library / Terence McKenna / Rap Dancing Into The 3rd Millenium - Part B

Rap Dancing Into The 3rd Millenium - Part B

Terence McKenna / audio 42:32 ~37 MB opus 123 kb/s

A Terence McKenna lecture delivered in his signature streaming-consciousness style. He explores consciousness and human evolution through the lens of psychedelics and botanical wisdom, discussing DMT-containing plants, the "transcendental object at the end of time," and the idea that history itself is a magical invocation building toward transformational transcendence. He situates our era as the moment when humanity might finally understand the nature of the transcendent force that has sculpted our evolution across eons. The talk crackles with the intellectual electricity that made McKenna essential listening for generations seeking to integrate mysticism and biology into a coherent vision of human potential.

transcriptmachine-transcribed, unedited

Some of you may have seen, I don't, years and years ago, this B-movie about a guy who has a big ranch in Mexico,

and one of the campesinos comes rushing back from having encountered a brontosaur in the forest,

and he can only point inarticulately at the woods and say,

something, something, something, something.

And that's what I am. I'm a monkey, and I've come back to the troupe,

and I'm telling you, there's something over the next hill that is off the scale, off the scale.

And I have made it my business to, you know, delve.

I'm a delver. I'm a noethic archaeologist.

There are obscure heresies and strange rites and all of this stuff.

Been there, done that.

It's all pale soup compared to this.

And so I hype it to you simply to try and inspire you to explore it.

We are, at the present state, in the position of explorers of the new world, 50 years after Columbus.

We have notebook entries.

We have partial maps.

But we don't have a complete map of what this thing is.

It's another dimension.

It is literally another dimension.

I took DMT to a llama of great accomplishment.

Not one of the grab-ass can of Budweiser welded to the good right hand llamas,

but a real llama.

This guy was over 90 when he smoked DMT.

And he sensed his wheel has turned.

And he said to me, he said, it's the lesser lights.

He said, you can't go further into the Bardo and return.

And so I think that we stand at the brink of an enormous frontier.

Call it incorporeality.

Call it non-material existence.

Or, you know, bite the bullet.

Call it death.

But this is the frontier that we stand on the edge of.

This is what history has been about.

History has been some kind of suicide plot for 15,000 years.

Not a moment passed that the plot was not advanced closer and closer and closer and closer to completion.

And now in the 20th century, you know, we see that this thing,

this transcendental object at the end of time,

this attractor has been, that chose us out of the animal kingdom

and sculpted the neocortex, opposed the thumb,

stood us on our hind legs, gave us binocular vision.

This thing is calling us toward itself across eons of cosmic time.

We are asked to mirror it.

And as we mirror it, we become more of its essence.

And as we become more of its essence,

we leave behind the animal organization that we were cast in in the beginning.

And what this is about, who knows?

You know, is this a drama of cosmic redemption?

Is it the transcendental other at the end of time?

Is it a gnostic demon?

Is it Il Dabuath?

What is it?

We do not know.

But I really believe we are in the era when we will come to know.

And what the psychedelics are, are periscopes in the temporal dimension.

If you want to see a little bit into the future,

elevate your psychedelic periscope outside of the three-dimensional continuum

and peer around.

For thousands, if not hundreds of thousands of years, we have been pulled toward this omega point.

The earth is like an egg.

It has come to its moment of fructification.

The dawn that has been anticipated since we were herding our cattle across the plains of Africa is now upon us.

The east is streaked with the blush of rosy dawn.

It is coming upon us.

And I think that it will redeem history, that history is not a nightmare.

It is a passage.

It is an initiation.

Think of the fetus in the womb at the moment of transition.

Surely, it must despair.

The walls are closing in.

It's being crushed and strangled.

Gone are the endless amniotic oceans of a few months before.

The weightlessness.

The effortless delivery of food through the umbilical cord.

Suddenly, it's just boundaries and agony and crushing pressure.

