention, the fire of awareness, the fire of life, perception,

to this kind of consciousness, we raise it to the point where it's a reflective and conductive type of consciousness,

as is gold, very malleable, can be shaped into ornaments and artistic forms.

And this would be the analogy, the imagery for expressing the change of consciousness,

the actual change of your mode of thinking, your mode of responding to the world,

the mode in which you perceive the world.

The yogic tradition is a little bit more separated from the physical world,

but it works basically with the same kind of, it doesn't work so much with animal or plant,

for example, plant substances, although some aspects of yoga do,

for example, the tantric tradition in India does use plants and herbs and so forth

as an adjunct to consciousness work, but more concentrating on the mental techniques,

the meditational techniques of yoga, but the purpose being the same,

being the contact with the inner world.

And animals are used as symbols, of course, you have animals and the chakras and that kind of thing.

In Taoism, it's interesting because there the yogic aspect of alchemy is much clearer,

it's much more clearly spelled out that alchemy is also a yogic internal practice.

So I would see yoga and alchemy as being the Indian and Chinese equivalent to what in Europe

became the alchemical tradition.

And which before, in the pre-literate, pre-technological, neolithic and paleolithic culture was shamanism.

Shamanism, animism, animism meaning that nature is alive.

One other thing I wanted to say about alchemy is that Jung said,

well, the alchemists were projecting the contents of their unconscious into matter.

So they were looking at the processes going on in the retorts

and having visions or hallucinations from that,

really projecting their own internal dynamics into that.

And what I've come to realize is that this is both true and not true in the sense that,

yes, there is projection going on.

You are projecting your own images that come out of your own ancestral inheritance

into these processes that you're seeing.

It's not, however, necessarily, it's not an unconscious projection

because the images that you're projecting are these mythic images that you've been taught,

that you have learned from your teachers and from your books that you've read.

The figures and the stories of the gods and the animals and so forth,

the stories of the ancestors, which is what the mythology is,

the story of our ancestors, are projected into these processes.

It's a conscious, not an unconscious projection.

And it's also, again, to remind you of this thing about the inner and the outer,

it's not only a projection.

Yes, there is projection, but there is also perception.

Projection and perception are the two poles of the processes of our intention,

attention in relationship to the world.

We constantly project images from within us.

We project meaning from us.

But we also can be and need to be and need to cultivate our receptivity,

our ability to perceive or to aperceive, as some people say.

Apperception is a sort of contextual perception where you get not only the thing there,

but the whole context in which that thing is and how it relates to you

and the feelings and the associations that go along with it.

That's a receptive process.

And in this, there is an exquisite and poignant dance in the interplay

between these projective and receptive-perceptive processes that we engage in all of our lives

because it's extremely easy to get stuck in one or the other mode.

And getting stuck in one or the other mode is equally detrimental.

Many psychics, for example, get stuck in the receptive mode.

They are not able to make the discrimination between what's their own projection

and what they're actually perceiving.

And often they take on a lot of physical illnesses or psychic discontents and distress as a result of that.

So, shamanism, alchemy, and yoga as traditional technologies of consciousness transformation

which allow us to be in greater access and communication

with the world's other worlds of consciousness

which exist around us.

And you might say, somebody might raise the question,

well, no, so what? Who cares?

Why is it important that we have contact with these other worlds?

Well, the reason for the importance basically is

if the model that these other worlds exist,

that we live in a multidimensional reality, is correct,

then we're in deep shit trouble if we don't pay attention to the other worlds.

And since all of the traditions,

you know, spiritual traditions, psychic, philosophical,

religious traditions of all times,

including shamanism,

are unanimous in asserting this claim

that our ordinary attention and consciousness

is limited to this pathetic fragment

of the possibility to be perceived.

Like the Sufis say, you know,

we're like a man who lives on the ground floor

of a seven-story mansion,

having forgotten completely

that there's the other six floors exist above him

which are larger and more spacious

and greater and more beautiful

and more interesting than the one that he lives with.

And if a lot of your essential knowledge

comes through to you from these other dimensions

and you've lost contact with them,

you don't even have the essential mechanisms for survival.

See, psychic perception or extrasensory perception

or clairvoyance and all these things

that the shamans and the alchemists and the yogis talk about,

they're not luxuries,

they're not something we can indulge

once we've taken care of survival.

They evolved as adaptive evolutionary processes.

And we've lost them to a large extent

through atrophy.

They've atrophied through misuse.

It's very clear from anthropological research

that primitive, preliterate, aboriginal cultures

have abilities that we call telepathy,

clairvoyance, and so forth,

as a matter of course.

They take it for granted

and they use it for survival.

For example, think of a hunter tribe

that's in Africa,

the bushman and the Kalahari.

This has been documented

that sends out a band of six hunters

to track some animal

which they may be gone for five days.

And they have to chase this big animal

such as the giraffe or buffalo

or whatever it may be

and bring it back.

So they have no telegraph,

they can't send runners.

How are they going to stay

in communication with the tribe?

It's been documented

that they are in communication

with telepathic communication

with the tribe.

The tribe can know

that it's essential to their survival.

They need to know

when food is going to come,

whether the people are okay.

The clairvoyance,

which simply means

being able to see

some of these more subtle phenomena

that are normally kind of

just disappearing

into invisibility

or imperceptibility,

is equally essential.

And your survival

could hinge on it.

So I see this

and we're not exactly

in a position to say

that our attitude

has contributed

to our survival.

I mean, people do say that.

People even say

that nuclear deterrence

has, you know,

the nuclear buildup

has prevented nuclear war

so far, hasn't it?

We should congratulate ourselves

how well we've done.

And nobody who can look

at the situation we're in

can say that we are survivors.

You know,

we've had to concentrate

on the material world

in order to survive.

And therefore,

we can't indulge in luxuries

such as these weird

peoples of ancient cultures

had the leisure to do,

apparently.

It's not the way it is.

One interesting difference

in the shamanic practice

that's now

from their role

in traditional cultures,

some of which,

of course, still exist,

is that in the new,

in what you might call

neo-shamanism,

is no longer

the shamanism

of the expert.

This is one of the things

I appreciate very much

about what Michael Horner does.

He's taken certain aspects

of core,

what he calls core shamanism,

whether it's that or not,

it doesn't matter,

certain techniques

shared by shamanic cultures

all over the world

and shown that

Westerners,

Anglo, white,

Westerners,

middle class,

with all the conditioning

and brainwashing

that the rationalistic

Newtonian mechanistic

world model

has succeeded

in impinging

and putting on all of us

and can,

within a very short time,

have shamanic experiences,

can open up doorways

to these other worlds,

can establish

ally relationships,

totemic relationships.

They're not really totemic

because totemic means family,

comes from the ancestry,

these are new,

these are individual new.

So everyone has the potential

for becoming a shaman,

becoming a practitioner

of shamanism.

It's no longer

you need to go

to the expert,

the one person

in the tribe

who played that role

because now

we've evolved

all kinds of

other approaches

for,

of course,

we still have experts

and, you know,

it's okay to use experts

but,

on the other hand,

what's much more important

is that people,

the actual you and me,

all of us,

anyone who cares

about the world

that we live in

and would like to survive

and would like to see

this world pass on

to our children

and our grandchildren,

it behooves us all

to make use

of every possible

help,

method,

tool,

technique,

ally,

spiritual,

technological,

as long as it helps us

get there

and accomplish this purpose

we'd be fools

not to use it.

I've recently come to understand

also that

there are

different varieties

of shamanic path

and this might help

some of you

think about

how you might relate

to that kind of path

and we can talk further

about this this afternoon too.

Part of this came for me

out of

a distinction

that's made

in the Polynesian-Hawaiian

shamanic complex

between

starting with the assumption

that the shamanic path

is one of the

obtaining this otherwise

unaccessible knowledge,

usually not accessible knowledge,

that

they make a distinction

between the path

of the warrior

and the path

of the adventurer

and

this is a very

interesting

distinction.

The path

of the warrior

is a path

that emphasizes

impeccability

and

intense

observation

and attention

and

it has a

worldview

that says

the world

is a dangerous

place

filled with

malevolent forces

both

ordinary human

and

spirit

and

it's the task

of the warrior

to

be able

to defend himself

him or herself

at all times

against

these

prevailing

malevolent forces

in the world

around us

and therefore

the path

of the warrior

emphasizes

highly disciplined

kind of practices

it tends to

emphasize

ordeal

self-infliction

of pushing

one's own

limits

for endurance

or pain

tolerance

in order

to extend

one's limits

of tolerance

and steal

oneself

as it were

for this

ongoing

combat

basically

it's the

impeccability

to me

consists

and

you know

Castaneda's books

are good examples

are good descriptions

of this

path

and this attitude

impeccability

to me

consists

in

the sense

of balance

between

what I've

called

the projective

and the

perceptive

not just

having the

vision

and sort

of

oh yeah

vision

groovy

wow

you know

taking it in

many people

have that attitude

towards psychedelics

just take it

and

wow

impeccability

means

you look

back

you don't

just

take it

you look

and you

try to

discriminate

and to

discern

between

what are

your own

projections

based on

your own

fears

and fantasies

and what

is really

going on

there

and what

really is

going on

there

you need

to be able

to observe

you need

to be able

to catch

the details

you need

to be able

to see

through the

surface

in order

to get

the meaning

that's being

expressed

by that

surface

of form

and that

to me

is impeccability

impeccability

means not

just

indulging

and having

the vision

it means

observing

the vision

that you've

shown

in all

states

of consciousness

now

the adventurer

the path

of the adventurer

is a little bit

different

the adventurer

actually needs

to have

the same

impeccability

and the same

attention

to observing

really observing

and really

attending

to detail

however

he doesn't

necessarily

and he agrees

the adventurer

agrees

that the world

is filled

with malevolent

forces

but that's

not all

the adventurer

whom I actually

prefer to call

the explorer

so you think of it

as adventurer

explorer

as a type

of path

as an orientation

says

yes

okay

we need to be able

to protect

ourselves

so we'll learn

the skills

of the warrior

but on the other

hand

reality

is infinitely

fluid

well not infinitely

it's fluid

and flexible

within certain

limits

and these limits

can be extended

and expanded

and the adventure

then rather

tries to

generate

or co-create

a picture

of reality

in which

the potential

for unfolding

and for creative

expression

of everyone

participating

it is

maximized

so it's

creating an

environment

creating a

setting

co-creating

a space

a context

a reality

in which

each and every

one of us

humans

and the animals

and the plants

and nature

herself

can be recognized

as a community

of equals

and can have

the right

to unfold

their own destiny

this is what

the deep ecology

movement is

how deep ecology

connects into

optimism

because deep ecology

says every species

of plant or animal

and the environmental

elements themselves

have an equal

right to

live their life

without having

their integrity

violated

by one particular

arrogant species

so

the adventurer

explorer

and the warrior

consciousness

shared the

emphasis

on impeccability

on observation

on detail

on discipline

to a certain

extent

but the

adventurer

explorer

also emphasized

creativity

more

the creative

play

to allow

the unfolding

of these

created realities

that maximize

everyone's potential

so

the drawback

of the warrior

consciousness

is that it

has a tendency

to become

paranoid

because this

kind of

suspiciousness

the world

is full of

malevolent forces

shades very

easily into

paranoia

and when you

think of warrior

consciousness

not so much

in the shamanic

context

see the shamanic

warrior consciousness

is conscious

warrior attitude

in relationship

to the inner world

to the other worlds

warriors of course

exist in the ordinary

world

and one way

one kind of summary

statement of

the kind of mess

that we're in

right now

is to say

that the warrior

consciousness

on this planet

has run amok

when you look

at the governments

of the world

both

first, second

and third world

countries

99% of them

are military

cliques

military elites

the military

industrial complex

has been

in charge

of basically

they have

access to

the largest

amount of

resources

they have

access to

all the

science and

technology

they have

access to

the largest

amount of

money

they control

they dominate

they are

parasitical

on the economy

because the

military economy

is not a

life-sustaining

economy

it's a

life-destroying

economy

which doesn't

produce anything

of value

that sustains

and supports

life

therefore it's

parasitical

on the

rest of the

economy

of people

who grow

food

and live

lives

and try

to have

babies

and continue

the life

on this

world

the difference

between

parasitism

and symbiosis

is very

crucial

symbiosis

means mutual

cooperative

support of

each other's

evolutionary

development

parasitism

is evolutionary

development

of one

species

or group

or clan

of another

at the

expense

of another

the colonial

enterprise

the entire

colonialism

is a form

of parasitism

that's why

we shouldn't

be surprised

when third world

countries

don't think

of America

as the land

of opportunity

as much

as the land

of imperialist

oppression

and exploitation

the opportunity

is not

for them

so we are

the ones

that go

in there

force them

to change

their agriculture

over to doing

monocultural

things

which leads

to

and force

them to

grow crops

that they

can sell

for cash

to feed

our

to make

our hamburgers

to feed

our cattle

and therefore

not be able

to feed

themselves

and destroy

the rainforest

they're not

doing that

they wouldn't

come up

with that

as a

mechanism

of survival

it's a

parasitism

it's for us

we consume

all that

stuff

and they

are left

with the

waste matter

so

this is

one difference

in which

the shamanic

revival

neo-shamanism

differs from

the traditional

role

is in its

emphasis

on

each individual

has the

ability

and the

necessity

and the

right

certainly

to practice

desirability

of practicing

it yourself

see for

yourself

find out

for yourself

go for

yourself

go and

see

see what

you can

well

this is

not

really

a

difference

from

before

but

let me

say

something

about

why

what

I

think

is

the

significance

of

this

and

both

Terence

and

Joan

have

study

our

own

past

because

we

had

that

our

own

ancestors

had

that

kind

of

relationship

to

nature

which

is

completely

different

they

had

a

relationship

to

nature

that

was

based

on

a

sense

of

community

with

nature

this is

one of

the things

Thomas Berry

the philosopher

who's

just come out

with this

extraordinary

new book

called

Dreaming the

Earth

emphasizes

the notion

of community

needs to be

extended

between

from

the one

that we

usually

used to

the human

community

to a

community

of

humans

with

animals

with

plants

with

the

natural

elements

of

the

environment

the

Earth

itself

and

with

the

spirits

that

dwell

in

it

this

interconnectedness

interwovenness

which we

have lost

which is

exemplified

in

and

emphasized

in

some

scientific

movements

particularly

the

Gaia

hypothesis

of

Lovelock

which

states

that

the

world

apparently

on

scientific

evidence

alone

behaves

like

a

living

organism

like

a

living

breathing

giant

organism

like

a

super

cell

and

the

deep

ecology

movement

which

says

that

ecology

is not

just a

matter

of

preserving

our

resources

it's

it's a

matter

of

shifting

out

of

an

anthropocentric

viewpoint

a

human

centered

viewpoint

into

a

biocentric

viewpoint

in

which

life

is

at

the

center

and

our

task

is

to

do

everything

we

can

to

preserve

and

sustain

life

and

everything

we

can

to

that

the

whole

thing

is

interwoven

in

a

unity

now

Gaia

the

notion

of

Gaia

the

world

by

itself

there

are

certain

limitations

in

that

view

too

for

one

thing

I

mean

the

Gaia

hypothesis

as a

scientific

hypothesis

I

think

it's

a

major

step

forward

in

science

it's

not

quite

the

view

of

animism

because

animism

says

that

not only

is

the

earth

all

the

different

parts

of

the

earth

are

alive

but

these

are

sacred

intelligences

so

if

you

say

the

earth

is

alive

but

you're

still

talking

from

within

a

mechanistic

world

view

then

it's

alive

in

the

way

other

animals

and

plants

are

alive

which

is

basically

like

a

machine

animals

and

plants

according

to

mechanistic

biologies

are

just

self

reproducing

machines

self

regulating

self

reproducing

machines

it's

still

views

might

be

personally

they

might

be

quite

different

from

the

scientific

hypothesis

so

it's

okay

to have

the

hypothesis

but

I

think

the

next

step

that

still

needs

to be

taken

that

involves

an

integration

of

science

and

spirituality

which

have

interlinked

with

the

existence

and

the

viability

of

the

earth

itself

and

when

you

think

about

it

you

look

at

the

spiritual

artistic

expressions

the

literature

the

sacred

texts

the

symbols

the

architecture

the

sculptures

the

paintings

and

so

forth

when

you

really

see

it

the

role

of

nature

animals

plants

in

all

cultures

even

I

patriarchal

monotheistic

religions

of

Islam

Judaism

and

Christianity

they

have

the

worst

record

as far

as

a

negative

relationship

to

nature

and

earth

even

although

there

are

exceptions

within

its

tradition

particularly

in

individual

mystics

but

the

overall

orthodox

view

of

the

system

itself

is

tends

to

be

in

all

three

of

those

religions

rejecting

of

nature

fearful

of

nature

and

seeing

spirituality

as

really

transcending

nature

in

Islam

you

have

this

notion

of

the

animals

it's

like

the

ego

the

ego

symbolized

by

animals

and

we

have

to

there

are

simultaneously

enemies

that

we

have

to

get

beyond

well

see

this

is

a

different

very

different

view

than

you

would

gain

from

the

animistic

religions

which

has

said

animals

are

not

our

enemies

neither

the

animals

inside

us

nor

the

animals

around

us

the

animals

are

our

brothers

and

sisters

our

relations

all

our

relations

both

in the

spirit

form

and

in

world

view

that's

emerging

this

will

be

my

last

point

now

before

we

break

what

I

want

to

emphasize

here

is

the

recent

realization

that

this

animistic

shamanistic

pagan

worldview

that we're

rediscovering

reconnecting

with

and appreciating

anew

its value

and its

significance

for our

time

becomes

this

significance

becomes

even

more

acute

when you

realize

that

in

shamanism

you know

they talk a lot

about the

importance of

connecting with

your ancestors

and

work that I've

done

individually

and with

groups

this is

more and

more

becoming

apparent

that

connection

with the

ancestors

connection

with animal

spirits

guardian

animals

and

connection

with

ancestors

guardians

is

an

essential

part

of the

process

and

this is

where

the

tie-in

comes

from

psychology

psychotherapy

into

shamanism

psychotherapy

you

do a lot

of work

with your

parents

to clear

up your

relationship

with your

parents

and any

negative

charge

that

needs

to happen

before you

can connect

with your

ancestors

the parents

are your

first

ancestors

if

you

if you're

not

clear

with

them

you

can't

go

any

further

back

than

them

and

connection

with the

animals

is actually

really a part

of that

because the

animals

are our

ancestors

we are

animals

we are

descended

from

animals

so the

primates

the mammals

the reptiles

the amphibians

and the fish

that's our

animal ancestry

as orders

of life

as kingdoms

of life

so

but our

human

ancestry

were

hunter

gatherers

for

a couple

of hundred

thousand

years

before they

started

farming

and building

cities

with walls

around them

a couple

of hundred

thousand years

of hunter

gathering

of wandering

of tribal

existence

with

shamanic

worldview

with a

view of

necessity

of total

sensory

communication

maximal

sensory

communication

fluidity

discrimination

with the

natural

world

these were

our

ancestors

and then

taking

getting

you get

into this

realm

of

prehistory

terence

referred to

the work

of Rhea

and Isler

which in

turn is

based on

the work

of the

archaeologist

Maria

Gambutas

whose

major

discovery

over the

last

twenty

years

has been

to

unearth

to

uncover

the

goddess

religion

of

old

Europe

as she

calls

it

Europe

before

the

invasions

of the

Indo-Europeans

the

Indo-Aryans

who came

from

Central

Asia

invasion

these

were

nomadic

horse

people

they

had

domesticated

the

horse

and

they

had

domesticated

they had discovered how to make bronze weapons and they started invading around 5000 B.C.

and wave after wave after wave pushing and invading and preying on, really functioning as predators

on the Neolithic cultures, farming cultures which had already existed in those areas

in old Europe and around the whole Baltic region, the Mediterranean, including Crete

all up into northern, central Germany, southern, western Russia

that whole area, there were hundreds and hundreds of different cultures and language groups

in which the two chief features that are of significance are that these were goddess cultures

that apparently had, did not have any kind of superior, inferior, subordination relationship between the sexes

it was not a matriarchy, as Reagan Buddha emphasizes, not a matriarchy

which means the mothers dominate, the mothers control, rather than the fathers

it was, as Rhea and Eisler suggested, a partnership society in which men and women had equal value

and had clearly distinct roles, the chief divinity was female

and it was not a mother goddess

this is also important, the mother concept has been over-emphasized, I think

again, it's something we can talk more about later

it's the life-giving and death-giving goddess

because we are given life by nature, but we're also killed by nature

so this is not a mother, a mother doesn't kill you

nature, as an intelligence, as a spirit, is what gives us life and what takes life

so there are these images, there are images of this goddess figure

in total unitive relationship with animals, the snake and the bird

various animals, toads, frogs, vultures, insects, bees, bears, bulls, sheep, goats

all the various animals, and no hierarchy within the society

other than possibly, I mean, in the buildings there would be a throne

but the throne was of the priestess, or the goddess would be in a central place

the goddess figurine would be in a central place

second very important part was that there are no, in all these cultures

in these hundreds of things, there have never been found any weapons

there have never been found any fortifications

there is not the pattern that you find in later Sumerian, Babylonian, Greek, Egyptian

all these other cultures, which were all male god cultures

of a male king surrounded by all this wealth and ornaments

and sometimes slaves also killed along with it

and weapons and inscriptions about the glorious deeds, militaristic deeds

that the hero or the king has done, none of that

instead, the dead men and women and children equally

were buried right under the house

right under the house, where you eat and sleep

so that you have the connection with your ancestors

right under your feet, under your body, where you live

you're reminded of them

and what does this mean?

