The Definitive UFO Tape

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

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

And what I like to think of as your virtual guest hosts this week are

Jared D., Garrett H., Francis V., James M., Zach M., Toby M., and Marco L.,

all of whom paid for a copy of my Pay What You Can audiobook, my novel The Genesis Generation.

And while I'm thinking of it, Vipal, who was one of our donors last week,

hey Vipal, I haven't forgotten about the suggestions you sent and I'll be thinking them over in the weeks to come.

Now, you guys really picked a great week to be my co-hosts here in the salon

because I think you're going to be as excited as I am about the tape I'm going to play for you today,

which is another from the box of cassettes that Diana Slattery sent me a few weeks back,

or I should say a few months back now.

Thank you again, Diana.

And I picked this one out of the box for several reasons.

The first one being that it is the oldest recording of a Terrence McKenna talk

that I've come across so far.

It's from December of 1982, and apparently was recorded in someone's living room, as you'll soon hear.

Another reason that I'm playing this today is that on his most excellent podcast, The Sea Realm,

well, my friend KMO has featured Larry Lowe on a couple of his recent programs,

and for my money, Larry is the most well-grounded and open-minded reporter on the topic of UFOs that you're going to find.

Now, if you're like I was until about five years ago,

well, then maybe you have already closed your mind about the UFO phenomena.

However, what opened my mind was that I wound up actually seeing one one night,

but I'll save that story for another day.

My point that I seem to have drifted away from was that UFOs seem to be on a lot of people's minds these days.

And then, when I started looking through that box of old tapes and searching for the oldest one I could find,

I came across this one that I'm going to play in a minute.

And, interestingly, it was in a case that was labeled Psilocybin in the Sands of Time,

which is a talk we've seen all over the net.

But then the tape inside the box itself was labeled the Definitive UFO Tape,

Terrence McKenna, December 1982.

So, here's a recording that somebody made in December of 1982,

in which, right off the bat, the first question to Terrence refers to the two books that he had written at that point.

And he answers by saying that he kept most of his UFO ideas out of the invisible landscape.

Then he refers to what he calls the second work, titled Psilocybin and the UFOs.

Now, I have to admit that that was a new reference for me.

I'm sure you might have heard of it already.

But I went and Googled it and could find no bibliography of McKenna,

even including the one at Arrowhead.org, that referred to that book.

However, at the very well-established Deoxy.org,

that's D-E-O-X-Y, in case you haven't been there,

Deoxy.org site,

I found a reference to what they call the missing chapters of true hallucinations.

And I did remember seeing that a long time ago,

so if you're interested, you'll find a link to it along with the program notes for this podcast.

And you can get to those through psychedelicsalon.us.

And I guess I should mention that lately I've received several comments

complaining about the audio quality of some of these recordings.

And they range from the obvious, which we can all complain about,

to the real picky, like this comment about podcast number 259.

And I quote,

this person said,

I just wanted to point out,

55 minutes into the podcast, I almost puked.

The most disgusting sound of drinking I've ever heard in my life was drilled into my brain.

Close quote.

So, I actually took the time to go back and listen to that.

But I guess my years of work with ayahuasca have immunized me

to be engrossed out by somebody swallowing a sip of water.

Now, the only reason I'm mentioning it here is that

about four and a half minutes into the talk we're about to listen to,

during a question from the audience,

you're going to hear Terrence also swallowing a sip of water.

And it's even louder than the one that was complained about.

So, and, oh, by the way,

he does that several other times during the talk.

So, if something like that bothers you to the point of puking,

well, at least you can't say you weren't warned.

Personally, it really didn't bother me at all.

Now, with that very strange introduction,

let's join Terrence McKenna and some of his friends on a 1982 December evening

and hear what was on his mind way back then.

In the two books that you have written,

I have read of UFO inferences.

Would you expand upon those things?

Yes, well, actually, in the first book,

the UFO reference is few and far between.

I think it's only touched on once.

I deliberately suppressed it from the invisible landscape

because I thought it was already lit up like a Christmas tree

with bizarre ideas.

And I would save that particular ornament for its own treatment later.

But in the second work, Down to Earth,

Psilocybin and the UFOs,

I deal with that directly

because it seems to me that

in psilocybin and the tryptamine hallucinogens generally,

we actually have a state of mind

that is very similar to the state of mind

reported to accompany the UFO contact

and that these things could somehow be co-mapped

one on to the other,

that at active levels of psilocybin,

there is visionary ideation of spaceships,

alien creatures, alien information,

a general futuristic,

Saucerian kind of quality

to the place it conveys you to

that seem to be coming from the same place

as the modern myth of the UFO,

if it is a myth.

And we discovered in our exploration to the Amazon in 1971

that this was quite true,

that involvement with these tryptamines

as they accumulated in your system,

you seem to acquire the ability

to inhabit more than one world at once

as though superimposed over reality.

There was a super-reality,

a hyper-dimensional world

where information was accessible in magical ways.

And in the wake of that experience,

I just went through the literature

of the mystical experience

and the Saucer experience

and ideas like alchemy

and that sort of thing.

And eventually saw that these,

they were all talking about the same thing,

that there is an experience

which is gaining ascendancy

for modern man,

which is called contact with the UFO.

But it is not reducible

to any of the things

that the main people

who've written about it

have said it could be reduced to.

It is not, strictly speaking,

a contact from a space-faring race

that has come from the stars.

It is not mass hysteria.

It is not delusion either.

There is, in fact,

something very odd going on,

something which is as challenging

to modern epistemological notions

as a U.S. Air Force jet transport

landing on some field

outside a village in New Guinea.

In other words,

here is an area

that is close to the experience

of people

in that a very large percentage

of people claim

to have seen flying saucers,

an area close to the experience

of people

where science

is totally helpless.

