Trialogue 1989

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

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

I know some of you who've been with us here in the salon for a while are probably shocked

that I actually am getting my third podcast out this week, particularly since I've been

saying for months that I was going to attempt to be more regular and frequent with these

programs.

But since coming into all of this new material that Ralph Abraham gave me, I feel obligated

to get it all online as soon as I can.

At the end of this program, I'll tell you what's in store for next week, but first I

know you're probably as anxious as I am to hear today's show.

In the last podcast, you heard Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake introduce

themselves and explain their concept for these trilogues.

In today's program, I'm going to play the first side of the first tape in the series of

conversations that took place at Esalen beginning in September 1989.

And as near as I can tell, this series of ten cassette tapes that I'm going to be playing

are in the order in which the trilogues were actually held, first over several days in 1989

and then again in September of 1990.

And since each tape is about 90 minutes long, so I'm going to present one side of a tape

per podcast.

And that should be just about the right length for those of you who are listening to these

programs during your daily commute to work.

I like the idea of you guys listening to these programs on your way to work, by the way.

Who knows what kind of subversive thoughts we'll be riding around with you during the

day when one of these talks really resonates with you.

So, let's get on with today's mind candy.

Today's trilogues begins with Rupert Sheldrake speculating that if the universe is evolving,

then the laws of nature are evolving as well, which leads Terence McKenna to ask where these

laws of nature were before the Big Bang.

And as you can tell, these guys aren't afraid to take on a few of the big questions that

us lesser mortals sometimes shy away from.

So, let's join them now, shall we?

We decided that Rupert would kick off this morning, and so he shall.

So, Terence, I want to start by explaining what I think the problem is that we're discussing,

because I think if we try and summarize it and get it clearer, it should be easier to see

how we're trying to bring together the idea of creation and imagination.

So, let me explain to everybody what I think the problem is as well.

Well, there's a crisis in science at the moment, a profound crisis, which is going to change

science as we know it.

And the reason why the crisis is so profound is that two of the most fundamental models of

reality that the West has ever known, these two fundamental models are both within science

and they're now in tremendous conflict.

They've come into head-on collision.

And this means that shockwaves are going through the world of science.

The existing worldview of science is an unstable combination of two great plates of theory,

like continental plates crashing into each other.

And where they meet, there are going to be major theoretical earthquakes and disruptions

and volcanoes of speculation.

The two models are concerned with the very basic nature of reality.

One of these says that the basic nature of reality is permanent, that there's an unchanging

permanence underlying everything that we know, see, experience, feel, and so on.

And in classical mechanistic physics, Newtonian physics, that permanence is seen as a

two-fold.

First of all, there's the permanence of the laws of nature, the eternal mathematical laws

of nature, considered by Newton and Descartes to be ideas in the mind of God, God being a

mathematician.

This is a very popular and recurrently popular idea among mathematicians, the idea that God

is a mathematician.

And it was a view that strongly appealed to them, and their image of God was as a kind

of a Christian God, but with a kind of Platonic or Pythagorean mind, containing essentially

the mathematical laws of nature.

So that was one source of permanence, permanent mathematical laws.

The other source of permanence were the permanent atoms of which matter was supposed to be composed.

All material objects were supposed to be made of atoms which were permanent.

And these atoms were in movement.

They combined and permutated.

And our own bodies and everything we see around us would be permutations and movements of those

atoms.

Those were permanent too.

And the movement that they were taking part in was also permanent, a constant amount of

motion.

And these permanences were summed up in the principles of conservation of matter and energy.

The total amount of matter is always the same.

Total amount of energy is always the same.

Nothing really changes in the realm of matter and energy at the most fundamental level.

Nor do the laws of nature change.

Well, that's the permanent view of nature, which has been the basis of physics and of chemistry.

And to a large extent, it still is the basis of physical and chemical thinking.

The other view is the evolutionary view, which comes to us from the Judeo-Christian part

of our cultural heritage.

And in that view, the original part in the Bible is there's one thing that does change

in time, in history, and that's humanity.

According to the biblical account, human beings are undergoing a kind of evolutionary process

from Adam through the patriarchs, well, first Noah, then the patriarchs, then the history

of the people of Israel, then the movement from Egypt through the wilderness to the promised land,

then the subsequent history of the prophets and the kings, then the coming of the Messiah.

This was a process in history which showed a kind of progressive unfolding development,

but it was confined to the human spiritual realm.

In the 17th century, this idea was secularized in the notion of progress through science and

technology.

By the end of the 18th century, the idea of human progress was a dominant idea in Europe.

By the 19th century, human progressive evolution or development was now seen as part of a progressive

evolution of all life, through the theory of biological evolution.

And right up in this century, only in 1966, did physicists finally abandon their eternal

or static cosmology and come to an evolutionary conception of the universe.

So with the Big Bang, the whole universe is now seen to be evolutionary.

This is a very recent revolution in science, and it totally changes our worldview, because

the most fundamental thing in science is its cosmology, its basic model of the cosmos.

And our cosmology has changed now from the static, permanent, or cyclical view of the universe

to one which is evolutionary.

Now, if nature is evolutionary, if all of nature is evolving, what about the eternal laws of nature,

which scientists have taken for granted for so many centuries, concepts going right back

to Pythagoras and the ancient Greeks?

Were all the laws of nature there before the Big Bang?

Well, if they were there before the Big Bang, where could they possibly be?

There was nowhere to be.

There was no universe.

So if the laws of nature were all there before the Big Bang, then they must be idea, non-physical,

idea-like entities dwelling in some kind of permanent mathematical mind, be that thought of

as the mind of God or just the mind of a kind of disembodied mathematician, they were thought

to be permanent and all there before the universe.

This assumption is still held by most of our modern cosmologists.

It's something that physicists have not yet begun to question seriously.

But as you can see, it's like an idea that's had the carpet taken from under it.

It's sort of hanging over an abyss.

Because there's no real reason why we should assume the laws of nature are permanent in an evolving universe.

If the universe is evolving, then the laws of nature could be evolving as well.

And in fact, the very idea of the laws of nature may not be appropriate.

It may be better to think of the habits of nature evolving.

The Big Bang is like the cracking of the cosmic egg.

That's its mythological correlate.

The notion of the ancient mythological idea of the cosmos beginning through the hatching or the cracking of an egg,

followed by the growth of the organism that comes out.

It's an embryological metaphor.

And we now have a kind of developmental model of the whole universe.

It's like a developing organism.

It's not like a machine at all anymore.

The universe is a growing, developing organism,

which is differentiating within itself, forming new forms and patterns.

An evolutionary process that on Earth has given rise to all the forms of animal and plant life,

all the different kinds of microbes, to ourselves,

and to the many and varied forms of human culture.

So the question arises, how does this process happen?

I myself have been working on a theory which I put forward in my two books,

A New Science of Life and The Presence of the Past,

which tries to understand these habits and how the habits of nature can evolve.

What I'm suggesting is that there's a kind of memory inherent in each kind of thing

through what I call its morphic field.

And that this, as time goes on, each kind of thing has a kind of collective memory

of everything that's happened to all previous similar things.

So, for example, when a crystal crystallizes,

the form its crystal takes depends on the way similar crystals have formed in the past.

Things are as they are because they were as they were,

to use Terence's felicitous summary of this theory.

In the realm of animal behavior, the theory says that if animals like rats learn a new trick in one place,

then just because they've learned it, rats of the same breed should be able to learn the same thing more quickly everywhere else.

So you train rats to do something in San Francisco,

and all over the world, rats of that breed should subsequently be able to do it more easily

through a kind of invisible influence, like a collective mind of the rats that's changing or developing.

There's already evidence that these effects actually occur,

and this evidence is summarized in my books.

It leads to the idea also that in human learning,

we all benefit from what other people have learned before.

There's a kind of collective human memory,

an idea very like Jung's idea of the collective unconscious.

So, habits build up,

and what I'm suggesting is that the regularities of nature are habitual.

They develop as habits.

Nature goes along habitually.

New patterns come into being,

but through repetition they become habitual.

The universe is an evolving system of habits.

But obviously, this is only part of the story.

If the universe is an evolving system of habits,

how do new things ever come into being in the first place?

What is the basis of creativity?

Evolution must involve an interplay on this view between habit and creativity,

just as our own lives involve an interplay between habit and creativity.

So, habit, a theory of evolutionary habits,

demands a theory of evolutionary creativity.

And how can we understand the creativity that's given rise to new ideas,

to Beethoven's symphonies,

to theories in science,

to new works of art,

to new forms of culture,

to instincts in birds and animals,

to the forms of flowers and plants and leaves,

to the many kinds of rocks and crystals,

and to all the forms of galactic and stellar and planetary organization?

What kind of creativity could underlie all those processes?

Well, there seem to be two basic answers on the market

within the conventional world views.

One is the materialist view that says

the whole thing is entirely due to blind chance,

that there's nothing but a kind of darkness

of blind material processes going on,

and then by blind chance new things happen.

That's the materialist theory.

And it really says, by saying it's blind chance,

it basically says, don't think about it.

You know, it's chance, there's nothing more that you can say,

so just forget it, you know, take it for granted.

Because there's no reason,

or there's nothing intelligible about it.

It just happens, and there's nothing more you can say.

The other theory is derived from the Platonic traditions

of the Platonic theology,

and says that it all happens because, in a sense,

it was all made up in the mind of God.

Everything that happens, every new form that appears,

corresponds to an eternal archetype,

a kind of eternal idea in the mind of God.

But evolutionary creativity is creativity that keeps on happening.

It goes on as the world goes on.

It's going on now.

It's not something that happened once

in an act of creation at the beginning.

If it's going on now, it may be entirely blind,

but there may be another model for understanding creativity.

The other model for understanding creativity,

I think, is provided by our own imaginations.

Our imaginations are not full of fixed Platonic ideas,

which are always the same, like Platonic minds.

They're ongoing, changing, dynamical processes

with a kind of creative richness that always surprises us.

So, the question is,

if nature is alive rather than dead,

if the universe, if the earth,

have a kind of mind or soul of their own,

if living organisms are, in some sense, mind-like,

or if there's a mind-like process at work in nature,

then, how does this express its creativity?

And so, then the question is,

could this creativity in nature

be a product of the imagination of Gaia,

of the Gaian mind?

Could it be a product of the cosmic imagination?

Could there be a kind of imagination working in nature,

which is similar to our own imaginations?

Could our own imaginations be just one conscious aspect

of an imagination working through the whole natural world,

perhaps unconsciously,

as it works underneath the surface of our dreams,

perhaps sometimes consciously?

And could this ongoing imagination

be the basis of evolutionary creativity in nature,

just as it is in the human realm?

So, those are the questions that I wanted to raise

and ask Terence to follow through on,

because Terence has studied the imagination

more than most of us.

And, in a sense, I regard him as somebody

who has a deep understanding

of the dynamics of the human imagination

and of its wider importance.

Well, certainly I think that the relationship

between creativity and imagination

is the place to focus

if you want to understand

the emergence of form out of chaos.

Of all the arguments that you make

in favor of the theory of morphic resonance,

I think the most powerful one

is this question,

if the laws of nature are eternal,

where were they before the Big Bang?

It seems to me that just defeats

the whole notion of eternal laws of nature,

because you either have to hypothesize

a kind of platonic super space

in which, for reasons presumably unknowable,

these were the laws that were present,

or you have to somehow say

that the laws of nature

came into being complete and entire

at the moment of the Big Bang.

And it's very hard to see

how laws of nature,

such as gene segregation

and that sort of thing,

could exist in the situation

of high-temperature physics

and non-molecular systems

that prevailed at the beginning

of the universe.

So my thinking about

how pattern came to be

in the universe

has sort of taken

all the orthodox positions

and stood them on their head.

And I think that's a useful place to begin.

How would it be,

or is it credible

that perhaps what the universe is

is a kind of system

in which more advanced forms of order

actually influence

previous states of organization?

This is what is emerging

in Ralph Abraham's work

with the chaotic attractors.

They are attractors.

That means that they exert influence

influence on less organized states

and pull them toward

some kind of end state.

And for me,

the key to unlocking

what is going on

with history, creativity,

progressive process

of all sorts

is to place

the state of completion

at the end

but to see it

as a kind of

higher dimensional object

which casts

an enormous

and flickering shadow

over the lower dimensions

of organization

of which this universe

is one.

So that, for instance,

in the human domain

when we look at history

what we see is

an endless series

of anticipations.

The golden age is coming.

The Messiah

is immediately

around the corner.

Great change

is soon to be upon us.

These are

intimations of change.

It's almost as though

the transcendental object

that is the great attractor

in many, many dimensions

throws out images

of itself

which filter down

through these

lower dimensional matrices

and actually are the basis

of the appetition of nature

for greater expression of form,

the appetition of the human soul

for greater immersion in beauty,

the appetition of human history

for greater expression

of complexity.

So, when I think about

these terms

chaos, creativity, imagination

I see them

it's like a three-stroke engine

of some sort.

Each impels

and runs the other

and sets up

a reinforcing cycle

that then stabilizes

organisms,

processes

that are caught up in this

in the phenomenon of being.

The phenomenon of being

is this self-synergizing engine

out of chaos

through creativity

into the imagination

back into chaos

out into creativity

so forth and so on

and it operates

on many levels

simultaneously

so that

the planet

is undergoing

a destiny.

The model

you know

deep time

the time

of geology

was only really discovered

around the turn

of this century

and it is

cosmically

ennobling

to think of

the universe

as a thing

of great age

but I think

that it's time

to put

in place

next to the notion

of deep cosmic time

the notion

of chaotic

sudden

change

cusp

flux

and

sudden

perturbation

because

what deep time

has revealed

as we've pushed

our understanding

of the career

of organic life

back

65 million years

270 million years

what we see

is

tremendous

punctuation

built into

the universe

in the case

of the earth

in the form

of asteroidal

impacts

this thing

which happened

65 million years

ago

nothing larger

than a chicken

walked away

from it

on this planet

so

there's a strange

paradox

where

taking deep

time

seriously

the message

of deep

time

is

you may not

have as much

time

as you thought

that

the universe

is dynamic

capable

of turning

sudden

corners

so then

the imagination

becomes a kind

of beacon

the imagination

is

as it were

a scout

sent ahead

or

a

something

which has

preceded us

into history

and in fact

is a kind

of eschatological

object

it is shedding

influence

the morphogenetic

field

if you wish

if the morphogenetic

field

is not

subject to the

inverse square law

of decreased

influence over

distance

then I

as a layman

don't see

why Rupert

we couldn't

locate it

at the conclusion

of process

because

you know

one of the

things that's

always puzzled

me about

the Big Bang

is

it's

a singularity

this is the

term

physicists

use for it

this means

theory

cannot

predict it

and yet

it is

necessary

to make

everything

which follows

from it

happen

so you just

say

you know

there's no

reason for this

we have no

argument for this

but the rest of

the theory

needs it

so

it's a singularity

and the

immense

improbability

which modern

science rests

on

but cares

not to

discuss

is this

the belief

that the universe

sprang from

nothing

in a single

moment

well

if you can

make that

leap

to believe

that

it's very

hard to see

what you

couldn't

believe

that is

almost

the

limiting

case

of

credulity

I would

think

you know

so in order

to say

of the

phenomenon

I would

propose

a different

idea

that

and I

think

it is

eminently

reasonable

and it

is

that

as

the

complexity

of a

system

increases

so too

does

the likelihood

of its

generating

a singularity

or an

unpredictable

perturbation

so

the

pre

existent

state

of the

universe

I imagine

to be

extremely

simple

an

unflawed

nothingness

in other

words

the least

likely

situation

in which

you would

expect

singularity

to emerge

but now

let's look

at the

other end

of the

historical

continuum

of the

history

of the

universe

let's

look at

the

world

we are

living

in

which

is

full

of

elements

tremendous

gradients

of energy

ranging

from

what's

going on

inside

pulsars

and

quasars

to

what is

going

on

at the

atomic

level

at the

molecular

level

at the

level

of

molecular

polymerization

at the

level

of

membranes

and

gels

at the

level

of

cells

and

organelles

organisms

societies

so forth

and so on

in other

words

the universe

at this

moment

is a

tremendously

complicated

integrated

multi-leveled

dynamic

thing

and every

passing

moment

it becomes

more so

this is

what

evolution

history

compression

of time

what all

these things

are attempting

to indicate

is the

increasing

complexity

of reality

well

then

is it

not

reasonable

to suspect

that

if a

singularity

is necessary

to explain

this universe

that singularity

must emerge

rather near

the end

of the

complexification

process

rather than

its beginning

you see

we simply

have to

reverse

our

preconceptions

about the

flow of

cause and

effect

and then

we get

a great

attractor

that

pulls

all

organization

and structure

toward itself

over several

billion years

and as

the

objects

of its

attraction

grow

closer to

its

proximity

they

somehow

interpenetrate

they

set up

standing

wave

patterns

of interference

new

possible

new

properties

become

emergent

and the

entire

thing

complexifies

well to

my mind

this is

the divine

imagination

this is

what Blake

called it

this is the

only way

I can

conceive of

it

that

Rupert and I

were chatting

last night

in our room

about the

aboriginal

nature of

God

this idea

which is built

into

Whitehead

that

somehow

time

is

the

theater

of

God's

becoming

but it's

also

from the

point of

view

of a

higher

dimensional

manifold

a

kind

of

fit

accompli

and this

is no

contradiction

or if it

is

it's

alright

because in

these realms

of higher

ontology

you're

always

asked

to

avoid

closure

and hold

the notion

of a

coincidencia

positorum

a union

of opposites

the

thing

is

both

what

it

is

and

what

it

is

not

and yet

it somehow

escapes

contradiction

and that's

how

the

open

system

is

maintained

that's

how

the

miracle

of

life

is

possible

so

I

sort

of

think

of

the

divine

imagination

as

the

class

of

all

things

both

possible

and

it's

a kind

of

reverse

platonism

the

attractor

is at

the bottom

of a

very

deep

pit

into

which

all

phenomena

is

cascading

and being

brought

into a

kind

of

compressed

state

this

is

happening

in the

biological

realm

through

the

career

of

the

evolution

of

life

which

paleontological

data

makes

clear

but it's

also

sign

simultaneously happening in the world as we experience it within our culture.

In other words, what we call history.

History is the tracks in the snow left by creativities wandering in the divine imagination.

And if you are a student of theories of history, you know that these tracks in the snow,

what is taught in modern universities these days, is that these tracks in the snow are going nowhere.

The technical term is trendlessly fluctuating.

And we're told that history is this kind of process.

It's trendlessly fluctuating.

It goes here, it goes there.

It's called a random walk in information theory.

It means you just wander around.

Well, it's very interesting.

Now we begin to see through the marvel of the new mathematics that random walks are not random at all.

That a sufficiently long random walk becomes a fractal structure of extraordinary depth and beauty.

So, you see, really what has to happen partially this weekend is for us to see chaos not as something that degrades information

and is somehow the enemy of order, but rather chaos is the birthplace of order.

Chaos is not the problem.

Chaos is the answer.

It's the inability to surrender that is the major cultural problem.

This is because everybody's personality is structured around the male ego.

This tumorous growth that has come upon us since the collapse of the Guilanic worldview that was practiced in the ancient Middle East.

This shift of emphasis from collective tribal values to the me values and away from partnership and toward domination is typical of the resistance of this need to surrender to the imagination.

It amazes me.

I was somewhere recently and two people who I didn't know were sitting at a table next to me in a restaurant.

And one of them was explaining to the other one something about the dynamics of the atmosphere.

And the person to whom it was being explained was very intently trying to understand this complex phenomenon.

And I thought to myself, amazing, these people go at this as though the weather wouldn't happen unless they understood its functioning.

And they place great importance upon it.

We each place great importance upon our own ability to understand reality as though you were an understudy for God or something.

So that if anything happened and they tapped you, you'd be able to say, that's all right, I can handle it, I understand thermodynamics and all this.

No problem.

Well, this is not exactly this abandonment to the partnership life lived in the creative imagination that I had in mind.

And, well, we could go on and on about this, but I hope this has stirred up something in you and we can go forward with it.

Well, I think the, I'm very interested that you start your description of the imagination from the cosmic attractor or the, which sounds to me like a combination of Plato, Thomas Taylor and Teilhard de Chardin.

It's the idea of the omega point and Teilhard de Chardin is the attractor of the whole evolutionary process.

It's all being drawn towards this end point, which is actually very like Aristotle's conception of God too.

He thought that the prime mover of the heavenly spheres as the heavens went round was God.

The heavens were not being pushed by God, they were being pulled by God, who was so attractive that the motion of the heavens was kept eternally, especially in the outer spheres, in very fast rotational movement.

The fast rotation being the closest they could achieve to the divine state of eternal bliss.

And God was the prime mover by pulling the entire cosmic process, by attracting it.

So, I think that this idea of attraction, it has ancient roots.

It's something that in this century has been brought out by Teilhard de Chardin.

I think, actually, we have to have some notion of an attractor for the evolutionary process of the cosmos.

And this has now actually become part of common discussion through the anthropic cosmological principle,

which is the idea of the whole cosmic evolution being, in some sense, designed so that it could give rise to human cosmologists.

This is the conception, this is the form the argument usually takes within cosmology.

The argument is, the cosmos must be such as to have allowed the evolution of carbon-based life on at least one planet,

and then to allow the evolution of human intelligence so that we cosmologists could be around to discuss it.

Well, this, in a sense, is a fairly obvious point to make.

You wouldn't think it was very controversial, but it is,

because it implies that there's some purposive organization in the cosmos that's given rise to cosmologists,

and other people as a kind of by-product.

Well, this is what they're busy talking about in modern cosmology, the anthropic cosmological principle.

If there is an attractor in the evolutionary process, then I think, which I think there must be, I agree with that,

then the question is, how does it work in the process of evolutionary creativity?

One way is to make this attractor a kind of platonic mind in the future,

which is what Terence, you seem to be doing,

making it the old platonic mind containing all possible forms and archetypes somewhere out there in the future,

and then this somehow interacts with what's going on now.

The way I understood it from Terence's description was that there's an ongoing system in the cosmos,

and the world, where we are now, an ongoing system of habits built up through the past,

and what's happened in the past, and habits have a certain density.

I mean, matter is in a sense dense because it's so deeply habitual.

There's a sense in which habits are the basis of the kind of density and the sheer materiality of the natural world,

and its sheer resistance to the imagination,

the fact that everything's so deeply embedded in habit.

And then, left to themselves, of course, habits would just fossilize,

and the whole world would just become intensely, repetitively habitual.

But they can't be left to themselves, because there's other active process going on,

which is the cosmological expansion,

associated with the continued presence of chaos within the universe,

which means that habits are permanently, or all the time, or at least intermittently being disrupted

by unexpected accidents, like asteroids hitting the earth.

Or, as we see in our own lives,

our habits are permanently being disrupted by unexpected accidents.

This creates new conditions, new possibilities,

vacuums where new things can happen.

And somehow, as I understood it,

between this, the needs, the vacuums,

the ongoing crises of the present,

the problems, the tensions,

these then somehow interact with the cosmic attractor,

and it's as if sparks pass between them.

What's the situation or the problems now

attracting to themselves those aspects of the divine mind,

which are appropriate to the present circumstances,

is creating a kind of imaginative penumbra

around what's actually happening,

a whole realm of the imagination related to what's going on,

just as our own imaginations are related to what we're interested in.

Our own dreams reflect our own preoccupations and interests

and drives and hidden motivations.

So the imagination working in that way,

by a kind of spark between this divine mind,

or cosmic attractor,

and the present situation.

Well, that's what I understood you to be saying.

And I think that's all right,

except that I myself find it more interesting to,

instead of say,

everything that can possibly happen is already there,

which is in a sense a way of denying creativity.

It says that creativity is simply the manifest

of a future potentiality or possibility,

which is also at the same time eternal.

Because the future of the cosmos must at least have endured

as long as the cosmos.

And in a sense,

the final unified attractor

is in a sense a reflection

of the primal unified state of the Big Bang.

The two have a symmetrical relationship to them.

They're part of a familiar model of history

in which the end,

in some sense,

reflects the beginning.

Or in which the end,

in some sense,

is the beginning at a higher turn of the spiral,

whichever model one prefers.

But I'm interested in the possibility

that the imagination

isn't all there,

all worked out in potential,

in advance.

But rather that the world

truly is made up as it goes along.

And this is something that,

I think,

in Bergson's book,

Creative Imagination,

he very strongly emphasizes

that evolution implies

ongoing creativity.

And we'll do anything we can

to avoid this notion

because it's so extremely difficult

to conceive of ongoing creativity.

You either have this tendency

to reject the question

and say,

well,

it's ongoing creativity

but it's entirely random

so you can't think about it.

Or,

substitute some kind of

platonic realm for creativity

where it's all there already,

in some sense.

So,

what I'm trying to look at

is a third possibility

where the imagination

really is made up

as it goes along.

And instead of emerging,

as it were,

from the light in the future

or from a kind of platonic mind,

it may emerge from something

much more like

the unconscious mind.

It may come into light

from darkness.

And the formative processes

of the imagination

may not be sparks leaping

from the mind of God,

but rather new forms

welling up

from the womb of chaos.

Well,

it's very interesting

to hear you say this

because I shouldn't have

predicted it.

Let me see

if I can explain why.

It seems to me

the problem revolves

around this notion

of purpose.

Is there one?

Is there not one?

If there is one,

what is it?

Well,

the 19th century science

was at tremendous pains

to eliminate purpose

from all of its model building

in order to make,

once and for all,

a clean break

with the contaminating power

of deism,

essentially.

So that,

for instance,

in evolutionary theory

as it was evolved

in the 19th century,

the stress,

the great breakthrough

for them you see

was that they had

a random process.

They didn't know

that it was mutation

through radiation,

but they called it

sporting

or the production

of variant types,

a random process

and then a second

random process

which was selection

for fitness

to the environment

and you run

these two random processes

head into each other

and out of it

emerges exquisite order,

animals, plants,

ecosystems.

So they said,

you see,

we have no need

for God

or purposes

or divine plans.

We show

that out of

the chaos

of the moment

emerges order

and this tendency

was so strong

in 19th century

and early 20th century

biology

that, for instance,

they sought

to entirely

appropriate

the word

evolution

and it was not

to be used

in any other context.

I had a biologist

once say to me,

if it doesn't

involve genes,

it isn't evolution.

so you cannot

talk about

the evolution

of the novel,

the sonata,

socialism.

It has to involve

genes.

Well,

largely through

the work

of Eric Jansch

who we mentioned

last night,

this was

overthrown.

I don't believe

that everything

is finished

somehow

in some

deterministic sense

at the end

of the cosmos

but I do believe

that

there is

some kind

of intimation

of purpose

that keeps

peregrinations

of processes

through time

from simply

becoming

random walks.

if you believe

that all

of the imagination

is being made

up in the present

then you're

back with

the trendlessly

fluctuating

theorists

of history

because

if none

of it exists

in the future

then there is

no compass

point

upon which

to fix

to guide

the process

forward.

Now I know

you're familiar

with C.H. Waddington's

idea of

creodes

and for me

that's been

the way

to preserve

your intuition

of that

it's all

being made

all at once

and the

my strong

intuition

and I think

the logical

necessity

for this

compass point

in the future

and the way

you do it

is you say

that the

universe

is not

determined

in what

will happen

what will

undergo

what Whitehead

calls the

formality

of occurring

but rather

the universe

is determined

in the way

I mentioned

last night

time is

a topological

manifold

over which

events must

flow

subject to

the constraints

of the

manifold

and I

call the

surface of

the manifold

novelty

and believe

that we

can say

where in

history

great outbreaks

of novelty

occurred and

so forth

but that is

not what's

important for

this argument

what's

important for

this argument

is that

without

knowing

any of

its

content

we can

place

the

novelty

of

novelties

the

novelty

to the

nth

power

of

novelty

we can

place it

at the

end

of the

historical

process

and then

watch it

as

operate

as an

attractor

without

having

any

information

about it

at all

that is

really

of its

essence

which I

think

comes

very

close

still

though

all

this

modern

jargon

has

been

hung

on

to

it

to

neoplatonism

we have

to

maintain

the

unknowability

of

god

hence

the

ultimate

unknowability

of the

imagination

but nevertheless

we have

to grant

it

as

an

attractor

nevertheless

that would

be my

take

on that

well

I mean

it's partly

a question

of

as I

see it

of

what role

one thinks

the attractor

has

I think

that the

cosmic

attractor

as

Tyod de Chardin

conceives it

or as

Aristotle

conceives it

is drawing

things towards

a state

of higher

unity

that's how

you could

express it

so one

could say

there's a

process

that

many possible

states

as can

be

otherwise

why would

there be

so many

forms

of life

so much

variety

in nature

but it

may be

you see

the question

is

are the

new

forms

arising

in the

attractor

or

is the

attractor

simply

attracting

what's

already

a

diversity

of

forms

through

a process

that lies

between

them

as it

were

the

imagination

as much

as I

hate

to leave

this

discussion

right now

our

time is

up

for

today

but

never

fear

next

week

you

will

be

able

to

hear

the

conclusion

of

this

by

the

first

part

of

the

second

tape

which

is

titled

Creativity

and

Chaos

where

you'll

be

joined

I'm

sure

by

Ralph

Abraham

who has

more than

a passing

familiarity

with the

subject

of

chaos

before

the next

two

trialogue

podcasts

though

on

Monday

I

plan

on

presenting

the

talk

that

Myron

Stolroff

gave

at the

100th

birthday

celebration

that was

held

in

Switzerland

for

Dr.

Hoffman

last

January

his talk

is titled

LSD

and the

future

of human

consciousness

and I

think you're

going to

find it

most interesting

before I

go I

want to

thank

Ralph

Abraham

not only

for

participating

in these

trialogues

but also

for

preserving

them on

cassette

tape

and

allowing

me to

podcast

them

thank you

to

Bruce

Dahmer

as

well

for

without

his

efforts

these

tapes

may have

slipped

away

from

us

psychedelic

salon

are

protected

under

the

creative

commons

attribution

non-commercial

sharealike

2.5

license

and if

you have

any

questions

about

any

of

this

you

can

click

on

the

link

at

the

bottom

of

the

psychedelic

salon

web

page

which

may

always

send

them

to

me

in

an

email

to

lorenzo

at

matrixmasters

dot com

and for

the

music

we are

using

here

each

week

I

want

to

again

thank

Jacques

Cordell

and

Wells

otherwise

known as

Chateul Hayuk

thanks again

guys

and

one

last

great

big

thank you

goes out

this week

to

Chris

Case

one of

our

European

salonners

for

telling me

about

my

RSS

feed

screw up

in the

last

podcast

if

like

Chris

your

machine

downloads

each

new

podcast

shortly

after

I

post

them

then

you

were

probably

disappointed

for the

first

hours

after

I

posted

the

last

show

just

as

I

was

creating

that

feed

there

was

a

bunch

of

confusion

taking

place

here

in

what

I

laughingly

call

my

office

and

I

kind

of

lost

track

where

I

was

in

the

process

that

meant

the

RSS

speed

didn't

have

the

correct

link

to the

program

at least

initially

but fortunately

Chris found

the error

and let me

know so that

I could

fix it

thanks again

Chris

and I'm

sure that

the rest

of our

fellow

psychedelics

owners

appreciate

it

as much

as I

did

and you

can

find

Chris

on the

web

by the

way

at

http

colon

slash

floating

world

web

dot

com

that's

all one

word

floating

world

web

dot

com

it's

a really

cool

site

and

if you're

like me

you'll

probably

find a

lot

there

to keep

your

interest

well

I guess

that's

about

it

for

this

week

I

hope

you

all

have

a lot

of

you

will

be

doing

just

that

so

for

now

this

is

Lorenzo

signing

off

from

cyberdelic

space

be

well

my

friends

greetings

from

cyberdelic

space

this

is

Lorenzo

and I'm

your host

here

in

last

week

with

the

trial

log

between

Terrence

McKenna

Rupert

Sheldrake

and

Ralph

Abraham

while

you

won't

hear

Ralph

on

this

particular

program

which

is

side

B

of

tape

one

in

the

first

series

of

trial

logs

that

were

held

at

Esalen

in

September

of

you

will

be

pleased

to

know

that

Ralph

will

be

joining

in

the

conversation

in

this

particular

trial

log

tape

is

titled

Creativity

and

Imagination

and

in

this

the

second

part

of

that

discussion

we

join

Terrence

and

Rupert

in

their

speculation

that

having

a

psychedelic

experience

is

like

tapping

into

the

guy

in

imagination

but

first

we

forms

from

the

unconscious

and

it's

as

if

there's

a

kind

of

creative

process

like

welling

up

or

boiling

up

of

new

forms

and

incredible

diversity

and

they're

forms

which

are

conditioned

by

memories

of

what

have

gone

before

and

existing

habits

but

they're

forms

which

make

new

syntheses

new

patterns

and

it

could

be

that

if

there's

a

kind

of

unifying

process

working

upon

boiling

up

of

new

forms

that

anything

that

comes

out

above

the

surface

of

the

unconscious

or

the

darkness

or

the

boiling

process

or

the

chaos

has

to

take

on

a

unified

form

to

come

above

that

surface

the

light

into

which

it

comes

is

a

unifying

principle

so

it

which

the

creativity

is

occurring

or

tending

so

in

I

think

in

our

own

case

the

one

model

for

this

is

dreams

that

dreams

involve

the

appearance

of

these

strange

stories

and

narratives

and

symbols

and

images

which

we

don't

create

with

our

conscious

minds

in fact

we

usually

just

forget

the

whole

lot

this

happens

to

each

of

us

nightly

is

usually

just

forgotten

or

disregarded

but

when

we

remember

our

dreams

they're

bizarre

and

unexpected

it

seems

almost

impossible

to

have

an

expected

dream

and

most

of

them

have

a

continuous

element

of

surprise

somewhere

hovering

around

them

and

this

curious

feature

of

dreams

raises

the

question

of

how

they come

from

the

Jungians

would

say

they

come

from

some

structuring

process

in

the

darkness

of

the

collective

unconscious

and

they'd

see

that

as

separate

a

kind

of

imagination

of

matter

or

imagination

of

the

psyche

not

a

kind

of

descent

from

some

higher

world

but

welling

up

from

a

and

so

what

I'm

interested

in

is

that

the

human

imagination

obviously

works

through

dreams

it

works

during

discussions

through

language

through

conversations

through

fantasies

through

novels

through

our

dreams

our aspirations

through

advertising

and it

also is

revealed

through

psychedelics

in a

particularly

extreme

form

now

in what

sense

is this

imagination

that we

actually

know

about

that we

know

about

from

experience

related

to the

imaginative

creative

principle

of

nature

is

Gaia

as it

were

awake

on the

side

that's

in the

sunlight

and

in the

side

the

whole

ecosystems

the

oceans

in some

sense

in a

dream

state

when

dreams

and

spontaneous

images

of what

might be

possible

come to

them

so

is there

a kind

of Gaian

dreaming

and does

it

happen

on the

night

side

of the

planet

so

is the

imagination

as it

were

located

how is

it

rooted

in

cosmic

events

and what

would the

Gaian

mind

feel

like

what

form

would a

Gaian

dream

take

or

what

form

would a

Gaian

psychedelic

experience

take

that's

how I'd

like to

know

how you're

thinking

of it

I think

a Gaian

dream

would be

human

history

that

human

history

perhaps it

isn't that

the planet

sleeps

each

night

but that

perhaps

it's been

sleeping

for

fifty

thousand

years

and

from that

dream

it

would

just

shake

its

head

and

say

my

god

I

don't

know

what

it

was

but

I

hope

it

doesn't

come

back

that

human

history

has

that

quality

I

mean

James

Joyce

should

be

mentioned

here

saying

history

is the

nightmare

from which

I'm

trying

to

awaken

and

the

whole

structure

of

his

novels

the

integrating

of

historical

data

with

daily

newspapers

and

this

sort

of

thing

to

give

reality

the

quality

of

a

dream

I

think

your

mentioning

of

the

psychedelics

is

important

you

said

it

was

an

extreme

and

intense

example

of

this

I

think

that

it's

so

intense

and

extreme

an

example

that

it

argues

strongly

that

the

imagination

is

not

the

human

imagination

while

we may

be able

to

analyze

dreams

and

see

the

acting

out

of

wish

fulfillment

or

repressed

sexual

drives

or

whatever

depending

on

our

theory

of

dreams

the

psychedelic

experience

it's

preposterous

to

attempt

to

analyze

it

in

terms

of

human

motivation

at

its

intense

levels

it

seems

rather

to

say

no

more

about

your

personality

than

that

the

continent

of

Africa

is

making

a

statement

about

your

personality

they

are

in

fact

independent

objects

to

my

mind

the

divine

imagination

or

the

imagination

is

this

the

source

of all

creativity

in our

dreams

in our

psychedelic

experiences

in the

jungles

in the

currents

of the

ocean

in the

organization

of

protozoan

and microbial

life

wherever there

is large

scale

integration

rather than

simply

raw

physics

but

integration

of

laws

of

physics

integration

of

properties

of

membranes

and

electrophoresis

and this

sort of

thing

this is

it is

the

creative

principle

beheld

so

do you

think

then

that in

psychedelic

experiences

you're

actually

tapping

into

tuning

into

or

experiencing

something

of the

Gaian

or the

cosmic

imagination

absolutely

and I

think

that

psychedelic

experiences

and

dreams are only different in degree that they are chemical cousins somehow and

this is why I could see human history as a Gaian dream because I think every

night when you descend into dream you are potentially open to receiving Gaian

corrective tuning of your life state you were the the whole thing is an

enzyme driven process we are like an organ of Gaia we are the organ which binds and

releases energy for read I mean a liver cell doesn't need to understand why it

binds and releases enzymes of the liver we bind and release energy for reasons

perhaps never to be clear to us but which place us firmly within the context

of of the Gaian mind we have been chosen out and this is not something to have

great hubris about I mean indolecetic acid has been chosen out in plant metabolism to

play certain roles we have a role but our role seems to be a major one we are like

a triggering system out of the general background of evolutionary processes

mediated by incoming radiation to the surface of the earth and then natural

selection suddenly we come with an epigenetic capability we write books tell

stories dance sing carve paint these are not genetic processes these are epigenetic

processes and they bind information and express the Gaian mind very well as an

example of how willing I am to introduce or to entertain this idea concretely I've been

talking to a lot of people about ecological crisis and the fate of the world and

this sort of thing well imagine in hindsight the wisdom that we would impute to

Gaia if we were to suddenly realize that what is happening on this planet is that

nature knows that the Sun is going to explode and what we are is a kind of

response to the anticipation of a wounding that fifty thousand five million years ago

the geo heliocentric relationships began to vibrate out of tune and as a

consequence of this a species was called forth that could organize an escape and we

are it in other words we are in a divine play in line with this and what made me

even entertain these ideas is I had a very bizarre experience recently I was in Hawaii

and in our botanical garden there is a very large dead tree and one limb of this tree sticks far out over

the over the land and banisteriopsis copy a large hallucinogenic South American vine is

planted at the at the bottom of this tree and it just has swarmed up this tree and covered it with

greenery but it wouldn't go out onto this one limb that stuck out and I it bothered my sense of

symmetry that this vine would not completely cover this tree and I even thought about trying to climb

up into the tree and thread it out onto this limb to get it to do what I wanted so I was sitting

looking looking at this tree and this situation and actually thinking about it and suddenly the limb

fell it broke off and then I thought and I thought the vine sensed that it was in unstable it would not

not invade this domain that it sensed was structurally unstable well then I said to myself but how could it

what is the mechanism of this sensing of instability and a friend of mine said well perhaps the wind

impacts on weakened wood differently than on unrotted wood and perhaps rhythms in the tree tell it to stay away from

them and then I realized if one plant has that kind of sensitivity to the entering into a domain of danger

what must the ecosystem of this planet be doing in reaction to what we are doing to the planet so it i i see

the reason this relates to the imagination is because i see ourselves in communication with the imagination it is

sending images back into the past to try and direct us away from areas of instability it really is the guy

in mind is a real mind its messages are real messages and our task through discipline psychedelics attention to detail

whatever we have going is to try and extract this message and eliminate ourselves from the message so that

we then can see the face of the other and respond to what i what it wants so it isn't for me a philosophical

problem it's a problem that relates to the politics and action that we take as a collectivity and as

individual just one more reflection on that you see if we tune in through our own imaginations to

the guyan mind which certainly seems to be an attractive idea and i think fits quite well perhaps with

dreams psychedelic experience imagination and so on the question for me is this

we can relate to the guyan imagination let's take that for granted but then how is the guyan

imagination related to the imagination of the solar system and that of the solar system related to

the imagination of the galaxy the imagination of the galaxy to the imagination of the cosmos and

then how is that related to what we could call the imagination of the cosmic attractor, or God the Father, or the cosmic Christ?

Well, I'm not sure that I want to follow you into the cosmic Christ.

For me, the mind of the solar system, I think there should always be some physical stuff to hang these things on.

The Gaian mind is not a problem. The earth teems with life.

A Jovian mind is not a problem, because the complex chemistry, the metallic behavior of gas, ices under pressure,

and all of this stuff seems to me to place enough cards on the table that mind could well emerge in that situation.

Similarly, the oceans of Europa. There are a number of places in the solar system where there's enough complex chemistry

that I can imagine these very large self-reflecting enthelechies to get going over billions of years.

But to move from that to the hypothesis of a continuous hierarchy of minds out to the level of the galactic mind,

you have to ask hard questions. I mean, how long does it take the galactic mind to think a thought?

Does it do it instantaneously via morphogenetic fields? And if so, then what are the transducing and signal sorting filters through which it goes?

If it does it through light, then to say that its thoughts are vaster than empires and more slow is to suggest that they're very high-speed phenomena indeed.

Empires come and go by the thousands before a galactic thought could reach from one side of itself to the other.

But I think that if we're thinking of galactic imaginations in the basis form, one would be all the probabilistic processes and the stars and everything within it.

If the communication is instantaneous, which it may be, or if it isn't, we don't really know because I think a factor which changes everything is the discovery of dark matter,

the fact that 90 to 95, 99% of the matter in the universe is utterly unknown to us.

This recent discovery effectively tells us that the whole cosmos and every material thing in it has a kind of unconscious,

unconscious, a material unconscious, an unknown dark realm which conditions everything that happens, the shapes of the galaxies, their interactions, and what's going on.

But it's utterly unknown to us. And so we've now got a kind of cosmic material unconscious which could play the same role as our own unconsciouses.

And so your search for the basis of the imagination in the known phenomena of physics and the visible realm is certainly an important one.

But the fact is that there's so much more that physics itself is revealed which is there and could be the basis of any number of processes.

Yes, I assume that psychedelics, for instance, somehow change your channel from the evolutionarily important channel,

which is giving traffic reports, weather reports, and stock market reports to a channel which is playing, you know, the classical music of an alien civilization.

In other words, we tend to tune to the channel which has big payback in the immediate world,

but that there are these other channels of the imagination not so tailored for human consumption seems obvious to me.

I think that you're right. I mean, the memories and hence all objects of cognition are not in wetware, the wetware of brains.

It's somehow plucked out of a super space of some sort via very subtle quantum mechanical transductions that go on at the molecular level in the brain.

The divine imagination is the reality behind appearances.

Appearances is simply the local slice of the divine imagination.

But what you want is a kind of map or a global overview.

Well, perhaps we should open this up if people have something they would like to say.

This man leads the world.

Okay, well, of course you've fired every neuron in my brain.

I have a somewhat different view of the problem of the eternal scientific laws.

In my opinion, the question of did these laws exist prior to the Big Bang is a non-question.

It's like the old Zen question of what happens to your fist when you open your hand.

Because in my view, these scientific laws are not objects in space and time.

If they were objects in space and time, of course they could not exist before the Big Bang.

In my view, these scientific laws are linguistic structures that we create, that we choose,

in order to give reasonably good expression to the regularities that we measure in the world,

and which we use for prediction and control purposes.

For example, we have an equation to express the gravity relationship.

And we have placed in that equation to key in the acceleration of the force of gravity.

It's not 32 feet per second per second.

It differs somewhat from that, and it differs depending on where you measure it on the Earth.

And it's even conceivable to imagine that it might change with space and time.

Because it's been going on for so many billions of years now, in Rupert's view,

I'm sure that it would be unlikely to change very much, but it's perfectly possible for it to change.

And the point I want to make is that science provides, in that equation, an opportunity to clue in this different change,

if that change is necessary, for purposes of prediction and control.

I think that the laws of nature can be used for purposes of prediction and control

within the kind of developing evolutionary cosmology that Rupert has expressed in.

All right, well then, yes.

