Psilocybin And The Sands Of Time

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

This is Lorenzo, and I'm your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.

And if you've visited my Facebook page, you already know that the salon is in kind of a hiatus.

Yes, what's happened is that our landlord just sold the duplex we live in,

and so we're now looking for a new place to live, which will then be followed by packing, moving, and unpacking.

Now, I know what you're thinking.

KMO never misses a program, no matter what's going on in his life, and the same's true with the dope fiend.

And then, of course, there's always Lefty, who lately has actually been recording his podcast in his car when he's stuck in a traffic jam.

Well, the simple fact of the matter is that they're all better men than I am.

So, while I hope to get another podcast out in January, it could be as late as February or March

before I can get back into a routine and start cranking out new programs once again.

Now, that's the bad news, but the good news is that I've sure got a lot of new material

that I'm really looking forward to getting out to you next year.

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but I will add a section to our Notes from the Psychedelic Salon website,

which you can get to via psychedelicsalon.org,

and I'll post your first name and initial there unless you tell me not to.

But since my last podcast, we have received donations from Garth A. and John J.,

which have covered our expenses through the end of the year.

So, John and Garth, on behalf of all our fellow salonners, I thank you for your support,

and I wish you and all of our fellow salonners a joyous and prosperous new year ahead.

And I guess I should say something here about the current drama about PayPal and WikiLeaks.

Several people have asked for alternative ways to make donations to the salon,

and so I've been looking into that as my time permits.

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so I'm going to keep checking into some of them and add them if and when I can.

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You should be spending your money on toys for the kids.

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hey, bring them something fun to play with.

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You know, it's probably too late for most of us to convince our relatives that we're not the crazy one.

But, hey, the kids will understand perfectly where you're coming from.

And, by the way, they're our future, so, hey, treat them well.

Now, one more thank you, and that goes out to our friend and fellow salonner, Sean Duffy,

who sent me an email that read,

Hello, Lorenzo. Thank you for all the kind work you have done.

Your podcasts have truly changed my life.

Well, you know, that's nice of you to say, Sean,

but the truth is that it's you who did all the hard work to change your life.

I am glad that the talks by these elders that we're podcasting here have worked for you,

but, hey, my hat goes off to you for actually doing all the heavy lifting.

Anyway, Sean goes on,

I have attached a file entitled Psilocybin in the Sands of Time, McKenna,

that I believe you have not yet podcast.

Although the sound quality isn't the best,

it is, in my opinion, one of the best of his lectures and interviews.

I know you have a lot on your plate,

but if you have yet to hear this recording, give it a listen.

I think you'll enjoy it as I have.

Thanks again. Love, light, and peace. Sean.

Well, Sean, you're right.

I really did enjoy that recording.

And, in fact, I enjoyed it so much that I'm going to play it for us right now.

I found that this talk, actually, that we're about to hear is from a workshop

that Terrence McKenna gave at Esalen Institute in California sometime in December of 1982.

In other words, 28 years ago this month.

In fact, today is actually the winter solstice of 2010,

which means that if you are a 2012-er,

you don't have much time to get everything done before the big event.

On the other hand, if, like me, you assume that 2013 is going to arrive on schedule

without any magical event first taking place,

well, then, maybe we should take to heart some of the suggestions

that the Bard McKenna has for us.

So let's join them now.

Consciously, 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 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...

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 Colombia in 1971

and was not even particularly interested in mushrooms at the time.

And we were looking for a less well-understood drug

that is still not discussed much in the literature

but 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 brother's 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 adaptive for growing this mushroom.

Within a matter of months, we had written

Psilocybin, the Magic Mushroom Grower's 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 certified pure by Mother Nature.

And that initiated the second phase of our work with these drugs,

which has carried us up to the present day.

And it's basically a project of taking the drugs,

calling attention to the differences,

the uniqueness of the state,

and trying to attract other people's attention to it

because I have, we have a very deep intuition

of its importance for the cultural predicament

for mankind generally.

And 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 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 how mutable consciousness really is.