this means, see these people were our ancestors

the nomadic, patriarchal, warrior, sky god people

were our ancestors

and the peaceful, egalitarian, goddess culture people

were our ancestors, because of course they intermarried

I mean they didn't just kill the others

they destroyed the religion, but they intermarried

they had children, both of them are our ancestors

you may be familiar with Rupert Sheldrake's theory of morphic resonance

you know, that habits of nature and culture

get transmitted by repetition

that means the morphic field

for a culture that's egalitarian between the sexes

and that's peaceful

exists within us

we have it within us

we have access to it in our psychic memory

whatever that may be

however that, whatever form that may take

and not only that, the morphic field of that

is much stronger

than the morphic field of

the militaristic, aggressive, dominating, patriarchal system

that started around

four to three thousand years before Christ

because those cultures go back to

twenty, ten thousand, twenty thousand

thirty thousand, forty thousand, fifty thousand

right back into the upper paleolithic

where you first have little

little stone chips inscribed with goddess symbols

these were not

these were hunter-gatherer cultures

and then

pastoralist cultures

and then farming cultures

they were not fighting cultures

the fighting

comes in

as a result of the invaders

who came in

who took over

who plundered basically

said here

these people are growing their food

this is much better than having to gather it

let's just take it

who were able to do that

because they sat up high on horses

who installed their gods

of course I'm not saying

this is sort of the growth picture

but they

you know

of course there was intermarriage

and much of

there is evidence

for peaceful interactions also

and cultural assimilation

and all of that

but the morphic field

of that cultural way of life

is stronger

because longer in time

more people

longer period of time

than this other

more new one

so that

when I discovered that

when I learned this

from Maria Gamuta's writings and talks

it did a change in my world view

in my paradigms

that was as profound

as the change that was induced

when I first took LSD

because

up to that point

I'd always believed

you know history begins at Summa

and begins with bloodshed and warfare

and has been bloodshed and warfare ever since

and in fact

then the biologists go along with that

and say well

we're descended from these aggressive animals

you know aggression in nature

nature raw and tooth and claw

eat or be eaten

the territorial imperative

you know 2001

you know

bash the skull

that's it

we've always been that way

it's part of human nature

we can't change

along comes this woman

from Eastern Europe

and says

uh uh

no matriarchy

no weapons

for tens of thousands of years

ten times twenty times

as long as our history

that we previously thought was

you know

this is our ancestry

this means

these people are our ancestors

we know how to do that

we know how to live

in an ecologically

and peaceful harmonious world

we've done it

so for that reason

I'm actually extremely hopeful

all even

although I realize

as every one of you do

that

our world situations

as you look at it today

is a total and unmitigated disaster

the apocalypse

the Armageddon

is already in full sway

it's not something

that's gonna happen next year

or 25 years from

it's happening now

all you need to do is read the papers

look at the television

the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse

war

famine

poverty

and destruction

they're all rampaging over the

over the

over the entire globe

Amnesty International

just put out there

more than what

more than two-thirds of all

nation governments

sanction torture

as official government sanctioned

practices

and the number is increasing

and the variety of

the torturing techniques

being used

and the number of people

is being used on

is increasing

so

there's no stretch of the

imagination

that can be called

progress

but

there are these very very

hopeful signs

and

the locus of those signs

is within the psyche

of every single human individual

nowhere else

so

thank you

for your attention

my expectation for this afternoon

is simply that we will

uh

attempt

to

address

what concerns you have

to dialogue

to give people

a chance

to

ask questions

it seems to me that

often the most fertile

part of these things

is the dialogue

part of it

because this is where then

instead of

talking heads

pontificating

about whatever

obsessions drive them

personally

you have a chance

to try and

uh

be the rudder

of these public egos

and steer them

toward something

interesting

and

uh

so

the obligation

is on you

for the quality

of rhetoric

for that kind

of a session

so

I don't know

how much was clear

this morning

how much obscure

what issues

it raises

for people

but

uh

if someone would like

to start off

with a question

we would just make

our way into it

yes

before we go further

do you want

people to take

a microphone

uh

how is this

speak clearly

when you ask

your question

sorry

go ahead

okay

so here's the

repeated question

and it

has to do with

drugs

psychedelics

I know that you

didn't

you know necessarily

recommended it

but you also

didn't sound like

you were against it

and

it's been coming

out a few times

maybe I've

overdone

this

even-handedness

trip

my question is

what is there

to know about

drugs

brain damage

they have

advertisements

with

a pen

and an

you know an egg

going in there

and it's frying your brain

uh huh

you know you knock some

brain cells out

and

well

you know the

uh

the president's

consort

urges us

to

uh

simply

say no

and

I

can't remember

who it was

I think it was

Tim Leary

the other night

was wearing a t-shirt

which said

just say no

k-n-o-w

see

how close to the surface

it is

and how nearly the same

thing

so

that's the short

and obvious answer

how

what is there to know

about drugs

a huge amount

I mean this is a

department of human

knowledge called

pharmacology

that is the life

study

of

psychedelics

and being a spiritual

uh

adventurer

and coming to a place

in your life

where you say

then

you know you have to make

very

um

clear choices

uh

my own

approach to this

has been

to give great

force

to tradition

that's why we're here talking

about

shamanically

utilized

plants

because they are plants

with a history

of human usage

thousands of years old

we already know

that they do not cause

tumors

or madness

or miscarriages

because

if that were the case

they would have been

pushed aside

over millennia

of usage

a private prejudice

of my own

that I urge

on people

is that

the drugs they take

should be

as much like

brain chemistry

as possible

as non-invasive

of the physical brain

as possible

fortunately

and

suggestively

the strongest

of all

hallucinogens

are

the ones

most like

ordinary brain chemistry

another thing

I think that's important

is to be

sort of

pharmacologically

monomaniacal

it's good to do

when you find out

what works

for you

just really do it

into the ground

rather than

being someone

who is always

you know

this week

it's

2CB

and next week

it's

something else

and then something else

it's much better

I think

if you find

an ally

who resonates

with you

to then

utilize that

Ralph you deal

with all this

what do you

a couple of things

I would just say

to that question

one is

the first thing

we all have to learn

to do

I mean we do it

but we also fall into

the habit

our national culture

has this concept of

drug

you know the ad

that you mentioned

and Nancy Reagan's slogan

refer to drugs

and drugs is a very

global

category

as anyone knows

as soon as you start

to think about it

and

law enforcement

legislation

does not

currently

presently

make any distinction

between

heroin

cocaine

marijuana

LSD

which couldn't be

more different

they have completely

opposite sometimes

the brain

and nervous system

so that's one thing

be discriminating

about what drug

you're talking about

and then the other

thing is to be

another thing is to be

aware of the fact

that science

and scientific

information

is a controlled process

and it's controlled

by a government

that has a basically

fascist attitude

towards foods

and drugs

that's often thought

the FDA could be

an acronym for

fascist drug

administration

it is

we do have a fascist

system

within a larger

democratic

outwardly democratic

process

one of the things

that's interesting

to realize

if you have a democracy

you can elect yourself

into a fascism

which is what we've done

yes

because fascism

is the imposition

of the

opinions and beliefs

of the minority

on the majority

it's the great danger

of democracy

that it will become

some kind of fascism

of the majority

and so the science

the fascist science

the medical pharmaceutical

complex

which is next to

the military industrial

complex

the largest and most

powerful

power group

in our world

controls

what goes out

into the media

in terms of scientific

information

not only control it

they manipulate it

it becomes more

matter of propaganda

so when you read

accounts in newspapers

and magazines

scientists did a study

that proved that MDMA

lowers serotonin levels

whatever

and damages brain cells

you can't read that

and accept it as truth

you have to

inform yourself

I would say

become more maniacal

about pharmacology

in a different sense

than Terence

you have to train yourself

and read the technical literature

if you really want to know

what really goes on

you have to go into the

original technical literature

yourself

and those which are genuine

and the media do not

make that distinction

and drug enforcement

doesn't make it

legislation doesn't make it

so

you know

it's everyone's

responsibility

if everyone's going to be

their own shaman

it's also their own responsibility

to know your

know your drugs

know what your particular

body can tolerate

as well as

what's generally tolerable

or what's toxic

what has undesirable

side effects

and

be discriminating

use discernment

be impeccable about it

really

and

take responsibility

as part of the whole

medical thing

we don't

you know

we don't take responsibility

for our own health

and well-being

and getting better

we say

you know

we still have that old

the doctor knows best

and

and finally

I would say

along with Terence

what Terence was saying

is

I think

the

use of the word drug

is

not a good word to use

period

I try to use it less and less

and less

and even Hoffman said this years ago

in relationship to psychedelics

but if you're talking about plants

visionary plants

sacred plants

that have a long long cultural history

as well as nutritional plants

it ties into the use of herbs

rather than synthetic antibiotics

antibiotics

or drugs

in medicine

herbal medicine

is

a huge underground medical system

that's basically

unrecognized and unacknowledged

just the way psychoactive

plants and substances

are unrecognized

and unacknowledged

so

by

focusing on herbs

and plants

natural

substances

using

synthetics

only in those cases

where

you've

just

something has been discovered

that doesn't

that's not known otherwise

in the plant or animal kingdom

would enable

one to bypass

much of that

whole

drug prohibition

paranoia

punitive

complex

that we live under

in this society

which is very very weird

because you have

a fascist minority

wishing to not only

control certain substances

but actually control

what you put into your body

that's going pretty far

when you think about it

I mean it's not

not that different

from them

telling you

what you can eat

and what you can't eat

eventually you see

when we move beyond

the current

sort of dark age

that we're living in

the idea that

governments

can tell you

what drugs

you can take

will be

as bizarre

a notion as

that

governments

can buy and sell

human beings

or that

there should be

recognized a

divine right

of kings

it's actually

a civil rights

issue

and

you know

in the 19th century

people's argument

against women's suffrage

was

that it would be

unimaginable

that the world

would be destroyed

if you gave women

the vote

that just madness

would ensue

this is now the argument

against

allowing people

to make

these decisions

about their bodies

and their spiritual

development

and yet science

which

just relentlessly

rolls forward

creating an endless

cornucopia

of

steroids

hallucinogens

aphrodisiacs

memory enhancers

so forth

and so on

is

presenting us

over and over again

with this dilemma

of

how do we

chemically manage

ourselves

in

the kind of world

we're living in

and I

tried to indicate

this morning

I think this is

central

to understanding

what human beings

are

that there is

no such thing

as

a

person

without

habitual

relationships

to plants

and

it's

tea

coffee

sugar

alcohol

and then

a wider spectrum

but

yes

cereals

the very

way in which

we define

good feeling

and

expression of

the self

is

these various

states of mind

that we associate

with our diet

and our habit

people get up

the first thing in the morning

most people do

is choose the first drug

of the day

will it be tea

will it be coffee

and so forth

and so on

there's nothing wrong

with this

we

apparently

by our

ability

to

collect

and

it actually you know

it all goes back

to our

omnivorous

diet

most

plant

most animals

are not

omnivores

most animals

have a

food source

a spectrum of foods

that they eat

that is very narrow

but

if you're an

omnivore

if your habit

is to eat

everything

and to test

everything in the

environment

that you lay

yourself open

to

exposure

to vast

numbers of

mutagens

hallucinogens

tumor inducing

compounds

steroids

galacticides

poisons

all kinds of

things

you

accept

that

these things

are impinging

and selecting

on the human genome

and very quickly

we have evolved

into this very quirky

kind of species

that as I said this morning

addicts to everything

I mean it is the source of our great anguish

and our great grandeur

we can addict to a piece of land

and call it the homeland

and defend it against all comers

and slaughter with impunity

anybody who gets near it

and claim it after we've been away from it

for ten thousand years

as ours

because we once were there

we can addict to another person

you know

anyone who's experienced heartbreak

real heartbreak

knows you know

this is like a withdrawal syndrome

I mean bursting into tears

tears every twenty minutes

and not sleeping

and vomiting

every three hours

I mean this person

has a severe dependency

which is being broken

in the same way

we ideologically

enslave ourselves

so

there is no percentage

in denying

this side of ourselves

what we have to do

is manage it

manage it

in some way

that serves

obviously

community preserving

purposes

and I think

that

the model is always tradition

that the traditional

compounds

the traditional

plants of shamanic usage

are the ones

that we are probably

meant to use

they fit our hand

the way a tool

fits our hand

they were made for us

we co-evolved

with these things

I was talking to

Lester Grinspoon

about this recently

and he said

the way you can tell

how long

human beings

have been using

a drug

is by how few

side effects

that drug has

because of course

there is this

mutual leveling

of the

of the stress

of

contact

symbiosis

has never

been

taken seriously

by evolutionary

biologists

food

as a

mutagenic

influence

has never been taken

seriously

by human

evolutionary

theorists

and yet

obviously

that is what

has driven us

to such a rapid

state

of evolution

our willingness

to expose

ourselves

to an extremely complex

and shifting

environment

that was

in fact

the things

we put into

our bodies

everything else

stayed pretty much

the same

over long periods

of time

so

this

the question

which the gentleman

asked

goes to the whole

heart of the matter

to the fact

that you know

we are living

now

of

hysteria

about

drugs

Tim Leary

said

LSD

was a compound

capable

of causing

psychotic behavior

in people

who hadn't

taken it

this

can now

be

generalized

we see

an entire

society

in a drug

induced

frenzy

induced by drugs

that they have never

taken

you see

I would like to add

to that too

on this theme

of the relationship

between foods

and drugs

and the human species

again to

hammer home

this point

the argument

has been made

that every major

civilization

is founded

on one of the

seven sacred grains

there are seven

sacred grains

the Chinese

is built on

rice

the European

is built

on wheat

and rye

American Indian

civilization

is based on

and so forth

and it's interesting

to realize

that

you know

there are

these food addictions

and food allergies

which are connected

and wheat

is one of the

commonest

foods

that people get

both allergic

and addicted to

as a food

and

what was probably

the most prominent

plant source

of LSD

is ergot

which is

a fungus

fungus

that grows

on rye

and wheat

and was probably

cultivated

in a

ancient Greece, deliberately, the ergot was, as the vision-inducing beverage that was the

heart of the Elezinian mysteries, if Wasson and Hoffman and Schultes are correct in their

theory about this. And so, and there have been newspaper reports from England of pharmacologists

and doctors claiming that people who buy wheat or rye that may be contaminated with ergot

may actually be ingesting active doses of LSD-type compounds. So, right here in the central supportive

grain of the Western civilization, you have a psychoactive vision-inducing plant built in,

the knowledge of which disappeared for 2,000 years and is now in process of being rediscovered.

And what that really means for us gives much thought.

In hypothesizing about the early dawn of consciousness of mankind, if it were assisted by visionary

plants, would this have made a genetic change in the DNA strand rather than just an experience

that hominoid or whoever it was that was enlightened, could have made a mutation and then this consciousness

was then passed on to their offspring?

Well, it's a very complicated situation and where we don't have all the information, but what it looks like happened

was there were arboreal canopy living primates in Africa, in a tropical forest similar to the Amazon in extent.

And over a long period of time, a hundred thousand years or so, drying set in and grasslands emerged and the forest retreated and these primates, who already

had binocular vision and an advanced grasping hand and a social form of existence with group signaling, were forced down onto the veld.

And there, in a much more restricted environment in terms of numbers of species of plants, they abandoned their previous vegetarian,

fruititarian habits and became omnivores, began testing all the food sources in the environment.

Co-evolving in this grassland situation were herds of ungulate animals, bison and zebra and this kind of thing.

In the manure of these animals was psilocybin containing mushrooms.

Well, you see, the psychedelic to be the trigger for the emergence of human consciousness, it must be African, it must require no preparation,

it must stand out from its environment and it must confer an adaptive advantage.

Now, it seems to me the only plant or organism which fulfills all these points is the mushroom.

What the mushrooms do in low doses is confer slightly increased visual acuity.

Well, you only have to have taken Evolution 1A to know that if you have two populations and one of them has something in their food that increases visual acuity,

and these are pack hunting animals, that the ones with this vision enhancing compound in their diet,

will have a more successful reproductive strategy than the competitors and it will dominate.

Well, at a slightly higher dose, psilocybin, like all CNS stimulators, can be interpreted as an aphrodisiac.

In other words, prolonged erection, prolonged interest in sex, so forth and so on.

At a slightly higher level, it flowers out into a visionary experience.

So it's like a stair-step process where the deeper the organism imbibes this one item in the food chain,

the more payback there seems to be.

First better hunting, then better sex, then great ideas.

Who could turn it down?

And I've talked like, you know, when Rianne Eisler and I appeared here,

Rianne is by no stretch of the imagination a psychedelico.

I mean, she's a very straight and very wise lady, but not a stoner.

But she said, you're right, there is something going on having to do with pastoralism,

having to do with this point in time where the previous pack hunting primates,

instead of killing their prey, began to pen them and began to relate to them, to addict to them, is what it was.

And I was saying to someone earlier today, here's a test of how conscious of the real world you are.

What is the weirdest thing about a cow?

And my victim said, the eyes.

And I said, no, the weirdest thing about a cow is its tits, obviously.

I mean, have you ever seen tits like that anywhere else?

These tits are made to fit a human hand.

It's obvious.

And so this is an example of very old co-evolution, co-adaptation.

The human being, the cow, and then less immediately obvious, but nevertheless powerfully present, is the mushroom.

Joan referred to this this morning.

You see, I think what happened is women outsmarted themselves.

The men were off silently hunting and practicing being quiet as they stalked their prey.

The women were creating language in order to describe the taxonomy of these various food plants,

of which they probably could distinguish four or five hundred plants, seasons, soil conditions, variants,

unusual conditions of all sorts, which parts of the plant were edible, which were poisonous, so forth and so on.

And as always happens, when you succeed in an enterprise where you seek control, you inevitably simplify.

So the women became so conversant with the power of plants that they realized they need no longer gather them.

They could grow them.

And then they realized they wouldn't, of course, grow all the plants they knew about.

They would only grow those plants that grew easily, produced large fruit, and had a big payback.

And suddenly, the women undercut their own power base.

And it became possible to silently practice very dulling agriculture.

And the gods then became not the gods of the orgy and the hunt and the wild plants, but the gods became corn gods and wheat gods.

And it became important to be able to get up early in the morning and walk off to your field and weed and less important to be able to ecstatically prophesy and have visions.

Well, that's just one scenario, but it's worth talking about, I think, because how we image our emergence out of animal organization

is going to color very deeply how we image our transition into a transcendental realm.

That's why I talk about what I call the archaic revival rather than the new age.

All this talk about shamanism is a reaching back 15, 25,000 years to those models to steady us.

We should go out the way we came in, which means as a partnership society, as a psychedelic society, as a tribal society.

And so, by thinking about the origins, we actually gain an intimation of the future.

Yes?

The persecution of riches is what's going on anyway.

You know, those very things you're just describing for women.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, it is all of a piece.

The suppression of women.

It's a complicated thing.

I mean, it has to do with solar calendars, which gained prominence with the invention of agriculture.

See, I think the invention of agriculture was where it began to go wrong.

Well, some people say it was the domestication of the horse or cities or this and that.

People idealized the Neolithic and think that this was fine.

But I think already in place were notions of hanging on to the land, of storing wealth, of cooperating, coerced cooperation in the production of food.

A simplified vocabulary about nature.

All of these things were put in place by the Neolithic.

But, you know, Arthur Young, some of you may know his theories, he has this idea that every state of freedom is accomplished by a descent into a state of bondage.

So that, for instance, you know, molecular chemistry is the product of the molecular bond.

If you have chemical systems with so much energy that there can be no molecular bonding, then all you have is atomic chemistry.

You have not the possibility of organic chemistry.

So the coming and going of the male ego, the coming and going of the repression of women and the feminine seems to be related to how much exposure there is to these wild plant states.

Because that, you see, women come up against it because they bury the dead, they birth the living, they know that all is not as it appears to be.

They are informed of the fact that culture is a charade.

But men believe all this stuff.

Well, at least those women that were able to, like the witches, were the women who, and the few men, who stayed, who had the wisdom, the wit, the wisdom to stay in touch with the lore, the herbal lore, the plant lore.

So they acted as midwives.

They helped women have abortions when they wanted to get rid of their children.

They acted as midwives.

They did healing when the doctors at the time didn't have the knowledge to do so.

So the inquisition was kind of the result of an unholy marriage between the power trips of the medical profession against natural healers, which still exists, and the power trip of the church against the animistic religion.

It's that because the church put its whole weight against this thing of the scapegoating process of using women as the scapegoats for everything that was corrupt within the church itself.

It was because women were sinful and they sold themselves in league to the devil.

And so from the church's point of view, they didn't really care about the plant lore.

It's very interesting that a lot of plant lore really went defunct with the elimination and the execution of the witches because there was nobody there who was at all interested in preserving it.

In fact, the witchcraft trials give clear indication that when the women tried to say, well, you know, when they were asked, well, why did you go and fly off and do this thing that was been reported to you?

Or why did you fall down on the ground and you were lifeless for three days?

And they said, well, it was because we took this little herb.

And the inquisitor said, no, no, no, it's because you took the devil.

And there's one poignant story actually recorded where the, you know, the Swiss word for, the German word for herb is kraut and the Swiss version of it is crudely.

So the Swiss witches that were being prosecuted and the inquisitors said, well, who is your, who is your God?

What makes you have these visions and these journeys?

And they would keep saying crudely.

And so the inquisitors wrote in their books, they call their God crudely.

They call the devil whom they have intercourse with crudely because he's the one that takes them off on these journeys.

So as a result, the knowledge got lost.

So the lore, the herbal lore of the Middle Ages that the witches preserved was completely lost.

I mean, the inquisition took place between the 14th to 18th century.

So that's comparatively recently.

And the scapegoating mechanism, incidentally, there also at play, which is very important,

is the same exact mechanism that surfaces later than in the 20th century with the genocide.

In that case, it's the Jews who, a particular race, was singled out as being the scapegoat.

And in the earlier inquisition, which has exactly the same pattern of the patriarchal power structure imposing this,

used to pick the women as being the scapegoat at the time.

Hopefully, one of the things that has to happen is that we go beyond the need for scapegoating

and take responsibility for our own growth and learning.

Embedded in all the monotheistic texts are the mention of women as creatures, so she has to be controlled.

Right. Right.

And Francis Bacon, who initiated the experimental method in science, talked about nature actually having to be violated.

We have to force her secrets from her by force, by violence.

It's sort of rapacious and...

Use the metaphor of the torture.

The torture.

The torture nature to get out of here her secrets.

Whereas, true science...

See, there is to me, there is a true science.

Much of what we call science is not true.

There are a few individual scientists who are true scientists.

They are the true...

Like alchemists, they are lovers of nature.

Like Albert Hoffman is a lover of nature.

And he who loves nature and approaches nature with love and loving understanding is given nature's secret as a gift.

As a grace.

As a gift, which is why he was given it.

Question on types of hallucinogens.

You mentioned the psilocybin.

That was good for sex.

And mescaline...

That's also good for sex, right?

It's also...

They're all good for sex.

I've seen the Yawkees dance and they take mostly peyote, which has mescaline in it.

Which is near methamphetamine.

What about scopolamine?

What does that do for you?

And what about DMT?

What does that do for you?

And what about DMT?

What does that emphasize?

Well, I mean, it's good that these questions are asked.

The real source of information is largely folkloric in our own culture.

Because, of course, we live in a society where research is not allowed.

So it's all underground and clandestine.

But you ask about scopolamine.

Scopolamine is, along with L-heil-siamine and other things, the active ingredient in

jimson weed, which, because of Carlos Castaneda and the practices of brujeria in Mexico, is

well known as a psychoactive plant.

It certainly is psychoactive, whether it is psychedelic or not.

Maybe more like madness or something?

It's a kind of delirious frenzy.

You go between delirium and frenzy and you have a great deal of trouble remembering.

It's what's called state-bounded.

If you try to dis- or, you know, from my own point of view, if I were to try to describe

my- the ideal shamanic plant, what it would do, it- it would not interfere with the short-term

and long-term memory.

It would clear your system very quickly.

Uh, and it would be highly visionary.

I'm- I am, I guess, just the kind of personality that values vision.

So I really think it's weird when people say they took drug X and it was wonderful.

And you say, well, did you hallucinate?

And they say, well, no.

Well, then what was so wonderful about it?

I mean, there must have been something, a feeling.

But for me, what is fascinating is just the indole hallucinogens.

This very small family, which includes psilocybin, LSD, Ibogaine,

the harmaline and harmine, the beta-carbolines.

Did I say DMT?

Yeah.

And that's it.

I see.

Not even, not even mescaline, which marks me as a kind of Calvinist in some people's books.

I always wonder why the audience could dance so long.

It's really amazing.

It's because it's an amphetamine.

It really is so.

And, and, but, but these indole hallucinogens, what we're trying to get out here is,

we're trying to appear to be sane and rational people.

So we don't seize you by the lapels and shake you.

But what we're trying to get out here is that these things contain something that our art,

our history, our literature, our religion did not prepare us for.

And it appears to be an alien god, an unknown dimension,

the edge of our ideological world in some way.

Big excitement, not prolonged erection or enhanced memory or ability to rave all night

or ability to recall instances of molestation in your childhood,

which may or may not have even occurred.

But something else, something really transcendental, completely astonishing.

And that as a rationalist, I think we have no right to expect that it exists.

Most people don't know that it exists.

People go from birth to the grave and never have the faintest inkling that there are these things in the environment

which can just turn them upside down.

Set elves crawling through your drawers and jumping out of...

I mean, really, reality just comes apart.

If you've never had that experience, be assured that you could.

A lot of people live their lives in the faith that there is no Santa Claus.

Well, I've got news for you.

One thing I might add about scopolamine is that scopolamine and atropine and hyosamine,

which are derived from these nightshades, solanacea nightshades,

were important psychoactives in the witches,

which is the European medieval shamanic tradition.

And they seem to produce a kind of a visionary,

but different than the psilocybin or indol tryptamine kinds of visions,

accompanied by kind of like a twilight sleep,

what brain researchers refer to as a theta state, just before sleep,

where you get these kind of images that you get a sequence of images,

like dream-like, and then you kind of fade out.

You go into sleep, which is why...

And then you may wake up again and have a few more images

and your body feels very heavy and kind of asleep,

and yet you're having these visions.

It's interesting that...

So there's that sense of confusion.

You're not quite sure, did you see this?

Did you dream it?

What was it?

That kind of thing.

And because it's a detachment from the body,

scopolamine was quite commonly used in childbirth.

The generations of women gave birth to children

while in this kind of delirial twilight sleep state.

It was also used by the SS as a truth serum,

because they thought they could extract information.

In that state?

Uh-huh.

Thank you.

Sure.

Can you talk about evil games?

Oh, here.

This guy.

In a recent article, the same magazine that Ralph mentioned,

in terms of your mushroom article,

Ralph Metzner wrote an article,

along with another person whose name I don't recall,

is MDMA.

And my sense was that you, Ralph,

pretty much extolled the virtues of MDMA

for experiences in the generic kind

that we're discussing here today.

Terrence, you give criteria

when you talk about what you think are useful,

a useful criteria for substance selection,

in terms of what you think would be helpful for people

that are interested in choosing or knowing the plants

or knowing the substances that they're interested in

for consciousness, expansion, etc.

And I just wonder if you both could comment

on what you think about MDMA.

It's had a lot of press.

There seems to be certain camps

that think it has a great virtue,

and some people feel that it's just an excuse

to take amphetamine.

The yuppies cocaine.

Do you want to go first?

By the way, you go first.

Oh no, you go first.

Give him the bad news.

You give him the bad news,

I'll give him the good news.

Well, it's a complicated question,

and so I will give a complicated answer,

which is the only answer that is true.

First of all, it's a moving situation.

Research is going on constantly.

A couple of years ago, the question was,

is MDMA good or bad?

Now I think, although Ralph may disagree,

the question has become, how bad is it?

You have to talk, first of all,

about the psychoactivity,

and then the physiological activity.

The psychoactivity seems entirely solitary.

People report tremendous breakthroughs in their personal growth.

As a drug of abuse, I don't think that's really a problem,

although some people have proven that they can take a great deal of it.

Where the pharmacology stands as of ten days ago or so is,

it does destroy in the rat at very fairly low exposures.

In other words, only twice a human level exposure.

It destroys certain microscopic structures on the dendrite of the nerve.

Now, the problem is, no one knows what these microscopic structures do,

and there is no behavioral sequelae, great word,

no behavioral sequelae that accompany the visible destruction of these structures.

So, there are three possibilities, or there are several possibilities.

One is, that whatever this structure on the dendrite is,

it is not important past puberty.

Think of it as a scaffold around a building,

which once erected, the scaffold remains,

but is not performing any function.

Therefore, this destruction that we see is not a problem.

Or, it may be that it's cumulative over a long period.

What it basically does is, it seems to show aging of brain structure very rapidly.

At 120 days, again in the rat, there's no reversal of this.

At 240 days, there's no reversal of this.

So, but, there is another drug, I think it's called finfluridine,

that is used to manage psychotics,

and it also destroys, in exactly the same way, the very same structures.

And it has been used with impunity in mental hospitals for 15 years.

So, what I say about MDMA is, that a prudent course would be to wait and see.

If it's really bad, they're going to find out.

If it remains in this somewhat nebulous place,

well, that means the people who think it's bad are actually losing ground.

As a general rule, I never was very excited about MDMA,

because I'm just very suspicious of synthetics.

And one of the things that is really terrible about the cultural climate that we're operating in was,

here was MDMA, a drug with an apparent potential in psychotherapy,

that actually became popular in psychotherapy.

And because there was no process for legalizing it, it was never tested at all.

That's what the FDA gave us with ADAM, was an utterly untested psychoactive drug,

because they refused to test it.

So, the fruits of ignorance are dendritic ablation, in this case.

Well, because they refused to test it, because they couldn't persuade any drug companies to test it,

because the drug companies couldn't market it, because the patent had already expired,

and it cost the drug company $5 million on the average, or more,

to take a drug through the human and clinical trial necessary,

before it can be approved and prescribed.

But don't you think, in a civilized society,

if they know people are taking this drug, the government itself should pay for this study?

Right, and in some other countries, that's exactly what happens.

In England, for example, it may still happen that way.

England may, in fact, still end up with a legal form of MDMA being possible,

because they run their sort of system a little differently than we do.

I think the only thing I would add to what Terence has said,

I mean, I basically share those views.

I think that, in a kind of a basic sense,

if you're talking about the whole spectrum of psychedelic and psychoactive drugs,

ADAM is just not that interesting.

It happens to be the most effective drug so far discovered for psychotherapy,

for helping people sort out their emotional entanglements, emotional attachments,

and balancing out the emotional nature.

And that sometimes takes one session with MDMA, sometimes two, sometimes half a dozen,

in a therapeutic kind of context, and many therapists found that this was the case.

And there's a book that we published called Through the Gateway of the Heart,

which is available in the bookstore if you want to read an account,

selection of accounts of experiences that people have had with it in a therapeutic context.

And it's not visionary.

Myself and somebody else simultaneously independently came up with the term empathogenic for it.

Generating a state of empathy simply seems to produce this kind of opening of the heart center,

from which then people can relate.

They can look at their problems with empathy.

They can look at other people, their relationships,

and they can sort of just balance it out, clear it out.

But apart from that, once people have done that,

number one, people report that after having done that a few times,

they can get to that same state of open-heartedness without it.

That's not it.

And number two, that nothing much happens. There's very little content.

Unless you have a problem to work on, there's really no reason or somebody that you want to relate to and bond with and explore the relationship.

What we should be doing is really the opposite of what we actually do.

When we discover, what we should be doing, it seems to me, is when we discover a synthetic drug that seems to have promise in treatment or whatever, psychically or physically,

then we should try to look for the plant or animal analog for the natural product that we could then work with in that way.

We do the opposite, of course.

If we find a plant that's promising, we go in there, we extract whatever it is, then we synthesize that, and then we sell that back to the third world countries.

And that often is then completely different, you know.

Cocaine, synthetic cocaine, is a completely different story than coca leaf.

Coca leaf chewing is a health-maintaining practice.

Cocaine snorting is a death-dealing practice.

The same difference between sugar cane, raw sugar cane, or sugar beet, is a completely, it's a nutritional food.

Refined sugar is probably an addictive poison.

And so I see the MDMA has a potential, you know, in the use of therapy, and it's very effective that way.

But for people that want to heighten creativity, explore visions, other states of consciousness, it's not that interesting.

And finally, I would say that the search for the closest plant analog of MDMA has already been pursued by some people.

And I think the closest that we've come to so far is low doses of peyote.

Low-dose peyote in extract form, tincture form, is an experience very similar to MDMA.