I mean, the thing is that there are two theological views, you see, that are possible about this.

If the laws of nature are linguistic structures outside space and time,

at least in the Judeo-Christian world, the prevailing archetype is the Word of God.

They're the Word of God. They're the Logos, which is the traditional theological view of the laws of nature.

So, then it really comes down to a theological question.

Do we think that the Word of God is a kind of eternally sonorous set of vibrations or linguistic structures

that's somehow permanently there in the permanent mind of a transcendent God?

Or, is the Word of God something that God speaks and, like real words, is a series of processes in time?

Spoken words are not eternally there. They're things that take time to speak.

And the underlying basis of a spoken word is the flow of the spirit or the breath.

So, are the words of God, if we take this Logos model, spoken words that involve a process in time?

Or are they like a sort of encyclopedia that's written words that can be sort of eternal?

No. In my view, they're not. The theological argument is a non-argument to me, because I reject the idea of the mind of God as having a structure in the universe.

Again, I come back to these scientific laws of nature as human formulations created like tools, created like a set of wrenches in our kit bag,

not a part of any eternal structure whatsoever.

But, at the same time, I recognize that certain of these laws that we have created are of such a nature that it would be very hard to conceive of us having a science without them.

Well, I think that there are a couple of issues here.

First of all, what has always given science its tremendous cachet was its ability to produce in the realm of application and technology.

So, I agree with you that these things are like wrenches, but that is not at all satisfying to a philosopher of science who doesn't care about the application, but wants to know, you know, is this or is this not in fact so?

Rupert is suggesting that laws are habits and that habits change over time.

They are incremental.

Therefore, in his view, no law is in fact a law.

It's a tendency or a creeping gradient of some sort.

Now, the argument for this is that we've only been measuring the constants we use to describe the universe.

We've only been measuring them for a hundred years on one planet.

We say that the speed of light is 186,000 miles per second and we've measured it on one planet for a hundred years and we extrapolate this statement to the entire cosmos.

If, in fact, laws are local and invariant, then this is going to be a hard swallow because it makes science no more than a series of localized opinions.

It turns science into folklore.

The thing that, personally, I find a personal discovery of, and I hope it comes from reading outside, is just a realm of pure geometric possibility, of pure form and symmetry.

And this seems to me the underlying Pythagorean or Platonic concept and that it does exist outside of time and that it's some sort of template off of which possibility hangs.

And that what undergoes the formality of actually occurring resonates against this template and also most likely resonates against what has been materially manifested so that it's going through time.

Yes, well, I agree with what you're saying about a template.

I mean, this is this idea of a topology that I want to put out.

Rupert and I were, again, last night after the meeting, talking about the idea of God as a mathematical mind had come up,

and I was saying how much a mathematically-minded God would miss, how impoverished that concept is,

because the primary qualities of experience, which are color, light, tactility, and then even subtler things like, you know, appetition for the past and the future,

and so all of this would be eliminated from the idea of the mathematical God.

In a way, the way I see it is it's almost as though there is a wireframe.

Yes, that the future is almost a kind of mathematical wireframe, and that that's what God, quote-unquote, knows in eternity.

But the whole point of the game is into this wireframe flows the living richness, the perverse creativity, the unpredictability, the perturbations, the interference patterns that create them,

and then the living fact of the felt presence, and then that wave of complexification dies down and leaves in its wake the fossil imprint of its passage, which is memory.

So you have, you know, the wireframe, then the moment of interface of the wireframe with the memory, which is what we call the present, which is absolutely what's happening, the richest part of it,

and then the wake, the shockwave of the eschatological moment of the now, which is just the historical record of its having occurred.

I always think in terms of politics, so I want to weld us into not three disparate points of view, but a movement with a forward thrust.

So I've suggested that what you're witnessing is the birth of geometric compressionism, or morphogenetic compressionism, or psychedelic compressionism,

depending on which one of us is talking, I'm sure you can figure out who is who, but the idea is drawing together that a new phenomenon has been discovered in the universe,

which is its drawing togetherness, its tendency toward cohesion, its tendency to move toward greater and greater states of wholeness, and not incrementally,

incrementally, but in sudden, highly punctuated stages that allow phenomena like history, or the 20th century, to come into being.

These are great leaps forward toward this cohesion that nature pushes toward, and as I said, I don't think that it's millions of years in the future.

I think this millions of years in the future stuff was a very brief phase in scientific discourse, and that as organisms, what we need to come to terms with is the chaos, the turbulence, the turmoil, the ephemerality, and the high-stakes nature of the game.

You know, even if no asteroid strikes the earth, each one of us in this room will die, and so life is guaranteed to be interesting, even if you don't live in one of these epochs when there is asteroid impact or geomagnetic reversal.

Nevertheless, the ultimate challenge is built into the biological script.

We each have our own apocalypse, and so I think we should live life in anticipation of it.

Does this have a gradient mind that you refer to?

Guy in mind.

Oh, Guy in mind.

Guy in mind.

What is that?

Well, it's the notion that, for me, and I'm sure Rupert has a different notion, but for me it's the notion that the Linnaean species are an illusion of the classificatory impulse of the human mind, and that really what we have on this planet are not distinct species, but levels and levels of gene swarming and control.

And that intelligence, creativity is such a positive adaptation for any biological system that possesses it, that I think the planet wouldn't have waited five billion years to allow self-reflecting intelligence in an organism such as ourselves.

I think probably self-reflection arose fairly early in the history of the Earth, and that the Earth is a minded, integrated kind of entity.

How this works is hard for us to model because we've only had the image to guide us for ten years or so, but the planet thinks, it perceives.

Life has a petition for more life and for an extension of itself, and the best strategies are cognitive so that all of these things that we see happening on the planet that we take to be miraculously ordered results of random processes may actually be the result of the creation of a great engine of cognition.

that history is the thought of Gaia, biology is the musings of geology, and so forth and so on, that we have been wrong to claim consciousness as the unique capacity of human beings.

It is in fact a general property of organization.

And the larger the organization, the more conscious it may well be.

So that the, I don't feel man, human beings are set against nature.

I think we occupy a special role in nature, but it's a sanctioned role.

There is no such thing as getting out of control because the control system is so deep and so vast that it's inconceivable.

But what is happening may appear to be out of control because we are not in full connection with what the purpose of all this is.

Yes, let me try and put it a different way, answering the same question about the Gaian mind, because it's obviously one of the things we're interested in talking about here.

So, starting from, just from another, a straightforward starting point, the idea of Gaia, put forward by Lovelock and other scientists, is that the Earth, using the name Mother Earth, Gaia is the Mother Earth of the Greeks, that the whole Earth is a living organism.

And that if the whole Earth is a living organism, and I think in that organism we have to include the Moon as well, because the Moon orbits the Earth, and in some sense sets its rhythms of time and tide, and is part of the Gaian system.

That the Earth is a living organism, that the Earth is a living organism, including the Moon, the atmosphere, all the living things on it, the oceans, and so on, behaves together in a way that has an organic, integrated, holistic quality.

That the Earth is alive, and its life involves some kind of organizing principle.

At that stage, a lot of people then say, well, if the Earth is alive, then in some sense it must be conscious, or in some sense the Earth must have a mind.

And one of the questions I think we're exploring is just in what sense can we think of the Earth as conscious or having a mind?

What might the Gaian mind consist of?

The traditional view of the Earth is that it's an inanimate assembly of a bit of rock hurtling around the Sun, with a thin film of moisture and life on its surface.

But the whole thing is just an inanimate mechanism, with no life, no purpose, no spontaneity, no creativity of its own.

Merely the environment in which other random purposeless processes take place.

That's the standard view.

But if the Earth does have a mind of her own, or a life of her own, a spontaneity of her own, is it entirely unconscious, like our own unconscious minds?

Does it come to consciousness?

Does Gaia have dreams?

Does Gaia have imaginings?

This is, I think, the questions that underlie Terence's use of the phrase, the Gaian mind.

And I think it's a question that's bound to arise.

Millions of people are now talking about Gaia, planet Earth, as a living whole.

And the question, really, one of the questions we're exploring is what kind of mind would this living whole have?

Does this living whole have a mind at all?

Is it just blind instinctive?

If it has a mind, does it have an imagination?

And if so, what kind of imagination does it have?

How much is that imagination colored by mathematical principles or geometrical forms which may permeate the whole universe?

How much of it spontaneously arises on Earth in the evolutionary process?

How much is it related to the cosmic imagination throughout the whole cosmos?

So I think these are the questions it raises, and I think that that's another way of coming to it, just starting with the idea of the Earth as a living organism.

It implies and raises the question of the mind of the Earth, if it has one, or the soul of the Earth.

Some would say that the mind's just another aspect subjectively experienced of the physical changes in the brain.

Others would say it's a kind of shadow or epiphenomenon of the functioning of the brain.

If we take that view of the mind, we would expect the Gaian mind, if it exists, to correspond to some set of complex physical processes going on on Earth.

Well, I think if we wanted to see it that way, we could make a good case for there being a base to the mind.

I'd put the magma of the Earth's core, these flowing currents as some perhaps like the limbus or the hypothalamus,

the sort of long-term driving things with a solid nucleus inside associated with changing magnetic fields and polar reversals every few million years.

And the whole of this being the underground process, virtually unknown to us, which is driving the process of continental drift, Earthquakes.

And, again, I'm going to push us out of this area on the soil.

We're able to push us out and put ourselves in the way, so we're going to push us back to the surface of the surface,

and then, now I'm going to give us the power to the space.

We're going to push us back to the surface.

You're going to push us back to the surface, we're going to push us to the place where we then put the surfaces to the surface,

that we're going to move forward.

It's going to get the surface to our surface, which is CARS?

In the bin, I'll pause as well.

As we've discussed, we're shown up with it, we made this.

It's a little bit ridiculous.

earthquakes, volcanoes, and is actually shaping the morphogenesis of the surface of the earth

through the distribution of the continents. And then there's the Gaian breath, which

is the atmospheric flows of the wind. Then there's the Gaian circulation of the oceans.

There are many of these systems, all of which are indeterminate, all of which are probabilistic,

and all of which could respond to, as it were, kinds of thoughts or impulses of Gaia.

So one can find many ways of thinking about the physical basis for the Gaian mind,

which would also include, in my opinion, the earth's magnetic field, the magnetosphere,

which trails like a great tail on the dark side of the earth, which surrounds the earth,

and which, as it changes and responds and resonates to sunspots, affects the whole patterns of

electromagnetic communication through radio waves. All of this, the field of the earth,

which would, I think, be one of the bases for the Gaian mind. Even the known fields,

the gravitational and the electromagnetic fields, stretch far beyond the surface of the earth.

So all these would be possible bases for the Gaian mind, or bases of its interaction with what's

going on, as well as the actual minds of organisms, animals, and plants. I mean, the Gaian mind may be able

to act directly on these minds through field-like processes. I, myself, would think of the Gaian

mind, and our own minds, as more like field-like processes which interact with our brains. And the Gaian

mind is interacting with living processes, the atmosphere, the earth's core, the magma flows,

the magnetic field. Interacting with them, but not being reducible to them.

I guess my question is really about the relationship to creation and creativity and imagination. Is there a qualitative

aspect to that that is evolutionary? The suggestion I have to bring out is that there could be a kind of evolutionary field-creo,

meaning that there is a pathway that when conscious beings are on a planet, the evolutionary field-creo would

be looking for a kind of an aesthetic, a kind of sensibility. And I would propose a symbiotic relationship

as an example of this. Well, creodes are pathways of change which have endpoints. And for those who've not

been following the literature on creodes, the idea is this, when an embryo develops, for example, a liver,

a group of cells develop into your liver, another group of cells develop into your kidneys, that the pathways of

change they go through are attracted towards an endpoint, which is the mature kidney or the mature liver, that they're drawn

towards that. And this pathway of change drawn towards an endpoint is called a creode. It's considered to be an object

within a morphic or a morphogenetic field. Now, if there's the idea of the cosmic attractor and the idea of an evolutionary creode,

as I understand what you're saying, is that one could say the entire evolutionary process of the Earth, or even of the whole cosmos,

is a kind of creode, and Terence's description of the cosmic attractor would be the end point of the evolutionary creode.

So, in a sense, using the term creode brings us back to that model we were talking about just now.

I was kind of missing listening to this discussion, what the meaning of the creation and the imagination was before.

What is the purpose of this? What is the fulfillment of it?

Yes. Well, I'm not sure I understand all of what you're saying, but in terms of this qualitative thing, which is deepening,

which is the purposefulness of it all, it's interesting when you look at the whole life of the universe and the way processes have evolved,

there is a tendency that has been going on for a very long time that has been accelerated at each step,

and what I call it is language seems to be seeking to decouple itself from matter.

DNA was the first language, and it's a language written at the molecular level,

and it's faithfully physical replicant is made of it, and then that template is used to create proteins,

which are the statements in this language.

Well, that's how all nature does it, except human beings.

And we have this epigenetic capability. We can write books, dance, sculpt, paint, all the things that I mentioned.

Well, then, when you look at the 20th century, the tendency to dance, paint, sculpt, and so forth,

has, through technology, become ever more released from the constraints of matter,

so that now we paint on computer screens, we merge, we sculpt with computers,

we sculpt with light and directions rather than in matter.

So I think that why this is, who can say, but the only thing as complex as organic life is syntax,

and syntax seems to have a life of its own. It is trying to shed the material matrix, which was its basis.

Now this, I'm sure, we don't have time to discuss it now, but perhaps later,

this creates strong reactions in people, because we have a tendency to want things to be folded back into nature.

We don't want this Gnostic ascent to the radiant unspeakable.

But nevertheless, it appears that language, in a kind of hellish marriage with technology,

has given us no way out except a forward escape into the further embodiment of language.

This now is apparently the only way we can keep from destroying the planet,

is by literally going off into the imagination, which is not a dimension of the physics of space and time,

it's actually a syntactical dimension.

So, the integration of media and human beings and creative processes like CAD-CAM and this sort of thing,

seem to me to say, language is shedding the primate body that gave it epigenetic articulation,

in much the same way that language shed the rest of organic nature,

when in one part of itself, it moved off into the potential for linguistic expression

that our biological organization makes possible.

So, for my money, language is on a journey to the eternal imagination through the process of creativity,

having begun in chaos and having a kind of inevitable end in chaos,

more properly, you know, revisioned, re-met, re-understood.

Well, perhaps we should break for lunch, it's after lunch.

Thank you very much. This was very useful, I think.

I hope you enjoy this.

If I remember correctly, the next tape in this series brings in Ralph Abraham,

who will be expanding on the concept of language that Terence just raised.

Although, like many of us psychedelic salonners, I first started listening to these trilogues

in search of a new little soundbite or two from the great bard McKenna,

but I'm really beginning to appreciate why Ralph and Terence think so highly of Rupert.

What an interesting way he has of looking at things.

For example, I've long thought that Gaia was sentient,

but I never actually took that thought to the next level and wondered about Gaia's dreams and imagination.

For me, that adds an entirely new dimension to the way I look at life today.

Now I'm wondering if my life is just another one of Gaia's dreams.

You know, at times it certainly seems weird enough to be somebody's dream,

and I wouldn't be a bit surprised if that was the case for some of you too.

But I guess there's no way we're ever going to know some of these things,

at least not while we're still walking around in these monkey bodies.

But if you're still looking for some more challenging thoughts to get your mind around today,

you might want to check out a podcast that Tim Donovan wrote and told me about.

If you go to webcast.berkeley.edu slash courses, you'll find a list of Berkeley courses that have been podcast.

And among those courses are some by the very talented Dr. David Presti,

who is Berkeley's senior lecturer on neurobiology.

And according to Tim, Dr. Presti presents entheogens in a very fair and perceivably reverent context.

Now I haven't had a chance to listen to one of Dr. Presti's lectures myself just yet,

mainly because I've lost my pod.

I guess that sounds kind of weird, but you know what I mean.

At least I hope so.

Anyway, I plan on listening to some of the lectures from his course number, PSYCH 119,

which is titled Drugs and Human Behavior.

And thank you, Tim, for letting us know about these podcasts.

Another audio file you might be interested in is one that my friend Michael Shields told me about.

Because the URL is a long one, I'll put the link on our podcast page

with the program notes about this podcast, which is number 61 from the Psychedelic Salon, by the way.

And the talk that Michael told me about is by Fred Turner of Stanford University.

And in it, he discusses his new book, which is titled From Counterculture to Cyberculture,

Stuart Brand, The Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism.

Here's what Publishers Weekly had to say about this new book.

End of quote.

Less a biography of Brand than a swirl of relationships surrounding him.

The book shows how the ride of the Merry Pranksters and LSD experimentation

led to the early online discussion board, Whole Earth Electronic Link,

the Well, and into the digital utopianism surrounding the hyperlinked World Wide Web.

End quote.

Now, given my renewed interest in the Merry Pranksters,

since meeting some of them just a couple weeks ago,

I'm taking the synchronicity of Michael's pointing out this book to be a sign

that I'd better listen to Turner's commentary and buy a copy of the book myself.

And if any of you have already read it, I'd love to hear what you think about it.

Before I go, I guess I should mention that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon

are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 2.5 License.

And if you have any questions about that, you can click on the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon web page,

which you can find at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts.

And if you still have questions, you can just send them in an email to Lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.

In a couple of days, I'll get the next trialogue podcast out,

which will be the first side of the second tape in the 1989 to 1990 trialogue series.

And it's titled Creativity and Chaos.

And in that program, among other things, you'll hear Ralph Abraham give a short overview of chaos theory,

why chaos theory is good for you, and his explanation of what mathematics means to him.

In addition to thanking Chatelle Hayuk for the use of their music here in the Psychedelic Salon,

I also want to thank Ralph Abraham for making these tapes available,

and to Bruce Dahmer, without whom we wouldn't be hearing them today.

And for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

Be well, my friends.

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

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

Today's program is a continuation of the series of trialogues

held between Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake

at Esalen in September of 1989, and again in 1990.

So far, the trialoguers...

I guess that's probably not a real word, but it does have a nice ring, don't you think?

The trialoguers.

Anyway, in the first podcast of this series,

the trialoguers gave us a brief glimpse of their backgrounds and how they came together.

And that was in our podcast number 58.

We then heard tape one of the series, which was titled,

Creativity and Imagination.

Now we move on to the first side of tape two, which is titled,

Creativity and Chaos.

And we begin with Ralph Abraham's short introduction to chaos theory.

And then we'll get into a discussion between Ralph and Rupert

of why, what is, is... or something like that.

Let's join Ralph and Rupert now.

Don't presumptuous to call this chaos theory because, as a matter of fact, there is no theory.

We're in the exploration phase now.

And this is experimental mathematics that we are doing with supercomputers.

But I think it might help if you had just a little idea of chaotic dynamics and the idea of the thing.

So I want to give a two or three minute primer so that you could understand what is a chaotic attractor.

And here, now we've seen 16,000 of them.

What does one look like?

And that will conclude my introduction and then I'll pass them on to Rupert.

So a good laboratory for the study of chaotic dynamics is the dripping faucet.

And the dripping faucet was discovered as the ideal demonstrator for chaos theory

because the lectures are usually given in a physics lecture hall.

And they always seem to have a sink with a faucet in the front to do experiments

or for the professor to wash the chalk off his hands.

Anyway, you take the faucet, you can do this immediately, you get home.

You crack the tap a little bit and the water drips out, drip, drip, drip, and it's regular.

If you crack a little more, then the drips speed up, but they're regular.

And then you crack it a little more and then it begins to sound drip, drip, drip, like rain dripping off the roof.

That's an example of a chaotic time series.

If you measure the time between drops and make a list of these numbers,

you have the paradigmatic case of a chaotic time series.

Now, somebody decided to seriously study this dripping faucet after seeing it in half a dozen physics lectures.

This person, Rob Shaw, one of the leading people in chaos theory, did a very fine study by placing a microphone in the sink where the drop would hit it,

getting an electronic beat, just discretizing, getting it in the computer and analyzing the results.

And so all of this is taking place on that level one, the lowest layer of the physical world.

Then he made a mathematical model on level three.

He went up there, he made a mathematical model for the water drop gets bigger and bigger.

So it's characterized by a certain mass. When the mass reaches a critical value, the drop falls off.

And from this mathematical model, he then wrote a program, a computer program on level two and ran it and produced data that was exactly like the experimental data from level one.

So this is an example showing the value of modeling on these three levels for gaining some understanding.

There's sort of a hermeneutical circle. You look at the data, try to build a model, you fail.

But building the model tells you to observe in a different way.

You observe in this different way that helps you to build a better model.

And as this circle turns, the level of our understanding grows.

So Rob Shaw came quickly to a good model for this.

I think he was lucky because it sounds simple. It's a very complicated system.

It relates to waterfalls, for example, when the spray comes off the waterfall.

And here's another example of a chaotic system.

Could you write some equations and obtain a computer program that simulated the spray from a waterfall?

I doubt it.

The new way of looking at the data that came to him from the theory

was to take the sequence of numbers, the time between drops.

You just visualize a column of numbers.

And you make a carbon copy of it and move it over to the side.

And then you whack one number off the top and move it all off one number.

Now you have a series of pairs.

And then you plot these pairs on the plane as a set of points.

So he did this.

There's a film or video available for aerial press that shows the machine actually doing this.

And from this totally chaotic data viewed in this particular way, which is called chaoscopy,

you get these points in the planes that if the data was really random, the dots would be all over the plane.

Instead, they lie on a curve, a smooth curve.

So from the observation of the data in this way, the smoothness of the curve suggests a kind of model

that you can actually take off the shelf in the building where the chaos theorists are working

and apply it to your data.

And the simplest model on the shelf of the chaos theorists closet is called the logistic equation.

It produces a series of numbers that are apparently random, but actually they comprise one of these simple geometric figures.

This curve that the data plotted in this special way of the chaos guilt is a curve,

and that is called the chaotic attractor.

So there are models on level three, which are good models for understanding certain behavior on level one.

And level two is an intermediary, which can either create the mathematical model from the real data

or create experimental data from the model to compare with laboratory data.

Well, to conclude, this video was made out of these simplest possible dynamical systems called the logistic equation,

and it just produces a series that is very similar to a dripping faucet.

So you could just as well imagine that we have 16,000 dripping faucets in an array of 128 by 128,

and the time between drops is represented as a color on the screen.

Now, do you think that if you had 16,000 dripping faucets, you could get out of them a pattern like Calico Mountain?

Now, well, it happens. I mean, there's a lot of theory behind this, enough to suggest that it's not some kind of artifact.

No matter what kind of artifact it is, it's an interesting artifact.

And I guess I'd like to call this a mathematical law.

It has to do with the emergence of form from a field of chaos.

We don't know what else to call it.

It's not a mathematical law that was known to Pythagoras.

And I don't know if it was always there since the beginning of time, long before the Big Bang,

or if it just emerged into the evolving field of the Gaian mind through the fact that computers make it visible.

I mean, I don't know.

But at this point I have, I hope, arrived at an actual connection between the work I routinely do as a specialist in the field of chaos

and the discourse that we're trying to carry on here to increase our understanding of our past, our future, and our possibility of even having a future.

The problem I have with chaos theory is that I'm never quite sure what it's saying.

There seem to me to be two things that are of interest here.

One is that the actual detailed models which chaos theoreticians make.

And they love finding fairly simple equations that will generate complicated and seemingly chaotic structures.

And so there's this modeling aspect of chaos which is at the forefront of modern mathematical chaos theory and modeling.

But the fact you can make mathematical models of chaos has given scientists permission to recognize that in fact there's a vast deal of indeterminacy throughout the physical world.

In the 19th century it was generally believed that there was no indeterminacy at all.

Everything in the physical world was totally conditioned by eternal laws of nature.

Laplace thought that the whole future and past of the universe could be calculated from its present state

if there were a mind powerful enough to do the calculations and to make the observations.

Now, that view, the illusion of total predictability, held science under its spell for generations.

Scientists were dazzled by this imagined power of totally predicting everything.

And it was a kind of illusion. They really did believe it.

And, of course, they couldn't calculate everything. I mean, they couldn't even, they still can't even calculate the weather very accurately more than a few days in advance.

So, in actual fact, this idea of total predictability was not realizable.

But the idea was, well, we would, if we could do enough calculations, be able to calculate it in principle.

What seems to me interesting is the fact that, first with quantum mechanics, there was a recognition that indeterminacy, probability, intrinsic, non-detailed predictability,

were inherent in small-scale physical processes at the quantum level.

And here was a genuine indeterminacy in nature, which had to be admitted in 1927.

Until then, practically everyone believed everything was fully determinate.

After that, there's been a gradual recognition that indeterminacy exists not just at the quantum level, but at all levels of natural organization.

There's an inherent spontaneity in determinism, probabilism, in the weather, in the breaking of waves, in turbulent flow, in nervous systems, in living organisms, in biochemical cycles, in a whole range of phenomena.

Even the old-time favorite model for total rational mathematical order, namely the orbits of the solar system, the orbits of the planets in the solar system, turn out to be unpredictable in terms of Newtonian physics.

They can be modeled in a chaotic manner.

Anyway, this indeterminism has been recognized at all levels of nature.

So there's the idea that what we can model with old-style physical models is an abstraction from a very small number of idealized cases,

that the natural world simply escapes most of the modeling processes which were the dominant features of traditional physics.

Now, it seems to me this openness of nature, this indeterminism, this spontaneity, this freedom, is something very interesting.

And it corresponds to the intuition of chaos in its intuitive and mythological sense.

Mathematicians have used this word chaos in a variety of technical senses.

And it's not entirely clear to me how these technical models of chaotic systems correspond to the kind of intuitive notion of chaos.

But what I want to do is to consider how form arises from chaos, starting from a simple intuitively obvious way in which more form appears from less through familiar physical processes.

And I'm thinking of the process of cooling.

If you start with something at a very, very high temperature, atoms can't exist.

The electrons fly off the nuclei and you get something called a plasma, which is a sort of soup of atomic nuclei and electrons in a kind of gas.

There's no longer individual atoms.

The whole thing, they disintegrate into a melange, a mixture of their component parts, the plasma, which has its own kinds of properties.

If you cool these plasmas down, when you reach a certain temperature, it's low enough for atoms to form and atoms begin to come into existence.

Electrons start circulating around nuclei.

You get atoms forming, you get a gas of atoms.

But the temperature is still too high for any molecules to form.

And say it's a hydrogen plasma and you cool it down, you'll get hydrogen atoms, but you won't yet get any hydrogen molecules.

Cool it down further, now you get hydrogen molecules.

You cool the system down further and you get a stage where more complex molecules can come into being.

But they're still gaseous.

Cool it down further and they turn into a liquid, which has more form.

It can form drops and flow around and has quite complex ordered arrays of molecules within it.

Cool it further still and you get a crystal, which is an extremely highly regularly ordered formal arrangement of the atoms and the molecules.

So you get a progressive increase in complexity of form as you lower the temperature.

And in traditional kinetic theory, lowering temperature means less random kinetic motion of the particles.

So you're getting a cooling down and an increase in complexity of form as the cooling process takes place.

Now, we all know from the cooling of steam into water, the cooling of water into ice, that we know about this process from everyday experience.

We've seen this aspect of it and we've seen how if you cool water vapor down, you get ice crystals emerging.

And these ice crystals have a considerably high degree of order.

So there's this formative process which we see through cooling occurs as the thermal chaos in the ordinary sort of everyday sense of chaos is reduced.

Because as cooling happens, more form emerges.

The opposite happens if you warm things up.

If you warm up snowflakes, they first turn into water, then they turn into steam.

Then the steam, the water vapor disintegrates into molecules, break up into atoms, then those break up into a plasma.

As you raise the temperature.

So there seems to be an inverse relationship between temperature, which is this highly agitated motion of things, essentially chaotic in the traditional theory of gases and plasmas.

And an increase of form when things cool down.

Now, in a sense, that's what has happened according in the entire universe.

We're led to believe that the universe started off exceedingly hot.

billions of billions of degrees centigrade, so hot that stable forms were not able to emerge.

By expanding, it cooled down.

The cooling process of the universe is associated with expansion.

The cosmic expansion both creates more space in which new forms can appear.

And by making...

...

making bigger gaps between things, somehow cools the universe down, so the temperature drops, and as the temperature drops in the developing universe, according to standard models, more and more form comes into being.

First you get atoms, then stars and galaxies condensed, then you get solar systems, and through the cooling of matter you can get planets.

The planets are the cooled remnants of exploding stars, the elements in us and in our planets are stardust, formed from supernovae.

So there's a cooling down of these things that came from immensely hot sources.

Then you can get rocks forming crystals, and in a sufficiently cool planet, and yet a sufficiently warm one, within a fairly narrow range of temperature, you can have the evolution of life as we have had on Earth.

So this appearance of forms comes out of an initial state where these forms are not present, and they appear through a kind of cooling.

There's a formative process going on, and we can call this one way of looking at the emergence of form from chaos or disorder.

Well, how do these forms come into being? This is the big problem of evolutionary creativity. How do the first molecules, how did the first zinc atoms come into being?

How did the first methane molecules, how did the first salt crystals, how did the first living cells, how did the first vertebrates, how did the first of anything come into being in this evolving universe as it expanded and cooled?

Well, one way of looking at this is to see the expansion and cooling process, and indeed the flow of events as being, thinking of it in terms of the flux of energy.

And one of the great unifying concepts of 19th century physics is a unified conception of energy.

Now, it's not entirely clear what energy is. Energy, in some sense, is the principle of change. The more there is, the more change that can be brought about.

It's, in a sense, a causative principle. And it's a causative principle which exists in a process. In this process, the energetic flux of the universe underlies time, change, becoming, and the flux process itself seems to have an inherent indeterminism to it.

This flux process, the universal flux, is organized into forms by fields. Matter is now thought of as energy bound within fields, the quantum matter fields, and the fields of molecules, and so on.

I think there are many of these organizing fields, the morphic fields. And the fields are somehow organizing the ongoing flux of energy, which is always associated with this spontaneity and energy.

Spontaneity and chaotic qualities. So, even organized systems of a high level of complexity still have this probabilistic quality. The fields that organize this energy to give rise to material and physical forms are themselves probabilistic.

Chaos is never eliminated. There's always this indeterminism or spontaneity at all levels of organization.

So, there's a formative principle, which is the fields, and there's an energetic principle, which I think has the chaos inherent in it. It's a kind of change, which left as pure change would be chaos.

One way of thinking of these is in terms of the Indian notion of Shakti as the energy and determinate principle, and Shiva as the formative principle, working together in a kind of tantric union to give the world that we know.

Now, if there's this formative principle that comes through the fields of nature, then one of the questions is, how do fields operate? How are these fields governed? How do they have the forms, shapes, and properties they do?

Well, I think that the organizing fields of living organisms of crystals of molecules, and so on, organized by, I think that they are what I call morphic fields, and that these fields contain an inherent memory, so that these fields are essentially habitual, and nature is the theater of these habitual fields organizing the indeterminate flux of energy, fields themselves, by having this energy within themselves,

having this indeterminate quality too. But this then brings us to the question of creativity. How do new fields, new forms, come into being in the first place? Where do they come from?

Well, this morning, with Terence, I was discussing how they may arise out of the interaction between chaos and some kind of formative, unifying, some kind of unifying,

aspect of the cosmic mind, aspect of the cosmic mind, which Ralph has hijacked for the Pythagorean sect by calling the realm of mathematics.

That there's an interaction here between these two levels, giving the world of becoming, that he's shown by the wiggly line in the middle.

Well, this is one way of looking at it, and this brings us back to the question of the nature of what he calls the mathematical realm, this sort of formative realm.

Is there a kind of mathematical realm before the universe, somehow beyond space and time altogether, which conditions all forms of creativity, all patterns and possible systems of organization that can come into being with the world?

Or, are these all made up as the evolutionary process goes along? These are questions we've already touched on this morning.

I myself think that if we take the view of things coming into being as evolution goes along, if we think of the cosmic, the soul of the world as having a kind of imagination,

we can think of these as coming into being as nature goes along, and we can see this imagination as having many levels.

There'd be a kind of cosmic imagination, which would be the soul of the world, the anima mundi, the soul of the universe, a cosmic mind, soul and imagination.

Within that, there'd be clusters of galaxies, each of which would have their own mind, soul or imagination.

Then there'd be galactic ones, then ones for solar systems, then ones for planets, then ones for ecosystems, then ones for societies of organisms and individual organisms, organs, tissues and so on.

There'd be many levels of organizing soul. I think these morphic fields could be regarded as an aspect of the souls of systems at different levels of being.

Then there'd be the possibility of a whole range of imaginations that we don't have to leap straight from what's happening in a social insect colony or in an animal or a plant or in a social system, a human social system, straight to the divine imagination or the mathematical mind of God or the transcendent realm of mathematics.

There's a whole level of imaginations in between. And within the earth, we're embedded within the solar system with its own particular kind of soul and imagination, and that within the galaxy.

So there'd be a whole set of levels at which creativity could come forth from souls with imaginations.

Now, I think the difference that we might have to consider between all this and the traditional doctrine of the world soul is that in the traditional doctrine of the world soul of Plotinus and of Plato,

they had a three-fold system where there was the intellect with the intelligence, which was really the realm of forms or ideas or the logos.

And embedded within that was the world soul, which had as its characteristic an attractor.

In fact, the world soul had space and time within it and was concerned with the realm of becoming, namely the cosmos, not with the realm of being, which was the realm of these pure forms.

And as the prototype of the cosmos, the world soul had this cosmic attractor as its intelliki, its goal.

And this was a striving towards the eternal perfection of the divine.

And then, within the world soul, there were hosts, hierarchical levels within levels of souls of all the different systems within the universe,

each of which had its own autonomous existence, a holistic or holarchic vision of souls within souls.

The view that they had was that the qualities of the world soul were all fixed by the eternal forms, the eternal mathematical mind.

The view that I want to consider is that the world soul or the world imagination makes up these forms as it goes along.

That there isn't out there a kind of mathematical mind already fixed, already full.

That what we do is make mathematical models of various aspects of nature.

And I think that one way, one thing that happens then is these models can be projected as if they're a real thing out there, as if the world soul is engulfed within a kind of eternal mathematical mind.

That may just be a projection of ours. The world soul may have an autonomy.

It may be no more mathematical than our own souls are when we're dreaming.

I mean, there are certain numbers and numerical forms come into dreams, but there's no sense when we're dreaming that these dreams are being generated by equations,

or that they're essentially mathematical in structure.

So, what I'm suggesting is that the world soul may have an autonomy to it, it may have a kind of mathematical realm as part of it.

But that if we think of it as having its relation to mathematics and its relation to the creation of form, the ordering of chaos into patterns and forms and structures,

then this mathematical aspect of it may evolve along with nature, just as our own understanding of mathematics evolves in time.

Well, I think that we are talking about complicated things, complex, obtuse and difficult ideas.

And we're talking about them in a language which seems more or less appropriate.

So, as you speak, I get an idea, I get a picture.

I mean, for me, it's frequently a picture.

And I don't see that mathematics is substantially different from verbal description as a strategy for making models.

I mean, certainly, if you talk about Plotinus, for example, we have really, you described a geometric, a visualizable model

for the all and everything, including within it, the world soul and so on.

If we draw that as a picture instead of a word picture, then that's officially mathematics.

That's geometry. That's a geometric model for the thing.

I think that with mathematics, we can make model for anything.

And if you think there's a big bang, we can make a model for that.

And if you think that there are three sexes on the moon, then we can make a model for that.

You see, so mathematics could be regarded as simply an extension of language.

It's not that mathematical laws describe the universe.

I mean, it's true that that's the old paradigm.

But I'm thinking that mathematics is a particularly good language for describing, discussing, imagining things that are really complicated.

And the more complex, the more structured, the more difficult to engulf in our minds, the more appropriate mathematics might be, or maybe music might be.

But words, I think, are frequently inadequate, that they have evolved.

Our language has evolved through the necessity of sharing our experience on a level of complexity, which is more or less traditional,

and which is inadequate to understand the whole world, or the world soul, or the ecosystem, the biosphere of planet Earth, or something.

So mathematics has only a little more magic than language.

And we could say, well, the conservation of energy, that's a verbal description of something that you could also say mathematically.

So I think that your maligning mathematics in this way is unjustified.

And I guess I've been quoted in the chaos book as saying that chaos theory is the biggest thing since the wheel.

Well, I believe that. I also think the wheel was a really big thing.

But on the other hand, I've been quoted as saying that chaos theory is no big deal.

So whatever you say, I agree with you.

But, I mean, about determinism, if I could reply to that, it's a long time ago.

But that was, you said you had a complaint about chaos theory, about determinism and prediction.

And there are two or three reasons why chaos theory is good for you.

One thing is, if you accepted chaos theory as a way of modeling anything that we're interested in,

which personally I don't, not by itself, it's too simple,

then it's still good for you.

Because according to chaos theory, prediction and determinism are impossible.

Even though it uses the language that the deterministic thinkers use,

when you look into the technical details of it, prediction is impossible.

You only get a sort of a probabilistic something or other.

Secondly, the models for anything that you want to talk about, such as cooling is a good one.

They don't come from chaos theory. They come from bifurcation theory.

And that is really good for you, because bifurcation theory exemplifies the best in mathematics.

The most it can possibly do for you is rule out a lot of possibilities that you might imagine might happen.

And then the mathematics says, well, no, according to the assumptions that you said you believed,

then all this won't happen. Only this.

And then you get a list of three or four of these so-called bifurcations.

They're the only things you're going to expect to see in any system which is well modeled by the theory where these models come from.

So when you have cooling, then you have, let us say, a control knob,

where you're turning down the heat under the pan and the boiling is gradually subsiding to simmering,

which is subsiding to a little bit of waving, which is subsiding to nothing.

Then we have at each stage, coming from the mathematics, a model which has attractors, which has maybe chaotic attractors.

But every time you change the knob, you get a different model.

And therefore, if you can't predict how the knob is going to change,

the models don't give any prediction at all and they're irrelevant.

And the only interesting thing is that the theory can tell you certain transformations you'll expect and others not.

For example, Terence had pointed to the punctual aspect of evolution, that many transformations are saltatory.

They are catastrophic. They are abrupt.

And here the theory comes in and saying models of this type in this theory, most of the transformations are abrupt.

And they have kind of a theory why, which is a geometrical model, which is only of use to those people who are thinking of the structure of the theory as opposed to what is happening in the ordinary world.

So this bifurcation theory is good for you.

When it gets rid of all, if chaos theory wasn't enough, that says determinism is impossible, using mathematical models, forget it.

Then we don't even think those models are appropriate anyway.

Instead, you have these models that are changed by a parameter, which experience bifurcations.

We have a very good encyclopedia of bifurcations, and those are good models for sudden changes, as, for example, in the emergence of form, as, for example, in the Neolithic revolution, as, for example, in the crystallization of the planets, of the stardust.

So, that's the good news.

But the truth is that this theory can be used to model everything, so it never settles any question as to the origin of things or the true nature of the ordinary reality.

And, therefore, it's worthless.

What's good about it, like language, is it's good for communication, it's good for a certain feeling of understanding, and gaining comfort in a new environment, because modeling is part of our basic process of grokking.

And, always, the models are no good.

They're no good as models, but they're good for the growth of understanding, the evolution of understanding.

Well, I mean, you put the whole case impressively and modestly, in the sense that you're claiming that mathematicians are making models, here's a new range of models.

I mean, it's like, before there were any mechanical instruments, and now we've got electronic instruments.

A whole new category of models have come onto the market, and we can look forward to more models in the future.

And, there'll be the latest, the 1990 model will soon be out.

And, we've got this ongoing evolutionary system of mathematical models, which enable us to model various aspects of reality.

That seems to me, eminently modest claim.

But, I suspect there's more in the background, because, at least there is for some people, because the traditional assumption is that these models correspond to something.

The reason why they work is because there's some aspect of nature to which they mysteriously relate.

And, that aspect of nature is, in essence, mathematical, which is why mathematical modeling is possible.

Now, this seems to me the interesting question, why mathematical models work in certain areas.

There are large areas where they don't work, and they aren't used.

And, maybe they could be used, and they could work.

But, I mean, I'm often meeting mathematicians or physicists who say,

quantum physics is the most brilliant predictive system that mankind has ever known.

It predicts things to the 25 places of decimals, and it's obviously correct.

Well, as an agricultural scientist, when I was working in India, you know, predicting the outcomes of my crop experiments,

there was nobody who could predict those.

And, those experiments were, I mean, vast distance beyond the capabilities of any physical,

quantum physical modeling process, or anything based on the so-called fundamental principles of physics.

You can produce, sort of, string and ceiling wax models for crop production.

And, we had people doing that, and we had a computer, and there were these simple models.

But, it wasn't that, they didn't seem to me to be pointing towards a convincing demonstration

that the whole thing depended on a hidden mathematical order.

There were phenomena going on.

Some of them mathematicians have modeled fairly well.

Others, there's huge areas of reality that are hardly modeled at all yet.

But, the question is, is there a, is it that mathematical models somehow fix on features of the fields of reality?

Are the fields of reality more real than the models we used to model them with?

Or, is there a kind of mathematics yet more fundamental than the fields?

Is the electromagnetic field, the magnetic field, for example, the north and south poles of the magnet,

is that field polar?

In a sense, it has a north pole and a south pole.

It clearly has a polarity.

And, is the electromagnetic field polar in electric charge as well?

There's a positive and there's a negative charges.

These polarities we find inherent, for example, in the electrical and magnetic fields.

Are those because there's some kind of Pythagorean two system or duality in some archetypal realm

beyond nature that's reflected in everything that happens in nature?

Or is that just the way fields are?

And that when we look at lots of fields, we make an abstraction

and we make conscious in a mathematical model something which is inherent in the nature of the organizing fields of reality,

but which doesn't exist in some transcendent mathematical realm?

Well, you could ask different mathematicians and get different answers.

I'll give you mine.

And other mathematicians would say,

it doesn't count because I'm not a mathematician.

And this answer, in fact, is the proof of that.

But I think that, for me, mathematics is a beautiful landscape, an alternate reality.

And there's infinite possibilities not yet loomed into view, not seen.

But I suppose they exist. It's just a fantasy.

And there may be other parts which don't exist, but they'll be created by the efforts of people such as myself,

who just go there all the time and hang out there and study there and give it energy, which is the nutrition and so on.

So there is some older part and some younger part in the mathematical landscape.

And this entire system is in co-evolution, I suppose, with the evolution in ordinary reality.

In this mathematical landscape, there is only small parts which have been used

and probably ever will be used for modeling anything in ordinary reality.

From the viewpoint of any non-mathematician, which is almost everyone,

then those pieces of mathematics that have been used by somebody for modeling something familiar,

like the simmering in the bottom of the boiling water,

those parts are the only parts of mathematics that are visible.

So then they proclaim how amazing the perfect fit between the mathematical concept evolved solely in the context of the human mind,

the human mind, and this boiling pot of water.

How amazing!

Something real, something only in the mind, the resonance, you see.

But it's just like some small parts of mathematics that have ever become visible in that way.

Furthermore, they became visible primarily in the context of mathematical physics.

And mathematical physics, I guess, is unfortunately an evolutionary dead end.

So you have to carefully watch out to take any inspiration from it, especially something like quantum electrodynamics.

You have a really good one, you know, mathematical physicists such as Stephen Hawking's going on record in several of his books,

saying that theoretical physics is done.

Everything we can figure out is figured out now.

And other theoretical physicists would like to say,

I'm sure that, you know, we'll progress a little further.

But basically, although Hawking is probably wrong, in essence, he's kind of right.

Because this whole subject is devoted to the study of the simplest possible systems.

Now, when you talk about your experience as an agricultural scientist and so on,

there you are talking of experience in a realm which is infinitely more complicated

than the most complex system that a physicist ever looked at.

So the parts of mathematics that have been used by these physicists

are the parts that are the least interesting to us.

And I want to tell you this good news that, at least in my opinion,

mathematics offers much more to the more complex sciences than it offers to physics.

And the whole potential of mathematics to aid us in our own evolution

comes from the fact that it can extend our understanding of systems

that are too complex to understand without it.

It might be good for that, you see.

So that when you just change the weather a little bit

and these peas grow at the expense of those and so on,

the understanding of that complexity could be aided.

I mean, in any ecosystem, you have so many different things.

You talk about the butterfly effect,

and we don't know that one oil spill off the coast here

could produce desertification and bring on the equivalent of nuclear winter.

This is possible, but we don't understand it, and we never will,

but our understanding can be advanced by mathematics

because mathematics is the supreme tool for the extension of our language

for dealing with complex systems.

That's its main appeal for application, for ordinary use, for garden variety life.