It seems as though

reality is haunted

by a spinning vortex

that renders science helpless.

And the spinning vortex

is the UFO.

And it comes and goes

on a mass scale,

haunting history

like a ghost.

You mean the records

and the Aztec records

or the whole thing

about coming,

the white man coming

to the New World

and spaceships?

Well, all these cases

have been made

for saucer intervention,

but no,

actually I'm speaking

more specifically

of the post-World War II

spinning silver disc

in the sky

and the myth

that accompanies it

of the large

pointed-eared,

cat-eyed.

It has numerous variations,

but it's clearly

an idea complex

emerging in the psyche

and the question is

what is it?

Is it prophecy?

Is it a vision

of the human future?

What is it?

And the post-modern phase

of flying saucer speculation

is the phase

which recognizes

that the saucer

is somehow mixed up

with human psychology,

that it is no mere light

seen in the sky,

that when you go back

and question the people

who see these things,

that right before

they saw it

they were thinking

something very odd

and unusual

which they didn't

normally think about

or right after it.

In other words,

it seemed to be

a kind of

ideological catalyst

for some purpose

and Valet

in a book

called

The Invisible College

was the first person

to suggest

what I would call

the cultural

thermostat theory.

He said that

the flying saucer

was an object

from the collective

unconscious of the human race

that appeared basically

to break the force

of any set of ideas

that were gaining dominance

in their explanatory power

at the expense

of their ethical force.

In other words,

that it was like

a confounding

which would enter history

again and again

when history would build

to a certain kind

of boil

the confounding

would occur.

Mind Parasites does that too.

This is a similar idea,

right.

And he suggested

that perhaps

the career of Christ

was an earlier

confounding

where Roman technique

and Roman militarism

and all these things

was unseated

by, you know,

a peculiar religion

which no educated Roman

could take seriously

for a moment.

I mean,

an educated Roman

was a democracy anatomist

and well-versed

in Epicureanism

and Sophism

and yet the servants

were telling stories

about a rabbi

who had risen

from the dead

and had somehow

reopened a gate

that had been closed

since creation

so that the soul of man

could again be reunited

with God

and this stuff

made no sense

to the Roman authorities

and yet it quickly

overwhelmed the empire.

The modern context

is very similar to that

in that science

now it can be seen

to have replaced

Roman imperial aspirations

as a dominant mythos

of control

and it has these neat

and tidy explanations

of the world

yet persistently

from the folk

there come stories

of lights in the sky

and strange beings

and bizarre encounters

that they cannot

quite lay to rest.

And you do have

experiences yourself.

Oh yes,

it's a real,

whatever real means,

I mean,

it is a real experience,

it is phenomenologically real.

In fact,

my contention is

that psilocybin

induces it

and that perhaps

on a mass scale

it's as though

there is an event

at the end of history

of such magnitude

that it casts

miniature reflections

of itself

back into time.

and these are

these apocalyptic

concrescences

which haunt

the historical continuum

igniting religions

and various hysterias

and seeping ideas

into highly tuned

nervous systems.

How does it do that?

Well,

it's as though

it's like Plato said,

time is the moving image

of eternity.

It does it

because in its dimension

all these things

are somehow

co-existent

in time

or outside of time.

They have already happened.

History is the formality

of viewing

this hyperdimensional object

in a three-dimensional way

by transecting it

many, many times

until you've built up

an entire picture of it.

But

the,

you know,

the mushroom

evokes

a profound

planetary consciousness

that shows you

that history

is just this

froth

of artifact

production

that has appeared

in the last

10 to 15,000 years

spread across the planet

very quickly

but that mind

in man

just goes back

and back

into the darkness,

you know.

And one of the things

we were saying

in the invisible landscape

was that

there are powers

in the human body

or avenues

of understanding

that have not been followed

because of epistemological biases

so that,

for instance,

the idea that you could use

your voice

to

affect molecular changes

in your own nervous system

is sounds

on one level

preposterous.

On the other hand,

it's simply

a formalized way

of noting the fact

that sound is energy,

that energy

can be transduced

in a number of ways

and then when you direct it

against your body,

you obviously

do make changes.

Well, that's the typical

chanting

that goes on

in shamanism worldwide.

Well, these people

are navigating

themselves

in a space

which we have

lost touch with

that for us,

as I'm speaking now

as a society,

only erupts

in the weakened situation

of a weakened

psychic constitution

where there is

the element of panic

in the mythological sense

of pan bursting

through

from the underworld,

the emergence

of the flying saucer.

What it is

is it's an autonomous

psychic entity

that has slipped

from the control

of the ego

and is approaching

laden

with the otherness

of the unconscious

so that, you know,

as you look into it

you behold

yourself,

your world,

your information field

all deployed

in this strange,

distant,

almost transhumanly

cool way

which links it

to the myth

of the extraterrestrial.

The extraterrestrial

is the human oversoul

in its general

and particulate expression

on the planet

which doesn't rule out

the possibility

that the mushroom

places you

in contact

with extraterrestrials

somewhere in the galaxy

actually circling

other suns

but it probably means

that that communication

is mediated

through the oversoul.