The same kind of open-heartedness, the same kind of empathy, the same kind of energizing of attention, with certain advantages.

And it does not seem to produce the kind of amphetamine drop afterwards that MDMA does.

And it doesn't lose, lower your, doesn't cut your appetite.

In fact, enhances your appetite and makes you eat.

And there seems to be something that happens with proteins, which then enhance and prolong the effect.

So that's another reason why you get the drop in energy with the MDMA is because you don't eat.

And this doesn't have that disadvantage.

So go with peyote.

Yes, I want to ask you something about what's really going on, and everybody's a part of this.

I've just been experiencing myself personally a synergy or an accelerating of some kind of, I hate to call it a psychedelic movement,

but in the past three months, the LA Weekly article comes out and I see Terrence McKenna reopens the doors of perception.

And then I hear on the radio two weeks later, on KCRW, Mitchell Harding talks about the time he's doing acid.

And every Friday there's like Sound of Sixers talking about doing acid.

And I go, how come I haven't heard this for the past five, six, seven years at all?

If I just, my ear's been shut, I've just been oblivious.

Is it just because I'm starting to listen more?

Or have you had a similar experience in the past few weeks, maybe past few months,

a very fast growing interest by a lot of people?

And I just have experienced it in Los Angeles, or this, but nobody's talked about it.

It seems like for five years, and suddenly I'm hearing all this input, and I'm fascinated, and I'm turned on,

and I'm going, this is great.

Why did I think about this six months ago?

Why has it happened just now?

And it seems to be happening so fast and so strong.

Is this true for you?

Well, I think there's some kind of critical mass.

Something is going on.

But, you know, some of us have been talking about psychedelics for nearly ten years,

and from the very beginning people said, you know, this must be it.

This must be the second wave.

I mean, people have been anticipating and announcing the second wave since 1980.

Maybe it is.

I don't know.

I mean, right now, the most repressive drug measure imaginable is making its way through the United States Congress.

Yeah, this is a very minority position that you're looking at here.

This is the Ohio Foundation.

When George Bush is elected, they're going to confront people with the choice of a drug-free society

with a trashed Bill of Rights, or the present state of anarchy.

They're very upset.

These polls which show that, you know, the number one issue is drugs.

What a propaganda job you have to have done.

I mean, there are people starving by the millions,

thermonuclear weapons stacked like cordwood,

people not saluting the flag.

And they say the number one issue is drugs.

I mean...

Well, I think that's it.

That the drug issue, which when Ralph, God knows, after the 60s, but in the second wave,

when I started talking about it 10 years ago,

we were just trying to get psychotherapists interested in looking at these things in therapy.

And meanwhile, all this stuff is going on about crack and heroin and Noriega and this and that.

So I think what it is is that drugs are apparently on the historical agenda.

We cannot exist half stoned and half down.

We are involved in a process testing whether this nation or any nation can be...

No, I'm kidding.

The point is, though, you see,

intelligence agencies have a huge addiction of their own,

an addiction for untraceable money.

And since World War II,

they have, whenever they got tight for money,

fallen back on their connections in the junk trade and the coke trade.

And this was more or less overlooked

because it allowed the creation of clandestine anti-communist armies

in places like Central Burma and South America and Iran.

But now what's happened is that these international dope cartels

have grown actually stronger than the governments that originally created them.

So now there's a great deal of hand-wringing

in the chancelleries and war planning rooms

because the drug thing appears to have run amok.

And I think that we're going to have to probably look at...

I think the government's concern is

they don't know where they'll get all this illicit money

if they legalize drugs,

but they seem to have set their own house on fire.

They have a tendency to do this.

I mean, I think of George Bush as a man

who, when he sets his hair on fire,

he puts it out with a hammer.

And the psychedelic issue is this tiny subset

never mentioned over in some corner

while they wrestle about who gets the money.

That's the real drug issue from the point of view of government.

Yeah, Joan.

Well, I think there's another factor here

which was mentioned earlier,

and that is with the increase of regulation

of all aspects of our lives

so that there's a real decrease of freedom on all levels,

that the impulse to actually create a context of liberation

breaks out on many levels of society,

not the least of which is the nostalgia

for what broke open in the 60s.

I agree.

And not the least of which is the commercialization of shamanism.

Oh, yeah.

People want authentic experience.

People want some way of authenticating their lives.

I mean, we're just sinking in an ocean of bullshit and propaganda

led down the primrose path at the end of the 20th century,

so narcotified and propagandized

and sold out and undercut,

and people want some way of breaking out of that.

And it's known for the presidential election either

where the shadow economy of the narcotizing drugs

is in the background of this whole electoral process

and is actually the unexploded bomb in the campaign.

But I mean, it's kind of...

That's right.

I mean, the drug in question is really up for grabs.

It's not, by the way,

I don't think it's not only cocaine and heroin,

it's also alcohol.

It's the whole range of anesthetic, of set...

Well, if you want to talk about...

A new way of talking about the drug problem would be,

let's talk about drugs in terms of what they do.

What do we want and what do they do?

So, here you have a family of drugs

and the typical image of the addict.

What is a drug addict?

Well, it's a person who has an obsessive behavior pattern

that is unexamined

and that causes them to return again and again

to the same source of stimulus

or the same source of stimulus

without ever cognizing the reason why.

In other words, unexamined behavior

is what is alarming about drug addiction,

that people behave like they are obsessed.

Well, on that scale,

then the most powerful drug of the late 20th century

is television

and propaganda.

And the way in which we consume propaganda is amazing.

I mean, the most intelligent of us,

the ones who hold ourselves most aloof

are probably junkies through and through

when it comes to the media.

And the media just makes you stupider

and stupider and stupider.

You become less able to formulate a creative response,

less able to tell what is real and what is not,

less able to empower yourself.

And it's just more and more and more of it.

The average American watches

six and a half hours of TV per day.

Average.

Imagine if a drug that you smoke or shoot or snort

had been introduced into this country

after World War II

and that now the average American

was consuming six and a half hours a day of this thing.

I mean, you would have the fundamentalists

foaming at the mouth.

There would be riots in the street.

It's that we define these things so oddly.

We don't attempt to make sense.

What I was trying to say this morning

about the fact that we must change our minds.

We must change our minds.

Business as usual will lead

to exacerbated conflict over resources and turf

and eventually thermonuclear catastrophe.

If the evolution of consciousness

is not the way to solve the world's problems,

then I don't know what it is.

Well, the psychedelics were originally described

as consciousness expanding drugs.

That was the phenomenological description

of what they were.

We need to intervene in our own psyches.

We cannot afford the luxury

of an unconscious mind

that can throw up a Hitler or a Khomeini.

We cannot afford

the unexamined obsessive behavior pattern

that leads us into a conditioned response

when somebody leans on our territory

or insults our racial heritage

or something like that.

We have to realize

that it is going to take

creative intellectual engineering

to steer us through

the narrow valley of being.

And it's always been that way.

This is what shamanism is.

It's using plants to balance

and control what is otherwise

an extremely violence-prone neurotic species.

The price we pay

when the symbiotic relationship

to the rest of nature

is interrupted,

we lose our bearings.

I'm not talking metaphorically.

I don't mean about sniffing the air

and making medicine wheels.

I mean about putting

the chemicals,

the enzymes from the natural environment

into your body

that create the seamless web

that unites us

to the purpose of the planet.

These psychedelic compounds

are bearing information.

They are pheromones

from the body of Gaia

that we, by imbibing,

can then attune ourselves

to the larger purposes of nature

so that we then can fit ourselves

into the picture.

We have a purpose.

It is to care for the planet,

to nurture it

and lead it forward

much the way bees do,

much the way termites do,

but we are conscious creatures.

Our caring,

our honey-making,

our architectonic activities

operate on a different epistemic mode

because we have somehow

one foot in a higher dimension.

This is the mystery

of our selves.

I just want to do this

off the shoulder

and a little number

and just look at it

just because,

I mean,

this is a hell of a rave.

So do the number already.

It's real simple.

The mushroom's growing bullshit.

As I listen to you,

I feel like the mushroom

is out there

and it's kind of like an implant

when you take it

and it actually shifts the context

whereas I look at it

in a certain way

as not the end

but one of the means

and that it's not an implant

but it's actually a context actualizer,

if you will.

It actually opens,

it's a biochemical key

that opens the door

to what's already there.

Oh yeah,

it isn't an implant,

it's that

if you're not stoned,

you're down

and to glorify that

in this Calvinistic way

that this society does

is to say,

you know,

only the depressed

perceive correctly.

Only the despairing

truly understand.

Only those who have given up hope

have recognized the real situation.

That's Western civilization's

message to itself

and it's just ridiculous.

No wonder people are down.

Look at the history

of Western Europe.

All these gloomy

male dominator types

running around

with sword and tongs

to exterminate

all unorthodoxy

to push the goddess religions

to the frontier.

Priestcraft,

beastly little priests,

you know,

it was Voltaire,

I think,

who said,

mankind will know

no peace

until the last priest

is strangled

in the entrails

of the last politician.

And,

you know,

if we're talking about

shamanism,

we're talking about

the primary stratum

of religious experience

which has been ripped off

and sold down the river

by every band

of beastly little priesties

that have ever come along.

And they were the inventors

of hierarchical orthodoxy.

They are the ones

who taught kings

and popes

their trade.

And it's true

that what they're against

is the experience.

They're not against,

it's not the drug per se.

That's also true

for the psychoactive drug.

Their importance

is not

the drug.

It's not the plant,

even.

It's the fact,

it's the experience

that they open up for you.

That's the real significance.

And that's the significant difference

between

psychedelic drugs

and all other drugs.

Cocaine, heroin,

alcohol,

barbiturates,

amphetamines,

all alter your consciousness.

They don't teach you anything.

The psychedelic plants

are teaching intelligences

with which

we have the ability

to enter into a relationship

from which

we can learn something

about our role

on this planet,

on this earth,

in the network,

in the interconnected web

of all life.

So you can have

the experience

that people have had

that you can learn

from a plant,

from eating a plant,

what it means

to be a human being.

When you think about it,

that's pretty peculiar.

Well, one teacher

that I worked with

called them actually

teacher plants.

Yeah, sure.

Sexuality is a good

intermediate example here

because orgasm

is a buzz

and you don't have

to wonder

if they would have

illegalized it

if they could have.

You know,

it's what alarms them

and so they make you

feel guilty

about masturbation.

God forbid

that you should even

have impure thoughts.

They just, you know,

try to say,

you know,

do not experience

your body.

Do not elevate

your mind.

Do not touch anything

which empowers you,

which authenticates you,

which unifies you

to yourself

and other people.

All that is bad.

We will tell you

where God is.

We will answer

all questions.

So the drugs really,

it's interesting,

they are like

an augmentation

of felt experience,

exactly like sexuality is.

And I think

it's sexuality

that has kept us sane.

If they could have

repressed it,

they would have,

God knows,

they tried hard enough.

Now that's been

broken open.

The clawed hand

of the paternal male ego

has been being

slowly forced open

for about 500 years.

I mean,

it's been a long march.

These guys had it all

sewed up around the year

1100 or something.

Three thousand.

Well,

it comes and goes.

Last week,

the Senate closed the hand

a little.

How?

There's an anti-cornography

bill that's just been

passed by the Senate

that's running its way

to the House.

Yes,

well,

this is another way of...

Print, cable,

television,

et cetera.

And mysticism,

mystical experience,

even without drugs.

Mystics have always

been heretics.

They've always been at odds.

The church has always

felt uncomfortable.

I knew a man

who was thrown out

of his monastery

for having mystical experience,

nothing to do with drugs.

He just kept having

spontaneous mystical visions

and they said,

you don't belong here.

Oh.

They were saints

on the Catholic calendar.

What?

They were psychiatrically

evaluated.

Yeah.

And off they went.

I don't know,

Jackie, isn't that true?

Yeah.

They told him,

go out and have a family,

you know,

get it out of your system.

The general social attitude

toward madness,

the fact that shamans,

witch doctors,

this is what they were called

until 30 years ago

when anthropology rescued

the term shaman,

there's great fear

of getting off the track,

of leaving the idols

of the tribe behind.

And yet the momentum

of the idols of the tribe

have pushed us

to the point

of global catastrophe.

We must get off the track.

The track leads

right straight over the edge

into an abyss.

Obliteration.

But the direction,

don't you think

we should be talking

more to our leaders?

I mean,

they should be

experiencing

the same psychedelic things

that we're experiencing.

Well,

the question then becomes

who are our leaders?

In fact,

we know who our leaders are.

They're the people in power.

Well,

but there's different

centers of power.

For instance,

different kinds of leadership

too.

Well,

I agree.

I think that the managerial

temperament

is the one

who has to be reached.

That the people

who control

world banking,

world commerce,

the direction

of scientific research,

and I think

these people

can be reached.

I think

that

to a degree

greater than

we tend

to realize

they are

our peers.

It's a matter

simply,

I think you can

convince anybody

of the rightness

of this position.

I mean,

well,

I think I could.

I can't imagine

how you could

flatten me.

there is some interesting

for that reason,

I worry

that making it

a mass phenomenon

now

in some ways

will antagonize them

and make it

more difficult.

Well,

I don't think

we're in any danger

of making it

a mass phenomenon.

I mean,

Tim Leary,

in the great heyday

of the 60s,

talked to more

people before lunch

than I have

talked to

in my entire

speaking career.

I mean,

he addressed crowds

of 150,000 people.

That's not the way

to do it.

I think

Aldous Huxley

had a much

better notion,

which is

to reach

the people

who are themselves

catalytically active

in society.

and to me

that means

the writers,

producers,

designers,

choreographers,

artists,

teachers,

politicians,

but they

have so much,

they're so nervous.

You know,

they will be

the last

to join.

But for instance,

bankers,

the people

who own the world

need to be

convinced

that their

investment

is threatened.

That will

sober them up.

And I think

they are.

I think

the greenhouse

effect,

once we get

this summer

into the bag

and the world

statistics are

jotted up

and we see

how many

billions of

dollars

the greenhouse

effect

cost

people

who own

the cereal

producing lands

of the western

hemisphere,

they meet.

They're concerned.

I think

the turn

is on.

You know,

H.G. Wells

said,

history is a race

between education

and catastrophe.

Well,

it's neck

and neck

in the home

stretch,

but I don't

think anybody

should tear up

their ticket

and toss it

in the air.

One interesting

thing that's

happening too

is that people

are now,

this economist,

Michael Phillips,

for example,

has made this

interesting prediction

that the 90s,

see,

there was an

interesting parallel

between the 1960s

and the 1890s.

there were

times of

social revolution

and new ideas,

but those ideas

didn't really

get into legislation

until the teen years,

which would be

30 years later

when the people

that were the

teenagers

and early adults

during that time

of social upheaval

become the majority

in Congress.

See,

we had,

in the 60s,

we had,

you know,

the social

and the sexual

and the ecological

revolution.

We even had

legislation like

the EPA

and so forth,

but they all

get watered down

and basically

it comes back

to making deals

and business as usual,

but by the 90s,

he's predicting,

again,

we will have

the 60s baby boom

generation

will be a majority

in Congress

so that that is a time

when they think

that there will be

a legislation passed

that will put teeth

into a lot

of these movements

including the

environmental thing

which is,

you know,

forcing itself

on everybody's

attention anyway.

So I think

there are some

helpful signs

in that direction.

Nancy's halfway

there with astrology,

I mean.

Politics makes

strange bedfellers.

I need to say

something about

the high school.

I take LSD

and various psychedelics

with a lot

of high school

children

and I've been

put scapegoat

by the police

and various

communities

as a threat

of corrupting

the morals

of their children

and I have been

in two torture

chambers

and one in Florida

and one in Colorado

for that.

What I wanted

to say was

that the law

just put all drugs

including psychedelics

in a taboo thing

and a lot

of the high school

children

they're taking

all kinds

of drugs

and I've taken

LSD

that they have

given me

and it's not

real LSD

and it affects

your nervous system

it makes you shake

it doesn't make you aware

it makes you dumb

and so

but they're buying

LSD in high school

anywhere from

two dollars

to eight dollars

a dose

and it's not

real LSD

and I turned them

on to real LSD

and they love it

and they play around

with computers

in class

on real LSD

and I've been

well you're a real

menace to the youth

but you're right

they get great grades

from real LSD

so what I'm saying

is that somehow

there has to be

a real LSD

to distribute it

it feels like

it does

well what

there has to be

is an uncorruptible

source of psychedelic

experience

and you know

in a sanctuary

environment also

well

in some way

it has to be

uncorruptible

and the best way

that I've found

is to urge people

to grow mushrooms

because

the mushroom itself

then acts

as the purity

maintainer

the quality control

you can see

what it is

when you have LSD

in front of you

you have a little piece

of paper

or a little piece

of gelatin

who knows

what this is

you know

and some way

to extract the drugs

from the market economy

this was what

undid the 1960s

some people

got high on LSD

and other people

realized you could

make a fortune

on it

and once that

realization

hit home

it was all

she wrote

so there has to be

you know

some way

of taking

the opportunity

to create

a huge financial empire

out of it

and how this is done

I'm not sure

but

the simplest solution

I think

is grow your own

and depend on nature

nature

is a bountiful storehouse

this is where

these things

come from

and

grow or gather

somebody over here

we haven't done much

over here

this late

can you

this question is for Terrence

can you speak

a bit about

your experience

in some of the

older societies

you've lived in

and

the relationship

between

visual artists

artisans

object makers

and

shamanism

shall I repeat

your question

the question was

could I speak

about

the relationship

of artists

to shamanism

in

some of the

more

the pre-literate

Amazon societies

that I've been in

well

I think

you know

people have

the notion

about

tribal people

that they

that their life

is very hard

in some environments

in some situations

it is

but people try

everywhere

to create leisure

for themselves

and to have

an opportunity

for aesthetic

expression

in psychedelic

societies

everything

is

art

I'm thinking

particularly

of

for instance

the shipibo

in their

classic expression

the shipibo

are an

Amazonian tribe

that shipibo

is very good

so

I think

it's very good

but

that's

very good

Amen

for instance

the shipibo

in their

neighboring

the shipibo

is very good

and

it's very good

to go to our

somehow

and

to the shipibo

is very good

and

as

little

the shipibo

is very good

to the shipibo

They cover every utilitarian object with design.

Everything is an expression of the images of the internal world.

And language and puns and this sort of thing become very important.

When you have nothing, life is easily transformed into art

because there's a how-ness about everything.

How you make a fire, how you cast a pot, how you cook a monkey.

Everything is a paradigmatic activity,

meaning everything is traditional,

everything has been done millions of times before

in the way that your people do it.

And so the individual is seen almost like just the cutting edge of the ancestral energy.

And they even have the concept of what they call the way of the ancestors.

And so you'll be doing something like sharpening a stick.

And someone will come up to you and say,

don't do it that way.

We do it this way.

This is the way of the ancestors.

Then they show you how to do it.

And sure enough, it is easier to do it that way.

Probably because this is the morphogenetic field of the how-ness.

And I think Ralph mentioned this morning

the confluence of yoga, alchemy, and shamanism

in the Taoist tradition.

And I think it's worth stressing that

because to my mind, Taoism is the most refined ideal of human existence.

It is open-ended.

It always yields to a good laugh.

It's not dogmatic.

It's rooted in nature.

It sees the world as shells of energy that can be manipulated and cultivated.

And I really see Taoism as something broader than the nature religion that arose in southern China

pre-Confucius and so forth.

I see it as the kind of natural way of being in the world

that tribal, tribally alive societies settle into.

And it's what we're trying to recreate,

appropriate activity.

That alone would create a world-informing revolution.

When I say that we must change our minds,

the physical accompaniment to changing our minds

is that we will begin to behave appropriately,

bury our shit, manage our resources,

lower our voices.

It's simply awareness.

Awareness and awareness of awareness.

And this is what these societies have that we have lost.

And I think it's because the male ego is a wart on human perfection.

And everybody has one.

It's not a put down of man.

The male ego is a part of the repertoire of every human personality in the modern world.

But it is unnecessary, divisive, and out of Tao.

And this reconnection with the Tao, with the flow, with the invisible,

the spirits, the energies of sky and water and earth,

the psychedelics impel us into recognizing these things.

But it's our own intent that can allow us to bring these things back into the world

and apply them.

So for me, that was the lesson of so-called primitive people.

You want to talk about that?

Well, the only thing I would add to it would be that the male ego

has come out of touch, but it can be reconnected.

There's nothing inherent in that structure,

that psychic structure or function in itself.

The ego is simply that function through which means of which we function in the world.

What gets it into trouble is this thing of assuming that it knows the only reality

and it has a claim to value over other.

It's not a relatedness.

It's a superior, separative, superior, dominating, controlling trip that it tries to run.

But at the same time, the Taoists show to a way of functioning with decisiveness.

Taoism is not a passive or inert or quietistic religion or practice at all.

It's being able to act and to function with the flow, with the grain of nature

so that your actions are in harmony with nature and therefore by themselves successful.

Taoism has proven itself to be remarkably resilient.

It's not by any means a religion of ancient China.

It's a 5,000-year or longer tradition and teaching that is alive and well to this day

in communist China and other parts of the world.

And we also have to recognize that we're not going to be able to go back

to a hunter-gatherer lifestyle.

We're never going to recreate great areas of wilderness we've lost.

We're never going to be able to get away from city living.

There is such a thing as urban shamanism and it's one of our tasks to really invent that.

That's something brand new.

Aboriginal cultures do not have it.

How do you live in a city environment in the late 20th century

while recognizing that in this city environment too,

the other worlds, the worlds of spirits, of animals and plants,

is right there in the streets of New York and under the concrete in the sewers.

Some of you may have seen his film, The Last Wave, which is about the Australian Aboriginal,

the survival of an Australian Aboriginal culture under the streets of Sydney.

It's a very interesting story.

So this is where, you know, this is going to require all the resourcefulness that we can come up with.

We have to study the past, take, you know, the valuable lessons that we've forgotten,

bring them back into, put them together with the new information that we're getting

that science has presented us with,

plus our knowledge of the limitations of the existing political structures,

and go to work and use whatever you can.

How do we step aside from the information that, I mean, all of us here, obviously,

must think about this, this information coming through the television of the great mediator.

This fascism that's so subtle because it's so sub-embedded,

because it's entirely a censorship of the economy.

So you experience it as just a pragmatic reality.

You don't experience it as what it is, controlling and telling us how we are to perceive reality.

And, you know, we lost, we had the 60s, we had an inkling of the shamanic or the experiential,

and then that was pushed aside.

So I think it's a test case to watch with this election.

I'm sorry that you said when Bush is elected.

I'd like to think that's an if.

But when you talked about that unexploded bomb,

well, let's see how the forces of disinformation can repress that unexploded bomb

and allow Bush to get re-elected,

or how to learn to continue to look between the lines and not,

I mean, I was close to historical events,

learned to look between the lines,

and yet I ingest daily stuff that I don't question

because it seems low on the order of priority

whether I should look and see what is this really about.

But we're given a 360 hologrammatic redefinition of our reality

entirely through the media.

Manufacturer consent.

And lazily, we consent and co-create by ingesting it.

So that's the thing to sidestep that and look for the nature ally.

You have to look at it with the same attitude

as you look at visions presented to you in a drug state

or in a dream state,

with that same impeccability, with that same discrimination.

Keep testing, keep looking.

Use what you know.

Compare.

You know, does this true for you?

Is this what's really behind it?

What's really, what's the hidden message?

What's the hidden agenda?

And trust your instinct.

Barraging us from television or from the media is exactly.

It's a complete mix of truth

with indescribable dosages of fantasy, hallucination, projection,

disinformation, malevolent intrusions.

And there's no shortcut.

There's no way of sidestepping it.

You can't sidestep it.

You have to confront it, deal with it, look at it, know it.

But when you look at the cultural images that we've inherited,

I think it's very easy to see that monotheism is a great deal

of what lies at the root of our problem.

Because, you know, it was Jung who made the observation

that as we picture our gods,

so then do we model our psyches.

That in fact our gods are models of our psyches.

And monotheism, which is basically the idea

that God is all-powerful, omnipresent, male,

and not to be trifled with,

if that's your model of the psyche,

well then you're describing someone who's extremely pathological.

I mean, that is a pathological model of the personality.

And yet, how many generations of men have behaved

as though they were Yahweh?

And we buy into this unquestioningly.

Yahweh is the only god, the only divinity,

the only god in all of world mythology

who never has sex with a female.

Most other creation myths involve sexual

or have consorts, the Indian gods.

Yahweh, who is the Christian

and basically the Islamic god too,

is the only one who never has contact with a female,

either human or divine.

Pretty interesting, that's our god.

I'm just going to say this thing about abortion.

It's the metaphor that you'd say

that man's law would be stronger than the laws of nature

that women experience stringently

as the doors open and close, birth and death.

And that man would impose himself on the doorway

between nature through the woman's body to creation.

That's the final metaphor.

Well, that's omnipotence.

Omnipotence.

We can interfere with anything, we can do anything.

Back there, I see that.

Back here somewhere.

I mean, much of not close to all of what you say

is really pearls to my ears,

and I feel there's a resonance,

especially when people have waited

to hear something described in a certain way.

It's like coming home.

There's a real fine edge that I feel in myself

when we get to a place of an us and them really strong.

And I noticed that when this man brought up

the thing about the politicians,

there was a certain uncomfortableness

and a kind of laughter that very easily came forth.

And I know that in my work with the nuclear waste issue,

it's very easy to get in this almost victimized role.

It's like someone else is doing it to us.

And it seems to me in part of almost strategizing together

if we really want this truth that you're describing

to really be present on this planet and in our midst,

that there's one aspect of like we have work to do ourselves.

That's to me the strongest thing that you said.

If you can really embody it impeccably

and continue to look at your own homework,

that you don't have to so much worry about

what's going on around you.

But there's another place where it seems to me

we do have to worry or be concerned

or care for what's going on around us.

And in being impeccable on that level,

it seems to me that some of the mind change

has to do with the shift of us, them,

and seeing them as the enemy and us as the victim.

And I know that in the nuclear work,

one of the strongest things we did

was to take a group of people down to Westinghouse,

down to where they're supposedly

burying the waste in the ground

to see that the people that have taken on this job

are actually, they really believe

they're doing the right thing

and they really believe that they're doing it for us.

And to almost from that place of common ground

start trying to share this information.

So I'm wondering in terms,

I guess I just really felt personally

to comment about that

in face of this us-them place

that we can get into

and to see if you have any comments

about our impeccability

in terms of dealing with this situation correctly.

Thank you.

Yeah, well, I don't really think

in terms of us and them.

I don't, I really resist paranoia.

I don't believe in conspiracy theories

or I don't believe that anybody is running the world.

I think it has a life of its own.

I think that, I agree with you,

the major task is the task of working on oneself

but not entirely to the exclusion

of social responsibility.

The major contribution most people can make

in the theater of social responsibility

is clarity of thought and intention.

The general tone of the discussion arises

out of the quality of the people participating in it.

And you can reach most people

if you will start with something

that they're familiar with

and then try and lead them out of it.

I mean, I'm amazed in all the years

that I've been talking about the things

that I talk about.

I have never been heckled, ever.