We can have models of emotional relationships, of love affairs,

of arms race between nations, of the nuclear club, of the United Nations,

of the society of people, of nations, of the society of species, and so on.

We can model these things with models that are no good,

but they're better than no models.

And the construction of these models is part of our evolution,

and is part of the evolution of the mathematical landscape as well.

Yes.

Well, that's all very moderate and reasonable.

No extravagant platonic claims.

What interests me, I must admit that my interest in mathematical models

has enormously increased since I came across attractors,

and my ability to understand attractors, or at least even a little bit about them,

was greatly increased by your visual dynamics books,

which for the first time made these things visible.

I should say for those who haven't followed Ralph's work,

that he's done more than any mathematician I know

to make the essential features of this mathematics visible.

He's produced four volumes of books on dynamics, visual dynamics.

There's not a single equation in the four volumes,

and through diagrams he tries to give you the essence of what dynamic systems are,

and what the science of the mathematical branch of dynamics is,

how it models them, and how it understands them.

It's very illuminating.

Normally, mathematics is hidden behind an opaque cloud of symbols,

which most of us can't penetrate beyond.

It's as if all we knew of music was looking at scores of symphonies,

but never actually hearing the symphony.

These symbols refer to things which, for real mathematicians,

are intuitions, visual intuitions.

And so Ralph helps make that clear.

But what interests me is, in these attractors,

no one else in any other branch of science has been able to think

in terms of teleological principles which pull from in front.

And mathematicians have sort of snuck in round the back,

and because it's an abstruse branch of an abstruse subject,

which the anti-teleological inquisitions of modern science

don't really understand very much.

It's somehow grown up in the back without anyone noticing.

And now we've got this whole system of dynamical attractors,

including chaotic attractors,

that have been developing for years without those who police the frontiers of science

noticing what was going on.

Sort of illicit crops of models have grown up in clearings and backyards, as it were.

And it seems to me that they've really quite changed our way of thinking about nature,

because they have made it conceivable to think of what Aristotle called the entelechy,

or this dynamical, this pulling process.

Now, what I'd like to know is how you think attractors work.

I mean, I know you'll say that all we're doing is modeling what actually happens.

We're not saying anything about the underlying reality or fields or structures that make it happen.

We're just describing or modeling what actually happens in the physical world.

The interesting thing is the models of attractors imply that a future state draws the system towards it.

And I suppose you can say, well, the model isn't in the future,

or the state isn't really in the future.

It's just a description of what you've observed in the past.

Can you believe that I'm going to leave this discussion hanging in mid-

and mid-

Well, I wish we had time to go on today, but I've got to get back to my never-ending project of working on a new and improved version of the Psychedelic Salon's website. And if I don't spend a few hours every day working on it, I'm never going to get it done.

But what I'll do to try to make up for it a little bit is to post the second half of this tape early next week, before I post another non-trialogue program. That way, we'll at least get both sides of each tape in back-to-back podcasts.

A few programs ago, I mentioned a fellow podcaster, KMO, who podcasts on the Sea Realm channel. That stands for Consciousness Realm, I'm told.

Well, he called me the other day to ask me to pass along his thanks to all of you who have checked out his podcasts. Apparently, some of us Saloners are finding his programs interesting as well.

I guess I should give full disclosure here, because part of his tenth podcast includes an interview with me. My first podcast interview, by the way.

One of the things I noticed about KMO's website, which can be found at sirealmpodcast.podomatic.com, that's c-realmpodcast.podomatic.com, and the links on the Psychedelic Salon's podcast page, if you didn't catch all of that.

Anyway, KMO has done a really great job of providing extended program notes where you can find links to some of the things that we talked about.

And you might want to check it out if you have the time.

And now that I've heard a live podcast slash phone interview, I've decided to try one myself.

And so the podcast after the next one will include a phone conversation between me and my friend, the great Sheldoni, otherwise known as Sheldon Norberg, author of the groundbreaking book, Confessions of a Dope Dealer.

So if you've ever wondered about the Dope Dealing Business, you might find that upcoming program of interest.

And I guess I should put in a special note here to my friends.

I'm assuming you're my friends in the DEA and other fascist enterprises who are monitoring these podcasts in a pretense of doing some investigative work.

Sheldon has been out of the Dope Dealing Business for a long time now, long enough for all the statute of limitations to run, for sure.

And you won't hear any tips on how to get started in the business either.

But you will hear a fascinating story of how the war on drugs helped to spawn an entire new class of entrepreneurs, in junior high school, no less.

And if you don't want to wait until next week to hear Sheldon's story, you can always go to our Amazon store at matrixmasters.com, and you'll find his book at the top of the page.

Thank you very much.

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

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

Well, just as promised, today we're going to hear the continuation of the previous podcast,

in which Ralph Abraham and Rupert Sheldrake were discussing creativity and chaos.

And this is from the first series of trialogues they held, along with Terrence McKenna, at Esalen in September of 1989.

There's one little hitch here, I guess, and that is that the first 12 minutes of the tape had a really bad hum in it.

I guess there was some sort of a problem with the line connection from the board, but it magically cleared up about 12 minutes or so into the recording.

And I did my best to remove that annoying hum, since it was really pretty loud, but unfortunately taking it out sort of distorted their voices just a little bit.

But it's only for the first few minutes, and it's not nearly as bad as listening to that hum.

So let's not delay any longer.

When we left them in our last program, Rupert Sheldrake was just beginning to describe his understanding that mathematical attractors pulled from the front, as he put it.

And so we'll pick up with Rupert concluding his thoughts about chaotic attractors,

and he'll be immediately followed by Ralph Abraham expressing his surprise with both Rupert's and Terrence McKenna's take on attractors, which he didn't quite buy into.

What this says to us in the present is that our cultural phase transition that we are going through vis-a-vis machines,

but that we're somewhere out in the middle of that wave, and that what the cultural transition that we are doing is about

is we are downloading all novelty so far achieved into a much colder and stabler regime,

the cold and stable regime of silicon crystals and arsenic-doped chips and this sort of thing.

And this is a fairly appalling idea, because I think we all have a horror of being replaced by machines,

but on the other hand, prokaryotes were replaced by eukaryotes,

and there have been several of these replacement scenarios in the history of life.

So I think it's interesting that you make this point about cooling and complexity.

It seems to me to imply that in my own theory, the zero point may in fact be the absolute zero point,

and that what the time wave or the fractal of time really describes is the fluctuation of the career of heat over the life of the universe,

and that in domains of high heat information is degraded and novelty is lost,

and there is a kind of recidivist tendency, and when temperatures fall, order reasserts itself and stabilizes.

Well, I think that this storage in low temperatures is interesting, because I think one of the things,

when Ralph said that mathematics is like language as a modeling system,

I think there's a very big difference between spoken language and written language.

When you get written language, the first ones we know about are written on rocks,

the ultimate low temperature crystalline storage system.

The Ten Commandments, as given to Moses, were written on tablets of stone.

I mean, this is this kind of permanent storage system,

and, you know, putting things in silicon crystals is a more sophisticated way,

but this is essentially a low temperature storage method.

You couldn't do it, you couldn't write on water.

Or in the wind.

So, I think that this language and the written language creates the illusion for us of an independent world.

I think the realm, I myself think the notion of platonic forms,

and this ideal, this transcendent eternal world,

couldn't have arisen until written language had arisen,

because written language produced the model.

And by what I think of as a kind of idolatry,

these man-made symbols and structures, languages and mathematics, when written down,

can be imagined to endure forever in some kind of other realm,

as if there's some kind of celestial rock or celestial stone or celestial crystal in which they endure forever.

But the reality of language, as it's existed for a far longer period of its history,

and as it exists right now here as we talk to each other, is in spoken language.

And spoken language is a process that happens in time,

and the memory involved in spoken language, which comes when stories are retold,

like the bards and the transmission in oral cultures.

There is no written record.

So, the spoken record, the story, organically develops as time goes on.

And there's nobody around to say,

well look, you've got the story wrong, because in the book it's written like this.

The thing organically evolves.

And so, I think a model of language is a kind of model of reality.

An oral tradition has this constantly evolving and conserved, and yet conserved model,

but as soon as you've got a written one, as soon as you've got written records,

or written mathematical formulae, you get the impression,

an imaginary realm of sort of eternal forms,

by just sort of projecting the notion of things written down.

Anyway, that was just what I wanted to say in response to what you said.

And I think that's one way in which we get this, or we could easily get,

I'm not saying for sure the mathematically platonic or Pythagorean realm is an illusion,

but it would be easy to see how such an illusion could be produced.

Well, I imagine, just to be contrary, that mathematics preceded not only writing,

but mathematics probably preceded language as well.

Certainly, mathematics preceded writing.

And in mathematics we have, for example, a circle, a line.

I mean, these are, for Plato, the ideal ideals.

So, we need writing on stone to think of a line or a circle or a triangle as being eternal form.

Well, we need all that, of course.

We need to do all this and we need to do all that.

So, our system does not mean to do all and otherwise,

and we need to sort of speak of a calendar the right to the right to the right.

There's no question.

I've been talking about that.

My word of Pi, I'm not saying what I just have,

but I've been talking about that.

What is this?

You have a situation where we are.

I've been talking about the right to the right to the right to the left.

Everything seems to the right to the right to the right to the right to the right.

and the evolution of this kind of mathematics preceding writing was

probably done by drawing in sand and writing evolved by drawing in sand and

only later you had drawing on stone so I think I mean it's just possible that

the the idea of eternal forms laws and so on he emerged before writing on

stone in that writing on stone was just as a matter of fact a concretization of

those it just suggest a migration in evolution from the immaterial to the

material from the abstract of the concrete I mean it's the opposite of what a lot

of people think

your theories are the theories of chaos using this gentleman's term is this a model how does it relate to

a model for the chaos in society in our world today and what does it tell you about that and

yeah I used to answer when I went on the airplane and the person in the next seat would say what would

what do you do and I said oh well I'm I'm a math professor I do research in mathematics and then

they always say that's my worst subject and the conversation would end so I soon learned to pretend

that it was something else well I write books oh yeah what kind of books well textbooks well that would

you know end the conversation once as a kind of accident I said well I study chaos theory and the person

immediately said now that's a subject I know a lot about that was many years ago but I rejected that

and so at that point I would have answered to your question no I didn't think there was very much

relationship between mathematical models with chaotic behavior on the one hand and the chaos in life what

people are talking about when they say that's something I know a lot about they're talking about

a problem in their relationship we're in the middle of the argument with their mate or something so but

my attitude has changed over the years and more and more I've been trying to make models in the social

sciences in general and now I have for example a project in psychoanalysis to model working with a group

of psychoanalysts to model the therapeutic situation and their idea was I mean in the experience of their

practice of psychoanalysis they had the feeling that the patient would present that's a technical jargon I

gather of that field would present chaotically that the presentation would become more chaotic and that

was to them a clue that the trigger was approaching for an episode or something so they came to me

saying could you model this could we have data where we could sort of meter the extent of chaos

like my parameter GN in that in the ocean and that was a few years ago and so it's progressed and now I'm

working on I call it aerodynamics ERO models for the love relationship and for the synergy of in society and

social synergy in a group of nations for example what does lead to war and what leads to cooperation

how do you resolve conflict and so on so I do feel that it is I won't say possible it's conceivable in

course of time given its adequate evolution of the modeling art of this hermeneutical circle the

gentleman has described so well in the context of the ships and the models for the ships that we could

reach a point where we had models that were decent in some sense to aid us in the understanding of

complex social relationships a group of people like two three a group this size a group of nations a

world of nations the evolution of society and Terence's dream a model for history itself this is

kind of it's thinkable it's not unthinkable we're not at a point where we can meter the chaos in the

room and say they're about to break for dinner it is presuming that we're all somehow going to get

together through this in some way make it better for us to communicate and be in room through this

particular instrument yes and in relationships what I know the relationships and working with people is

well I'm delighted to hear this optimism because I had recently a month or two or three ago given the

talk here to a group of social scientists about the possibilities of mathematical modeling and their

response was really angry and hostile the very idea of a mathematical anthropology or a mathematical

sociology they thought was really offensive

people were looking at using politics especially revolutionary politics that there are certain

political and political and social changes which occur peacefully and in an incremental manner but those

same changes will occur catastrophically if for example the economy is in trouble so they were they were

attempting to use catastrophe theory to model politics they weren't able to get enough data

I think to make a practical model actually that's a good case because it was very promising it's still very promising but it suffered a kind of a sociological or historical accident where a wave of popular hostility built up over catastrophe theory and a series of newspaper articles and within the mathematical community and it killed

it was anyway it was anyway it was very limited it was a temporary stage on the way to what we are doing now with with these systems and I don't know if it will save the world or anything but I can tell you it's a lot of fun

Ralph in line with the question about sociology I haven't asked you this question for a couple of years I ask it every couple of years do you still cling to the mathematical proof of the impossibility of monogamy

I don't remember your asking that two years ago Terence nor nor ever before

do you remember making the statement

not only I don't remember but I say I proclaim to you all it's impossible I ever made it such a statement

because as I've just explained to Rupert I don't believe in the resonance between the models and the actuality of ordinary life

I think that it emerges or it evolves our understanding to play with models or well they do have a certain practical value but I don't consider that the interesting part

so if I had a mathematical proof of the impossible of impossibility of monogamy

in a certain model universe of model relationship

in level three

I might have spoken about that

and you made what Gregory Basin called a category error

and thought I was talking about human relationship

but you know I never actually speak about human relationship

I wish you told me this

seriously

this whole notion of the role of modeling

since he's been using this word extensively today

appetition

and I don't know exactly what it means

Terence are models attractive

I mean are they habit forming

is modeling a habit

I think so

I think if a model is a good model

it will

it will begin to attract

it will begin to pull

energy toward itself

it's almost like the idea of a self-fulfilling prophecy

and in a way that's what I see

the three of us

and others

mentionable

as doing

we're

we're trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy

where it's such a good idea

that it will act as an attractor

and the world will move

yes

it's good to dream for a future with a future

yes

well maybe it's an appropriate time

just to make mention

of this area of mythology and ritual

that

here we have a kind of model

which has been

thought to be crucial

for the evolution of a society

and

it could be that

certain models are attractive

in that realm

for example

the Trinity

or

one God

I think that

it's

possible

I mean

there's an alternative possibility

in that the models aren't attractive exactly

but

you have

springing up

thousands of new societies

around the planet

every few years

and some of them will survive

they're like mutations

in the

social sphere

and

some will survive

for a while

and others

not

and some may have a really huge history

like 3,000

5,000 years

or

our civilization

how old is this one

starts with the Renaissance

or in the

time of Christ

is

say in the Renaissance

this

particular

model

where this very complicated

pantheon of gods and goddesses

I think

it could be

natural selection

of societies

that have adopted

a certain model

and made it a habit

whether attractive or not

and then

the longevity

is not because

the model is attractive

but because

it has a certain

evolutionary advantage

or advantage in whatever

is the selection

mechanism

or

it could be that

certain models

like the Trinity

are intrinsically

attractive

and that's why

there are so many

societies

with Trinity

as their model

which had a long

lifetime

where does it

make it over

the model

takes on a kind

of social reality

doesn't it

in a religious system

like Islam

for example

the model

of God

which Islam

has

this

strongly

emphasized

monotheism

actually takes on

a social reality

it's reflected

if you have

one God

then

the

then the earth

is sacred

but then you have

the idea

there should be

one sacred place

on earth

so you have

all pilgrimage

to Mecca

all mosques

pointing Mecca

to Mecca

you have

one God

mirrored

in this

one central

so you have

a model

actually becoming

social reality

this is a common

thing

but

there's one

let me just

conclude

one further

thought

on this

line

I think

that the

history of

religions

is one

of the

things

that it

tells us

is that

all

temples

images

diagrams

all the

paraphernalia

of religion

ritual forms

in some sense

have a

modeling function

some of them

may be symbols

that participate

with the reality

they're describing

and one of the

constant dynamics

in the history

of at least

western religions

is the way

in which

the models

are taken

to be the reality

by people

it's a recurrent

danger of models

and in the

judeo-christian

tradition

it's called

idolatry

it's that

the model

of reality

the image

of the god

is taken

to be the god

itself

and I

myself

think that

one of the

problems

of the mechanistic

world

view

is that

the mathematical

models

of classical

physics

were taken

by many

people

to be the

actual reality

governing the

world

so the idea

was there was

this mathematical

mind governing

and this

became the god

of the materialist

or the atheist

this kind

of the mathematical

models

the images

of reality

became the

ultimate reality

for them

here's a

possible

interesting

example

of a

religio-poetic

myth

becoming a

powerful

attractor

between the

11th and

the 13th

century

in western

Europe

there was a

very important

paradigm shift

took place

namely

the

recognition

of the

importance

of the

feminine

principle

and this

affected life

in every way

one of the

ways to do

this is to

see the

shift in the

style of

architecture

say

between the

Romanesque

construction

that was

used in

the older

portions

of the

Abbey of

Mont-Saint-Michel

and say

the

Cathedral

of the

Chart

Mont-Saint-Michel

was built

for the

glorification

of Saint

Michael

who was

the most

powerful

of all

angels

and one

who threw

Satan

out of

heaven

and a

very

masculine

thing

it's a

masculine

building

very little

decoration

thick walls

very little

small windows

solidly built

a masculine

style of

architecture

if you go to

Chart

you see the

hypothesis

of the

feminine style

of architecture

this act

I think

is in

the sense

of what

you're calling

an attractor

because

between the

11th and

the 13th

century

beginning

around

the beginning

of the

12th century

hundreds

of these

Gothic

cathedrals

were built

in Europe

all for the

adoration

of the

blessed

version

hundreds

of it

at an

enormous

expense

remember this

was a poor

time

Europe

put an

enormous

amount

of their

effort

into doing

this

and I

can only

see this

as the

attractive

power

of a

myth

created

around

God

is it

it must

be something

like that

and it

must be

something

to do

with

the

feminine

aspect

of

creativity

you see

one of

the things

that

Ralph

and I

were thinking

about

earlier

today

we were

having

a conversation

after

lunch

that

we

find both

masculine

and feminine

creative

principles

in

mythology

and both

masculine

and feminine

creative

principles

come in

trinities

quite

frequently

the triple

goddess

but then

in the

Christian

world

the male

trinity

and Ralph

was saying

well

maybe

there would

be

since there

seems to be

this possibility

of looking

at it

either way

there must

have been

somewhere

in which

the two

threes

formed

a six

and

the two

creative

trinities

interlaced

and then

I

cared to

us

that

the

star

of

David

is

just

such

a

diagram

to

interpenetrating

triangles

all the

well any

six-fold

structure

anyway this

takes us

into

another realm

of

archetypes

it's

six o'clock

and maybe

it's time

now to

stop

because

after supper

we come

to Terence

and Ralph

on

chaos

and

imagination

at

eight

o'clock

and

that's

where

we'll

pick up

with the

next

trial

log

which

will

be the

podcast

after

next

because

as

most of

you

already

know

I'm

trying

to put

out

three

programs

each

week

at

least

for

series

podcast

I'll

let

you

know

what

I

decide

about

how

soon

the

next

series

will

come

out

because

maybe

you'll

be

ready

for a

break

from the

trial

loggers

by then

in any

event

I've

got an

embarrassment

of riches

in new

program

material

right now

so

it looks

like

we're

going

to have

some

interesting

times

together

in the

year

ahead

getting

back

to

today's

program

about

minutes

written

and

spoken

language

particularly

in

respect

to

the

permanence

of

the

written

word

I'm

wondering

if

the

internet

and

podcasting

are

going

to

change

his

thinking

about

the

spoken

word

not

being

very

permanent

who would

have

thought

on

that

lovely

September

day

at

Esalen

in

that

over

years

later

so

many

more

thousands

of

us

would

be

able

to

hear

this

wonderful

conversation

so

here's

a

question

for

the

way

Rupert

and

Terrence

are

talking

about

attractors

what

kind

of

attractor

or

series

of

attractors

do

you

think

it

was

that

prompted

someone

to

record

those

conversations

and then

give

them

to

Ralph

and

eventually

draw

them

into

being

podcast

here

so

I'll

let

you

have

a

toke

or

two

on

your

own

KMO

interviewed

me

for

his

podcast

on

the

sea

realm

he

told

me

about

another

program

that

can

be

found

at

www.dopecast.co.uk

and now

that I've

heard several

programs

I have

to say

that it's

one of the

best

podcasts

I've

heard

so far

the host

of the

dope

cast

goes by

the

handle

dope

fiend

and

me

one

myself

I can

honestly

say

I've

never

and

after

KMO

told

me

about

this

program

I

checked

their

website

and

downloaded

a couple

of

podcasts

by

the

dope

fiend

as

well

as

a

couple

of

other

podcasts

from

what

they're

calling

the

Cannabis

Podcast

Network

all

of

which

is

hosted

at

dope

cast

dot

co

dot

UK

now

let

me

give

full

disclosure

here

the

thing

is

that

ever

since

losing

my

MP3

player

I've

only

listen

to

short

segments

of

these

podcasts

because

it's

just

not

very

convenient

to

be

tethered

to

a

computer

particularly

once

you've

enjoyed

the

freedom

of a

mobile

MP3

player

anyway

I

sent

dope

fiend

an

email

and

told

him

I

is

Christmas

it

was

just

like

Burning

Man

does

Christmas

I

guess

because

just

out

of

the

blue

someone

I

don't

even

know

sends

me

a

really

cool

iRiver

MP3

player

with

a

built

in

mic

that

looks

like

it's

going

to

work

perfectly

at

Burning

Man

and

other

road

trips

that

I

make

to

interview

people

so

when

I

tell

you

how

much

I

like

the

podcast

from

these

guys

I

don't

want

you

to

think

it's

because

of

this

wonderful

gesture

or

because

he

very

kindly

mentions

the

psychedelic

salon

from

time

to

time

I

just

really

enjoy

these

programs

and

my

bet

is

that

most

of

you

will

too

you

know

from

some

of

your

email

I

most

of

my

friends

from

the

tribe

are

now

physically

far

away

and

so

I

sometimes

get

a little

lonely

myself

and

yesterday

I

got to

hear

some

of

dope

fiend's

programs

on my

new

mp3

player

and

did

I

ever

have

a

ball

you

just

have

to

hear

these

guys

for

yourself

and

you

know

just

have

a

toke

or two

and

listen

to

the

dope

fiend

max

freak

out

the

toker

and

some

of

their

other

friends

and

fellow

podcasters

like

Queer

Ninja

whose

music

podcast

is also

really

quite

brilliant

and

then

there's

Zandor's

Girl

Reports

that I

now

don't

want

to

miss

all

in

all

of

these

guys

are

having

a

real

party

that

we

can

all

join

in

on

at

least

in

my

humble

opinion

and

I

think

you'll

find

the

production

quality

of

process

of

moving

the

matrix

masters

dot com

family

of

websites

it's

a

major

task

for

me

particularly

since

I'm

making

some

changes

to

the

site

as

well

but

once

it's

finished

I

think

you'll

like

some

of

the

things

like

the

secure

IM

chat

feature

that

we're

going

to

eventually

be

able

to

use

so

thanks

for

putting

up

with

the

super

long

podcast

page

for

now

you

know

I

feel

your

and

all

of

the

podcast

from

the

psychedelic

salon

are

protected

under

the

creative

commons

attribution

non-commercial

share alike

2.5

license

and if you

have any

questions

about that

you can

click on

the link

at the

bottom

of the

podcast

page

at the

psychedelic

salon

where

you can

find that

of course

at

matrix

masters

dot com

slash

podcast

and if

you still

be well

my

friends

greetings

from

cyberdelic

space

this is

lorenzo

and i'm

your host

here in

the

psychedelic

salon

so

are you

ready for

some more

trilogues

between

terence

mckenna

ralph

abraham

and

rupert

sheldrake

when we

left our

three

merry

trilogues

in the

podcast

before

last

they

just

had

included

their

discussion

about

creativity

and

chaos

and

in

today's

program

we're

going

to

hear

them

talk

about

chaos

and

the

imagination

i should

say

and

imagination

we

begin

with

ralph

abraham

going

into

the

history

of

the

word

and

the

concepts

about

chaos

and

then

terence

mckenna

joins

in

with

his

thoughts

about

how

chaos

and

imagination

are

connected

if

you

caught

the

last

podcast

from

the

psychedelic

salon

you

might

remember

sheldon

norberg

talking

about

how

as

he

progressed

into

the

world

of

psychedelic

medicines

his

experiences

began

to

shift

from

those

focused

primarily

on

pleasure

to

journeys

that

involved

a

deeper

understanding

of

his

consciousness

well

at

about

half

hour

into

the

trial

log

you're

about

to

hear

terence

mckenna

begins

to

wax

poetic

about

the

lone

fisherman

on

a

tropical

sea

with

his

net

where

he's

referring

to

the

net

of

human

imagination

on

an

ocean

of

chaos

and

the

fisherman

of

course

is

the

psychonaut

sailing

on

the

seas

of

consciousness

now

I

can't

actually

say

that

that's

how

things

actually

are

but

don't

you

think

so

now

let's

listen

to

ralph

abraham

and

terence

mckenna

discuss

chaos

and

imagination

chaos

and

the

imagination

now

someone

asked

about

the

relationship

between

the

chaos

on

plane

three

and

the

chaos

on

plane

one

and

i

said

there

was

sort

of

a

resonant

relationship

my

appreciation

of it

had

increased

over

these

past

years

i'm

wearing

the

mask

of

chaos

but

i'm

not

constrained

to

stick

to

the

mathematical

plane

so

i

should

like

now

to

speak

about

the

chaos

of

ordinary

life

and

the

relationship

of

this

chaos

to

the

imagination

and

along

the

way

i'll

try

to

explain

to

you

why

i

think

chaos

is

the

biggest

thing

since

the

wheel

i

know

terence

you

have

been

you've

emphasized

the

tractals

in your

own

thinking

and

so

on

so

here

will

be

either

more

of the

same

or

maybe

a

further

reason

to

regard

the

chaos

revolution

as

good

news

somebody

came to

me

last

year

and

gave

me

a

splendid

quote

about

chaos

knowing

that

i was

writing

a

popular

book

on

chaos

sky

on

eros

and

it

said

all

creation

begins

in

chaos

progresses

in

chaos

and

ends

in

chaos

it's

perfect

for my

book

especially

considering

that it

comes

from

homer

but

i

couldn't

find

it

in

homer

i

called

a

classics

professor

in

my

university

told

me

about

all

the

lexicons

and

concordances

where

every

single

word

in

homer

word

chaos

never

appears

in

homer

it

is

known

where

it

occurs

for

the

first

time

and

it

occurs

for

the

first

time

in

hesiod

he

was

kind

of

contemporary

more

or less

of

homer

if

a

person

at

all

around

bc

the

beginning

of

the

bardic

tradition

of

ancient

greece

and

in

hesiod

this

word

chaos

appears

in

a

piece

called

theogony

which

that is

to say

more or

less

a

creation

tale

but

the

stories

of

the

creation

of

the

gods

and

goddesses

one

by

one

well

they're

not

gods

and

goddesses

really

they're

abstract

principles

the

three main

ones

are

chaos

gaia

and

eros

so in

this

way

in

literature

has

nothing whatsoever, apparently, superficially, to do with what we mean by chaos in the English

language and in ordinary life. It meant only to Hesiod, according to the lexicon, the gaping void

left the gaping void, sort of the gaping void between heaven and earth, out of which the creation

came. So creation out of chaos, yes, but the chaos did not mean disorder or anything negative. It only

meant this gaping void. Well, after reading in detail about the significance of this and the other,

those proper nouns in Greek literature, beginning with the capital letter, they don't mean people

or anything like people. They're more abstract principles, particularly in Homer and Hesiod and

in the Orphic literature, the Orphic hymns. So these chaos, Gaia, Eros are, I mean, it's a trinity

and it's associated with, they're the gods of, or concepts of the primitive types. Chaos is a sky

concept and Gaia, of course, is an earth concept. And Eros is, Eros is actually a bisexual, it says in

the literature, but that means what we would call an androgyne, you know, a double-sexed person or concept,

whereas chaos is definitely a feminine word as it appears in Hesiod. Gaia is feminine,

chaos is feminine, and Eros has got this ambivalence. And they're the most abstract earliest proto-concepts

of sky, earth, and the creative tension in between. Well, after understanding that, you look up, you

think of these different interpretations, sky, god concept, the gap in the opening and so on. When you

look at the sky, the most obvious chief characteristic feature of the sky is the Milky Way. And it does

appear as a kind of a gap between this and that, the two sides of the Milky Way. The sky, as understood by

primitive people, is sort of like an Easter basket. And you have the ecliptic, is around the wave,

the waist, kind of a snake. And all what is below that is considered the underworld. And then you have

this handle across the top to hold it, which is the Milky Way, the royal road of the gods traveling

between the underworld and the overworld. And this is, it's analyzed in extensive detail in a thick book

called Hamlet's Mill. So looking further then at chaos as the Milky Way, you see like the photograph

that Terence has just showed, the prototypical chaos in the sense of randomness or disorder and so on.

Understanding that, you can then connect the word with an earlier word concept or god or goddess,

meaning the same thing as what you visually see represented in the Milky Way itself. And that is in one of its

most popular representations, Tiamat, the goddess of chaos from Enuma Elish, the creation poem, the greatest epic poem

of Babylonian literature, of Babylonian literature, discovered in the library of Ashurbanipal at Nineveh.

A recent discovery, how to read the text, another recent discovery, 1950s, came out, maybe 18, sorry, 1870

or so, was the first discovery. There was this story of the origin of the gods and the creation of the world

by Tiamat and Apsu, the god and goddess of chaos who lived in the water, one more sweet water and the

other salt water. And they created then the whole pantheon and the whole world and so on. But eventually,

along came Marduk. Marduk was a younger generation of gods and the next generation. And there was a conflict

between the older and the younger gods over how the world ought to be run. And apparently this conflict

was taking place in the form of a social transformation, a transformation represented in the mythological

by the demotion of Apsu and Tiamat from the pantheon of Babylon, the city Babylon, and the replacement by

Marduk eventually became the god, Mr. Big of Babylon around 2000 BC, coinciding with the sweep of

patriarchy over that city, propelled on a new type of war chariot with spoked wheels instead of solid wheels.

Am I digressing too much? No, you've reached the wheel.

Well, I've reached the spoke wheel and its association with, is this accidental? I don't know,

with the patriarchy and the fact that the wheel itself as a mathematical model is the paradigm of

order. What we mean by order is either the thing is static, it's constant, its order is that of

homeostasis, like more or less the temperature of planet Earth, or it's regularly changing in a circle,

a divine mathematical form, according to Plato, as the planets were supposed to move before

Kepler, who introduced the ellipse. Fantastic transformation,

punctual catastrophe in the history of consciousness. In short, according to this epic, Enuma Elish,

Tiamat was killed in the most violent way, ripped to pieces, creating the world, creating a new order,

by our hero of that alone, Mr. Marduk, who also bell, bow, and so on. His New Year's celebration

was honored at the New Year time all over Old Europe, including at Stonehenge. At the New Year's

festival, this epic poem was read, so annually was the reminder that chaos is bad, chaos has been killed,

chaos has been replaced by order, an order associated with perfect periodic, the wheel,

cycle, the cycle, the perfect roundness, and so on. For 2,000 years, this poem was read in a

festival lasting 11 years called the Akitu festival, in Babylon, with similar, almost identical festivals,

in Egypt, the Osiris festival of Dendera, in Creti, the Dionysian ritual of the New Year,

and in Canaan, in the Israelite festival surviving to this day, Sukkot, which begins next month. All of this,

just to the importance of the chaos revolution now, is that chaos has recovered from being demoted,

from being banished to the unconscious, in around 2000 BC or so, from then up to now four or maybe

5,000 years of the repression of chaos. I mean, chaos is, to this day in our culture, a bad word.

We have to watch out for chaos. It ruins your love life. It has to be replaced by order. Scientists

most especially hate it, and so on. The fact that scientists, of all people, in the temple of science,

that Tiamat has to be accepted as a friend and replaced upon her throne, this is big news. Now,

a little bit of lore about chaos. And now, about the imagination. Since we have developed this theme,

I think, to all our satisfaction, the connection between chaos and creativity, the creative as,

now we're connecting, I'm going to try to make a direct link from chaos to the imagination, but

it's completely unnecessary because we've already got the line from chaos to creativity and the line

from creativity to the imagination. So we know that imagination is linked to chaos. The repression

of imagination, the evil shadow, the bad name of chaos, must therefore result in an impedance,

a resistance to imagination. So the creative imagination manifests most profoundly by people

like Euler, like Beethoven, like Wagner. This imagination should, of course, be functioning in

everyone, but people have a resistance to their own creative imagination. And I'm suggesting that this

resistance has a mythological base, a ritual base, and historically represents a very deep creode,

a runnel in the morphogenetic field of a depth of three to five Waddingtons.

Well, this is a unit that Rupert and I have worked out for measuring the depth of runnels.

So we've got a really, it's not only a personal failing, if you find it difficult to write poetry

when you sit down at your desk, you see. Repeat what?

Yes. So $30 or $25 as the case may be.

I could try another pass nearby, but I can't remember where we are.

The Waddington. They just want to hear the word explains.

Stealing a line from Tarrant's current book. There are habits.

Habits. Habits, according to Rupert, are tunnels. They're, you know, deeply worn paths,

labyrinths in the morphogenetic field. But habits is a habit. There's a habit of habits. That's the

line I'm stealing from Tarrant's book. And the habit of habits has, as a mathematical model,

these creodes. That's the attractor and the basin. Any state in the basin tends to the attractor. The

attractor is the teleology of its habit. So the habit of habits is the habit of living in a landscape,

a landscape with peaks and valleys, where we have the tendency to go down the track to the attractor.

Do I digress too far? So the habit of habits is good. And some habits might be harmful.

And one thing that creates a really deep runnel is the repetition for 11 days a row, once a year,

for 2,000 to 3,000 years. So that makes it a more serious matter. I mean, it's going to cost you a

lot if you're going to a psychotherapist to get cured of your difficulties in creative imagination.

It's going to be cheaper to fix up something that only started last year,

like thinking bisexuality is bad or something. So we felt that we wanted to quantify the depth of a

runnel. And I'm not going to say it's proportional exactly to the number of days of the repetition and

the frequency, the annual or the, you know. But there's, since Waddington introduced the concept

Creode in connection with embryology, as Rupert has explained, we thought it appropriate to take his

name, like Resistance, Ohm, you know, there's Maxwell's Henry's, there's Faraday's, there's Gilbert's,

there's Amperes, Amperes, Watts, as in Watts Tower, and, and Waddington, as in the depth of the Creode.

And for a really deep Creode, I recommend for your consideration the New Year's Festival of Akitu,

together with its complete descriptions, the subject of numerous books of length,

300 pages or so, by a fantastic field of scholarship known to few. We know about archaeology,

anthropology, history, comparative religion, and so on. What about OT, Old Testament studies,

the most voluminous, incredible field of the greatest scholarship, of the most minute details,

all interdisciplinary, has produced, among other things, a comparative study of New Year's festivals

around the world. Amazing evidence of morphic resonance on a planetary scale in society before

radio, before sailing ships, a global manifestation, evidence of resonance with the guy in mind,

on the same level as the distribution of these so-called Venus figurines of the

Gravetian culture all over the planet. So chaos and the imagination, the repression of chaos,

the obstruction of imagination, the final development over these thousands of years of serious and

perhaps fatal ecological problems that we have today. Suggestion of the

growth of a problem beyond all bound, with nobody even trying to do anything about it,

as associated with a lack of imagination, and therefore an artifact, a consequence of a cultural flaw

that came in with the patriarchy. Now, I'm not saying that patriarchal culture is bad because it's

patriarchal, although I would say that too. That belongs in another context. I would say, besides all

that, it's bad because it's repressed chaos. It's made chaos bad. It's made Marduk good, the god of law and order.

No. We would like to reject that so the planet can be saved, so life and love can be saved. And lo and behold,

along comes an event as big as the development of the wheel, as positive, perhaps, as whatever negative

was the discovery of the wheel, due to the fact that without getting rid of the wheel, we don't have to give up our automobiles.

We are regaining chaos for potential partnership with the wheel. Chaos and order. Chaos and cosmos.

Chaos and the imagination.

Yes. Well, chaos and the imagination, and the notion here is in everyday life, in the dimension in which

we find ourselves. I would like to sort of expand on what Ralph has been saying with my own perspective

on it. Chaos is feminine. Chaos is intuitional. Chaos has a very flirtatious relationship with language.

And the process of creating a culture has to do with how we relate to this thing.

And since we're talking about everyday life, it seems reasonable to talk about how we come to be

in the kind of planetary mess that we're in, and whether these extremely rarefied and abstract matters

that we've been talking about can in any way be brought tangential to the burning planet.

And I think that they can, that the key is the power number one of chaos, which is feminine and beyond prediction,

and beyond full rational apprehension. And the imagination, which is, you know,

our richest legacy, really the birthright that connects us to the divine, is our poetic capacity,

our ability to resonate with an idea of ideal beauty, and to create that which transcends our own understanding

in the form of art through the imagination. So what does all this say about the situation we're in,

and how we got here? Well, I believe that the importance of the psychedelics is primary here,

and that it doesn't simply have to do with the fact that they synergize cognition,

which they do do, and the synthetics as well as the natural ones. But it's deeper than that.

It's that we have a secret history, knowledge of which has been lost to us, and only is now recoverable

in the light of the kind of mindset that becomes possible to us if we accept the new paradigm.

And what this secret history is and has to do with, and how it relates to the Gaian mind and the world soul,

is that we are the victims of an instance of traumatic abuse in childhood as a species, because

a symbiotic relationship with the world-girdling intelligence of the planet, which was mediated

through plants, through shamanism. I mean, it wasn't an abstraction, it was an experience, was

eventually broken up and disrupted by progressive climatic drying of the Eurasian and African landmass.

And so, this is literally the fall into history, the expulsion from Eden, all these primary myths of a golden age,

found and lost, have to do with the fact that once we lived in dynamic balance with nature,

nature, not as animals do, but as human beings only could, but in a way that we have now lost.

Well, how have we lost it and what have we lost?

How we have lost it is the way in which these psychoactive compounds that were being brought into the diet were acting,

is they were psycholytic upon the formation of the ego.

They literally suppressed the formulation of the ego and promoted instead collectivist, tribal, partnership values,

which were operating intuitionally in a resonance relationship with the feminine vegetable matrix of the planet.

In other words, nothing was verbalized, everything was felt, everything was intuited.

And regularly, at the new and full moon, these small groups of hunter-gatherers, later pastoralists, gathered and took these hallucinogenic plants

and dissolved boundaries and engaged in group sex and annealed, a new word that we've brought in here,

annealed the irregularities that had cropped up in people's personal self-imaging in the interval since the last session.

And this kept everything grounded on the plane of that which is important, i.e. the values of the group,

of the species, of dynamic balance with the ecosystem, and so forth and so on.

Well, when this was disrupted, and the supplies of these plants were diminished, and new religious forms arose,

and the time between the great festivals grew longer and longer, the ego begins to take hold, first as a kind of cancerous aberration,

but then quickly becoming a new style of behavior, which quickly then eliminates all other styles of behavior by suppressing access to the chaos.

And this is the point I want to make, that there is, between the ego and full understanding of reality,

a barrier, a problem, the fear of the ego to surrender to the fact of chaos.

Now, no, in a pre-modern society, no woman could escape chaos because of the automatic birth script

that would have women give birth over and over and over unto death in these societies.

Women are biologically scripted into being much closer to this thing simply because there are certain episodes in the life of a female

which are guaranteed to be boundary dissolving.

And in fact, the whole psychology of feminine sexuality, which is the acceptance of penetration,

is an entirely different relationship to boundary than the male relationship,

which is, you know, to be able to fulfill the potential to penetrate.

So chaos is what we have lost touch with.

This is why it has been given a bad name, because it is feared by the dominant archetype of our world,

which is the ego, which clenches, because its existence is defined in terms of control.

And the furious modeling process, and this will now sound like a knock on modeling,

the furious modeling process that the ego endlessly carries out is an effort to fight the absence of closure.

The ego wants closure, it wants a complete explanation.

The beginning of wisdom, I believe, is the ability to accept an inherent messiness

in your explanation of what's going on.

Because nowhere is it writ that human minds should be able to give a full accounting of creation in all dimensions and on all levels.

You know, Wittgenstein had this idea that philosophy should be what he called true enough.

And I think that's a great idea.

Let's just make it true enough, because that's as true as it can be gotten.

Well, so, the imagination is chaos.

New forms are fetched out of this chaos.

For me, the creative act is the letting down of the net of human imagination

into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended, and the attempt to bring out of it ideas,

to bring out of it, you know, sometimes, and this is part, this is my model for the psychedelic experience,

that it is the night sea journey, that it is the lone fisherman on a tropical sea with his nets,

and you let these nets down, and sometimes something tears through them that leaves them in shreds,

and you just row for shore and put your head under your bed and pray.

And at other times, what slips through are the minutia, the minnows of this ichthyological metaphor of idea-chasing.

And, but sometimes, you know, you actually can bring home something that is food,

that is food for the human community, that we can sustain ourselves on and go forward.

So, we haven't talked that much about art and aesthetics, but I think in the human world,

the appetition is for beauty, to my mind, and this is another place where the Platonism shines radiantly through,

you know, because Plato held that the good was the true, and that both were the beautiful.

And this is a very quaint idea from the point of view of modern philosophy,

that I think, you know, it's in the bones when you actually connect yourself up to the planet.

That's why chaos is capable of being the tremendous repository of ordered beauty that it is,

because there is no chaos in the old definition,

that which is to say, that which by any definition or any test is found to be disordered.

That is just a kind of a hell notion, a kind of hypostatization of an ultimate state of disorder.

But nowhere in the world that is deployed through space and time do you encounter that.

Instead, what you encounter is embedded order upon embedded order, this fractal, this fractal thing.

And then finally, for me, the imagination is the goal of history.

I see culture as an effort to literally realize our collective dreams.

And, you know, it's on a very crude level when it's you make your mask and I make my mask and then we dance around together.

And it's even at a very crude level when it's you design your shopping mall and I'll design my world trade center and we'll put them on the same piece of real estate.

But we're coming now into, through media, I believe, through virtual reality and human machine integration and this kind of thing,

into a situation where the imagination is going to be something that we can share,

that the path of mind through its own meanderings will become something that can be recorded and played back.

We will have the possibility of living in our own past or, you know, creating and trading realities as art and art as life lived in the imagination is the great archetype which rears itself up at the end of history, life in the imagination.

The imagination is this auric field which surrounds the transcendental object at greater and greater depth as you approach the transcendental object.

And as we now close distance with it, all of our cultural expression, all of our self-awareness is taking on this curiously designed quality.

I mean you must have noticed this, that the world is very heavily designed in a way that it never was before.

Morphogenetic fields of great size and scope, which are international schools of architecture and design, touch whole...

continents, entire cities are given certain ambiances. This is the summoning of the imagination

into the human scale. It's like a god that we wish to call down and draw to earth. I mean,

this is why William Blake called it the divine imagination, because it is the four-gated city.

It is the flying saucer. We are on a journey to meet this great attractor, and as we close distance with it,

it is more and more a multifaceted mirror of our images of beauty. So it's like an ascending learning curve

that becomes asymptotic, and at that point, you're face-to-face with a mystery,

a living mystery that is within each and all of us. It's the imagination that argues for the divine

spark in human beings. It's absolutely confounding if you try to get biology to produce it for you as

a necessary quantity. It isn't that. It's an emanation from above. It is literally a descent of the world

soul into all of us. We then become the atoms of the world soul, and our channel to it is by closing our eyes

and obliterating our immediate personalized space-time locus and falling into the imagination,

which is running like a river through all of us endlessly, driven by the hydraulic momentum of the cataracts of chaos,

which usher into the creativity of the imagination. I mean, these river metaphors are just endlessly

applicable to this, the flowing of forces over landscapes, the pressure of chaos on the imagination to create creativity,

and it's looping back into the same. I mean, these things are the icons for the world that wants to be.

But the key is surrender and dissolution of boundaries, dissolution of the ego, and a trust in the love of the goddess,

which transcends rational understanding. There will come a moment which will be an absolute leap into space,

and we will simply have to have the faith that there is something waiting there,

because the dominator style has left us no choice. So, that's my wrap on that.

The cataracts of chaos. They roll off his tongue, you see, which obviously has a direct connection to the cataracts of chaos.

So, well, we are progressing toward a dialogue, now is the idea, but there's so many different ideas to respond to here.