The oversoul

is some kind

of field

that is generated

by human beings

but that is not

under the control

of any institution

any government

any religion

it is actually

the most intelligent

thing on the planet

and it regulates

human culture

through the release

of ideas

out of eternity

and into

the continuum

of history

and what the UFO is

is an idea

to confound

and its purpose

is to confound

science

because science

has begun

to threaten

the existence

of the human species

leave alone

the ecosystem

of the planet

and at that point

a shock

is necessary

for a culture

a shock

equivalent

to this culture

to the shock

of the resurrection

on Roman imperialism

and the myths

that are building

are like

the messianic myths

that preceded

the appearance

of Christ

and what they are of

is of an intervention

by a hyper intelligent

entity that comes

from the stars

and reveals

the right way

to live

and wrecks science

by a series

of demonstrations

that make it

apparent

that the purpose

of human history

is nothing less

than total immersion

in the teachings

of the saucer

and once this message

is slammed home

via worldwide tv hookup

and that sort of thing

it will just disappear

and in the wake of that

you see

what you have

is

this hysteria

of abandonment

similar to the hysteria

of abandonment

that swept

the Christian communities

when

after the crucifixion

the resurrection

the coming

of the millennium

was postponed

century

after century

and

the development

of science

will cease

this flying saucer

oriented religion

which is definitely

the emergence

of an archetype

of enormous power

will hold sway

in the same way

that Roman science

was stymied

for a thousand years

by the immersion

in the words

of one

one rabbi

scientists are not

going to like

your opinion

well they should

be forewarned

Vallée was saying

this in another

book of his

called the invisible

college

he was more

alarmed than I am

because he is

of the tradition

of French rationalism

and he was

quite frightened

to think

he didn't believe

it was

I should say

the oversoul

of mankind

he actually

believed it was

a politically

oriented group

of human beings

who had

an advanced

technology

that was

allowing them

to do this

I reject that

as total paranoia

and I am not

as concerned

with him

to pull

science's

chestnuts

from the fire

I think that

science has

betrayed

human destiny

to some degree

and that

you know

we are led

to the brink

of star flight

but we're also

led to the brink

of thermonuclear

holocaust

but the conclusion

the political

implication

that I draw

from all this

is that

scientists will

be swept away

by the revelation

of the flying saucer

they have always

been the ones

to be like

the apostle

Thomas

and want to put

their hand

into the wound

and if the wound

is offered

meaning if the

saucer comes

and is seen

by hundreds

of millions

of people

they would

go over

immediately

so the

political

insulation

the political

conclusion

to be drawn

is to preserve

your freedom

of thought

by deconditioning

yourself

to the flying

saucer

religion

before it

happens

because

the most

inspired

scientists

might be

the most

intrigued

in this

situation

oh they

would go

over first

but you see

a religion

operates by

law of

large numbers

as long

as 80%

of the people

believe

it can

transform

a civilization

therefore

if you're

one of the

13%

who don't

believe

it's okay

so you

always want

to stand

where the

high water

won't reach

but I

think that

the flying

saucer

experience

is

tremendously

powerful

and that

it

really

is

somehow

linked

to the

psychedelic

experience

in a way

that will

not perhaps

be understood

for some

time

but that

the

futuristic

hyperdimensional

world

of these

tryptamine

hallucinogens

and the

persistent

message from

the unconscious

in the

form of

these

spinning

idea

complexes

with the

alien

creatures

inside

are

definitely

expressions

of the

cutting edge

of the

evolution

of

consciousness

and

it's

very

interesting

a voice

has been

silent

a voice

that

guided

and revealed

has been

a silent

phenomenon

for about

1700 years

now in

western

civilization

before that

there was

such a

voice

I mean

it was

called

the

logos

and all

philosophers

strove

to invoke

it

and it

was a

voice

which told

you

the

truth

the

self-evident

truth

you had

only to

hear it

and you

knew you

were hearing

the truth

and with

the passing

of the

aeon

or something

the death

of the

pagan

gods

this phenomenon

faded out

however it

is still

available

through the

mediation

of these

compounds

how can

you say

these same

words

how can

you say

them and

have people

feel like

they want

to invite

you to

dinner

to tell

of this

doom

and destruction

of mankind

and the

toppling of

science

especially

when it

is only

right now

science

scientific

people will

understand

what you're

saying

well see

what I'm

saying

is

if we

would

intelligently

examine

these

dimensions

that the

psychedelic

drugs make

available

we could

as it

were

get in

touch

with the

oversoul

and

and leave

the era

when man

is disciplined

by flying

saucers

and messiahs

and progress

is halted

for millennia

at a stretch

just because

people can't

evolve their

ethics

and their

technology

at the same

rate of

speed

if we

would have

a dialogue

with the

other

we would

understand

all these

things

and become

in contact

with the

Tao

of the

ancestors

and

you know

this is

what a

shamanic

civilization

or a

shamanic

culture

is

it's

where

certain

people

mediate

the

group

racial

experience

that is

available

somehow

deployed

in

mind

space

have you

done a

controlled

experiment

whereby

you can

bring

a number

of people

to the

college

of

psilocybin

or however

it is

that the

message

would come

across

have you

done that

you mean

in regard

to triggering

these UFO

type

experiences

well only

in the

sense

that

we've

ascertained

by

questionnaire

that

this is

a very

frequent

motif

perhaps

the most

frequently

mentioned

motif

by people

who take

psilocybin

recreationally

is that

it's

about

outer space

and flying

saucers

and

aliens

little green

men

and these

are people

who are

taking

you know

15 milligram

type doses

sufficient doses

to elicit the

full spectrum

of the

compound

DMT

is similar

I mean

it conveys

you into

an elf

infested

space

where

you know

wild

and zany

things

are going

on

it's as

though

there are

continual

a reality

that is

beyond

this reality

linguistically

as well

as

spatio-dimensionally

so that

you have to

turn to

a different

language

channel

and then

with this