There is a prejudice against the use of drugs

because there is an inherent dualism 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 the history of human art

and literature and music and painting

is surprisingly empty

of the motifs which exist

in the tryptamine-induced ecstasy.

And always when I speak of hallucinogens,

I'm speaking of this limited family of drugs,

not LSD or ketamine or mescaline,

but psilocybin and DMT

and combinational drugs

which utilize strategies

for making that effect noticeable.

My career is to point at this place in nature

which I've stumbled upon

and to say,

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 place?

And even the most sophisticated consciousness researchers

tend to hurry over drugs

or to focus on one drug

to the exclusion of others.

And yes, psilocybin has not received

this kind of attention and treatment.

And why that is, I'm not sure.

I think 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 it's a challenge.

It is 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,

that 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,

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 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 an end state

in the evolution of the human mind,

and so they cast enormous reflections

back over the historical landscape.

It is they which generate religions

and physics and messianic careers

and outbreaks of great psychic accomplishment

and disgrace.

And 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 means to eliminating the future

by becoming cognizant

the architecture of eternity,

which is modulating time

and causing history, essentially.

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 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 may take

a thousand generations of people

but as a biological fact,

as an emergent process

of planetary significance,

that is only a microcosm,

I mean, a microsecond of cosmic time.

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 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,

a possible end state

of that kind

of technical 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

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

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

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

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

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

and you are

launched

into another

modality

a modality

that you would

not perhaps

have chosen

but that you

cannot do

anything about

so I

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

something remote

from us

but

somehow

the clamor

of the modern

world

and in 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

Bardot-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

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 preliterate

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

assimilated it

and live

with it

the problem

with that

for them

and for us

is that we are

destroying their

world

and our

intellectual

equipment

is such

that we can

never have

that

naive

epistemological

approach

to these

phenomena

because we

know

about

technique

we know

that energy

can be

manipulated

to achieve

effects

and

so

it isn't

enough

for us

to

try to

recreate

the shamanism

of preliterate

people

we have

to go

into the

shaman

space

with

the

a priori

categories

of Kant

with

the

edetic

reduction

of

Wittgenstein

with

the ideas

of Merle-Ponte

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

accumulating

shock

waves

like the

bow

shock

of

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

bell

here

is

no

I'm

talking

about

a

shock

wave

which

precedes

eschatology

and is

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

confusion

the

amount

of

contradiction

the

amount

of

cue

it's

called

in

engineering

just

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

primal

crisis

that

when

we

have

gone

through

it

we

will

then

live

in

this

realm

of

altered

understanding

that

psilocybin

and these

drugs

anticipate

and it

isn't a

coincidence

that they

anticipate

them

it is

in fact

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

bell

theorem

you're

talking

about

well

the

bell

theorem

is

simply

an

interpretation

of

an

experiment

in

quantum

mechanics

which

seems

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

the

here

and

now

it

should

be

efficacious

information

that

bears

on

your

survival

instead

what

we

finally

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

Jungian

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

so

alienated

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

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

extraterrestrials

somewhere

out

among

the

stars

our

state

of

the

state

of

the

development

of

our

chemistry

astrophysics

linguistics

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

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

dream

of

hegemony

of

organized

intelligence

out

in

the

galaxy

that

we

will

relate

to

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

life form on the planet is not man and his institutions it is the a the overmind of the

human species which is a diffuse organism 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

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 if if there's a certain kind of

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

is outstripping the evolution of ethics a religion can step in to freeze 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 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 in something like the worldwide phenomenon of flying saucers

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

science uh but science uh creates alienation um 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 uh 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 it 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 uh 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 uh we seem to be

ignoring the opportunity because our categories uh mitigate against us correctly appreciating it

are these entities coming from outer space or are they more part 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 uh 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

it's not important to know the context is more important to know the content the content is very

interesting yes because even if we were somehow to verify that bell's non-locality theorem applied and

that this 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 to demand that they appear in three-dimensional

space i always i have this hang-up so i i don't put it down i always think of the apostle thomas

because you'll recall thomas was not present when christ returned after 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

apostle said listen the master was here and it was wonderful and he said 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 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 i'm 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 uh entities uh from atlantis and beyond the grave and zeta reticuli and

