Mcpsilosa

conscious development of conscious alternatives but it was not until the amazon that i saw that

this was possible in a way that was accessible to me so then i concentrated on those people

those chemical families and that that then became the compass for all the work that i've done since

then and i regard the degree more or less as a joke because it was self-directed study they don't

really uh there is no degree in shamanism but my interest was basically one in the phenomenology

of religious experience religious traditions worldwide and primitive people against a

background of tropical nature and stumbled onto the mushrooms in the jungles of columbia in 1971

and was not even particularly interested in mushrooms at the time we were looking for a

less well understood drug that is still not discussed much in the literature that exists

in a very circumscribed area among three indian tribes and we went into the jungle to stay at a

mission that served these indians and the priest at this mission had cleared pasture and brought in

white cows and there were many many of these mushrooms and as soon as we started experimenting

with them i realized that what i had been told about psilocybin which was that it was analogous to lsd

but simply required a larger amount for the effect to be present was a complete simplification of the issue

and actually then psilocybin became the focus of my interest and by extrapolation the other

tryptamine related hallucinogens and a great dream of mine and of my brothers as well

was that the mushroom must somehow be made accessible to people so that they may judge for themselves the

difference and we worked with this over a number of years and in 1975 we succeeded in growing it by a method

that had previously been used only in the laboratory on commercial grocery store mushrooms to study their genetics

but it turned out to be perfectly adapted for growing this mushroom

within a matter of months we had written psilocybin the magic mushroom growers guide

and the information was moving out into society but more important from our point of view was

that the mushroom was again accessible to us so that we had psilocybin in a form that was

this certified pure by mother nature and that like initiated the second phase of uh our work with these

drugs which has carried us up to the present day and it's basically uh a project of taking the drugs

calling attention to uh the differences the uniqueness of the state and trying to attract other people's

attention to it because uh i have we have a very deep intuition of its importance for the cultural

predicament for mankind generally and uh this is how we come to where we are today basically you just

mentioned that the mushroom is really important for our country right now and you perceive yourself as

an advocate to bring in to our culture a new element like an easy way to reach altered states of

consciousness what can you learn from these experiences well the first thing that we can learn

is that they exist in other words that uh perhaps it's a truism in the 80s but at one point it was thought

that there were two states of consciousness awake and asleep now there is a gamut of these states but

i still don't believe that the people who deal with consciousness realize uh how mutable consciousness

really is there is a prejudice against the use of drugs because there is an inherent dualism in built into

western thought where people value the experience if it is endogenously produced produced through ordeal or

personality or dieting but is undervalued if it comes from drugs this has in my opinion held back

the western development of understanding consciousness because quite simply these states i do not believe

are accessible by any means other than drugs and this is heresy to a number of people but the evidence

that i lay in favor of that contention is uh the history of uh human art and literature and music and

painting is surprisingly uh empty of the motifs which exist in the tryptamine uh induced ecstasy and

always when i speak of hallucinogens i'm speaking of this limited family of drugs not lsd

or ketamine or ketamine or mescaline but psilocybin and dmt and combinational drugs which utilize strategies for making that effect uh noticeable

and my career is to point at this place in nature which i've stumbled upon and to say uh

uh what is this what do you make of this what are you the physicist you the psychologist you the after death researcher what do you make of this uh place and uh

even the most sophisticated consciousness researchers tend to hurry over drugs or to focus on one drug to

the exclusion of others and yet psilocybin has not received this kind of attention and treatment and

why that is i'm not sure i think that uh that the element of terror involved in doing it the fact that

it does not bathe your ego in a cloud of certitude or assurance that everything is going to be fine

it is much more cut and dried than that and uh it's a challenge it is uh when you are out in the billows

as i call it because it seems to come in in waves like sets of billows when you're out in the billows you

are against the power of mind up against the power of mind to such a degree that you know

that the entire enterprise hangs in the balance but no matter how much you've been told about dosage

and this kind of thing that the mind actually holds the key to life and death and that those parts of

your control board which are normally masked from you are suddenly unmasked and the buttons are there for

you to manipulate to the degree that you understand them and there is an element of risk i never tell

people that there isn't but i think that the risk is worth it because i think these bizarre dimensions of

beauty and information are actually uh it is an intimation of these things that gives human history its

coherency in other words this is not a peripheral issue to the general uh phenomenon of human becoming in

time it is actually because the evolution of the human species is the evolution of the human mind these

consciousness expanding agents actually anticipate uh an end state uh in the evolution of the human mind

