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Original Tree Of Knowledge

Terence McKenna / audio 9:59:12 ~614 MB opus 143 kb/s

A Sounds True weekend workshop recorded live in Boulder, Colorado, with ethnobotanist and philosopher Terence McKenna. McKenna examines the hypothesis that psilocybin mushrooms were central to human evolution and the emergence of language and consciousness, arguing that psychedelic experience is not fringe anthropology but fundamental to understanding what we are. He discusses techniques of ecstasy developed by non-Western societies, the relationship between diet and evolutionary pressure, and the ways that making a transformative experience illegal removes it from the realm of model-building and human knowledge. The workshop weaves together rigorous philosophical argument with personal testimony about consciousness and access to invisible worlds.

transcriptmachine-transcribed, unedited

Sounds True presents In Search of the Original Tree of Knowledge, a weekend workshop with Terence McKenna.

Researcher, author, and philosopher, Terence McKenna has spent 25 years studying the foundations of shamanism and the ethno-pharmacology of spiritual transformation.

His books include Food of the Gods and The Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide, and most recently, The Archaic Revival.

He is also the founder of Botanical Dimensions, a non-profit botanical research project.

In this weekend workshop, Terence McKenna examines time and its mysteries, the nature of language, and the techniques of ecstasy that have developed in non-Western societies to navigate to and from invisible worlds.

And now, recorded live in Boulder, Colorado, In Search of the Original Tree of Knowledge, a weekend workshop with Terence McKenna.

How to slice into this pie, I try to never do it the same way because I don't want to get bored, but that lays a sort of obligation on me that I'm not always able to meet.

And two things, I think, are going on inside this wrap as currently packaged.

First of all, I'm very interested in talking about the impact of psilocybin on human evolution and values and institutions.

And then, so that you don't think we've just fallen into fringe anthropology 101, I'm interested in taking the insights from that discussion and trying to apply it to the modern or postmodern, as the case may be, dilemma.

Trying to draw some implication from looking at human prehistory and the set of factors that were in place at the moment of human emergence.

And since I feel pretty much among friends and fringies here, it doesn't trouble me to confess that my book, Food of the Gods, I really conceived of as a kind of intellectual Trojan horse.

It's written as though it were a scientific study, footnotes, bibliography, citations of impossible to obtain books and so forth and so on.

But this is simply to assuage and calm the academic anthropologists.

The idea is to leave this thing on their doorstep, rather like an abandoned baby or a Trojan horse.

And they will open their doors to it and take it inside, only to discover that out of this very staid rational discourse, pour the self-transforming elf machines from hyperspace with their own agenda.

I feel like I should say this, it's more for my ease than yours, that I've reached the conclusions that I now espouse through skepticism, reason, rationalism and tough argument.

So it may sound ditzy, flaky and soft-headed, but that's just because you're hearing it wrong.

The guiding input was experience.

And in a way, what we're gathered here to talk about tonight is an experience, which is not only rare, transformative, challenging, but also for reasons which we'll probably get around to, illegal.

So, uh, it's, uh, it's, uh, it's a very peculiar situation.

Very few experiences are illegal and our, uh, models of the world are built up based on our experience.

So, if you make an experience illegal, you're essentially saying it is off limits for model building.

You can't include that in your model because it isn't really there in some sense.

And, and this is the situation in Western society vis-a-vis the psychedelic experience.

To my mind, the psychedelic experience is as much a part of being human as sexuality, in personal independence, uh, child rearing.

These are the things which are scripted into us as opportunities for exercising our peculiar situation vis-a-vis the phenomenon of being.

And a society which would deny that is a society whose secret, or maybe not so secret, agenda is the infantilization of its citizens.

I mean, if we are not capable of dealing with these things, then who is?

And are the people who made the rules, did they carefully, conscientiously, and at depth explore these dimensions?

And decide they were unfit for human consumption?

Or, uh, was it done more hastily, more mindlessly, and with more fear?

I would submit to you that, uh, it's the latter.

Well, first of all, I want to talk about the impact of psychedelics, especially in this case, psilocybin, on humanness.

And then, if there's time, maybe we can talk a little bit about what is so great about it.

I had a philosophy professor once, Paul Feyerabend, some of you may know his books.

And he opened his Epistemology 101 course by saying,

I'm going to teach you what truth is, and then I'm going to teach you what's so great about it.

Well, I won't claim to teach what the psychedelic experience is.

That you will have to find out on your own.

But I think it is legitimate to discuss what's so great about it.

You know, are we, by any measurable index, superior or inferior to people who do not have this experience?

Because if not, then really the psychedelic position is no more than a kind of cult

to be lined up along with Roman Catholicism and all the other cults out there.

Speaking as a former member, of course.

Well, my notion of the way to legitimate the importance of psychedelics is by showing,

and I think one can show in fairly short order,

that these things are not alien to the human experience,

or ancillary or the province of uneducated little brown people down in the rainforest or anything like that.

I submit to you that the psychedelic experience and the impact of psychedelic plants on human beings

is central to understanding who we are and how we got this way.

And if we can explore this issue and convince ourselves that there's some merit in this point of view,

then it will simply, it will do more than rewrite the annals of a staid science like anthropology.

It will actually change how we relate to each other and to the planet that we're in the process of grinding into pollution.

So that's the raison d'etre for the politics behind it.

Now, here's the spiel.

Sometime in the last three million years,

our remote ancestors, the proto-hominids,

were disrupted in their evolutionary climax

in the canopies of the great rainforests of Africa.

You see, most animal species evolve into a niche,

tighter and tighter and tighter.

We see this with termites and cockroaches and most life forms.

This is what happens to them.

Only if the niche is somehow disrupted or destroyed

does the game veer away from its tendency toward closure.

And this is what happened to us.