what have you clamoring to be heard so i uh i take it on faith and i ask you to take it on faith

that i am uh more objective 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

perhaps this is why shaman are the primary sources of the information about it 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 cameras out and take the drug no i don't think so i think it's very uh i

think it's very dangerous i do not tell people that it's safe because uh 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 uh 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 you know the drug may not be toxic but you may be self

toxic and you may discover this on the drug in the drug experience so you have to uh 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 uh and uh the element of fear is always there

i mentioned this this morning but i think the fear validates it i'm not uh i think it's fine to take

drugs uh 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 i think there is a 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 uh 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 the 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 it's happening now but i think the work

we do with these drugs we are the the earliest pioneers in what over the next hundred years will lead to

an understanding uh 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

uh 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 uh 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 there 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 we are not i don't see history as the process of

accepting and coming to terms with monkeyhood i see that it will inevitably seek to transform and transcend

monkeyhood and uh this will be very frightening i mean it's frightening imagine if a even a 15th century

person were to be in this room with us and the value systems the clash of uh assumptions about what is

important and unimportant and this will be a much more intense change that 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 uh i don't fear this future but if someone had a doubt even a 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

uh 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 the 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

i think uh gerard o'neil 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 this is

a birth crisis that we're going through for the entire entirety of human history has been the story of

monk 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 multi-dimensional uh metamorphosis that is uh there's never been

anything like it on this planet before it's absolutely astonishing information which was locked for uh

kiliocosms of time into the dna of plants and animals has through the hand and articulation

the voice of man uh 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 uh the transformation is taking place essentially in

our lifetimes 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 uh the human soul essentially the over

soul of mankind calling history toward itself across the dimensions and it's taking only a moment

and it is the great great uh adventure of becoming and we are very very privileged to be in this uh final

ticking out of the last seconds of the third act do you have any comments about the fact that uh dmt is

located in the human brain well i think that puts in some sense is 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 ayahuasca 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 very 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 adapted than the

previous form and uh uh hence the mutation dominates that is not the way evolution works the way it works

is you have a the normal expression of the genotype in a population and then you have mutations being

thrown up 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 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 the modalities of evolutionary selection are shifting it's as though if you think of a rain forest that

has been above water 200 million years all evolutionary niches have become occupied everything is at steady state

there's not going to be any dramatic uh 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 uh 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 uh 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 uh modernity is a desert and we are jungle monkeys and some new evolutionary selective

pressures are coming to bear upon the human situation new ideas are coming to the fore uh psilocybin is a

selective filter for this the wish to go to space is a selective filter for this just the wish to know your own mind

that this is this is 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 uh i need to be the measure you said earlier that

psilocybin is coming from outer space there's a possibility that this mushroom is there's a possibility of

that fred hoyle and an associate of his have uh 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 into already existing planetary ecologies and 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

and 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

uh 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 sure what do you think is evil and can these

mushrooms be misused well i think anything can be misused uh most evil is uh trivial and i if i could

speak off the top of my head the only evil uh that associates itself with mushrooms is uh taking it but

taking too little in other words

evil evil is uh there's a word i want it uh it isn't twiddle but it's 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 able to say you've done

these things but you never want to really place your validity on the line and i am amazed at the number of

people who claim uh familiarity with psychedelic drugs who when you actually question them closely

it's very clear that they have a sub-threshold dose even if they've taken it 50 or 100 times they have managed

through 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

large and dose of

you enter into these places not to knock him personally because he's a very nice man but as

an example uh roland fisher 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 majorca but uh

oh you do you know and i said to him i said roland what do you make of it i mean what do you make of

it he said well make of what and i said well what do you make just specifically of the hallucinations

you say you give it to all these people you took it to 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 seemed 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 be yet here was a man with a lifelong professional involvement published dozens of

papers has made contributions in the mapping of consciousness but he could never just stop

fidgeting long enough to see it so that's so my idea of that as evil evil is uh anything which trivializes a

mystery would be evil and since this is a mystery uh any uh 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 uh speak about it you really have to

do these heroic amounts and uh and integrate them this is something i haven't even talked about in

this interview but these things are very state-bounded but terms 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 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

uh it's easier to map i'm i'm reminded of there's an alchemical aphorism i think it's attributed to

athanasius krishna where he says uh the oldest books farthest countries the deepest forests the highest mountains

this is where you must seek the stone and what he means is you can 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 it so there's an obligation to

experience deeply and richly and thoroughly and intellectually 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