No one has ever stood up quaking

with righteous wrath

and quoted chapter and verse

or denounced me.

And it's because I will argue with anybody

unto the ninth hour if necessary.

I really think that the best ideas

will come to the fore

and that there are no evil people.

There is no group with behavior.

I mean, who among us cannot think back

on our own behavior

to moments that hardly exemplify the Guyan ethic?

So then how can we expect more

or anything better than that

from other people?

The real task, I think,

is one of linking together

through communication,

which people don't realize

when they're not communicating.

But what we're doing right now,

this is a very unusual activity.

Even the most intelligent of us

go through our ordinary day

basically with grunts and groans.

That's how we signal to each other.

But creating a shared mind space,

a consensus of understanding,

requires people talking to each other

and clearly speaking from the heart

about what they know and understand.

Ralph introduced me

to the notion of clairparlence.

This is a psychic ability

that we're trying to cultivate.

Clairparlence is clear speech.

You know, William Blake said,

the truth cannot be told

so as to be understood

without being believed.

that's the greatest weapon

the truth is, has.

That if it is articulated

and you hear it,

you will serve it.

And so will George Bush

and so will anybody else who hears it.

The power of the truth

is its immediate limpid rightness.

And so cognitive activity

and this really goes back

to the theme of the weekend

which is shamanism.

To my mind,

what shamans really are

are people who indulge

in cognitive activity.

They communicate.

They dance.

They sing.

They chant.

They tell stories.

They speak out.

They orate.

They pray.

They communicate.

And in so doing,

they empower everyone around them

to open their hearts

and their minds.

Reagan was a shaman.

There is a shaman.

Oh yes.

It's stage magic.

And there is this...

And you can't understand

why it works.

And it is morally neutral.

This is the other thing.

I mean, Goebbels...

You can forget Ronald Reagan.

This is a piker and a buffoon.

Joseph Goebbels

was the man who understood

the power of information

and communication.

And if he believed

the best idea wins,

then he can only shake his head

at the fate that overtook his ideas.

Because here was a millennial dream

that 12 years after it was launched,

people were living in basements on rats.

So it's a matter of allowing the ideas

to fully express themselves through us.

We can only advance into the future

at the rate at which we can transform our language.

And we can only transform our language

by working with it.

This is why design and art and music

and all of these things

are so important.

The artist,

who appears to be the weakest among us,

actually creates the context

for everything to happen in.

So that it's so bizarre

to hear right-wing politicians,

for instance,

talk about terms like

spin and hype.

And, I mean,

they use the language

by grafting certain concepts

onto the language.

You make it impossible

for people not to agree with you.

You actually foreclose

the option of disagreement.

They know this,

and we know this.

So this is the theater

where the battle goes back and forth

to say what the world is

in such a way

that you convince everyone.

And then we can get down

to the business

of living in that world.

And history really is

this process

of trying to generate

a guiding image

that serves.

And so someone,

Christ, Mohammed, Buddha,

will project

the guiding image,

and it gels

in the unconscious

and becomes a creode

and a vast set

of historical forces

follow it

the way water

follows a dry arroyo.

But then

the way is lost.

It's not clear

which direction

the flow should go.

Then there must be

a new guiding image.

And I think

that the guiding image

that we have been

operating under,

which is

the property-owning

male citizen,

is giving way

to a new guiding image

which is

the

planetary

steward

androgyne

shaman.

And this image

reconnects us

to nature,

reconnects us

to the lost part

of ourselves

and will serve

then

until circumstances

change.

And then

it too

will have to yield

to some new definition

because we are

ultimately malleable.

We are like water.

We achieve,

we take upon ourselves

the shape

of the container

into which

we are poured.

And this is

what history is,

is the flowing

from one container

to another.

I think

that I wanted

to just

connect.

Sure.

Yeah.

I just

wanted to ask

you to comment

on a remark

you made

this morning

about

anticipating

the future

and how

information

drifts back

to time.

I thought

you would

never ask.

Can you repeat

the question?

What it

refers to

my comment

this morning

that a portion

of shamanism

is the

anticipation

of the future

by accessing

information

which drifts

backward

through time.

Well,

I think

my interpretation

of what

religion is

other than

the scheming

of eunuchs

is

there is

something there.

There is

something there

transcendent

and

compelling.

And what

it is

is I think

an anticipation

of a future

event.

An anticipation

of a future

state

of human

completedness

that actually

ahead of us

in time

our destiny

whatever it

is

is casting

an enormous

shadow

backward

into what

we call

history

and that

in fact

one way

of thinking

about history

is as

the shock

wave

which

precedes

an eschatological

event.

Fifty-five

hundred thousand

years ago

there was no

intimation

of an

eschatological

event.

There were

simply

hunters

and tribalism

and animal

existence

embedded in

the life

of the

planet.

Then slowly

there has

grown

like an

ever-increasing

downward

rolling

boulder

of a

momentum

of intuition

that there

is something

a great

change

is in store

for us

that

we are all

going to become

enlightened

or that

the Messiah

is going

to come

or that

the

extraterrestrials

are going

to rescue

us from

ourselves.

The intimation

of a sudden

shift of

epoch

and an

ingression

into

ordinary

history

of the

transcendental.

Now

some

psychologists

might say

this is

nothing more

than the

culture's

reaction

to the

inevitable

fact of

death

that every

one of

us

will

recapitulate

this

process

that

death

itself

is like

an enormous

shadow

at the

end

of

life

sending

a flickering

signal

back

through

our

existence

and when

you're

young

death

seems

far away

and has

no

power

but as

you

live

your

life

you

suddenly

realize

that

the

walls

are

growing

steeper

the

water

is

moving

swifter

there

is

a

kind

of

inevitability

and

that

you

don't

want

to

stare

this

inevitability

in the

face

well

I

think

the

historical

process

is

like

that

and

that

we

are

in

the

grip

of

what

I

call

a

singularity

that

it

the

objects

the

objects

of

our

imagination

we

are

through

cultural

evolution

actually

creating

our

own

eschatology

you

know

Plato

said

if

God

didn't

exist

man

would

invent

him

well

there

are

many

different

kinds

of

gods

for

humanity

to

invent

and

one

of

the

most

satisfying

I

years

are

reacting

to

this

is

what

inspires

the

careers

of

the

prophets

and

it

is

I

maintain

what

shamanism

is

about

we

we've

offered

many

definitions

of

shamanism

here

is

another

one

a

shaman

is

someone

who

has

seen

the

end

that's

all

once

you've

seen

the

end

it's

like

going

with

a

friend

to

a

movie

that

you've

seen

and

you have

a

completely

different

relationship

to

it

you

are

anticipating

their

enjoyment

of

it

their

moments

of

fear

anticipation

and

pleasure

but

you

are

above

them

looking

down

you

have

already

seen

the

end

you

know

the

punch

line

and

every

shaman

in

every

culture

gains

his

or

her

humor

balance

healing

ability

wisdom

if

you

will

by

having

participated

in

medical

eschatological

object

and

modernity

just denies

this

the

modern

the

theory

of

history

taught

in

the

universities

is

what's

called

the

trendlessly

fluctuating

theory

that

just

means

war

revolution

reform

revolution

war

reform

revolution

it's

like

a

random

walk

across

the

landscape

with

pressures

but

that's

all

it's

because

there

is

no

place

for

the

transcendent

in

the

scheme

of

rationalism

as we

inherit it

from the

late

you know

from

the

enlightenment

but in

fact

if

what the

psychedelic

experience

argues

what our

dreams

argue

what our

good sense

argues

is that

it is not

business

as usual

on this

planet

and

history

is not

a

random

walk

that

has

tens

of

millennia

yet

to

run

ahead

of

it

but

actually

we

have

set

off

processes

that

finalize

our

time

upon

the

earth

finalize

the

duration

of

our

present

cultural

mode

we

ending

and

so

it

shall

and

I

think

shamanism

anticipates

this

superhuman

condition

out

of

which

we

arose

in

illio

tempore

before

history

and

into

which

we

shall

be

subsumed

at

the

end

of

the

historical

peregrination

the

myth

of

our

culture

is

the

myth

of

the

prodigal

son

we

made

the

of

the

world

if

you

wish

our

job

to

recover

a

piece

of

lost

information

about

the

nature

of

the

soul

and

then

return

to

the

tribal

family

to

the

shamanic

prehistoric

and posthistoric

mode

where

then

the

fruits

of

history

will

be

not

thanatoptic

in

yi ching

versability

of

time

going

both

ways

and

also

in

that

second

book

there's

an

interesting

comment

on

the

actual

contrast

or

complementarity

of

creativity

and

transformation

was to

suggest

that

there

processes

that

counter

to

one

another

could

you

well

I

think

the

yi ching

is a

special

obsessive

interest

of

mine

specifically

the

kinds

of

things

you're

talking

about

there

is

this

body

of

commentary

that

is

pre-confusion

late

joe

early

han

that

is

puzzling

in

the

present

context

of

the

yi ching

and

I

think

this

is

what

you're

referring

to

there's

a

place

where

it

numbers refer to the future, the forward-running numbers refer to the past, and you say, well,

what does this mean? There are no backward-running or forward-running numbers, there are just

64 numbers. It's because the I Ching as we possess it today is a piece of broken machinery.

It is actually an extremely sophisticated understanding of time couched in an intellectual

and epistemic domain that we can barely cognize because it arises out of a different kind of

language stratum. But really, I think, being is a kind of interference pattern where the

forward-flowing casuistry of what are called prepotent situations, like the rolling downhill

of a ball-bearing, the momentum of happenstance, where the momentum of happenstance meets this

more mysterious carrier wave from the future, and together they form an interference pattern.

I remember I was very impressed where the Amazon River flows into the Rio Negro. These are both

huge rivers, they're each about 12 miles across where they meet each other, and so consequently,

they are like two waves coming together, and where they meet, they form a standing wave, and you can

actually sail up to this bump in the river, and it's quite large. I mean, it's five or six feet high,

and you can sail along it. It's like a ridge in the middle of the river, and you can see that all the

material is in motion, but the wave itself is stable. It is what is called a standing wave. And I think

that this is what being is. Science has attempted to give a very full account of the forward-moving momentum

of happenstance, but we have, we deny that there is appetition for the future, or that the future is

somehow shaping events. And in our denial, we are then left with a blind spot in our account of reality.

I'm going to teach a five-day workshop at Esalen, the week after Thanksgiving, in which psychedelics

will barely be mentioned, and the I Ching and its mathematical dynamics will be the entire focus of this,

because I take this notion very seriously, and have worked it out in excruciating detail,

because I think that the waveform of the Tao can be known, and was known, and that there are technologies

of interior observation, which is what yoga is, but Taoism in its early and incipient phase was a similar

kind of technology that allow real insight into the future. The future is not determined. If it were, thought would be meaningless.

But it has, it's like water flowing over a dry arroyo. The water takes the shape of its container, and the water of historical happenstance flows into the vessel of the future, which already exists, and takes its shape.

Can you comment on the opposition of creativity and transformation?

Yeah, I'm not so sure about, you see those as opposed?

I thought that one led to the other. But in reading that, it seems that there's some question, and I'm puzzled by it.

Well, I think you have to read the I Ching with a grain of salt. I mean, why does before completion come after, after completion?

There are a number of puns. I mean, it can be read as very deep, but not without humor, I think. And it is Taoistic thinking is inherently contradictory.

The coincidencia positorum used to create cognitive dissonance. So you never have the satisfaction of logical closure that you get in Hegel or somebody like that.

You're always left not sure, not knowing.

Ralph, do you want to sum this up? I got carried away here.

I thought my watch said 4.30 and it said 5 o'clock.

Well, we said we were going to stop at 5, so I don't think there's any way to try to sum it up.

Well, you could just add.

Well, one thing I just thought we have had some thoughts about tomorrow, and also maybe some of you have some particular wishes that you'd like to express about that.

But the one thought we did have about what we might do tomorrow is tell stories, rather than present ideas or information to tell stories.

Terence has some stories, I have some stories, and many of you will have some stories that are related to your theme.

And stories, I mean, one way of looking at our lives is that we're creating and living out each story, and we're trying to make it stories that are interesting and productive and life-sustaining, life-enhancing.

What are stories that are your own personal stories that have happened to you, or fairy tales, myths, or ones that you're working with in your process that you might want to share?

So, and we might want to use a staff for that, a talking staff, so that the storyteller has the staff, and pay low attention to the flow.

So, you might dream about that, you might have some dreams, and so that's what we have in mind about tomorrow.

I did want to mention one little thing that may be happening around here, and I want to mention it in the sense of sharing an observation in the spirit of perhaps some of you are also picking it up.

I had a dream last night, and I've since talked to two other people who had similar dreams last night here, in which there was some kind of attack by not-so-friendly spirits.

In my case, they were just indistinct, humanoid, could have been aliens, could have been humans, I had no way of knowing, I didn't know anything except their intent.

They caused me actually to scream in my dream, and somebody else experienced them, experienced a gang of street punk gangsters, kind of challenging, invading, intruding.

So, there may be something happening during this, or paranoia on anybody, but just to tune in, and perhaps some of you will have something to report tomorrow, or perhaps some of you know about it already.

If you do, I'd appreciate knowing about it, and there might be some opportunities to discuss it.

Pay attention, you could be the next Whitley Streber.

Yes.

Pap-duck tea.

So maybe we should end with a few minutes of drumming, and then...

When is dinner?

Kind of paths or types that are known, ways of knowledge within the kind of shamanic context that some of you may relate to.

Probably the most common one actually, the one that most people relate to, is the shaman as healer.

And this is the one that, where the shaman functions as the physical and spiritual healer of the, of his family, his or her family, and immediate village or tribe.

And does shamanic work for the purposes of healing.

Part of that includes an aspect of the warrior.

The warrior is a necessary part of the healer function, because in the process of health maintenance, the warrior function is the function that defends your body against infections and toxins.

The immune system.

The immune system is the warrior function of the body of our system, seen as an aspect of healing, maintaining the integrity of the system.

And then another very prominent path is the one that Terence referred to a great deal yesterday, was the path of the artist or the maker.

The artist, the maker of tools, the craftsman, which would include scientific inventors and people that build tools and perceptual instruments, for example.

That facilitate our perceptual and cognitive understanding of the world.

Communicate our vision.

And so, and then another path is the path of the seer or prophet or visionary in some cultures, such as the ancient, the ancient Paleolithic Basque culture of Europe, the sole surviving pre-Indo-European culture in Europe.

They have a class of people called vision makers, who are the ones that you go to if you have a problem or you need to get a, you want to get an insight into your life path, your life destiny.

A professional oracle, as it were.

So, I wanted to share that with you, because it might trigger off some thoughts about, I see different people who are engaged in shamanic work having different combinations of those different qualities.

Terence is obviously very strong on the explorer, adventurer, and the artist communicator.

I have some of the healer, also the adventurer, explorer is my main one, with some of the healer, some of the artist communicator also.

Some of the warrior, but not as much as several of my friends that I know.

One interesting additional difference between the path of the warrior and the path of the explorer that I also learned recently is that the adventurer, the warrior in terms of to seek a vision is more likely to go for an ordeal.

Where pain and stress is used as a way of expanding your perception, pushing your boundaries.

So, the kind of thing that Wallace Black Elk is wont to do of inserting himself into a hole in the ground, suspended from hooks in the chest, two days and two nights without food or water in total darkness.

That's an ordeal. See, it's not natural. I mean, you're going out of your way. Nature isn't doing that to you.

You're going out of your way to create a stressful, limiting situation in order to be able to transcend or push that limit further.

The adventurer explorer tends to, again, because the attitude isn't quite as, you know, it's not quite as hard as that of the warrior,

to go to nature herself, the wilderness, pure wilderness.

Now, wilderness may be an ordeal, but it may not be. It may be a sheer ecstasy.

And it's in the wilderness with its shifting, mysterious patterns that you have to be alert.

You can't just indulge and say, well, Mother will take care of me, because Mother Nature will not take care of you.

Mother Nature doesn't give a shit about you as an individual.

Basically, you know that, and that's a very important realization.

If you think Mother Nature is going to take care of you like your mother did, I mean, you can be dead in two seconds flat out in the wilderness.

If you attend, though, and pay attention, then you can survive, and not only survive in the wilderness, you can learn a great deal from it.

You can enter into a communication relationship.

So, wilderness is the preferred mode of vision path, I think, for the adventurer, explorer.

And that could be the wilderness internal as well as external.

Can we cheer occasionally?

Oh, absolutely.

Okay.

So, having said that, I want to read you a brief passage from Blake's The Marriage of Heaven and Hell, in which he summarizes basically what both Terence and I said yesterday in a few memorable lines.

Let me know who's on top in terms of literature.

Well, he was one of our great visionaries.

He saw it at an early age.

The ancient poets animated all sensible objects with gods or geniuses, calling them by the names and adorning them with the properties of woods, rivers, mountains, lakes, cities, nations, and whatever their enlarged and numerous senses could perceive.

Oh!

And particularly, they studied the genius of each city and country.

You know, they had this concept of the genius Loki, spirit of the place, placing it under its mental deity until a system was formed which some took advantage of to enslave the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects.

Thus began priesthood.

Very important sentence.

Till a system was formed which some took advantage of and enslaved the vulgar by attempting to realize or abstract the mental deities from their objects.

Thus began priesthood.

That's you too.

No way, Jose.

Choosing forms of worship from poetic tales, and at length they pronounced that the gods had ordered such things.

Thus, men forgot that all deities reside in the human breast.

Oh!

One last passage from the same marriage of heaven and hell.

Fantastic text.

The ancient tradition that the world will be consumed in fire at the end of 6,000 years is true, as I have heard from hell.

There's your apocalyptic vision right there.

For the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at the tree of life.

See, the cherub is standing guard at the tree of life to prevent humanity from attaining immortality.

That's what Yehovah said.

You know, you've got to go because otherwise you might eat from the tree of life and you'll become immortal like us.

Exclusionary system.

So, the cherub with his flaming sword is hereby commanded to leave his guard at the tree of life, and when he does, the whole creation will be consumed and appear infinite and holy, whereas now it appears finite and corrupt.

This will come to pass by an improvement of sensual enjoyment.

Oh!

For aphrodisiacs and hallucinogenics.

And each other.

Yes, and each other.

But first, the notion that man has a body distinct from his soul is to be expunged.

This I shall do by printing in the infernal method by corrosives.

You know, that was Blake's doing engravings in copper and etching the stuff.

Which in hell are salutary and medicinal, melting apparent surfaces away and displaying the infinite which was hid.

If the doors of perception were cleansed, everything would appear as it is, infinite.

For man has closed himself up till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.

So, I'd like to tell you a story, part of a story, part of an ancient story, an ancient myth.

Actually, the oldest written myth of Western culture.

The story of Gilgamesh and Enkidu and the goddess Ishtar.

Which might also be called the story of the hero, the wild man and the goddess.

Or better, the goddess, the wild man and the hero, just for the sake of balance.

And in this oldest myth of Western civilization, I think more basic to the Western psyche than the Greek or the Egyptian myths,

we find already all the themes in a prophetic way that we deal with now.

The overbearing, male, patriarchal, heroic warrior, ego trip.

The distrust of the goddess and the projection upon the goddess of qualities of human deceitfulness and treachery.

The regret of what was lost in giving up the old goddess cultures and going to a male dominated culture.

And what was lost by leaving the wilderness and going into cities.

And the price that was paid for that.

The price that was paid for hubris.

And the price that was paid for separation from our instinctual nature.

And Gilgamesh was king of Uruk.

Uruk was the city from which Abraham went out.

Abraham was a pastoralist, a herder, a wandering nomadic herder.

He took his herds of sheep and his tribe of people and founded another religion.

Uruk was a city of farmers.

Gilgamesh was a mighty king, a great warrior.

He had built the city of Uruk with massive walls of stone.

He had slain many enemies.

He was said to be two-thirds god and one-third man.

He was a mighty and powerful man and king.

And he became overbearing and arrogant in his behavior towards his own people.

He lorded it over the people.

He bullied the young men and he demanded that the young brides were given to him for the first night of their marriage.

And he oppressed the people to the point where the people went and complained to the high gods.

And said, you have to do something about this Gilgamesh king of ours.

He lords it over us.

He oppresses us and he pushes it around.

To our lives are miserable.

He is a tyrant.

And the gods sitting in council agreed that something had to be done.

That a counterpart player had to be created.

So they went to the old ancient goddess Aruru, the creator goddess, who created both them and men.

And said to her, create somebody to, please create somebody to balance out this raving Gilgamesh tyrant.

Somebody who will be his equal in strength and courage.

Who will be like him, like his very self, like a second self, it says.

Thereby pointing, this is an aside, to the fact that right here in this earlier story, we're dealing with a coded story that talks about the internal psyche.

This second self is the second self within every one of us.

Gilgamesh is the human self who becomes arrogant through power.

Gilgamesh had a dream in which he saw a star fall from heaven.

And the people came to pick up the star.

And it was heavy and Gilgamesh tried to pick it up and it was so heavy he could not lift it.

And he went to his mother, Ninsun, who was herself a seeress, semi-divine seeress, priestess, who said,

this dream symbolizes the one who is going to be born, who will be your counterpart, your brother, your equal, like unto you, like your very self.

Gilgamesh had said in the dream, he bent down to pick up the star and he felt attracted to it like to a woman.

And he had another dream in which a sword of unusual design was found in the town square.

And nobody could figure out what it meant and Gilgamesh picked it up and put it on his belt.

And he went to his mother and asked her, what does this mean?

And she said, this too is the one who is going to be born, who is like yourself, your counterpart.

And he will be like your right arm.

He will help you fight your battles and be your equal, strong like you.

In the woods.

A hunter saw a creature, a man, with the animals, running with the animals, drinking at the

stream with the animals.

This man was covered with hair all over his body and had long hair like a woman.

He ran with the animals and he drank what he was waiting for.

And Gilgamesh went to the priestesses of the temple of Ishtar and asked the priestesses

of the temple of Ishtar to send one of their women priestesses, later on falsely called

sacred prostitutes, they were not prostitutes, they did not sell sex for money, they offered

love as an act of devotion to the goddess.

Gilgamesh sent the priestess with the hunter and another companion out into the wilderness

to search for this man called Enkidu.

Enkidu.

And they came to the place after three days walking and sat down and waited and waited for

five days.

And finally Enkidu appeared with the animals to drink water at the stream.

The woman from the temple of Ishtar went towards Enkidu and exposed her nakedness to him and

took his hand to touch her breast, whereupon Enkidu was suffused with feelings and sensations he had

never felt before at this hairless being who spoke and made sounds from her throat that he had never heard before.

And they made love for nine days and nine nights.

It is said.

After nine days and nine nights the woman said to Gilgamesh, we must bathe you, we must give

you a haircut.

They gave him a haircut, they bathed him, they anointed him in fragrant oils, they gave him

human food to eat, sweet meats, grain, breads, fruit, cooked flesh.

And when Enkidu attempted to connect with his erstwhile animal friends, he found he could

no longer do so.

They shunned him because he smelled differently.

And he could not keep up with them when they ran.

His legs were as weakened.

He could not run as fast as he could before.

They escaped.

He no longer had any contact with them.

He was saddened by this.

But the people and the woman encouraged him and took him with them to the city and told

him about King Gilgamesh and his arrogant, tyrannical ways.

And Enkidu said, I will fight this man.

I will wrong, I will right this wrong.

And Enkidu came to the city where Gilgamesh was strutting down the main street.

And they met in the main street.

And they fought and wrestled for two days and two nights.

And neither one could throw the other.

And after many hours of battling and fighting, they stopped their fighting and embraced one

another as brothers and friends and henceforth were inseparable companions.

And Enkidu came to live in the city and had a house and much wealth and a wife.

And he and Gilgamesh went out and did many heroic deeds together.

And this is the first part of the story, which is the story of humanity's transition from

the wild state to the city-dwelling cultured Neolithic farming state, from the existence

as wild nomadic hunter-gatherers who lived in the fields in a wild state in the wilderness.

We were all wild men.

Not only do we have a wild man, wild woman within us, we, those are our ancestors.

We were that for hundreds of thousands of years, much, much longer, ten times as long

as we were city-dwelling, farming, pastoralists, technological, literate people.

So and this story tells about the price that is paid for the separation from nature, for the

separation from our own wild nature, our own instinctual nature, the loss of the communication

and the communion that we had with the animals and the knowledge of the land and the plants

and the forests for the advantage of city-dwelling, of language, of sexuality.

And it's the role of the woman.

And it's very instructive to compare this story of the transition from wildness to culture, from

nature to culture, from wildness to civilization, with the story in the book of Genesis, which

was the story of the Abrahamic pastoralists that went out of Uruk to the land of Palestine.

And the role of the woman in that story, where the woman is blamed for the decline from an

Edenic state with really no advantage to the state that they then went into.

The state outside of the Garden of Eden is a pure fall, a pure disaster.

In the Gilgamesh story, which is older, Sumerobabylonian story, the woman plays the crucial role of

she plays the civilizing role, for which she is not blamed, but rather honored, as appears

later on in the story.

And also, there are advantage to the civilized life, while there is also recognition of the

price that was paid.

And later on, when Enkidu dies, he has a flashback hallucination on his deathbed of regret and

even cursing both the hunter and the woman who seduced him and abducted him out of the

wilderness.

But the gods say to him, no, you should not curse the hunter or the woman, because they

brought you into the cities and they brought you the friendship of Gilgamesh and they brought

you life and a house and much wealth and a wife and a family.

And then he says, yes, you're right, I take back my curse.

I honor the woman, he says later on.

On his deathbed, Enkidu says, I honor the woman.

She shall be honored by all, old men will take off their hat to her, the young men will

take off their pants to her.

It says, inscribed in stone, clay tablets.

After a while of living in the city, Gilgamesh said to Enkidu, you and I should go out and

uh, to the great cedar forest and cut down some cedar trees, which we need to build more

houses and walls, and uh, kill the giant that lives in that forest, whose name is Humbaba,

a great and terrific giant.

And first Gilgamesh goes to the great, goes to Shamash, the sun god, and says, you know,

uh, I want to do this.

I want to do this.

And the sun god says, why, you know?

And Gilgamesh says, because, and he says this to Enkidu too, because he is evil.

Because he is evil, and we must rid the country of this evil.

And Enkidu gets tears in his eyes and says, oh no, oh no, Gilgamesh, you don't know what

you're saying.

You don't know what you're getting us into.

This giant that Humbaba, that you want to kill, is a fierce and terrible and monstrous

giant.

He will wipe us both out.

He will destroy us.

You don't know that forest.

I know it.

I've been there.

That forest is 10,000 leagues in every direction.

It is huge.

It is monstrous.

We are in grave danger if we go there.

And the gods, the gods have appointed that giant to guard that forest.

That's the guardian of the forest.

If we kill him, we will incur the wrath of the gods.

And Gilgamesh said, don't worry.

The two of us will do it together.

We'll help each other.

Why are you a, don't be afraid.

I'll help you.

I'll protect you.

You protect me.

And together, we can do it.

That's what the hero always says, regardless of whether he's a man or a woman.

This is a story told from the man's point of view, but please recall that it's equally

true of a woman.

The hero and the hero are the parallel people, the wild man, the wild woman.