language

pouring through

your head

you observe

the other

place

the alternate

reality

and it is

that's what

Sanskrit says

too

yes

although

this alternate

reality

is surprisingly

far from

most traditions

about what

alternative realities

are like

I mean

it doesn't

prepare you

for its

crackling

electronic

hyperdimensional

interstellar

extraterrestrial

saucerian

mighty peculiar

all this

these highly

polished

and curved

surfaces

and machines

and beings

and language

transformations

and machines

undergoing geometric

transformations

into beings

and thoughts

that condense

as visible

objects

this is a theme

that's very

interesting

to me

is the

hyperdimensional

language

a language

that is

fulfills

philo judaeus

quest for the

more perfect

logos

philo said

that a more

perfect logos

would be

beheld

rather than

heard

and this is

what happens

on DMT

you hear

a language

which is

very faint

and far away

and as it gets

louder and louder

you realize that

without ever going

over a quantized

transition

it is becoming

a phenomenon

not of the

audio field

but of the

visual field

and that it is

in fact

a fully evolving

synesthetic

hallucination

of extremely

realistic

and utterly

bizarre

proportion

I mean

it's like

an Arabian

maelstrom

of color

and form

and you somehow

sense

you know

that you're

in the Sistine Chapel

you're at the

Cabot

you're at

Conorac

you're at

all these places

and

but you know

it's a

hyperdimensional

infundibulum

if you will

it's just a

little place

to dance

and then

you see

you know

that there is

alien information

this Osirian

information

is deployed

everywhere

in this other

space

and that the

really astonishing

thing is that

human history

and art

reflect so

little of it

but it does

you do see it

oh you see it

but very

very faintly

when you see

the real thing

you just think

you see it

elsewhere

my god

I mean

how do they

keep the lid

on this stuff

this is raging

right next door

and

you know

the modern

epistemological

methods

are just not

up to

dealing

with an

elf

with

chattering

elf

infested

spaces

I mean

we have a

word for

those spaces

we call

it

schizophrenia

and slam

the door

but you know

these

dimensions

have been

with us

since

ten thousand

times longer

than Freud

and people

just have to

come to terms

with them

now it's

because of

accidents of

botany

and history

European man

has been away

from the

psychedelic

dimension

since a while

you know

from the

dimension

of the

tryptamines

and psilocybin

since perhaps

the closure

of the last

glaciation

so now

we've

accomplished

marvelous

things

with

techni

and this

and that

but

here it

is

you know

many cultures

around the

world

have kept

the flame

burning

and the

disks

which haunt

the skies

of earth

indicate

that the

unconscious

cannot be

kept waiting

forever

these things

are going

to have to

be dealt

with

and what

it seems

to me

to point

out

is

you know

that

the

imagination

really is

the ground

of being

and this

is the

great

discovery

which

will

change

things

it will

be

as if

man

had

discovered

fire

for the

second

time

the

imagination

is

the

golden

pathway

to

everywhere

and

when we

cease

to try

and cross

to the

stars

by

crude

rocket

and

engineering

schemes

and

realized

that

deployed

in the

imagination is the entire universe. How do you think you can go about instigating the launch off?

Well, I think what the task of history can now be seen to be is what I call turning man inside out.

The body has to be interiorized and the soul has to be exteriorized to create

a golden disc. How? By magic.

This matter of the flying saucer gives me an excuse to read a favorite poem of mine,

which answers your question about the future of man and the psychedelic experience.

He says, once out of nature, I shall never take my bodily form from any natural thing,

but such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make of hammered gold and gold enamelling to keep a drowsy

emperor awake or set upon a golden bow to sing to lords and ladies of Byzantium of what is past or

passing or to come. And this is the idea of becoming, you know, a golden object after death.

Yates. This is sailing to Byzantium. Once, once out of nature, I shall never take my bodily form from any

natural thing, but such a form as Grecian goldsmiths make of hammered gold and gold enamelling to keep

a drowsy emperor awake or set upon a golden bow to sing to lords and ladies of Byzantium of what is

past or passing or to come. In other words, a golden bird, a hyperdimensional object of Grecian gold

enamelling. And this is what the flying saucer is. It is the soul become object. This is the secret of

alchemy. It's interesting, you see, that the great flowering of alchemy, the great last flowering of

alchemy in the 16th century, was coincident upon a level of understanding of natural chemistry

approximately equal to our modern understanding of the role of life in the universe. In other words,

mostly speculation. So that what for us moves off into the sky as the flying saucer told to us to be

possible by science but highly unlikely is like the 16th century mind's relationship to the philosopher's

stone, which was said to be highly unlikely but not impossible. And so all this imaginative effort

was exhausted in trying to produce the philosopher's stone. And the focus was upon chemical hardware,

heating alembics, watching swirling gases in cloudy glass. And now in the modern context,

it has gone into the sky. The sky is the dimension of the other for 20th century man. We feel we

understand natural chemical processes. There is no mystery there. Miners no longer encounter gnomes when

they go into deep mines the way they did in the 15th and 16th century. Those gnomes have been stilled,

but the sky is still haunted. This is where we are told it might be possible for it to come from,

and the sea. And the sea is obviously co-mapped to the unconscious. But the sky, because our scientists

tell us, you know, that somewhere out there just possibly it might be so. But I think what's being

missed is that the whole dimension of communication is being ruled inadmissible as evidence simply

because it doesn't conform to the epistemological biases of the people who are asking the question.

And that is all these voices in the head that guide shaman, that obsess lunatics, that make poetry.

And in other words, the muse, the muse is real. I mean, if you have not experienced the muse,

that doesn't mean anything. You may not have climbed Mount Everest either. But I tell you,

out there in life there are experiences which cause a need for new definitions.

Everyone has had them whether they're willing to admit it. I think of one sort or another.