I'll try to limit myself to one or two. I'd like to try to connect these up, these two statements,

and I think the key, the intersection is the Eleusinian mysteries. And here, this is not validated by all the scholarly research, just a speculation.

It was generally supposed by historians that there's sort of a straight line from Babylon to Ugarit, to Minoan Crete, to Mycenae, to Athens, and so on.

So, it was supposed that there's a cultural diffusion, including the festivals, which, as I said, are very similar.

But in the Babylonian festival, you already had, by 2000 BC, the extensive domination of the male god of order, and the patriarchy, and so on.

Whereas, in Minoan Crete, you find, according to the evidence of the excavators and all who had examined the artworks that remain,

an outstanding, a long-lasting fluorescence of partnership culture with no domination by a male god.

So, there is a little question mark there as far as the diffusion from Babylon to Crete.

Instead, there's a complementary theory of a renewal of the partnership concept in Crete coming from India in the early days of Cretan culture in 3000 BC.

In any case, it's established that there is the diffusion from Crete to Greece, and the last remainder of the Cretan culture, which is a very interesting one,

it must have been sort of the last vestige of the Garden of Eden.

We're talking about a tremendous happiness and fluorescence of beauty in all aspects of life.

The Ellicinian mysteries and the related mysteries of Plua were said to be identical to those in Crete, which were celebrated publicly.

So, they became secret after the patriarchal takeover by the Mycenaeans in Crete and the exportation of this dual culture to Greece,

where you had kind of the overworld and the underworld, the conscious and the unconscious,

and the goddess and the partnership of gods and goddesses of Crete continued to exist in Greece,

as this accepted but still unacceptable secret festival.

And among the aspects of the Cretan and Ellicinian Plua festivals are the sexual rites and psychedelic rites

celebrated in a highly specified ritual format and on an annual basis.

So, there's a speculation on what happened to the cataracts of chaos in the hands of the patriarchy.

This is, I don't know, I think you guys know a lot more about this than I do,

but our conversation has stimulated this speculation.

In patriarchy, because of the patrilineal aspect, you have to know who is the father of the children,

not just who is the mother, and therefore monogamy is very important,

and this was in a strong conflict with the ritual.

And so, sooner or later, that aspect had to go.

I don't see that there's any...

I don't understand the direct connection between the patriarchy and the repression of chaos.

But I can see the simple explanation for the repression of the other aspect of these rites that were celebrated together,

that somehow, I don't know if they go together, of sexual license and the psychedelic ritual.

Anyway, the illustrating mysteries disappeared,

and what we are left with is this control of Marduk order,

the constipation of the imagination,

and in our fantasy, it's consequent, the world problems.

Now, there are some open questions here, I'm not addressing, maybe you can consider.

One is, if you consider the practical aspect of what we're talking about in these world problems,

it seems like a main motor of world problems is the population explosion.

So, I don't know, do you think it would be true if we had a partnership society instead of a patriarchal, a dominator society,

would we still have the population explosion?

That's what I don't understand.

Can I ask you, you said that you didn't understand the suppression of other parts of the partnership society,

other than the orgies which confused knowledge about who was the father?

Yeah, you see, the New Year's Festival continued on to our day,

but these aspects of it were removed and replaced with, in all cases,

with a recital of the conquest of chaos by the god of order.

And part of his conquest, I assume, was the elimination of sexual license, as well as psychedelic ritual.

Don't you think it's because the ego is basically a control trip,

and so the ego, the person who has the ego,

becomes the center of the space in which they're operating in.

They control the women, assuming it's a man.

They control the resources.

And they, vigilance is the key.

It reminds me of the national motto of Albania,

which is, fear it is that guards the vineyard.

So, this is definitely an egocentric, dominator view.

And so, the fear of the psychedelic experience is, quite literally,

the fear of losing control.

And even if you approach dominator types today and say,

wouldn't you like to try some psilocybin?

Say, I'm afraid I would lose control.

This is the great, and it's not important to maintain control

if you are not in control in the first place, by definition.

In a tribal society, for instance, where there is no property,

and where there are no assigned sleeping places,

because everyone behaves according to something which we can only call whim.

But whim has replaced, you know, mine, yours, my spot, your spot,

my food, your food.

And the psychedelic thing dissolves this

and makes it all very threatening

and throws it all up for grabs.

And then you have to rely on group values and not yourself.

As I was listening with you to Terence McKenna just now,

I was taken by his rap about sharing imagination

and playing back imaginings

when I thought of it in context of his first

and I guess maybe his only encounter with others

through the 3D avatar world

that Bruce Dahmer and Terence's son Finn

and some others created to host Terence's first online workshop.

I believe that most of that world is still preserved somewhere in cyberspace,

and I'll try to track it down and link to it from our webpage

with the program notes of this podcast on it.

Not long ago, I saw a homemade video

that was taken on Terence's end of that event

and it was really cool to see how almost childlike he was

as he interacted with others in cyberspace.

It was almost as if you could see the wheels turning in his mind

with all kinds of new ideas about the possibilities

that these alternative worlds present

for the evolution of our consciousness.

Sadly, that event took place only about a week or so

before the seizure that revealed the fact

that Terence had a very large mushroom-shaped tumor in his brain.

What an amazing person he was.

What an amazing mind.

And thanks to a lot of people

and the advent of podcasting,

all of us here in the Psychedelic Salon

can still hear the words of the irreplaceable Terence McKenna,

along with the wonderful thoughts and comments

by Ralph Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake,

and a lot of others here in the Psychedelic Salon.

One other thing I want to point out

is that while there is only a brief mention

of Ralph Abraham's book,

Chaos, Gaia, and Eros,

if you haven't had the chance to read it yet,

I highly recommend it.

And if you're worried that the chaos part deals with math,

well, don't worry.

You won't find any equations in it.

Instead, you'll find a very readable and concise history

of some esoteric knowledge

that you might have missed in school.

Also, I want to thank all of you

who sent emails this week.

It's always nice to receive your comments and suggestions,

and it truly warms the cockles of my heart

when you say such nice things about these podcasts.

You know, it's interesting how your emails

sometimes seem to arrive with comments

that are right in line with something

that I was thinking just a few minutes

before I checked my mail.

For example, this morning,

I was thinking that this new schedule

of putting out three podcasts a week

might be a little too much.

I know I'm not getting a lot of other things done

that I want to do,

and I was worrying that maybe

I'm overloading your MP3 inboxes.

And then comes a note

from a listener calling himself Wooden Ship,

who writes from what he says

the Bald Prairies of Saskatchewan

to say that, and I quote,

it's the small-dose hits of psychedelic info

that keep my far-out bone in tune

and offer balance in this consciously constricted

Western culture.

Well, I sure hear you there.

And, well, Wooden Ship,

you've convinced me to keep up

these three-a-week podcasts a while longer,

at least until this first series of trialogues

is all online.

And since we're only on the first side

of tape three right now,

it looks like we've got at least

seven more weeks to go

to finish up the 89 and 90 trialogues.

And, of course, that still leaves

quite a few more to go

since they continued holding

these interesting conversations

until the summer of 1998.

And, hey, I love your handle, by the way.

I have a special affinity

for wooden ships myself

since I had the great good fortune

to do a Pacific crossing

in a square-rigged wooden sailing ship.

And if you're in that kind of a trip, too,

well, you can see some of my photos

from those days on my website

at matrixmasters.com.

Or you can also find the entire listing

of all 65 podcasts

from the Psychedelic Salon.

Just go to matrixmasters.com

slash podcasts.

Also, I received some good advice

from Chris, who suggested something

that John M. also told me

a few months ago,

and that is that I should consider

putting up this series of podcasts

on FitTor.

And I promise I'm going to follow up

on that soon,

and maybe with a little of Chris's help

once he finishes exams.

And good luck on the exams, Chris.

And same to the rest of you

who are out there cramming right now.

Hey, shouldn't you all be studying right now

instead of listening to this podcast?

But I shouldn't talk.

One of the reasons I'm not getting

very far along on my website revisions,

as I think I should have,

is that I've gotten hooked on the podcast

from the Cannabis Podcast Network.

I just learned about them from KMO

a few weeks ago,

and he hosts the Sea Realm Podcast.

Now I'm going back and catching up

on all of their programs.

Not only is there a lot of good information

being podcast on the Cannabis Network,

but their programs are also

a lot of fun to listen to,

particularly if you don't always

have close friends to share

a little smoke with,

or a little vapor,

as the case may be.

And just to give you a feeling

of how upbeat their programs are

on the Cannabis Podcast Network,

as soon as I'm done here and sign off,

I'm going to play a little clip

from one of Queer Ninja's podcasts,

which are titled

The Sounds of Worldwide Weed,

where you can hear

some really good world music,

a nice wide variety of it.

Now I haven't checked with Queer Ninja

to see if this is okay,

because from what I understand,

he's right now recovering

from a flood that ravaged

his remote Scottish home.

So I don't want to add

to your email queue right now,

Queer Ninja,

and I hope you're recovering

from your flood.

The soundbite though

that I'm going to play

is actually sort of a plug

that Queer Ninja did

for the entire group of programs

on their network,

but his happiness

and enthusiasm for life,

I believe,

would come out

even if he was just

reading a telephone book.

I think you'll see

what I mean in a minute.

And as I try to do

in every podcast,

I want to thank my friends

Jacques, Cordell, and Wells,

otherwise known as

Chateau Hayouk,

for letting me use

some of their music

here in the psychedelic salon.

I hope you guys

are having a great year end.

And for now,

this is Lorenzo

signing off

from cyberdelic space.

Be well, my friends.

Hey, how's it going?

How's it going?

This is Queer Ninja,

and this is

The Sounds of Worldwide Weed,

Episode 4, man.

Welcome along.

This is a big yellow mug edition.

It's quite a special edition.

I want to share with you

some of the journey

of my very good friend

that's traveling in Africa,

and this is coming up

in the second half of the show.

In this half,

I just want to say

a great big hello

to everyone

who's emailed

and left comments

from around the world, man.

Hello to Italy,

Spain,

United Kingdom,

Japan,

East, Western,

Southern United States,

Canada,

Bolivia,

and Romania.

Big hello to Romania.

I've never been there, man.

Hello.

Anyways, anyways,

music in this half of the show

featuring artists

from Sibumatu,

Bluetooth,

Bedouin Soundclash,

and coming up after that,

we're going to have

some musical accompaniment

when we take it

a little peek

into a vast journey

accompanied by some tunes

from Eastern Africa

and beyond.

And always,

listeners,

emails,

and comments,

which is my personal

favorite part.

I really like to get

all fluffy,

you know what I mean?

Get some nice emails

from people, man.

So drop me a line, man.

You know the drill.

My email address is

queenninja

at delphine.co.uk.

You can also leave

a comment there

on the website.

It's good for,

I think it's three listeners

last week.

There's some comments

there on the website

at delphine.co.uk.

Home of the Dopecast,

Home of the Sounds of

Worldwide Weed,

and Home of Mr. Bud's

Grow Shop.

So diverse programming

to compensate for,

you know what I mean,

the lack of mainstream coverage

that our people get.

You know,

it's good to have

stoner people get,

man.

And it's beautiful

to us to come together

like this.

It's great, man.

I have so much fun

making this show

every week.

I really don't know

what I would do

without it down.

So with that in mind,

I want to get this show

kicked off, man.

And the first track,

this is an

Owl Town Classic.

I got lots of feedback

from, you know,

Fluffy Clowns last week.

With Stickbox Chips.

Greetings from

Cyberdelic Space.

This is Lorenzo,

and I'm your host

here in the

Psychedelic Salon.

And happy winter solstice

to all of you out there.

Or as Steve

from South Africa

pointed out,

it may be the

summer solstice

for those of you

in the southern hemisphere

of this lovely

little planet.

Just six more

of these solstice celebrations

before 2012 gets here.

And what are you

going to be doing

on the December solstice

of 2012?

More importantly,

what do you think

you'll be doing

on the solstice

in 2013 and beyond?

Well, that's just

too far ahead

for me to be

thinking right now

because if I don't

focus on the

here and now,

we aren't going

to get to the

next tape

in the Trialog series.

You might remember

that in the

last program

I mentioned the fact

that these conversations

build on one another

and that if you

are part of a Trialog,

you might not

understand all

of the references

being made.

So, with that

thought in mind,

I want to play

a brief little

soundbite of

Terence McKenna

from the previous

podcast.

And that involves

opening our lives

to chaos

in whatever way,

becoming much

more a part

of the will

of the world

soul

than,

and,

you know,

recapturing

that Greek

sense of fate

that has been

replaced in

our minds

by this

Faustian

sense

that is an

illusion

of control

and dominance.

And now,

to do my part

in shattering

the illusion

of control

and dominance,

I'm going to

do what I can

to inject

a little more

chaos

into the

psychedelic salon.

Unintentionally,

I might add,

as you know,

for four weeks

or so now,

I've been putting

out three podcasts

a week,

two of them

being part

of the

Trialog series

with Terence McKenna,

Ralph Abraham,

and Rupert Sheldrake,

and the other

program each week

coming from

other sources.

The program

I started to put

together for today

was to have

included two of

this year's

Burning Man talks,

one by Mark Pesci

and the other

by Amanda Fielding.

And,

while the talks

are ready to go,

I haven't yet

received an okay

from Amanda,

so I decided

to skip that

program for now

and get the

next Trialog

tape out.

Now,

if you heard

my last podcast,

you might want

to remember me

saying that the

title of the

next tape

in the Trialog

series is

The World,

Soul,

and the Mushroom.

I think you'll

probably be able

to imagine my

disappointment

in not finding

that tape,

because my

disappointment

is probably

on the same

order as your

disappointment

might be right

now,

as it slowly

dawns on you

that this

long introduction

is my way

of saying

I screwed up.

Apparently,

when I was

digitizing all

of these tapes,

the Mushroom

tape came up

during one

of the all-night

sessions when

I was getting

up every 90

minutes or so

to change tapes.

And guess what?

I apparently

recorded the

third tape

in the series

twice,

but I labeled

the second

copy as

Tape 4.

So I'm afraid

that the

mysterious Mushroom

tape is going

to have to wait

until I can

mount another

expedition to

Santa Cruz

where I can

borrow it

again from

Ralph Abraham

and get it

into MP3

format for a

podcast.

So I've decided

to mask my

disappointment

at not being

able to hear

the Trilogue

about the

world soul

and the

mushroom by

being thankful

for this

wonderful

solstice gift

from the

goddess of

chaos.

I'm sure

that she's

held back

the Mushroom

tape from

us until

the end

of the

Trilogue

series when

we'll be

better prepared

to grok

its wisdom.

So how's

that for

putting a

pretty face

on my

screw-up?

Anyway,

let's get

on with

today's

program,

which is

from the

fifth tape

in a

series of

ten that

were made

in the

Septembers of

1989 and

1990 at

Esalen,

where Terrence

McKenna,

Ralph Abraham,

and Rupert

Sheldrake got

together and

held a

trialogue on

the topic

of light

and vision.

And we

begin with

Rupert Sheldrake

setting out a

few of his

thoughts about

light.

I've been

thinking

about light.

One of the

problems that

I've been

thinking about

is the

connection

between

physical

light,

the kind

we study

in physics,

and light

used in a

whole host

of other

senses like

the light of

consciousness,

the light of

reason, the

light of

understanding,

or the

light of

God.

And it

seems to

me that

these two

kinds of

light, it's

not that

one's

physical and

the other's

just kind

of metaphorical,

but that in

some sense

they must be

aspects of

each other,

they must be

talking about

the same

thing, of

which we're

seeing different

aspects.

So this

suggests there's

some

relationship

between

light and

understanding,

or light

and vision.

And then of

course we

realize there

is a

connection

between

light and

vision.

Light is

the medium

of vision,

vision not

just in

the visionary

sense, but

in the sense

of ordinary

visual

perception.

So then if

one thinks

about ordinary

visual perception

and thinks

well how much

do we

understand

about the

nature of

vision,

what is

vision,

what is

seeing,

of which

light is

the medium,

then we

find that

science doesn't

really tell

us very much.

What it

tells us is

that light

moves from

the thing

we see,

goes through

the eye,

inverted

image on

the retina,

patterns of

electrical and

chemical activity

in the optic

ganglia and

nerves and

in the cerebral

cortex.

And then

somehow what

we're seeing

seems to

spring up in

a totally

unexplained

way as a

subjective image

of what we

see somewhere

inside the

brain.

And we

then falsely

imagine,

according to

the standard

theory,

that this

image inside

the brain

subjectively

experienced

we know

not how,

is then

projected

outwards

until it

appears to

be in the

place where

the thing

seen is.

So if I'm

looking at

you,

Terrence,

the light

rays come

into my

eye,

and then

I have a

subjective

image of

you,

which is

actually

just my

understanding

or my

subjective

awareness

of an

electrochemical

pattern in

my optical

cortex.

That gives

me somewhere

in the

cognitively

and imagine

is where

you are,

but actually

it's inside

the brain.

That's the

standard theory.

And it

seems to me

an extremely

peculiar theory

of vision,

because it

has a one-way

movement of

light into

the body.

It has

things going

on inside

the brain,

and then

the visual

world we

experience is

imagined to

be located

inside the

brain,

and not

around us

where it

seems to

be.

So what

I've been

considering is

the idea that

when the

light comes

in,

the

visual image

is a

mental

image.

It's

definitely a

mental and

subjective

image.

My image

of you

is interpreted

by me.

It's a

mental

construct.

But I

think this

mental

construct may

not be

inside the

brain,

but right

where you

are,

namely

outside

me.

And this

is an

idea which

is developed

with great

clarity by

Bergson,

who gives

in Matter

and Memory,

who gives

the notion

that what

we see,

our perceptual

world,

is all

around us.

And the

idea that

it's inside

the brain

corresponds not

at all with

our actual

experience.

It's just a

theory.

It's a

theory of

remarkable

hallucinatory

power,

because we

forget it's

a theory

quite quickly.

Anyway,

so if

there's an

outward

projection of

images,

as well as

an inward

movement of

light in

the process

of vision,

then if

this outward

projection has

anything to

it, if I'm

not just

playing with

words,

producing a

different

metaphor,

there must

be something

moving out,

some influence

moving out,

as well as

the light

moving in.

And if

so,

people or

things might

be affected

just by being

looked at,

if some

influence is

going out

from the

eyes,

as well as

an influence

coming in.

Now,

at this

stage,

we recognize

that the

idea that

things go

out from

the eyes,

as well as

come in,

is a very

old and

traditional

view of

vision.

It was

present among

the pre-Socratics.

It's present

in an

implicit form

all over the

world in

the fear and

practices associated

with the evil

eye, which is

supposed to be the

outward movement of

influences from the

eye to the thing

or person looked

at.

And we find

there's also an

enormous folklore

in our own

culture, known to

everybody, about the

phenomenon of the

sense of being

stared at, the

feeling that people

have when they

think they're being

looked at, for

example, from

behind, and

turn around, and

indeed someone's

looking at them.

There seems to

be an influence of

the eyes that is

actually detected by

people, and 95% of

a normal population

in England, according

to a recent survey,

have actually directly

experienced this.

It's very common.

Now, there's not

been much empirical

research on the

sense of being

stared at.

Three...

published papers in a hundred years, and it's a subject that parapsychologists have ignored as

well as psychologists. And it's, I think, oddly enough, the biggest blind spot in our whole view

of the world, because I think it holds the key to moving to an entirely new paradigm, an entirely

new understanding of the relation between mind and matter, or spirit and body. I've been doing

experiments to test for the sense of being stared at. Most people aren't very good at it under sort

of initial conditions. The only way is to do long series of experiments where people train the

ability to do it under the artificial condition of experiments. But let's assume, for the purpose of

discussion, that it can be established empirically that there is such a thing as the sense of being

stared at. I mean, that's an empirically investigatable point. Assuming that there is some influence passing

out of the eyes, which can be detected empirically in the sense of being stared at, then what kind of

influence could this possibly be? What kind of influence could be moving outwards through the

eyes as part of the image-forming perceptive process? And in this outward projection, in some sense,

projects the image we see, or the image we see is part of this outward flux, or this movement outwards, the

opposite direction to the incoming light. Now, there's two possibilities for explaining such an outward

movement. One of them is that this outward movement is in a kind of mental field, let's say, which I think of as a

morphic field, which is somehow over and above the electromagnetic field, and has nothing much to do

with it except for the fact the electromagnetic field sets up all the normally understood electrochemical

changes in the brain, and then somehow an organizing or morphic field organizes and meshes in and relates

to that field, but is not itself part of it, and then projects out the image. That's one possibility.

The other possibility, a more economical one, is that the outward projection process takes

place by a reverse movement along the photons of light which are coming in. In other words,

that when the photon comes in, it corresponds to an antiparticle moving out, a kind of opposite of a

photon moving out, and that these outward moving influences that move along the exact track of the

photons are associated with vision, perception, comprehension, subjective experience of an object,

that they're, as it were, the grokking, the grok wave, if you like, or the outward moving.

Somehow this vision is born on the reverse movement of photons. Since physically speaking,

from the point of view of a photon, no time elapses as it travels, the connection between the source

from which it leaves, the reflection from my skin, and the place where it arrives, namely a rod or a cone

cell in your retina. There's no time taken, and therefore the contact is, from the point of view

of the photon, instantaneous between the source and the sink. But an instantaneous connection,

if there were a reverse flow of action, could mean that there'd be this kind of instantaneous

grokking, as it were, and that the two would be connected together. And just one is the subject,

the other is the object, as it were. But through this connection together, there's this reverse flow

between them. And so vision may be very closely related to light. Vision may, it would be too crude to

say that the antiparticle of the photon is the vision. But there may be the missing link here between

vision and light may simply be that the photon is in some sense reversible, and that the electromagnetic

field is, in some sense, the field of vision as well. So that was one of the lines I've been thinking

about, because it has further implications. But so I just wanted to see what you thought about it.

Well, there are a number of questions to be asked here. I noticed you were careful to say that it wasn't,

that the vision was not simply the antiparticle of the photon. And I imagine this was because you

anticipated the objection that if it were simply the antiparticle of the photon, then the phenomenon of

light pressure should not exist. And it in fact does exist and is well studied, because the vision

would cancel out the impelling force of the forward-moving photon. And so solar sails and things like that

would not work. Or it could be polarized differently. No, this is no problem at all. We can allow that

the photon is a particle with physical properties in the physical realm, and therefore exempts

of physical pressure. Now, if the vision is in some sense to do with the conscious properties, or

properties, let's say properties of understanding, that's moving in the opposite direction,

setting up a wave in the opposite direction. And the sense of being stared at, for example,

will be sensing that wave impinging. Right. As it were, there'd be a kind of pressure in that

direction of the psychic kind. Well, I think then a more elegant description of what you're trying to

say is not to call the vision a particle which accompanies the photon, but to call this reverse

wave phenomenon a quality of the photon itself. As you point out, from the point of view of the photon,

the travel time to and from its destination is zero. Likewise, travel time from destination

back to origin is zero. So why not simply take a page from super string theory and visualize the photon

as a kind of particle which is stretched in one dimension and is both co-present at its origin and

its destination simultaneously, and thus able to impart information at a distance by that means. You see,

if you don't do that, if you say that the vision accompanies the photon but is not an anti-photon,

then you've violated a major symmetry in the edifice of physics because the question can then be asked,

well, what about every other particle? Does it have a ghost particle which is not its simple anti-particle,

but which partakes of some of its properties, but not others? And I think you'd unleash a lot of messy

speculation at that point. So I prefer a more complex photon. It might not be so messy, you see,

because the anti-particles of most other particles are anti-matter, and anti-matter in some sense doesn't exist.

Well, in what sense? Well, first of all, that the universe is not symmetrical. If the universe had

mostly its same amount of matter and anti-matter, they would self annihilate, and we wouldn't be here.

We're only here because there was an enormous change in symmetry between matter and anti-matter,

so that matter is predominant in our universe, for a start. At least in this part of the universe.

At least in this part of the universe. Yes, all right. But then in this part of the universe,

you see, there's a tremendous asymmetry between the two, and anti-matter has a symmetrical relationship

to matter in our mathematical imaginations, but it doesn't in physical reality. As we know it.

As we know it. That's true. That's true. So I would have thought that to follow this,

if one did want to see... You see, I'm not so wedded to particle theories of... Let's say that light

moving in one direction, which already has pattern, quality, etc., is associated with vision moving in

from the other. To put it in the most general terms, we needn't bring in the photons necessarily.

But we see still that the thing that moves in the other direction is in some senses its opposite,

but in other senses is different, because it doesn't have as physical a reality as the light does.

And that's exactly the same is true of the anti-matter, which is supposed, by symmetry considerations,

to be, at least originally, equal and opposite to matter.

Yes, I see what you're saying. Ralph, how do you take to this?

This discussion is very hypothetical. In fact, as hypotheses go, this is the big bag full.

Certainly, if there was no... if there was established that there was no effect could be produced in a person

by looking at them from behind and so on, then this discussion is less interesting, although there

still remain some serious outstanding questions about the M-fields, about morphogenesis...

The relation of mind and matter, the nature of vision and light, these still remain questions.

They still remain questions. Nevertheless, it does seem very useful and correct to make this assumption

that such effect had been established. But this assumption, then, puts us at some time in the

future, supposing that sometime in the past and so on. In that case, the science that we'd be using

to discuss... to carry on this discussion would be a different one than we've got now, and that's

a further speculation that we're making. For example, if such thing were established,

then that would be the first of all the various so-called paranormal phenomenon of recent decades

in science to be validated and accepted. Exactly. That's why I think it's so important.

Me too. But probably that means that a lot of paradigms would be shifted, and therefore we would

also be seeking explanation of telepathy and other kinds of things that have to do with vision

at a distance, remote seeing, clairvoyance... Second sight, as I say.

Yes, I don't think it would automatically follow if this effect were established that people would

think it had anything to do with eyes or light at all. People would say... But with mind.

Yes, you've established that attention can be felt across space, and this is an establishment of

telepathy. It isn't the fact that I'm looking at the back of their head, it's that I'm focusing my

attention, and you know it's most effective when you really bore in. Well, output of the optical system

is not increasing. Output of the mental act of concentration is what is increasing. I just wanted to

get to the end of this sentence. If we agree then in the implication of this hypothesis that science has

been stood on its head, as it were, by the discovery of one paranormal thing so all of them are fair game,

we have to assume that field theory and so on would have expanded considerably so that various proposed

mathematical models for the M field and so on would abound. And therefore, when we come to the

your argument in favor of model two over model one on grounds of economy, I don't think that would be

effective. So therefore, I'm posing this question to think about why isn't model one actually more

more interesting, where we would think of the return influence from the receiver to the sender to be

carried in possibly a different field for which any model would be fair game. I don't really see the

the sense of identifying the, let's say we have an experimental result that in laboratory people can

get someone's attention from behind by looking, by boring in as Terence says. Would it really be

useful to propose the electromagnetic field as in any way an intermediary for that influence?

Or would we rather just have another field that would be a conceptual model for the observed

phenomenon, including its variation of force with distance and so on, trying to measure the speed

of light, as it were, if it were measurable, within that field and see if there was any comparison and so

on? Yes, yes. Well, I think that this question is actually empirically testable. I'll tell you how.

It's just occurred to me that one of the ways I'd thought of testing for the sense of being stared at is

first train people to get sensitive subjects, you know, so people can do it fairly reliably,

then try the effect of distance, staring through binoculars and so forth, then doing it over

closed-circuit TV, different rooms of the same house, can they tell when they're being looked at through

the TV? And if that works, real TV, you know, people can, do people when they're seen live on

the air by millions of people, feel any different from people being with a blank camera at them

where nobody's looking at them? Is there any different? Broadcasters say they can tell a big

difference when it's live. And maybe it's just imagination, but, just imagination, but whatever

the reason for it is, if one could find that this worked over TV, that people in a studio could tell when

people thousands of miles away were looking at them, you know, satellite and stuff. If it were going

through a reverse circuit, it would then have to go through electrons through the TV screen, back

through the wires of the TV set, out through the aerial, then through the electromagnetic field,

and then back through other electronic apparatus to sort of vibrations of things inside video cameras.

So I think that would be rather, the field hypothesis in that case would be more economical.

But then one could test out the time, the rate of movement of that field, because if one could

insert a time delay into the TV transmission, for example, two minutes or something, and then tell

the person, ask the person to say when they felt the thing hit them. I mean, it would be a very crude

measure of this, but it could tell one whether it was moving at the speed of light, or at least

anything roughly like that, or whether it took much longer, or what. I think the stack of hierarchical

hypotheses here is sufficiently thick to call this more or less fiction. And let's take an audio survey.

Terence, do you think that it's more or less economical to assume that this kind of influence

is carried in a new or more or less fictitious M field devoted to, invented to model this phenomenon

alone, or to try to cram it into the electrical wire? I think I'd have to go for a new field.

Me too. And furthermore, the idea of identifying this field while thinking of this phenomenon as

mental. I mean, this, I think we're, here's the bottom line. Since ancient times, we have thought

of the mental, physical, and spiritual phenomenon as operating in different planes. And I think that

these planes used metaphorically by the ancients and the rishis of India and all the other mystical

cultures are more or less what we're calling fields. And so they have found it useful to separate these

fields. So if we get a physical perception, whatever that word means, I'm not sure, the same as reception.

We get, anyway, some photons, and then we get a mental picture, or we get a brain picture,

we get a visual cortex picture, and then somehow this is, by resonance, becomes a mental picture in

the mind, and so on. And that has suggested a resonance between these two planes, an object,

as it were, in the physical, and an object, as it were, in the mental. Now, the electromagnetic field

is physical, at least I think of it as physical, although physicists might think of several parallel

planes where there are different fields operating, like the strong force, and the weak force, and so on,

the gravitational field. But thinking of all of that collectively as the physical field. And I

like, this is prejudice, I like the idea of the separate mental field. I like the idea that you had

mentioned before, the mind somehow follows the eye out and extends itself so as to actually engulf

the object. So, as it were, to know it through an intimate touch, that cognition could be a kind of

engulfing, like Paramecium eats the food, that this motion then is visualized in the mental plane,

and therefore belongs to a different field. Now, we're not inquiring as to the actual structure,

the true structure of the phenomenal mental and spiritual universe, only what kind of models are

useful to us. And economy is not the only consideration. So, coming from a deep habit,

an old runnel of thought with mental and physical being separate fields, I guess I'm feeling a bias

toward that view. On the other hand, if you could show that this telepathy, or whatever it is, the

transmission of an influence from one person to another could be modulated electromagnetically

by holding a magnet here that would strengthen them, then that would strengthen the idea of the

association, the actual proximity of the two separate planes, without even then suggesting to identify

them. Yes, well, I mean, there's a part of me, you see, that thinks the separate field idea is more

attractive. But I've been leaning over backwards to try and see whether, instead of introducing separate

fields, one can come to a new understanding of the electromagnetic field, and that the connection

between vision and light may be a very, very close one. And so that even if there is this other field

involved which moves out and engulfs it, this other field may be in intimate resonance with the

electromagnetic field, as it may be in the brain. I mean, there's no doubt that the changes in the

nerves are largely electromagnetic patterns. And there's scope for resonance there. But the light

that's coming to our eyes is not, is a complex, the fact I can see you. All that complexity is in the

light that's coming to my eyes. And if this thing is resonating with the whole field of vibration,

then indeed it will connect me through the light, because the field of vibration is between us in

the light, and it comes from you and comes to me. And so anything that resonated with the light

that's in between us would indeed directly connect us, as it were, via the light.

Well, I have trouble with this particle view. I'm more comfortable with the wave metaphor. And since

experts assure us that they're more or less equivalent, let's just think of waves. Here I am looking at these

waves on the ocean. And I see that there's a rock out there, and as the waves pass the rock,

they, their shape is changed. And somehow there is a hologram of the rock is then is the wave that

comes forward, it crashes on the beach, and then there's a reflected wave that goes back. And I think

that the electromagnetic field, as theoretical physicists or something view it anyway, is something

very, very like that. It has a mathematical model, which is a wave equation, and the speed of light

in the waves, and you see the ripples going along, and so on. Then this does seem a suitable medium for

influence to go both ways. But somehow I don't see it as having a rich enough structure to model all of

mental processes. I'm not suggesting all mental processes. I'm only modeling vision on this so far.

Yes, so to see that the visual part of the mental field as part of the M field, the mind, the visual

part is maybe just a very thin slice, which is somehow in very intimate contact and close resonance

with the electromagnetic field. That must be right. But to identify them for sending influences

around between people, I think, is very limiting. But it would be somehow better to carry on

the conversation about the model of the phenomenon after seeing the phenomenon, the result of actually

these experiments with the video and so on.

Well, yes, except that, you know, one doesn't have to wait for empirical results to discuss the

possibilities. And the reason why it's not worth it, why I think it's a bad strategy to wait for

empirical data, is that if one thinks through this phenomenon, if one thinks it through, one can derive

perhaps other experiments which are simpler and easier to do, and which could, might even correspond to

existing data. You know, there's a question of this. It's the, um, Terence said, what was it you said about,

this is your definition of progress, things progress toward a higher level of integration.

So the urgent desire of Einstein and other physicists for a unified field theory is an

expression of the universal urge for progress. And here we have Rupert, I think, lusting after this

unification that I think is a really, maybe this is a really good idea, if we can put it this way,

that the electromagnetic field is to be thought of as an integral part of the M field, of the mind,

of the soul of the world, that it just belongs in there, more in the mental part of the picture than

the physical. Well, I think surely if we do have the idea of interfacing planes, if you were trying

to take your metaphor of the levels, the old idea of different levels, with the planes being thought

of as fields, in the physical universe we do actually have a series of stratified levels. We've got the

quantum matter fields, which are to do with the strong and weak nuclear forces in atoms, and the

quantum matter fields are supposed to determine the shape, structure, properties of atoms and molecules.

But once you get about, I mean, they only work over very short ranges. The electromagnetic field is

what actually holds together atoms and molecules and crystals more than anything else. And the

electromagnetic field becomes the kind of higher organizing field of more complex structures.

So one could say the electromagnetic field is the associated with or the medium of the morphic

fields, if you like, of molecules and crystals. And then when you get to plants and vegetative growth,

there's a morphic field of vegetative growth, which interfaces with the electromagnetic field

somehow as the lower level field. It sort of inter-vibrates with it. And then that can be included

in animals within what Aristotle called the animal soul, which is the organizing principle of instincts

and movements, which organizes and coordinates the activities of the nervous system. And then you can

have hierarchically higher planes above that, more embracing fields, perceptual fields, fields of sort

of higher level understanding, etc., which work down... So you have this plane of fields which are like

the planes, but they're in a nested hierarchy. And then the gravitational field embraces all as the

universal field. I got it. Novum organum, new order of the universe, which there's more fields. If, well, the

electromagnetic field as a constituent component of the end field, the mind field, or the world's soul,

should be utilized economically to carry as much of the burden of explanation as possible. And certainly

all of these morphogenetic phenomena about crystals and so on, they're so intimately connected by

resonance with the electromagnetic field that the EM field itself might be enough to explain this

evolution structure. So I think it's time to bring up dousing. Well, you mentioned evidence for

this sort of thing, which has been ignored. I mean, dousing passed through my mind.

And pheromones is another possibility here. There are not only electromagnetic fields,

but there are chemical fields. And I think that pheromones are vastly underrated for their organizing

power in biology and social systems. And that, in fact, the whole earth may be essentially chemically

regulated through very small molecule, organic compounds that are a byproduct of the metabolism of

various species, but which percolate out through the environment and set up the field, the ambiance,

in which a lot of animal and plant business is done. I mean, to me, the vegetative mind and all this,

there have to be mechanisms for all this influence. And I think probably easily

volatilized low molecular weight compounds are running a lot of this. It's even conceivable that

Rupert's experiments on the looking at the back of people's heads would show that it worked in a room

of this size, but that the television transmissions would fail. And that would argue to me that it was,

in fact, pheromonal. I mean, if materialists can seriously argue that the crystallization phenomenon

has to do with seed crystals moving around on chemists' beards, then they will certainly be

an agreement that the percolation rates of nature are effective enough to move these control and

message-bearing chemicals around everywhere. Well, this idea, I think, is very supportive of

Rupert's economy move, because the olfactory bulb is nothing but a transducer from the chemical field

to the electromagnetic. For example, in Walter Freeman's model, just a small number of molecules

of the scent, the pheromone, is enough to excite the identifiable morphology of the electromagnetic wave

across the bulb, which is then identified by some kind of associative memory living primarily in the

electromagnetic activity of the brain, with whatever is the association for that scent. So there's a coupling

that kind of shows the electromagnetic field as an intermediary between the chemical field and the mental

field. Which it obviously is, because the chemical field is simply a higher-order manifestation of the

magnetic field, because most of these volatile compounds have very electronically active ring structures.

Yes, it's a resonance phenomenon. Exactly, charge transfer and resonance and all of this stuff is happening.

It is the most electronically active molecules that are the drugs, the pheromones, the growth regulators, and so forth.

Yes, so here we've got sensors that respond in a kind of electromagnetic resonance to these things,

which then could, by morphic resonance, bring into play a much larger field of memory and dissociation,

but the interfacing would be electromagnetic again. And in hearing, you see, if we follow through these lines,

the smell isn't localized anywhere particularly. Our vision, when I see you, you are localized

somewhere outside me, where you are. If I hear you, the sound is also localized outside me. I don't hear

sounds as if they're arising inside my auditory cortex. I hear them as if they're arising around me

in three-dimensional space, and I can locate, in fact, which direction they're coming from.

So, this means that we must not only be surrounded by a kind of visual perceptual field that spreads out from

this and fills the space of our perception.

It writes in the space of our perception.

.

out to the distant stars when we look at them. But we're also surrounded by an auditory perceptual

field, which is again located around us. And it means, therefore, that something must move out.

The sounds come in, and something must, as it were, move out from us in the opposite direction to the

sound. Well, this perhaps militates against the photon argument, because in this case it would

have to be a kind of antiphonon that was moving, and it would move at the velocity of sun, not the

velocity of light, if it was the kind of shadow side of the sound wave that was used as the medium.

And its undetectability is going to be troubling. Well, people may be able to tell when they're

being listened to, and you sometimes doubt it when you see some people talking, but

there's a simple experiment here. You have people talking, saying a message down a telephone,

and at the other end, according to some random program, you have somebody listening to what

they're saying, or not listening. And you have to... they have to be able to tell you when

they think they're being listened to. That's a simple experiment. It can be done by anybody,

and if it's done locally at local call rates, it would be very inexpensive, not requiring

a large grant or anything. Well, with radio, too.

I just think it won't work. You look at the ocean and you see it has infinite structure and complexity, and nevertheless, it could never function as a brain. I think that, I mean, the brain is, in the neurophysiology, it presents to the experimentalist, certainly much simpler than the mind. There's a poor shadow of a mind, and its structure is definitely richer. I mean, it cannot function through electromagnetic

field alone, even though all of the effects are kind of manifesting the electromagnetic field. For example, a given thought might be a pattern where electromagnetic fields in the extracellular space control clouds of calcium ion, for example, that we can think of them as clouds in the sky that are being pulled this way and that electromagnetically, and then if there's a large number of them adjacent to some empty

receptors or receptors or something, well, this motion of the cation is through the electromagnetic field, but the electromagnetic field without some charges moving around can't really manage to do to control all these multidimensional patterns where you have the layered structure of cortices with pyramidal cells connecting, and then you have solid bodies of stuff like the glial cells that the actual materiality of it, the fine structure with the ion channels and this and that, somehow that structure is much richer

than the electromagnetic field. Just to think on the level of mathematical models, you have an excellent mathematical model, I mean, not to identify these models with the field, but just to think of an idea of the measure of the complexity of one of these fields, as currently conceived by us, would be the complexity of the mathematical model currently in vogue.

So we have Maxwell's model for the electromagnetic field. It's all described by a tensor field to a bivector. It has four indices. It takes this much complexity. A simple tensor field describes the electromagnetic field in regard to an observer moving through at whatever velocity in the context of special and general relativity and so on.

For the physical fields in the brain, the usual models are tensors that are much larger, that take into account this physical structure, symmetries, the creation and destruction of symmetries moving around, and so on.

So the brain, as described by currently the better mathematical model, which is, it'll get much more complex as time goes on, has, it requires much more mathematical structure to even discuss the thing or imitate its behavior than does the mathematical model for the electromagnetic field.

And that brain is much closer to the mental field. So I think the electromagnetic field is too thin to occupy more than a fraction of a fractal dimension of the entire structure of the field, carrying recognition, memory, how to serve in tennis, and learning a new language, and recognizing haiku, and all this.

Yes. Yes. Well, I mean, I am somewhat inclined to agree. But I think somehow it has to play this kind of interface role between the chemical and the psychic, or the morphic realm.

It has to interface with morphic fields somehow, because one has to have these planes linked together. There's another question you see that arises, how does the electromagnetic field interface with the quantum matter fields of the electron, because the electron and the nucleus, the nucleus structure and the electrons in their orbit are held in those orbits by quantum matter fields, not by electromagnetic fields.

In fact, in fact, being opposite charges, if it were just electromagnetic, the electrons would plummet into the nucleus. So the structure is actually maintained by fields which, in a sense, are stronger than the electromagnetic field, which resist it and override it, and the electromagnetic field sort of works around those fields.

It's a more subtle field. But it works around them. So we've already got one model. I don't know how much attention people have paid to the interface of those two fields, but they are separate kinds of fields. And they interface because the electron and the nucleus are electrically charged. But at the same time, their structure is made of quantum matter fields.

Yes. Well, if Nick Herbert were here, he'd say that it was the quantum matter field and not the electromagnetic field. Maybe he would say that it was the intermediary between the physical and mental planes.

I guess I should have mentioned in the beginning of this podcast that, for the most part, today's program was a whole lot heavier on scientific jargon than I normally like.

During the middle of their discussion, I wasn't sure if my brain was going to explode or if I was going to just nod off when their voices started getting lower and lower and lower.

I did my best to boost the volume along the way, but there was only so much I could do in parts of it.

That session actually reminded me of a workshop of Terrence McKenna's that I attended and where during the Saturday afternoon session, a guy just flat went to sleep on the floor and then he started snoring.

You know, seeing the look on Terrence's face when the snoring started was worth the price of admission.

Oh, Terrence was really cracking up about it.

I think I mentioned this earlier about getting an email from Steve, who lives in South Africa, and glad to have you guys down there joining us, by the way.

And he's planning on building a 2012 portal to help focus the various aspects of that date, and I got to wondering if any others of you out there are doing that, too.

And if so, I'd like to hear about it.

I also heard from Lauren about the idea of a new calendar, and one of the things that she has done is to create a daybook with illustrations she's created for each of the 260 days in the Mayan Zolkin calendar.

I'll try to remember to put a link to her site with the program notes for this podcast, but the URL is easy to remember.

It's www.dharmaawakenings.com.

That's D-H-A-R-M-A-W-A-K-E-N-I-N-G-S.com.

Only one A in the middle there.

Also, I'd like to thank Adolfo for pointing out a typo I made, or maybe it was actually some kind of a dyslexian-freudian slip where I spelled trial logs, T-I-R-E logs, as if I was tired of these logs.

Hey, I really do appreciate you guys pointing things like this out to me.

And Adolfo also asked an important question about the term universal human that I used in my Beyond 2012 talk at the Oracle Gathering.

What I did, not very elegantly, I know, was to exchange the phrase Homo Divinus for universal human.

And if you've been following my essays and talks about this topic over the past few years, you know that I've morphed my ideas from Homo Cyber to Homo Divinus and now to universal human.

And I hope that clears it up a little.

Well, in case you missed it, KMO's Sea Realm podcast number 11 featured an interview with the editor-in-chief of Foreign Policy magazine about his book, Illicit, How Smugglers, Traffickers, and Copycats Are Hijacking the Global Economy.

I hadn't heard of this book before, and it really sounds interesting, so some of you may want to also check out that program.

There's a link to the Sea Realm on our podcast page, by the way, which you can find at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts.

And also in that podcast by KMO is the first part of an interview with Rick Doblin, the founder of the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies.

And in that interview, Rick mentions a lawsuit in which his organization is suing the federal government for the right to grow its own cannabis for research studies that have already been approved by other branches of the government.

And if that topic is of interest to you, then you may want to also check out podcast number 14 from right here in the Psychedelic Salon.

I think that's the one that includes Rick's talk at the National Press Club the day that lawsuit was being heard.

Before I go, I guess I should mention that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share-Alike 2.5 license.

Thanks again to Chateau for the use of their music here in the Psychedelic Salon and thank all of you who sent emails and messages through tribe.net.

I do read everything that comes in and I do my best to reply when I can.

And so for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

Be well, my friends.