Our remote ancestors would have lived happily

in the climaxed rainforests of Africa

in the same way that primates to this day live happily

in the climaxed rainforests of Indonesia and South America.

But for the fact that the dynamics of the planet,

and this ultimately is, if we're looking for a cause,

or some people would say a villain,

then it's the climatological dynamics of the planet

which began to limit these rainforest habitats.

And a new kind of habitat began to form in Africa,

which was grassland.

It's very recent.

And under nutritional pressure and under a pressure

that was the result of this retreating environment,

our remote ancestors descended from the trees

and began to adapt themselves to the new world of the grassland.

And they did this over a period of probably a couple of million years.

Now, I maintain, and if any of you are evolutionary biologists or anthropologists,

this is the nub of my position.

Here's what's new scientifically.

What they teach you about evolution is that it's caused by mutation,

which is a random process,

which then meets another random process,

which is natural selection.

And out of these two random processes,

lo and behold, you get sea urchins,

birds of paradise, gray whales, and human beings.

Now, when you inquire as to what is the source of this mutation,

you will be told it's cosmic rays,

incident, incoming hard radiation,

which can disrupt chromosomes.

And then most of these mutations are lethal,

some huge percentage of them.

But a vanishingly small number of them

actually confer adaptive advantage,

and they are then preserved in the genome

and passed on.

Now, what I want to suggest,

and I've never seen it thoroughly treated

by evolutionary thinkers,

is that food is the unexamined source

of evolutionary pressure.

It can be.

If you know anything about animal species,

you know that most animals tend to specialize their diet.

Insects are famous for this.

If you find a caterpillar and you want to raise it in a jar,

you must give it the food plant you found it on

because they don't just eat leaves.

It doesn't work like that.

They have species-specific adaptations.

Now, why is this?

It's because it's a strategy

to limit exposure to toxic and mutagenic chemicals

that other life forms are sequestering in their tissue

to discourage predation, essentially.

Well, so then what happens when an animal population

such as our remote ancestors

comes under pressure from a dwindling habitat

or a limited availability of food?

Well, what happens, if you have any sense,

is you start experimenting.

You start digging up roots you never thought about before

and chewing on them.

You start eating leaves.

You start eating insect protein.

You experiment with the slaughter of small animals

and so forth and so on.

And this is precisely what our remote ancestors did.

This is the much-lamented transition

from fruititarian holiness

to predatory carnivorous messiness.

But had we not been willing to lower our gourmet standards,

we would have entered the fossil record at that point.

So, here we have these proto-hominids

foraging into this new grassland environment,

beginning to beat on prairie dogs

and stuff like that.

And, simultaneously, as we all know,

evolving in this African veld environment,

were great herds of ungulate animals,

proto-cattle, bison, wildebeest, antelopes,

many, many different kinds of animals.

And one of the curiosities of nature

is that many mushrooms prefer the dung of ungulate animals

to just going out and making a deal

with the raw, natural environment.

They like the leavening that goes on

with vegetable material

when it passes through the double stomach

of an ungulate animal.

As a headline, what this means is

mushrooms grow in manure.

And so, our remote ancestors,

testing for insects and eating small animals,

would certainly have encountered

the so-called coprophytic or coprophilic,

the dung-loving mushrooms.

And they would have tested them for food.

Years ago, when I was in Kenya,

I observed baboon troops

in this very environment we're discussing,

and their habit was

they were very interested in cow pies

because they had learned from experience

that if you rush over to a relatively old cow pie

and flip it over,

there's a high probability of beetles

or beetle grubs under there.

And so, these were vectors for food getting.

Well, in the M,

I did not observe mushrooms in Africa,

but I observed mushrooms in the Amazon,

and they can attain the size of a dinner plate.

I've never seen them in cultivation quite that large.

But, you know, you come out after a hard rain,

and these things are landed

like little flying saucers or frisbees

in the meadows.

They would certainly have been tested

for their nutritional potential.

And psilocybin,

different from all other chemicals in nature,

including, as far as I can tell,

all other hallucinogenic chemicals in nature,

psilocybin has a unique set of characteristics

which implicated, to my mind,

very strongly in the catalyzing

of the emergence of humanness

out of proto-hominid and hominid organization.

And it works like this.

It's very relatively easy to understand

as major scientific breakthroughs go.

At least you're not going to be asked

to do any partial differential equations this evening.

I mean, psilocybin, in very low doses,

doses so low that if you were to take a dose this low,

you could conceivably forget you had done it

and just go out and shop and fiddle around.

But at doses so low that they do not register

as a psychedelic experience,

psilocybin imparts measurable improvement

in visual acuity.

Roland Fisher did this work

in the late 50s and early 60s.

And they built an experimental device

where a person who could not be seen

by turning a crank,

there were two parallel bars.

And by turning a crank,

this person could rotate one of the parallel bars

so that it was no longer parallel.

And lacking talking rats,

they went to the next preferred experimental animal,

which is graduate students.

And they would sit a graduate student

down in front of this device,

give them a very low dose of psilocybin,

and then put a buzzer in their hand

and say,

when the two bars are no longer parallel,

push the buzzer.

And Fisher collected large amounts of data

which showed that the people

who had taken the psilocybin

and the other people were given placebo,

of course,

could detect this deformation

long before the unstoned subjects

were able to do so.

And Fisher,

who was a totally straight European scientist,

in fact,

a Vienniser,

when I talked to him about this stuff,

he was very cagey.

And he was funny,

in fact.

He said,

well, you see,

it's very interesting.

Apparently,

here we have data

which argues significantly

that we are perceiving reality

better with the drug

than without the drug.

Yes.

For him,

that was a joke.

I mean,

he never did anything with it.

It was just a throwaway line.

But it stuck with me.