So, they go and they march many days to come to the forest.

Before he goes, Gilgamesh has the people of the city make magnificent weapons for him, great swords, great clubs, great axes, great shields, carved in bronze.

And they go out and they march many days.

And they come to the mountain.

They cross seven mountain ranges to come to the great cedar forest, where the great cedar trees are.

And Gilgamesh goes up on the mountain and says prayers to Shamash, the sun god, who was his special protector.

He says, will you protect me and help me in this?

And Shamash says, first questions him, why do you want to do it?

And Gilgamesh says, well, you have to rid the country of all this evil.

Shamash says, well, all right.

I don't think it's that great an idea.

But he bought the sacrifice.

The god bought the sacrifice and said, okay, I'm compassionate.

I'll help you.

I'll give you these allies and you'll have seven fierce winds.

The north wind and the stone, the icy wind and the frost wind and the hot wind that will be your allies in this fight against this terrific giant Humbaba if you should need them.

And Gilgamesh had a dream on the mountain before they came to the forest.

And in this dream, he dreamed that he and Enkidu were in the canyon underneath the mountain.

And they were like tiny gnats under the mountain.

And he had another dream, a second dream on another night in which he dreamed that the mountain fell on him and crushed his body, pinned his body under the rock.

And then a great light came out of the rock and turned into a light being, a light man figure, who lifted the rock up and freed him.

And Gilgamesh told this dream to Enkidu and Enkidu interpreted it.

Throughout the story, Gilgamesh has dreams and Enkidu is better at interpreting them and saying what they mean.

The instinctual man, the wild man, is more intuitive, more connected with nature, more connected with the unconscious, altered states of consciousness.

And he says this is a very favorable dream. This means we will succeed in our fight against this giant because you have this light of God helping you.

And then Gilgamesh had a third dream, which was a disaster where dust clouds blackened the sky, volcanic eruptions, dust settled over everything.

For many days and nights, nothing but darkness.

They came to the forest. The forest was an enchanted forest. It had a magical enchanted gate around it, outside of it.

And when they came to the gate, Enkidu touched it and said to Gilgamesh, don't touch this gate.

What just happened to me is that my whole arm and hand went paralyzed and weak when I touched the gate.

So you have to smash the gates, he said to Enkidu.

I'll leave it to you to think about what this means.

This whole myth of going in and slaying the forest giant is the myth of our ecological catastrophe that we're presently in.

We are the people in the form of the lumber companies, supported by government and industry,

who go in and cut down the giant cedar forests and the giant rain forests in the Amazon and the cedar forests in the Northwest to build our cities.

And in doing so, we violate the guardian spirits of nature that are assigned to protect those and maintain those groves as sacred groves, as sacred forests, sacred to the gods.

So I think it's interesting to say that right here in this oldest myth of our culture, dating back to maybe 3,000 years BC,

we have this ecological dilemma already indicated very clearly.

Because then they go into the forest and the giant recedes into the inner recesses of the forest and they don't see him,

and Gilgamesh proceeds to start cutting down the great cedar trees.

This summer I was up on Vancouver Island, on the west coast of Vancouver Island, where they have these cedar forests,

where the connection between what's happening now and this myth became clear to me.

These cedar trees sometimes grow over a thousand years old. They are 50 or 60 feet in diameter.

They are the most magnificent trees that you can imagine, and they're being cut down.

So he proceeded to cut down the cedar trees, and when he had cut down very many of them, he fell into a coma, a sleep coma,

from which he could not rouse himself for several days.

Like Enkidu, his wrist and hind got paralyzed, Gilgamesh cut down the cedar trees, he became paralyzed, fell into a coma.

Humbaba, the giant, in the meantime, the giant forest guardian, heard the cedar trees being cut down and came out of the inner recesses of the forest

to where Gilgamesh and Enkidu were having cut down the trees.

Enkidu managed to rouse Gilgamesh just in time from his sleep.

And it is said that Humbaba fixed them with his fierce eye, his eye of death.

He fixated them with his eye of death.

As in another Sumerian myth, Ereshkigal, the goddess of death, fixates Inanna, the goddess of heaven, with the eye of death.

And Gilgamesh calls upon the allies given to him by the sun god, the north wind, and the frost wind, and the icy wind, and the hot wind,

and the fierce wind, and the hurricane wind.

And they come and they blow, and they confuse and immobilize the giant, so he cannot fight effectively.

And so Enkidu and Gilgamesh are able to pounce upon the giant and cut off his head, drag him, the body, and the cedar logs back to the city.

Before they kill him, one other last telling episode.

The giant, he's been caught by them, by the combination of the winds and Enkidu and Gilgamesh's strength.

He's trapped, he's caught.

He appeals to them, he says,

Don't kill me, I am doing my job here as guardian of the forest.

You have seen the abode of the gods, which is in the inner recesses behind these forests.

The beautiful Edenic garden, the garden of Ishtar, the garden of the sun god, are all protected by this forest.

You have seen it.

You should let me go.

I am the guardian, I'm doing my job.

I was sent here to protect this forest.

Don't let me go.

And Gilgamesh says,

Well, I'm inclined to agree with you, I think we should let you go.

This catching animals and wild creatures is not such a good idea.

I think we should let you go, Gilgamesh says.

And Enkidu says, interestingly enough,

I don't think that's a good idea, because if you let him go, he'll kill you.

So Enkidu is suspicious.

He doesn't trust the other forest dweller, the other forest wild creature,

because he knows basically what he wants is to escape, and he'll do his best to continue his role.

He says, if you want to really get rid of this giant, you better kill him now while you've got him,

because if you don't, he'll get you.

So Gilgamesh says, well, you're right.

So they kill him.

So it's a very interesting story in that, you know, it's the arrogant human still who wants to go out,

who creates an enemy out of nature in order to exploit nature, calls nature evil,

that's what the Christians did later on, and violates the sacred integrity of nature for his own exploitative ends.

The wild instinctual part of him tries to warn him, but then when he does agree to go along,

because he has no choice, because he is one with him, he is the same person,

he then has a better understanding of what the real issue is,

and what really needs to be done to accomplish the objective.

Where Gilgamesh still is more likely to be compassionate.

So it's not a black and white story.

It's not like Gilgamesh is all bad and Enkidu is all good, you know.

It's not the noble savage either.

It's the canny wild man.

It's a very different thing.

And they both together, after all, because they are together, they're both in the same fate.

They both suffer the same fate and the same consequences.

So then they go back to the city.

That's the end of the second main story of that.

And I'll just tell you the third one, I'll leave out the last one.

Well, because I don't want to take too much time.

The last one has to do, or the third of these stories in this epic,

has to do with the story with the goddess Ishtar.

So after they come back and they, you know, they get great admiration

and the people of the city, oh, Gilgamesh, what a hero in Enkidu.

What a hero, what mighty men, what great heroes and warriors

to have killed this huge giant.

And look how huge this giant is and his head is huge and his body is huge.

And Ishtar, the goddess, says to Gilgamesh,

Gilgamesh, I want you for my lover.

I want you to come and be my lover and together we will have great enjoyment.

And you will be my preferred lover, you who are so strong and virile.

And Gilgamesh says in this old, old tale, he says,

I don't want to be your lover.

Number one, I don't know what to give you.

I wouldn't know how to feed a goddess, for example,

the way I know how to take care of a wife.

I wouldn't know what you need.

And number two, and more importantly,

what about the history of your previous lovers?

What about Tammuz?

Look what happened to him.

He was your lover and he got killed for your sake.

And the people are still bemoaning him and crying,

Tammuz, Tammuz, where are you?

Where are you every year?

They cry for him.

And what about the bird, the man that you turned into a bird?

He was your lover and now he's a bird with a broken wing

who goes around flapping his wings in a paralyzed fashion.

And what about the lion who became your lover?

And look what happened to him.

He got caught and killed by the lion hunters.

And look about the stallion, what happened to him?

He got caught and he got captured and made domestic

and he now experiences the whip and the spur and the saddle.

And what about that other man?

And you turned him into a mole.

He's under the ground.

I don't want to be your lover.

Look what happened to the others.

And Ishtar was furious.

This is a story of the male gods,

the patriarchal hero warriors with their male gods

and their reaction of fear and distrust of the goddess and of the feminine.

And Ishtar just said, went to her father Anu and said,

Ishtar, Gilgamesh has insulted me tremendously and I'm just enraged.

And her father Anu said,

Well, you know what he said was true.

That's your story.

You did all those things.

What can you expect?

She said, I don't care.

I've been grievously insulted

and I demand that you give me the bull of heaven

to punish these people.

And if you don't allow me to send down the bull of heaven

to punish these people,

I'm going to open the gates of the underworld

and allow the dead to come up and eat food with the living.

See how you like that.

And he said, well, okay, okay.

You can have the bull of heaven.

The old gods knew the power of the goddess,

even though it had been turned around where she's the daughter.

Originally, of course, she's not the daughter.

She's the mother of the gods.

That's how the myth got turned around.

This myth is a very interesting myth of a hybrid

of the old goddess culture myths,

you know, the old creator goddess,

created the gods and the humans

and the new male god, sky god mythology.

It flips back and forth from one point of view to the other.

And Anu, her father, said,

well, if you're going to send down the bull of heaven,

you know, have you taken the precautionary measures?

I mean, the people will be out of food for seven years

and there will be a tremendous famine and so forth.

And she said, I have seen to it.

They've got grains stored up.

They'll be okay.

They'll survive.

She sent down the bull of heaven,

which some people say is a drought.

Some people say.

I prefer the notion that it was like a flood, flooding.

Tigris and Euphrates Valley probably flooded,

had numbers of devastating floods that simply wiped out.

Because it said the bull of heaven came down,

killed 100 men with his first snort,

and his second snort, another 200 men,

and another 300 men, wiped out hundreds of people,

wiped out the cities, wiped out a major disaster, in other words.

Gilgamesh and Enkidu attacked the bull of heaven and in a great struggle,

during which Enkidu leaped up on his bull's back, grasping him by the horns,

leaped up on the bull's back as they later on did in Crete at the bull games.

And while riding on his back, seizing his tail in one hand and the horns in the other,

and then Gilgamesh cut into his throat and heart with a sword,

killed the bull of heaven with a great crash and dragged him into the city,

adding to their great accomplishments.

And Ishtar was even more incensed because now they had killed this semi-divine being

that had been sent down by the gods.

And the gods sat in council.

And the oldest of the gods, Anu, said,

they have killed the forest giant Humbaba,

they have killed the bull of heaven,

one of them must die.

Let it be Gilgamesh, the one who cut down the cedar trees.

And Enlil, the god of the sky god, said,

no, no, Gilgamesh is my special protege,

and it should be Enkidu who gets killed.

Enkidu saw this whole scene as god council in a dream.

And Shamash said, I don't think you should kill them at all,

because after all, I helped them out.

You know, they came to me, offered me sacrifice,

and I gave them allies.

And Enlil got enraged at Shamash.

See, the gods get enraged at each other.

He said, yeah, well, you're like, you know,

you just go down there and hang out with those humans all the time.

You're a real troublemaker yourself.

So the decision was Enkidu was going to die.

And Enkidu, actually there's an extraordinary story too,

even before he has this dream,

where the goddess Ishtar goes up on the city walls

and complains and invades against them.

They've killed not only the forest giant,

now they've killed this bull of heaven,

this special animal that she sent down.

And they're both defiant, you know,

they say basically, fuck off, you know, we don't care about you.

That wasn't inscribed in the tablets, so I added that in.

And Enkidu, it says, took the right thigh of the bull,

which might actually be a gloss for the penis of the bull, we don't know.

It says, took the right thigh, the right thigh of the bull,

and hurled it at the goddess and said,

this is what we'll do to you if we catch you.

So they were naughty boys, to say the least, in relationship to the gods.

They defied the gods, they insult the gods.

This is what we still do.

All the naughty boys and the big companies in the government.

So after it was decided by the gods and council that Enkidu should die,

Enkidu became sick and ill and started having these hallucinations

and had a vision of the land of the dead

where all the great kings and emperors were all the great kings and emperors.

People of power and the priests and all were wandering around in this dusty gray world with no light

and sitting at tables with dust and eating food with dust, the land of the dead.

And he had other dreams and he had visions and he thought about his animal friends that he had left long ago

and he cursed, as I told you, the hunter and he cursed the woman.

And the god came and said, no, no, don't curse the hunter, don't curse the woman, they gave you this.

And Gilgamesh was weeping and saying, oh my god, what am I going to do?

I'm just going crazy, I can't stand this, you're my best friend, you're my closest.

Think of all the adventures we've had together and all the good times we've shared and we're so close

and I'm going to miss you so terrible, I just can't tolerate this, what am I going to do?

And Enkidu gets sicker and sicker and he has this fever and he's hallucinating and he's raving

and seven days and eight days and ten days and then finally he dies

and Gilgamesh goes crazy and tears off his hair, his clothes and starts wandering through the wilderness

crying his name and Enkidu, my brother, my friend, my other self has died, has died, what shall I do?

I must go on the great journey to find the secret of life and death and what this is all about.

And that's another whole part of the story which I'll leave for now, having told you the story

of how Enkidu, the wild man came to the city through the woman, how Enkidu and Gilgamesh

together as hero warriors fought and slew and cut down the forest and killed the spirit guardian

of the forest and how Enkidu and Gilgamesh insulted and rebuffed the goddess and how then the price was paid

and that the animal part of the man dies. Eventually the man himself dies also. The animal part, the body part, dies first.

And there's one counterpart I want to mention to you of this experience that Gilgamesh has in relationship to the goddess.

Why does Gilgamesh say to the goddess, I don't want to be your lover because you're such a faithless goddess, you know,

I want to look at the other people. What is that? And it came to me that that experience is analogous to an experience

that I had in the desert when I first, in the wilderness vision quest, when I first realized that Mother Nature,

so-called, does not give a shit about me personally, does not care for me personally, that I can be wiped out

by a falling rock, a sudden drop in temperature if I'm unprepared, or losing my way, a landslide,

any number of things, in which my personal existence, my personal accomplishments, my personal happiness, security,

well-being, recognition, reputation, none of those mean a whit for nature. That's why the limitation of the...

So if you try to have a personal relationship like a lover to nature, you know, I love nature,

sort of romantic ideal, you're likely to get clobbered, you're likely to get killed, because nature, as Maria

Vigambutta has called out, the old goddess is not really a mother goddess. That's the limitation of that mother metaphor for nature.

It's an okay metaphor in one sense because it indicates we're family, but it has a limitation because our mother is not like that.

It means that you don't really take care. We are responsible for our own relationship to nature and for impeccability in our relationship with nature.

We have to be observant, we have to be attentive, we have to study nature so we know our part in it and how we can survive and live in an adapted way with nature.

Otherwise, we get...so that to me is the insight that's behind Gilgamesh's rejection. It's a kind of a petulant, spoiled adolescent kid, you know,

who's rejected by the girl when he wants his first date kind of thing, but that's the experience behind it. It's this...the basic recognition of that nature is personally neutral towards us.

I mean, she's not against us either. That's a misinterpretation of Gilgamesh. She's not out to do us in. Nature is doing her own thing.

We are part of it, but it's not for us. So neither for us nor against us. She's neutral, but the petulant male adolescent who gets his ego bent out of shape says,

oh, you know, you've rejected me, you know, I don't want to be your lover. I can't be your lover because look what happened to all these other guys.

But we all get killed by nature in the end. Maybe by other people, but that's nature too, isn't it?

So, the story of how Gilgamesh Enkidu comes to the city, how the human makes peace with the animal wild man within,

they become companions, which is the true relationship for them to have, how they then get overbearing and lose it by going and killing the forest, guardian spirit,

and then by rejecting the goddess and nature in a personal way rather than understanding their proper role in relationship to nature.

And then the final illusion in the last story is that Gilgamesh thinks, well, he should be able to do something that will allow him to be immortal like the gods,

and he has to learn that lesson too, that that's not going to happen. So that's the end of this part of the story of the hero, the goddess, the hero, and the wild man.

Why don't we all myths that are authentic and haven't been rewritten for daytime television maintain a kind of dreamlike, surreal quality.

And so I'd like to tell you a story that I came upon a few months ago and was delighted, and I tell it to you in the hope that you can perhaps help me to understand it.

Like all good stories, it doesn't really make a whole lot of sense, but I felt that there must be something important in it because it was very easy to memorize.

So that clued me to the fact that there must be something in it.

And this story comes from that ultimately pivotal moment in Western civilization when the last outpost of the goddess culture, which was Crete, Minoan Crete,

fell and was in the process of falling to the pirate paternalists of Mycenae, who with advances in shipbuilding and an economic base built on grain,

were beginning to conquer the Eastern Mediterranean, and one by one the last bastions of the goddess religion were falling.

There were also great earthquakes in the Eastern Mediterranean at this time, which also contributed to the disruption of this civilization.

And the story that I want to tell is a story that occurs from the very oldest stratum of Greek mythology.

This is not about the pantheon of classical or even Doric Greece.

This is an older story, Mycenaean, perhaps older than that, going back even to the pastoralists coming out of Africa and into the Fertile Crescent.

It's a story set in a setting which is probably familiar to most of you, although this story is only told in Pausanias and alluded to in Herodotus.

So it is not a story that even classicists are too familiar with.

Robert Graves in his four-volume study of Greek mythology gives it only passing reference.

You may recall that King Minos was the king of Crete and that he was most famous for having built a labyrinth in which to house the Minotaur.

And I'm sure you know the story of the traversing of the labyrinth.

And perhaps you know that King Minos built the labyrinth, had need of it because his wife, Queen Pasiphae, was an extremely sensuous and experimentally minded young woman.

And she became so interested in the sexual habits of cattle that she had Icarus, the craftsman who was later to break out of this scene on the...

Daedalus.

Daedalus, the guy who was going to break out of this scene later on the first flying machine.

Daedalus, she had him fashion for her an artificial cow in which she hid in order to have sexual union with the bulls in the royal flock.

And out of this hanky-panky came the Minotaur.

And her husband, trying to cover up this series of faux pas, built the labyrinth, installed the Minotaur in the labyrinth.

And they grew older and did less swinging and began to settle down.

But then comes the story I want to tell, which is a few years later, the king and the queen apparently under quite normal conditions conceived a child who was in due time born.

And this child's name was Glaucus.

Glaucus means blue-gray and is to this day a term preserved in taxonomy to describe the blue-gray color typical of the peyote cactus and of the bruising reaction of psilocybin mushrooms.

And young Glaucus had the run of the royal palace at Gnosis.

And in his sixth year, he was exploring the pantries of the palace and he discovered a huge urn filled with honey.

And he took the lid off the honey urn and was reaching into it and fell into the honey and was drowned and died there.

And no one knew what had become of the son of the king and the queen.

And there was tumult, as you can imagine, in the court.

And eventually, Queen Pasiphae, in a state of complete hysterical distraction, went to the great seer who advised the king's generals and the king's weathermakers.

And she said, you must find our son.

And the seer looked into the surface of oils poured on water and burned hyssop leaves.

And he said, my magic is not sufficient to find your son, but I can lead you to one who can find your son.

He said, the person, and this is the part of the myth which is so bizarre that you suspect that there must be textual corruption or some kind of misunderstanding because it's so weird what follows.

The seer said, the person who can lead you to your son is that person who can compose the most apt simile on the tricolored cow in your herds.

What the tricolored cow is, what kind of code language we're dealing with, can only be a matter of conjecture.

But obviously, the story at this point is couched in a secret language which conveyed meaning only to the initiates.

So the king and the queen commanded each citizen of the principality to appear before them and compose a simile on the tricolored cow.

And there was a man there, a minor philosopher, whose name was Polyidos.

And Polyidos, you only have to have spent two weeks in Greek before you transferred out to something a little less horrifying to know that Polyidos means many ideas.

So Polyidos, the man of many ideas, went before the court and he proposed a simile which, according to the account of Pausanias, was brilliant.

He doesn't preserve it and hence it's lost forever.

But whatever this simile was, it carried the day.

And Polyidos was actually a very humble man, a minor healer and magician.

And he was puzzled that out of all the people in the kingdom, he had been chosen or he had by fate been singled out as the one who could solve this extremely wracking dilemma of the lost son for the king and queen.

And he said to the king, I have no idea how to go about this, how to find your son.

And the queen flew into a rage and said he should be sealed into a crypt with the body of our son.

And he can come out when he comes out with our son alive.

And so Polyidos was seized by force.

And notice now the motifs of incarceration, the dark night of the sun.

And as Polyidos sat there bewailing his fate and rending his clothes and calling out on the gods to help him,

a snake entered the chamber through some unseen tiny chink.

And the snake approached the corpse of the child lying in a dripping pool of presumably dark attic honey on the polished stone of the sarcophagi.

And Polyidos emerged out of his reverie and struck out at the snake and killed it

because he was afraid it would violate the body of the child.

And then seeing that the snake was dead, he went back to his reverie.

And a few minutes later a second snake appeared and came to the body of the first snake and reacted very violently.

And before Polyidos could move to catch it, quick as a wink, it was across the room and lost through a small aperture in the floor.

And hours passed and the depth of Polyidos' despair grew and multiplied as he realized the hopelessness of his situation.

And then suddenly the second snake appeared again and this time it was carrying in its mouth a branch of a small herb.

And it approached the corpse of its companion and regurgitated the branch into the mouth of the dead snake.

And the dead snake was revived and the two snakes went away.

And Polyidos was struck dumb with amazement.

And he called to his jailers and he described this herb to them which was well known to him for its use in other medical matters.

And the herb was brought to him and he chewed it up and he regurgitated it into the mouth of the corpse of young Glaucus.

And the child was revived and Polyidos' ass was saved.

So he emerged and the king and the queen were jubilant and the court was jubilant.

And the king said, you can have anything that you wish.

And Polyidos who was actually a foreigner in Crete said, I want to journey to my homeland.

I want to return to my homeland.

And King Minos was on the brink of granting the boon when Queen Pasiphae intervened and whispered in his ear and said, you cannot allow a magician of this power to leave the kingdom.

We must somehow gain his knowledge before we allow him to depart from us.

And so King Minos backtracked and made a different deal and said, you can return to your homeland.

But first you must teach all your magical arts to my son Glaucus who you have resurrected.

And so Polyidos, not liking it but seeing the power of the king, acceded to the demand.

And over the course of many years he taught all his shamanic and magical arts to Glaucus.

And he schooled him in all of the esoteric knowledge that had made Polyidos the unique person able to recover, find the lost child.

And finally he went to the king and said, I have taught all I know to your son.

Now fulfill your promise and allow me to leave your kingdom.

And so the king was agreed and on the appointed day of departure, a royal retinue accompanied Polyidos to the quay where he was to grab the boat out to Syracuse.

And they were embracing and the last goodbyes were being said and finally it only remained for Polyidos to make his departure to Glaucus.

And he approached Glaucus and he said, as my pupil, as the one that I have initiated, I have one last request.

It is that now at our farewell, you spit into my mouth.

And Glaucus thought it was a bizarre request, but he did as his master bade him.

And Polyidos boarded the ship and they cast off and sailed away.

And as the royal family was standing on the quay looking out to see, Glaucus realized that all the magical information that had been given to him over the years had been contained in the glob of spittle.

And that the master had reclaimed his knowledge and sailed away.

So that's the story of Glaucus and Polyidos.

One sort of funny part, is that in the original, first you said they wanted to find, they couldn't find the body.

And then you said they knew where the body was and needed to revive him.

Oh yeah, I blew the story.

He did, he, Polyidos, once chosen, he dreamed and saw the body in the honey, but they were so flipped out that the kid was dead.

That the fact that he had found the body didn't buy him much slack.

Yes, thank you for clarifying that.

Now the reason, let me say a little bit about it.

It's a very interesting story.

I found it while I was searching for proto-Hellenic myths related to mushrooms.

And there's something funny going on in this story.

The fact that the blue-gray child is preserved in the honey and then is resurrected through the intercession of another herb.

An herb known to the snake.

And recall from the Genesis myth that the snake is always the keeper of the vegetable secrets.

It was the snake who had the inner skinny on the flora and fauna of Eden.

And so the snake comes bearing information that then concerns this herb of immortality and the ability to resurrect the dead.

And it shows, I think, the very late persistence of these Paleolithic themes of shamanic power carried and transmitted through plants.

If any of you have any other insight into this, why, perhaps in the afternoon.

Blackwas may have been eaten a mushroom and gone into some kind of coma state where he appeared dead.

And then the task was to revive him.

So they found an herb that restores people who are apparently dead.

In the Gilgamesh story, there's also an herb of immortality that the snake absconds with.

The snakes have always been especially credited with knowing the secret of regeneration because of they slopping their skin and all that.

Well, you know, people in Mexico who go to Huatla and places like that and collect the mushroom,

the on-the-road, old-style way of preserving the mushrooms was to put them in honey.

And it turns into a totally black mess.

It turns into the alchemical primal materia.

It turns into the exudate of the grave.

But if you have the courage to eat it, it is then reborn inside of you.

And honey, the role of honey as a pre...

Well, any of you have read Levi-Strauss, Honey and Ashes and the Raw and the Cooked,

know that this is a symbol of semen, of sunlight, of sweetness.

I mean, it's a very rich kind of symbol.

There are even, it's reputed, hallucinogenic honeys in the Amazon.

This is a whole unexplored area where nobody has ever been able to walk into a laboratory

and slam down a quart jar of hallucinogenic honey.

But there are persistent reports filtering back from wild-eyed travelers.

The metaphor of honey, the manas from heaven, yes.

Do you recommend preserving mushrooms in honey?

No, I don't recommend preserving mushrooms in honey if you have a good freeze-dryer

and modern refrigeration.

But otherwise, you see, the honey draws the moisture out and it like candies it

and crystallizes it and makes it impervious.

Honey is highly antibiotic.

Nothing rots that is immersed.

Do you have to eat all of my parents?

Can you make sure that they actually talk to the microphone?

Yes.

Mr. Coffee is going to...

You had a story to tell.

No, no.

No?

I tailored myself to your needs, sir.

Now I have nothing to say.

Come on, you can't back out.

Yes, I can.

Yes, he can, as a matter of fact.

Well, um...

It's not a story, but it's sort of a joke.

She has a joke.

A joke.

Well, it's a deathbed joke.

When I was deafening my father, a couple of days before he died, he told me a dream he woke up,

and he said that he was sitting on the top of the peaks, and the elders came and gave him the beads,

and they contained the secrets of the universe, and they described, they went through the rosary of all the beads

and showed him all the secrets of the universe.

And he understood that he was going to die, and that he had been given the skip before he died,

and then they left him there, telling him that they would see him.

And he looked down in the beads, and he couldn't remember any of the secrets of the universe.

Yes, well, there's something about dreams where meaning, puns, or some great truth is portrayed,

but it can never be quite brought back.

And it seems simple, silly, profound, but mostly difficult to remember.

And a friend of mine, the closest to my mind that anybody ever came to capturing this,

was a friend of mine told me about a dream he had that was very complex,

and many, many things happened, but in the final scene, there was a raft covered with Edwardian furniture

and naked mermaids, and it was floating out to sea,

and the mermaids were waving to my friend who stood on the beach,

and the last thing he heard them call out to him was,

déjà vu, déjà vu.