That's where we are.

And we are going to have to shed history like a snake sheds its skin if we want to slip off into hyperspace where I think all of magical humanity is awaiting us and cheering us on, lending their weight.

They're all out there, you know, Proclus and Plotinus and Plato and Hypatia and Henry Cornelius Agrippa and John Dee and Robert Flood and Eliophus Levy.

They're all out there pulling for us.

And every shaman and shamaness, every magician, practitioner, as far back in time as you go, was part of the plan.

The conjuration, the conjuration, the great work, the distillation of the quintessence.

History is a magical invocation.

And at the end of that invocation, if it is correctly done, all boundaries will dissolve into the stone, the lapis, a transdimensional vehicle that can move through space and time.

That is, the collectivity of all human souls free at last in what William Blake called the divine imagination.

And you don't have to wait for the general dispensation.

You can join up anytime by hyperspatializing your metaphors and your point of view through psychedelic symbiosis with the plants that are pouring this hyperdimensional Gaian vision into the minds of anyone who will detoxify themselves from history and linear thinking.

And but open themselves to the presence of the transformative mystery that is going to leave this planet unrecognizable to us within our lifetimes.

So that's the basic spiel.

And I think it raises a lot of questions, and yours is first.

The answer is yes.

Yes.

The question is, are there herbs in the temperate zone that contain DMT?

And yes.

There are certain grasses, Phalaris arundanaceae, Phalaris tuberosa.

These can be ordered from plant dealers or gotten, ironically enough, from agricultural experiment stations because these are pasturage grasses.

A lot of people are doing wonderful work right now, learning how to make DMT preparations out of native plants.

The mature Phalaris grass, it's very diffuse, the DMT.

So what people are doing is they're getting the seeds and they're sprouting them in a sprouter.

And then they're taking the sprouted seeds and air drying them.

Well, you can imagine how powdery sprouts become if you air dry them.

Well, then you can powder up a handful of these sprouts and roll that, twist that into a bomber and come very, very close to the flash point.

The other thing, I mean, since I'm talking to recipe oriented magicians, the other thing you need to understand if you want to work in this area is that the DMT can ordinarily not be taken orally because there is an enzyme system in your intestines called the monoamine oxidase system.

Then it will destroy the DMT, but the good news is there are certain compounds called monoamine oxidase inhibitors.

Didn't you know it?

If you take a monoamine oxidase inhibitor and then you take DMT, the DMT will survive the gut and pass into the bloodstream and pass the blood brain barrier.

So here is a very important piece of practical information I'm about to give you.

If you want to inhibit your monoamine oxidase in order to make DMT trips longer or mushroom trips longer and more intense or to activate DMT, if you only have a little bit of it,

then what you should get are the seeds of pergamum harmala, P-E-R-G-A-M-U-M, pergamum harmala, H-A-R-M-A-L-A.

You can either order it under that name from seed dealers or go to an Iranian market and buy what is called H-U-R-M-A-L, H-U-R-M-A-L.

This is simply pergamum harmala seeds.

They use it as an incense to fumigate rooms.

But two grams, don't take more, two grams of this macerated in a mortar and pestle with spring water taken from a spring at the new moon near a crossroads

will inhibit your MAO.

It will inhibit your MAO.

Consequently, then when you smoke the bomber of Phalaris dust, it will grab on.

Or you can even smoke mushrooms then and they will grab on.

So, knowing how to inhibit MAO is one of the key techniques in this kind of herbal shamanic magic.

Other plants that contain DMT, and here's one you all should be aware of because it's probably right around here,

is Desmanthus illinoisensis, Illinois bundleweed.

It's a, it's a rank weed of, I've not seen it except in the dried form,

but people have grown hundreds of pounds of this stuff in a few months.

And the root bark has the highest concentration of DMT ever measured in any plant.

It's, it's higher than the ayahuasca admixtures used in the Amazon.