and so they cast enormous reflections back over the historical landscape it is they which generate uh

religions and physics and messianic careers and outbreaks of uh uh great psychic uh accomplishment and

uh uh uh disgrace and uh until we understand this until we understand that there is a teleological

object at the end of human history and that it can be known we will continue to live the kind of

limited intellectual existence that has characterized the last 500 years or so of western development

so aside then tryptamine is in my opinion the uh the means to eliminating the future by becoming cognizant of

the architecture of eternity which is modulating time and causing history how do you perceive in this

context the future of mankind and the human mind well i've said many times the human history is a a lunge

across 15 or 20 000 years of time from the primitive stone chipping primate to that creature which will walk

into a trans-dimensional vehicle and leave the solar system and human history and the concerns of the human

monkey far behind and this may take a thousand generations of people but as a biological fact as an emergent

process of planetary significance that is only a microcosm a microsecond of cosmic time

uh the immediate future of man lies in the imagination and in seeking the dimension where the imagination can be expressed

the present cultural crisis on the surface of the planet is caused by the fact that this is not

a fitting theater for the exercise of imagination it wrecks the planet the planet has its own

ecostemic dynamic dynamics which are not the dynamics of imagination in space the physical space that surrounds

the planet the modalities of imagination will be the limiting cases of what man can be done so i see

man becoming an artist and an engineer in other words flowing into our ideas perhaps more than we

dare even now suspect in other words uh a possible end state of that kind of technical uh evolution would be

the interiorization of the body of the human body the individual body and the exteriorization of the soul

and this seems to me to be what the recovery from adam's fall uh allegorically is getting at that the soul must be made manifest and eternal

and the body must be incorporealized so that it is a freely commanded object in the imagination

and what i mean by that is something like what william butler yeats is getting at in his poem sailing to byzantium where he speaks of the artifice of eternity

and talks about how beyond death he would hope to be an enameled golden bird singing sweet songs to the lords and ladies of byzantium

in other words it's the image of the human body become a an indestructible cybernetic object

and yet within that indestructible cybernetic object there is a holographic transform

of the body and it is released into the dream in other words the after-death state

is actually the compass of human history that we are attempting to undergo a complete death of the species

and as we struggle with this concrescence of thanatos there is there are problems like nuclear stockpiles

and all these things arise because the message that we're trying to read is the message we most fear to

hear which is uh that you must die to experience eternal life essentially but what this death that

we're talking about is is an understanding that the human the dasein the being of human beings desires to

be released into the imagination and until we confront death uh with the attitude that it is the after-death

state that needs to enter history there will be a great deal of anxiety it's like a birth uh you know a birth

is a death everything you treasure and believe in and love and relate to is destroyed for you when

you leave the womb uh and you are launched into another modality a modality that you would not perhaps

have chosen but this jew cannot do anything about so i uh i think these drugs anticipate this because i think that

time is the moving image of eternity as plato said and these drugs place you outside of time now the mechanism

of how that's done you can invoke bell's theorem or just call it pure magic but it does happen in the

here and now it is accessible it is not it is not something remote from us but somehow the clamor of the

modern world and in the search for answers people have feared to place themselves on the line and to

actually wrestle with life and death out there in those strange bardo-like dimensions not realizing that

there is no other way to win true knowledge i mean it cannot be easily come by there is no knowledge

without risk-taking and i see the human future emerging along the lines that the mushroom visions have

insisted upon the proliferation of electronic media the densification of information the breaking down of

consensus reality the breakdown of a coherent dogma at the center of physics all these things indicate that

it is slowly becoming understood that the modality of being is the modality of mind

and once that realization is placed in the center of someone's thinking about the world the importance of

these drugs will be seen to be paramount and once that culture places that understanding

in the center of its model of the world these drugs will then point the way

and we will be much closer to the end of history that i think we all

we all desire consciously or unconsciously a cutting of the gordian knot and a release of the human species

and individual into the dream basically and primitive people meaning pre-literate people

they just have circumvented the entire process of history they have leapfrogged over us they are already in the dream

they have accepted the drug on its own terms and uh and assimilated it and live with it the problem with that for them and for us

we are destroying their world and our intellectual equipment is such that we can never have that uh

that naive epistemological approach to these phenomena because we know about technique

technique we know that energy can be manipulated to achieve effects

and so it isn't enough for us to try to recreate uh the shamanism of pre-literate people