He said, this sounds like it means something.

Well, anyone who wishes to say, I mean, you don't have to feel constrained.

You have to feel constrained.

No, I'm kidding.

Well, too bad Maria Gambutis can't mud-wrestle Sigmund Freud.

Sure, the Caduceus.

I'd like to invite people also in terms of telling stories.

Also, dreams, I think, would be, you know, often do contain good stories,

and you might search your memory particularly for dreams.

I mean, I have a personal interest, I think, it kind of ties in with the theme of this weekend,

and this theme of the wild man or the wild woman, the wild creature, the half animal, half human part of our own nature.

If you ever had a dream that seemed to be about such a being, this would be a very significant dream,

very centrally related to what we're talking about here.

There was a book published very recently that I enjoy plugging because the guy is so perverse.

And, you know, he's a post-structuralist, Marxist, Jacques Derrida, labor organizer, rationalist type.

But he wrote an amazing book about ayahuasca called,

Colonialism, Shamanism, No, Shamanism, Colonialism, and the Wild Man.

And if you want to be plunged into the world of real shamanism as it is practiced today among very sophisticated people,

I mean, this guy got it, I really, his name is Michael Taussig,

and you have to take off your hat to this guy because being an anthropologist at the University of Chicago,

and a Marxist, he took it over and over and over again, not sipping it.

He actually, you know, just got flattened with these people and talks about it and just throws out the gauntlet

to orthodox anthropology, and he's no true believer.

This is no Carlos Castaneda.

This is somebody very few of us here would actually be comfortable with,

because you can tell this guy is abrasive, thinks everybody else is a moron,

thinks people who hear voices should see a psychiatrist,

and yet you get the whole thing.

It's all there, shamanism, colonialism, and the wild man.

The thing that I got from that book was that, what he points out is that the people in the Amazon region,

having experienced 250 years of savage colonial oppression,

are returning to ayahuasca to heal themselves,

and to retreat as it were, to restore themselves and to heal themselves from the outrageous wounds and humiliations imposed on them by the colonial...

...

colonial robber barons that run the rubber plantations down there who regularly torture

and massacre the Indians just for sport and, you know, convert them to slavery, basically.

And so the ayahuasca is healing and also reconnecting them with their original existence in the

jungle, which fits with his Marxist analysis of, you know, the major human cultural patterns

being a reaction against economic oppression and so on.

And the role of hallucinogens there does, I mean, there is other evidence for that in

Africa, for example, where the tribe that uses the Iboga root from which Ibogaine is derived

are the Fang people in the Congo area and they themselves say in their visions and their

descriptions of their journeys with it, which they say puts you in touch with your ancestors

ancestors and they acknowledge their own ancestors who went on these great, had to do these

great migrations to get away from Muslim and Christian soldier armies and so forth and credit

the, and even another people, the pygmy people who live even further in the forest.

So the Fang are village dwellers and so they credit the Iboga and the use of the Iboga having learned

that from the pygmies who showed them this is how you live in the forest, which is the earliest

stratum, really the wild, you know, even more wild than they were.

I mean, from our point of view, they'd be wild, but this is even further, more nature, deep forest.

So they learn from them how to reconnect with that living source in the deep forest and at the same

time escape the depredations of the colonialist oppressors.

It's interesting in the case of Iboga, there's no known reference to it before 1850.

So this is like a use of a hallucinogen in a tribal context for which there is no evidence

of great age at all. The peyote use over a widespread area is also similar. The older stratum

of archaeological digs in the southwest seems to indicate that peyote use came in fairly late.

This brings up a point that I wanted to make in discussing and imaging the figure of the shaman,

which is not to get into a naive cult of the wild man.

Some of you may know the book The Rio Tigre and Beyond by Manuel Cordoba Rios, or it's by F. Bruce Lamb,

but it's about Manuel Cordoba Rios, who was a great ayahuasquero. And he describes going on curare

and rosewood collecting expeditions into really uncontacted tribal areas in the Amazon. And there

he would meet people brewing ayahuasca, completely bare-ass, scarified, hunter-gathering types. And they

didn't know how to do it. And it was weak. He took it with them and it was just a stone drag. So

if you know the book, you know that he himself had this history of involvement with ayahuasca. So

he made it for them the way he thought it should be made and showed them how to make it. And they had

no resistance at all. They said, my God, you really know how to do this. Our whole culture will now be

different. You know, we've just been making weak tea. So there is this thing about how the real access to

the shamanic mystery is a shifting doorway. You never know where you're going to find it.

We, when we were in the Amazon in 83, we were dealing with pretty authentic tribal people and asking

them about these orally active DMT drugs. And the best they could do was to say, well,

I saw my grandfather make it a couple of times before he died. And he died 20 years ago,

but I think I could make it. The tradition was just in the act of fading away. But then,

among the pharmacology students of the University Nacional de Peru, we found that with the help of

Harvard Museum botanical leaflets, they had reconstructed these aboriginal drugs so that

they were extremely powerful and hit the mark every time. So shamanism is not the depth of a shaman's

authenticity is not measured by the authenticity of the culture. The woman or man who is a shaman,

it depends on their unique personality. That my brother once suggested that a good definition for a

shaman would be an extra-environmental and that this is the attitude to cultivate. Be a stranger everywhere.

Always stand on the outside. Always be the alien. And you will have the proper attitude for furthering in

yourself, the tendencies that make you into a person who sees deeply into reality. Another way of thinking

about a shaman is, it's a person, this is the definition I created when my son was much younger,

and he asked me, what is a shaman? And I said, a shaman is a person who knows how the world really works.

And this is the task of every one of us, to find out how does it really work. How does it really work?

You inherit always a cultural model, which is relatively trivial and idiotic, and in all complex

situations will fail you. So how does the world really work? And to what degree does the cultural

model stand in the way rather than serve as a springboard too? In the case of our own culture,

I think quite a bit. This thing about the disappearing knowledge reminds me of something I wanted to

share with you too. Some of you may know this woman called Ann Armstrong, who's a very, very gifted seer,

seeress, psychic we call her, or intuitive, some call her now seeress, somebody who can tune into

personal and metapersonal kind of larger cultural visions of the past and the future. So she was once

asked in a context of a small conference about the history and future potentials of psychedelic

plants and visionary plants. And she got from her vision that said something like,

well, these kinds of psychoactive visionary plants have been used by humans since the most ancient times

for the purpose of helping humans come closer to God, basically, using kind of God language,

or we would might say in a more abstract way, come closer to a real understanding of the evolutionary

design of life on this planet and what our role really is. So the kind of role of psychedelics that

we've been talking about here. But what happens and that the intelligences, the conscious beings that

that inhabit these plant forms, plant species, reach out to the human world, essentially, to establish this

kind of cooperative, symbiotic, mutually supportive evolutionary relationship. But then if humans start

forgetting what the purpose of that is and start misusing the plants for their own personal purposes,

then the plant spirits withdraw. And they withdraw into the recesses of history. So they become inaccessible.

Like Hans was saying, the knowledge is lost because the people are no longer using it for the purpose

for which the plants really want them to be used. You know, this is like really treating the plant

spirits as equal intelligences to us. Not as something to be used, but as something to be shared

and communicated, exchanged. Or, you know, the knowledge becomes forgotten. Like with the mushrooms,

they were regarded as a myth up until the 50s. You know, still in the 20s and 30s, there were

anthropological texts that referred to the magic mushroom as a myth. I mean, a fairy tale, in other

words, a non-true story, a fantasy. And until the 50s, until Wasson rediscovered Maria Sabina up in the

mountains of Oahuaca brewing and doing the mushroom velada, that was the belief. Or another way they

become inaccessible, you know, the Eleuthis ergot beverage was lost. Of course, it was suppressed.

The somer thing was suppressed or lost or both. And, or they become, another way they become

inaccessible is by being made illegal, prohibited, as happened with LSD and all these others very,

very quickly. Becomes accessible, same with MDMA. MDMA was used like LSD was for about 10 years by

therapists and serious people wanting to use it to explore the potentials of the human mind. Then,

at a certain point, a certain threshold gets crossed. People start realizing the potential for

making profit by distributing it to large numbers of people who otherwise wouldn't really have any

interest in it. It's manufactured not for the purpose of helping people expand their consciousness,

but for the purpose of getting, making certain people rich. Then it becomes illegal, immediately.

And then it becomes illegal. Then you've got the various maniacs, the perverts, the exploiters,

the barbarians, the people like Manson, who completely, you know, misuse it, pervert it for

the opposite of what it was originally intended to be. And it becomes essentially inaccessible.

It's interesting to try and understand how this kind of knowledge could ever be lost. I mean,

like Soma is a good example. I mean, the whole of the Rig Veda, especially the ninth mandala of the

Rig Veda, is just this ecstatic hymn to Soma, to some kind of intoxicating plant juice thing that was

expressed in a series of pumps and grinders that was the central mystery of this invading Indo-European

civilization for a couple of thousand years. And then around a thousand BC, for inexplicable reasons,

even the knowledge of what this plant was seemed to be lost. Well, how can such information that is so

central to a full experiencing of human potential, once found, ever be forgotten? And I think that the

only scenario that I've been able to come up with that would account for something like that is if you

have a visionary plant and it's used by the population, but then you specialize and create a

professional class that uses it. And then that professional class makes it illegal for all other

classes. And then the professional class which is using this entheogen coincidentally is also the

ruling class. Well, then when the lower echelons of society have had enough of being ruled, then there

are slave revolts and popular uprisings. And the priestly class that held this secret as its own source

of power is probably wiped out to the last bald-headed priest. And with them dies the information. So the

holding close of the information is the first step toward losing it. Well, and I think the other aspect

of that is the active suppression by the priest caste of the knowledge. They don't, and the same pattern

exactly happened in Europe with all the witches, the herbs preserved by the witches. The ruling priests

of the church and in India, I think something similar may have happened. The priests always want people,

like Blake says, you know, the priesthood abstracts the deities and says, we have a special relationship

to this deity. And we are the ones, we're the experts. We'll intercede for you. We'll be the

intermediary. You talk to the deities and they'll talk to you through us. We'll tell you what the gods say

because we have this superior connection to them. And you do what they say and you pay us. You support us.

That's the deal. And the people buy the deal and then part of the deal consists and then you can't take

the medicine because the medicine would make the people communicate with the god directly. That's

what the peyote Indians say. You know, white man goes to church and talks about god and the Indian goes

to the peyote teepee and takes peyote and talks with god. And so the priesthood immediately, they don't

want people to have mystical experiences, whether with mushrooms, soma, herbs, datura, no matter what it is.

And then they want the power and the wealth. They control the power and the wealth anymore. Finally,

they say, they don't need to take the mushrooms themselves either. Because actually if they

continue to take the mushroom, they would, or the psychedelic, they would have to question their

own power trip. So they rather want to maintain the power trip rather than constantly question it.

So they suppress it. I think it's the only way soma could have been wiped out is by

systematic suppression. It's all there in Genesis. I mean, basically the story of this struggle over

your access to a plant and the first prohibition. You know, you can do anything you want, but do not

eat of the fruit of this plant. And then the other... The Tree of Knowledge.

The Tree of Knowledge. And the other source is saying, you know, you will become as him.

You will know your true condition in the cosmos. Well, is it that you will know your true condition in the

cosmos? Or is it that you will be cast down into an unending and eternal hell unto the thousandth

generation? This is essentially Nancy Reagan's position. So the issue is knowledge. The true,

you know, if you look for an archetype of the shaman in the western pantheon, the archetype of the

psychedelic user, it has to be Prometheus. It is Prometheus who steals the fire from divinity,

and carries illumination down to the human species. In a fennel stock. And for that must suffer the

most outlandish torture and indignity ever dreamed up by the western imagination.

Okay, and then we'll break. Get your mic and do your thing.

Okay, so I want to change from the image of the primordial man, the sort of primitive man of nature,

who is the other half of ourselves, to the primordial man in the sense of the wizard,

or the genie, or the excellence. The immortal. The immortal, one in us. And in the story,

his name is Khazar, who is a Muslim figure who kind of runs around on the edge of reality,

rather like Elijah for the Jews. Elijah was taken up in a chariot of fire and never died.

And so he's always present. And he can come to the rabbis and sit after midnight and stand in front

of their desk and teach out little pieces of scripture to them. And so Khazar comes to people

in their dreams or in vision. And in the Hindu tradition, Babaji is this man. So the story starts

with an ordinary man living in a small village on the frontier of Afghanistan and southern Russia

there. And he is the official in charge of collecting taxes, the weights and measures.

So people who come through, they go through him. And he has a perfectly nice life with a wife and a

child and so on. And one night in the middle of the night, comes to the foot of his bed,

this figure, Khazar Nabi. And he's dressed in an emerald green cloak with an emerald green pointed

hat. And they have gold and silver stars and sickle moons embroidered upon the cloak and the hat. And

he has a long pointed gray beard and piercing green eyes. And his eyebrows curl up at the edge.

And he says to the little man, meet me at the river in three days at sunset. And the little man is totally

trembling. And he wakes up in the morning and goes to his little tax office. And he tells the big boss

who's in charge of him, excuse me, but in three days time, I have to leave and I'm quitting the job

now and I can't do anything about it. And they say, the rumor spreads through the village immediately.

He's gone mad. He's gone crazy. And his wife comes to hear of it because he doesn't have the courage

to tell her himself. And, oh dear, he's gone crazy. What can we do? Perhaps we didn't feed him the right

food or whatever else he takes. But anyway, three days later, he's standing at sunset at the edge of

the river. And he sees far up river coming towards him, this man with a great emerald green cloak and

the tall hat and the pointed beard. And they meet and they acknowledge each other. And Hezer

says, jump in the river. So shall I continue? So he jumped in the river. Robert Bly taught us that

when the storyteller stops, then you're supposed to encourage him to go on. Otherwise,

he doesn't know. Maybe he's boring you, you know? So, oh, good. So that's what I was doing to you.

I was trying to encourage you, you know, just in the traditional way to make you know that

we love your story. So he jumps in the river. And fortunately, he can paddle a little bit and

swim a little bit. So he's in the river and it's carrying him. And it's nearly dawn when a small

fishing boat comes by and sees him and says, oh, you're nearly at the mouth of the river. It's

dangerous here. And they take him up onto the boat and they take him to shore where they have a small

hut, palapa they call it, yes? And they make him, help them with the nets and they feed him,

of course, from the fish that they've caught. And then they take him out with them in the early

morning and they teach him how to read the stars, to know what time of the night it is and when to set

out for the fishing. And they teach him about the tides and about the seasons. And then one night

he's sleeping in his little hammock in the fishing village. And who should come by but Khazad Nabi,

who says, leave here before dawn, walk over those mountains and see what happens. Shall I continue?

So he comes to a green valley over the mountains,

and he sees some men harvesting and putting the wheat up on a cart and carrying it to the farmhouse

and coming back for more. And he stands by the road watching them and they call him and they say,

hey, this is the harvest time, come and help us. So he helps and he loads the hay and then in the

evening he's in the farmhouse and they sit him down at the table with all of them. And the next morning

he's up for breakfast and it's the farmer's daughter who brings him the porridge and the cereal and

everything and it's looking quite nice. And he learns about planting and about the seasons and

the autumn and the springtime and how to keep the seeds. And he's quite interested in the farmer's

daughter after all and life is not so bad. And there's cream and there's honey. And then who should

come in the middle of the night but Khazad Nabi says, without saying goodbye to these people because

you like them before the dawn comes, leave and go to that far city and become a dealer in furs and skins.

Yes, yes, each time he gets right up in the middle of the night and rushes off with nothing.

Oh no, they'd given him a small salary. So he had to take the money that he'd earned and go and set

himself up. So he goes there and he buys some skins and soon because of his non-attachment and because

he didn't really do this out of ambition, the gods smile on him even though nature is indifferent.

Sometimes if your mood is right then those nymphets and other devas and goddesses who inhabit nature

can actually help us and give us the illusion, I think, that nature is on our side even if it really isn't.

So he has this illusionary experience and becomes quite rich and one of the main

merchant ladies of the city takes an interest in him and they decide that they're going to buy a

house together and then improve their investments and share their knowledge of dealing in things.

And they're putting their money together and discussing this and they found the right house

and who should come in the middle of the night but Khazad Nabi with his emerald green cloak and all

his paraphernalia and said to him, give me the money you've earned, which is the pun I really like

about the story, and go to that small village in the mountains and apprentice yourself to the potter.

Or is it the greengrocer? I always change this part of the story. Anyway, shall we go on?

So he goes, he gives the money together and he goes to the small village in the mountains and he

apprentices himself to the greengrocer and people come to buy their vegetables and so on and they talk to

the greengrocer and they pay him and they talk to the greengrocer's assistant and then they go away

and they feel nice and then some of the ladies in the village have a headache and they go to the

greengrocer and they come back from the greengrocer and their headache's gone and then someone's sick

and they go to the greengrocer's shop and he isn't there and they just speak to the assistant

and they go away and they're not sick anymore. And so this becomes a byword in the village and

finally the leaders of the village come to talk to the person and then even the scholars from other

places come and they examine him and they ask him to tell them what it is that has brought him to this

deep knowledge and which marvelous teachers he has had and which theological schools he studied in.

And then he tells them the story of his life. I don't know if you remember it,

I could tell it again. And so they make up some story which makes it very important his life and they

say, well, he's really hiding the truth from us and he must have studied with this great Peter and

with this great teacher and had these tremendous initiatic experiences. And it's simply called

the story of the man with the inexplicable life. And my question out of it is how the primordial man

and the kind of alchemist, how they play against each other and with each other in our struggle to

become more than just our human self, to discover our natural primordial self and also to discover this

godlike self. Well, anyone who's written a curriculum vitae has grappled with that problem.

Okay, gang, that's it. We'll meet here at three.

So it is not a metaphor that we are in a state of symbiotic abandonment to our mother.

It isn't a symbolic statement at all. It is simply a true statement that we are so far out into the

history game that we don't understand this, that our ennui, our existential angst is all because we

don't know jack shit about what's going on. And the reason we don't is because we have accepted

prohibitions against finding out what's going on. We are infantile, as a matter of fact. Our whole

spiritual engine of transcendence is infantile. It rests on the daddy figure who is the priest, the guru,

the wise man, some beady-eyed character from Bengal or elsewhere who's going to just straighten us all

out. There is a complete kind of wrong-headedness that we have inherited as part of our historical

legacy. It's that we do not value direct experience. We do not trust ourselves. We do not pay attention to

the immediate input from the living world. We are always casting away from ourselves.

What do the experts say? What did Buddha say? What did Plato say? What did somebody on the other

side of the world, what are they saying now? We give ourselves away. And the reason is because we are

bereft. You know that phenomenon of the forty-year-old guy with the sports car and three marriages behind

him. This guy is desperate. He is bereft. I always think of that amazing phrase in Lady Chatterley's Lover

where Constance Chatterley faces the fact that she is, as she says in the book, to be had for the taking.

And to some degree we all have reached such a state of spiritual bereavement and abandonment that we are

to be had for the taking. And this makes us susceptible. It makes us marks, to use a word that's dear to William Burroughs.

Shamanism is an effort to get outside the carny midway to actually walk between the tents and to discover the cool

night that is going on away from the sound of the change makers and the barkers. And this,

uh, it has to do, I maintain and I become less and less tolerant of any other view, which is either a sign,

either a sign that I'm slowly losing my mind or I'm slowly just, eventually I'll just be like John

Lilly. I just won't give a shit, you know, really say what I think. But I really believe that, uh,

uh, authentic shamanism is psychedelic shamanism. And then people say, and nobody's said it yet,

but it's okay to say it, can't you get there some, uh, fasting, that I'm not saying that you can't push

consciousness around for, and, and I'm not saying that you cannot, uh, induce psycholitic states,

states of self recognition, states of abandonment of neurotic behavior patterns and that sort of thing.

Certainly these things happen, but this informing impossible mystery, this thing which need not

exist at all, so far as we can tell, it is entirely a gratuitous mystery. This informing sense of the

other that approaches us with poetry and jeweled machines and visionary vistas of the far future

and lost races in space and biological destinies possible but untried, that is not approachable

any other way. And I think, you know, that all this lineage mumbo jumbo and the close holding of secrets

means you don't have a strong hand. If you're holding your hand close to your chest,

it's because you're afraid to...

play it and the the the shamanism that is happening at the most primitive

cultural level is shamanism that is willing to show its hand I mean they

don't tell you that you're not pure enough or celibate enough or haven't

mastered textual proficiency enough they just say yes come with us into the

woods and we will show you what we know and what we know is that we don't know

nothing and this is how we found that out we found it out by putting ourselves at

the mercy of something that we absolutely cannot understand something

which cannot be boiled down to serve ideology this horse cannot be broken any

priest who tries to ride it will be thrown for a loop any politician who

tries to ride it will be trampled beneath it it is a true mystery and the male ego

that reductionist Newtonian Cartesian positivist approach always pushes for

closure there is never satisfaction unless there is explanation and yet

explanation is a fool's game anybody can create an explanation the history of

thought is the history of one cockeyed explanation after another which is

immediately perceived as ludicrous once it becomes outmoded so the mystery is not

an unsolved problem it is a true mystery nobody knows what is going on

I don't think any tradition has taken the measure of this or operates in the light

of it the people who actually handle the molten alchemical ore that pours out of

the furnaces of hyperspace have very little to say about it have no

interpretation to offer it's the public relations people and the priestcraft people

and the people who have a book they're selling they are just full of information explanation

denunciation adoration so forth and so on but the people who stand close to the mystery are silent and

what I would like to put across and what I'm always trying to put across and what is very hard to put

across even though we say it over and over again is how real what we're talking

about is it is real it can just shake your teeth out it is very fine to sit under the

teaching tree and talk about psychedelic drugs you know how much this is like

being smashed on a psychedelic drug not at all not one iota because what is required in the actual

confrontation of the thing is that all this theory all this tradition all this self-examination is

brought in to the focus of the moment it is existentially real you are being tried and you

are being tested by a thing and an agency that you cannot know and this is very different from

getting a laugh from an audience or a paycheck from an institution or your book reviewed in the

newspaper that is all dross and foolishness because we all know that there are weasels everywhere and

that your position in human society is no indication of your existential validity but if you can pass

through the fire of the psychedelic experience and it is a fire the hexagram leave the clinging is

the sign of the psychedelic experience it is the noetic fire it's the fire that descended on

pentecost and gave language to the apostles if you can pass through that fire then you have made a pact

outside of history outside of the validations and value systems of men and women you have found

authentic being and it's a great challenge a great controversy people you know react differently they

want to preserve this particular tradition which mitigates against it that particular tradition which

mitigates against it the fact is we can only say what we know and I diligently sought existential validity in

in the various rumored sophic oasis in the landscape of human aspirations such as yoga such as sitting such as such as such as and

it's just a matter of shopping around you know and finding out what actually sets your knees knocking what actually makes tears of joy run down your face spontaneously

what actually can make you grovel and plead for mercy and it is this force this real invocation of real spirit it is a dark night of the soul

it is an ecstasy apotheosis apocatastasis it even happens outside of Greek it is pure challenge met and overcome pure

pure self-authentication and in a world where we are just buffeted used set against one another misled misconstrued lied to and controlled

nevertheless you can just push between the tents of carnival row and walk out into the woods and there you find the spiritual life waiting

there you find the limpid sophic waters of the Tao that were always there and it's a matter of courage not of finding the guru not of seeking the answer

anybody who is seeking the answer is in flight from the answer because the answer is not sought it is faced you know what it is you just have to face

the demands that it will make upon you because it isn't easy somebody isn't going to pass by your prostrate form and touch you on the head and tell you you're enlightened

it's going to be burned out of you the way the dross is burned away from the precious metal in the alchemical furnace it takes courage and commitment and a willingness to make what Plotinus called the flight of the alone

flight of the alone to the alone this is what shamanism is about it's we do have a good time with each other we do have a good time with all these drugs and copulating furiously upon them and making metaphors with them but the truth is that it is the narrow neck that challenges us and the narrow neck that authenticates us

when you pass through it when you pass through it each time you come to the other side you've taken a step along the path of knowledge that is irrevocable you are not set back nature loves courage nature is an infinitude of doorways opening into authentic being calling to us with the voice of our ancestors the spirits of the planet

the time travelers the time travelers that roved the centuries ahead of us and who knows what else the whole fact of being is a palpable ongoing continuous miracle and we know this we feel it but we are the programmed victims of a death dealing society

to use the empowerment to use the empowerment that these kind of gatherings give us and to use the self recognition that we can each have here that we are not alone that you know I'm saying this because I'm glib but we all know it that's how I'm able to say it you know it is elicited from the group mind if it weren't in you I would be incomprehensible

understanding and then we each are strengthened in the private trials of our souls when we go to meet these things when we try to hammer out a relationship to the ally when we try to hammer out a relationship to the denizens of our own unconscious this is life authentically lived and I'm sure that you're probably like me in that you come to these kind of gathering

you know it's a very mundane life a life a life of a scramble for sustenance and whatever career mongering we're all doing I mean very few of us have a chance to keep the white hot image of ourselves as a skywalker in front of us but nevertheless this is the fact this is the internal myth that drives us

the white being and it takes a very very small number of people to make a change especially when the change is not resisted because what we're saying is not menacing to the establishment it's utterly incomprehensible to the establishment so we can formulate in our benign neglect we can formulate

our own self-image and when finally in the chaos of the world we are asked for what our answer would be what solution we would propose it will be all there all finished ready and waiting this is how mutation real mutation occurs in biological populations it isn't that there's a mutation and suddenly it works better and so it

takes over no it's that the mutation is always there in the background and is never significant until the conditions change it gets dry it gets wet suddenly those mutant genes that allowed an organism to survive in wetter or drier conditions make all the difference so we are a residual mutation that will not

die that is carried along in the bloodstream of the beast and every 20 or 30 years or so like the hatch of locusts or the coming of some other natural phenomenon in the ecosystem of the planet there are waves of reform and of transcendent hope it begins in america with the transcendentalists as part of that now we have only to

bide our time this shamanic model is at the very centerpiece of the new society that will be constellated if there is to be any future society at all that's it i think

well now we should talk more i mean that's just my it's like a summation or you know what i wanted to do

out of it so now we should react against this and let me give you also

okay when you talk for your honest let me just take a few minutes not long to give you one other mythic image

to think about that i recently come into focus again which relates very much to the

kind of apocalyptic millennial types of discussions and images that terence has been conjuring

and that's the story of kali in hindu mythology ajit mukerji who's a scholar of indian tantric art

especially has just produced another one of his extraordinary books and it's called kali the feminine force

in hinduism especially hindu tantrism the goddess is regarded as the dynamic life force consciousness is thought of as

basically inert

and needing to be galvanized into life by the dance and the power of the shakti which is the female power and you get these symbolic images of

khali dancing on the inert body

lying prone on the ground sometimes with an erection

of shiva and sometimes just lying as if dead and she's dancing on his body

that's their picture of the entire universe process so

as you know they also have this vision of four descending world ages of increasing density

tightness and

and uh... darkness and evil and uh... degradation and degeneration

after which the whole cycle starts over again and we're now

in the middle or end phase of the kali yuga

the fourth and tightest and

most grimmest phase of the cycle

and the story that relates to that is that

um...

uh... kali is born

out of the head of durga who is herself

the feminine form of shiva as the destroyer transformer who

uh... is a warrior goddess durga and uh... she

goes around slaying demons

and there comes a time uh... in which uh...

uh... the asuras who are uh... basically uh... demons and they're male demons

the asuras sometimes referred to as violent gods or jealous titans or something analogous to titans in

in uh...

uh...