An intimation of the other. An intimation of the other. Well, so imagine a compound which elicits this

when you choose to use it. Well, one could talk endlessly about this subject, I suppose, but

until it's resolved, all of man's epistemological dealings with reality will be haunted by this faint

spookiness which can't be gotten rid of. So to start off this continuation of the discussion of flying

saucers, I'll read Yeats again. O sages standing in God's holy fire, as in the gold mosaic of a wall,

come from the holy fire, pern in a gyre, and be the singing masters of my soul. Consume my heart away,

sick with desire, and fastened to a dying animal, it knows not what it is, and gather me into the

artifice of eternity. And it's that phrase, the artifice of eternity, which again invokes this strange

mechanistic yet spiritualistic future into which the archetype of the flying saucer is calling people.

You see, what's happening is man is becoming a trans-planetary creature, and this is something

which takes about 10,000 years, from the first, you know, the earliest machines to leaving the planet.

And it, give or take, 3,000 years away. But it is, as H.G. Wells said of history,

it is a race between education and catastrophe, because these more and more destructive chemical

and atomic processes are released as the species realizes its aspirations are alien to the ecology

of the planet, and that it and the planet must part. And this, the transformation of man into a

spacefaring race is, on a biological scale, the great event that history is about. I mean, the coming

of agriculture, the coming of urbanization, these things are peanuts compared to the, what is going

to happen to this species, to these monkeys, as they leave the planet with their computers and their atomic

physics and all this. I mean, you see, what is happening and why the psychedelic experience is so important

is because information is loose on planet 3. Some kind of very strange thing is going on. The world

is not made of quarks or electromagnetic wave packets or the thoughts of God. The world is made of

language. And language is replicating itself in DNA, which at its culmination is creating

societies of civilized and intelligent beings which possess languages, which possess cybernetics,

which possess machines, which use languages. So that standing off a light year or two from this

system, what seems to be happening, what is unusual about Earth, is that language literally has

become alive. It is infested matter. It is replicating and defining and building itself. And it is in us.

My voice speaking is a monkey's mouth, making little mouth noises that are carrying agreed-upon

meaning. And it is the meaning. Without the meaning, you only have little mouth noises. The meaning is a

crude form of telepathy. Because as you listen to my voice, my thoughts become your thoughts. And we

compare them. And there is what's called communication, understanding. It's all about codes. And that's

why I've said at times the flying saucer problem is like a grammatical problem. It's like a dangling

participle in the fourth dimensional language, which makes reality. And that's why it's not reducible to

any of these very simple-minded approaches. It is somehow embedded in the machinery of epistemic

knowing itself. So we won't be able to find it if we go out in rocket ships.

No, it is within. It is the soul of man. We won't be able to find it until we somehow come to terms

with the hidden part, you know, the unconscious, the collective unconscious, the overmind, the fact

that there is a level of hierarchical control being exerted by the human species as a whole, that the

destiny of man is not in the hands of governments and corporations and communist party apparatchiks.

It is in the hands of a weirdly democratic, amoeboid-like, hyper-intelligent superorganism,

which is called everybody. And as we come to terms with this, as we take our place embedded in the body

of everybody. And information flows more freely. And the reality of this informational creature

is seen more clearly. The fact that we are, it's an organism. We are having a symbiotic relationship

with an organism made of information. And this is what psychedelics reinforces, I think, very strongly.

It's in the psychedelic dimension that you finally can key into the voice of the organism and say,

hey, what's happening? And then it explains to you that things are not as you took them to be at all.

And that there is, in fact, layer and layer and layer upon interlocking meaning. And that there's

very little else other than that. And that the imagination is the true ground of being. And that

there is a dimension parallel to time, outside of time, that is accessible to you as much as you want

it to the degree that you can decondition yourself from the history-bound cognitive systems that have

carried you to that point. This is why it's always been said of psychedelics that they were

or sociological catalysts. For the shaman. The shaman brings the message to the tribe.

Yes, but the tribe is a system set up to receive the message. We have a different way of doing it,

which is that power elites in political control pass down state-approved philosophies, which are then

applied. And this runs quite... The state as shaman. The state as shaman, the state as mediator of God's

holy will, rather than a personal, a Protestant approach, if you will, a personal relationship to

the overmind. And the flying saucer, what it represents basically is an instance of crisis between

the individual and the overmind, where the overmind breaks through the oppressive screen

thrown around it and comes to meet the individual. And it is, you know, like an interview with an angel

or a demon. It's very, very laden with heavy psychological resonances for the person experiencing

it. It is a numinous experience. It is... Isn't every moment of recognizable creation then falling into that

category of the seepage from the overmind, where you get a synthesis of information which becomes

your creative thought, your discovery? Yes, well, our theory of time basically mapped the idea that

novelty was what you call this standing wave of eternity, and that it seeps into time at a variable

rate, which can actually be mathematically described using the I Ching and other techniques. It's that

sort of thing. Yes, it's as though, you know, where the flying saucers come from is eternity. They don't

come from the stars, unless space and eternity encompasses the idea of being able to move instantly

to and from the stars. But the flying saucers come from a dimension, you could almost say they come from

beyond death. They come from a dimension, somehow totally different from our own, but tied up with the,

with human psychology and human psyche in a way that is puzzling and alarming and reassuring.

And shaman, it's very hard. This is a question to what degree non-participants

in 20th century civilization perceive this, meaning people who take mushrooms but have nothing to do

with 20th century society. Whether they accept that always, since Paleolithic time, this super futuristic

dimension has been present, so that in any century, people could have had this commerce with the end of

time, with the far future, with the place where, as James Joyce said, man becomes dirigible. The place

where, you know, we have bootstrapped ourselves to the point where we leave the planet, leave the monkey

shell, leave all earthbound conceptions of ourselves behind and push off into the pure imagination.