And I don't think you have to be

a rocket scientist

to see

that if you are a hunting animal

in a situation

of nutritional pressure,

as our remote ancestors were,

and there is a food

in that environment

which will give you

better vision

than, by God,

the animals

which accept that item

into their diet

are going to

be more successful hunters

than the ones

that do not.

And consequently,

they will outbreed

those members

of the population

that have some aversion

to this exotic food.

Either they don't like

the look of it

or they don't like

that it grows in manure

or they don't like

the taste of it.

But those who accept it

as a dietary item

will be more successful

at getting food

and consequently

more successful

at raising their offspring

to sexual maturity.

And that's the name

of the game

in Darwinian evolution.

You must raise

your offspring

to sexual maturity.

then the genes

flow forward.

If you fail

in that

you get

an F

in the evolution

game.

Well, okay,

so visual acuity

that's all very fine

but psilocybin

has other properties

which build

on that initial

pharmacological

peculiarity.

If you take

slightly larger doses

of psilocybin

and this is typical

of many indoles

you get

with many of which

are hallucinogens

you get

what is called

CNS arousal

central nervous system

arousal.

You all know

this feeling.

It's the feeling

of two double cappuccinos

in short order.

It's that you

do not sleep.

You are very restless.

You are very alert.

Your attention

is scanning,

scanning,

scanning

and

in highly

sexed animals

like primates

arousal means

exactly what it

sounds like.

It means

erection

in the male

animal

and

now

isn't that

interesting?

That is

a second

factor

feeding back

into this

increased

success

with offspring

business.

not only are you

a better hunter

but you're a more

highly sexed creature

and you're having

more of what

straight anthropologists

refer to as

successful copulations.

An amazing phrase

actually.

Meaning of course

that impregnation

is a consequence

of this sexual activity.