we have to go into the shaman space with the a priori categories of kant with the eudetic reduction of wittgenstein with the ideas of merleuponte and whitehead

all the intellectual equipage of our culture must be carried with us into that space

to attempt to map it in a way that will be relevant for us

and that will point the way toward a shortening of this period of uh and the accumulating shock waves

like the bow shock of uh ionized particles or energetic particles meeting the magnetic field of the planet

that's what the chaos at the end of history is were you just talking about the belt here no i'm talking

about a shock wave which precedes eschatology and is uh modern times basically i mean it has been increasing

throughout history but as we grow closer to this moment where the human mind will evolve into hyperspace

the confusion the amount of contradiction the amount of uh cue it's called in engineering just the

the amount of vibration in the system is increasing to the point where it seems like the system is about

to fly to pieces this signals to me that the onset of the uh of the primal crisis that when we have gone

through it we will then live in this uh in this realm of altered understanding that psilocybin and these

drugs anticipate and it isn't a coincidence that they anticipate them it is uh in fact uh what eschatological

time is is what they reveal that's why the cultures we find using them are eschatological and historical

cultures what is the belthereum you're talking about well the belthereum is simply an interpretation

of an experiment in quantum mechanics which seem to suggest that information is non-local in other words

that everything about everywhere can be known here and now because somehow all information is cotangent to

every point in the matrix i don't pretend to have the background to judge the bell theorem what i would

say about it is if it isn't true something like it must be true to account for the informational content of

these drug experiences if you just take a simple behaviorist model what is in your head if behaviorist and

reductionist evolutionists are correct what is in your head should be very uh adapted to the here and now

it should be efficacious information that bears on your survival instead what we find when we

take these drugs is a density of information an alienness of information an inapplicability of

information to the human condition that suggests that information is available that has no bearing

on the life of the individual or his the success of his evolutionary strategy and i just cannot believe

that these things are built into the human psyche i have as i said i was involved with union ideas and i those

archetypes and those archetypal processes are not what i'm talking about i'm talking about the thing which for

want of a better word we call the alien or the extraterrestrial the thing which comes out of the drug

experience that is unenglishable beautiful but so bizarre that it seems to exceed human categories some

people talk about entities yes it can present itself as an entity it can present itself in a number of

different ways it is uh it is uh it is the central mystery of our age we are so alienated uh restart them the

the relationship of intellectuals alive today who are familiar with the state of modern science and

that sort of thing to a question like the existence of extraterrestrials is approximately in the same

place or degree of closure as the relationship of 15th and 16th century intellectuals to the real properties of matter

in other words they had only a tenuous grip on the real properties of matter and consequently alchemy

could exist could project the hopes of human psychic transformation onto inert matter

because so little was known about the real nature of matter that it seemed a reasonable place to expect

these kinds of things to happen the present state of thought uh today is that it's highly likely that

there are extraterrestrials somewhere out among the stars our state of the state of the development of our

chemistry astrophysics uh linguistics etc etc makes it reasonable for us as moderns to expect that so then

consequently we go into our heads and there seems to be the extraterrestrial uh it may be a true

extraterrestrial but it is odd that it is hidden itself in the place where we expected to find it

and this causes me to assume that actually it's something far more profound than an extraterrestrial

it's something which to gain our confidence is disguised as an extraterrestrial because

its real nature is so much more devastating than that that that is the way in which it insinuates itself

into our lives so that we can dream of a hegemony of organized intelligence out in the galaxy that we will relate

to and be assimilated into what i think is going on is that actually the most intelligent life form on the

planet is not uh man and his institutions it is the a the overmind of the human species which is a diffuse

organism of uh technical artifacts like computers and information transfer and retrieval systems

and human beings and but human institutions are like myths woven by the individual human cells that make up

society the real controlling uh modality on the planet is never visible and it is this group mind and it controls the release

of ideas into history by designating certain people as geniuses and it's uh if there's a certain kind of imbalance

a certain kind of religion will arise to collapse that imbalance if uh if uh technical advancement is

outstripping the evolution of ethics a religion can step in to freeze

uh these uh these developments so that one can catch up with the other and i think the whole consciousness

movement and that has evolved over the past 20 years is an attempt to map to verify and to open a dialogue with

this thing which is the other we call it the other we call it the alien but it is actually the overmind of the

species and it it seeks this dialogue it has been waiting all these millennia to uh for us to essentially

come to a point of intellectual maturity where we did not then require messiahs religions and these various

crude fine crude interventions into the human experience which keep us from destroying ourselves