Pardon?

In the root bark, the root bark, which you, you dry the root and then scrape the bark off

and you'll get this reddish root bark.

The red is actually the DMT.

Varola trees in the Amazon shed DMT in their sap and it's always a blood red sap.

And to show you how strong it is, the Indians in the Amazon, some of the tribes,

they roll their arrow points directly into that sap and it's a paralytic poison

in the bloodstream of monkeys and small animals.

So, there is a great deal of work is being done right now and you should,

if you're of an experimental and herbal and alchemical and magical bent,

people are creating what they call ayahuasca analogs.

This is where you use local plants to create a brew which is chemically equivalent

to an Amazonian hallucinogen.

And, of course, you have the satisfaction that it's yours.

It's your magical recipe.

No one on earth is doing quite what you've got.

And it's very, a lot of interesting work is being done and you'll hear more about this.

In fact, Jonathan Ott just wrote a book called Ayahuasca Analogs

in which the state of the art is spelled out.

And it would be worth your while to check that out if you're an experimentalist.

Yeah, the question is, is there a more, is there a simple reagent test for the presence of DMT?

The answer is sort of.

You can do a paper chromatographic test and all you need is a little UV light

and some chromatography paper and some solvent dishes.

I mean, it's at the level of a seventh grade science project.

Yes, I don't know how much I should say on this subject.

I'm probably about to say too much.

But at one gathering I go to, one of the people who's a very regular part of that particular posse

is a wheat breeder.

So when he heard about the phalaris, he was a geneticist and a wheat breeder.

And he has been working very quietly on his own to produce super strains of phalaris.

And I think we will soon see super strains because the underground community is incredibly creative in this area.

The compound I talked about yesterday, salvia divinorum, that's all underground work.

Brett Blosser, the anthropologist who discovered it, is a complete freak.

The guy, the chemist who extracted it, who would prefer I don't put out his name, is a complete freak.

And the people who then did the confirmation studies, my brother and his band of performing pharmacologists, all freaks.

So we actually, we do not take ourselves seriously enough.

I mean, we have our scientists.

We have our philosophers.

We have our thinkers, our legal experts.

We are a complete community.

And it's no longer, in my mind, even necessary to publish in straight journals

and to seek a pat on the head from, you know, the American pharmacology community.

They don't understand what these things are for anyway.

Yes.

Yes, I'll repeat this

and strengthen once again my case to the guy who owns the company

that he should pay me, for God's sake.

If you want a catalog of extremely rare and useful, psychoactive and magical plants,

probably the most complete in the world,

the company is called Of The Jungle,

P.O. Box 1801,

Sebastopol,

S-E-B-A-S-T-O-P-O-L,

California, 95472.

Write and ask for a catalog

and tell them George Bush sent you.

No, I'm teasing.

Don't tell them that.

They won't send you the catalog.

Well, let me,

I didn't mean to diss Castaneda as a metaphor maker.

No, I think The Teachings of Don Juan

is a tremendous book.

I'm very suspicious of some of his later stuff.

It's interesting what you said

because you know the famous Crow transformation

in The Teachings of Don Juan

has been traced,

and I'm sure many of you know this book,

has been traced to George MacDonald's book

Through the Gates of the Silver Key.

And George MacDonald

was a friend of Evans Vance.

So I think what we're getting here

is a mining of late 19th century English folklore

by Castaneda.

Nevertheless,

the presence of these small entities

has been a part of folklore

for a long, long time.

Elementals, tykes,

what puzzled me about,

what puzzles me, I guess,

is I've spent a lot of time

in this magical literature

and art historical area,

and the descriptions don't quite match.

I can't quite convince myself

that the sprites,

the afrites,

the nixies,

the djinns,

that these creatures

of the woodland fae

are the same thing.

Or, I don't know whether

I am contaminated

by an early love

of science fiction,

and, well, again,

close, but no banana.