Now the other thing

that psilocybin

does

at or slightly

above this

arousal level

and this is very

important for the

argument

is it creates

it causes

what I call

boundary

dissolution

and boundary

dissolution

in human beings

like you

and me

means

ego loss

and I believe

that this

would have

promoted

a social

and sexual

style

based

not on

monogamous

pairing

but on

orgy

the scenario

is fairly easy

to imagine

it's

that

these

remote

ancestors

of ours

would take

these mushrooms

and they

probably

at the new

and full moon

the thinking

is that

ritual

was originally

lunar

timed

and then

they would

and these

are

we're talking

about

nomadic

groups of

people

probably

no more

than 80

to 100

people

and then

there would

group

sexual

activity

now

an interesting

social

consequence

orgyastic

social

styles

besides

a whole

lot of fun

of course

it's impossible

to trace

lines of male

paternity

in that

kind of a

situation

you see

women know

whose children

are whose

because they

see the child

come out of their

body

and they nurse

the child

but men

do not

in that

situation

have

their children

my children

what they

have

are

our children

the tribal

group

and

this

boundary

dissolving

thing

let's dwell

on this

for a moment

because this

is central

to my

argument

and it

has

political

consequences

for our

own

lives

all

primates

clear back

down

into squirrel

monkeys

and lemurs

all primates

have

what are called

male

dominance

hierarchies

and what this

means is

that the

most

the males

with the

longest claws

the hardest

muscles

and the

meanest

dispositions

take control

of everybody

else

women

children

weaker

males

everybody

comes under

the thumb

of the alpha

males

of the pack

this is true

as I said

of squirrel

monkeys

howler monkeys

so forth

and so on

it is also

true of us

sitting here

in this room

this is a male

dominant society

I mean there's a lot

of complaining

and hair pulling

about it

and there's a

political alternative

in the form

of the women's

movement

and feminist

sensitivities

but for most people

male dominance

is the rule

well I

would like

to suggest

that our

peculiarly

discomfort

relationship

to reality

is a consequence

of the fact

that

for a

long period

of time

perhaps as short

as 20,000 years

perhaps as long

as a million years

as a species

and not

consciously

we accepted

into our

diet

a drug

that had

the consequences

of suppressing

male dominance

that this

was

the social

consequence

of accepting

psilocybin

into the diet

the ego

structure

that

forms

in the

psyche

like a

calcareous

tumor

or a

growth

if you

do not

have

regular

recourse

to the

cure

and the

cure

psilocybin

and the

boundary

dissolving

sexual

and social

style

which it

carried

in its

wake

so the

reason

that we

as a

people

are

haunted

by the

idea

of a

lost

paradise

perfect

world

sometime

in the

misty

past

is not

you know

Mercier

called it

the

nostalgia

for

paradise

and thought

it was

a kind

of a

longing

that had

no basis

but I

think

that it's

entirely

a memory

of a

period

when

male

dominance

was

chemically

suppressed

ego

was

chemically

suppressed

and by

male

dominance

and ego

I don't

mean to

lay this

entirely

on men

I mean

I would

wager

probably

everyone

in this

room

has more

ego

than they

need

certainly

starting

with me

and that's

part of the

paradox

that you're

supposed to

enjoy

in this

you know

the ambiguity

of me

preaching

the loss

of ego

essentially

you know

what happened

was

a chemically

driven

leap

in evolution

as a

consequence

of the

suppression

of these

behaviors

that favored

male

dominance

as a

species

we would

have continued

with male

dominance

forever

had it

not been

for

psilocybin

in the

diet

and it

established

a situation

in which

in less

than

two

million

years

the human

brain

size

doubled

this is

without

contest

the

greatest

mystery

in the

whole

evolutionary

theory

Lumsden

who is a

brilliant

evolutionary

biologist

called the

doubling of

the human

brain size

in two

million years

the most

spectacular

transformation

of a major

organ

of a higher

animal

in the

entire

fossil

record

well

now

it would

spectacular

enough

if it

were the

liver

of an

otter

or the

pancreas

of an

elephant

but

notice

that

it is

the

organ

which

created

the

theory

evolution

itself

and

all

other

theories

so that

we're

getting a

little

tautological

here

folks

there's

something

fishy

going on

what

was it

that

caused

this

explosive

doubling

human

brain

size

well

maintain

that

was

the

new

behaviors

that

emerged

with

the

suppression

ego

and

their

reinforcement

this

situation

nomadic

pastoralism

and

that

there

was

period

let's

call

from

the

melting

the

last

glaciers

there

was

period

when

men

and

women

were

balance

with

each

other

children

and

adults

were

peace

with

each

other and then it was lost and we fell into history you know the long slog

toward Armageddon is what was initiated in its place well now if it was so

wonderful why would anybody ever let go of it why was it lost well we have to go

back to the very forces which created this situation remember I said it was

called the climatological dynamics of the planet created the grasslands in place

of the rainforest continuation of those processes turned those grasslands into

desert and where there once were water holes running rivers grasslands and vast

herds of animals and their human symbiotes suddenly there was encroaching

desert fewer water holes the mushrooms began to be seasonal began to be

located only in the rain shadows of mountains the great mushroom festivals

which had been at the new and full moon became solstice seal and then equinoctial

and then you know biennial or something anyway you get the picture it was fading

and I don't think people took this lying down no pun again I think that there was

great anxiety about the fading of the mushroom and the loss of the sacrament and

so these people searched for a strategy for preservation well in a world without

refrigeration there is only one well no there are two strategies for preservation of

a delicate food like that one is air drying which is not terribly satisfying because as soon as a

rain cloud comes along your dry stuff absorbs moisture out of the air and turns yuck and so

the real the only real option is preservation in honey and this was done I'm sure it's still done in

Mexico to this day in remote mushroom using villages people preserve it in honey now the problem here and this is a

a lot of my book goes into this kind of thing a lot because food of the gods because what food of the gods is

really about are the hidden factors that drugs lay upon us that we are not even aware of and if you are

attempting to preserve a hallucinogenic mushroom in honey what you have to be aware of is that honey itself is

potentially a psychoactive drug honey will turn into mead it will ferment into a crude kind of honeyed alcohol

well if the mushroom brings suppression of ego group sexual activity and the formation of group values what does alcohol bring

alcohol has two effects primarily it lowers sensitivity to social cuing at the same time that it confers an exaggerated sense of verbal

facility in other words people turn into jerks behind this I mean you only have to go to a busy singles bar somewhere here in Boulder and you will see the alcohol ambiance being acted out

right in front of you so and and you know it's perhaps not so true of our generation but I think probably for a thousand years nobody got laid in western civilization unless they were juiced

because Christianity was laying such a heavy trip on everybody and you know people barely took their clothes in other words you had to become blindly intoxicated to do what comes naturally

and I think up until very recently how many women have their first sexual imprinting in an atmosphere of alcohol abuse I mean I would some huge percentage I imagine

so that is the story basically of the fall into history the loss of this mushroom cult happened right at the time that we were inventing agriculture and

agriculture and the suppression of orgy have something in relationship to each other on two unrelated levels

first of all you suppress orgy because once you have agriculture it's no more about psyching yourself up for the great hunt it's all about getting up before dawn and going out and hoeing the weeds out of the crops

so it doesn't promote a party mentality

the other thing is that as human mental capacity was evolving remember that exploding brain size as human mental capacity was evolving women in these nomadic groups

began to notice a curious fact which was every year they would return roughly to the same place as they had been the year before and in the discourse

from last year's camp in the midden they would discover food plants growing

and some brilliant woman or group of women put it together and said aha we buried food here last year and now there is food here

must be something about putting food into the ground gets you food in other words they were able to cognize a cause and effect relationship

that were separated over many months of time at the same time that women were putting this together men were noticing that the act of sex had certain consequences nine months later

the same perception had different impacts on both sexes but it was an ability to coordinate a temporally separated cause and effect

well once men got onto the notion of male paternity

they realized that these aren't our children

some are mine

some are somebody else's

and from that notion

you go to

my child

to my woman

to my hunting area

to my weapons

to my

sib group

you get it all

you see

the ego is born

and it is born in an atmosphere of complete paranoia

the first consequence of agriculture

well it has a number of consequences

but one consequence

it's a tremendously efficient way of producing food

that's obviously why people got into it

what does efficiency mean?

surplus

what does surplus mean?

haves and have-nots

the most spectacular architectural edifice of 10,000 BC on this planet

was the grain tower at Jericho

it was

had thick walls to hold the grain

and it had high walls so you could climb up on top of it and drop rocks on the people who were trying to get into it

surplus makes nomadism impossible

because you can't drag this huge amount of grain with you

so you get sedentary populations

and then

since the people who want the grain are killing your people in fury when they can't get the grain