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

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

Those of you who have been with us here in the Psychedelic Salon for a while know that for the past four weeks I've been producing three podcasts a week.

And you've also probably noticed that each week the podcasts seem to come out a little later and a little later.

In fact, today's podcast by my schedule is over a day late already.

So obviously three a week is probably more than I can keep up with.

At least if I'm going to ever finish reworking my website, do a little email and most importantly listen to some of my own favorite podcasts.

So for the next month or so, I'm going to cut back to two shows a week.

But with all of the good programming coming out of the Cannabis Podcast Network, the Sea Realm and quite a few others,

you should have plenty of mind candy to keep you engaged during the holiday season.

And to introduce today's program, I'm going to follow a suggestion that Fig sent in.

And once I read it, it seemed obvious that I'm surprised at myself for not doing it before.

And what she suggested is that when I play the second side of one of the trilogue tapes,

that I introduce it by playing a few minutes from the end of the previous side first.

That way we can all hear where the conversation left off and get back into the flow of conversation from the previous podcast.

Brilliant idea, Fig.

And thanks for sending it along.

So without any further ado, here is a brief soundbite from the end of Side A of Tape 5

in the series of trilogues with Terrence McKenna, Ralph Abraham and Rupert Sheldrake

that were held in the month of September in 1989 and again in 1990

at the Esalen Institute on the California coast.

And we begin with Ralph Abraham's speculation about the human brain.

The brain, as described by currently the better mathematical model,

which is, it will get much more complex as time goes on,

has, it requires much more mathematical structure

to even discuss the thing or imitate its behavior

than does the mathematical model for the electromagnetic field.

And that brain is like much closer to the physical universe than to the mental.

So I think the electromagnetic field is too thin

to occupy more than a fraction of a fractal dimension

of the entire structure of the field,

carrying recognition, memory,

how to serve in tennis,

and learning a new language,

and recognizing haiku and all this.

Yes, well, I mean, I am somewhat inclined to agree.

But I think somehow it has to play this kind of interface role

between the chemical and the psychic

or the morphic realm.

It has to interface with morphic fields somehow

because one has to have these planes linked together.

There's another question you see that arises,

how does the electromagnetic field interface

with the quantum matter fields of the electron?

Because the electron and the nucleus,

the nucleus, its structure, and the electrons in their orbit

are held in those orbits by quantum matter fields,

not by electromagnetic fields.

In fact, being opposite charges,

if it were just electromagnetic,

electrons would plummet into the nucleus.

So the structure is actually maintained

by fields which, in a sense,

are stronger than the electromagnetic field,

which resist it and override it.

And the electromagnetic field sort of works around those fields.

It's a more subtle field,

but it works around them.

So we've already got one model.

I don't know how much attention people have paid

to the interface of those two fields,

but they are separate kinds of fields.

And they interface because the electron

and the nucleus are electrically charged,

but at the same time,

their structure is made of quantum matter fields.

Yes.

Well, if Nick Herbert were here,

he'd say that it was the quantum matter field

and not the electromagnetic field.

Maybe he would say that was the intermediary

between the physical and the mental planes.

But, Ralph,

if you feel that the electromagnetic field

is inadequate to what Rupert's asking of it,

then you must be equally skeptical

of the morphogenetic field.

It sounds to me like what you're saying.

No, I'm not skeptical.

I think that what we're trying to do

is through the revision

of the actual phenomenon of light,

of our experience,

to make up a model

for some of the phenomenon,

which now modelers,

I mean scientists,

prefer to totally ignore.

And the electromagnetic field

and its history as a modeling effort,

you know,

its hermeneutical history

is an excellent history to imitate.

And what we must do

is try to fashion a field concept

around the phenomena

that have been ignored.

And it does seem very attractive

to think of the electromagnetic field

as some kind of favored intermediary

among all the physical fields.

Well, let's just put it this way,

that perhaps the M field

or the mind of the world,

the oversolar or whatever,

will end up with a mathematical model

which is simply field theoretic,

maybe with many dimensions,

and that is coupled only

to the electromagnetic field.

And the electromagnetic field,

of course,

is coupled to all the other

physical fields

and through that intermediary.

So this is a combination model,

a sandwich model,

which might be successful

in explaining perception,

cognition,

idiosyncrasies of time,

and that there would be sort of

eventually a general relativity theory

for the M field,

which would explain time

and novelties like clairvoyance

and so on.

And in that case,

I think what we're talking about now

is the conception,

the struggle to envision

the coupling between the M field

and the electromagnetic field,

including wave metaphors,

particle metaphors,

and so on.

And that's kind of what it's about,

at least model one,

you described at the beginning

explicitly in these terms.

That's right.

Well, my first model,

you see,

has always been

that the perception

and mental activity

must have a kind of

field-like structure.

They'd be morphic fields

of some kind.

These perceptual fields

are in turn part

of these behavioral fields,

which involve action

as well as perception.

The perception

and the action

are linked together.

They're not,

it's not motiveless perception

that one's usually carrying out.

It's linked in some way

to action.

Bergson said,

all perceptions

are potential actions

or possible actions.

There's a sense

in which they're

very closely related.

So once,

this was my first model

and I thought of

the sense of being stared at

as a way of testing

for the existence

of this other kind of field.

It then occurred to me

that there's this mystery

of light.

I still think,

you see,

Maxwell's electromagnetic

formulations of light

are much too simple.

You see,

whereas you were saying

the model of the brain

to get the complexity

out of it

that's in it

would have to be

more complex

than his equations.

That's obviously true.

But when I'm seeing you,

all the information

about you,

everything that's transferred

to me

through my vision

is coming through

the electromagnetic field

and Maxwell's equation

couldn't...

Well, is it?

I mean,

are we not then

buying the oversimplification

of the physicist

in assuming that?

Why not have

a full mental wave

traveling

from my mental being

to yours

as a wave phenomenon

or a particle phenomenon,

resonance phenomenon

that takes place

in the mental field alone?

Plus, you exist

in a cloud of pheromones

that are also

transducing information.

Yes,

but in parenthesis

about pheromones,

this staring-up test

can exclude those

by being done

through glass window,

double-glazed glass windows.

But in fact,

in all cases

when it's been done

that you're aware of,

hasn't the possibility

that the pheromone

was carrying the effect

been...

No, it's been done

through windows.

One of the most

common anecdotal sources

of this

is people who tell me

that when in traffic jams,

they're stuck in traffic jams

or at traffic lights

with the windows rolled up,

you know,

and the air conditioning

on them in the winter window,

that they look at

the back of the neck

of women in other cars

who turn round.

I mean,

there are a lot of men

who find this a favourite

pursuit at traffic lights.

I've had many anecdotes

told me of this kind,

and that's through

two lots of glass.

No, that's pretty good.

So, I think that...

No, but even if you

can handle this,

if you could explain this

with pheromones,

that means that

I would have to have

the capability

to focus my pheromones

on a single person

with mental power alone

or visual

or looking

or whatever it is.

So...

So it's not a very

good hypothesis.

Anyway,

I think it could be

empirically excluded

at a very early stage

through these glass partitions.

So back...

So back to the physical...

the electromagnetic field.

If one wanted

to model the information

coming,

you know,

through...

If one did want

to model it properly,

how I could see you

through the electromagnetic field,

you'd need more

than Maxwell's equations.

Yes.

And the thing is

that the way we treat light

is we take for granted

the information

that travels through it.

Virtually everything we read

is going through

the electromagnetic field.

All the information

in libraries

we access through it.

I mean,

everything that

human knowledge

is capable of

in a stored or written form

is mediated through it.

We'd be in a pickle

without light.

We'd be in a pickle

without light.

And so Maxwell's equation

does seem a little simple

to model the transfer

of the entire stock

of human knowledge.

Well, we've come to

the crux of the problem

because Maxwell's equations

was made up

to model the observables

and it did a really good job.

And here we're kind of stuck

for lack of observables

in spite of this

anecdotal evidence,

which to me

has the same force

as a report

from the Argonne

National Laboratory.

Nevertheless,

I think that

we ought to think

about the possibility

that this effect

will not be confirmed

in laboratories,

which is already

the experience

of so many

experimental efforts

over these years

with the cards

and so on

to confirm

the so-called paranormal.

Whereas there is evidence,

it always seems to be

just the slightest bulge

of the curve

to the right or left

of the absolutely insignificant

result,

that these phenomenon

that we want to

capture in a model

don't seem to be

very robust.

And they come and go

because,

due to the fact perhaps

that they live primarily

in the mental field,

they're very subject

to the noise,

the heat bath

in the mental field,

which maybe all the time

I'm trying to get

the person to turn,

somebody else somewhere

trying to get them

not to turn,

or they're trying to get

somebody else to turn.

I mean, I don't know.

But for whatever reason,

these effects are very

difficult to confirm.

And I'm thinking of that

as being a kind of evidence

in itself,

that on the one hand,

we have the very widespread

impression that these things

exist on behalf

of many people

dousing and so on.

And on the other hand,

the impossibility

to confirm them

in the experimental paradigm

of modern science.

That somehow this is just

suggesting to me

the necessity

for a thicker model,

a richer field

in which to try

to do the modeling,

where there's just

chaotic attractors

everywhere

and no homeostasis

or anything like that.

Well, yes,

I agree we need

a thicker field

to deal with most

of these

parapsychological phenomena.

I suspect the sense

of being stared at

may be different

under the Barclay test,

you see,

whereas the others

have proved evanescent

and hard to pin down.

It's not that this

is proved like that.

It's that this

is something

that parapsychologists

for some mysterious reason

have assiduously ignored.

And there literally

are three published papers

in the literature

and I gave a lecture

on this three or four months

ago to the Society

for Psychical Research.

I gave a lecture

called The Sense

of Being Stared At

and there all the veterans

of the British Society

for Psychical Research

were present,

you know,

ghost investigators

of yesteryear

and hardened

experimentalists

and so on.

Ectoplasma nuts.

Yes.

You know,

veterans of many seances

and so on.

They were all there

and all the luminaries

of the Society

and not one of them

had ever thought of this

as a paranormal

or psychical phenomenon

after 50 years

of psychical research.

They told me so afterwards.

They were fascinated

by the lecture

because in a sense

this really has been

a blind spot

of parapsychology

and if you look

through any textbook

on parapsychology

there's nothing,

no mention

of the sense

of being stared at.

Well,

will this result

in some new experiments

then

or what must we do

to stimulate

some research?

Well,

I'm working on it.

First of all,

I've decided

that I've got

to try and train myself.

I've got this

biofeedback

training system

for this.

You have two people.

One sits

with their back

to the other.

The other tosses a coin

and if it's heads

you stare at them

and if it's tails

you look away

and think of

something else

and so you make

a click

when you've done

the coin

you're ready to stare.

If it's heads

you then stare

and the other person

from the click

knows the trial's begun

and then they say

yes or no

depending on if they

think they're being

stared at

and they're right

or wrong.

You record the result

and then you tell them

correct or incorrect.

So there's instant

like biofeedback

and one can train

oneself to test

various subtle,

I've done hundreds

of trials of this

test on various

subtle sensations

and the interesting

thing is that most

people are more

often right

when they are

being looked at

than when they're

not.

But the reason

I wanted to discuss

this in the first

place is that I

actually don't know

which to think.

I don't know

whether it's better

to adopt the

electromagnetic

hypothesis

which has the

attraction

of giving

another side

to the phenomenon

of light

which most people

think is just

physical

and it's all

in textbooks

because I think

light's far more

mysterious than

that.

And it also

that's one

advantage.

The second is

that it then

takes us into

a whole other

area

which is that

this metaphorical

use of words

like the light

of consciousness

and the fact

that when we

dream we see

things in a kind

of light.

We do have

a kind of

inner light

which illuminates

psychedelic visions,

dreams,

daydreams,

you know,

visual images

with your eyes

closed.

There's some

sense in which

our imagination

or our image

making facility

is self-luminous.

Now,

is that kind

of light

if understanding

or perception

if vision

is related

to normal

physical light

here we may

have something

where the

physical light

comes first

and vision

comes second

when we're

looking at

somebody.

You know,

if you turn

the light off

you don't see

them.

But in this

other case

it may be

the other way

around

and their

relationship

may be

expressed

in the

reverse sense

that if

you have

vision

in the

visionary

sense

of vision

that vision

may itself

generate light

through an

association

between vision

and light

so that at

least subjectively

they're self-luminous.

And then if

somebody has

visions enough

themselves

according to

all traditions

they start

developing

halos

and their

bodies

actually

become

luminous

according to

mystical

and spiritual

traditions.

It's interesting

according to

one school

of pharmacologists

attention

is the

thing they

most suspect

of being

mediated

by DMT

because

DMT is

so quickly

able to be

brought forth

and degraded

it's very

has a

fast reaction

time

which is

exactly what

you need

in a system

where you're

going to

throw

attention

first from

one object

to another

and these

tryptamine

halucinogens

certainly

fill the

head

with

light

I mean

if you

take

the

visionary

the

intensity

of the

visionary

experience

as an

index

of the

intensity

of inner

light

then

they

release

this

and

they're

near

relatives

in

brain

chemistry

serotonin

is

transduced

to

melatonin

by a

light

mediated

reaction

in other

words

light

actually

enters

through

the

eyes

and

a

part

of

the

visual

pathway

breaks

off

and

goes

to

the

pineal

gland

where

photons

work

a

chemical

change

on

serotonin

and

turn it

into

melatonin

and

so

the

tryptamines

their

near

relatives

all this

stuff

is going

on

in

the

pineal

and

it's

all

light

driven

chemistry

nevertheless

it seems

that this

kind of

vision

has

nothing

to do

with

light

with the

electromagnetic

field

even though

these

neurotransmitters

are very

photosensitive

the fact

is that

in the

dark

you have

very

visual

on the

retina

producing

a

chemical

wave

etc

so

in

the

alternation

many

times

back

and

forth

between

electromagnetic

and

chemical

waves

in

well

neurophysiological

level

these

psychedelics

for example

are

taking

over

at

some

point

and

supplying

what appears

to be

the result

of the

previous

train

of

several

reversals

so

this

illumination

on that

level

actually

the photons

can be

replaced

as it

were

by this

other

messenger

well

it's

interesting

this

business

of

light

I

probably

tried

this

out

on you

in

the

past

Ralph

but

one

of

my

cosmological

fantasies

of

years

past

was

I

You know, there's this curious problem with the fact that the photon has no antiparticle.

It's the only particle without an antiparticle, and this is a really sort of disturbing asymmetry in things.

And

so, who preceded me in this? I think Hans Alvand, this Swedish cosmologist,

he suggested that at the Big Bang,

the reason there is such a low incidence of antimatter in this region of the universe,

is that actually the Big Bang was not a spurting of matter into the continuum,

but that it went in two directions, and out of a single point, like a double jet, and

two bubbles were blown at once, in other words, and we are in one universe with a very high proportion of

matter versus antimatter. And there is a twin of our universe, the anti-universe, and we cannot detect

it, or see it, or transmit information between ourselves and it in any way. And in this anti-universe,

every particle's antiparticle exists. Well, in a higher dimensional manifold,

these things have gone off into the great void, but they are actually on a collision

trajectory of such a nature that, after a certain amount of time, they will re-encounter each other.

And when this happens, because it's happening in a higher dimension,

it isn't like a collision of two solid objects, it's more like the sudden instantaneous superimposition of two objects,

so that this cosmic collision, if you will, could actually occur across the entire face of the topological manifold instantly.

It would be as though every particle in the universe underwent collision with its antiparticle at the exact same moment.

Three-dimensional blackout.

Yes, and at that moment, parity would be conserved. All particles in the universe would cease to exist except the anomalous photon,

anomalous photon, which would be in this moment in which all the rest of matter disappeared.

The photons would then be left to obey the physics of a universe made entirely of photons.

And what this would be, we can't say. But the form would be preserved in that final moment.

All form would be turned to light.

The body of the cosmos.

Yes, and so since tradition is so keen on resolving things into light,

and what's also amusing about this kind of cosmology is that it's a totally apocalyptic cosmology.

There would be no warning. This collision with the antimatter twin could occur at any moment.

Another vision of the end. Terence MacLeod.

Of cosmologies, there is no end.

And of apocalypses, there is no end.

I think it might be useful, Rupert, to think about the habits of electromagnetic nature,

and the behavior of the electromagnetic field as evolving according to habits of the morphogenetic field,

explaining in this way the resonance between them, as above, so below, that the EM field has created,

the EM field, do its bidding in the quantum matter level.

Well, certainly, you see, if the electromagnetic field...

it is the bearer of all visual information in the world.

I mean, of everything we see, of everything in every book, in every diagram.

Now, this brings me to another fantasy or idea, as the electromagnetic field is an interface,

not just between the matter fields in us and the mental aspects or psychic or morphic aspects of our being,

but also the electromagnetic field is playing a similar role in the mental structure of the soul of the world.

You see, if the soul of the world...

if there is a world soul which permeates the entire cosmos,

which in its bodily level is mostly expressed in the gravitational field,

but which at its sort of knowing or psychic or perceptual level

is mainly expressed through some kind of interface with the electromagnetic field,

the electromagnetic field would be a perfect medium for the world soul's omniscience,

and then through the world soul for divine omniscience,

because nothing that happens doesn't affect the electromagnetic field.

The holographic reality of the electromagnetic field at any one moment is what's happening.

At least it's in exact correspondence with what's happening.

And so all the light in the universe, including this kind of cross-currents of memory that would be set up,

for example, by the continued presence of the cosmic microwave background radiation,

the fossil light of the Big Bang.

It's still there as a kind of background.

So there'd be even a kind of light memory built into the whole universe.

So this similar model, you see, gives us the universal electromagnetic field as the universal basis of the world soul,

as of its knowing or perception or interfacing with other planes of reality,

and as a medium of divine omniscience.

Well, I like the idea of the electromagnetic field being the chosen representative,

the ideal intermediary that is positioned in the hierarchy of fields in that way.

Its position in the hierarchy of fields is very much as the position of our individual consciousness

in the hierarchy of consciousness in the world soul.

And therefore, we have in our individual consciousness a particular affinity with the electromagnetic field,

with electromagnetic perception, reception, and so on, as epitomized by vision.

And if this fantasy has any reality, then it seems like it should be easier,

if there would be a phenomenon of a mental effect of the action of mind over matter,

then the easiest thing to affect should be the electromagnetic field.

As in, dousing is a direct sensitivity to magnetic field.

Then you'd wonder, is it easy to, for example, to mentally influence the magnetometer?

Let me tell you one fantasy I've had for an experiment of this kind.

You know those puzzle pictures that I did experiments with?

You know, you have those black and white blotches.

Did you see those ones I used in my experiments?

When you recognize it, there's a visual gestalt is set up.

You see the man on the horseback against the pattern of blobs.

And you now see it differently.

So, if there's anything in this sort of thing coming out as well as coming in,

when you look at that picture of black and white blotches knowing what it is,

as opposed to scanning helplessly for trying to find what it is,

you should be seeing it differently.

And, in particular, where the lines, the outlines of the horse are,

which you sort of fill in mentally,

those lines should be reinforced as above other parts of it.

Now, if this picture were produced by means of a liquid crystal display,

or something of that kind,

where you could actually work full of sort of probabilistic processes

that could actually be monitored in some way,

I'm not quite sure how to do the technology of this,

but some probabilistic light-sensitive processes

that were built into this picture that you're looking at,

you know, little units,

it might be possible to pick up,

when you explain to somebody,

you have somebody look at it,

you then show them the answer and they look at it again,

and the pattern of output from this thing,

of this pattern of probabilisms,

may change because it may be less random

now that certain lines and directions have been recognized and reinforced.

And that might be a way,

if one could possibly design the sensor side of this apparatus,

it's a matter of finding something that's probabilistic.

I would imagine that in a photographic film,

whether the silver grains go or not is probabilistic,

except with high light intensity they'd all go very fast,

but I should imagine with very low light intensity it must be probabilistic.

So one could possibly do it with some kind of suitably fine-grained photo Martian thing,

where one has a light intensity,

where it's a probabilistic matter whether you get the thing going over the edge or not.

Do you see what I mean? Some experiment of that kind, some sensor.

Maybe with a computer terminal or a photoluminescent screen

there might be a way to be affected by looking that someone else could see.

That's right. If it's a photoluminescent screen

that's working probabilistically at a low level of intensity,

you might be able to get a kind of enhancement of the luminescences along the outline, as it were.

Just one more word on divine omniscience.

You see, it seems to me that any theology of divine omniscience

would require any all-knowing mind.

Any theory of any omniscience, whether it's the world soul as an intermediary,

or God directly, or the goddess, or any form of omniscience,

would require the divine mind to know everything.

And since knowing everything would include knowing all the properties and states

of the electromagnetic and the gravitational fields,

one can be pretty sure that what's going on in those fields

is essential to divine omniscience, just on general principles.

But the usual model I find when people think about divine omniscience

is to think of it as an entirely miraculous process,

totally disconnected from any kind of physical reality, somehow standing outside it.

Yet, any reflection on the subject would show that divine omniscience must involve

not just sort of somehow standing outside all things,

but in some sense being imminent within them as well,

knowing from within, not just seeing from outside.

And therefore must, in some sense, pervade the electromagnetic field.

Just as Newton thought the medium of divine omniscience was space,

absolute space, which he called the sensorium of God.

Everything happens in space, and therefore if space is the sensorium of God,

everything happens in God's sensorium,

and God therefore knows where everything is and how fast it's moving.

Why is divine omniscience a necessary concept?

We need a little primer on divine omniscience.

I mean, can't the universe get along just being partially aware of what's going on?

Well, it depends whether you think there's any...

There are a lot of people who think that, if they're pantheists,

they think that the universe is in some sense conscious,

or the soul of the world in some senses perceiving what's going on,

not just entirely unconscious.

Or, and there are many theological traditions of divine omniscience.

There are a lot of people who've got a stake in cosmic omniscience.

I'm just stating this as a sociological fact.

And what is so good about it?

Well, that there's a lot to be said for models of reality.

They're very popular, and I think that they're intriguing.

To think of models of reality in which there is a knowing...

a sense of knowing associated with the cosmos.

I mean, it's in so many...

Isn't that different from...

I mean, divine omniscience...

We all have a sense of knowing, but we're not omniscient.

No.

What problems are solved by hypothesizing that notion?

It's to do with the question of the nature of our own minds.

You see, there are two possible models.

One is that our minds are the most advanced in the universe,

and that's the standard model of secular humanism,

that the rest of the universe is essentially unconscious,

and that living organisms crawled out of the primal broth,

and then through the miracles of random mutation

and neo-Darwinian natural selection,

gave rise to organisms such as ourselves with complex nervous systems

that happen to have this interesting subjective correlative consciousness.

And this consciousness we have has emerged out of the darkness of the Earth

and the darkness of the universe,

and it's the highest consciousness there is.

That's dogs and cats, you know, may be a little way towards us,

and it's conceivable intelligent beings exist on other planets,

but basically this is it.

That's the one model.

The other model, the more traditional one,

is to derive human consciousness from a much larger consciousness,

which pervades the cosmos, pervades the Earth,

pervades the whole of life on Earth,

and that our consciousness has arisen by a kind of diminution or descent

of some higher kind of consciousness,

rather than ascent from a layer

and finally from a non-existent kind of consciousness,

that we're a reduced version,

a self-contracted version of a higher consciousness,

rather than an inflated version of a lower one or none at all.

That's the biomedical background.

I find it more reasonable to suppose that our minds

are in touch with larger minds,

and in many ways shaped with larger mental systems,

those of whole societies, ecosystems,

Gaia, the galaxy, the entire cosmos,

and maybe a cosmic mind beyond that,

or a universal...

I think it more reasonable to think that our minds...

Well, I can go as far as a Gaian mind,

because it seems a biological object,

not a theological hypostatization.

The mind of the whole universe seems unnecessary to hypothesize

and unlikely to be encountered.

It's no problem.

Suppose there was another Gaia, another inhabited planet.

Then it will have its own Gaian mind.

And they will be citizens of the universe even as we are.

And between our Gaian mind and theirs, there might be a dialogue in progress.

Yes, but nothing of this suggests theology.

This is just exotic of biology.

No, you just projected theology onto it

as an association with the phrase divine omniscience,

which is usually associated with Yahweh, the one God,

and his divine omniscience.

That is unnecessary to me, that association.

As soon as you have gone as far as the Gaian mind,

you can certainly go further,

as there is obviously a hierarchy of worlds up into the universe, as it were.

Yes, although I'm not convinced that the hierarchy is minded at every level.

The universe is obviously a hierarchy, but if there were simply...

Does Jupiter have a Jupiterian mind?

Well, possibly, but a stranger question is,

does the solar system have a mind?

I think that's sort of silly.

No, I don't think so.

That's the interface to discuss that.

Yes, I think that's the interface, you see,

because for me it seems entirely natural to suppose,

on any holistic model of reality,

that if Gaia has a kind of mind, the soul of the Earth,

then the Gaian mind will be embedded in the solar system mind,

and that in the galactic mind.

And that these higher levels of mind consciousness being,

which may be hard to conceive by us,

are very likely to exist by a simple logical argument.

I don't think that...

Although not necessarily in a hierarchical order.

I mean, chipmunks are not small portions of whales.

No, no, no, but chipmunks are not inside whales.

Chipmunks are inside sort of terrestrial ecosystems.

They're small portions of terrestrial ecosystems.

Whales are in different ecosystems,

and both these, the oceanic and the terrestrial ecosystems,

are part of the Gaia.

So the hierarchy is of more inclusive units.

The solar system is not on the same level as the Earth.

It's a higher level of organization of which the Earth is part.

The galaxy is a higher level of which the solar system is part.

So we need to decide whether we can have any interest in a lunar mind or not,

or a solar mind.

I think it's an Earth lunar mind.

Yes, I think the Moon's part of the Earth as a system.

It orbits the Earth.

It's in its gravitational field.

It's in our blood.

It causes our time.

If you accept Gaian mind,

do you think there's a similar kind of mind associated with Jupiter?

Yes, I think planets are animals.

Without having primates and so on running around.

Yes, planets are like animals.

But I don't believe that...

I think that...

Then there's a mental ecosystem of our solar system,

which is the solar mind.

Now we've got to there.

And that's in astrology, you see.

That's the island.

It's the movement of the solar organism.

Now we've got your limit.

But a minute ago it was the Gaian mind.

Now we've boosted you without rockets to the solar mind.

Certain other places in the solar system

seem potentially open to the support of recognizable forms of life.

The oceans of Europa...

No, but does it need recognizable life

to have a mind?

You see, in the Gaian mind

it is not only the so-called living beings in it,

microbes included, that have mind.

Right?

The ecosystem is a mind.

And the Gaian mind includes...

Well, but you don't want to define mind so broadly

that it's no longer recognizable as what we say

when we ordinarily use the word mind.

No, that's the problem.

I think so.

The Gaian system, as described by you yesterday beautifully,

as this system of control, self-control, interpenetrating, holistic system,

that the functions of all these different components of the complex system appear to think.

I mean, they fit exactly our model of thinking.

Now, to ask if it's conscious or unconscious is a different question, I think,

which very much complicates the issue due to the fact that we have consciousness and unconsciousness.

Oh, well, I'm definitely into the notion that if you can't have an I-thou relationship with it,

it's fairly uninteresting to call it a mind.

Well, do you think that the Gaian mind would then be dead if the human species became extinct?

No.

Any more than anyone else is dead if an acquaintance dies.

I communicate with the Gaian mind.

Then why can't Jupiter have a Jupiterian mind without the necessity of microbes?

Oh, I grant that.

It's these more diffuse abiological systems.

Well, no, who said that?

If Jupiter has one, the Sun...

The Sun is a hard step to take.

Well, this is one we discussed the other day.

Right.

If the Sun indeed is a very complex resonant pattern of magnetic fields...

It has neurons.

With little sort of cells and vortices throughout its whole surface.

The whole thing with very complex resonant patterns, as has recently been shown.

With complete magnetic polar reversals every eleven years, starting at sunspot maximum.

And longer periods of resonance, too.

A very complex system of highly probabilistic turbulences, resonances, and so on.

There's a physical interface for, you know, if a mind has to have a physical interface,

then there's a pretty good one for the Sun.

And the solar system as a whole involves all what's going on in all the planets,

all the gravitational interactions.

The electromagnetic field of the Sun, in which everything is made manifest.

The electromagnetic field of the Sun includes us sitting here in this room.

You know, everything that's illuminated.

It's illuminated.

And if there's some kind of associated mind with the light, which is one of the things

we started off name.

The solar mind, which is the source of the light, directly and indirectly,

with everything that we see, is, in a sense, we're in it.

We're in that solar.

The light is coming from the Sun, and in a sense, we're in it.

We may be...

All things may be seen by the Sun.

The Sun is often, in many cultures, called an eye in the sky.

And on the dollar bill, that eye of Horus, which is in the triangle there,

but it's the radiant eye, and it's the Sun.

It's not only the seer, but the emitter of light,

which brings us back to the sort of theme from which we started,

you know, the connection between light and vision.

And if the Sun has both this inner dynamics,

plus is the field of which all things in the solar system are seen and related,

plus is related to them all through the gravitational field,

we've got galaxies, clusters, and the cosmos beyond.

Yes, there's no doubt that we can jack them up the rest of the way,

but I think that the problem has to do with divine omniscience.

Divine omniscience.

That's more difficult.

It certainly is.

That put you off, that's...

Because it implies a kind of knowing that is never met with.

Well, that's surely implicit in the very concept of divine omniscience.

Any notion that our consciousness is less than her forms of consciousness

implies there must be forms of knowing that we don't meet with it.

But omniscience is a kind of mathematical notion,

not something you could expect any biological system to attain.

Biological systems just get, you know, sentience,

and then a little more, and a little more, and then a lot.

But divine omniscience is like a mathematical absolute.

It means certain knowledge of everything.

That's some program.

Well, if...

I just was suggesting the simple thought that conceived for the purpose of argument

that there's some kind of sense of knowing associated with the electromagnetic field,

then would that not amount to complete knowledge of everything in the physical level?

Well, I'm saying...

Does it include knowledge of the future?

I'm talking now about perceptual knowledge of the present.

I mean, my discussion has been entirely centered on omniscience of...

I'm not now thinking of future knowledge of the future.

That's a separate question.

This is the Laplacian thing, wasn't it?

If you knew the initial positions, i.e. in the present,

this divinely omniscient mind could calculate all futures.

Well, yes, that's the plus, but that was in a deterministic universe

where the God was modeled on the plus.

Uh-huh.

But let's...

What I'm talking about is divine omni-percipience, let's say,

omni-perception.

That if there were a mind associated with the electromagnetic and the gravitational fields,

the positions and everything that's happening in the universe would be known to it,

not through some kind of external mind-looking and examining it,

but because this knowing would pervade these fields.

There'd be nothing in the universe outside them, and on the physical level.

True, although within my own body I have very little understanding of what's going on.

Well, the divine omniscience may be...

it may be as unconscious as your omniscience of what's going on in your body.

What you need to know in your body is when something alters.

Right.

And if you had a pinprick you'd instantly know it,

but you'd know it by contrast with the non-pinprick state,

because your present state is different from being asleep or unconscious or comatose.

You see, the fact is that our mind is primarily unconscious,

and consciousness is not a necessary consideration of omniscience.

And it's, I think, a major fallacy of the modern system

is to emphasize the grandeur of consciousness.

To imagine that our mind is primarily conscious

is just to deny the existence of the unconscious,

which is part of the rational approach is to the denial of the irrational.

The fact is that consciousness is a drop on the bucket of the individual mind.

And it could be that the guy in mind is completely unconscious,

and that wouldn't matter at all.

I think that it still functions as a mental being,

and that even the concept of consciousness is inappropriate

for the world soul, the cosmic mind, and so on.

It's just not an appropriate concept.

There's no need to project that little tiny self-reflection aspect

of our own being onto the cosmic mind.

It's unnecessary.

We could discuss that at a future time.

Yeah, what do you think about that?

Well, I think that the cosmic mind may be largely unconscious,

because I think that most things that happen in the cosmos are habitual

and therefore unconscious.

But there's a curious kind of consciousness or awareness associated with habituation.

I mean, all sensory modes that we know of work on the principle of difference.

What you detect are not fixed levels, like when you're sitting on a cushion.

You're not sensing the pressure on your bottom.

You habituate.

And even in the simplest organisms, habituation is the first form of learning.

It's the ability to sort of filter out or become unconscious of everything that's habitual in the environment.

The way consciousness works...

Novelty is the big thing.

Yes.

What attracts attention is novelty.

Anything new in the environment immediately attracts the attention of a person, an animal, or anything.

And they usually react with fear, then followed by approach and curiosity,

and then if it's harmless, it's just accept as part of it and ignore it.

This pattern is shown by pet dogs.

It's in Gregory Bateson's theory of information.

So it's the difference that makes a difference.

I mean, this is standard sensory physiology.

It's not just Bateson.

It's that sensory systems work on differences.

And sensory perceptions are all based on differences.

So you become sensory aware if you're just staring vacantly at a whole area of what we call the visual field, appropriately enough,

you don't notice anything in particular.

As soon as there's any motion in it, your eye immediately batons onto the moving object.

And that's because it's a difference.

So this is the way our senses work.

Now, I think that if there were to be something like the Gaian mind or the mind of the solar system,

or even the galactic mind, that it would probably work in a similar way,

be habituated to anything that stays the same or follows regular cycles.

But it may be that consciousness would flare up, as it were,

or become associated with anything that challenge, crisis, problem, pain,

or anything that makes, or any new thing that makes a difference.

There might be a kind of rising of awareness about that in the Gaian mind.

There might be, against a large background of unconsciousness, which is the way...

What you're saying is novelty would drive it.

Novelty would drive it, and it would be driven by...

and also discomfort, because there's certain kinds of pain that we have that persist,

and act as motivation as planned behavior.

And I think there'd be some... there'd have to be some kind of...

So disequilibrium would drive it, is a better term.

Yes. So disequilibrium and novelty.

I mean, there'd be a variety of things that would drive it.

But the reason I think that this is a reasonable view is that we see the same pattern,

not just in our own minds, but this thing of sensory differences and habituation,

right back to unissellular organisms and plants.

And it seems to be a kind of universal mode of awareness, or at least of sensory awareness.

And since we're talking about perceptual... the perception of the world soul,

as it were, its sense... if the electromagnetic field is, as it were, its sense organ,

or a part of its sensory system, then something of this kind would apply.

We're talking about reductionist Gaian psychology.

Well, it's not just reductionist Gaian psychology.

I mean, the electromagnetic field is only part of this,

just as the electromagnetic changes in our brains are only part of the brain.

Well, it's valuable to parse the system into parts,

without necessarily reducing it to some of its parts.

We're talking at the moment anyway only about Gaian perception,

not about Gaian understanding, nor about Gaian hopes, fears, and goals,

nor about Gaian dreams, nor about Gaian daydreams, nor about Gaian memories.

So there's much more to the Gaian mind than its perceptual mode of knowing what's going on now.

And light is just one of the aspects of that perceptual mode,

as it's just one of the aspects through which we know the world around us.

But, somehow, the light and what happened...

...

in the light, and it has to be related to our vision.

And so the question is, first, is the question of our own vision,

how it's related to light.

Gaian vision.

And then how Gaian vision, or other forms of vision, are related to it.

Yes. We're on the track of a cognitive map of the Gaian mind.

That seems to be the appropriate level.

We've tried smaller, we've tried larger.

That feels comfortable this year.

Yes, that's right.

Yes.

A cognitive map of the Gaian mind.

Maybe we should rest at this point.

Yes.

I don't know about you, but I'm going to go back and re-listen to that part where

Terence was talking about a possible twin for this universe,

but one that has more anti-matter than matter.

I want to try to think about that in the context of a possible 2012 event.

Of course, I guess the only event that would occur if these two universes,

assuming they even exist, of course.

But if these two universes ever collided, both would zero out.

Poof.

And what does that remind you of?

How about those first few seconds after inhaling a couple of deep hits of 5-MEO?

I don't know about you, but for me that experience is

pretty much an annihilation of my universe.

I know it took one of my friends almost half a year to get back to baseline after his first 5-MEO

trips.

So if you're thinking about taking that journey, be sure you know what you're doing and have an

experienced sitter with you too.

I'm also going to have to go back and re-listen to part of today's trialogue and see if I can

put aside some of my own ingrown bias against the concept of divine omnipotence that Rupert

was trying to sell to Terence and Ralph. Kind of unsuccessfully, I thought.

You know, it's interesting that this topic came up in today's trialogue because I recently received

an interesting email from James, who's another Canadian salonner who joins us from beautiful Prince

Edward Island. And James broached the same subject by asking,

Do you have any interest in the intersection of spirituality, I hesitate to say religion,

and psychedelics? Well, yes James, actually that's basically what got me involved in this work in

the first place. In fact, I no longer am able to use psychedelics without being spun into deep

thoughts about spirituality. And I totally agree with you that we should distinguish between

organized religions and spirituality. Personally, I have a pretty dim view of all organized religions,

and don't see much spirituality in any of them. To me, the word religion is just another way to say

we want to control your mind and have you think like we tell you how to think. And personally,

I want no more of that. Thank you very much. If anyone wants a truly spiritual experience,

all they have to do is ingest six or seven grams of psychedelic mushrooms, and I'll guarantee that

they'll have a truly mystical and very spiritual experience. And I guess I should point out that

maybe that shouldn't be anybody's first experience with magic mushrooms. You know, until you know how to

navigate that space, it's probably best to use a lower dose. You know, maybe three or four grams would be

better at first. I can't really say because we're all so different, so you'll just have to follow your own

instincts on that. However, I do believe that it's wise to follow Jonathan Ott's warning that we should

beware the dreaded underdose. As funny as that may sound, my bet is that many of you know the truth of that

statement. I've seen more people struggle with a low dose LSD experience than with a heavy dose of

ayahuasca. You know, if you don't take enough to propel you over the threshold of that psychedelic

boundary, the chances are you won't have a peak experience and you might even wind up having a

very uncomfortable trip. I don't know what got me hyperlinked into that direction, but maybe I better

move on to some more earth grounded topics, like the flood that recently took place in Scotland where

wiped out Queer Ninja's house and his recording studio too, I guess. As I've mentioned before,

Queer Ninja produces one of the most energetic and happiest podcasts around and although the dope

fiend comes in a close second in that category, I just really love listening to those guys. Anyway,

when the sounds of the worldwide weed didn't come out in the week of the flood, I kind of expected a

low-key subdued program once Queer Ninja got back online. But was I ever surprised, pleasantly so,

when I listened to his first program after the flood, the one that's just now out. In fact, he was

even more upbeat and fun to listen to than before and I think we could all learn something here.

You see, each week at the start of his show, Queer Ninja tells us what variety or varieties of

cannabis he's using and so now I know what to take if I'm ever flooded out of my house. You know,

it seems like this week's program was fueled by some Nepalese hash and from the sound of it,

this must have been some pretty amazing hash. In fact, I highly recommend that the next time New

Orleans floods, that we just forget about sending food and water to the flood victims and instead send

them large quantities of Nepalese hash. It might not restore their physical losses,

but it sure seems to do wonders on the spiritual plane. So anyway, Queer Ninja, it's great to hear

you back and in such good spirits once again and I hope you get the cave studio back online and in

operation pretty soon. And for those of you who haven't yet had the pleasure of tuning in to the

sounds of worldwide weed, you really owe it to yourself to check out his podcasts as well as the other

great programs on the Cannabis Podcast Network. I know some of you have been sending emails and

asking about what what other podcasts are out there that are might be interesting and boy, the Cannabis

Podcast Network, they've got a lot of great programming there and you can find them at dopecast.co.uk

and also I think you'll find KMO's latest podcast on the Sea Realm quite interesting. It features the

second half of his interview with Rick Doblin of maps and as well as a sound bite from my recent

interview with Sheldon Norberg. And you can find links to those podcasts in our main podcast page

which is at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts. Also this week I heard from Bill who joins us from

Japan and who like Nick and Trey and Fig and many more of you says he's really been enjoying these

trial logs. So many thanks for writing you guys and I'll do my best to keep the trial logs coming.

But if you're looking for some other great talks in addition to podcasts while you're waiting for my

next program or you've maxed out on some of these others, well there's what appears to be a great

website that lists quite a few lectures that are along many of the same lines that we play here in the

Psychedelic Salon. And I believe it was James actually who sent me the link and that is futurehigh.net

www.futurehi.net

media.html

and I haven't had a chance to listen to any of them yet myself but their speakers include Albert

Hoffman, Houston Smith, Joseph Campbell, let's see Marilyn Ferguson, Terence McKenna and a whole bunch

more and it looks like a great resource and thank you James for letting us all know about it.

I know I'm forgetting some messages that I got through tribe.net as well as from your emails but

if I don't get this podcast finished pretty soon I'm not going to be able to say that I actually

completed three podcasts a week for four weeks. But hey it's been fun and I've sure enjoyed being

with you here in the Psychedelic Salon so often. You know it's really great to feel your vibe as I put

these programs together and there are a lot of us out there you know and between a whole group of

podcasts like this one we're all being interconnected in ways that we may never understand. But in some

strange way perhaps Gaia is connecting each of us in some kind of a new neural network getting us ready

for her next great evolutionary leap. Or maybe I should come back down to earth and close this

program and leave the wild speculations to the trial loggers. Before I go I should mention that

this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are protected under the Creative Commons

attribution non-commercial share alike 2.5 license. And if you have any questions about that you can

email them to me. Address is Lorenzo at matrixmasters.com. And thanks again Jacques Cordell and Wells for the

use of your music here in the Psychedelic Salon. And for now this is Lorenzo signing off from

Cyberdelic Space. Be well my friends. Greetings from Cyberdelic Space. This is Lorenzo and I'm your host

here in the Psychedelic Salon. So are the holidays treating you all okay? My guess is that I'm

probably not the only one who's kind of looked at like somewhat of an outsider at these holiday

gatherings but hey that fits right in with today's trial log topic about entities. And I guess to the

uninitiated our psychedelic community might look and sound like some strange collection of other world

entities from time to time but hey that just goes with the territory. If you've been with us for the

past few weeks you know that we're slowly working our way through a series of recordings that were made

at Esalen in 1989 and 1990 when Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake got together and

conducted a series of three-way conversations that they called a trial log. And the tape I'm going to play

today was simply labeled entities and it begins with a more complete description of the topic by Terence

McKenna. So let's join them now. Oh and by the way the occasional background noise that you hear was

actually in the original tape recording. I don't want you to think that it's me doing the heavy

breathing every once in a while. I'm afraid that's just the price we have to pay for pumping up the

volume a little extra to make these podcasts easier to hear in a noisy environment. And so with that

let's listen in on some of Terence McKenna's thoughts about entities. Well this morning's discussion will

revolve around the exotic theme of disincarnate intelligences and non-human entities that seem

to occupy a kind of undefined ontological limbo in terms of precisely what their status in the world

is. Whatever their status in the world is, when you start looking at the question of these disincarnate

entities, the first thing that strikes you is their persistence in human experience and folklore. This

is not something unusual or statistically rare in all times and in all places, with the possible exception of

Western Europe for the past 200 years, a kind of social commerce between human beings and various

kinds of disincarnate entities or non-human intelligences was taken for granted. And this could be as simple as

the Celtic farmer's wife leaving out a pitcher of milk for the fey folk, or it could take more elaborate forms.

Because the second aspect of this question that you encounter is the tremendous variety of these entities,

that we're apparently talking about a kind of parallel taxa in another continuum because we have gins,

afrites, water nixies, boulder grinders, gnomes. The list is endless and that's only the list within the context of the European imagination.

Once you add in all the various ethnic takes on the potential for non-human intelligent life forms, you have a

truly vast array of peculiar creatures, all expressive of a very fundamental belief system that seems to be inimical to the human condition.

Well, before we get into the history of this idea, it might be good to simply review the logical options

that are open to us in examining a phenomenon of this sort. And I take the logical options to be basically three,

basically three, that these entities are in some sense, or that some of these entities are rare but physical,

and they sort of operate somewhere between the choleocanth and the Bigfoot.

It potentially could be imagined moving from the realm of mythology into the realm of established zoological or botanical.

fact. And this has, in fact, happened in some fairly unspectacular cases. This is certainly the least interesting.

But, for example, the yeti is a creature which refuses to declare whether it is simply a rare member of the ordinary taxa of this planet,

or something quite different. The second option that lies before us when we look at the ontological status of these entities,

is what I would think of as the Jungian position. And to demonstrate it, I'll simply quote Jung on the subject of sprites and elementals.

He calls them autonomous fragments of psychic energy which have temporarily escaped from the controlling power of the ego.