Scary. Scary. Scary. Gnostic, perhaps, as someone said. It sounds like megalomania to me, Martha.

But, you know, the future always. I mean, how mad would the 20th century have sounded recited to anyone in the 19th?

It, what it comes down to is trying to have faith that man is good, because what's happening is that

whatever man is, man is taking control of the definition of being human, so that through genetic

engineering, through drug design, through probing of, you know, these weird psychedelic dimensions, through

cybernetic interface, through activation of information, man is going to become a mirror of his deepest

aspirations. And the question then becomes, what are man's deepest aspirations? You know,

what will it be? Is it some kind of Mephistophelian nightmare? Is it the Nietzschean superman come

back to haunt us in a way that makes the Third Reich look like a picnic? Or is it, you know, the element

of care and control, the aesthetic element, the wish to escape into a universe that is, in fact, art? This

is what it holds out, that man could become an inhabitant of his own imagination, because with the

technology for space, for building large habitats in space, it is possible to imagine the complete

galaxy of science fiction created in a sphere less than 12 light hours in diameter, with the sun at the

center of it, so that you would have 50 or 60,000 independent habitats pursuing social experiments of

every sort, spatially independent, doing very long-term slow orbits from the sun and the outer planets,

but informationally linked in a bubble of time, 12 light hours in diameter. And the current engineering

thinking on building these large habitats is that right now you could produce the Hawaiian environment

six, up to 14 light hours from the sun, which is several light hours further out than Pluto. So that

means that essentially the entire solar system has become habitable real estate. If we can simply transform

the human imagination to realize that getting high is not a metaphor, getting high is what the whole ball

game is about, that, you know, it's true that the earth is the cradle of mankind, but you don't remain

in the cradle forever. And this is what beckons the, it's been, you know, only 25, 30, 50,000 years since our

shamanic ancestors began to munch the mushrooms and glimpse the vision of man radiating out through the galaxy

as a perfected super intelligent force for light. And this is the 15 round slugout, the leading to whether or

not that happens or not. Now, Timothy Leary maintains similar positions from a different...

Similar, but different. But right, he, he talks a lot about the DNA. I'm not...

Well, it's the DNA on one level, the genetic information is stored in DNA, where these visionary

worlds, the information that allows them to be just shown to you like movies hour after hour,

where that information is stored is, I think, a very, very interesting question and certainly a

challenge to molecular enthusiasts of molecular memory models.

Well, now, is it not so that the muse is a sort of a catalyzing of the imagination?

Precisely. It's an ecstasy. And the claim is made that these things can be attained various ways,

but there are many different kinds of ecstasis. I think the peculiar,

spacey, extraterrestrial dimension that these tryptomines convey you into is not the standard

ecstasy of the mystics, or we would have more of a reflection of that in our literature. In fact,

one of the things most puzzling to me is why the, uh, the bizarre motifs of the DMT flash have not

made their way into any culture anywhere, as far as I'm aware.

Well, um, would that make either an image of people being fearful of the, of these, um, visions when

they have them and so keeping them under cover, or an idea they might be going insane in some way? I mean,

what is the, the, uh, way out of that? Yes. Well, I think the change is so radical and the implication

so hard to digest that you're right. People either feel their own sanity is being threatened or they

recognize it as a challenge to the, to the, uh, reality myth of their society. And so they just repress

it. They have very little to do with it. It's very hard to, uh, to contact these contradictory realities,

which throw into doubt everything you know about the reality you're inhabiting. I mean,

what a strange, strange world it is if there are these alternative continue I operating all around

us, uh, filled with strange alien information floating around. And yet, uh, why, uh, why pose it in the,

in the future? It is so that this is what's going on. It's just then how much time you care to spend

thinking about it. Well, these are science fiction theories too. I mean, one comes across this smattering

here and there and, um, you are saying that it's actual and this is the way it is. This is your

mission basically, your rep. Yes, well, I'm not saying it's only the way it is, but I am certainly

saying that, uh, these tryptamine drugs elucit an experience that is extremely peculiar, that has more

relationship with the UFO experience than with classical mystical experience or other hallucinogenic

drugs. And that, um, societal attitudes and other things have conspired to, uh, uh, keep this under wraps.

It has not been well looked at and yet, uh, basically because people who are interested in flying saucers are

not interested in drugs, the great majority of people interested in flying saucers are hardware nuts

and just for sure want to prove that it's a machine from Zeta Reticuli, you know, just nuts and bolts.

And, uh, the, the psychological explanation is not welcome anywhere particularly. Meanwhile, the

community of drug researchers feels they're laboring under enough of a stigma to not ally themselves with

flying saucer people, which is just like, uh, adding an albatross to an anchor. So, uh, you know, it's not a

popular point of view. So since I'm outside of all of that, I can just say, you know, I read Iliad on

shamanism and, you know, I think these people did a fine job and, but I don't catch the flavor from any of this

orthodox anthropological reporting on shamanism that anybody has really come to grips with how strange the

psychedelic experience is and that it poses problems not only for these so-called primitive

people who use it and are being studied. It poses fundamentally, uh, equally deep problems for

our society that we can no more assimilate the content of the psychedelic experience than can a

villager in the New Guinea Highlanders or a Witoto in the Amazon. In fact, we have less of a basis for

coming to terms with it. So our culture is in, in a very, uh, desperate crisis, a birth crisis, a terminal

crisis. Uh, if, if we are not fully informed as to the nature of reality, we should correct that

oversight. And this is my motivation. Well, I'm disappointed that we can't, um, greet our other.

Well, I guess you greet your other, uh, when you meet them in that dimension.

Have you ever gone anywhere with another human to these places and actually been able to, say,

have a parallel combined experience?