this is also what jung called the collective unconscious right but he he painted it as a very

passive kind of thing more like a data bank or a place where all myths and all memories

were i think of it as a god a kind of god and i think it it is active in three-dimensional space

it can be active in something as uh personalistic and uh circumscribed as uh a string of coincidences

which you experience which seem to be turning your life in a certain direction that you may not have

expected or it can be active uh in in something like the worldwide phenomenon of flying saucers flying

saucers are nothing more than miracles and they occur essentially to bedevil science because science is a human

institution that has arisen in the last 500 years that is the dreams of displacing the overmind without ever

realizing that it exists science dreams of this place of preeminence but science creates alienation

species survival problems all of these things now then the overmind which can be thought of simply like a

cultural thermostat it clicks on when the clash of contradiction between the ethics of a society and

some other institution in this case science becomes too great

this governing device clicks on and it begins producing those events most destructive to the institution

that is seeking preeminence in this case science so the inexplicability of the flying saucer phenomenon

is its central uh reason for being and all the effort to reduce it to something uh metal ships from far

away or anything else is doomed to failure because its very reason for being is to undermine those kind of

ontological systems uh why we're talking about this is because psilocybin

makes, inducts you into the flying saucer experience.

In other words, a metaphor for it would be to say

that psilocybin is a means of triggering the so-called abduction experience

or the close encounter of a third kind.

Once you realize that, once you've satisfied yourself that that's true,

a number of experimental avenues are opened up,

a number of different approaches to what's going on are suggested.

I mean, here we have alien entities eager to transmit information,

eager to carry on a noetic dialogue,

and we seem to be ignoring the opportunity

because our categories mitigate against us correctly appreciating it.

Are these entities coming from outer space,

or are they more proud of us?

It's impossible to tell.

This is the game that you must play with them,

is through dialogue trying to figure out

if this is the previously unseen human psyche

or whether it is actually a thing coming from the outside.

And it is not an easy thing to decide

because we are so alienated from the self

that we don't really know what it would be.

So it's not important to know the context.

It's more important to know the content of the data.

The content is very interesting, yes,

because even if we were somehow to verify

that Bell's non-locality theorem applied

and that these were real entities around a real sun

somewhere in the universe,

it would make them no more or less real.

In other words, it's a hang-up

to demand that they appear in three-dimensional space.

I have this hang-up, so I don't put it down.

I always think of the apostle Thomas,

because you'll recall Thomas was not present

when Christ returned.

When he rose from the grave,

he appeared to the apostles in the upper room,

and Thomas was not present.

Then later he was there,

and the apostles said,

listen, the master was here,

and it was wonderful,

and he said,

getting too many little brown cigarettes,

that's preposterous.

And at that point,

Christ walked in,

and he said,

he said,

Thomas,

come put your hand into the wound

so that you will believe.

And so he did,

and so then he believed.

Well, the moral of the story,

as I read it,

is Thomas was the doubter.

Consequently,

Thomas was the only one

who was allowed to actually touch

the resurrection body.

It was because he doubted

that he was vouchsafed

to this position of preeminence.

And I'm like that.

I mean,

I would like to touch the incorporeal body.

I would like to call the saucer down

and observe all of its workings.

But this is a spiritual aspiration

that cannot be advanced

by any human technique or activity.

This is just something you pray for.

In the meantime,

the job is to map it

and describe it

and explore it

and try to direct the attention

of other people,

more intelligent than myself,

to this astonishing fact,

really.

I mean,

I am troubled by the fact

that so many strange claims

are made today,

so many forms of aliens

and channeling

and voices in the head

that when I began all this

ten years ago,

I was afraid to speak

because I sounded mad

even to myself.

and I sounded like a voice

in the wilderness.

Today,

the situation has changed

to the point

where I can barely

make myself heard

amidst the clamor

of people

who have various entities

from Atlantis

and beyond the grave

and Zeta Reticuli

and what have you,

clamoring to be heard.

So I take it out of faith

and I ask you

to take it out of faith

that I am

more objective

and somewhat more interested

in hard facts

than these other channelers.

I would like people

to take a look

at this phenomenon

and then tell me

what they think.

And it involves risk.

People fear to do it.

Careers are placed

on the line.

It is not easy

to make a career

out of taking

a psychedelic drug.

It is not a thing

which mixes well

with the politics

of any institution,

a university,

a research institution.

I can't think.

Perhaps this is why

shaman

are the primary sources

of information

about it.