Greek mythology

uh...

and the closest to anything that uh...

Hindus have in terms of like uh...

something like the devil

it's not a... there isn't one figure that incarnates evil

they're basically the asuras are sort of like a cosmic mafia

they basically break all the rules and do everything opposite to the gods

the gods are trying to help the evolutionary process along

and then uh...

and then the asuras are trying to do the opposite

they're into uh... power and violence

and uh... the humans are of course

caught between these two factions and

plus the animals and so forth

they've got their own trip going

so

there's this time that comes when the asuras

the asuras

the activities of the asuras

the violent fighting and control

trips

that the asuras

the fighters

the warriors

the militarists

male

run

on each other

and on other people

other beings in the world

gets totally out of hand

and the gods become alarmed

like in the story of Gilgamesh

they say you've got to do something

these asuras are getting out of hand

you know the world itself is being threatened

this could have repercussions on other systems and so forth

and uh... the gods go to Durga

and Durga says

okay it's time for Kali

produces Kali out of her head

and Kali proceeds to deal with the situation by devouring

all of the male demons

the asuras

and you see these pictures of

uh... their bodies and heads and arms cut off flying through the air

and Kali just shoveling them in

so what is that image?

this is the image that some people

new age people refer to as Gaia

the earth

doing the corrective action

needed in order to

uh... deal with the imbalance created by

uh... an amok technology applied by paranoid

uh... militarists

and uh... the kind of devouring

that's in fact what is happening

asuras as well as of course many humans

are being devoured

heads and arms and limbs are flying through the air

war, torture, famine, pestilence

uh... all the four horsemen of the apocalypse

that's all the Kali age

that's the balancing process of the earth going on

and I'll just give you one other reflection connected to that

which is that

uh...

you know this theme that the earth is redressing the balance

you get this out of a lot of the Indian prophecy

the Hopi prophecy

the earth is going to go through this time of purification

and then there's various myths about the elect being able to take off in time and so forth

which needn't concern us

but the emphasis on the purification

so what form does that take?

and uh...

one of the things that I was shown in one vision was that

if it got to the point

if the environmental, the ecosystem degradation got to the point

that uh... some... a violent reaction

became necessary to turn the thing around

before it being blown up let's say

then what would happen would be an ecological disaster on this planet

that would be the earth's response

an ecological disaster of such proportions

global proportions

that it would take the entire combined cooperative use

of all of human resources of all countries and nations simultaneously

diverted away from a military technology

which is where the bulk of it presently goes

in a concerted effort to deal with the problem

forcing people to cooperate against a common enemy

and that is in fact what I think is going to happen

and I think it's going to happen during the next ten, twenty years

uh... the ecological crisis will grow to the point

many people feel, myself included, that's already reached that point

where it is an unmitigated worldwide disaster that dwarfs everything else

including nuclear war

because nuclear war after all is a threat

it's a possibility

it may never happen

the eco-disaster is already happening

it's in full swing

the greenhouse effect

and the population explosion

are only the two last factors

that are gradually dawning into people's consciousness

adding and multiplying the factor

even far beyond everything else

the greenhouse effect which is really misnamed

because greenhouse suggests something positive that promotes growth

the greenhouse effect is actually a heat trap

a planetary heat trap or fever condition

of the planet

that we're in

and that we have no way of stopping

the best we can do now

according to the latest computer projections

is to slow it down

to slow the inevitable rise of at least one degree

overall global temperature

which could result in major disasters worldwide

including the desertification of the entire American Midwest grain basket

will either take 20 years or 15 years or 25 years

depending on the kind of action we take

so

this is the significance of the Kali

the myth of Kali

which is Gaia

which is the earth correcting herself

and redressing the balance

purifying yourself

doing a corrective action

so I wanted to share that with you

for further reflection

the image that I always hold

of all of this

because I try to be a rationalist

and an optimist

and it's very difficult

to be both I think

but I don't think we ever slipped out

from beneath the control of nature

that man is not some kind of abomination

run amuck inside what would otherwise be a very ordered and pleasant situation

it's that the planet itself is destabilizing

the last ten million years

have been more unstable

with more glaciations

than the previous hundred million years

and the appearance of human populations

is simply

the

to the present moment

the most extreme example

of the destabilizing forces loose on the planet

but evolution does not proceed

at a steady rate

it appears to go faster and faster

and

historical time

is

like

the

career of intelligence

just putting the pedal to the floor

and you're pushed back in your seat

and you begin to

accelerate

this is what history is

and we are now accelerating at such a rate

that

as Ralph very eloquently pointed out

there are processes in motion

that

are real

and

measurable

that

show beyond the shadow of any

uh

controversy

that

we are living in times

such as have never been known

before

the dissolution

of the ozone in the atmosphere

the clearing of the Amazon

the

uh

pandemic spread of diseases

and information

the

complete globalizing

of the whole human family

so that

we essentially do live

in a global village

what happens in Bangladesh

and Argentina

and

Anchorage

is all reported everywhere

in the same day

the kind of ecotastrophes

that Ralph mentioned

the

AIDS epidemic

is one of these

the AIDS epidemic

like

the spread of nuclear weapons

another epidemic

have been

uh

wonderful stimulus

to

sober thought

about

our condition

and

uh

you know

that the Chernobyl

disaster

in the Soviet Union

was really what turned

the Kremlin leadership

toward

rethinking

their foreign policy

because

the explosion

of a single

power plant

was like

dropping a drop

of ink

in a glass of water

and

watching the entire

glass of water

turn slightly gray

and

we're talking about

the atmosphere

of the only planet

suitable for human life

that we know of

and people just said

you know

my god

when

Three Mile Island

nearly melted down

if it had

melted down

and

the federal

capital

of the United States

of America

had had to be relocated

a hundred miles

to the south

this would be

a more

ecology

conscious nation

today

I mean

we got through

by the skin of our teeth

but

is

large enough

to contain

the violence

and the desperation

of the situation

and

still offer

some

hope

is the image

of birth

that

we are somehow

the children

of the planet

we are somehow

its finest hour

and

this may grate

on some people

as anthropocentrism

but

I actually

espouse

a certain

kind of modified

anthropocentrism

because I don't think

we are like

fruit flies

and giraffes

and even

god save us

dolphins

and

chimpanzees

there is something

different

about

this species

the evolutionary

biologists

say

what it is

is that

we

have maintained

we are

omni adaptive

the strategy

of other animal

species

is to define

a niche

a tight

set of conditions

and then to

perfectly

occupy that

niche

we don't do that

what we do

is we redefine

niches

we

remake

things

so that we

can go there

we dress ourselves

so that we can

inhabit the arctic

we invent fire

so that we can

keep it with us

so forth

and so on

we are

some kind of

experiment

that nature

is indulging

herself in

an experiment

with the

efficacy

of epigenetic

codes

previously

the coding system

that has been

ubiquitous

throughout nature

has been

the evolutionary

code

of the nucleotides

that form

the codons

of DNA

that code

for the structure

of proteins

that then compete

in a kind

of structural

environment

of adaptability

but the epigenetic

information

that we carry

through song

through writing

through dance

storytelling

and electronic

media

is a whole

different ballgame

we do not forget

we bind time

we bind

the past

we anticipate

the future

we are going

hyperspatial

we are claiming

a whole new

dimension

for biology

that it never

claimed before

always before

biology

has operated

within the

confines

of the immediate

moment

but with the invention

of writing

and mnemonic

skills

and still more so

with the proliferation

of electronic

media

we are actually

becoming a fourth

dimensional

kind of creature

our past lives

our future

is somehow

with us

and you'll recall

early on

I said

that the shaman

journeys

through time

the shaman

is the paradigmatic

figure

for the future

state

of all humanity

humanity

what is happening

is a birth

process

and in the same

way

that a fetus

and its maternal

matrix

eventually

must be parted

or else

toxemia

sets in

and threatens

the life of the

mother and the

infant

in that same way

we seem to have

been groomed

for metamorphosis

into our own

imaginations

this is where

we are going

and this is what

our peculiar

cerebral

self-reflective

property is about

now

history

is

a wink

of

God's eye

25,000 years

maximum

a geological

instant

which begins

with people

chipping stone

flint

and which ends

with people

walking through

a violet

doorway

into

what

galactic

citizenship

a

super civilization

spread throughout

space and time

and through levels

and continui

that we can barely

conceive of

or imagine

I mean

we are

like

Paleolithic man

staring

dumbly

into his campfire

and seeing

there

the shimmering

towers

of Babylon

and Memphis

and Athens

and Rome

and New York

and saying

you know

what is it?

it seems so important

it looks so familiar

and yet

it's utterly

incomprehensible

our future

is our mystery

our destiny

is to live

in the imagination

and the historical

process

that we're going

through

is not

I think

cause for

despair

but it is

a major

transition point

in the life

of the entire planet

and I would like to think

to think

that a thousand

years

to live

and

to live

and

to live

and

to live

and

to live

and

to live

years from now, the planet will be empty of human life, that, you know, the forests will

be creeping out into the grasslands, the animal populations will be stabilized, the sequestering

of heavy metals will have been completed, and the planet, like a woman who has just given

birth to an eleven-pound baby, will just breathe an enormous sigh of relief. And we, following

our shamanic inclinations, following the self-transcending image of shamanic flight that leads us to build

space shuttles and starships and L5 colonies, we will have followed our imagination into

the unimaginable vistas of artistic creation that are our true destiny and home. And we

are now in transition, the most difficult part of any birth process. Blood is being shed,

there's screaming and groveling and waves of tension sweeping through the planet, sweeping

through the human population, but it is an anticipation of a higher, wider, freer, kinder kind of

being that we have always held up as an ideal for ourselves with the notion of the shaman. The superman

or woman who knows the secrets of the animals, moves with the subtlety of the wind, is always capable of

appropriate behavior, is at home, everywhere, and leaves no mark. It's our aspiration, it's our guiding

image. What we need to do, I think, is articulate. You leave works of art. It leaves works of art.

Yes, it sheds works of art. It leaves records. We excrete ideas. We leave a contrail of artifacts as we move

through time. And they, you know, they're rotting in the jungles of Belize and Guatemala. They're parched on

the sands of Egypt and Iran. And there are more artifacts ahead of us, an endless shedding of our

architectonic and imaginary dreams as we move toward the quintessence, which is the self, which is this

transcendent object at the end of time that has cast this vast shadow over our dreams, our poetry,

our aspirations, our art, our self-image. And we can each know this here and now. The psychedelics put

you in on the joke. You no longer are caught in the unfolding drama. You have seen the end. You have

acted as a go-between. You have discovered the way in which the world actually works.

Well, now I'd like to hear from some of you if we can tie this up for people. Sure. This gentleman. Oh,

yes, microphone. Well, I basically agree with a lot of things that you have been talking about,

Terrence, and giving the mass of thoughts and information. I'm trying to just answer and put

some points out that I feel important in the whole context that you are talking about.

One is just a simple thing in the beginning. You're talking about psychedelics. I didn't quite get

whether you make a distinction between synthetic psychedelics and organically grown. No, I make

a definite... Yes, I know that you make the difference, but within your talk, you mentioned LSD several times

in a way that I got the impression that you look at LSD as something that is not synthetic.

Well, LSD is kind of a borderline case. I'm probably under the spell of Albert Hoffman's recent visit.

LSD-like compounds occur in morning glories and were the basis for certain hallucinogenic rites among

the Mayans and the Toltecs. LSD is a sort of a hybrid. Ultimately, I suppose I would be

sort of anti-LSD because the problem with LSD is it's so easy to make a million hits. And a million hits

is not a party. A million hits is a governmental problem. And that's what undid LSD was the fact

that it was so easy to manufacture truly society-disrupting amounts of it.

That was its main function, most likely. Well, but don't you think a burrowing from within strategy

might have gotten further? Like, I believe that the reason Leary decided to use LSD in the Harvard

experiments was because Michael Hollingshead made the case to him that they could manufacture so much

of it. Leary's original inspiration was psilocybin, but there were physical constraints on its manufacture.

Oh, yeah. The facts are... I just think that, you know, I might not have done it that way, but that's the way it happened.

And that seems to have been what the historical process came up with. That was what the historical

process came up with. Something that could be manufactured could be in large amounts, giving

hundreds of thousands of people access to an experience that before only a few had had. So, like,

reaching that kind of 100th monkey, mass quantum, mass action threshold. I mean, thinking in these

quantitative terms is a very male thing. And I just wanted to put this question because my experience

with my own experience as well as what I have seen in many other cases where other people are taking

LSD is extremely affecting your body and that it is creating confusion, possibly, and that you should

at least take into consideration that it is developed by a Swiss company and even Albert Hoffmann, who I

really appreciate as a wise, nice old man, is a man still. And it is done in the whole context of patriarchal

a chemical work. Sandoz is destroying the River Rhine and besides all these things they have developed LSD.

Yes, well, I tried to be... Okay, I just wanted to mention that very briefly. It's not the main point

that I wanted to come to. Can I answer it anyway? Sure.

Basically, I agree with you. I bend over backwards to be liberal because I, you know, Ralph once accused

me of being the most conservative person he knew. But I think you're right that the fact that it can

be manufactured means it can be manufactured badly. And what you want when you take a psychedelic is

something that you know where it came from, you know what it is, and you don't have to worry about,

you know, were people orphaned, or did evil people manufacture this, or is the money being used to hold

down black South Africans, or... So I think plants... My advice to someone who takes it seriously, who wants to get

right on this issue, is grow your own mushrooms. You should grow your own mushrooms for several different

reasons. First of all, if you can successfully grow mushrooms, you probably can take them. Because in the

process of growing them, it has taught you cleanliness, punctuality, attention to detail,

all of these traits which are very useful then when you take it. And then you know what you have. You've

watched grain, rye, a human food, turn into pure psilocybin. And it all happened in your own basement. So no

middleman, no question of sources, no question of international chemical companies, so forth and so

on. No, I think you're right to be very sensitive to this issue of synthesis, origins, and the karma of

these things. But now go on, please. Well, your answer is even an answer to my next point, which is

that we have been talking a lot about whether or not taking drugs, which is, from my impression,

not even a serious question for most of the people here. But the more important question that I found was

not dealed with enough is the question how we take it. We live in a culture where we have not many

tools or transmissions of knowledge how to use properly plants. And what you're just saying about

mushrooms is a very good point, how we can learn to deal with something properly instead of just buying

it and consuming it. And the last remark to this question of how, where I would like to hear maybe

a few sentences from both of you, is the point that, because I think Aralf mentioned the mysteries

of Eloysis at a certain point. And what I know, or one point that I remember is that people were only

allowed once in their life to get this visionary experience. And you pointing out that the

visionary experience is maybe the most important. I would say, I mean, in shamanic cultures,

quite often it was just the shaman who would go for the visionary experience and then had the challenge

to share that with his people, and not everybody was just going for a visionary experience. And what

happened in the psychedelic movement was that everybody was going for visionary experience again

and again and again and again and again without, or even by doing that, losing his motivation of

bringing his vision back to his life and to his people. Well, people don't know how to do it,

you're right. And so maybe it's useful. I mean, this is certainly tying up loose ends. I feel like this

is where we really soar out toward the edge and stretch the envelope of the institution. But you must know

how to do it, right? And so how you do it, in my humble opinion, but based on experience, is you, first of

all, you take a committed dose. You don't take some namby-pamby, piddling, testing it out, toe in the

water kind of dose. Because, you know, even in the Christian, in the Gospel, Christ says, it's the

lukewarm that I vomit out of my mouth. You know, don't bring me any dilettantes, no dabblers, no

drugstore cowboys. So you take a committed dose. What is a committed dose? A dose that when you think

about taking it, you feel fear. That's a committed dose. So you take a committed dose. And then you take

it on an empty stomach. And then you take it in silent darkness. Leave your Walkman alone. Forget

Mozart. Forget the Pink Floyd. Forget Bach's Choral Preludes. It's ridiculous. All that stuff sounds

fine without these things. And this is heresy to some people. I mean, to some people, it's all about

choosing the music. Again, this selling out, you know, what the hell? You can't illuminate your mind

without having a synthesizer diddling in the background. So silent darkness, committed dose,

empty stomach. And then it's very simple. You lay down, you shut up, you close your eyes, and you look at

the back of your eyelids with the expectation that you may see something. Now, people have described,

in describing this back to me, people have called that the McKenna method, which seems to me just,

you know, you must be nuts to think of it that way. Because I talked to someone, I won't name him,

but a great researcher, widely published researcher in psilocybin. And he'd done 80 trips

and given it to 25,000 people and so forth. And I said, well, what did you make of the hallucinations?

And he said, I never closed my eyes. And I realized, you know, that these guys are just quaking

with terror. And a lot of people, the main reason in the 60s, I saw a lot of people who took LSD for one

reason only. Commit a dose in a shamanic situation. And now I'm not advising this. This I do not advise,

but this is how I do it. I do it alone. I have never understood the obsessive need people have to take

drugs in groups. It just makes my flesh crawl. And the only time I've ever been able to do it

comfortably was with Amazonian people and Mestizo people where there was a language barrier.

But if I take a psychedelic with somebody, then I just, I listen to them breathing,

and I hope they're all right. And I get all tangled up with, are they all right? And should I say

something? And should I not say something? And this, and it just turns into this mother hen

thing that I can't stand. And often when I take psychedelics alone, I pass through a place where I

say to myself, boy, I'm sure glad there's nobody else here, because I think this would really alarm them.

At this point, people would be reaching for 411. And since I can't, it's not going to turn into an

embarrassment for me. So I think, you know, committed dose, silent darkness, empty stomach,

lay down, shut up, be still. Keeping still, the I Ching says. It's all in keeping still.

The last thing that I wanted to mention in this context, that from my own experience,

there's more than just this set and setting and dosage, which has to do with the cleaning of

the gates of, how do you say? Doors of perception. Doors of perception, because in my own case,

and again, what I saw with many other people happening, is that if you still have some

narcissistic patterns in your system or in your psyche, you first of all will have difficulties

to stay in a place like you can do that. And what happened to many people is that they either got

difficulties to handle that situation and would do all kinds of things that would damage themselves,

or if they would go through, they would run around with some kind of omnipotent feelings. I mean,

there is serious research being done about the fact that Hitler has taken mescaline and got some of his

visions, so not through his dark and deep wounded soul, other than he did.

Well, eventually it becomes an aesthetic question. I mean, you know, the trick with psychedelics,

as with life generally, is to be in good taste. I mean, it is not tasteful to vomit on your partner

or declare yourself the world messiah. This is embarrassing, and it's happening, but it's

inappropriate. I just think, you know, the rules don't change when you take psychedelics. You still,

there's no license to be a jerk. The thing about narcissistic hang-ups and stuff like that,

usually I just feel that the person hasn't done enough, and that sometimes you really have to

clobber people, that the dose is insufficient. That's a good response to it. But let me just

briefly ask, in terms of your basic question on how, to Terence's suggestion, which centered mostly on

dosage and setting factors, practical down-to-earth physical factors,

I would emphasize the factor of intention, i.e. set more than he has. And to me, actually, intention

is the single most important criterion for a productive kind of experience. And Terence is basically

assuming a clarity and authenticity of intention. And many people who experiment and dabble in

psychedelic drugs, as he was saying, you know, do it for all kinds of reasons, such as being able

to say that they've taken it once, or because their friends suggested it, or because they want to be

less insecure about their sexual hang-ups, or whatever it may be. And the intention, whatever your

intention is in going in, the entire flow of the experience will be a response to that. You may not

understand what the hell it means, or what the significance really is. And that's your challenge

then, to try to figure out. And that may take you years and months. That's why, for some people,

one psychedelic session was, in fact, enough. Not because they were afraid to repeat it, quite the

contrary. That was the thing that connected them to their source. They got their instructions, and

they can live with that the rest of their lives. Other people make a specialty of exploring

various other areas, and exploring the possibilities of tools, and applying them in various contexts,

such as healing or creativity. I also feel that, in a way, we're in a much more experimental age,

and that ties back than, you know, the traditional shamanic societies were.

Well, I personally lean towards testing out and working as much as possible with the tried and

intrude ways. Not because they're shamanic, but because they've been tried. They have, in fact,

worked. They've demonstrated their ability. But that does not preclude the possibility that there

may be new ways of working with these medicines, that are still have integrity in relationship to

the basic evolutionary purpose of how you're approaching it, but that may be completely new.

Such as, for example, and that could apply even to,

equate to synthetics or semi-synthetics like LSD or plant substances to use them in combination with

techniques of yoga, with techniques of birth. I personally know of many instances where

these breathing techniques, or known as the name of rebirthing, have been very effectively combined

with low doses of MDMA, where the MDMA adds a kind of a catalyst, making that kind of technique much

more effective. Or conversely, during an MDMA experience where a person gets stuck in a certain

way, then using a breathing technique that they've already learned to dislodge them from that stuck

place. So I think the possibilities of, also I think, I think the thing Turner says about the totally

committed dose, the full trip, yes. I think there are also possibilities of low dose kinds of experiences

that allow a certain different kind of entry and access to the other worlds,

not as radical, not instead of, or not that one is better than the other, but it's another dimension.

I feel about these plants that they're, they're, they are allies, I mean they're tools, but they're more

than tools, because along with the tool comes a living intelligence, someone that you can respect and

communicate with. And so it's more appropriate to call it an ally in your work, in our work of fostering

the evolutionary process on this, on this planet. And so the only reason I continue to work with it is

because I've encountered the allies, unexpected, unexpected. I didn't know that when I was in graduate

school, much less under, even undergraduate or college or high school, that I would one day

be working with teaching plants that can tell us about what it is like to be a human being and what

the proper role of human beings on this earth is, and what we are to do, would have been,

nothing could have been further from my imagination. And yet it's presented and I've come to accept

the arrival of a new tool or a new ally, such as one of these plants, as a sign almost that I'm on the

right track. And approximately, I'm on the right track, suddenly you meet somebody who's like a

powerful, I say, I know where you're going, I know how you're trying to get there, and this will help

you. I say, thank you very much. I mean, respect and honor that, try to understand as much of what's

going on, knowing that we'll never know everything there is to know. There are things that, you know,

the interesting distinction, Terence was talking about the mystery, and I think this is the key to it. It's

being open to the mystery and maintaining our openness to the mystery. If we close ourselves

off to the mystery, if we have answers, we're lost, we're dead. Or as punk gangsters now say to one

another, you're history, man. Right? They've done something that's offensive to them. This is the

insult. You're history, man. So if we close ourselves off to the mystery, we're history.

The backwaters, bye-bye, humans. And that's happened before, according to the record. And so anything

we can do to keep ourselves open to that mystery, and also recognizing that there'll be some areas

that we'll never know. The mystery itself has this allure, you know. It has a magnetic attraction for us. We

want to explore it. It draws us out of ourselves. And yet there are also realms that, and Castaneda

talks about that in one of his last books, that are not only unknown but unknowable. Unknowable in

principle. We will never know. And to recognize the difference between those two realms can save

us a lot of time and trouble. Because if we try to go into the realms that are in principle unknowable,

we're likely to get very, very confused. I'd like to say something or ask directly about the subject of

how-to, which you've been discussing. And I'll say it in as quickly a way as possible so you can put

your answer together the way you want. Potential problems in taking this. I've said to people,

have you taken a lot? Have you ever seen this stuff? And they haven't quite been in the dark.

I've gone out, and it's hard to find a place that's dark. There's a lot of lights everywhere.

Well, no, you don't go out. You just close the door and turn out the lights.

Then the question is, I talked to Kat a little about this, and she said,

no, don't do it in the city. You're absorbing all the vibes of everybody around you.

Well, it's true. We live in the country, but it doesn't have to be pitch. You just

take your cone tent and go out to Joshua Tree and up a canyon and...

So you agree with the thing about taking it in the city can...

No, I think it's totally weird to take it in the city.

But as long as, before we move on, one thing I'd like to say about technique, it may seem small here,

but it someday may save you great wear and tear in a tight situation. And that is, if you get into a place

in the psychedelic that is difficult, Western people seem to freeze at the controls.

And what you need to do is sing and recognize that sound is a tool for pushing energy around.

And you can just move past an unpleasant exhibit by chanting your way through it.

And all the things that we're taught as spiritual tools, mantra, yantra, mudra,

all these things which never work worth a damn most of the time, work perfectly in that state.

In fact, that's probably what they were designed for.

I mean, I have no... all these things are totally frustrating to me, but in the psychedelic state,

yantra, mantra, chanting, singing, at work, drumming, as advertised, can move you through these spaces.

Let's give somebody else a chance, a woman back here, either Gigi or the lady in the...

It's not on. It is. Is it? Um, I just had a question about, um, ritual. You mentioned the Terence

method and everything. Um... Disgraceful, but yes. Yeah, well, that's, that's good advice,

but so I was wondering what other rituals you do repetitively, other than just like the normal

brushing your teeth kind, but do you... You mean in my personal life? Yeah. Is there anything that

you do every day or every other, you know, month that you just... I spend as many hours a day as I

possibly can, uh, smoking cannabis? This is a practice that... This is the secret of McKenna's philosophy. Thank you very much.

Uh, this is a practice that I've adhered to since my 17th summer. And, uh, you know, God knows if I put

in the same amount of time on yoga or writing plays, uh... I also throw the I Ching at the new and full moon.

What am I doing to decriminalize it?

Well, I always talk about it whenever anybody asks. It's funny how rarely, how rarely the subject

comes up, even in groups like this. It's almost as though marijuana is the poor country cousin.

We're all here talking about 5-methoxy, hydroxy, this and that. And, uh, the lowly cannabis weed,

which has been with us, uh, since before the Vedas were a gleam in some Indo-European warlord's eye.

It's very interesting how the metaphors of cordage are also the metaphors of creativity,

that we weave a story and we spin a yarn. And, uh, all the connection between fibers

and, uh, and cognitive processes has always been well understood. I think cannabis has a bum rap.

What I'm doing to decriminalize it is being fairly out front about my devotion to it. I just think it's

trivial and silly and it's like trying to outlaw masturbation or something. It has to do with having

a torqued notion of human nature. Uh, these things exist. I mean, I'm not recommending that for everyone,

but when I was young, I was what's called a nervous child. And, uh, the first time I had a hit of

cannabis, I realized that I could self-medicate myself to normalcy and, uh, be just like everybody

else. And, uh, and so I did that. And, uh, I don't know if it's the proper place to tell it, but once I

became concerned that I did too much smoking and, uh, so I decided I would quit. First of all, I wanted to

see if I could quit. And then I wanted to see how much of my interior life was actually riding.

on this ocean of cannabis ingestion.

So it so happened that the conditions for the experiment were perfect

because I was arriving on a small desert island

in the Seychelles group in the Indian Ocean

and had rented a house on this island in order to write a book.