In other words, this is what I would call the mentalist, mentalist reductionist approach to disincarnate entities and intelligences.

It's saying they are somehow part and parcel of our own minds,

and their existence is dependent upon our conceiving them as objects in our imagination, however pathologically expressed.

In other words, the humanist position that all gods, entities, and so on, are merely projections of our own minds.

Projections. Exactly. Exactly. The projection.

Escaped from that.

Well, escaped from the controlling force of the ego. It's a wonderful lineage.

And then the third, and obviously more interesting but fraught with argumentative pitfalls,

is that these are, one, non-physical, and two, autonomous in their existence in some sense.

In other words, that they actually do carry on an existence independent of their being perceived by human beings.

And then, and this is the position, the classical position, of those who have had the largest amount of experience dealing with these entities,

which are shamans, ecstatics, and so-called sensitive or edge types in all kinds of social situations.

This position, which is the most, in a sense, elegant and commiserate with the evidence,

that they are in fact autonomous and non-physical, nevertheless poses a tremendous barrier for the scientific and Western mind,

because the eradication of spirit from the visible world has been a project prosecuted with great zeal,

concomitant to the rise of modern science.

And the admission that that project overlooked something as fundamental as a communicating, intelligent agency,

co-present with us on this planet, would be more than a dangerous admission of the failure of an intellectual method.

It would pretty much seal the bankruptcy of an intellectual method.

So, science has handled this problem by creating a tiny subset within its vast mansion of concerns called schizophrenia.

And schizophrenia has been deemed a concern of psychologists,

not the most honored members of the legion of the house of science.

And they have been told to take care of this problem, please.

And this is where we get the Jungian mentalist reductionist model.

What's interesting about that model, which is the reigning model of what entities may be,

is that its appeal is in direct proportion to your lack of direct experience with the phenomenon that it seeks to explain.

In other words, everyone who has ever encountered a disincarnate intelligence of this sort,

knows that this is a pitifully inadequate, a woefully inadequate description of the phenomenon.

Before I close, I just want to make one digression to drive home the point that this is not a pursuit of dilettantes or obscurantes,

the question of the status of these entities, because if we examine the history of early modern science,

we discover that some of the major movers and shakers in that situation were in fact being guided and directed in the formulation of early science by disincarnate entities.

In the case of John Dee, the great flower of Elizabethan science, he actually had commerce with angels and all sorts of entities of this type over decades.

No less a founder of modern scientific rationalism than René Descartes, actually was set on the path toward the realization of the ideals of modern science by an angel who appeared to him in a dream and told him that the conquest of nature is to be achieved through measure and number.

This enunciation, which is really the battle cry of modern science, first passed from the lips of an angel.

So, and then the well-known example of Kekule, the discoverer of the benzene ring, by seeing the ouroboric symbol, the snake taking its tail in its mouth, the ancient symbol of eternity, and understanding that it was the solution to a molecular structure problem that he had been dealing with.

This aspect of science, that much of its premises have been transferred to mankind from a hidden realm of higher intelligence, is completely suppressed in its own official history, which is that it's the story of rational thoughts, conquest of the dark world of superstition.

So I think as we look at these entities, as we try to place them in context to human society, a way of internalizing what they can do for us is to look more toward the shamanic model, where these spirits were not only identified, but the adjective helping was added.

And what was envisioned was a kind of symbiosis between ourselves and an invisible world of higher intent.

And this has certainly been lacking in the expression of modern science as a social force.

And it wouldn't be a bad idea, perhaps, to, in any future model of society, to attempt to inculcate into it whatever wisdom, whatever insight, is represented by these forces.

Now I suppose it would be not fair to close without mentioning that the aversion to the irrational is something that science inherited from Christianity, and that what all of these voices of nature, of the sky, of the earth, were suppressed by Christianity in favor of the triune mystery of the Trinity.

And a rebirth, or a rise in the volume of the voices of the elementals, which is how I interpret what's going on, seems to me part and parcel with the ecological crisis of the planet.

I mean, the planet is attempting to speak. Everything which can signify is reaching out toward humanity to try and reclaim us for the family of nature from this rather pathological trip that we've been on for a long time.

So the elementals, these voices, the promptings of the disincarnate entities, are, if not to be heeded, certainly to be carefully considered and studied, we are wandering in a wilderness, and here is a prompting voice.

So then the analysis, without prior commitment to any kind of epistemic conclusion, would seem very useful at this point.

So that's all I really have to say about it.

I'll bet.

I think this is very modest, Terence, that you have given the survey of these different views.

Actually, we have our own view as we'll evolve in these next minutes.

So I'd like to attempt to give a rocket boost into our own sphere here to get started.

And I'll try a model, sort of a mathematical model, which I think we're all close to.

And that is the Trinity of early Christianity, which came directly from the Neoplatonic.

This is the one called, not the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, but the body, the soul, and the spirit.

Here the body is more or less the Gaia of the Orphic Trinity, the material, ordinary reality, the matter, energy, universe.

And soul is the soul we speak about, and the spirit is kind of a medium in between the body and the soul, like the Holy Ghost.

And I think that entities, that there are kind of abstract entities, that the Logos contains intelligence, information, evolving stuff.

And we could just sort of try identifying this with the top layer and the soul, the world soul level.

And here are kind of abstract, we don't know how, we don't have a cognitive strategy for dealing directly with entities in the world soul.

But the world soul is coupled to this, the Gaia level, where our minds are operating closer to the material plane than the soul plane because of the limitations of language.

The separation of conscious and unconscious has to do with this triune model.

So as an abstract entity, difficult to cognate because of its complexity in the multidimensional spheres of the world soul, reaches down, propagates through the spirit, which is a kind of like an electromagnetic field, a medium, you see, extending between these parallel planes or concentric spheres of soul and individual mind.

Then it comes more and more into cognitive forms, which belong to our mind in its evolution in the sense of morphic, morphogenetic field.

And then it gets into representations which are culturally dependent, such as fairies, dakinis, and elementals, and so on.

So this is just a background model where I think we're closer than, this is closest to three of your list, the non-physical but real, but it also allows for a kind of a spectrum of different forms of what are essentially the same entities.

And that their representation, they might be timeless, more or less, in the celestial sphere, as it were, but their cognitive map into our own consciousness depended on our paradigm, our worldview, and so on, is evolving.

And for this reason you get, in different cultures, the elves, the fairies, the pantheon of gods, and so on.

And particularly in the Christian, even though this triune model was made illegal, I think it was in 879 in the Council of Byzantium that the spirit was made illegal, and then we went from three to two, so there's only body and soul.

For this reason that no one, nowadays, this is, I think, the reason why no one knows the difference between spirit and soul, and thinks that they're the same.

And we talk about spiritual, the inspiration, bringing down the spirit into the world, which we need now, because our societies had an expiration over the past 200 years, as you said.

In order to have an inspiration, we have to know what is spirit and what is soul, if they're not the same.

And we need to learn this model, or some other model, if there is one more appropriate to our time.

So I think that this is a context in which we could place in parallel and with full validity all of these different representations.

And in this list, in your initial taxonomy, I think we should include the saints and saintesses of the Christian and the Catholic religion,

because in spite of the one God, the Yahweh theme of the Judeo-Christian tradition, there exists always this changing and local list of deities,

which actually are the Christian form of these elves and so on.

And we have the idea of the timeless forms, or even there's evolution, let us say, on a slower time scale in the celestial sphere.

But their representations are multifarious, and these representations closer to our own cognition, these are evolving very rapidly.

Then we have the different timescales, kind of like mathematical physics, that we can deal with in discussing this.

That makes possible, in other words, to make identifications between an earth spirit of this culture and an earth spirit of that culture.

As in the diffusion of mythology, there is what Jung called archetypes.

It just suggests that different layers in a spectrum of reality.

or particular-ness or individuality of these things.

Well, one of the things that you have to wonder if you go for that it's a non-physical

autonomous entity of some sort, then that raises

another set of questions, which is, is it a non-physical autonomous entity

unrelated to us except by the fact that we can share the same

communication space, or is it in fact somehow related to our own existence,

not in the sense of being dependent upon it or maintained by it,

but all this talk of soul and spirit leads then to the question of

the relationship of the dead to these

disincarnate entities. It's very interesting. Did you know that the

dogma of purgatory in Christian theology

was not created by theologians in Rome. It was created by St. Patrick

in an effort to make Christian doctrine more commiserate with Celtic

folk belief in the process of converting Ireland to Christianity

because the fairy faith

that was in place when Patrick landed in Ireland was a faith that the dead

souls

coexist with us

invisibly in ordinary space and can be seen by people who have a special ability and

he took that notion and turned it into purgatory and it was so successful in the conversion of Ireland that later

councils wrote that into general church dogma, but it was a genuflection

to the Celtic folk belief in this way station of souls that was

all around them and of course we've

not mentioned that for modern people the major tool for contacting these entities in any kind of controllable fashion is

psychedelic compounds

especially DMT and

tryptamines and those sort of experiences

seem to line up pretty well with the the Celtic folklore

concerning the

habits

humor style and presentational mode of these

entities or at least a class of these entities, the

little people class of these entities.

Well, of course, the Celtic people came from Eastern Europe

you know, and they had contact with the the cradle of civilization as it's called or they were the cradle of

civilization and the view of the underworld

introduced

introduced into church canon by St. Patrick

we have already in the Sumerian Babylonian Ugaritic models

the Sumerian myth of

Inanna and Demoussi, for example, you have Inanna goes to the underworld and

speaks with her sister, Erish Kegel, who is the queen of the underworld. So somehow this is very old

the land of the dead, the journey of the dead. I mean, we're touching really deep stuff here

Chatalhoyuk, there are all these skeletons were stuffed under the house that evidently were left

outside in the prairie to decompose and when nothing but bones were left, they were like folded up in convenient bundles tied it and stuffed

under the house

So this is an example of one

aspect, the mythological side, the birth and death, the deepest layers of the

fairy tradition.

But in my model of the spirit between the

mundane and the celestial spheres, I think that there

is a prehistory going back much deeper, in which this was more or less light. Metaphors of light and so on that were

particularized in human form, near human form, and whatever forms were

reasonable in a given

culture, then in whatever language of form is available in the mind of that culture, then

these

entities would have to materialize in those forms. And I think that the underworld

even though it goes back at least 2,000 years to Sumer, is a

displacement from this middle between us and the sky, that some bit of sky, you see, was brought low.

And this has to do with the patriarchal takeover and the creation of the unconscious to begin with, that

something was essentially made bad in

the perpetual difficulty of our species in dealing with the birth and death experiences.

You used the word language, and it occurs to me, all of these

disincarnate entities would be but

dancing

hallucinations before us, were it not for the fact that they possess the ability to address us in languages, which we can cognize, and

instantly we transfer to them a whole new

power and importance, because they speak, because they are transferring information

from somewhere to us, and only a very small percentage of which are we able to do

anything with. And I wonder

exactly what this is about. The traditional

notion, and I'm sort of restricting myself now to the gnome-elf end of this, is that they are

artificers of some sort. They are master artisans working in metals and with jewels and that sort of thing.

Well, then, is the whole, since shamanism, we know, begins

with a kind of deep

interpenetration into early metallurgy, that in fact the Smith and the shaman are the, are two twin brothers

that are

work, linked together in the working with matter, the extraction of energy from matter, well then, is this whispering

from the demon artificers, a phrase which Jung uses, the whisperings of the demon artificers, have led us into

technological self-expression, and perhaps indeed into self-expression, period.

So, it's the languages that pose the problem, otherwise it would simply be a vision, be held before the eyes,

open to

interpretations of all sorts. But the fact that they speak to us, and we understand, is very, very

puzzling, and I don't think, you know, modern thinkers don't even want to talk about it. They just call this schizophrenia, and put you in a small room, and leave you there.

But, a fair reading, as you mentioned last night, Ralph, of the history of modern science, as presented by somebody like Thomas Kuhn,

and shows that the irrational in this objectified form is very active in, in the process that we call history.

It's just that we don't like to admit that, because we're committed to an official philosophy of reason and

casuistry.

We have two different models going on here, in

information transmission, as it were. There's the horizontal

theory of

cultural diffusion, where, for example, since you mentioned that these

entities are

artisans in metal, then perhaps we learn

metalworking from them. So, the Chalcolithic Revolution, or the

agricultural revolution, we see that it took place in one part of the world later than another part. It suggests an outgoing

circle wave of

transmission.

The agricultural revolution in Britain was in 3500 BC, in France in 4500 BC,

Anatolia in 7000 BC, and so on. So, not only it moves, it moves slowly. It's been tracked by archaeologists, and so on.

This is the horizontal

theory. On the other hand, if we

need, for our future evolution, and for our past history as well, that brought us successfully to this point,

to have inspiration,

to make shamanistic journeys, to travel vertically, and to go into the world of the Spirit,

reaching out joyously toward the celestial sphere,

where some of this information we need has been stored up somehow, or is in a process of evolution,

then we would expect that the Chalcolithic, I mean, the fairy folk, would have shown people how to work bronze in many different places at the same time,

or maybe what has traveled in cultural diffusion is just the habit, the wish, or the means, the

technology of communicating with angels, so that we can receive this information.

Descartes was somehow open to this dream. Kiku was open to this dream, and we actually

have worked hard, the three of us, in the pursuit of our own dreams, in order to draw

information down vertically from the celestial spheres, in order to re-inspire our own

generation, with this sacred knowledge. So we have these two dimensions in our model,

whereas modern science, and the so-called modern paradigm, has allowed only one

dimension, the horizontal diffusion. As far as the original inspiration for bronze

metal working, that would be an accident that took place near a volcano, or I don't know.

Why do you suppose early modern science became so averse to these phenomena, at the same time that

there was such a zeal for the cataloguing and description of all the productions of ordinary nature?

Well, that's a giant question. We know where it happened and when it happened in a short span of time,

and we can study the history of that time, let us say, between John Dee and Newton in England,

and we can study everything that went on, we still don't understand what went wrong,

because none of the developments in the scientific enlightenment seem to be explicitly adverse to angels.

And Newton believed in alchemy, and that means particularly astrological alchemy, the little astrology,

that means that the significance of the stars, the hand of God, and the reality of the Trinity, the full Trinity,

that means the body, the soul, the spirit, and so on. At the same time, Descartes also, Descartes and Newton,

that we frequently blame for our mechanistic paradigm, and so on. They were full of the spirit themselves, yet they daren't speak,

because of the examples of fascist terrorism all around them, what had happened to other people who spoke.

Giordano Bruno, I think, is one of the most particular cases. If you have to point at a particular case here,

the fact that he was burned at the stake in a field in Rome in front of an enthusiastic, cheering audience of 300,000 people

on Easter Sunday or something, that he was offered his last chance to recant and denied it, and he said,

if you'll only say that the world is finite, we'll let you go. And he thought and he said,

I shouldn't say that, so I won't. And they burned it. Well, that would be one kind of thing. I mean,

it must be a factor in there, and yet he didn't recant, as Galileo did. And...

Well, the whole ambiance of his world was one of stellar demons being called down,

and this was how Renaissance magic worked, was by the communication with these stellar demons,

as they were called, and the lining up of resonant incenses, minerals, colors, to draw these things down.

Perhaps they succeeded, and out of the Renaissance came modern science after the pact was made.

Starting with an astronomical revolution.

Yes.

And, I mean, for me the question seems to be, are these classes of entity that one can experience,

and which I think principally are experienced by most people in the realm of dreams? Because in our

dreams we travel in a realm where we ourselves can travel in a strange way. We meet people who are dead.

We meet other people from different parts of the world. We meet strange situations and experiences,

quite unpredictable. Our dreams live in a kind of autonomous realm. Now, the reductionist theory is

that's just because it's part of our own psyche. The traditional theory is that in our dreams we

travel out of our bodies, and we do enter what the Theosophists call the astral plane, or this other

realm. The realm of our dreams is a personal, nightly journeying into these realms of other entities,

sometimes penetrating some realms, other times others. Some people have dreams of

angelic beings, and others have dreams of nightmare qualities, of hellish qualities, that all these

are different regions, as it were, of heaven, hell, and purgatory, which can actually be accessed

through the dreams. That's the idea, autonomous dreams, and all people throughout the world believe

when you dream you travel out of your body in another realm. And this therefore means that the

realm of entities includes the realms of the dead, the realms of the dreamers, and the imaginative

world of the dreamers. And then also, does the realm of entities include the spirits of species?

For example, the spirit of the earth, the spirit of the solar system, the spirit of each star,

which would be these stellar geniuses, or angels, and genic intelligences. The spirits of each species

of vegetation, of plant, mushroom, of each species of plant or animal, has its own way of being, its own

repetitive form, its own way of seeing the world and experiencing it, its own way of reflecting participation

in the whole, from a different point of view from anything else, like a kind of monad. So if each species

has its own spirit, or guardian spirit, or in a Christian terminology perhaps guardian angel,

but at any rate its own kind of spirit, then these are things that shamans have talked to about, wolf

spirits, crow spirits, and all these animal spirits, which are a major part of the shamanic fauna.

And then there are plant spirits of various kinds, and then nature spirits, waterfall spirits,

naiads, you know, as you mentioned all these traditional ariads, mountain spirits, tree spirits,

and so forth. This would be the natural historical basis of the entire system, it seems to me, rooted

in the species of nature, the intelligences of each species of bird and of animal, and of its characteristic

space, its own characteristic spirit. You know, like if you become like a hawk, you fly like a hawk,

you see like a hawk, you take on a kind of hawk-like quality of being.

That these sort of hawk spirits and stuff are all biologically grounded, and the others,

the angelic ones, are rooted in actual stars and planetary systems and galactic spirits, which...

So that the whole system is a system of intelligences which in some sense either have a bodily aspect,

or were at one time embodied, like the dead, the departed. So that...

is it all grounded in the bodily aspect of the world, as it were? Or is there a free-floating,

totally separate realm of entities of an entirely autonomous kind,

that are kind of free-living? Now, it seems to me that Ralph's model of the world soul and the

world imagination would admit either of these possibilities. You know, whether they're...

all entities have a kind of biological or physical base, be it a star, a species of animals,

or plants, a kind of crystal, or whatever.

So that everything at one point passes through matter, and that passage through matter allows the

eternal existence of the form in this other realm after the matter has dissolved from the form. And then,

somehow, biological existence is fraught with these intimations of immortality.

Who knows why? I mean, we just pick up on

our own destiny, as it were, and it lies in this animate but disincarnate realm.

Yes. Well, that would be a very happy scenario.

Well, I would rather speak of animal souls than animal spirits and so on, preserving

a soul for somehow the ultimate end of the great chain of being. And

spirit is, may be, which is some sort of elastic medium connecting it all up. It might be the

venue of our travels and dreams and shamanistic journeys and so on, because maybe we cannot reach,

not in consciousness anyway, all the way to the soul. We have visions of the logos that may be

very close to the soul. On the soul level, certainly, it's all connected up and all is one,

as in the oversoul of Emerson and Thoreau and so on. There's a great pancake in the sky,

which may participate in the material world by ripping off a piece of it, rips off, and then

incarnates in a blob of protoplasm or something, as a bad habit, is this incarnation, like our eating

meat. But in this view, which I think is the essence of the Hermetic tradition, everything has

soul. Spirit is just spirit, it's like air, but everything has soul. Animals have soul. Rocks have soul.

The souls are permanent. Their occupation in a rock or in trees is temporary. The interaction

between these different planes is one of a resonant wave phenomenon that has different

places along the Great Chain, has more or less of the particulate aspect of ordinary reality,

where we are beings should be a connected, you know, geometric object, for example, is only here

and there. Other places it's all spread out, like moving wallpaper. So in this view, a kind of

hermetic view, we have our greatest opportunity to understand ourselves, our history, and I think to

take a stance for a real future. Because the history on this scale of the world soul, the morphogenesis,

first, this biological life on planet Earth is very recent in the global timescale, whether you believe

in the Big Bang and the scientific creation myth or not, that certainly the morphogenesis of the stars,

I mean, these entities that have taken from time to time in their history incarnation in constellations

in the sky, or whatever, they long proceeded. They have a whole lot more experience. And the

the incarnation in the atmosphere at the moment when they decided to have oxygen, you know,

how was this? I mean, here's a great catastrophe in our evolution, which is not quite explained.

The chicken and the egg problem in this evolutionary great step, we got the oxygen. It has something to

do with the incarnation of a whim of spirit, of imagination on the level of the world soul,

decided to screw around with the organisms in the ocean on planet Earth and create oxygen and see

what happened. And all of this has enormous history compared to the extreme youth of our incarnation in

animal mammalian bodies and human bodies in the development of language and so on. So in traveling

up the great chain of being toward the world soul, we're getting in touch with these things which

must precede any capability we have of verbalization or understanding and mammalian experience and so

on. And yet they do seem to reach out for contact. And then they try, I suppose, to learn our language

and communicate. As the corn circles in England, for example, apparently are a kind of a semiotic,

where a cornfield as an organism of the world soul, or the Gaian soul, let's say to particularize to

planet Earth. The Gaian soul is trying to speak to us and find some language, so developing an alphabet

little by little, just as we developed cuneiform. You see, I think the best theories really would

be that Azeroth says it's the world soul communicating to us. But if it turned out that in fact it were exactly

what the most persuaded school of rationalist explainers believes it is, namely whirlwinds of a

particularly focused kind, you suddenly discover they're right. Suddenly whirlwinds can take on

entirely new patterns of focus and write new patterns and so that there's a kind of spirit behind the

whirlwind that really expresses itself as many traditions have always believed. The spiraling form of the

whirlwind. A whirlwind is probably an extremely complex organized entity. It's an expression of DNA,

it's an expression of the ordering morphology of the galaxy. I would expect a higher... Yes, it's a higher

order form of life, but it still has a spiraling energy form. Well, maybe some kind of breakthrough is not

far away when you... these facts I recited about the early modern science and how all these guys were

shaped in their ideas by converse with these entities. What would it be like to take that notion

seriously enough to actually open a kind of embassy to the invisible so that we could have commerce and

treaties and exchange of patents? Yes, well shamans are ambassadors. Well, this must be what in fact is going on,

but what you need to do is bring a lot to it. I mean, if you understand the differential calculus and

the theory of hyperfine reactions, you may be able to work out a different treaty than if all you understand

is blowguns and canoe manufacture. Well, that's where mathematical modeling comes in, as Ralph must be

thinking. Well, I confess that I do have in mind a mathematical model for the world's soul, spirit,

and the mundane that I would like to run as a video game in arcades or at Disneyland or something,

because the bad habits of science in the past 400 years have had the unfortunate effect of depriving

us of a mathematical model of the spirit and the soul, and therefore our understanding of the material

world is just because of these peculiar selection, the selectivity of scientists as it evolved, you know,

they neglected the spirit world as far as modeling is concerned. So our understanding could be advanced.

I mean, our understanding is somewhere, it's not nowhere, because we have ideas of fairies, angels,

saints, and so on. I wonder how accurate and reliable the maps are that the occultists have accumulated in their

fashion over the past couple of hundred years. I remember when I first read A. E. Waite's Ceremonial Magic,

what struck me was that there were lieutenants, generals, majors, they were assigned different medals,

each had its own sigil, each had its own dedicated incenses that were to be burned in special days.

I'll tell you the history of that, you probably know it. A. E. Waite is derived from the Enochian,

the Enochian is the revelation to John Dee of an earlier magic, and when we look in the literature of

the pre-Christian Jews in Jerusalem, and especially in Alexandria, there we find the Markaba mysticism.

In heaven, you know, there's the seventh heaven, and in seventh heaven, actually there are eight

heavens according to the Markaba mystics. These are visualized as kind of concentric spheres,

and this is a particular visualization of the spirit, of the Logos, of the elastic medium between

here and the end of the great chain of being, the one God.

Well, we're going to have to end on that note for now, but like you, I'm really curious about where

they're going to go from here, so I'll do my best to get the continuation of this trial log out in

the next couple of days for sure. As I listened to this conversation with you, I kept thinking about

Graham Hancock's new book, Supernatural. I'll go into that in more detail at a later date, but for

those of you who may be interested in a scholarly investigation into the origins of art and religion

and the human experience, you may want to pick up a copy of this new book, because in it, Graham

Hancock does a really good job of covering the current state of research into prehistoric cave art

and its possible connection to psychedelic plants. And in the area of disincarnate entities, such as this

trial log covers, Hancock's book really shines, so you might want to take a quick look at that.

You know, I've got several emails that I want to mention, along with answers to some of the

questions I've received in the past couple of weeks, but if I'm going to get the next part of this

trial log out yet this week, I'm going to have to cut it short for today and begin working on the

next program, which I plan on getting out by the end of this week. But before I go, I should mention that

this and all of the podcasts from the psychedelic salon are protected under the creative commons

attribution non-commercial share alike 2.5 license. If you have any questions about that, you can click

on the link at the bottom of the psychedelic salon webpage, which you can find at matrixmasters.com

slash podcasts. And if you still have any questions, just send them to me in an email.

That's Lorenzo at matrixmasters.com. And a big thank you to Chateau Hayouk for the use of their music

here in this psychedelic salon. And thank you as well to all of you who are out there with us in

cyberdelic space. It's nice to know you're there. And so for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from

cyberdelic space. Be well, my friends. Greetings from cyberdelic space. This is Lorenzo and I'm your

host here in the psychedelic salon. Today's program is the conclusion of the trialogue between Terrence

McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake on the topic of entities. Earlier today, I was thinking

about what Terrence said in one of the recent programs about the fact that the discussions

they were having weren't just frivolous conversations, but that they were serious investigations into

topics that the majority of people seldom think about and are rarely discussed in public.

And that, I think, is one of the things that's so appealing about these trialogues. You know,

the fact that the three of them were willing to be so public about such speculative issues,

I think is really impressive. And the reason I mention that is so that near the end of today's

program, when Rupert Sheldrake begins talking about how our current system of civilization is now

devouring the Amazon rainforest, well, if you can, pause there for a moment and give some serious thought

to what he has just been talking about. At least for me, it brought about an aha moment of understanding

how important these big picture metaphysical concepts may actually be in playing roles here

in our physical world. One other thing that you might want to think about is when you hear

Ralph Abraham talking about human prehistory in the interglacial period hundreds of thousands

of years ago, particularly the point where he talks about the interior life of early humans.

Right there is where I think Graham Hancock's book that I referred to in the last podcast comes in.

The book is titled Supernatural, Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind.

And in it, he reports on the current state of our understanding about prehistoric cave art.

And I think this new book may fill in some of the gaps that Ralph mentions.

And with that, we'll get right into the second side of tape six of the Trialogue with Terrence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake that was held at Esalen in 1989 or 1990.

The set of ten tapes weren't really clear about which year they were recorded, only that it was either 89 or 90.

So take your pick.

Anyhow, we'll begin by first listening to a few minutes from the end of the last podcast, which was of the first side of the tape titled Entities.

...senses that were to be burned and special...

Yes, we'll tell you the history of that. You probably know it.

A.E. Wade is derived from the Enochian. The Enochian is the revelation to John Dee of an earlier magic.

And when we look in the literature of the pre-Christian Jews in Jerusalem, and especially in Alexandria, there we find the Markaba mysticism.

In heaven, you know, there's the seventh heaven. I mean, seventh heaven. Actually, there are eight heavens, according to the Markaba mystics.

These are visualized as kind of concentric spheres, and this is a particular visualization of the spirit, of the Logos, of the elastic medium between here and the end of the great chain of being, the one God.

So in the eighth heaven, you have God in his own castle, in his own chambers, and along the way, there are these chariots, you know, with the wheels that go this way and this way.

And then there's the being that's holding up the chariot, which has four faces, one facing in each direction, the lion and so on.

And then there's, to get into the chariot, there are the four gates, and each gate has eight guardians, four on each side, and you have to repeat each of them with a word, with an incident.

And all of this was revealed to travelers who were doing their best to be ambassadors.

They were going out to bring back the necessary knowledge for our evolution, and one by one, successive generations, and they wrote down, they kept their records, and they had their specific means of traveling, which involved putting your head between your knees in the dark room in the basement, for which reason they spoke of going down to the chariot, instead of going up to the chariot, which was envisioned in the sky.

So, these early travelers of the millennium before Christ had brought back this picture, which evolved into what we have today under the name of ceremonial magic in the Western tradition.

And since it's quite a long history of a trusted vision, which is a particular, well, verbal, they never drew pictures, they just described this in words, as far as we know, the original manuscripts are stamped, many of them.

collected in Jerusalem, and translated, and translated from Hebrew into English by several different translators, and studied by these scholars, known to people who were in the Russian children.

So that is the root of the sigil, the circle, the holy words, the holy letters, all of that can be traced to them.

But through this Markaba mystical tradition.

Yes. Yes.

Very interesting.

You see, I keep going back to this thing about language. You get this same peculiar emphasis on language and letters in the esoteric doctrines that surround the chakras in Tantric Shaivism.

A huge amount of exegesis goes into the explication of these letters, which appear on the petals of the chakras, and talking about the ontological status of these letters, and what they mean, and so forth.

It's as though the medium of language itself is under review in these encounters with these entities.

It may be that somehow the field of language needs to be prepared for communication with them, or that the field of language can be prepared for communication with them, and that what happened in the West was some kind of peculiar stiffening of language against the ability to perceive and express this stuff that is now beginning to break down.

Yes, we have to misuse language as our divine responsibility.

Yes, and that linearity and print and all that conferred upon language and inability to deal with the invisible world in any meaningful way, and so it just became pathology.

But now it's returning, and people such as ourselves, who have one foot in each world, have a real obligation to cognize this.

Well, the Indian tradition, according to the theory of Alan Danya Liu, identifies Shiva with Dionysus.

And Dionysus, according to Diodorus Siculus, writing the history of the world in 50 BC, is a translation of Isis to Crete.

So there's the suggestion then, combining these two historians, of a transmission of the Isis legend from Egypt to the Indus River.

That's sort of the suggested transmission there.

And if so, we could see the Judeo-Christian tradition preceding primarily from the Chaldean, and the Hindu primarily from the Egyptian.

And the enormous differences between these two nearby systems coexisting in the same time evolving,

but in totally different flavors of images and so on, really different, the language, the Indo-European versus the Semitic, basically.

Completely different images, language, alphabets, gods, and yet to go back one step,

so reaching outreach to Chatal-Hoyuk to try to see the common root of the Sumerian, say Babylonian on the one hand and the Egyptian, on the other.

Each had a version of the Hermetic tradition, with magic, with journeys, with the afterlife, and so on.

But here we reach sort of the dawn of the horizon of our current vision into the past is there.

We can't really see into Anatolia very well.

Well, I believe that the people that you call Egyptian were the African peoples who were coming out of Africa

as the interglacial preceded, and that the people that you're calling Sumerian were these older people

who had been already crossed into Asia before the last glacier, and they were there.

And then when these two floods came together during the last melt, history was born in the subjugation of these...

So this is the horizon you're suggesting, then, might actually be the Holocene,

that the prehistorians never suggest civilizations before the Holocene.

There's very little discussion of the intelligent science, mythology, and so on,

of these, you know, 100, 200, 300,000 year BC, what is going on during these previous interglacials.

And it could be that there was agriculture. I mean, there would be no way to rule that out,

that there was an agricultural revolution in the interglacial before the Holocene.

So what are they called, the Cro-Magnon, or the Neanderthals, I guess is the usual word for this period of time.

So I'm suggesting they had navigation, they had architecture, they had sacred geometry,

and they had astrology, and they had magic, and travel, and their own images of the heavens and the underworld.

So all of that tradition comes fully formed into the Holocene interglacial, from these previous interglacials,

from the memory of people hiding out in caves, preserving their knowledge in cave drawings.

Yes, I think the major cultural artifact that was added during that glacial period,

that the new people expressed as they moved out of Africa 17,000 years ago, was pastoralism.

Pastoralism was invented during that last interglacial, during that last glacial period,

when those populations were bottled up in Africa.

All previous human migrations into the Middle East, out of Africa, had been in the absence of domesticated animals.

When you've mentioned that this entity theme was of high importance in the Hermetic tradition,

was it because you were thinking of the fact that actually the main focus of the book four of the Hermetic corpus

is this animation of statues?

This was a major concern in the early Hermetic tradition, was to somehow draw the stellar demon down into a simulacrum,

from which it could then articulate.

Yes, this is a high technology of beyond communication,

assisting in the intervention, talking about embassies.

Embassies were temples, and if we were going to think about someday a new society of world order,

you know, what education would be, what rituals would be, and so on,

I think we should take count of the fact that our culture had evolved around rituals,

that they were very important guiding centers, particularly the Akitu festival,

the paradigmatic New Year's festival that was celebrated annually in Babylonia for 13 years,

for 2,000 years without missing a beat.

This had certain basic elements which characterize our whole history,

most particularly the sacred marriage and the sacred procession.

The sacred marriage was the obtaining for a temporary contract for one year between the king,

that is to say the social organization of humans in this city-state,

with a divine god and goddess essentially in charge of prosperity, crops and so on.

So that contract was renewed for a year in the New Year's festival in the sacred marriage,

which was kind of a ritual that was played out with actors and actresses,

but the role of the king was actually played by the king, who actually took his power from the ritual.

Then the sacred procession had to do with the hermetic empowerment of the statues of gods and goddesses,

which included a lot of animals, mushrooms, and so on,

and then these were paraded in a circle tour through the town and everything in one of the day.

Usually these festivals lasted 11 days, so there was plenty of time to do a lot of stuff.

In fact, Egypt had more festivals than days in the year.

It wasn't necessary to go to them.

The priests and priestesses did the work for you.

You can just keep on working.

But every day one of the temples in one of the cities of Egypt

would be having one of these things where they're doing the work for you,

and it involved the magical empowerment of these statues.

The main theme was celestial magic.

I mean, it was the incorporation or the bringing down the inspiration of Gaia

with celestial themes, intelligence, and powers,

understanding Gaia as a younger entity than the celestial sphere.

I would see that as the key theory if there is one in the hermetic corpus,

and the reason why a lot of people nowadays practicing magic are specializing in star magic

and trying to reconstruct it from the corrupt mythology of Western astrology.

So then, what personal experience do we have of entities?

I mean, if there are star spirits, as I believe perfectly possible,

and I think it's very likely you could invoke them by various kinds of magic,

and you could somehow connect with the star,

and I think to do that you'd have to look at it.

I don't think it's any good doing this just from books.

I think you have to lie into the sky and actually connect with the star through the line of sight,

or do it through a mirror or whatever, but you have to look at it.

Then, if that's possible, what kind of information would such beings impart?

We know that they thought that Sirius had particular things,

Aldebrand, various stars, had particular properties,

and Sir Algol was a dangerous one.

So there were these widespread beliefs about the properties of particular stars,

and then there were lots of hosts of lesser stars,

and in fact most books on angels and most accounts of angels

describe them as innumerable, as the stars are,

and the connection of angels and stars is made very explicit in Christian tradition.

So there's one class of spirits associated with stars.

Now, have you ever met one?

And if we haven't met one, which I haven't,

could we or would we want to try and meet one

by carrying out an appropriate ceremony invocation

in a suitably receptive pharmacological state or whatever?

Well, with the proviso suitable pharmacological state,

I think suddenly the stage becomes crowded

with stellar demons, earth demons, and what have you.

But do you know for sure that they're stellar demons?

Have you ever connected your experience of a stellar demon

with directly looking at its resident star

and connecting through the senses?

Well, yes, I think we do have this experience in a limited way.

Among the stars there are all these asterisms

which are among our most ancient knowledge,

and I think pictograms, petroglyphs, and so on,

in many cases are drawings of asterisms.

It's sort of like a Rorschach when you look at the sky,

and there are all these dots, and you could connect them up anyway.

When there's a tradition of connecting them up in a certain way,

then you have an astrological tradition.

So mythology, I mean there's star mythology,

is all of the Greek myths, for example,

are projected into the sky in these asterisms,

or what we call constellations.

So mythology, it's suggested that myth is from mythos.

Mythos meant the lyrics, the words of the songs,

from the rituals, and that myths gained the power

they now have in unconscious and unconscious lives

through their secondary role in the ritual,

which I think the ritual and the myth together,

as part of our tradition,

is one of the most important things for us to regain.

And these old rituals were actually the bringing down,

I mean, the place where star magic was worked successfully

to empower our evolution.

Our own experience, like my experience of watching the sky

and trying to figure out the asterisms

that had only been going on for two or three years.

However, in all of these astrological systems that we know,

the wanderers are particularly important,

and most important, the sun and the moon.

And we do have, I think, travels and communications

with the sun and the moon in our recent experience

of shamanic journeys and dreams.

There were during the 1960s in Santa Cruz

when I first came there, monthly moon festivals

where we did a ritual that we imagined very much to be

like the Dionysian festivals in Crete,

the Orphic rituals translated to Greece

as the Eleusinian mysteries and so on,

where psychedelics, where sexual rites and star magic

were combined into an annual or monthly ritual

of tremendous power, of adequate power to produce prosperity

for people, for animals, for plants.

And peace, I think, was not produced by just a partnership paradigm

with a lucky society to have escaped the bad habits

of the dominator paradigm.

There was also the conscious interaction

with the peaceful initiative of the celestial sphere

in bringing peace down.

I mean, Crete had no fortifications.

They had all this wealth.

They had wealth like Kuwait, and they didn't get captured

until the third millennium.

So we have definitely our experience of the sun and the moon,

and if we wanted to investigate astrology experientially,

then perhaps we could concentrate on the sun and the moon.

Tonight will be a full moon.

The moon soul will be in its greatest power.

The spirit between the moon and ourselves,

our own soul will be in its most receptive,

and we could do an experiment.

The sun, I think we spoke yesterday of the eclipse of the sun

and the power of this experience in the psyche,

and that would be also a place where we could look for a modulation

of the influence of the sun soul that occurs when the moon soul

passes into a linear, rare, collinear arrangement with our own soul.

So those are some experiences that we could have, really, on a daily basis.

The star magicians I came to know in Santa Cruz, who came to my class,

they get up every day, every morning and evening,

and watch the sunrise and the sunset,

no matter how it disturbs their sleep schedule.

And I think I have been very affected by sunrises and sunsets in my own life.

Since early babyhood, I have a fantastic fascination with sunrise and sunset.

In India, I had seen particularly good ones that I felt to be amplified,

their meaning amplified, by the appreciation of an entire civilization,

a whole country appreciating, knowing, taking the meaning,

basking in the rays, and giving conscious attention to your sunrise and sunset.

Surya Namaskar and other greetings.

Surya Namaskar.

A splendid thing to do with the sun is to greet it when it's arrival,

and to take note of the fact that it did happen again,

which we have no reason to believe that it always will.

Well, in our physical environment, we tend to move into cities,

move into apartments, exclude nature, push it away from ourselves.

In our mental environment, we actually do the same thing.

Most people in a culture live in a very conventionalized set of notions

that are deeply embedded in other conventionalized notions,

far from any edge.

I think when you go to the edges, physically that would mean deserts, jungles,

remote and wild nature.

And when you go to the edges in your own mind, meaning meditation, dreams, psychedelics,

then you discover there's an extremely rich flora and fauna in the imagination

that has simply been ignored because our tendency has always been to look inward,

to build inward, and to turn our backs on the raging ocean of phenomena around us

that entirely overwhelms our metaphors.

Well, it's all the satanic spirit of science, isn't it?

I mean, if one says, what was it that caused this blindness, the question you raise,

there's something that happened around the seventeenth century

that Milton described so well in Paradise Lost.

There was a consciousness of the spirit of Satan,

which is what Paradise Lost is largely about.

And there's also a taxonomy of the various demons and fallen angels,

which act as malevolent powers that somehow influence things like mammon,

the demon of commercial greed.

So if mammon is worshipped, then you have a whole society that's motivated by money,

mammon's instrument,

and entirely under the influence of commercial greed,

as our own is, obviously, to a very large extent.

So here's this personification of Satan,

and the primary sin of Satan is pride,

turning away from God and declaring his own self-sufficiency.

Well, this is precisely the beginning of turning away from God

and the angelic and the whole spirit realm

and declaring the self-sufficiency of man.

It's the humanist illusion.

So you then have this humanist point of view,

and then from that all gods, demons, and everything else

become projections of the human mind,

which now becomes a kind of geocentric universe.

I mean, it's like the old geocentric model.

You even get it in Ficino, who says,

man is the measure of all things,

when actually the order of intelligence

could have been the measure of all things.

Exactly. It's humanism.

And it's this putting man at the center.

That's why adopting this alternative position

of recognizing all the living... of animism,

of recognizing the living spirit of all nature

and living souls of all nature,

is profoundly repugnant to humanism,

but yet is the common ground of all human civilization,

thought and tradition,

apart from this deviation that we're thinking about now.

So this blinding is a kind of satanic pride,

and the spirit of Satan is the spirit of self-sufficiency,

of being in charge,

and the spirit of denial of the whole other realm.

Like in Goethe's Faust,

I mean, Faust being the paradigm scientist,

selling his soul to the devil

in return for unlimited knowledge and power,

the paradigm of the entire process.

By selling it through ceremonial magic,

he invokes Mephistopheles.

So the guiding spirit of modern science,

according to the Faust myth,

is a demon.

It's in fact a satanic demon,

a fallen angel, Mephistopheles.

So, how seriously does one take, then,

the role of Satan and of malevolent spirits

in this disembodied world?

Because they're part of its taxonomy and its landscape,

in many traditions, not only the Christian.

And how seriously does one need to take the idea

that our whole society and civilization

may be under the possession of such a spirit,

worship through money and other, you know, mammon?

The spirit of mammon,

as Milton describes him in Paradise Lost,

he says,

Even in heaven, his looks and thoughts were always downward bent,

admiring more heaven's pavement

than ought divine or holy else enjoyed in vision beatific.

So there's mammon, who has this kind of characteristic,

and then when he falls to earth,

the first thing he does,

he and his crew opened up the sacred hill

and digged out ribs of gold.

It's the first thing mammon did when he got to earth.

Mm-hm.

And started...

And uncovering treasures better hid,

Mother Nature's treasures better hid.

So, here's the description of a demon,

which actually is the spirit of our whole civilization,

by Milton, in Paradise Lost,

as an actual entity.

Now, in that case it's a kind of poetic entity,

but it's also a biblical one, you know, mammon.

And mammon is one of the hosts of Satan,

or of the fallen angels.

So there's this idea of these malevolent powers

that goes back much...

In every society you get these malevolent,

you know, djinns and deceptive spirits

and dangerous entities,

of a kind of, in some sense autonomous,

but in some other sense related to some historical process

involving human beings.

So the current manifestation of this Satanic entity

is the impasse in the world petroleum market

over supplies, resources, possession, distribution.

Yes, and obviously, particularly the United States

needs this Satanic entity to be incarnate,

and now it can't be incarnate in Russia anymore.

It's, you know, where for a long time

the entire imagination could focus on

the Satanic powers being over there.

You know, communism.

Now there's a perfect Satanic figure emerged

for the projection, being Saddam Hussein,

you know, his pronouncement about hostages

and babies starving and stuff.

You know, now Hitler,

the whole sort of projection thing he's got working,

and now he's become this totally evil power.

So this same projection is operating.

And the question is, you know, one thing,

you see, one thing that does is blind us

to the Satanic powers within our own civilization.

And if we take seriously these entities,

how much can we admit the possibility

that there are these malevolent entities,

like mammon or Satanic powers or fallen angels,

which are actually guiding and perverting

the progress of science and technology,

which are actually intervening and conducting

in many respects the ways of the world,

through influence on people, through inspiration,

putting ideas in people's minds,

which is how these things work,

and actually channeling or directing

a large portion of human history.

You then get back to the classic scenario

that there are some people whose consciousness

goes beyond that,

who are fighting on the side of the light,

and you get a standard good versus evil,

celestial struggle, like the Great War in Heaven,

being acted out on Earth.

And for a lot of people,

that's a very plausible picture.

I mean, for these Amazonian ayahuasca Christians,

the idea that Satan has taken on the force of,

like the Great Dragon,

is coming into the forest,

devouring it and burning it,

as prophecies foretold.

This entire system that devours the forest

and destroys and so on,

this whole technological civilization,

Leviathan, as Hobbes called it,

Leviathan?

is in fact the Great Dragon,

and somehow possessed by its spirit,

and that this is an entirely destructive spirit.

It's the satanic spirit,

which is destroying the Earth.

So then you see it's very hard to avoid

falling back into this archetype,

and then the question is,

is that the way it really is?

And I see if one allows for autonomous entities,

if one allows for them to have a historical rootedness,

and to represent spirits of things that have happened,

or spirits that inspired things that have happened,

since human history reveals millennia of oppression,

exploitation, imperialism, enslavement,

brutality, torture,

and which goes on today,

war, domination of every kind.