There,

all these popular aliens

that are running around,

you know,

the Whitley Streboids

and all these things,

are much more mundane

than what I encountered.

I mean, what I encountered

was terrifyingly not human.

terrifyingly alien,

and I just do not quite get,

and Madame Blavatsky was into it,

and they're always saying,

you know,

I don't know,

they're very sort of

cut and dried about it,

and when I encounter

an extraterrestrial alien

or a creature

from another dimension,

the main thing

that's happening for me

is the implications

are blowing my mind.

and they don't,

they seem totally immune

to the implication.

Yeah.

Well, a sufficient amount

of DMT is smoked

west of the Pacific Coast Highway

that it wouldn't surprise me

if the writers of Star Trek,

I mean,

we're on to this.

Yes,

what is not much talked about,

the part of the experience

which is anomalous,

and maybe people

who know more

about magical literature

than I do

can correct me,

but this,

what the elves

are really interested in

is this stuff

which I call

visible language.

that's the whole point

of the encounter

is to exhibit it

and to get you

to do it.

Well, now,

first of all,

think for a minute

about ordinary language.

It's really weird.

It's the weirdest thing

we do.

I mean,

if you were looking

for the thumbprint of God

on creation,

human language

would be a good candidate

because, look,

we're supposed to be

some kind of animal

who just went

a little further

than the next guy,

but to get out

of that Shakespeare

and Milton

is a pretty amazing

accomplishment,

hardly to speak

of the mathematical

languages

that we generate.

So,

something happened.

Some people think

only 35,000 years ago.

Imagine if that's true.

I mean,

I don't care.

Some people say

150,000 years ago,

but to speak,

to take small mouth noises

and to turn them

into signifiers

for symbols

and relationships.

In spite of some

people's enthusiasm

for cetaceans

and dolphins,

I just am not

overwhelmed

by the evidence.

I mean,

to me,

you know,

it is a miracle

to be able

to speak poetry.

It is a miracle.

I mean,

when Coldridge wrote

and south

and southward

I we fled

and it grew

wondrous cold

and ice

mast high

went floating

as green

as emerald.

I mean,

that's language

and it's magic

and we have

a fascination

then we also

paint,

then we sculpt,

then we write,

then we create

electronic databases,

then film,

television.

Clearly,

what we want to do

is we want

to communicate

visually

and these things

are saying

there's a way

to do it.

Do it!

and I don't understand,

do we all have

to be loaded

on DMT

all the time?

Can you learn

to do this?

The gentleman

who asked about dreams,

here is a piece

of information

that is critical

in this jigsaw puzzle.

If you have smoked

DMT

at any time

in the past,

it is possible

to have a dream

in which people

are running around

and you're checked

into the Mars Hotel

and the luggage

is lost

and this and that

and in the middle

of all that

someone drags out

a little glass pipe

and hands it to you.

It will happen.

It will happen

in the dream.

Not a memory,

not a simulacrum,

it will really happen.

Well, now,

to me,

that's an amazing

piece of data

because what it's saying

is you can do it

on the natch.

You may have to be

dead asleep,

but still,

on the natch,

this can be done

and the lucid dreamers,

the biofeedback people,

the people who claim

these wonderful things

that you can do

with sleep and dream

and programming,

I challenge them,

teach people

to have DMT dreams

in their sleep

and then let's figure out

how to drag that puppy

into the light

so that we can do it

at will

on the natch.

just one second

and one thing

that I have come

to believe

is that

we remember

no more

than 5%

of our dreams

and it's

the most mundane

5%.

I think,

and there's

scientific evidence

to support this,

remember I said

DMT is in the human brain?

well it concentrates

in the human

cerebrospinal fluid

on a 24-hour cycle

and it reaches

its peak of concentration

between 3 and 4 a.m.

in most people.

That's when

the deep REM sleep

is happening.