you decide to put a wall around the whole encampment

now you have a small town

now you have urbanism

now you have the division between nature and secular society

you have classes

you've got it all

and I maintain that this is the long march into hell

and

our particular

obsession with drugs

as a species

I maintain can be traced back

to this transition

that

you know

yes elephants love fermented papayas

and so do butterflies

and so forth and so on

but this kind of

intoxication

is not

what we're about

addict

severely

to several dozen substances

less severely to

probably a hundred more

and

we addict to everything

that

you know

what we call romantic love

shows a lot of similarities to hard drug addiction

when you separate the lovers

you know

sleeplessness

suicidal tendencies

burning into tears

hysteria

loss of weight

you can't tell whether this person is getting off heroin

or has separated from their partner

well if you take an individual

who is alcoholic

has some kind of serious drug problem

current thinking is

this can be traced to traumatic abuse in childhood

this is what happened to us

traumatic abuse in childhood

we were literally

torn out

of a symbiotic relationship

to the earth

by the forces of male dominance

agriculture

sedentary living

so forth and so on

and we've been trying to

scratch an itch

that we can't find

ever since

and it has

you know

money doesn't do it

power doesn't do it

nothing seems to do it

we cannot

we seem to be the unhappy monkey

and we take this unhappiness out on each other

with a vengeance

and

you see what happened was

when the mushroom faded

the million years of

pharmacologically interrupted

patterns of male dominance

reasserted themselves

but it was no more a foraging monkey

with this style

it was a creature with language

tools

music

social organization

and suddenly it got very ugly

and people weren't interested

people began fighting over the women

so we don't want to have orgies anymore

this woman

is my woman

touch her you die

and so forth and so on

and we are living out

the legacy

of this

well before I talk about the

the social consequences of it

for us

I want to go back to the question

what was so great

about it

I mean we've talked about orgy

but you can have orgy without psilocybin

what was so wonderful about that

proto-historical mode

well this is where it becomes slightly more woo-woo

because what we have to talk about is what is the psychedelic experience anyway

and I maintain

that if we're talking about psilocybin

and we're talking about taking it in nature

as these people did

that you know

yes

first come the dancing mice

the little candies

the colored grids

and so forth and so on

but what eventually happens

quickly

like ten minutes later

there is an entity

in the trance

in the vision

there is a mind

there

waiting

that speaks good English

and invites you up into its room

and once there

you

realize that this is what all the hoopla

about the Gaian mind

and the rebirth of the goddess

and all that

is about

it's not a metaphor folks

it's a headline

in biology

we are not

the only intelligent

minded species

occupying

this planet

we may be the only

bipedal hairless mammal

with intelligence

on this planet

but there is something

out there

spread through

the grasses

the forests

the rivers

and the oceans

our own emergence

emergence into intelligence

took less than two million years

life

has been on this planet

for a billion and a half years

and we don't know

how many strange pathways

beckon

but at some point

a kind of mind

came into existence

and it is real

it's what lies behind

the religious impulse

in our species

there really is

somebody else

sharing

the local

mind space

and I don't believe

we're talking

theology

here

in other words

this is not

you know

in Milton's wonderful

phrase

the God who hung the stars

like lamps

in heaven

it's not about that

for me

that's a big question mark

but it is

it is

the God

goddess

of this earth

it is the biological mind

it is

that all

boundaries

are illusions

and that life

is a thinking

feeling

entelechy

of some sort

and we are just like a little

droplet

that has somehow

escaped

from the river

of cognition

and now imagine

that we're the only water

in the cosmos

not so

it turns out

what

the reason the psychedelic experience

is so baffling

and transformative

even as we sit here

with your heads

full of Heidegger

and Husserl

and

I don't know

Wilson Phillips

and all this stuff

is because

in the faith

in contact with that

we have no more

sophistication

than our

orgiastic

mushroom

munching ancestors

civilization doesn't give you

a leg up

on this stuff

in fact

it makes it harder

to figure out

what's going on

because we have defined

nature

as dead

you know

atoms

screaming

through empty space

ruled by

tensor equations

of the third degree

that's our picture

of what nature is

that isn't what it is

it's

a mind

of some sort

okay

what is the implication

of all this

is this just some kind of

fringe

anthropological revisionism

it isn't

because

the fall into history

and its consequences

at this point

a loaded gun

held

to the head

of the entire planet

we are about

pull over

the soup cauldron

and if we do this

then

two and a half billion years

of evolutionary advance

will be shot

nobody else ever dropped

the ball

so you know

we appear to be

vying for

this peculiar

honor

if we do not

awaken

to the consequences

of ego

then

we are going to run

this system

right over the edge

the whole

thing

which characterizes

our dilemma

as a global society

our inability

to feel

feel

the consequences

of what we are doing

you know

we've got the data

the ozone hole is

disappearing

life in the sea

will die

if it does

that will disrupt

the food chain

the world food supply

will drop

by 60%

everybody who isn't

white as a sheet

will have to starve

in that case

and so forth

and so on

I mean

we actually toy

not only

with our own extinction

but with the extinction

of all life

on the planet

and with the extinction

of the idea

of dignity

and decency itself

well

I'm not in this

psychedelic game

because I think

it's not easy

or because

I think it's going

to be a cinch

I'm in it

because I think

it's the only game

in town

you know

if hortatory preaching

could have done

the trick

then the sermon

on the mount

would have turned

the corner

cautionary data

flowing back

to ruling institutions

could do the trick

then sometime

after Thomas Malthus

people would have begun

to hit the brakes

nothing

seems to work

we're sick

we need

pharmacological

intervention

the

ego

permitting us

slowly

not so slowly

commit suicide

and

you know

the fact that we

cannot act

collectively

that we are suspicious

of all forms of

collectivism

that we

really are

all for one

and one for all

is not

our style

instead

what we have going

is a cat fight

and

you know

no less

straight person

than Arthur Kessler

in a book called

The Ghost in the Machine

said

humans are so wired

for beating the brains

out of woolly mastodons

that's what evolution

has equipped us to do

not

negotiate

weapons

treaties

and destroy

bacteriological

factories

have to

force

our evolution

have to

chemically

restructure

the primate

brain

so that we

do not

commit suicide

and the only way

to do it

is for the psychedelic

community

to stand up on

its hind legs

and roar

and

you know

maybe they'll build

camps for us

but

the point being

I think

there's a moral

imperative

to try

what works

I mean

you know

in the 60's

psychedelics were called

consciousness expanding drugs

a good old

phenomenological

description

well

consciousness

does not

loom large

in the future

history of our species

then what the hell

kind of future

is it

going to be

no future at all