Is this influence somehow evolving along with humanity,

or in some sense inspiring the development of civilization,

or in some sense intimately and inseparably involved from it?

Well, probably the process of civilization

is going to reveal the final status of this shadow within us.

Because as the constraints of physical resources and energy

presumably fall away,

more and more our self-expression will be unimpeded.

And we don't know what you get

when you get unimpeded human self-expression,

in architectonic form, or social organization,

or something like that.

Well, on the other hand,

it may be just the gradual devolution,

in which the same old forms continue to dominate,

but become, the satanic forms become more and more inflated

by energy and attention, as it were,

as if there were, in the mathematics of the process,

two competing attractors in this dualistic theory

of the battle of good and evil in heaven,

of God and Satan in heaven.

struggling with each other to attract a multitude of human souls.

And the forces of evil, as it were,

progressively more inflated by the acquisition of more souls,

as more and more angels are falling from heaven.

If we wanted, if people could get together

and try to conceptualize the role of their species

and the evolution of the universe and decide,

vote for the forces of good over the forces of evil or something,

and then try to redirect the trend of human consciousness and unconsciousness

toward this other attractor, it would be necessary to,

I suppose, to do interventions on this level with ritual,

with magic, with astrology, with inspiration, with imagination,

in which attention was re-directed to the positive forms,

if we can find them, if we can identify them.

Probably everything is disguised as something else,

and our ignorance is enormous.

But traditionally, I think through the study of world mythology, ritual, religion, and so on,

in the sense of Joseph Campbell, let us say,

we could identify, let us say we could successfully identify the good genies,

and then design rituals.

Let us say we try to present music and visual music on MTV

and on the world cable network so that people could be exposed to visualizations

and harmonizations of these good forms selected through,

from the world history of mythology, religion, and so on.

Collect up some of these good rituals, like we felt moon rituals were in the 1960s,

and do them, present them on TV and so on.

Would they, or would they not, attract souls?

And my feeling is that the enhanced, winning attractiveness of the satanic form

somehow is irreversible at this time, as far as the human species is concerned.

It's practically the only evil species, as far as we can see.

And I don't know about age and so on, that might be actually celestial intervention.

The evil forms of satanic images have been most successful with people,

at least during this patriarchal time of the past 6,000 years,

which seems to coincide with the dawn of history.

So we don't even know exactly what preceded in the early history of our species.

So could eros provide a counter-attractor?

Well, I would think so. It's fantastic.

It's more interesting than evil.

Well, the forces of evil, of course, have adopted every attractor, like mammon.

I mean, money is perhaps not necessarily bad, and prosperity is not necessarily bad,

but it seems to have been engulfed by the forces of evil.

Likewise, sexual images have been, are used extensively,

and have become almost totally identified with evil.

So the shadow side of sexuality in our culture has dominated.

So how could that be reclaimed? How could you even begin that?

I think we'd have to ask the stars for guidance.

I'm very positive about the Green Revolution,

and I think the revival of the Gaian soul

and our consciousness of the Earth as living or divine being is very important.

But still, I don't think this is enough.

I don't think we could make it out of this cul-de-sac without the stars.

So I think we need the Gaian, and we need the chaotic, that is the celestial sphere,

to be reconnected, to be coupled to the human spirit in such a way that they're partnered.

That is the ultimate partnership.

You're dreaming the dream of alchemical revolution that would do pride to a Renaissance magus.

That's essentially what you're calling for.

Yes, it's very close to John Dee's dream, yes.

John Dee's failed dream.

And his dream failed because the Thirty Years' War wiped out the possibility

of an alchemical kingdom in Central York.

Queen Elizabeth withdrew from participating in this partnership even before she died,

and I think that is a key.

The failure of courage on the part of Queen Elizabeth might be an important historical element

in our own fall from a divine path.

But we can always try again.

And where would the new alchemical kingdom be?

I think it would probably have to be in Czechoslovakia.

You know, there's not much choice and chances that Bush is America turning into it,

or Britain at the moment.

Well, that was where the original alchemical kingdom was planned for Prague.

Yes, for Prague.

That's right.

And you're on your way.

You're on your way.

I will discuss it with proper officials.

I think I've been in Prague, and I think that it's a really dark place,

and there is very little hope of illuminating it at this time.

And I have my highest hopes for England, as a matter of fact.

I always have been a great Anglophile.

And particularly now, I think it's very auspicious there,

the number of people who are thinking and reviving in great detail

and with great love and integrity all of these old things,

digging in the archaeology of the mind and trying to seek rituals

and actually perform them and live them.

Well, why don't we call it quits, baby?

Okay.

Did you find it as fascinating as I did when Rupert Sheldrake was talking about

the Faustian story of Metasopheles?

And then he brought out the fact that the United States has always needed a demon

to keep it from examining the satanic powers within our own civilization.

And then he went on to say that after the fall of the USSR,

the focus was shifted to Saddam Hussein.

Now keep in mind that this trialogue took place before the first Gulf War.

And now that we seem to be only weeks away from the state-sponsored murder

of the very same Saddam Hussein, the search for a new Satan is underway.

It looks like the American fascists in Washington are focusing on Iran

while the rest of the country, and the rest of the world for that matter,

sees the new Satan as that insane little bush fellow.

Ah, the world is in flux once again, don't you think?

There's some kind of a new tidal shift in human consciousness that's already begun.

I know a lot of you can feel it because you tell me so in your emails.

What it will amount to and where it will lead us still isn't clear, at least to me.

But being an incurable optimist, I can't help but believe that things are going to work out just fine.

And those of you who have had the great good fortune to have ventured very deep into the far reaches of Entheospace know exactly what I mean.

I know that Trey understands because in a recent email he said,

I know this thing with the great world age shift is really going to happen because I've somehow known it my whole life.

And my bet is that a lot of us have felt that way too, Trey.

I also received an interesting email from Justin who writes in response to a question I asked a while back about what some of you are doing as the year 2012 approaches.

Well, Justin is part of a new rock group called Vav-Ohm. It's V-A-V-O-H-M.

And here's what he had to say.

Our intention with our music is to break people from their molds of habit, get them thinking psychedelically,

and suggest how to properly align their dreams with their will.

I guess you could say that we're of the mind that what happens on 2012 is what we can create.

But the lines between doing and being done to are getting harder and harder to discern.

The music draws on as many influences as musical history has to offer, from Mingus to Motown, Beatles to Mozart, Radiohead to Pink Floyd and Michael Bolton.

Mix it all up, sprinkle a bit of future perspective on it, and you end up with what's been called post-historical rock.

Well, on a personal note, I think that one of their tracks is also reminiscent of an old favorite of mine called Morphine.

The band, that is, not the drug.

Anyway, it's good to know that there still remains a future for psychedelic-inspired rock music.

I don't know about you, but there's just something about Pink Floyd and mushrooms that seem to go together for me.

Also this week, I received an email from Ben.

And by the way, I'm not sure if you guys want me to mention your last names here in the podcast or not,

so I'll continue to only use first names unless you specifically tell me otherwise.

But Ben, and I hope I'm not breaking a rule here, Ben is also known as Valley Sequence on Arrowhead's Visionary Arts Fault.

In fact, Valley Sequence is the featured artist for December 2006.

And here's part of what he had to say in his email.

I am writing in regards to psychedelic art and its relation to the coming technological-slash-consciousness shift.

The lecture series by Terence McKenna was very inspiring.

When he asked what form this shift would occur or how it would first be seen,

it seems that Terence would point to art as the domain for the most future growth.

I am a traditional and digital artist and am seeking innovative ways of synthesizing the traditional with the digital

and to create expressions that deal with the medium of perception itself.

He said that the coming art would be an art with teeth, and that's what I see too.

And if you check out his work on the Arrowhead site, you'll see what he means.

I'm really blown away that an artist this gifted is one of our regulars here in the Psychedelic Salon.

And Ben is correct in his observation about Terence McKenna's position on the importance of art.

I've heard Terence express that thought from many different directions,

one of which is that today's artists are actually creating a new language for us to use

and communicating some of the experiences that we have in Entheo space.

I don't know about you, but when I go to the Arrowhead vault and look at Ben's painting that's simply titled 4981,

I'm swept up in a range of emotions that I experienced a long time ago when I saw, I think I saw, a very similar vision one night.

And that was only the first painting in the series on Arrowhead.

Needless to say, it wasn't the only familiar sight that Valley Sequence captured for me.

What an interesting and talented clan we have here in the Salon.

Before I go, I guess I should mention again that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon

are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 2.5 License.

And if you have any questions about that, you can check on the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,

which can be found at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts.

And if you still have questions, you can send them in an email to me.

Address is Lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.

And thanks again to Chateau Hayuk for the use of their music here in the Psychedelic Salon.

And a special thank you goes out to Ralph Abraham and Bruce Dahmer for seeing to it that the tapes of these trilogues were preserved and digitized.

And from the email I've been receiving, I think it's safe to say that there are now thousands of other people around the world who would also like to thank you guys.

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

Be well, my friends.

And may you all have a joyous and peaceful new year.

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

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

Well, it's good to be back here in the Salon with all of you once again.

I guess that most of the big holiday celebrations and parties are over for a while.

But it was nice while it lasted.

How about you?

I hope all of you had a few perfect moments during the past few weeks.

I had a relatively quiet couple of weeks myself.

And to tell the truth, it's been hard getting back up to speed.

My plan for this year is to publish a podcast by the end of each Wednesday and Friday.

And as you can tell, I cut it a little close already this week.

And by the way, that's Wednesday and Friday Pacific time.

If all goes well, I may actually get them out a little earlier each week.

But a Wednesday and Friday schedule I think I can stick to, at least until further notice.

Now, before I do anything else, I want to thank the people at Gigavox.com for making their Levelator product available online and for free.

As you regulars here in the Salon know, I've been struggling with volume levels for quite a while, particularly with these trial logs.

And the one we are about to hear was the worst one so far.

The microphone on Terrence was okay.

And Ralph's voice was in mono and not too clear.

And it sounded like Rupert's voice was only being picked up by the other two mics.

In short, this tape was a mess.

And so I just kept putting off doing this show because the cleanup on the file was just going to take so long.

And then yesterday I was listening to a podcast from PodcastTools.com and learned about the Levelator from Gigavox.

That's G-I-G-A-V, as in Victor, O-X.

Gigavox.com slash Levelator, L-E-V-E-L-A-T-O-R.

Now, I won't go into a major geek out on you here, but for you other podcasters out there, particularly if you're doing phone interviews,

you might want to check this tool out.

All I had to do was drag the audio file to the Levelator, and it automatically brought all of the voice levels up to a relatively equal point.

And it's, you know, it's not perfect, but it's, well, it's free.

And it sure did a better job than I could do manually.

So a big thank you to the good people at Gigavox.com.

And today's program, as you already know if you've been listening to this entire series,

comes from the seventh tape of the trilogues between Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake

that were held at Esalen Institute in 1989 and 1990.

And this tape was simply titled, The Unconscious.

And sure enough, it begins with Ralph Abraham explaining his bifurcation theory of the unconscious.

But by the time they were halfway into the discussion, their talk had turned to orgies

and to the competing forms of consciousness brought about by alcohol versus psychedelics.

And rather than tell you how it ends, why don't I just put it on right now and we can listen to it together.

Try today and experiment in rapid induction.

That might fail, and then we could fall back on it, you know.

But I think that we haven't tried to push our format in any way,

but now feeling more confident here at home base at the Esalen Institute.

Quick one, two, three.

I would try to suggest some actual questions that you could respond to

as if somebody in the audience had asked questions, you see what I mean?

I'm trying to, the rocket moves rapidly into a designated point on a target, as it were.

The Unconscious.

One, two, three in summary.

One is a theory, the bifurcation theory, that the unconscious was created one afternoon in a certain place.

A curtain, which then divided the conscious and the unconscious forever.

An iron curtain is a question about the relationship between this bifurcation and other bifurcations.

And then three is a theory, which wouldn't have to be taken too seriously as to a particular relationship between this bifurcation and some other one that I propose for the sake of discussion.

Well, all of this is very hypothetical.

One, the unconscious.

Well, I did a talk recently in the History of Consciousness program at the University of California, Santa Cruz.

That's the most successful program at UCSC.

Internationally known graduate program.

Thousands of applicants every year for a few places.

So, to begin with, I challenge them to change the name from the History of Consciousness to the History of Unconsciousness.

So, as long as we restrict attention to a historical period, then there's not much to say.

But all the interesting events I want to point out are prehistoric, so therefore we have to speculate.

Among the possibilities are that the conscious mind developed from the unconscious mind.

Another one is that the unconscious mind developed from the conscious mind.

Another one is that consciousness existed always and that there was never any division.

All these possibilities.

So, for the sake of discussion, I'll choose one.

My favorite one, but only for today.

And that is the consciousness is always and the unconscious is recently created.

So that we can view it like this.

Where we have consciousness going on and then the unconscious begins one day.

Created by an accident in a historical accident or a natural law of evolution.

This fantasy, however, because of peculiarities in conscious, in the evolution of conscious mind and culture and civilization and so on.

More and more things were regarded as illegal in the current world view and by the paradigm rejected from above the curtain to below.

So that as we go along, unconscious begins growing from modest origins.

Well, the conscious mind correspondingly shrinks.

So, eventually, it looks more like this.

Well, you have conscious, conscious unconsciously, but this is growing.

And in its growing, evolution, further bifurcations, morphogenesis and emergence of form in the unconscious.

So, all what we identify today as fundamental deck furniture of the unconscious, the dreams, the archetypal symbols and so on.

All of that is evolved and has evolved from simpler origins and so on.

And this history of the unconscious we seek to discuss.

So, I call that the bifurcation theory of the unconscious.

Now, one virtue of this theory before going on to number two is that allows us to see our conscious mind in evolution from a universal conscious mind.

The Gaian mind is then regarded as conscious.

The animal mind is conscious.

The mind of plants.

All of it, we can speak of the consciousness of animals.

The consciousness of plants.

The consciousness of Mother Earth.

The consciousness of Father Sky.

The consciousness of their partnership in the nuclear family of the all and everything.

And this is valuable in, if we could promote this somehow, in terms of our future and relating with respect to the mind of all the other entities.

Now, number two, this question is about the relationship of this bifurcation in the history of consciousness and other bifurcations of ideas such as the fall of Adam and Eve from the Garden of Eden.

The fall of Angel, Archangel, Lucifer, other angels, and so on.

The creation of the devil, the growth, the emergence, the importance of evil, the empowerment of the negative moment, and so on.

We had a lot of other dichotomies which might have emerged from a unity by a process of mitosis, as it were, in the world of ideas.

And we could try to relate these bifurcation events to each other in time, or in space, or as waves, or corporal relationships, or whatever your favorite ones.

The third, just for example, I'm going to recommend an example which, for me, was the source of my thinking about the history of unconsciousness in this way.

So this is a specific hypothesis on the creation of the unconscious by the rejection of something according to a dogmatic paradigm.

And this has to do with Marduk and Tiamat, the first creation myth that I know about that has the subjugation of chaos by a law and order executive, a cosmic god.

The war between chaos and cosmos, won by cosmos, the king of law and order.

The first one I know about is Marduk and Tiamat, and this is historical and is written on a tablet.

It was part of the Akitu festival that I always talk about, that was celebrated for 2,000 new years in a row throughout Babylonia by the Akkadians, the Semitic successors to the Sumerian civilization.

And in this horror story, repeated every year and actually acted out by the king playing the role of Marduk, Tiamat, a dragon, goddess of chaos, is actually divided in two, murdered with a sword and stretched.

The two halves opened like an oyster shell, forming the sky and the earth at the beginning of the Babylonian creation myth.

At this time, this ritual, so in a time when rituals were performed well and successfully in stabilizing the evolution of culture, chaos, which is essential to life and happiness, was subjugated.

But we experience it all the time, but that was not allowed by the paradigm.

And in this myth was created, I claim, the unconscious, the negative charge on the serpent image, the snake, the innocent, the essential symbol of Mother Earth itself, the consciousness of Gaia.

That this symbol came to be associated with Hades, with evil, with terrorism, with Pluto, with the torture of Erich Kegel and the torture of Inanna by Erich Kegel and so on in the underworld.

Somehow is associated chaos goes to the basement and with this gesture created the bifurcation in consciousness, giving us the unconscious, which appears to be gaining ever since.

And in this gain, also, our life, our history of the human species, going more and more into the evil, the demonic, canarily unsuccessful forms of society.

That's the one, two, three of it.

I see.

So you're in favor of the kind of foal theory of the unconscious?

Yes.

One from which, if we adopted, we could seek also to escape, and we would have a mechanism to escape, because we have a historical map, as it were, of the creation itself.

How would escape happen?

It would bring unconsciousness back into consciousness.

We would take the deck furniture from the lower floors of the boat back up to the deck where it belongs.

We would take back what's happening if, I mean, this is just an example of the chaos theory of the bifurcation or the creation of the unconscious.

In this case, we see that science, which is the main temple of law and order, is now having to eat humble pie and to accept chaos again.

That's a good thing, I think, for our future.

And this good thing is apparently happening more or less accidentally.

But suppose that we had this talk in 1960, and we decided that we would try to do something which would, something intentional, to restore Tiamat to her throne.

To bring up chaos from the unconscious and make it okay.

Then we'd hunt around these computer people, we'd locate Ed Lorenz, we'd popularize his model, we'd revolutionize the sciences on purpose in 1963, instead of waiting for it to happen spontaneously in 1973.

And if we'd done that, we'd never know about that.

It would never have happened without our intentional intervention.

I'm not recommending an intentional intervention.

I'm just saying that if some of these things are brought into consciousness, that the little that we do in our lives for the future generations,

it consists of this discussion alone, maybe all that takes, you see, to bring something back from the basement, to put it in consciousness, starting a new upward spiral somewhere in the evolution of the spirit.

Well, could it be that the unconscious was created?

Could it be that there was a time in history before which there was no unconscious, there was no split, there was only one, which you wouldn't know whether to call it conscious or unconscious.

I mean, we don't know what consciousness means, except to say it's the other one from unconsciousness.

What do you imagine caused this bifurcation?

I don't know.

I know that in historical time, we have this horrific story, Babylonian myth, in the sense of myth as the lyric of the opera, which is a ritual.

And that all the rest of this story had Sumerian precedents, and this part didn't.

So I'm not able to say, to speculate, that this had a 2,000 year history before Marduk.

Marduk was the city god of Babylon, and there was a time when Babylon didn't exist.

Other towns existed, Eridu existed in 2000 BC, Ur existed in Sumerian time, and they had their city gods.

Every city in that early urban revolution, every city coalesced around a god or goddess, and the form of the goddess was materialized in the fall of the city.

And this is the whole idea of the sacred city.

The god concepts, or goddess concepts, which were successful, which were attractors, created cities, and the other ones didn't.

And you had, therefore, a kind of a morphogenesis in the full complex of population movement, urban technology, city design, and religion, ritual, and so on.

And the successful ones accreted with other ones.

And syncretism was the way in which empires were created.

So before 2000 BC, we didn't have Marduk. This didn't exist.

Bel Moradach, he was called.

And this was a synchronism from previous elements.

So, there are books about the serpent, about dragon image in mythology.

And many cultures have dragon images, and they're all associated with chaos.

And basically, they're okay.

Suddenly, we have Saint George killing the dragon.

We have Saint Michael with his foot on the dragon's throat.

We have all this...

energy given to killing the dragons in the Celtic mythology in England, coming

over into Christianity and so on. Now I think it's important that that be

undone. I think we want St. George and the dragon getting it on together in a

May Day celebration where Dionysian elements are accepted. I think it's

possible that this particular bifurcation has to do with the

patrilineal necessity of knowing who is the father of the children and

therefore the rejection of the ritual in which sexual license was an important

part of the play and that this patrilinear structure involved with the

creation of the nuclear family brought about the rejection of the dragon and

the killing of the dragon and so on. But this is a speculation I don't know. Lately

I've come to think it'd be nice to have a competing theory. I'm not sure we can

blame everything on the patriarchal structure. But now you're suggesting that

it was the concern for male paternity that drove the breakdown of this whole...

kill the goddess, yes. We couldn't have this goddess around who liked to seduce young

men and so on. Well this the suppression of psychedelics it comes at that same phase

because the orgies driven by the psychedelic religion completely frustrated

that desire to identify male paternity. The rejection of psychedelics and

shamanism and so on could be likewise associated. So now we're getting a certain

collage of bifurcation events. Only so-called primitive societies have shamans. They

have psychedelic rituals on a weekly basis and they believe that spirits are alive

in rocks and plants and they believe this because they've seen them and they

believed in the reincarnation of the spirit and that a human soul could

reincarnate in an animal and and so on. So a whole... it's possible that a whole

complex of things all disappeared at the same time because of evolutionary

selection. Some unnatural selection as it were. And it might be important to try to

figure out the mechanism of this fall because this is a really big fall and

now since these thousands of years we're suffering from the loss of this whole

complex of ideas together and I don't know if there's any one of them which is

is the cause. I'm not sure there were simultaneous or if there was one place in

the world where they were simultaneous. I can't accept blindly the theory of the

Kurgan waves, the three Kurgan waves and so on. I think that over time these

mushroom using people in the Sahara were transformed unwittingly into mead cults by

a scarcity of mushrooms and the recognition that honey was a potential

preserving medium for the mushroom. So as the mushrooms became rarer and rarer the

effort to preserve them in honey and to concentrate the use of them into large

festivals intensified and finally what you had were mead festivals where mushrooms

were no more than a flavoring and ultimately no more than a memory and that

the shift from the psychology of a psilocybin mushroom cult to the

psychology of a beer mead intoxicating cult is precisely the difference in

emphasis of inner dynamics that would shift you from a partnership arrangement

sensitive to social cueing to a patriarchal relationship insensitive is

precisely the effect so first I need then the patriarchy the patriarchy and the

mead and evolve together along with the concern for male paternity it had to do

with the suppression of orgies this was a critical decision that had to be faced

basically the choice was between fun and full knowledge of the flow of your genes

and once it was decided that male paternity was an important issue then the

concept mind comes into existence my women in this case my women and then my children and

then my food my weapons my land and this was the whole thing which this orgiastic

psychedelic boundary dissolving mushroom religion was uh holding at bay it was

literally a pharmacological intervention to keep that kind of a psychology from getting

well maybe it was an accident you see an accident in the kitchen that mead took over just because

well the climate warmed up and there was no other way to preserve it or or something and after the

mead entered the kitchen by accident and then all these other shifts followed so this would be an

alternative to the kuergen wave theory this is an alternative to the kuergen well i like that i like

that terence i think we need an alternative when you see it would happen quite naturally you have this

flourishing mushroom cult on the plains of africa and then the drying which created that situation

continues and you get first of all seasonality to the mushroom so that's all right you just have

these wonderful huge seasonal celebrations and your psychology can be basically intact but then as the drying

continues and the water holes are further and further apart the need to preserve the sacrament and to

spread it ever more thinly i mean this is how so this is the only scenario i can imagine by which psychedelic

mysteries are lost is if they actually slowly fade from the zone of occupation of the culture using them

and a substitute slowly takes their place in a way that is at least satisfyingly a booze booze they went from

an ecstatic goddess cult of orgy to a drunken revelry of warriors the two-phase theory the psychedelic

partnership phase or the alcoholic dominator phase this is one drug driven phase transformation repeating

itself endlessly flip-flop seesaw in the history of consciousness i like that and there's historical

evidence as well in crete where we see this phase reversal phenomenon went on into historical times

ending there because the dionysian ceremonies were apparently debased into alcoholic uh rebels

and orpheus was a reformer trying to get the dionysian religion back on track as it were with

psychedelics and away from the booths and it happened again with pythagoras and again with buddha and

well and it happened with dionysius turning into bacchus into bacchus then it was the vine it was wine

the early bacchus is a frightening figure whose practitioners fell into such frenzies of ecstasy

that it was charged against them that they devoured their own children the late hairy-footed lascivious

bacchus is simply an image of the alcohol consciousness made concrete so if we took this theory seriously

for a moment which we won't too seriously through this two-phase theory and then we favored one phase

and whether in the other phase and then we would seek the mechanism of a phase transition as you turn

on heat underwater and it boils or something then we would try to get psychedelic drugs back into the

agenda and somehow get rid of alcohol and um this would then explain why alcohol is legal and marijuana

is not in these societies and so on is there is some self-preservation function there's a phase

maintaining mechanism within this phase which has made it dominant this past six thousand years

reinforces male dominance because why why why because if if you technically analyze what alcohol does

pharmacologically it actually does diminish sensitivity to social cueing this is a technical

way of saying you turn into a boor and an oaf zombie no a libidinally driven oaf is what you turn into

and because you now have a reduced sensitivity to social cueing and you are your normal um good sense is

impaired you're prepared to make a sexual conquest and most of the sexual neurosis of the western

civilization can be traced to incidents of early sexual imprinting in the presence of alcohol

alcohol how many women lose their virginity in an ambiance of a drunken groping encounter i mean this

is how it is normally done in the west so that alcohol is so spun into our simultaneous terror and

attraction for the sexual experience that it's just become scripted in as part of our cultural neurosis i'm

willing to bet that for a thousand years in the west nobody got laid who wasn't smashed i did this was

it ends the period i'm talking about ends before you were born so it's just a matter of there's a good um

you know a point for the discussion the way in which our relationships to the material world specifically

drugs promote or retard the expression of what we're calling the unconscious because one of the things

that i think repels us all about drug abuse is that it is unexamined unconscious behavior and it's worth

thinking then about how the unconscious is in a way an out of doubt relationship to the exterior world

because we can call it forth you know we can addict to heroin or television and turn 90 percent of our lives

into an indwelling in the unconscious well i do this in my own way i feel that i'm unable to become

unaddicted totally unaddicted but i could be addicted to this or that right so after i figured that out i

decided not to be addicted to chocolate ice cream alcohol and a whole bunch of other things and

and it seems very easy to make these choices you can replace something with something else you just

touch it and it's attractive so then you get pulled away from this one to that one could this um

then be inserted in our educational system rights of passage and so on so that people know that they

have a choice and they don't have to be addicted only to alcohol and not to anything else and that they

could actually choose reclaiming free will without rejecting addiction this is what it has to be because

this is the kind of creature we are and the the addiction of addictions which spawned this itch

originally is no addiction at all but rather our natural connection into the hierarchy of gaian

information that was accessible to us when these nature religions were freely practiced a sacrament is

not a symbol and the day they were able to sell people on the notion that a sacrament is a symbol they severed

the umbilical connection to the logos and then ran off the track and screwed everything up well to get

back to the conscious and the unconscious here i i think it's not necessary to destroy the unconscious or

to make everything unconscious become conscious but i do think some growth of consciousness could be

associated with some shrinkage of unconsciousness and if we can't undo this bifurcation in which the

curtain was developed at least we could we could rearrange the furniture a little bit so we see one one way

that might be relevant for doing this is giving people a wider choice of addictions and in this sense

a restrictive society which narrows the choice of addictions is somehow anti-evolutionary and that

promotes the growth of unconsciousness insensitivity and danger to life and limb of the biosphere and so

on but um what what could be done besides you know somehow diminishing alcoholism inside what could be done

for the advance of consciousness to develop kind of telescopes little stellarators where we can look

into the unconscious henry green i mean dream analysis just doesn't really do it for people

well your idea rupert about the age-related reestablishment of shamanic i think so yes this

this is this idea that came up at holyhock recently legalizing um psychedelics in an age-related manner

already we have age-related legislation before 18 in britain it's illegal to buy and consume alcohol

after 18 it's okay before 16 it's illegal to buy and consume tobacco after 16 it's okay so now what

about legislation at before 30 it's illegal to buy and consume mushrooms after 30 it's okay before 40

it's illegal to buy and consume say lsd after 40 it's okay 50 dmt etc there's a series of age-related

initiation-related legalizations and your ability to purchase the substance legally after you've reached

that age depends on being initiated into it you have to go to being held at e-cannels a place like

acid or honeyhoff etc and you know your friends for your 50th birthday they know exactly what to do

they'd have a whip round to subscribe for the price of a free gift voucher for a dmt initiation

is it valued at either omega-eslim or the new york this is a vision you understand anyway there's an

initiation so there's a series of openings into other realms of perception but you see i don't

think that the problem is so much that the unconscious is a kind of conspiracy or fall

but the fact that the whole way that nature works in all aspects is through the whole formation of

habits and as we know from our own experience that habit formation involves going into unconsciousness

the principal model of which is habituation found among animals right down to the level of stentor

in their unisonular ciliates habit habituation where like when we go into a room there's a funny smell

you notice it then after a while you stop noticing it the background was it but habituation is the way we

actually personally experience and share with the entire animal kingdom are going into unconsciousness

of a large part of the environmental stimuli and what's acting upon us and it seems that the focus of

attention is always quite narrow what sensory systems and lunatic organisms do right through the animal

kingdom is perceived differences you know differences in smell differences in temperature differences in

pressure when you move the finger over something all sensory systems differences in movement sensory

systems work on differences and what become conscious of differences and they're on the surface as if it's

on the entire surface of the largely unconscious system the the shimmering surface where you notice

differences there's a kind of awareness or consciousness of differences but the heart of

the whole thing is unconscious habit and the heart of all living systems is unconscious habit however

conscious we become we don't become fully conscious of the unconscious embryonic habits that formed us and

the unfolding of human instinctive and cultural habits that have so conditioned our development and

of our culture so there's these habits uh inbuilt in the whole of nature and i don't think there's a kind

of sinister conspiracy of unconsciousness um it may be that a sharper awareness of the interface developed

at some time i don't know i mean maybe um perhaps through psychedelic visions themselves the sense of

in certain moments you're conscious of things that other moments you're not conscious of

you become aware of beings and entities and dimensions etc which you're not normally

there on so it's not that you're conscious all the time you're conscious sometimes the fact that when

you start from habit that habit is a natural process depends in all nature shimmering on the surface of the

habits of atoms of molecules of crystals uh disruptions and chaotic perturbations and so on like crystal faults

and fractures that make each crystal different and there's and there's a kind of consciousness

associated with these discontinuities and differences um so everywhere there's this kind of um

awareness of difference which is the kind of consciousness level but below that is a large underground

thing of habit or unconsciousness and there's a sense in which shamanic journeyings uh ritual practices

like an annual liturgical year where like still today september the 29th the festival of saint michael

and angels liturgies and masses for the angels said all throughout the christian world a day of invocation

and hymns for the angels it's a day on which you become particularly aware and open to and

invoke and talk to and communicate with the angelic orders there's a day for it it's there today it's

practiced um then there are other days like all souls day when you communicate through reprient

directly and masses and relate to the souls of all departed then there are the various saints days that

relate you to the lives the lights the kind of as you were saying this morning each saint representing

a kind of christianization of a sort of spirit principle or in some cases even nature spirit principle

um the green men the green men so you have all this going on

so i think that somehow there's the sense in which through liturgies through rituals through psychedelic

visioning it's possible to come to bring to awareness with a whole liturgical calendar

these all these different qualities celebrated on different days throughout the year this is found

in barley today in the catholic calendar you know saints days and the services throughout the liturgical

calendar and in the major festivals and solar and lunar festivals like christmas and easter

so there is this awareness through ritual of all these different dimensions they're brought into

awareness they're normally unconscious but there are particular days in the year when they're

brought into consciousness you can't be consciousness of everything all the time we have a limited focus

so you're saying the calendar can be an engine for uh illuminating the calendar of rituals that actually

achieve opening yeah i i think that the the theory of habituation like sensory inhibition is uh it's a good

model for the mind in which the um the whole thing is viewed as essentially unconscious and that consciousness

is little window which rolls over and could be redirected at will by a ritual or something at a certain

park of the unconscious which would then become by a voluntary choice conscious for a day it would have

its day of days yes the unconscious that i was speaking about before is a region of this whole thing

in which the contents have somehow become unavailable and it's the unavailability that i would identify

that as the ultimate unconscious let's call that then the unavailable unconscious the unavailable unconscious

has been growing since a certain time in in history where it's not possible to rove the window over it anymore

because it's been declared illegal terrain because it doesn't need to i think perhaps because it doesn't

have its day yes the orgy principle had its day and still does in indian holy festivals you know

yeah and throw those and have kind of processions and so on so and reversals of the social order

those kinds of things are very alive in india um there's all these different principles throughout

the year which we find that mirrored in carnival and mardi gras and so on the same kinds of festivals you

see suppressed in the protestant countries through the reformation so no longer did the goddess have

a day in the various marian festivals all these female saints and and um saint francis and all the rest

no longer had their days the eight days of the angels were not observed any of the most important

biblical festivals might give and easter and of course christmas and then and so there was a great

shrinking of the number of observed days and you know in certain mammon doesn't have an observed day

and the goddess doesn't have an observed day and all these principles are entirely unconscious in our

culture because they're not collectively and publicly observed so i think that um probably the

traditional model for bringing to consciousness what is so largely unconscious not necessarily through

an evil conspiracy or names of ignorance or anything like that but simply through the natural

tendency to habituation and served in the operation of all sensory systems everywhere but things that

remain the same are not perceived whereas differences that are so unconsciousness proceeds by a lack of

attention as it were only by focusing attention and having days and special rituals and so on we could

maintain consciousness we would have to work and maintain maintenance of consciousness as we work at the

maintenance of the garden and keep reading and watering and so on and these mythic festivals you talked about

were obviously a way of doing that you reenact every year the drama of the myths yeah so that you bring the myths to

consciousness and make them seen by the senses heard enacted and real in the sense of the king's concept

of the magic or whatever yes well so but it's and it happens on particular days in the year that's how it works

that our attention is selective and this has always been based on seasonal and festivals and tragical calendars

and so forth so you're saying everything tends toward unconsciousness and it's only by this

act of awareness pushing against this universal principle that we illuminate phenomena in consciousness

yes and i think this relates to ralph's model of the spirit which where he told us that on the one

hand you have the the soul on the other hand what you have the body and the spirits what mediates between

well in it's interesting in the late medieval or renaissance theory or certainly the 17th century

theory the animal spirits were what mediated between the psyche the soul or the um of the person and the

body they were in an intermediate position the animal spirits nerve impulses were brought to the

duty to animal spirits when they can't so the spirit is and if it's the surface or the interface

between them then it's that part which picks up differences in which differences can only be known

through an awareness of differences in where difference can be perceived or you have to have

a larger space within which it's seen as a difference and that means difference is defined relative to

non-difference or sameness or or steady habit or whatever it's measured against the background of unconscious

habit which isn't changing or by clock time as a model for that so you that it's differences in

this it's therefore differences that would be observed throughout guy would be very conscious during ice ages

because things would be changing at the beginnings and the ends of ice ages there's a tremendous

difference going on and the guy would come to a higher consciousness as guy must be coming to a higher

consciousness now through these large ecological changes so that's the history is triggering this

awareness something like that that it's to do with differences and it's to do with rates of change

that consciousness or awareness are concerned you know in sensory physiology the whole thing is to

do with all these laws logarithmic laws our sensory perception of rates of change 10 times

increase in stimulus strength it usually represents two-folds to increase in subjective stimulus

a hundred-fold three-fold it's a logarithmic scale and that the senses work on pretty universally

well i think this is right this is good this is a theory of the importance of holidays but there's

still something wrong because through the annual repetition of christmas which persists to this day

the consciousness is still gone because there's not enough difference i guess

every year christmas is the same i mean people have have they not completely forgotten the

significance of christmas it's possible to experience christmas with full regalia of angels on the trees

and so on and still to not have any awakening into consciousness of lost archetypes that's precisely why

christmas is a child's festival and why the delight of christmas experienced by everyone the ideal archetypal

delight of it is young children waking up on christmas day and seeing the stars and the angels the

sounds and bells and the presents and the magic of christmas is considered to work for young children

adults feel somewhat guilty about being jaded about it and you know there's a great impulse to recapture

it through the delight of young children and since it's a young children festival it's a nativity festival

it's a child festival it's a child festival the sacred child festival um that's the pole that touches in

us sick child um so i think that that's what that particular festival is about and i think that it

operates quite well in its way as a reminder and react so it works a few times i think it has a particular

because of its ritual power there are a lot of people who only go to church at christmas

for some it's very common in england you know in the church of england you have lots of people there

at christmas and easter you never normally get at all um and so there are some people whose

connection with the christian faith is confined to these major seasonal festivals and um

it therefore sort of still has a kind of the pulse the basic ritual pulse of the seasonal festival year

of the ritual year is still alive however sluggishly in a lot of people so it's not that most people have

forgotten it but one thing i think that one of the troubles with terence and his suggestions is that

they're usually uh the ideal state that he usually portrays like his idea of moving over to an entirely

lunar calendar to bring about feminine virtues and partnership families and his ideal predictions

usually turn out to be have been realized and often refuted by the world of islam

like the lunar calendar that's true they were big on that and the other thing is that they were big

on banning alcohol one of the most important of the quranic prohibitions is on intoxicating drink

and the result therefore is that many muslims mainstream muslim culture and certainly on the surface of

righteous muslim life alcohol is not consuming but in most muslim societies cannabis has been considered

all right it's still an intoxicant and still falls under a kind of pharaonic prohibition but not one

that's taken seriously prohibition of alcohol that's right no that's a good point you're right so islamic

culture is a culture that the drug of which is cannabis the largest country is rather than alcohol

yes although whether islam has a drug at all could be argued i mean perhaps the drug of the islamic world

is coffee caffeine is more typical of the state of mind we associate with most of the denizens of that

part of the world rather than the affable states induced by cannabis it's the shrill argumentative and

mercenary arguments of the marketplace and coffee managed to take that basic foothold and write itself

into every labor contract on earth it's the only drug sanctioned by industrial capitalism

form of the coffee break they don't have smoking breaks you mean at factories

no they've never world that's right they don't have cannabis breaks but you have

cannabis parties on the weekend I think cannabis is associated with the mystical

strain in Islam that's definitely minority and has and doesn't really it

when it has shaped Islamic culture it's been episodic and far in the past did you catch that

part where Terence said that he thought that the only way the psychedelic mysteries could have been

lost was through climate changes that caused the plants and mushrooms to become ever more scarce

until they disappeared along with the knowledge about how to use them and it made me think wonder

a little bit about whether the internet might play a role in preserving psychedelic knowledge

this time around of course what if the net goes down in some kind of a new dark age I can't really

foresee that right now but hey then again I never thought my good old eight-track tapes would ever

become obsolete either so just to be sure that the core of this vitally important information isn't

lost everyone who can might want to think about buying a copy of to call and t-call both by Ann and Sasha

Shulgin if you haven't already seen these valuable books you might want to check them out particularly if

you're one of these chemists out there I think the Shulgin still have some copies left that you can order from

their publishing company transform press which is at box one three six seven five berkeley california nine four seven one two or if you want to buy them through Amazon I've put links to them at the top of our Amazon store page at matrixmasters.com

I've kind of let the email pile up these past few weeks but there are a couple of things that came up that I'd like to mention and the first one I think is one I've mentioned before but maybe some of the

some of you miss that program and so I need to bring it up again and that is the fact that if you write to me and ask about where you can obtain any illegal substance well you're simply not going to hear back from me you know that at least for the time being the first amendment to the US Constitution is still in place somewhat and it allows us to discuss these sacred medicines in almost any kind of way we want to the thing we can't do however is talk about

how and where to get them but please don't think that I don't understand how you feel when you're essentially out there on your own without any connections to the worldwide psychedelic community I was in exactly the same place about ten years ago you know I moved to a new state didn't know anybody there I didn't feel like I could trust anybody at work to talk to about it in short I just thought I'd run out of options so how did things change for me you ask well

I went to hear Terence McKenna talk at Omega Institute in New York and he told me about the Amtheobotany conference in Blanque Mexico and it was at that conference that the door kind of opened to this community for me

unfortunately that conference series no longer exists so where does that leave us today well here are three events that might hold some promise for you to meet like-minded people and I'm sure that there are more of these going on as well the first one is taking place on April 20th in Amsterdam and you can learn more about this event at www.dopefiend.co.uk

www.dopefiend.co.uk and listen to the Dopecast for more information I'm not sure exactly what kind of event this is but it sounds really similar to the Cannabis Cup parties that are held every November and my guess is it won't be as big as a cup which had over 2,000 people there the year I attended but with the crew from the Cannabis Podcast Network as a part of it I'm sure that you'll have a great time there

hard not to have a good time in Amsterdam isn't it

and the next big event that I know about will be from June 13th through the 17th in Costa Rica

and this is John Hanna's 2007 Mind States Conference

while John does a large conference every other year in the States

I've been told by several people who attended the alternative ones out of the country that

they're the closest conferences you're going to find to the original in Theo Botany series in Palenque

and I'm not sure where the ticket sales on that conference stand right now but I think

John keeps attendance down at these out of country events down to around 100 people or so

so if you're thinking about going you might want to get your reservation in early

and all the information about that conference is online at

mind states m-i-n-d-s-t-a-t-e-s dot org

and of course the third event that I'd recommend is Burning Man

and now the problem is that it's really expensive to go to any of these events

and there's no getting around that fact

when I was working in the corporate world it didn't seem too bad

you know I just took several short vacations each year to attend a couple of conferences

but now that I'm essentially in the same boat that a lot of students are

you know I don't have much disposable income

and so in my case rather than do something different each year at least for the time being