Experience? Well, I think that happens, uh, certainly in taking ayahuasca with,

with groups of people in the Amazon where the shaman is singing, you definitely have the feeling that, uh,

you're all being carried through the same space and being shown the same things. And when you take

psilocybin just with one other person, you're lying together, be mushroomed, as Gordon Lawson says,

uh, you have the feeling, you know, that you're just flowing there together. And sometimes you can even,

one person can describe and then leave off and the other one can begin to describe and it's all flowing

together. And yes, I am totally convinced that, that telepathy occurs on these drugs. I'm not sure

how to go about making it a repeatable phenomenon, but, uh, it certainly happens.

You see, psilocybin was made illegal just as an afterthought when, in the panic, when everything was

being made illegal. It never had any hearing or was, uh, you know, examined by itself. It was just a

hallucinogenic agent, therefore illegal. But, uh, for, for throwing a light on the psyche, for, uh, for

catapulting the imagination into these futuristic spaces, it needs to be, uh, looked at very closely.

How do you see it being organized in order to, uh, educate people?

Well, we need to have, uh, what's always been lacking in psychedelic

research is, uh, uh, an examination of the content of the experiences. So we need to give it to very

intelligent people who are willing to work with it, not in a clinical setting, but in a setting where

you ask the question, how does it change people's lives when they, uh, can be involved in it in a open,

non-stressed sort of environment? We found that going into the Amazon, which is not exactly a non-stress

filled environment, that as we would go up these jungle rivers and inevitably contact small villages

where the mushrooms would be available, that, you know, reality is transformed. Reality truly is made

of language and of linguistic structures which you hold unbeknownst to yourself in your mind and which,

under the influence of psilocybin, just begin to dissolve and you begin, you begin to perceive,

right, beyond the unspeakable, you, the contours of the unspeakable begin to emerge into your perception,

and you can't say much about the unspeakable, and yet it can colour everything you do, you live with it,

it is the invoking of the other, the other has become the self, all these various forms of estrangement

are healed, that's why it's so, you know, that the term alien has these many connotations.

What's the next step? Well, the next step is to confirm some of what I've said to, uh, form a consensus

among a group of researchers to then try and to figure out a strategy, chemical or otherwise. Who would you

invite to participate? To work on a problem like that? Oh, people like Frank Barr,

Sasha Schulgen, my brother, John Lilly, if he would behave himself, all these great people, you know,

would have a great interest in this. This is the question that has not been dealt with, the botany

has been dealt with, the taxonomy, the chemistry. How would you set it up? How would I set it up?

Well, we need to, uh, explore this linguistic phenomenon somehow. Specifically, I think, not by

giving drugs to volunteers, but by giving drugs to the researchers who are going to actually grapple

with the problem. Because all this talk that orbits around the psychedelic experience by scientists,

how many of them have had a psychedelic experience? So you would do it with people who have already

had, or you would try to get un...? I think the early approach with psychedelics, which was the

Baconian approach, the logical approach, uh, was the correct one, which is very intelligent, thoughtful

people should take psychedelics, and try and understand what's going on. Not batteries of prisoners,

and not school children, but intelligent people, and to share their experiences. See, I say it's too early

for a science. What we need now are like the diaries of explorers. We need many diaries of many explorers,

so we can begin to get a feeling. Uh, the hit I get off of it is that it is very important for human

culture. That it is no coincidence that this is coming to Western man just as we acquire the

technological capability to leave the planet. That the mushroom and the transformation of the human

image by going into space are all things that are spun together. That nothing less is happening than

the emergence of a new... Metamorphosis? Yes, a new human order. A telepathic, uh, humane,

universalist kind of human culture is emerging, which will make everything which preceded it be the

stone age. Will the overview, monad, uh, oversoul, whatever, reassume the personality knowledge...

gained within one lifetime and therefore that is what you see as a UFO

reincarnation or would you say that it's terminated at that terminals

termination in other words the personality which inhabits your form is

when that license is up it reforms itself and that the form is what the

personality is carried by well the wind consciousness is finally understood it

means that the absence of consciousness will be understood which

means the study of consciousness leads inevitably to the study of death death

is both a historical and individual phenomenon about which we as monkeys

have great anxiety but what the psychedelic experience seems to be

pointing out is that actually the reductionist view of death has missed the

point and that there is something more it isn't simple extinction that the

universe does not build up such complex forms as ourselves without conserving them

in some astonishing and surprising way that is perhaps related some way to the

intuitions that we have from the psychedelic experience the UFO comes from

this murky region beyond the end of history beyond the end of life it is both

super super historical and super organic it is uncanny alien it raises the hair on the

back of your neck it is both the apotheosis and the antithesis of the monkeys

journey toward mind it is like the mind revealing itself this is what all

religion is about is shockwaves given off by this event at the end of history

which we are now very close to and which psilocybin can help us to understand

because it conveys you into the place where it is happening constantly where the

the millennium is a standing wave in eternity not an anticipation and so the

mushroom stands at the end of history it's an object that pulls all history

toward itself it's a causal force that operates to us backwards through time it's

why things happen the way they do because everything is being pulled toward a

nexus of transformation you're listening to the psychedelic salon where people are

changing their lives one thought at a time and so he ends by saying everything

is being pulled towards a nexus of transformation and I guess that even a

casual glance around the world right now seems to bear him out don't you think you