I maintain

there is even the

slightest

iota

of possibility

that these things

what I'm saying

they do

we need to get

johnny quick on it

and check it out

because

that we may be

beyond the point of

no return

right now

nobody knows how bad

this ozone hole

thing is

or what's locked up

at rocky flats

or behind the iron

curtain

or dumped in the arctic

ocean

we may be past

the fail safe point

right now

folks

there is no time

to lose

it is time to engage

the powers that be

in a little more

serious dialogue

than the

just say no

horseship

that's been peddled

recently

because we're talking

about the survival

of life

on the only planet

that we are

certain

has life

on it

this may be

the site

of a cosmic

experiment

with

universal

implications

and it rests

in our hands

everybody

here

tonight

is here

because

a whole

bunch of people

didn't drop

the ball

and

you know

you think you've got problems

nine times

in the last

million years

the ice

has moved south

from the poles

miles

thick

no antibiotics

no electronic

communication

nothing

and I'm sure

these people

were miserable

and they dragged

through it

and they lived

and they passed

it on

now we're

and we will be judged

the lamest

of the lame

if we cannot

come to terms

with this

and begin to talk

about what is going

this is not

obscure

as I said

I view

the psychedelic

experience

as central to

humanness

as our sexuality

we cannot

allow

dominator

institutions

to infantile

infantilize

and to tell you

where your mind

can and cannot

we even have a piece

of paper

locked up in a vault

in Washington DC

that guarantees

life

liberty

and the pursuit

of happiness

well now

what could

the pursuit

of happiness

possibly mean

if it doesn't mean

the freedom

to practice

your own

relationship

to nature

and its gifts

so I think

we have been

entirely

too casual

about the importance

of the psychedelic

experience

this is for one reason

because

we cannot

publicly get together

and discuss it

in detail

and one of the things

that I think

is very important

about get-togethers

like this

is if you will

look around

you'll notice

that we cannot

really be distinguished

from the rest

of society

some of us

live under bridges

some of us

clip coupons

you know

there's a wide

spectrum

of people here

but

this is your

affinity group

this is your

community

someone in this room

actually has

what you need

and

you know

I have

acted as a

filter

so out of

millions

living along

the front range

here we've

gotten it down to

I can't go any further

than that folks

the rest

up to you

well

I guess

the last thing

I want to say

and then we'll take

a little intermission

and

and then come back

and do questions

afterwards

which is my favorite

part

but I want to

just for a minute

invoke

the psychedelic

experience

without regard

the evolutionary forces

that created it

or the political

institutions

that suppress it

and so forth

and just say

in case there's

some soul

in this room

who's never had

experience

that

this is

extraordinary

news

we're not talking

about something

like a dream

it is not

meditation

you can't

get there

by yourself

and

Babaji is

equally useless

because you

and Babaji

are starting

from the same place

in this game

it requires

pharmacological

perturbation

of ordinary

neurochemistry

in order

to see

this mystery

and it is

a mystery

it is

not going to be

reduced

to the firing

of synapses

or repressed

sexual desires

or day

residues

or anything

like that

it is

the very thing

which all

these religions

are yammering

about

it's there

it's real

I mean if you think

that the world

is empty

of adventure

then you just

haven't been hanging

out with the right

crowd

I mean

on a Saturday

night

within the confines

of your own

apartment

on five grams

of psilocybin

mushrooms

in silent darkness

I guarantee

you

you will believe

that Ferdinand

Magellan

should take second

place to you

you will see

things

which no human being

has ever seen

before

and

that no human being

will ever see

again

that's how big

that universe

that can

the incredibly

constricted

space-time

locus

of the here and now

that evolution

has forced upon us

for survival purposes

is simply

one point

in an apparently

infinite hologram

of explorable

data

that is

the human world

I mean

the

you know

the entire world

of every science fiction

novel

and story

ever written

minuscule

compared

to the universes

of strangeness

and peculiarity

that are

accessible to

any one of us

if you will

but

apply the method

and if you're not

willing to apply the method

then you know

you're going to sweep up

around the ashram

till hell freezes over

and

not

understand

what

is going on

I mean

I think

you know

I'm sorry to be so hard

on religion

I think it has

its place

the inspiration

of ethical behavior

you know

religion should

teach

ethical behavior

but

it has

very very little

to say

about the mystery

of being

other than

that it's there

and that's not

practicing religion

is dancing

with the mystery

losing

and finding

yourself

in the mystery

and people often

say to me

you know

well

how does this relate

to other forms

of spiritual work

the answer is

maybe

not at all

I mean

I've certainly taken

a lot of psychedelics

and I think

I see no sign

spiritual attainment

ethical

perfection

or anything

la-di-da

as that

I don't know

what this is

all about

but I do know

it's ours

it belongs

to us

we are the creatures

of mind

and

95%

of what

mind is

lies

on the other

side

of the psychedelic

boundary

ordinary

consciousness

is just

keeping the

accounts

of life

but there's more

to life

than the account

books

I mean

everything else

is out there

the color

the affection

the humor

the terror

the mystery

the strangeness

of it all

this

is the domain

that we want to claim

and explore

and if we can find

the collective

institutional courage

to do it

I think this

current

planetary crisis

will be seen

for what it really is

and what it is

it's not a dying

these are not

the last rights

for intelligence

this is a birth

process

I mean

if you were to

come around

if you've never seen

somebody give birth

around the corner

and it was in progress

you would be

thoroughly

profoundly

alarmed

I mean

it looks like an

enormous tumor

is making its way

out of somebody

and they are being

split in two

and blood

is being shed

and there's

pleading

and screaming

and thrashing

it would be a real

leap of understanding

for you to say

oh how wonderful

new light

is emerging

this is the way

we do it

well

this is the way

we do it

I mean

we are in the birth

canal right now

of a planetary

civilization

literally

the amniotic oceans

of 500 years ago

that's all gone

there is no frontier

there is no going back

the piece of the fetal environment

is gone

and now

in transition

literally

the walls

are closing in

you can't breathe

you can't eat

you can't find your way

it appears to be the end

but there's light

at the end of the tunnel

the problem is

that tunnel

is in the back of your mind

and if you don't go

to the back side of your mind

you will never see

the light at the end of the tunnel

and once you see it

then the task becomes

to empower it

in yourself

and other people

spread it as a reality

God did not retire

to the seventh heaven

God is some kind of lost continent

in the human mind

and if we will but explore the human mind

we can reclaim these relationships

with our own authenticity

and shed the childishness of his mind

of historical existence

and gender politics

and all the rest of it

and move on to the real business

of establishing a real civilization

thank you very much

Does anyone want to ask a question or is it all just perfectly clear utterly convincing and