Are you a shaman?

Are you an exploring shaman?

I'm an exploring shaman.

I wouldn't claim

to be a shaman

but I think anybody

who takes these things

and goes out

and tries to navigate

through

and make maps

and bring back data

is a shaman

for sure.

Do you want

that everybody

takes this drug

down this order

and take the drug?

No, I don't think so.

I think it's very

dangerous.

I do not tell people

that it's safe

because I don't have

the faith

that it's safe.

I know what

the pharmacological

literature says

and it says

that it's safe

that at the doses

where these effects

occur

there can't possibly

be a problem.

but this seems

to me

to be

the naivete

of materialists

and we shouldn't

be in a hurry

to believe them

even though

it might make us

more comfortable

to do so.

In other words

it's saying

the drug

may not be toxic

but you may be

self-toxic

and you may discover

this in the drug

experience.

So you have to

you have to

hone yourself

and be clean

and you never

know if you're

clean enough

until it's too

late

because each

journey into

that dimension

is a total

existential

commitment

and

the element

of fear

is always there.

I mentioned

this this morning

but I think

the fear

validates it.

I'm not

I think it's fine

to take drugs

for pleasure

but it should

be labeled

as taking drugs

for pleasure

and the high doses

of psilocybin

that are necessary

to elicit entry

into these places

it requires

as it says

in Hamlet

you must screw

your courage

to the sticking place.

Mankind evolving

towards a

teleological goal

would you comment

on that?

What is the goal?