When you give

somebody

DMT,

they lay back,

they close their eyes

and the way

you,

the guide,

the sitter,

I don't like

the word guide,

you,

the sitter,

the way you can tell

that they're getting off

is their eyes

dart wildly

behind their

closed eyelids.

It means

they're in REM.

They're in REM sleep.

They've been

immediately shoved

into deep dreaming.

So,

I believe

that what DMT

is doing

in normal

human metabolism

it mediates

the descent,

the spiral descent

into dream

and that

every single night

we are

reunited

with the

boundaryless

oceanic

mystery of being

that we are

frantic about

in waking life

and so distant from

and that

if we could

in fact

just engineer

a drug

that would

allow us

to remain

fully conscious

as we drift

deeper into dream

we would need

no other

drug

or substance

that that's

where we want

to go

and I think

that's where

history is headed

what the

archaic revival

is about

is a revivification

of the aboriginal

dream time

we are going

to live

in the imagination

we are

preparing

to decamp

from three-dimensional

space

I mean

yes

the earth

is the cradle

of the human race

but you don't

stay in the cradle

forever

you know

and

it's something like

going into dream

it's something like

taking the

hyper-technical

virtual reality

internet

head of the snake

and inserting

the

shamanic

late

paleolithic

ecstatic

orgiastic

tale

of the snake

and then

you have

the oroboric

completion

then you have

the quintessence

and the work

is complete

and history

ends

and we live

then

in the light

the stone

made manifest

well

definitely

has

something

this

mystery

that we're

talking about

definitely

has

something

to do

with

sound

and

the

magical

role

sound

ayahuasca

is a

sort of

different

way

sectioning

the

DMT

experience

because

ayahuasca

orally

active

unfolds

over

hours

not

dramatic

DMT

but

the

people

who

use

ayahuasca

ritual

on a

weekly

basis

what

their

practice

consists

they

take

this

stuff

and

then

they

sing

they

sing

crazy

and

then

when

they

stop

singing

and

people

light

cigarette

and

take

leak

and

forth

and

you're

listening

these

conversations

you

hear

people

say

stuff

about

the

shaman

the

part

with

the

olive

drab

and

the

silver

but

when

became

magenta

and

moved

toward

orange

thought

have

the

reason

interested

something

techno

nerdy

virtual

reality

because

you

could

program

virtual

reality

that

when

you

went

iridescent

blue

line

would

keyed

that

descend

into

the

space

and

I'm

very

better

than

the

psychedelics

can

well

will

miracle

mean

you

see

beauty

first

wave

psilocybin

than

the

human

race

has

produced

the

past

5,000

years

and

who

are

you

know

yes

promised

this

guy

venue

and

possible

mean

we're

definitely

coming

some

enormous

cusp

and

whether

you

think

it's

the

cusp

cusps

just

big

cusp

it's

hard

say

somebody

faxed

got

fax

right

before

came

here

don't

know

who

sent

was

just

anonymous

fax

but

huge

letters

it's

interesting

and

that's

good

question

the

answer

yes

and

obviously

there is

hardly

anything

personal

than

psychedelic

experience

kind

summation

who

you

are

and

it's

viewed

through

the

filters

your

personality

nevertheless

when

you

put

notion

coming

at it

from

sort

union

attitude

had

say

what

the

archetype

DMT

the

archetype

the

circus

it's

the

circus

and

let me

say

why

first

all

circus

place

wild

exotic

activity

and

clowns

are

you

don't

have

circus

without

clowns

and

clowns

are

wonderful

for

children

circus

wonderful

place

for

child

DMT

there

something

very

weirdly

childlike

about

in a

very

unchildish

way

some

you

may

know

the

52nd

fragment

Heraclitus

where

says

the

aeon

child

play

with

colored

balls

the

aeon

the