Yeah, of psilocybin bad effects

Somebody once said what's wrong with DMT and I said well nothing unless you fear death by astonishment

But but your question is a good one first of all

You know, I talked a lot about how what we have to do is destroy and ablate ego

However, there is a very small percentage of us who have a hard time creating any ego

whatsoever and the for these people boundary dissolution is no problem their boundaries are dissolving all the time on them

I would say that they are at the

Contraindicated end of the spectrum that if you're

fearful already and

Fighting to keep from being overwhelmed by confusion at what's going on in your life at the paper box factory or something

then probably

Tossing in mega doses of how the sentence is not the way

for you to do it or if you do if you're just bent on doing that then I would say

Do it in the presence of some kind of professional and

How you find a professional in this legal climate you'll have to discuss with me privately?

I don't want to make it sound though. I mean it's a tricky thing

I don't want to make it sound like it's absolutely riskless

Physically, I think it's pretty safe

Unless you have are odd in some way, but you need to know you know

You don't want to find out you're odd an hour and a half into it, but that

the the problem comes

with the mind

You know if if you are delicately balanced

If your whole life has been about not looking at that or that or that

Then this is not your game, you know you should go back to

watching Jeopardy and

But the kind of person

The kind of person who is called to this is a person who has an exploring

soul I mean my I am not a

Courageous person in the sense that you won't find me shooting white water you would do don't see me

You know rappelling down the faces of cliffs, but from the time I was at the tiniest little kid

I was into the weird

What's weird weird is the compass heading and if you keep your compass always

Pointed toward the peculiar the ultra the bizarre the unspeakably alien then you know you'll find these places

The people the people who think life is all cut and dried and are perfectly happy to have Carl Sagan and George Bush explain all of reality

Have never left the broad swift stream of mundane

thinking but you know off in the byways and tributaries

There's a wonderful alchemical saying

Which I generally mangle, but I think it goes something like this the tallest mountains the oldest books the widest deserts

There you will find the stone and what it is is it's a prescription for exploring weirdness

That's all it's not going to be on mtv. It's not going to be in God forbid Esquire

It's going to come

From you know doing your homework visiting strange people in strange lands

and checking it out the

What I can't give you to return to your question is I can't give you a guarantee that it will be fun

You know the rolling stones have that wonderful line you don't get what you want you get what you need

This stuff is ruthless and if there's something that you're trying not to look at it's going to get you for sure

But ask the veterans most people will tell you you learn more from the bad trips

Than you do from the good ones the good ones are ecstatic and connect you up to nature and other people the bad ones show you

Your your kinks and your limitations and your thought

Errors and that sort of thing. It's not an easy row to hoe. That's why I think

There's a little bit of social confusion about it one of the things I should make clear is I really advocate

high doses

Rarely I think the worst thing you can do is get into a style of psychedelic diddling

Where you know you take half a gram every day

all this is doing is

Giving you a tolerance to psilocybin

You're not having the psilocybin experience. You're having the tolerance to psilocybin

experience the really the way to do these things is to

Do them rarely so that your whole system can reassert itself and come to equilibrium and then just slam it

and

This is amazing. I mean, I think I think that this works for all these psychedelics

I'm

I'm an inveterate cannabis user and I wish in a way that I could get a slightly

Better grip on my cannabis use because the I think the real way to do cannabis is like

once a week

by yourself in

Silent darkness with the strongest stuff you can get and then immense amounts of it

And you know people call it a recreational drug and of this and of that hate done that way it will

catapult you into places where it's the it's I love it the great place to get to on cannabis and some people never in their whole life

Touch it is the place where you say my god. I've done too much

It's not easy folks, but it's worth shooting for

Basically what what you should do is is you know do some homework read some books

Talk to your friends and then hang on Hannah. It's like

You know, it's very much like riding an enormous roller coaster

You know once that baby rolls out of the station

Do not stand up do not try to climb out of your car

Shut up and hang on with the faith that most people have lived through this

Somebody else yeah the purple

Well having just heard that I'm a pothead please ask them one at a time

What is your first literary question?

Well, I don't mean to imply that people first used it in low doses and then middle and then higher over time

What I mean what I meant to imply I think they were using low middle and high doses from the very get-go

But they were using low doses to hunt middle range doses for orgy and ceremony and truly high doses for this boundary dissolving

tremendum

literary question uh-huh

Well, I'm I'm not wedded to that first of all chatal hyaluk for those of you haven't read the book

Or know about chatal was this immensely sophisticated

civilization that existed in the seventh millennium

B.C.

We're talking three thousand we're talking six thousand years before

Zero this civilization existed and was destroyed and the

The characteristic of it is shrines dedicated to cattle and in my book

I argue that this was probably the last outpost of this partnership

Society

But it was still I think the real golden age of mushroom use was probably from about

30,000 years ago to about

15,000 years ago and by the time chatal hyaluk comes along it's it's a fading or yearly or seasonal thing

The important one. The assertions that you made earlier

The assertions that you made earlier was that these endo-based plant solution agents actually change people that use them. And the unfortunate thing that I observed is, I can't agree with that assertion. It seems that as many people, it seems like only a really few people are changed by it. Only those who are predisposed to change. And I'd like, in one of the questions you asked, that's one of the important ones that you made earlier.