I think there is

a final goal

in the name

of the history

but speaking

relative

to the history

of the past

four or five

thousand years

I think the goal

is as I said

to invert

the relationship

of body

and soul

so that the

body

becomes

an image

in the imagination

and the soul

becomes

an exteriorized

solid state

piece of circuitry

which maintains

everything else

in stasis

and I'm not sure

if people

even realize

what I'm

picturing my mind

when I say this

but I think

that the destiny

of man

and what man

will make

be his destiny

just because

of how we are

is release

into the imagination

and this is

what all our

after death

scenarios

say

whether they are

true or not

and they may be true

and this is what

poetry aspires to

art aspires to

its release

into the imagination

we are creatures

of the dream

and once this is

articulated

with sufficient

clarity

and it's

happening now

but I think

the work we do

with these drugs

we are the

earliest pioneers

in what over the

next hundred years

will lead to

an understanding

consciousness

almost as a

thing apart

from the monkey

body and brain

we are

consciousness

we may not

always be

monkeys

we fear

the dehumanizing

effect

of so many

computers

and emotions

euphoric emotions

not related to

sex

and all these

things

we fear them

we say

we are moving

further and further

from nature

deeper and deeper

into our own

psyche

but this is a

dualism

our psyche

is nature

and we are not

we cannot move

away from nature

by exploring

these places

so I believe

you know

that a

technological

recreation

of the

after death

state

is what

history

pushes toward

and that

means a

kind of

eternal

existence

where there

is an

ocean of

mind

into which

one can

dissolve

and

reform

from

but there

is also

the self

related to

the body

image

but in the

imagination

so that

we each

would become

in a sense

everyone

I would

live at

Versailles

and you

might live

at the

Taj Mahal

and someone

else might

live at

Buckingham

Palace

but what

you would

see

if there

were an

exterior

observer

what you

would see

is only

that man

had become

a coral

reef

of circuitry

in space

and on

the planetary

surface

but this

is a very

extreme view

of the

history of

man

because it's

essentially

gnostic

it says

we are not

now

what we

yearn to be

and are

destined to

be

we are

not

I don't

see history

as a process

of accepting

and coming

to terms

with

monkeyhood

I see

that it

will

inevitably

seek to

transform

and transcend

monkeyhood

and this

will be

very frightening

I mean

it's frightening

imagine

if even

a 15th

century

person

were to

be in

this room

with us

and the

value

systems

the clash

of

assumptions

about what

is important

and unimportant

and this

will be a

much more

intense

change

and whether

it is good

or bad

rests on a

question

that I have

no answer

for

and the

question is

is man

good

and this

I maintain

is the

central

thing

to dig

at

and we

cannot

know

and there's

evidence

pro and

con

I have

the faith

that man

is good

so I

don't

I don't

fear this

future

but if

someone had

a doubt

even a

small doubt

about that

then they

would be

repelled

by this

and I

take all

these

movements

which

want

zero-sum

growth

and

reject

technology

reject

space

colonization

reject

drug

experimentation

as

artificial

these

people

would be

very

alarmed

by this

kind of

a point

of view

but they

do not

seem to

realize

that the

momentum

toward this

kind of

thing

is now

so great

in terms

of human

culture

and that

sort of

thing

that there

can be

no turning

back

we are

either going

to change

in to

this

cybernetic

hyperdimensional

hallucinogenic

angel

or we are

going to

destroy

ourselves

the opportunity

for us

to be happy

hunters and

gatherers

integrated

into the

balance of

nature

that fell

away

15,000

years ago

and cannot

be

recaptured

Gerard O'Neill

made it

in answer

to this

very objection

he said

the earth

is the

cradle

of mankind

there is

no question

about that

but you

do not

remain

in the

cradle

forever

and this

is a

birth crisis

that we are

going through

the entirety

of human

history

has been

the story

of the

monkey

becoming

the flying

saucer

and it

is taking

just that

long

in geological

time

but we

for some

strange reason

happen to be

living through

the final

moments

of that

process

right now

and it

is

a turbulent

chaotic

multidimensional

metamorphosis

that is

there's never

been anything

like it

on this

planet

before

it's

absolutely

astonishing

information

which was

locked

for

kiliocosms

of time

into the

DNA

of plants

and animals

has through

the hand

and articulate

voice

of man

been able

to bootstrap

itself

out of

the DNA

and into

these

culturally

validated

rapidly

operating

electromagnetic

codes

and languages

and this is

allowing its

development

its evolution

to proceed

at a rate

so fast

that

the transformation

is taking place

essentially in our

lifetime

and psilocybin

is central

to this

because psilocybin

casts a

spotlight

into the

darkness

into which

we are moving

and shows

that this is

what lies there

it is

the human

soul

essentially

the oversoul

of mankind

calling

history

toward itself

across

the dimensions

and it's

taking only

a moment

but on the other

hand

it's taking

20,000 years

and it is

the great

great

adventure

of becoming

and we are

very very

privileged

to be in

this

final ticking

out of the

last seconds

of the third

act

do you have

any comments

about the

fact that

DMT is

located in

the human

brain

well I think

that puts

in some sense

as a strong

piece of evidence

for the argument

that I've been

making

not only

is DMT

endogenous

in the brain

but beta-carbolines

of the sort

that occur

in onelosca

are endogenous

in the brain