know I've heard quite a few Terence McKenna talks but this has to be one of my

all-time favorites which I think is something I say after every new talk I

heard maybe it's just me but in no other talk of his where he spoke about

complexity did I hear him talk about preserving the complexity that is each and

every single one of us his exact quote was the universe does not build up such

complex forms as ourselves without conserving them in some astonishing and

surprising way that is perhaps related some way to the intuitions that we have

from the psychedelic experience now I think I mentioned a while back that in my

work to overcome the brainwashing that I experienced as a child in Catholic

school that I worked really hard for a while at trying to become an atheist my

only problem was that at the time I was living in Florida and I had an almost

unlimited free supply of psychedelic mushrooms which I enjoyed to the

fullest now I'm sure you remember that old saying that there aren't any atheists

in a foxhole during a war well I'm here to tell you that it may be even more

difficult to be an atheist with a belly full of magic mushrooms but I sure did

give it a try what I did succeed at though was to rid my thinking of heaven and

hell and those mysterious points in between in fact I try so hard to live

intensely in the present that I seldom give any thought at all to the

possibility of an afterlife or to reincarnation or anything like that but

now that quick little thought that Terence planted in my mind just now has got

me thinking about those things again damn it you know I have now heard this

recording three times and I think that maybe I'll go back one more time and

listen again each time I've heard it so far I've picked up something that I

previously missed and to me it seems to have something for everyone who has ever

given any serious thought to the topic of UFOs I can see why whomever made this

recording labeled it the definitive UFO tape and I hope that you enjoyed it as

much as I have you know thanks to the internet and to relatively inexpensive

mp3 players quite literally millions of people have now heard one or more

lectures of Terence McKenna millions more than did while he was alive to be sure

and even before he died though his reputation was worldwide but today he's

even kind of begun to slip a little bit into legendary status and I've got no

objection to that however I also think that it's very important to learn

as much as we can about our heroes not so as to reveal their feet of clay but to

give each and every one of us hope in our own ability to grow and evolve over a

lifetime that's full of ups and downs and as I'm sure you already know Terence's

brother Dennis has committed to undertake the momentous task of writing the

definitive story of the life of Terence McKenna as seen from the closest

perspective possible that of a brother who shared many of the adventures that

we've heard Terence speak about in fact just now we even heard Terence include his

brother Dennis as one of a very select group of people he would trust to further

investigate the world of psychedelics of course that's precisely what Dennis has

made his professional life all about now I guess I'd better just lay this out and say

something here hopefully it won't make too many people mad but as you know I get

several requests each week to help somebody promote their kickstart request and so

they're just way too many to sort through and then promote as a result I know that

I probably pissed off quite a few people and I'm really sorry about that but you

know I've got to try and keep these podcasts as commercial free as possible but

now I'm going to break that long-standing rule of mine and promote Dennis

McKenna's kickstart project and I'm doing this for a lot of reasons but to me the

most important one is that this is an opportunity for all of us to come together collectively

as a worldwide community and contribute to a project that will preserve the very valuable

part of the early history of the resurgence of the use of psychedelics as what we hope

will one day be an acceptable practice in human society once again and this is an opportunity

for us to do something that maybe will be a very significant value to those generations

coming after us you know a big part of the reason that I do these podcasts is so that

these talks this information will still be available centuries after we're gone and thanks

to Bruce Dahmer and the good people at the Internet Archive that's archive.org these podcasts are

all backed up on servers on three continents and will be available in new formats as technology

changes over the years and without you coming back each week to hear these podcasts well I probably

wouldn't even be doing this so don't forget that you are every bit as important in this process as I am

we're all in this together you know so just a few minutes ago I went to Dennis's kickstarter page

myself and made a pledge and as much as I had good intentions to just give a pledge and not accept

any of the gifts being offered for the various pledge amounts well Dennis I have to confess that

your offers were just too tempting and so I accepted one of them so hey thanks in advance I feel like I'm

the one that's really making out on the deal so if you're interested in his kickstarter.com project

it's titled the brotherhood of the screaming abyss what a great title and there's also an interesting

video there along with a very detailed description of the project and here's a summary of it that he has

on that page Terence McKenna is a legend in the psychedelic community he is remembered as a

radical philosopher futurist raconteur and cultural commentator he was and is one of the most articulate

spokesman for the post psychedelic zeitgeist he is one of the prime originators of the 2012 mythos

with all its attendant of populitarian anxiety I am the younger brother of Terence McKenna I want to

write a memoir telling of the real story of our intertwined life together over the last 60 years

and of the ideas adventures and explorations both inner and outer that we shared I am Terence's only

brother I am the only one who can tell this tale from this unique perspective Terence died in 2000 but

his ideas live on on the net and in his books for example true hallucinations food of the gods the archaic

revival the invisible landscape and others the time has come to tell his story in reality it is our story

so there you have it and Tony and my other friends I hope that you understand why I'm promoting this

particular kickstarter and not your equally important projects it's simply that this podcast probably

wouldn't be anywhere as popular as it is without all the public domain talks of Terence McKenna and so this

is my small way of giving a little back to his legacy and believe it or not there is one more Terence

McKenna announcement I have for this week you know it's funny sometimes how things fall into place

so next week at long last I'm finally going to be able to play for you the first part of the two-hour

interview that Eric Davis did with Terence McKenna for Wired Magazine and as it turned out it was also

the last interview that Terence ever granted although there is a CD set of this interview

it's now out of print so if you have one it's a real collector's item but through the kind services of

the traveler Alex Chuck Wall and Eric Davis himself I'm going to be able to play it for you in the next

two podcasts barring any unforeseen circumstances so I hope you'll be joining us then as well well that'll

do it for now and so I'll close today's podcast again by reminding you that this and most of the

podcasts from the psychedelic salon are freely 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 the psychedelic salon webpage which

you can find via psychedelics salon dot us and if you're interested in the philosophy behind the salon you

can hear something about it in my novel the genesis generation which is available as an audio book a

pay what you can audio book that you can download at genesis generation dot us and for now this is

lorenzo signing off from cyberdelic space be well my friends