So I had this Mombasin bomber weed and a lid of it

and I just rolled it up and nailed it above my kitchen door

and decided that I would not smoke until I had finished writing this book

and was relieved to learn that I had enough self-control

that this was possible.

I mean, I didn't sleep a wink for eight nights

but I did not resort to breaking my pledge

and I slowly realized it was all right.

What it seemed to do was I spent a lot more time reading

and had much more interesting dreams

and otherwise it didn't seem to be any big deal

and I wrote this book then

and it took me about six weeks

and I promised myself that when the book was finished

I would then allow myself to smoke up this lid of weed

before I left this island

so finally I finished

and I was very diligent

I wrote every day at 8 a.m. for till noon

I typed

and then I would take my dogs and explore this island

I had this very set regimen

and finally the book was finished

and I rolled these huge bombers

and dragged my lawn chair out under the coconut palms

and waited for the sunset to get really going

and then I just flared and consumed

about three of these things in about five minutes

and I was just waiting for this sense of relief

and accomplishment and clarity to sweep over me

and this thing began to happen

and I like pushed it away

and then it came back

and I pushed it away

and finally I realized I had to look at what this was

that it was just becoming overwhelming

and then I looked at it

and what it was was

it was the incontrovertible, instantaneous, deep, unarguable realization

that this book I had written

was dog shit

and I was just frozen

with there, you know

just sitting in this chair

quaking with this realization

and up to a half an hour ago

I had this vision of myself

returning triumphantly to Berkeley

like Lenin entering Moscow

with the tome raised high

don't worry brothers and sisters

it's all figured out

and I realized, you know

that it was a catastrophe

an abortion

a monstrosity

so I just was, you know

really set back

so then I just shrugged my shoulders

and said, oh, okay

I will smoke day and night

until I can try and save this thing

if it can be saved

and I did

I mean, I did smoke day and night

and I did struggle with this thing

and it was not possible to breathe life into that corpse

this book

I'll just tell you the title

in order to convince you

that this thing should have died a morning

it was called

I blush to tell you

it was called Crypto Rap

Meta Electrical Speculations on Culture

Terrible, terrible

so I realized then

at that point

that I was a fool

to try to navigate life

without cannabis

and that it would just get me

in terrific trouble

and that I lost my way

and couldn't make judgments

and had no discrimination

and so forth

and so on

anybody

yes, sir

you've been struggling mightily

to be heard

next

I've taken LSD over a thousand times

and I've taken psychedelic plants

a couple hundred times

and I agree that plants are superior

and I prefer them over LSD

however, real, true LSD

such as orange sunshine

is a phenomenal mystery

in my experience

compared to the

rinky dink acid

that's going around these days

but

to the guy who was talking about LSD

I wanted to say that

LSD is not confusing

it's the environment

and the accumulative

unconscious mind

the things that your unconscious mind

has collected

that is confusing

it's the environment

and society

and what they program

into your computer

that is confusing

not good, true LSD

but on one level

LSD is confusing

which is that

when you buy it

you don't know

what you've got

that's truly confusing

if you buy it from people

who don't chant mantras

and aren't into

a high state of

spiritual awareness

and vegetarianism

I get it from people

listen, I know weasels

who chant mantras every day

and they have to know chemistry

I know where I get it

I know where I get it from

but see, that's too much

to ask of most people

I recall a conversation

I had once

with a psychotherapist

about MDMA

and he said

it doesn't matter

that it's toxic

at twice the ordinary dose

because I would never

give somebody

twice the ordinary dose

and I said

but X

you don't understand

people pop this stuff

like pretzels

down on Sunset Strip

so you have to think

of the fool

the fool is always with us

and

huh, no

well, maybe the fool

is not always with us

with an attitude like that

no, but it is

the thing about LSD

that's confusing

is the difficulty

to tell what you've got

until you're out in it

Xishi, what was your point?

Bah, bah, bah, bah, bah

Being that you're both

in many ways

a master of words

I want to go back

and pick up on

this fine line

that you admittedly

are walking

in describing the plants

as an ally

and at the same time

describing them as a tool

and continually

talking about use

and I find also

in the questions

using the word

take a lot

which is

our common language

around this

and

people have asked

some questions

about the ritual

and also

Ralph

I was glad to hear

brought up intention

and I'm curious

knowing that

in the Native American

traditions

there are

very simple teachings

that respect

the exchange

when you interact

with a plant

whether you pick

a piece of sage

you give a giveaway

at that point

whether it be

some saliva

whether it be

something that you offer

that in the traditions

that you have been

working with

if either

within the intention

or within the rituals

there are

these kinds of

giveaways

and exchanges

and you might

comment some more

on those

so that they can

sort of

fill our body

in this way

or

you might share

also some of your own

if you

if you carry that

deep sense of ally

do you want to do that

well

it's hard to describe

a ritual

you know

and

there are not only

the rituals

I think we

Terence and I

share

an abiding interest

in the rituals

surrounding these plants

in traditional cultures

and

at the same time

I feel

and I think

he probably agrees

too

that it's not a matter

of copying

the Indians

we live in a different

time

in a different place

so

I see a lot

of very fruitful

experimentation

going on

experimentation

that's not just

random

and it's informed

by clear intention

and by deep study

and reflection

and grows

organically

so I see

people have

numerous groups

and circles

of people

that have worked

with these substances

both the synthetic

and the plants

do have serious

intentions

and bring to bear

a certain creativity

that emerges

out of those

experiences

onto how best

utilize

the experience

while

it is a matter

I mean

the plant itself

is the thing

that you take

so

but it's the meaning

behind it

the spirit

behind it

that's really

significant

the significance

of the psychedelic

movement

is not the drugs

it's the experience

that was facilitated

by the drugs

and that in itself

then makes

the plants

or drugs

significant

I mean

it's a kind of

a paradoxical thing

I don't know

if I'm getting

at your question

so I think

there are rituals

and one of the

basic rituals

that I have become

most familiar with

and is adapted

from

I know groups

that use

some of these

substances

you know

in a ritual

that's adapted

from the Native

American church

and yet it's not

a Native American

church ritual

I would not

presume

to try to

run

for example

a Native

American ritual

or try to

direct one

because that's

something that's

taught by

those who have

been initiated

in that way

and it's passed

on that way

but some of the

basic core features

such as

sitting around

in a circle

around either

a fire

or in darkness

and having

something like

a talking staff

which is a ritual

that comes

very strong

in the North American

Northwest American

Indians

Northwest Coast

the talking staff

often used

in councils

and also

in the peyote church

that's

the staff

and rattle

are passed around

for people

to sing

during the ceremony

which allows

each individual

who is participating

in the circle

experience

group experience

to express

some part

of their own

visions

through their song

or their statement

and yet

each person's

own individual

vision

and journey

is honored

in other words

you don't react

to it

you don't respond

to it

you don't

give encounter

group challenges

questions

arguments

and so forth

is that getting

at what you're asking

I'm not sure

not quite

I'll add two things

about it

I'm not looking

for a description

you know

of the whole ritual

per se

as much as I'm

tracking

what you brought up

earlier in the week

about

or the week

the weekend

about this memory

that was

way before

that there's

some relationship

with the plants

that in our

modern time

and even in

the traditional

societies

perhaps has

been overlooked

or forgotten

or shifted

and I'm curious

about the

experience of

giveaway

the experience

of exchange

which

is part of

this relationship

with plants

which very quickly

gets lost

in our language

and in some

of our modern

usage of them

as tools

so I was

looking for

any sort of

traces of that

in your own

sort of

use

relationship

with them

and also

curious

because this

topic has

come up

in terms of

the cultures

in which

these plants

are culled

from

or visited

that these

are also

the cultures

which seemingly

are having

a great deal

of difficulty

holding on

to their plants

in other words

the destruction

of the rainforest

etc

and what

is that

all about

in terms

of this

allyship

I'll just say

briefly

and then

what I get

from that

was that

you're asking

what are we

giving the plant

in exchange

for what it's

giving us

that's what I

hear you saying

what's the giveaway

the giveaway

is the exchange

and what I've

learned from

the plants

is an

understanding

of our

proper role

and my

particular role

in life

on this planet

that's the

whole notion

of this whole

thing of this

Gaia conference

the green earth

work that I

was mentioning

to you

is that's

what I learned

from the plants

that's what

it was emphasized

and that's

what I've learned

from previous

non-drug

non-plant

involved

shamanic

kinds of experiences

vision quest

or however

induced

similar kinds

of communication

with animals

I had dreams

with animals

like whales

and dolphins

or plant

these plants

birds telling

me

okay here's

what the

situation

you understand

the situation

once you

understand the

situation

that we find

ourselves in

once you really

face it

as Terence said

there is only

one course of

action that's

possible for all

of us

I'm convinced

I mean it has

many different

forms

you know

realizing

realizing the

Gaia

the place

of the earth

that we're at

and what we're

doing in our

blindness

and stupidity

is a tantamount

in a way

it's another aspect

it's the reverse

side of this

vision that

Terence is talking

about

it's the vision

that once you

see it

it's incontrovertible

and it's

inescapable

and you know

what has to be

done

and it's just

a matter of

time

and having

the

and being

having the

grace

and then

to not get

caught in

despair

or cynicism

all of which

are possible

outs that

we've all

used

despair

cynicism

or escape

blotto

denial

burying

ourselves

in career

blah blah

whatever

and just

getting on

with it

clean up

our act

clean up

our act

over to

you sir

well

I think

what

a person

who has

a relationship

with an

ally plant

gets out

of it

is an

enriched

and balanced

inner life

what the

plant

gets out

of it

is

a human

being

with an

enriched

and balanced

inner life

and that

feeds back

then

into

stewardship

and inspiration

for caring

we then

notice

that we have

this partner

and

agriculture

was the first

great example

of human

plant

symbiosis

and it was

very important

to the plants

involved

they went

from being

rare

grassland

endemics

to being

great

monocultural

crops

and

you know

orthodox

biologists

say that

successful

reproductive

strategy

signifies

successful

evolution

so

you can say

what

people got

out

of taking

mushrooms

in ancient

Africa

was

increased

visual

acuity

better

sex

and

ultimately

a rich

inner

life

of

cognition

but

what

the

mushroom

got out

of it

was

cultivation

and

by being

associated

with cattle

becoming

like an

episome

on the

main

genetic

heritage

of human

beings

because

when we

finally do

go to

Aldebaran

and

Procyon

we will

take cattle

with us

and

presumably

we will

take beans

and peas

and hemp

and spinach

they are

the cloud

of genes

that have

managed to

insinuate

themselves

into a

relationship

with human

beings

so that

our fate

is their

fate

and if

the sun

gutters out

and is left

behind

by us

as we

radiate out

through the

galaxy

we will

take with

us

dogs

cats

goldfish

runner

beans

morning

glories

ayahuasca

but not

everything

and is that

your finding

both of you

that you personally

carry

is that your

finding

in the people

that you work

with

this birth

of feeling

of stewardship

yes I think

so

that you

can't

take

these

things

without

facing

the facts

of the

historical

crisis

our

legacy

our

bad

behavior

so forth

and that

when you

face

that

then

you

have

to

have

recourse

to

some

kind

of

stewardship

I don't

know

people

who

aren't

who are

seriously

into

psychedelics

who

don't

want

to

change

things

I don't

know of

anybody

who says

I take

psychedelics

and I'm

perfectly

contented

with the

world

the way

it is

then

I wanted

to say

something else

about

ritual

and here

again

I take

a

controversial

position

and it

never

would have

occurred

to me

to take

this

position

except

that the

mushroom

this

is

straight

from

the

shoulder

said

ritual

is a

substitute

for

understanding

it's

exact

words

and I

said

you know

I don't

quite

I don't

get it

said

if you

understand

you have

no need

of ritual

ritual

is like

a demonic

a mnemonic

demonic

device

for

touching

something

deeper

which is

in danger

of being

lost

so I

recall

a situation

where

I was

in

the

Amazon

and we

were

collecting

ayahuasca

plants

myself

and a

young

botanist

who was

Peruvian

but very

westernized

and

we

chopped

through

the

as we

were

chopping

it up

and putting

it into

the bags

to carry

it out

of the

forest

he said

to me

don't

you

think

that

we

should

have

done

a

ritual

and

blown

tobacco

smoke

over it

and

ask the

plant

permission

to cut

it

none

of

which

we

had

done

but

as

we

had

cut

the

plant

this

had

all

been

going

through

my

mind

and

I

felt

that

the

moment

was

so

intense

that

ritual

would

have

and

Ralph

was

very

good

to

bring

up

intentionality

which

is

a

state

of

attention

to

what

you're

doing

and

when

you

incinerate

a bud

of

cannabis

or

cut

an

ayahuasca

plant

or

gather

mushrooms

I

it's

not

necessary

to

perform

a

ritual

but

it's

an

abomination

to

have

an

empty

head

at

that

moment

I

mean

you

must

feel

what

you're

doing

you

must

be

aware

that

a

gift

is

coming

to

you

that

a

life

is

being

sacrificed

so

that

you

can

deepen

your

experience

so

I

don't

know

if

this

goes

to

your

question

ultimately

the

give

take

question

I

think

can

be

dissolved

in

that

what

do

I

give

the

planet

is

a

gene

swarm

and

there

is

only

one

destiny

for

life

on

this

planet

it

is

the

destiny

of

all

of

it

and

when

we

take

these

plants

we

are

synergized

to

higher

states

of

intellectual

activity

this

creates

redistributions

in

the

patterns

of

propagation

and

growth

of

the

plants

we

are

inside

some

kind

of

huge

natural

control

mechanism

we

cannot

fail

to

be

in

Tao

but

we

can

fail

to

recognize

that

we're

in

Tao

and

so

it's

always

a

task

of

bringing

back

attention

and

authenticity

in

the

moment

I

guess

I

would

reformulate

your

statement

about

ritual

being a

substitute

for

understanding

in

two

ways

one

is

that

I

see

ritual

as

a

framework

for

communication

and

a

framework

for

structuring

your

intention

the

kind

of

ritual

you

perform

comes

out

of

your

intention

so

if

your

ritual

is

empty

a

ritual

empty

of

intention

or

consciousness

is

just

that

an

empty

substitute

for

the

real

thing

and

I

also

realize

that

especially

if

you're

alone

going

into

that

kind

of

an

experience

as long

as you

are clear

about

your

intention

and

you're

going

about

what

you're

doing

with

the

maximum

of

consciousness

that

you

can

you

are

in

fact

doing

a

ritual

you're

doing

the

essence

of

ritual

and

when

you're

out

in

the

wilderness

and

you

do

everything

with

as

much

consciousness

as

you

can

every

morsel

that

you

eat

when

you

take

a

shit

everything

when

you

breathe

when

you

brush

your

face

brush

your

teeth

or

sweep

your

campsite

everything

becomes

a

ritual

which

means

simply

that

you

have

clear

intention

and

clear

maximal

awareness

your

attention

follows

your

intention

if you

think

about

it

what

your

intention

is

determines

what

you're

going to

attend

to

and

so

I

think

the

ritual

has

its

place

and

it

has

to

be

recognized

for

what

it

is

and

it

has

to

be

imbued

with

your

awareness

and

your

intention

so

that

it

doesn't

the

taking

of

such

substances

dr.

israel

rigardi

who

is

the

last

in

the

original

lineage

of

the

hermetic

order

of the

golden

dawn

out of

england

boy

i'll bet

there's

somebody

who

will

contest

that

but

go ahead

he's

the

he was

the

last

living

english

he was

in that

lineage

anyway

of that

lineage

and

he'd

made

the

statement

that

he

would

not

accept

a

probationer

into

or a

neophyte

into

for

initiation

until

they

had

undergone

a hundred

hours of

psychotherapy

because

he had

seen

how

imbalanced

people

could become

through the

work

of high

magic

do you

think

that

applies

to the

use of

psychedelics

do i

think

psychotherapy

should be

a precondition

to the

use of

psychedelics

is that

the

question

god

let's

hope

so

i mean

i hope

that's

the

question

that's

the

question

veiled

by

which

veils

excuse me

which

who

do

not

have

knowledge

of how

the psyche

operates

have not

really

investigated

their own

psyches

should

then

take

psychedelics

take

large doses

well

i don't

know

certainly

i don't

think

psychotherapy

is a

precondition

to taking

psychedelics

i mean

psychotherapy

is

you know

probably the

kindest thing

you can say

about it

is that

it's a

scam

certainly

a

person

should

be

sophisticated

about

the

dynamics

of

psyche

and

i

would

if

ralph's

prescription

to

have

clear

intention

is

followed

i don't

think

a

person

would

arrive

at

the

brink

of

a

psychedelic

experience

if

he

needed

psychotherapy

instead

if

they

didn't

have

a

healthy

interest

in

the

dynamics

of

the

psyche

most

psychotherapy

as it's

currently

practiced

is

i think

just

well

as i said

at the

albert hoffman

thing

psychotherapy

without

psychedelics

is

pissing

into

the

wind

and

has

done

a

and

unions

rike

unions

and

what

have

you

it's

all

get

the

same

results

which

are

one

third

get

better

one

third

get

worse

one

third

stay

the

same

so

clearly

method

is

useless

in

psychotherapy

it's

something

about

a

bonding

between

two

people

to

sensibly

discuss

hangups

what i think

is generally

felt to be

true

among

psychedelic

researchers

is

that

early

psychedelic

trips

tend

to have

a

personalistic

cast

to them

tend

to address

one's

hangups

problems

in

relationships

difficulty

in coming

to terms

with

parents

and

loved

ones

and so

forth

but

that

people

who

persist

with

psychedelic

experimentation

quickly

burn

through

that

one

of

the

objections

that

I

always

sort

of

had

to

LSD

was

that

I

call

it

abrasively

psychoanalytic

this

seems

to be

a

compound

that

only

wants

to

talk

about

what

are

basically

therapy

issues

it wasn't

like that

for

everybody

I

gather

but

it

was

certainly

like

that

so puzzled

by

other

people

what

other

people

were

saying

about

it

psilocybin

on the

other

hand

doesn't

seem

at least

in my

experience

to work

that

way

it

immediately

dresses

this

transpersonal

cosmic

planetary

level

so

my own

exposure

to

psychoanalytic

literature

and therapy

and that

and this

is where

the real

skinny

is held

I don't

think

you can

read

a better

book

on the

psychedelic

experience

than

Mysterium

Conjunctiones

and

it doesn't

mention

psychedelics

per se

but it

deals

with

the

motifs

of

transformation

and

no I

think

that if

there's a

relationship

between

psychotherapy

and

psychedelic

shamanism

it's

that

psychotherapists

must

apprentice

themselves

to

psychedelic

shamans

and

must

learn

what

they're

doing

because

they're

doing

better

than

one-third

get

better

one-third

get

worse

one-third

stay

the same

neurosis

in

extremely

uh

shamanically oriented societies with a tradition of psychedelics is almost unknown.

And I saw these people work in the Amazon and their intuition and their perspicacity in

dealing with human situations was clairvoyant, you know?

I mean, they just could go right into it.

So I think the relationship between psychotherapy and psychedelic shamanism should run the other

way.

Well, to my mind, and I've made this metaphor many times, but it gives the right feeling

to it, psychedelics are to the study of consciousness what the telescope in the 16th century was

to the science of astronomy.

And you know, the telescope was suppressed.

I mean, Galileo had to humble himself, Giordano Bruno was burned at the stake.

Now they want to suppress the inner telescope.

The telescope that brings the stars and galaxies constellated in the human psyche up for close

inspection.

Well, I suspect they shall have the same fate as they had with the suppression of the telescope.

They will just be looked at as pedestrian plebeian philistines, and the people who had the good sense to

advocate this, people like Ralph Metzner, will be hailed as forward-looking visionaries.

Anything I would add to that analogy, I think, of the telescope is that because the telescope

after all is used by astronomers, a rather select elite group of people.

For example, the average man probably never in his lifetime looks through a telescope.

The significance of the psychedelic drug, in terms of enhancing our perception, expanding

our consciousness, in addition to that, it does it for, has a potential for doing it for anybody,

not everybody, but anybody who wants and needs it, who feels drawn to it.

And so, it's a tool that's unique, and this ties back to the theme I mentioned at the beginning,

you know, the age of shamanic experts is over.

That was the old age.

I mean, there will be experts, of course, there are people who are more practiced and skilled

and experienced at it.

The elders, the ones who've done it the longest time, are the ones you go through for guidance

and training and so forth.

But it's everyone has to make their own discoveries.

Everyone has to explore their own psyche.

Nobody else can do that for you.

And I wanted to say one other thing in relationship to your question, and I don't want you to take

this in any way critical of your asking of the question, but I wanted to actually have

you think about the assumption, the presupposition that underlies that question.

Because you're asking us, in a way, you asked something like, should people who take psychedelics

be required to undergo therapy?

That's asking a question about who should or should not, you know, ingest certain substances.

It's a control question.

And I understand your intention is, you know, protection of people flipping out and all of

that, but we shouldn't be asking anybody that question.

We shouldn't be asking ourselves, basically, or anyone else that question, looking for those

kind of criteria.

We should take responsibility for our own path, and that will serve as an example to other people.

Everyone has to find their own way.

Psychedelics is not the way for everybody.

There are many people who never should, in quotes, use it, and who never will, and who

don't need to, and who will get, quite possibly, to the same spaces as we get without that way.

And my always standard answer when people start asking questions about, you know, how do I

actually get there?

How do I actually make that connection?

Well, okay, Terence has given you an actual practical hint.

Grow your own mushrooms.

That's certainly a way to go.

I tend to give a more evasive answer, which I really mean in all sincerity, which is that

if the psychedelic visionary plants is going to be a part of your way, your path, you will

find your way to them at the appropriate time, when needed, no sooner and no later.

If your intention about it is clear and good, and that's not to say you may not make false

starts and you may have some trips and decide it's not for you, that's okay, too.

There's no requirement.

It's everyone for himself, and yet we're all for each other at the same time.

And if you're clear about your own intention, and you take responsibility and inform yourself

and be discriminating, do the best you can, that by example will spread to others.

Your friends and associates and people you come into contact with will follow your example,

and won't need to follow your advice.

Before we leave it, I have to tell a wonderful story about the telescope, which relates to

what we've been talking about.

The telescope seems to be a good metaphor for psychedelics.

When Galileo discovered the telescope, he was not immediately slapped down by the church.

It took a few months for them to even sort out what the issue was here.

And then of course eventually he had to recant.

But in the year preceding his trial, Galileo was, of course, before the invention of the

telescope, well known in influential circles in Rome as an inventor and scientist, natural

scientist.

So in his apartment on the rooftop, he set up his telescope and would hold small garden

parties for influential Roman citizens, among them great cardinals and princes of the church,

who were involved in deciding the issue of whether or not he was dabbling in heretical material.

So one evening he had Cardinal Roncalli of the Holy Office, which is the keepers of the doctrine

of the faith, and had him to dinner and said, Excellency, would you care to look through my telescope?

And the cardinal allowed us how he would like to look through the telescope.

So Galileo pointed it at the full moon, which was rising over the city, and the cardinal peered

into the telescope, and Galileo said, and so, Excellency, as you see, there appear to be oceans

and range of mountains on our sister world.

And the cardinal looked for a long time, and said, Yes, but senor, surely we can agree among

ourselves that this is only a hallucination.

Well it turns out they couldn't agree among themselves that it was a hallucination.

And I don't think that we can agree with our establishment that what we perceive is only a hallucination.

It is, and yet it isn't, it is a true hallucination.

I remember once in the Amazon, a very bizarre incident, I was lying with a fever in a hut,

and stomach, some horrible thing had happened to me anyway, I was in a terrible state.

And I heard these children singing outside in Spanish.

And the song that they were singing, as I slowly and painfully translated it, I could hardly believe

my ears, the song was, Behold, behold, the final illusion.

At last, at last, the final illusion.

And this is, I think, from the point of view of historical society, what we are looking at.

We are looking at the final illusion.

The body of Eros, expelled from Greece, burned at Eleusis, driven out of the European mind

by busy and pesky celibates, denied, repressed, cut apart, lay in wait in the mountains of the

new world for the European civilization that would eventually conquer the new world.

And as it burned and pillaged and raped its way deeper into the interior of the new continents

that it proposed to put under European sway, at last, at last, in 1953, Gordon Wasson glimpsed

the final illusion.

It lay like the body of Osiris, like the body of Eros, lost since the fall of paganism, but

waiting there to spread back through this proud, vain, scientific, paternalistic, male

dominated society.

And to lay the seeds of its undoing, to lay the seeds of an archaic revival, of a return

to the way we lived when the glaciers were melting and the game was plentiful, the way

we lived when there was partnership, and goddess worship, and ecstasy, and a sense of community

and globalism.

And this is what we have found.

You remember I said yesterday that the archetype of Western society is the prodigal son, the

wanderer who leaves his birthright, who leaves the comfort of the village and the bride who

was planned for him, and goes out and does something tremendous and ambiguous and unimaginable,

and returns with the gift difficult to obtain, returns with the healing plant, the magic word,

the jeweled crown, and lays it at the feet of the mother so long parted from, and by that

act creates a historical closure.

You'll recall at the beginning of this weekend I talked about the hexagram that had been thrown

for the fate of our planet.

Work on what has been spoiled through the line, work on what has been spoiled by the father.

And what has been spoiled by the father is the feminine and the planet as the exterior manifestation

of the feminine leading to the change, which is the cauldron, the alchemical vessel, the theater

and laboratory of the witch's magic, the potion that transforms.

And in the act of transforming nature through cooking, in the act of transforming human nature

through the cooking of the historical process, we have made ourselves unrecognizable to our

ancestors, even as we shall be unrecognizable to our children.

But ladies and gentlemen, this souffle is done.

This pie is cooked.

It's time to take it out of the oven, give the oven a rest and spread the board.

You know, with the passing of the patriarchy, I recall that wonderful line in Finnegan's

Wake where Joyce says,

Grandpuppus has fallen down, but Grinny spreads the board, sunny side up with care.

If you want to be parked, if you want to be Phoenixed, come and be parked.

Because upnient prospector, you're going to sprout all your worth and woof your wings.

And so that's what I invite you to do, to woof your wings.

Woof, woof!

Woof, woof.

That's all I've got to say.

Ralph's got to catch a plane.

I'll give you one footnote to the word hallucination and hallucinogenic.

We generally think means seeing something that isn't really there.

So then Terence talks, well, but what about these hallucinations that are really there?

And long ago, we used to say, in the 60s, we used to say, well, hallucinogenic is not

a good name for the psychedelic drugs because it's not a matter of seeing something that

isn't there.

It's a matter of seeing something that is there, but that you normally don't see.

And then I looked up the original etymology of the word hallucination and found to my interest

and delight that it comes from Latin hallucinare, which means to wander in your mind.

It has nothing to do with illusion.

A hallucination is your experience in wandering through the psyche.

A hallucinogenic substance or plant is one that induces you to go on a journey in your

mind.

And that's a very appropriate term for that.

And whether what you see is an illusion, a falsehood, a mask, or what it is and what it

means, that's up to each one to find out.

The greatest adventure still lies ahead.

Do you want to say something?