as well

these things

as I mentioned

this morning

the shift

of a single

atom

on the ring

structure

of one of

these molecules

can cause

a compound

to go

from inert

to highly

active

well that

means then

that it's

probably

reasonable

to say

that we

are as

close

to shifting

the level

of endogenous

hallucinogens

in our

head

we are

probably

only a

one gene

mutation

away

from that

happening

and if you

know anything

about how

biological

evolution

works

it isn't

that a

change

a mutation

occurs

and the

mutation

is found

to be better

adaptive

than the

previous form

and

hence

the mutation

dominates

that is not

the way

evolution

works

the way

it works

is

you have

the normal

expression

of the

genotype

in a

population

and then

you have

mutations

being thrown

off all

the time

and they

are usually

quenched

except in the

situation

where the

environment

shifts

so that new

selective

pressures are

operating in

the environment

when new

selective

pressures

begin to

operate

a gene

that was

previously

without

consequence

may suddenly

have

immense

consequences

so then

every

member

of the

population

that you're

looking at

that has

that gene

suddenly

is in

a much

more

advantageous

position

to advance

their

evolutionary

strategy

and I

think that

certainly

modern

existence

has changed

the selective

pressures on

the human

genome

and now

it is

people who

are far

out

that's

simply a

gloss

it is the

people who

are far

out

who are

gaining

advantage

in the

evolutionary

jostling

for

efficacious

strategies

and this

you're right

Frank

this is

happening

on the

hardware

level

on the

level

of endogenous

tryptamines

and that

sort of thing

I think

schizophrenia

is

essentially

in a way

a disease

of modern

times

and it

is

no it's

always existed

of course

but the

incidence

of it

and the

incidence

of

schizoid

if not

schizophrenic

personalities

and types

is because

the

modalities

of evolutionary

selection

are

shifting

it's

as though

if you

think

of a

rainforest

that

has

been

above

water

million

years

all

evolutionary

niches

have

become

occupied

everything

is at

steady

state

there

is

not

going

to be

any

dramatic

radiation

of a new

species

because everything

has been

worked out

and the

energy

flows

are so

tight

nothing

can gain

a leg

up

on that

situation

but if

you clear

a thousand

acres of

forest

and reduce

it to

rubble

essentially

open land

then what

are called

invader

species

come in

there

and they

very quickly

gain

dominance

where in

the jungle

at steady

state

you never

see those

plants

you never

see

weedy

annual

heavily

seeding

plants

in the

jungle

the jungle

strategy

is for

enormous

plants

which

produce

small

numbers

of

seeds

and

this

is

again

an

analogy

to

the

modern

situation

that

modernity

is a

desert

and we

are

jungle

monkeys

and so

new

evolutionary

selective

pressures

are coming

to bear

upon

the

human

situation

new

ideas

are coming

to the

fore

psilocybin

is a

selective

filter

for this

the wish

to go

to space

as a

selective

filter

for this

just

the wish

to know

your own

mind

this is

part of

the picture

this is

what's

happening

it's

inevitable

it's a

very good

thing

I think

if you

have

faith

that man

is good

and

my

I

follow the

renaissance

platonists

on that

I think

man must

be the

measure

of all

things

what

else

could

possibly

serve

with

certainty

that's

all I

would say

about

that

you

stated

earlier

that

psilocybin

is coming

from

outer

space

there's

a possibility

that

there's

mushrooms

there's a

possibility

of that

Fred Hoyle

and an

associate of

his

have

come to

my aid

on this

saying

that

spore

bearing

life forms

because

spores

have

the

capacity

to

survive

in the

conditions

of

outer

space

that

spore

bearing

life forms

may

over

truly

large

scales

of time

percolate

out

through

the

galaxy

and serve

as a

basis

for the

evolution

of life

on

various

planets

or

insert

themselves

there

I

don't

I

on

these

matters

of

specific

fact

like

is

the

mushroom

an

extraterrestrial

and

that

sort

of

thing

I

haven't

the

faintest

idea

the

mushroom

itself

is

such

a

mercurial

elusive

zen

sort

of

personality

that

I

never

believe

a

word

it

says

I

simply

entertain

its

notions

and

try

and sort

through

them

and

I

found

that

to

be

the

most

enriching

approach

to

it

to

know

that

the

option

of

believing

that

is

there

on

hard

evidence

is

very

exhilarating

as to

what

is

really

going

on

the

mushroom

assures

me

that

I

haven't

got

even

the

faintest

grip

on

what

is

really

going

on

but

something

is

going

on

can I

ask

another

question

what

do you

think

is

evil

and

can

these

mushrooms

be

misused

well

I

think

anything

can

be

misused

most

evil

is

trivial

and

if I

could

speak

off the top

of my

head

the only

evil

that

associates

itself

with

mushrooms

is

taking it

but

taking

too

little

in

other

words

evil

is

there's

a word

I want

it

isn't

twiddle

but

something

like

that

evil

is

when

you

play

at

things

not

in

play

in

the

Hindu

cosmic

sense

but

where

you

fiddle

with

things

you

muck

with

things

because

you

don't

want

to get

your

feet

wet

you

want

to

be

even

if

they've

taken

it

or

times

they

have

managed

through

low

doses

and

strong

defenses

to

always

keep

the

demon

at

bay

that's

the

demon

with

a

D-A-I

to

keep

the

demon

at

bay

and

they

don't

know

what

they're

talking

about

you

must

take

a

sufficiently

large

dose

so

that

you

enter

into

these

places

not

to

knock

him

personally

because

he's

a

very

nice

man

but

as

an

example

Roland

Fischer

whose

work

you

may

know