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 to 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 uh pulled apart into its

constituent uh uh 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 uh of uh denial simulation 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 20th century is all about and we are still tiptoeing at the edge of it even though

great men great women great mappers of the 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 to be more a part of it you're listening to the psychedelic salon where people are changing their

lives one thought at a time did you uh catch what terence said near the end of this uh lecture when

he was talking about the other and whether we are the same as it and then he said he hadn't actually

quite resolved that question yet well uh that's where i am as well you know once i quit believing

things but instead began using what i call working hypotheses about the cosmos well uh i've now gone

from a single belief to dozens of working hypotheses uh it certainly is less constricting and once you

get used to it it's kind of nice to just accept the fact that until we die we simply aren't going to

have any real answers about the next stage of our journey and so it seems to me that the only

sensible thing to do is to get together with as many friends as we can and dance and then just keep

on dancing for as long as we can you know i'm sure there are other ways to spend a life but for me

singing and dancing seem really close to the top but uh maybe the best thing for us to do is uh simply

just to get together more often with friends and family and it doesn't even have to be in person all

the time either for example at the recent psychedelic conference in la i bumped into my friend alan who

told me that up in british columbia up around nelson where dustin still holds forth late on sunday

nights he'll sometimes hear cuts from the salon so that got me to thinking and late last sunday night

i stayed up i vaped a little bc bud and then tuned into kootenay cooperative radio over the net and had a

virtual evening knowing that there were other salonners doing the same thing right then plus

i was lurking on the girl report dot com's forums at the same time which is about as close to

multitasking as i can get anymore anyway hey don't think that you're alone out there in cyberdelic

space because you aren't there's a lot of us out there and we're all connected one way or another

and as my favorite canadian comedian red green says keep your stick on the ice it only gets better

you know uh here we are at the end of uh the year 2010 and uh what a year it's been huh at this uh

very moment i think we can all sense that there is probably a little more sorrow in the world right

now than is normal even among the most affluent among us those who are financially able to travel home for

the holidays even the well-off are having a hard time right now you know on top of all the political

upheavals going on the whole planet it seems is uh experiencing unusually difficult weather and uh

travelers everywhere are having a less than pleasant time of it maybe uh this is nature's way of letting us

know uh those of us who are more well off at least uh maybe we should be able to find a little more

empathy for the vast majority of our fellow humans who are having hard days like this every day

you know uh recently there have been a few days when i decided to feel sorry for myself and

got depressed about having to move once again but then i took a look around and i see how unbelievably

fortunate i am i'm sure there are a lot of problems in my life just like we all have hey you know that's

life but you know what there are quite literally billions of people who have it significantly worse

than i do and although it pains me that i'm not in a position to help them all out there's something i

can do and i think you can do too to make the world just a little bit better and that is find a couple of

small children and bring a smile to their faces even if it's only for an instant every moment of joy we

can bring to those little innocent beings well the better the world becomes and if your holidays aren't

going perfectly well well uh don't take it out on the kids hey we're the ones who have created

everything in this world right now and they haven't had a chance yet so go out of your way to smile and be

nice to the little ones and see if it doesn't make your world a little better too and uh so that'll do it

for today and and again happy winter solstice 2010 and again i'll remind you that this and most of the

podcasts from the psychedelic salon are available for you to use in your own audio projects under the

creative commons attribution non-commercial share like 3.0 license and if you have any questions about

that just click the creative commons link at the bottom of our psychedelic salon webpage which you can

get to via psychedelicsalon.org and if you're interested in books that have a little psychedelic

orientation you may want to listen to my novel the genesis generation which is available as a pay what

you can audiobook that you can download at genesisgeneration.us and for now this is lorenzo

signing off from cyberdelic space be well my friends