Does it make us better...does it make us different. And I'm just not convinced at all. When I see people taking mushrooms and going around, no. And I mean, it's, it's an amazing show, I mean, my friends are you all through me too.

And that's because I tell my brothers, you know, it's one of the things, right? And I'm very interested in sharing that there's what you're going to do. This is so hard to learn.

So you're a real person that you're doing. That's why you're going to be the ones that are worthy of the most.

I think one of the questions you ask that doesn't make it better, doesn't make it different.

different. And I'm just not convinced

at all. But when I see people

taking mushrooms and going around

doing chinkish-minkish things,

and just being as jerky

as they ever were, I mean,

you know, I'm going to

and you know, I don't see it happening.

Well, I...

My argument

would be that people

don't take it enough and they don't take

it frequently enough.

That there are a lot of people

who really would rather

not get loaded

but who feel they must

take some psychedelic

drug in order to keep membership

in their peer group. So what they

do, you know, you can always spot these people

because their first question

at the get-go is, will I be able

to drive? I love this

question.

Because, you know, it indicates

you've got a real tough nut

on your hand. In every

sense of the word, no.

No, you will not be able to drive.

So, you know, I...

One of the things that inspires

me to do this is

I want to get to the people

who've taken

three grams of mushrooms

and the people who've taken

150 mikes of LSD.

And I want to convince those people

that they never got close

to what I'm talking about. Even though

they had a life-transforming experience

and saw things totally differently,

they never got close to what I'm

talking about. And so

what you have to do is convince people to take

high doses

and then that's to

break them through and then

frequently enough that they don't

forget what the deal

is. So I think if you take a

psychedelic population and divide

it into those who have done

five grams and above,

then you will see

an exceptional

slice.

But not the dabblers.

The dabblers don't count.

And we all can

be, or at times,

guilty of this, I think.

And then...

Is that your last question?

Does that do it for you?

Or do you want to be thought psychotic?

You choose.

Well, I'd love competition.

I mean, I...

The competition is terrible.

That's the entire basis

of my success.

Yeah.

You, because you were

before.

If you still wish.

I don't know if it's preferable.

But here's the thing.

People are going to think

you're a nut

if you come down

and say

that Johan Sebastian Bach

or Jerry Garcia

is God.

And this is what

you will have to say

if you listen to the dead

or the B minor math.

So,

what I'm interested in

I want to know

the thing in itself.

Not what it does

to Bach.

not what it does

to a river

flowing through

a forested valley.

I want to see

what it can do

with darkness

and silence.

And I think

most people think

it'll be boring.

Probably because

they've been hanging out

with these BDI gurus

meditating

and God knows

there's nothing

more boring on earth

than most meditations.

However,

psychedelic,

sitting in a darkened room

on five dry grams

of psilocybin mushrooms

is nothing

like meditating.

And that's where

it can get at you.

My relationship

to it

is always one

I want to know

what it is.

And so,

I think this

sensory deprivation method

is the only way

to get at that.

Other people might not like that.

People say,

well, you mean

you put down

the whole thing

of going into nature?

Isn't nature

the great affirmation

in all this?

And the answer is,

yeah,

but it works for me

sort of

without the drugs.

Plus,

and this is just

maybe my own weirdness,

but I'll share it with you.

I have noticed

that these things

are incredibly disruptive

of the ordinary flow

of Kazuistry.

Do you all know

the concept of synchronicity?

Well,

if you don't stay

in your room

with the lights out

and the phone unplugged,

the damnedest things

will happen to you.

I mean,

you couldn't pay me

to go into

an American city

even mildly loaded

because

adventures beckon.

Now,

some people like that.

You know,

some people say,

you know,

let's take 500 mics

and go meet

weird people.

Uh-uh.

Not this cookie.

Uh-uh.

Yeah.

According to your statement,

what I find happens there

is that you

create an experience

where you are

taking in other people's dogma.

You know,

you're bringing in

something that's already done.

And I feel like

the people experience

can create something new

and something new

expresses itself

from the death.

Which is why

I also say

the darkness sometimes.

But one thing

that I did learn

is that

the high doses

are very,

very interesting.

It would take me

way far

beyond

the small doses.

And I've experimented

with both

homeopathy

and

now from the

mineral extracts

in terms of

making my own medicine.

But in turn,

it's psychedelic.

But if you take that

into

and my question

is coming back,

of course,

that if you take that

into a situation

where you remove

the whole

elective habit

that you do

in a homeopathy,

do you think

that there could be

a more potent experience

through that solution?

Are you asking me

do I think

a homeopathic

preparation

of a psychedelic

would be effective?

It would be

homeopathically

effective.

I wouldn't expect

it to be

experientially effective.

See,

I would say

that

there's

what we view

out here

is a direct

creation

of what we are

inside

that's the current

present.

That if you do

change it

in the same manner

that you change

your homeopathy,

which is changing

the asterisk

so that you then

create the world

of a certain time,

that it would be

even more potent

and even more

immediate

effective

really

just in our reality.

But don't you

think that

if that were true

and since

in a high dilution

like that

no molecular trace

of the original

compound remains

that you have

then just

found the solution

to the

legalization

conundrum.

because in a

materialist world

it's assumed

to be bogus.

right

yeah

well

this seems

to me

not an abstract

proposition

at all

let the best

homeopaths

succuss

the strongest

hallucinogens

and set them

out

and

let's give

it a whirl

over on

this side

yeah

oh I can

hardly

wait

why are you

in jail

why am I

not in jail

hmm

well that's

an interesting

question

and I

number one

I don't know

here's what

I've come up

with

notice

that I

use

big words

I don't

boil

I don't try

to boil it

down to

a shoutable

slogan

turn on

tune in

drop out

uh uh

that

then they

come

they come

so that's

one possibility

that simply

if you are

defined in

their eyes

as an

intellectual

then they

automatically

put you

in the

harmless