I

talked

to

him

and

he

has

given

Psilocybin

he

says

to

about

15,000

people

at

NIMH

and

now

he's

retired

to

Mallorca

but

oh

you do

yeah

and I

said

to

him

I

make

of

what

and

I

said

well

what

do

you

make

just

specifically

of

the

hallucinations

you

say

you

gave

it

to

all

these

people

you

took

it

six

times

what

happened

when you

closed

your

eyes

and

looked

at

the

hallucinations

he

said

I

never

closed

my eyes

I

was

highly

agitated

throughout

and

I

just

realized

these

things

which

seem

to

me

as

natural

as

breathing

just

slide

right

past

people

I

mean

of

course

you

do

not

eat

for

a

few

hours

before

you

do

it

of

course

you

lie

down

in

darkness

and

compose

your

mind

and

look

at

the

darkness

behind

your

eyelids

and

of

course

you

invoke

it

through

the

wish

to

have

it

come

to

you

these

are

things

as

simple

as

they

can

just

stop

fidgeting

long

enough

to

see

it

so

that

so

my

idea

of

that

as

evil

is

anything

which

trivializes

a mystery

would be

evil

and since

this is

a mystery

any

dismissing

of it

or

constantly

taking it

at low

doses

for

hedonic

purposes

I mean

there's nothing

wrong

with that

but that's

not the

whole story

and nobody

should

think

that that

gives you

a pedestal

from which

to speak

about it

you really

have to

do these

heroic

amounts

and

integrate

them

this is

something I

haven't even

talked about

in this

interview

but these

things are

very state

bounded

a term

which

Roland

Fisher

in fact

coined

that simply

means

that they're

very hard

to retain

and remember

what exactly

happened

at the

peak of

the flash

and you

come down

and you

say

well it

was very

strange

there was

information

there were

entities

but I

just can't

get back

to it

the way

to overcome

that

is to be

as psychedelic

in your down

life

as possible

and by

psychedelic

I mean

ideas

cognitive

activities

you should

dance

you should

read

you should

think

you should

paint

you should

sculpt

you should

converse

you should

constantly

involve yourself

in cognitive

activities

because

taking these

drugs

is one

of the major

cognitive

activities

and then

if you

have

a grip

on human

history

where the

human enterprise

has been

where it's

going

if you

have been

many

places

it's

easier

to map

I'm

reminded

of

there's

an

alchemical

aphorism

I think

it's

attributed

to

Athanasius

Krishna

where he

says

the oldest

books

the farthest

countries

the deepest

forests

the highest

mountains

this is

where you

must seek

the stone

and what

he means

is you

must simply

acquire

experience

because

it is

only in

the

acquisition

of

acquired

experiences

that you

have a

reservoir

to draw

on

when you

seek to

make

metaphors

and

analogies

about

the

alien

thing

when you

invoke

the god

then you

can map

back onto

it and say

well

it's like

this

it's like

that

knowing

that it

is not

that

or

this

but

the fund

of analogies

is there

to give

you a

grip on

so there's

an obligation

to experience

deeply

and richly

and thoroughly

and intellectually

and then

you can map

back onto

it

but it's a

dialogue

between

you and

it

where you

are discovering

new things

about yourself

and it

and

trying

to

trying to resolve the question, are we the same thing?

And I haven't resolved the question.

My suspicions flow one way and then another way, but I think it is without a doubt a living

mystery existing in the presence, available to anyone sincere enough to seek it.

And for me, that was a life-transforming discovery and revelation, because I didn't

believe there were any mysteries, I believe there may have been once, but to discover one

right in our midst, and it cannot be reduced, it cannot be pulled apart into its constituent

functions, it is truly a unitary mystery, and it's accessible in our lives right now, without

kneeling at anybody's feet, without following any regimen of denial or the assimilation of

any belief system.

And this is very big news, I think.

The mystery has always been there, I'm sure, but our society is so bizarre and has led us

so far astray that we have to rediscover it, and this process is happening.

This is what the twentieth century is all about, and we are still tip-toeing at the edge of it,

even though great men, great women, great mappers of consciousness have come and gone, we are

still at the very infancy of this thing.

And it calls out to us, it beckons, it says, do more, see more, know more, and be more a part

of it.

Well, you know, during your talk, I thought about one experience a reader and I had in

India when we were in the phantom caves.

We were looking at the lingam, and you know, when we would look out of the caves, you could

see across the bay, you could see an atomic plant.

And these two things just look really identical.

Well, the mushroom, could any symbol be more appropriate of the ambiguity of human transformation?

What mushroom is it that grows at the end of history?

Is it stropharia cubensis, or is it the creation of Edward Teller?

This is an unresolved problem.

It's supposed to go on for another 20 minutes or so, or at least 10 minutes.

But anyway, I just put all my records away.

We'll figure something out here.

Something's happening.

KPFK, Los Angeles.

We've just been listening to a talk by Terence McKenna, M-C-K-E-N-N-A.

And this was entitled, the interview was entitled, Psilocybin and the Sands of Time, which took

place at Esalen in December of last year, December 1982.

If you are interested in this tape, or other Terence McKenna material, or any allied material,

you can contact Dolphin Tapes, Post Office Box 71, Big Sur, California, 93920.

That's Dolphin Tapes, Post Office Box 71, Big Sur, California, 93920.

He has a book, and as I remember, although nobody has it in stock, it's called Invisible Landscapes.