child

that

you

encounter

the

elf

dome

but

the

circus

has

other

connotations

than

simply

the

three

rings

and

the

clowns

eros

present

entwined

with

thanatos

the

form

the

nearly

naked

lady

the

tiny

spangled

costume

who

working

without

nets

hanging

her

teeth

near

the

top

the

big

tent

and

personally

earliest

experience

eros

was

that

lady

the

tiny

spangled

costume

was

small

was

wrapped

something

and

being

held

and

was

horny

hell

there's

that

and

then

there

also

radiating

off

from

the

central

ring

the

freak

show

the

goat

faced

boy

the

lady

all

that

that's

there

the

wiggy

weird

kinky

strange

alien

stuff

and

then

you

think

about

the

archetype

not so

much

the

circus

but

the

carnival

the

carnival

represents

breakthrough

from

another

dimension

because

you

normal

and

then

the

carnival

comes

town

and

children

are

told

you

can't

stay

out

and

play

the

carny

people

are

town

and

what

does

mean

well

they

may

fuck

differently

than

they

may

steal

things

they're

not

they've

had

than

one

marriage

some

them

and

then

the

carnival

people

are

there

and

the

hoochie

coochie

dancers

and

the

whole

thing

and

then

they

fold

and

they

away

just

DMT

trip

and

every

little

boy

and

girl

the

world

worth

their

salt

wants

join

the

circus

course

and

away

with

the

tattooed

lady

and

the

tigers

and

all

that

the

archetype

the

circus

then

I've

seen

many

people

it's

the

circus

but

the

circus

presented

the

Nebul

Genubi

Prime

something

that

but

one

woman

who

was

anthropologist

who I

think

got a

sub

threshold

dose

she

had a

very

interesting

trip

because

was

light

trip

but

with

prompting

from

she

said

was

carnival

midway

but

was

after

hours

and

there

was

nobody

there

and

there

were

just

those

ice

cream

those

square

papers

for

holding

ice

cream

were

just

blowing

the

wind

and

getting

caught

chain link

fences

was

sub

threshold

dose

well

then

she'd

done

she

would

have

arrived

there

eight

hours

earlier

when

the

thing

was

happening

and

she'd

done

yet

another

toke

would

have

moved

off

into

the

zone

the

truly

weird

that's

why

well

then

you

could

I'm

working

something

I'll

describe

you

I'm

having

glass

blower

make

thing

which

has

chamber

with

pipe

stem

coming

off

but

has

another

stem

degrees

around

the

chamber

coming

off

that

breaks

into

two

prongs

and

what

you

heat

the

DMT

you

insert

the

two

prongs

your

nose

and

you

have

friend

blow

the

other

outlet

and

will

force

the

entire

contents

the

vessel

the

entire

load

white

smoke

but

you

old

bold

pharmacologist

yes

there

are

antidepressants

that are

MAO

inhibitors

that's

right

but

wouldn't

use

them

for

this

purpose

because

what

you

want

what's

called

reversible

MAO

inhibitor

and

harmin

which

harmaline

which

the

Syrian

rue

reversible

MAO

inhibitor

reversible

four

six

hours

some

these

antidepressants

inhibit

every

molecule

MAO

your

body

for

three

weeks

and

that's

why

when

they

give

you

those

antidepressants

they

tell

you

the

long

list

don'ts

you

know

chocolate

red

wine

soft

cheese

lentils

that's

list

alkaloid

containing

foods

and

you

are

antidepressants

and

you

eat

bunch

camo

bear

with

your

yuppie

friends

you'll

probably

have

roped

down

for a

while

before

you

straighten

out

just

sum

this

and

put

kind

classifier

stupid

reasons

but

there

this

tiny

chemical

family

the

tryptamine

hallucinogens

psilocybin

and

DMT

and

then

some

artificial

cogeners

and

5-methoxy

is in

there

too

which

I'm

not

that

fond

but

this

the

doorway

it's

the

umbilicus

this

world

these

are

things

which

are

called

drugs

because

that's

the