I've decided to just go to Burning Man each year and pass on the others

and for those of you who can't make any events like these this year

well that's one of the main reasons that I'm doing these podcasts

you know at least this way you can get some of the information that's available

you know it's not as good as being there of course

mainly because the thing that sets these other events apart

is that the people that you're going to meet there

they're really spectacular crowds usually

but let me circle back to where I started here

and say that you shouldn't expect to find sources for any illegal substances

simply by showing up at a conference or two

you know thanks to the draconian laws

that have made outlaws out of people who ingest certain plants and chemicals

our community has become wary of strangers

so my advice is not to be a stranger

attend as many events like these as you can get to

and get to know the people there

and more importantly let them get to know you

you know even the narcs do it this way

which of course makes it even more difficult for good guys like you and me

but that's the way the game is being played these days

so let's just hope that the rules become a little more sensible before much longer

i said that's the first thing i want to talk about

and there are a couple other email topics that i'd like to get to today

but if i don't quit talking pretty soon i'm not going to get this program posted

so i guess i better sign off

and before i go i should mention that this and all of the podcasts from the psychedelic salon

are protected under the creative commons attribution non-commercial share alike 2.5 license

and if you have any questions about that you can click on the link at the bottom of the psychedelic

salon web page which you can find at matrix masters dot com slash podcasts

and if you still have any questions you can send them to me an email address is lorenzo at matrix

masters dot com and thanks again to jock cordell and wells for the use of your music here in the

psychedelic salon i hope you guys are going to have a terrific year this year and for now this is lorenzo

signing off from cyberdelic space be well my friends greetings from cyberdelic space this is lorenzo and

i'm your host here in the psychedelic salon so here we are back to the conclusion of the trial log between

terence mckenna ralph abraham and rupert sheldrake on the topic of the unconscious and since i've got a

few things i want to comment on at the end of this program i'm going to keep this introduction

mercifully short and get right into today's trial log what i'm going to do is to begin by playing the

last few minutes of the previous side of this tape to give us a little continuity from the last

program and so we'll begin with terence mckenna's thoughts about the drug of choice for islam

yes although whether islam has a drug at all could be argued i mean perhaps the drug of the islamic

world is coffee caffeine is not the state of mind we associate with most of the denizens of that part

of the world rather than the affable states induced by cannabis it's the shrill argumentative and

mercenary arguments of the marketplace and coffee managed to take that basic foothold and write itself

into every labor contract on earth it's the only drug sanctioned by industrial free break they don't

have smoking breaks you mean at factories no they've never world that's right they don't have cannabis

breaks but do you have cannabis parties on the weekend i think cannabis is associated with the

mystical strain in islam that's definitely minority and has and doesn't really it when it has shaped islamic

culture it's been episodic and far in the past oh i think in india today there's a very strong

cannabis element to islamic culture it's the drug that most young muslims will smoke or take rather than

alcohol most many of them will have tried it and certainly know it's used and there are certain

sufi dagas near hyderabad where they dance into frenzies and so on on the annual festivals and so on

where in that kind of sufi shrine smoking cannabis is quite normal it's you know fakir smoke it like

hindu holy men and although the it's not exactly all right from the point of view of islam it's it's

the drug of promise and also i went to a daga in in srinagar in cashmere where there was it was a sufi

shrine and in it was the cannabis room where they had legally on sale hashish and people sitting around

smoking and in the in the sufi shrine this special room for smoking room attached to the shrine so i went

with my friend i was staying with we sat down and we had to smoke there it was a fairly depressing place

in the sense that most people there were the derelicts of society and it was a little bit like a kind of

why no atmosphere and one could see why the prejudice against cannabis develops in in islamic countries

as well because it's associated with the kind of why no down and out derelict yes what's missing is the

ritual the calendric ritual the ritual use the guided trip that contains a culture well cannabis day

and that have to be you know like the indians have have you know the holy plant tulsi i'm sure there's

a tulsi day and they pay honor to the tulsi plant every day by walking around it women do the basil

they did at the house where i lived in hydropath every morning they'd touch the plant do a little

pooja and walk around it second ambulate and lighted incense stick just as part of their morning

ritual so here's a sacred plant associated with fertility and women's rights and powers

um it's interesting it means king doesn't it in english basil

um so if there were for example cannabis day you'd have days in which these different principles were

recognized made clear there could be a booze day that would be okay that could be a booze day yes

indeed there'd be a beer booze festival like the the scottish himalian festival i mean that's the

usual the traditional booze festival it's hogman ale you yes the addiction would be controlled by

rotating it around the different crops as we're told to avoid food allergies by changing our staple food

every five days so you'd have a calendar round of intoxicants each one associated with a particular

asterism on the horizon or something yes since the plants are already associated with celestial bodies

in in medieval herbals there's already this association in herbalism it's in some cases it would

merely be a matter of looking it up i mean recovering you know perception because they had perceptions of

these relations well maybe we could have a practical step toward the resurrection of this cycle

just through the publication of a calendar in which the associations are mentioned and recommended

such things almost already exist don't they sacred day canada and i've seen several versions none

but with the plants and addictions is there a booze day oh no i don't think anyone's i don't think

it's got to the stage of uh new dates being appropriate the choice of dates and everything

the alexandrian institute or the deep society or somebody could be induced to uh publish this

project well i think as long as cannabis day occurs more frequently than once in the solar round

don't you associate it with something fast like mercury once a month one day in the lunar cycle each

lunar cycle would be cannabis day i would think yeah so possibly lobbies i suppose for every plant

i think that i think weekly probably best since it would become a foundational thing you see the

christian sacrament of holy communion taken weekly by most people involves the sacred sanctification

of wine the ritual element the central sacrificial element is wine and and there's no doubt that

alcohol has this and the fermentation and the corn and all those kinds of things are a central part of

these mysteries ancient mysteries come in the christian form um which is wine on saturday beginning maybe

at friday sundown yes on sunday i think cannabis on friday actually because cannabis is the day the

islamic sabbath i mean it's the jewish shekinah day friday is this day of prayers of of of muslims and

is their most sacred day and cannabis is their if anything's their sacred plant this is it um then

friday is also friday evening is also the invocation of the shekinah in the jewish custom the invocation

of the feminine presence of god or the sabbath bride by the woman lighting the candles at sunset on friday

evening um well robin silvan you know has has readopted the um this invocation of sabbath bride and like

other jews who've been to these sort of jewish revival work weekends led by lynn gotley than people

it's all to do with reconnecting with the sacred festivals and observing the sabbath as the first step

and actually sacralizing the flow of time well he's done it by they they light the candles and then

they smoke together and talk and that's friday evenings their evening for meeting and in a kind

of sacramental spirit and so friday is the cannabis day and i think that's probably probably a good day

for it it's also the goddess day you see friday frayer venus day so i'd advance friday as my top choice

for cannabis day beginning uh friday at sundown you mean yes and then saturday at sundown alcohol day

yes saturday at sundown alcohol day monday morning one takes coffee coffee yes tuesday tea

and wednesday presumably dmt we need rituals so that when consciousness is restored

by difference through the change of the medium as it were then this consciousness would be focused on

some submerged furniture through an actual ritual associated as this uh friday night ritual is associated

with the shekinah and uh well sunday is the sun so here we could have the uh salutation to the sun

um yes sorry namaskar three another scar monday sunday sunrise sunday sunday sunrise monday well moon

festivals we could have a moon observance i mean actually we it'd be quite easy to reclaim the week

because the names are all still there yes the week is a good way to go i think annual is like too slow for

the modern society oh i think annual is a really good one as well yeah well you have these many cycles

running and then well seasons for people to be unconscious of the seasons in modern cities this is

really well notice that what you end up suggesting is that the uh reclamation of the unconscious has to do

with directing attention into time using these mechanisms that time is the body of the unconscious

apparently well time is the mediator of the differences time is the enemy of habituation

time is the strategy sub subverting sensory and time is the theater of habituation as well

so time and attention used creatively banish the unconscious well i don't know how how they they

they banish it on an annual basis and they they still mean there's a lot of these things go unconscious

again for much of the year but they they they keep each aspect of the collective consciousness which is

far larger than the everyday consciousness because it includes all the mythic and ceremonial realms

by this annual connection they keep the whole collective consciousness uh aware and in in acknowledging

on a systematic basis these different dimensions of so symbolically the unconscious is death symbolically

the unconscious is death yes because it's the absence of awareness or is it sleep it's sleep

and death which are often equated yeah and so then the then if sleep and death are the principal

images of the unconscious we then have the curious intermediate form of dreams which are intermediate

between unconscious and conscious life in some sense they're conscious after a form but not fully

conscious and they occur when we're unconscious and we rapidly forget them in a role for meditation in

maintaining consciousness through a voluntary fluctuation difference in the awareness well in the annual

cycle people should become and we should become more aware of the zodiacal sign not the fictitious

zodiacal sign of western modern astrology but the actual asterism in the in the sky through which the sun is now

passing and we've become much more aware of the movements of the heavens if if for example

thursday thor's day or jupiter's day jovedi um is associated with jupiter as it is or saturday with saturn

that on those days you actually see those planets in the sky you learn where they are and and you know on

those days where to look to them because you have to direct your consciousness towards them to come

under the beneficent influence of their principle and even if they're up in daytime you can still

be aware of what part of the sky they're in exactly and the rituals of these different days would

involve actually connecting with these the intelligences of the planets which is what the

names of the days are named after we could be sort of accelerators in public places like a big

tube which is aimed at the place in the sky where jupiter is a little clock adjusted and you just go up

when you're passing by and through looking through it you're aware of the fact that even if you can't

see it because it's daytime that's where jupiter is that's right and then these things are set either

by an technician or by some remote control program more easily so the next day and you'd have venus

friday and then saturday you'd have saturn and each day there'd be a renewed awareness of the planetary

bodies and you might also have to include something for the more recently discovered ones pluteo yeah

and uranus and so on and in well several days would have two uh but this then would be returning onto

a modern version of those medieval cathedral clocks that show the astrological control astronomical

configuration should be in in towers but of course these towers will be associated with shopping malls

instead of with cathedrals and abbeys and so on because shopping malls are actually the modern

equivalent of the medieval abbey i see they've always seemed to me the most desolate and desanctified

of places well i was at uh glastonbury abbey recently and have you know in little museum and then there are

drawings and reconstructions of the place and there's this huge outside the wall there's this huge market

which was on which is exactly like a shopping mall people have their stalls selling things and

shopping malls are really like bazars you see because you have one big building and then you

have little shops with no walls around they're soups hmm yes and uh the only thing missing of course is the

actual abbey near detail because a bank sits in its place we'll put that back we'll know where to put it

obviously because we have to put it back in the middle of commerce where people like to go

for shopping and then between the jewelry store and the grocery store one would pass by this tower

which if you felt like it you could ascend and then have take the darshan of jupiter and pluto yes

somehow i so hate shopping malls that i'd rather be able to go to it without having to go past all

these shops i would too but uh so we have to have the freestanding version or the ancient sacred site

version as well yeah because if these things are placed on sacred sites within each you know like

each town had its temple or sacred site you could have a sacred center of each place where this is

well in north america we don't have sacred sites only in europe you have them here we have well these

would be on native american second design land and well there's yellowstone there's big mountains geysers

and some natural features where people go but we don't have this thousands of historical sites

all right well they visit on the weekend all right well then we just have a few of these they'd be

made for a limited edition to start with and they'd be installed at esalen hollyhock omega etc yeah

places where a daily ability to be related to the reigning planet would actually intrigue a lot of

people who came here yeah to look through and it would be a novel feature everyone would talk about it

it would be extremely it would be fairly easy to make especially if it were meant to operate it

position you see where these uh work study scholars they call them here rotate they're they're quite

happy at their work because they rotate the job so they have this novelty factor five days of dishes

and then suddenly you're doing the sheets then you're out cutting the lawn well one one of the jobs would

have to be the maintenance of the of the tubes pointing at the heavies and the person who did this would

have a you know dunce cap in a long robe of linen and go about setting you know that maybe there'd be

a little pyramid with truncated pyramid with a top and you climb up the stairs like in the yucatan

and then you have these tubes pointing and a little plaque that explains so one person would come

properly dressed every morning and adjust them for the day's planet like there's arabic or um mogul

observatories like you see there you know they're like parks where there's one where you go up a

long ramp and that gives you a view on something and then there are all these different ramps and

tubes and then sort of semi-secular so you can get all different viewing angles that's exactly it

it's a kind of astronomical theme park in a way where you've got all these apparatuses which actually

enable it to become a reality for you in relation by walking into it and climbing upstairs and moving

the revival parks so i think stonehenge and those places must have had something of this quality they

still function in this way for a lot of people so the thing is it's not difficult to construct

henge-like structures or these astronomical tube setups so we'd start with a few selected places

a kit that could probably be mounted on a sort of couple of yards square area the henge kit well this

would first be the tube kit the celestial observation kit with mini henge would be the first prime yes

and then we'd have the complete henge kit which for those for use at schools institutions etc where

people have got commanding views and large or farmers or open-air entrepreneurs in the countryside you'd

have these henge kits established where you've got the entire line of view of if you sit in the center of

the exact horizon position of midsummer sunrise you know equinoxes the rising points of the moon through

its 18-year cycle of moving along the different points all these marked marked out by the coordinates

of the henge with a booklet maybe a computer program explaining exactly which ones to look for when

and then relation to the heavenly bodies through sitting in the center of a henge

could become again a living experience for millions of people yeah public parks could have them

you know every people would go for it too because they would find out through experience that

something actually does happen to you when you look at that part of the sky that the direct

sight personal observation of the sky have this effect on consciousness it's cheap it's easy to

obtain and it's fun as popular as disneyland exactly so if if this kit were designed first the tube

kit and then the hinge kit based on a reliable study of ancient henge monuments including woodhenge the

materials used it could be wood you see because woodhenge and they went or it could be stone in

which case one would have to send out just it would simply be an instruction manual for the kind of

local stone to use it a computer program could aim the tools yes and also help with the alignment of the

stones although the best way in fact to do it would be to do it in reality to go to the central point and

observe the sunrise on the summer solstice yeah and mark the point and actually do it by observation

sunrise observation is the easiest one to understand the horizon of venus that's harder

somewhat tricky yeah you have to recognize venus and you have to watch for several days and then so

much would be reclaimed which the remnants are still there in the names of the days and the months and all

these saints days and so on the remnants are everywhere they're reclaimable it's probably not too late

that's right and the other thing is that the idea of a quality of time which is what this is about

the idea that time has its qualities is something that already has a popular following and millions

who follow astrology in a vague or professional more professional way well the horoscopes are the

newspapers exactly there's a vast i mean it's not as if this is a new or esoteric idea it's in fact

much more popular than yes among uneducated than the magic or any other pagan elements suppressed by

modern science this is the most popular one is political astrology the popular faith that time does

in fact have variable qualities and the times of birth etc moments of important events etc and judicial

astrology i mean who is doing the horoscope of the of august 2nd in the invasion of kuwait and so on

someone i'm sure i'm sure they are but probably the united nations is not consulting it probably not

but maybe saddam hussein maybe maybe he is but elective astrology which is the kind most commonly

used in india like picking the right date for a wedding or for starting a new business or something

i suppose it may be i don't know whether saddam hussein is using that kind of astrology maybe not

well if hinge kits were about and people then became recovered their consciousness of the sky then

they'd be more interested in electives astrology because it would mean something in terms of their

experience that's right in the present day astrology has got detached from observation

my endless complaint to astrologers is that i've never found one who can actually point to me the

positions of the planets if i ask where's jupiter tonight because i want astrologers don't know any

more than anyone else hardly anyone knows no because the official zodiac

got separated from the real zodiac by the procession of the equinox.

So this thing was, these hinge monuments would have, they'd connect us with the sky,

and in that sense, through making us conscious of the quality of time and the relationship of

the earth to the larger celestial organism, would obviously create, by direct experience,

some awareness of the heavens. I think people are probably even more, they're more unconscious

of the heavens than the earth right now. I mean, most people literally don't know what the different

constellations are, what phase of the moon it is. Modern city life leads to an almost

unconsciousness of the heavenly realm. Whereas we're very conscious of the earth realm, in terms of

we know about the cause of the earth, we know about, you know, everyone knows geology and tectonic plates

and stuff. Our attention is earth-directed, very much so. And so this heavenly connection is obviously

an important step. And then there's the only other question I can think of is the realm of psychedelics

in the rediscovery of the realms of the unconscious. Presumably different drugs, different psychedelics

and different other drugs, tune on into different realms of the otherwise habituated or possible,

or areas of more morphine fields, different spheres of human experience. There's the alcohol sphere,

there's the LSD sphere, there's the heroine sphere. Incidentally, the heroine's legal too,

if you think about it. It's legal for people who are dying. In our society, it's the officially

recognized drug of death. And it's admissible to use it in hospices, heroin and morphine, to dying

patients to ease them through the pains of death. So it is legal in our society, but it's the death

drug. So you have to retain a certain, not only age, but a state. Yes. Near death. So it's interesting,

that's another example of a legal drug that's illegal under certain conditions, but not others.

It occurred to me that, you know, heroin and opium, easing the pains of death, that death aspect of

those drugs, is, has a kind of traditional lineage of, you know, opium is a kind of painkiller. It's long

been known. And as a visionary substance, it's a long lineage. It's a dream drug, dream and death drug.

Whereas cocaine, because in its original form, taken by Indians when climbing hills and so on,

was a work drug. And indeed, that's what it still is for the yuppie cocaine takers that we read about

in magazines. That's right. So they have qualities, drugs have qualities, and they open up different

realms of experience. And so there'd be different drug days and different thresholds, initiations through

life and that kind of thing. But still, we don't have to ask the question, how do these visions,

which are the most intense that certainly I've experienced, how do these visions relate to the

actual unconscious or consciousness of the natural world? Or how much are they mansions created by the

human imagination? That the astral plane, as it were, gets, has a cumulative memory of all previous

journeys on it. And so in certain recurrent kinds of dream, fantasy, adventure, and dream, archetypal

progress, a kind of morphic fields in that realm. So there's all these things that have ever happened in

that realm, including adventures, constructions, creations, experiences, surprises, interpretations,

that have occurred to previous psychedelic voyagers. So there's this cumulative geography.

A kind of Akashic record. Yes. And the unconsciousness contains all this, and different

drugs give different accesses to different parts of it. And so the question is, how much of it would be a

kind of cumulative record of this creative edge of the human imagination? Or how much of it is a

communication through that openness from the spirit of the plant, or of the earth, or, um...

Or the spirit of a star. Or the spirit of a star. Or whatever is invoked, you see, I suppose that

given the laws of ceremonial magic, and indeed of prayer in all traditions, are that whatever power,

or presence, or being, you want to speak to, you first invoke our Father who art in heaven,

hail Mary full of grace, om shivaya. You know, you start by invoking the being or entity to whom you're

addressing yourself by name. And so what would happen if, for example, one took a powerful psychoactive

that opened one to the astral realm in the starry sense, and then invoked a particular star by name,

Mm-hmm. And tried to journey or connect with or become open to influences from that star. This would

be the way, one way of doing it. I'd be rather frightened to try it myself. Well, these are the

questions only the future will answer, that kind of thing, because... You mean this kind of research,

correct? Yes, this kind of research has to lie in the future. Well, I think we should maybe come back to

your starting point about this bifurcation theory. You started with a bifurcation theory model of

consciousness and the unconscious. And I think this bifurcation is happening the entire time. It's

the basis, it's the habituation process, which is the kind of opposite of bifurcation. What you have

in habitual is like we have an awareness of that machine. If it were going on all day, we wouldn't

notice it. So there's a kind of movement from an awareness of duality, a separation of oneself from

what's heard, a kind of consciousness of subject and object, that reverse bifurcates into a unifiers,

into an unawareness of the difference between subject and object, which is the habituated state.

So it may be that consciousness, by its very nature, involves a kind of...

No, I think that we've missed my initial idea without replacing it, because I agree that the history

of consciousness, I mean, I just sort of adopted for the sake of discussion, this idea of the

consciousness of the planet and so on, I agree that the history of consciousness is more properly

called the history of unconsciousness. And it's the nature of the mind to be unconscious most of the

time, because consciousness is a crowded little window. However, this other idea of experience being

denied on basis of authority, and dogma, and ritual, and so on, that which should be ours, our heritage of

perception and experience, vanished from us by denial. The idea that chaos is bad, for example, that

this is another kind of unconsciousness. This is the unavailable part of the unconscious over which is

illegal, difficult, and perhaps even impossible to fly your plane and look out the window of consciousness

and observe it. It becomes unavailable. This is the dark part of unconsciousness. And this kind of

unconsciousness, I think, is created at a certain time in history. And there is a bifurcation for it.

And previously, certainly in microbial life, we do not have an idea of prohibited experience,

of a denial of valid experience, and so on. All it can be smelled, eaten, excluded, and so on.

Exhaled. All of this is okay. Denial, I think, is a recent phenomenon. And here, there's a serious

danger for our evolution, because once the experience is denied, then evolution is shunted off its track.

What point in time do you think it was when this happened? Well, this patriarchal business, I don't know

if the whole complex has a particular element, which is the dominant leading or causative one.

But there's the patriarchy, the patrilineal, the nuclear family, the identification of order with

good and disorder with bad, the idea that order is only homeostasis or periodic phenomenon, that which

has been associated with, by Hamlet Smill, you know, with the precession of the equinox, that the order

of the heaven is broken by the equinoctial sunrise, moving from one constellation to another, destroying

all possibility, apparently, of understanding the heavens. Something around there, that is 6,000 years ago,

5,000, 4,000 years ago, that there was a special new mode of thought, prohibition of valid experience,

was begun. And I think that's a real fall from grace. And on basis of that, we have real evil now, which is the problem of life.

There is this growing evil, there is the destruction of integrity, there is the death of nature,

and so on. These are real problems, and I think that they're new problems, and that they have a history,

and it has to do with denial. It's not only the Christianity that made certain experiences illegal,

the spiritual, for example, deciding that the spirit is illegal in 879, in a synodic council,

in a political meeting of bishops, this kind of thing, where the prohibitions of

of Islam, of Christianity, of Judaism, and so on, of political gatherings, and

the repression of psychedelic drugs, of religious fellow, the destruction of the goddess, replacement

of the goddess by gods, the destruction, the end of the magical invocation of the plentiful produce in

the garden. I mean, there's so many things that became illegal. There's a dogmatic rejection of

actual experience that creates a situation where we cannot fly our plane over this part of unconscious.

We cannot reclaim a view of it. It's not legal to have a spiritual experience. Men in this culture

can't have an emotional experience. So finally, our consciousness is limited in a way which can't be

restored simply by a willingness to devote one day to attention, a variation, observation of the

difference or amplification. It just becomes unavailable. And I think that we have touched on

some means that can be used to restore when it became legal to try to heal ourselves from the effect

of this denial. Then the means are there, and we've discussed them. But there's a certain, a political

step which is necessary that we haven't touched upon, which would legislate into existence these

hinges and so on, which would make it legal to hinge, would make it okay to hinge. We don't know how to

produce the station to regain what is lost. After something has become not okay, it's very hard to

reclaim it. And the fact that chaos is considered so bad, it's very hard to undo this damage.

Except through observing chaos as day, which is like the saturnalias where they had the

reversal of the social order and so on. Holies like that in India. All these saturnalias,

like May Day and May Eve in Europe. The true goddess festivals. Serpents alive and well,

dragons on the run. A play in the fields of the Lord. Do these days still exist? Well, they do,

yes. I mean, Halloween is one example. Maybe there's Morris dancing. Halloween is one example.

Yes, Halloween is on the comeback. And Halloween is, in England, the All Hallows, the effect of All

Hallows, even the reversal of the social order, is celebrated sometimes in many places. The night

before Guy Fawkes, November the 4th, called Mischief Night, which is when people can carry out

mischief that normally otherwise would be extremely prohibited. In Cambridge, when I was an

undergraduate, there were regular fights every November the 4th on Mischief Night between undergraduates

and town boys. Gather in the market square and there were pitched battles, which culminated in my

second year in the burning down of the police shed in the center of the marketplace and in some

thing that went too far and involved large-scale police intervention. And the proctors of the

university had to act to restore order. And from the following years, all undergraduates were

prohibited to leave their colleges on Mischief Night, or at least had to return by 9 p.m.,

and had to be wearing at all times their academic dress and gowns so they could be identified,

which, of course, fanned up town attacks because undergraduates were easy. Of course, they were easy,

they were easy, they were easy. Anyway, this was all a relic of a kind of one of these reverses. So one is

the Halloween or November the 4th Mischief Night one, the other is the Mardi Gras Carnival,

Shrove Tuesday, beginning of Lent festival, that's the other big one. These exist in places like Brazil,

they exist as highly effective dissolvers of the social order into this kind of primal chaos,

carnival. I'd like to see a resurrection of magic as well, and that magic should become

white magic. It would be some modern analog of voodoo, in which one would seek to do well to a

person. But I think it's possible to raise the frequency, to lighten the dark and so on, of many

places that had fallen into disuse, and that the garden maintenance had not been done, it was overrun

with weeds and so on, as it were, on the magical level, that these places could be sweetened with

the banishment ceremonies and so on, that we'd learn, need to learn a technology that would sort of

connect the star magic of the hinges and so on, with the progress of daily life and the political

events. Because we may have great powers that aren't being used, since we don't believe in them, that

this kind of reclaiming the denied, the illegal, the rejected, the dogmatically destroyed,

the unavailable unconscious, which contains enormous powers for doing good, as it were,

which have been somehow, they've been denied by the forces of evil acting through governments,

churches and so on, through councils of bishops, ecumenical councils, putting evil thoughts in the

mind of somebody at a certain moment, that they begin to lobby for a vote to deny, to reject,

make illegal something which is actually an enormous power for good. I think that England is the place

where these reversals seem to be going on at the maximum possible rate involving a lot of people

supported by hinges still exist everywhere, and that's helpful. I'm surprised you should think this.

This is based on your recent visit to Pastonbury. Yes. And what happened? Well, there's a lot of

traffic going up and down Glastonbury Tor. There are people all over Glastonbury Abbey looking at it,

loving it, studying the pictures of it restored, getting the feeling of the thing,

understanding what it would be like to live in a society that had fantastic spiritual integrity,

and particularly the studies of the Ley Lines and the St. Michael and St. Mary's lines that go up and

down in the country. There were places like Avebury and Grastonbury belong to this line, and so many

people are now marching this line, they're flying over it, they're photographing from airplanes,

they're walking along it, they're dousing it, they're having the personal experience of the pagan legacy,

and they're re-evoking these things through discussions and publication of books and reading

books and having meetings about and actually going to the sites. It's thousands of people,

and it's a holiday destination, destination resort, Glastonbury Abbey, Dorchester Abbey,

Dartmoor, it's incredible. Yes, it's true. And there are a lot of Earth mystery circles, and I mean,

the lay hunters, and these are mostly quite small societies, but they do exist. But I'd always

assume there must be something comparable here, in the recovery of Native American traditions and places.

Yes, and yet there are teachers and there are centers like Ojai and so on, where they have these

people who seem still to be in quite good command of the old traditions, and they have workshops and

people do come and so on, but it's just nothing like the scale of individual popular archaeology going

on in England. It's decades, decades away from that. Really? Well, maybe there's some hope then. I didn't

see England as being particularly a center for this kind of thing, although I think the corn circle

mystery, it's perhaps no coincidence that it's happened principally in England, because it's a perfect

country to intrigue people. I think that whether the corn circles are the world soul, or the Gaian

soul rather, working through and training vortices of wind, or working by direct kind of psychic

kinesis, or however they're created, they're obviously a kind of message, because they've started

quite recently, you know, people would have noticed them before if they've been going on for years.

That in itself is intriguing, that they should start, and they happen near places like Silbury Hill,

and these ancient powers, mostly in the west of England, where most of these power spots are.

And everybody in Britain, in every pub out and down in the country, a television program, and from the

Queen downwards, there was a report in the papers that she'd taken two books on corn circles with her

for Christmas reading last year, because she was so intrigued by the phenomenon, and often discussed

it at the palace. You know, from the Queen downwards, everybody's intrigued by them, and there's no clear

hypothesis at all. It's kind of a koan that's being posed for the collective consciousness.

Well, there's a journal of seriology. I'm a subscriber. John Michel is the editor.

The interesting thing is that all of this stuff has been connected up, and the whole

Earth Mysteries movement, their motto is a kind of a general systems approach to all these different

things. Try to synthesize the learnings about the ley lines, the hinges, the corn circles, into

super understanding of the Gaian physiology, and the relationship with our evolution, and the history

of consciousness. So it's the only place I know. Maybe in Brittany, there's a French equivalent that we

don't know much about, because not knowing French well enough. But that's possible. I think the ley line

idea actually occurred first in Brittany. Just, I mean, it seems to me that we've obviously been

talking about the unconscious in a much wider sense. We've been talking about the Gaian unconscious,

or the natural unconscious, in a much wider sense than Jung's still humanistic idea of the collective

unconscious, which, although being unconscious, it's hard to assign its boundaries, is generally assumed by

Jung and his followers to be confined to humanity. Yes, a very limiting hypothesis, a dangerous hypothesis.

The first one that we want to transcend is the separation of the human unconscious from the

other unconscious. Yes, yes. So that's a curtain. That's one of the curtains you're talking about

about consciousness, because as soon as you say that the human unconscious is separate, or the human

consciousness was the first thing Descartes said, separate from the entire realm of matter. Then you get

the idea of the unconscious and extension of mind, and they're separate from the unconsciousness of the

rest of nature. You cut off human consciousness into a human sphere or balloon, with no windows,

no true windows or openings to the world of nature. I think one of the important correlates that I always

hesitate to mention, or mention last, is eating meat, domesticated animals, and eating them. I mean,

like the Maasai for example, you have dairy, you know, and then you have eating the older animals when

they die, that's one thing, but then like breeding them and killing them only to eat them is another. And

I think it's impossible to do that at the same time that you imagine a continuity between your own

spirit and the spirit of the animal. So associated with this animal domestication and eating habit,

addiction, is the denial of consciousness of the animals, which is one of those veils, which then

excludes microbes, plants, and the whole of Gaia. It's a human-centered,

veil-generating device, is eating these things, or drinking the blood instead of the milk.

Yes, I mean, it seems quite... I mean, it's associated with the dominator mode, presumably. This idea,

since the dominators came out of herders and hunters, rather than the agricultural people,

by conquering the fixed agricultural set, the dominators were agricultural pastoralists. And

presumably the model there is that just as you break horses and you dominate flocks of sheep and

cows, by riding around on horseback or by whatever means you use to dominate or frighten, you get the

sheep into sheepfolds and shepherds control the flocks and so on. Then it's a short step from doing that to

people, where people become the hunts. And human sacrifices were common in the rituals, and probably

the sacrifice meat was eaten. They used to have meat shop outside the temple, because after the sacrifice,

of course, they'd sell the meat. Then that was considered bad for the temple to raise money by

selling the meat and sacrifice the animal. So in the case of the human sacrifices, with the Mayans,

for example, I wouldn't be surprised if eating the victim was part of the practice. And this certainly

must involve a lot of denial. And these denials are kind of one-way transactions. It's very hard to

recover. I suppose it takes generations of being vegetarian before you can relate to a food animal,

like a cow. I had a friend, Danielle, you'd see a cow. And then the cow would say to Danielle,

moo. And Danielle would say, hamburger. I think we should quit here.

Well, I guess if you weren't already a vegetarian, that you're either going to give it serious thought

right now, or you're going to put Ralph's comments about eating a conscious animal right out of your own

consciousness. It's an interesting choice, don't you think? As I was listening to this conversation

with you just now, it struck me how well the subscribers to this podcast would fit into the

ebb and flow of the discussion. Some of the emails I've received lately lead me to believe that you

guys could hold your own with these trial loggers. Which brings me to a suggestion that Tom made recently

about trying to put together a Skype cast with multiple participants. He began by saying,

I continue to enjoy the trial logs, but I must confess, I am almost at a complete intellectual

saturation with the ideas being presented. And then he went on to propose the Skype cast where we could

hear others' takes on the information being presented. Well, Tom, I do like that idea. And in fact,

I've already been corresponding with some of the people over at the Cannabis Podcast Network about

doing something like that. But I do like your suggestion of expanding the idea to focus on a

particular trial log or something like that. I can't say how soon any of this will be worked out,

but even though the tech is basically here, it's a matter of finding the time to fit something new

like that into our schedules. But eventually, I'm sure we're going to be doing some things like that. And

in the meantime, I'm about to release the upgrade to the notes from the Psychedelic Salon blog where

I'll be posting the program notes to these podcasts in the near future. And that way you can all interact,

at least with a comment section for each podcast. I originally set that up as a wiki, but not many people

participated in it. And when I upgraded the wiki software a couple weeks ago, it put some kind

of a bug in there that has the entire wiki locked up right now. And I haven't taken the time to fix it

because I think the blog and comment format will be easier for everybody to use. I also got a nice

email from Lauren who asked if I was torrent savvy. Well, Lauren, I wish I could say I was, but that

wouldn't be very accurate. I am aware of how BitTorrent works in general, but I still haven't

had the time to get into the old technical details of what needs to be done to make these podcasts more

torrent friendly. But thanks to John M., I've begun to look into it. And once the new blog is finished,

you hopefully will find several options for listening to these podcasts and torrent will be one of them.

I also want to mention an artist who was brought to my attention by Sharon who wrote about Dennis

Numkina, whose paintings have been speaking to the subject of the Hopi migration from this,

the fourth world into the fifth, final and most peaceful world throughout his career.

And she went on to say that several of his paintings are, and I quote, on display at the

University of Richmond, but are due to be moved. New placement yet to be determined. They are each

seven foot by seven foot and full of mythology, symbolism, and juicy color. If you want to know

more, you can visit the website at www.numkena.com. Well, thanks for sending that information, Sharon, and

if you find out where the new placement for these paintings will be, please let us know. Now that I've

seen some copies of Dennis's work, and boy, it's really breathtaking in its scope and beauty. I can just

hardly imagine what it would be like to experience this art in person, so I'd love to find out where

it's going from here. Also, I got a nice email from Jeffrey, who has been a fan of Terence McKenna's

since first meeting him back in 1991. You're really lucky, Jeffrey. I only met him for the first time

in 1998, so I didn't have all that many opportunities to hear him in person before he died. But I do have a

lot of his old tapes because, fortunately, my wife first heard him speak at a conference in the early

1980s, and then she managed to hear him several times a year after that. So I've got a lot of Terence

around here. And Jeffrey, by the way, I really also appreciate you mentioning the fact that you used

the program notes for one of the trialogues to find a quote that you remembered from the program.

Well, for what it's worth, that is the very first mention I've received about the program

notes that I've started doing for these podcasts. They still aren't up to the level of the notes

that you'll find on the Sea Realm or over at the Cannabis Podcast Network, but now that I know that

they're being used, I'm all charged up about making them better as time goes on. So thanks for mentioning

that, Jeffrey, and also thank you for contacting the Institute of Noetic Sciences about these trialogues.

Here's what Jeffrey had to say about irons. Quote,

I've been so captivated by the trialogues that I emailed Ralph and asked him if he would consider

granting ions access to his collection of tapes as well. He replied in assent. End of quote.

And so now it looks like these trialogues may continue to increase their distribution on the

internet. By the way, if you don't already know about ions, you'll probably really find it worth your

time to see what they have to offer. You can find them online at www.ions.org. And I highly recommend

their magazine for those of you who are into offline reading as well. Finally, I want to comment on a

wonderful email I received from Cooper who describes himself as a high school student living under the

oppressive educational system. And he went on to say, quote, I'm sure you may already have some picture

of this, but I really just wanted to bring your attention to the fact that your audience is not

just comprised of the established core following and the regular burners, but your podcast has

succeeded in reaching out to new people such as myself who have no prior affiliation with the larger

community. Well, it's really good of you to point that out, Cooper, because your generation is exactly

who I'm really hoping to reach with these podcasts. You know, ever since that twisted little mind of

Nancy Reagan came up with her Just Say No campaign, the schools in the states have been brainwashing the

most important members of our society into equating the use of entheogens with the use of

things like methamphetamines, crack cocaine, and other non-psychedelic substances.

I think it's critically important that your generation reformulate Mrs. Reagan's nonsensical saying

by spelling no, K-N-O-W. And the best place I know of to begin to K-N-O-W. More about these important

plants, chemicals, and states of mind, is at erowid.org.

That's E-R-O-W-I-D dot org.

You know, if people don't get anything else out of these podcasts,

I hope that they learn that there's a significant amount of good information available

about this important subject.

Another example of good information out there is the Entheogen Review.

This is a little periodical that comes out about four times a year

and bills itself as the Journal of Unauthorized Research on Visionary Plants and Drugs.

And in the latest edition, you can find articles like one by Dr. Rick Strassman

who did the Breakthrough DMT Research Study.

And in that, he talks about becoming a psychedelic researcher.

Also, John Hanna has a must-read essay titled Security Issues in the Underground.

And for you kitchen chemists out there,

you might be interested in the article titled DMT for the Masses.

And there's also a fascinating article about entheogens in video games

in addition to a whole bunch of other information that you might find interesting.

You can find more about the E-R at www.entheogenreview.org.

E-N-T-H-E-O-G-E-N-R-E-V-I-E-W, all one word, dot org.

At least if that kind of information interests you,

that's a really good periodical, I think.

I guess that was just a long-winded way of saying

that I really appreciate all of you out there with us

here in the Psychedelic Salon,

no matter what your age or experience level with these sacred medicines.

Because, you know, after all, our focus here in the Salon

is primarily on the state and evolution of human consciousness

and on our own individual consciousnesses.

So, thanks to all of you for spending a little of your time

with us here in the Salon each week.

It's nice to know you're here.

And before I go, I guess I should mention

that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon

are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-Share-Alike 2.5 License.

And if you have any questions on that,

you can click on the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,

which may be found at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts.

And if you still have questions,

you can send them an email to lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.

And thank you to Chateau Hayouk

for letting me use your music here in the Psychedelic Salon.

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

Be well, my friends.

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

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

Well, we're winding down to the last three tapes in this series of podcasts.

Those of you who have been with us here in the Psychedelic Salon for a while

know that I've been podcasting a series of conversations

between Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake

that were held at the Esalen Institute in the fall of 1989 and 1990.

And the cassette recordings of these discussions,

which the participants called a trialogue,

were loaned to me by Ralph Abraham a few months ago,

and I've been trying to get at least one tape out each week since then.

Now, after we listen to today's trialogue,

I'll come back and let you know where we are in the series,

and I'll give you a rough idea of what the next month or so of programs will include.

But first, let's get on with today's trialogue,

in which our intrepid trialoguers

approach the topic of the re-sacularization of the world.

I don't know if I have shared with you

the story of my religious training and upbringing.

Maybe that will be appropriate for this discussion,

as I have heard a little bit about yours.

My parents, of course, were derived of some Jewish background,

but after some remove of generations, particularly my father.

My mother had been a regular temple visitor in her town

until she married my father.

And since his parents had relocated from New York

to the backwoods of Vermont in their youth,

they had no connection with any Jewish tradition.

So my father was brought up in somewhat of a vacuum.

Nevertheless, I think he developed an aversion

to organized religion of any sort,

and particularly Jewish.

I thought he might have forbade the mention or presence

of any Jewish religious stuff in the house,

but my mother denies this.

Anyway, there wasn't any.

And in the meanwhile,

he developed a kind of religion of his own,

which was centered on the family

and on a concept of love,

which was fairly abstract.

So he used to say that love was everything.

Occasionally, some circumstance would cause me

to be in a church while a service was going on,

and then I would look around at the other people

with heads bowed when told to bow their heads,

thinking,

I am the only one who's not casting my eyes down.

I am the only one that doesn't believe this stuff.

So, I don't know if there's a name for this

kind of religious upbringing,

I guess, total vacuum.

Explicitly, my father's idea was,

it's better to start when you're an adult,

and then you can acquire whatever religious training you want,

sort of considering all with an open mind.

Now, I never considered all with an open mind

and decided whether to have one or none.

I just didn't bother to think about it.

And then I studied, you know,

psychoanalysis and music and physics

and eventually mathematics

that has no relationship to any religious tradition.

So, eventually, the 60s happened,

and probably my first experience

that I would now identify

as a real religious experience

was the experience of LSD

and whatever intrinsic meaning it carried to me

without too much suggestion

from the set, the setting,

the popular books, and so on.

And I immediately thought,

as many people did in those days,

but not so many today, I think,

that this was a religious experience

in the true sense of religion,

as was probably lost from organized religion,

which I knew on the basis of no knowledge

or anything, just a guess,

because, of course, I knew people.

In fact, practically everybody I did know

went to some kind of church

or at least had been brought up with one

and formally rejected it.

And through them,

I got the idea

that there was no evidence

of any sacred knowledge

outstanding in any of these churches.

Through, eventually,

in the study of art, architecture, music,

and so on,

I could see in the recent past

that there had been a sacred knowledge

in the churches of Europe

that was embodied in the architecture,

the music, and so on.

But it occurred to me

that there might be

what I had recently discovered

in the form of religion

had become extinct

only in the recent past

in the Western world.

These were just idle thoughts,

as in these days, in the 60s,

we were very preoccupied with politics.

Then, when I got to India,

I found that this lapse,

the extinction of the sacred

in organized religion

was sort of reduced to zero there,

at least with the jungle babas and so on.

You had a live tradition

of identification with sacred,

what I recognized as sacred

at that time,

and an easy sharing of the idea of it

with the students, the chelas,

and so on.

And then,

when I returned from India to California,

about the time I met you, Terence,

I began to think

that there might be

some way

to revitalize the Western tradition.

Of course, other people

were speaking about this also,

particularly those

concerned with

Western yoga,

the remnants of

the adepts of the Middle Ages

and the Renaissance and so on.

And, of course,

we had our

great influence

from the theosophists

and the studies of alchemy

and so on.

But there was still,

at this time,

in 1972,

a tremendous separation

between

political activity,

which we were

still involved with,

particularly around

issues of

chemical pollution

and things like that,

on the one hand,

and

the loss of

the sacred in religion

on the other hand.

I mean, it was more like,

it's a shame

this pretty thing

is gone.

Then, in the course

of time,

these came together

and

in the suggestion,

which now I see

many people have made

in their books about it,

that what's gone wrong

in the world

now is actually,

I mean,

a root cause

is the loss

of the connection

to the sacred

within and without

organized religion.

After this connection

is made,

then political activity

has to address this.

I mean,

if people have

different theories

of evil,

I would call them,

whether the loss

of the

partnership society

in 1400 B.C.,

or

the loss

of the sacred

in church

ritual

after the

scientific revolution

or

the population

explosion

and

the advance

of modern medicine

in reducing

infantile

infant mortality

and so on.

The different theories

of evil

because of

the strength

of the direct

experience

I had

with the sacred,

this became

and remains

my favorite

theory of evil.

So if I was going

to direct myself

to some activity

to not exactly

save the world

but at least

to hope

in that direction,

then I would

try to create

for some larger

portion of humanity

the lost thread

of connection

to the sacred.

So this is the program

that we have all

thought about

under the name

and the re-sacralization

of the world.

So

as far as I know

there are just a few

proposals

for any kind

of direct

action

that go

in this

direction.

One is

the

resumption

of

rituals

not native

to us

but native

to other people

that still exist

in some kind

of life

forms

such as

the shamanism

of

native tribes.

Another idea

is the

revitalization

of existing

religion

by

finding means

to re-attract

people

to the

wonderful churches

of the western world

having

not only

the

shape

the

architectural

shape

most appropriate

for communication

with this

sacred thread

but also

the tradition

the morphic

field

the runnel

creode

of this

connection

by figuring

out

through some

sort of

archaeology

of knowledge

the missing

link

when was it

that this

went out

for what

reason

was it

that

the organ

replaced

singing

in the church

or what was it

and whatever

it was

to do

experiments

on bringing

it back

and

another

idea

is to

remain

within

the context

of western

society

but outside

the organized

churches

and replace

churches

with an

equivalent

institution

perhaps

based in

the sacred

arts

music

architecture

painting

and so on

and another

one

that

we have

all given

great attention

to

and I'm

beginning

to think

too much

attention

is the

revitalization

of science

acknowledging

that science

has replaced

the traditional

Christian mythology

with its own

substitute mythology

and the weaknesses

of this mythology

are at the root

of evil

so those are

four things

I put on my list

as top candidates

already discussed

and in this

connection

we probably

should keep

in mind

the

partnership

society

because

there's a

connection

I mean

it's

suggested

I think

in these works

lately on

Isler's

on the

partnership

society

that the

disintegration

the

devitalization

the decline

of the

church

of organized

religion

of the

significance

of organized

religion

is associated

with the

patriarchal

transformation

of society

and the

embodiment

of the

patriarchal

values

within

the

organized

church

in the

papal

hierarchy

of the

Roman

church

and so

on

had

contributed

to the

roots

of its

decline

so

my

favorite

idea

at the

moment

from

this

list

has to

do

with

rituals

these

new

years

rituals

and so

on

I

would

take

the

Ellisonian

mysteries

as a

model

and

I

don't

think

that

everybody

should

take

psychedelics

for

example

or

have

a

shamanistic

experience

in the

Amazon

jungle

in

order

to

reawake

and

to

rebuild

their

connection

to the

divine

but

it

could

be

that

the

churches

and their

rituals

and so

on

could

be

reinvigorated

by having

a certain

class

of priesthood

as

Jesuits

and so

on

that

may be

a new

class

that

specialized

in

maintaining

this

connection

with

the

purity

of

this

connection

being

devoid

of

any

intrinsic

cultural

overlay

and

that

could

be

one

component

among

many

the

weaknesses

of

the

scientific

mythology

could be

somehow

fixed

by

incorporating

scientific

worldview

into

the

church

view

and so

on

so

there's

some

sort

of

syncretism

between

the

Christian

tradition

the

Judeo-Christian

model

including

its

patriarchal

weakness

for the

moment

trying to

repair

that

in the

ways

that

people

are

doing

in

the

new

church

movement

and

in

the

inclusion

of

the

sacrament

at least

for

a holy

elite

the

re-sacralization

of music

I think

is very

important

if I

had to

point

to

a

single

factor

that

I

thought

was

destroying

society

faster

than

other

it

would

be

evil

music

my

personal

bias

well

that's

my

view

for a

start

on

the

re-sacralization

of society

in short

I'm looking

for

something

beyond

the

understanding

of the

virtues

of the

past

that

could

be the

basis

of

some

kind

of

program

in

the

present

even

if

it

very

interesting

why don't

you

just

say

a

tiny

bit

more

about

what

constitutes

evil

music

since

Orpheus

Pythagoras

and so

on

there

has

been

a

permanent

tradition

of

sacred

music

and

we

have

recorded

sacred

music

is still

played

various

places

and we

have

recordings

of

Gregorian

chants

and

the

best

analysis

of the

relationship

between

style

and music

and style

in society

that I've

come across

is Cyril

Scott

Cyril

Scott

is somebody

that

Janice

Rosé

pointed out

to me

this was

a moderately

famous

composer

and pianist

in England

and his

pieces

aren't

well known

but he's

in a

process

of

rediscovery

now

and some

people

have

said

who are

you know

serious

musical

scholars

that he

will one

day rank

with

Beethoven

that might

be

an

overvaluation

anyway

he

he's an

interesting

composer

I've heard

his music

played

and he

wrote a

book

called

I forget

the harmony

of the spheres

or something

in which

he analyzed

the particular

contribution

and the

evolution

of western

society

of the

various

composers

for example

Debussy

and Bookstude

and Bach

and so on

I don't remember

the details

he said

for example

that

movement

when it

began

in England

was enabled

by a

handle

that there's

something about

handle

which is

supportive

for political

revolution

and not

for other

things

and Beethoven

developed

the romantic

and the emotional

in German

culture

this is spelled

out in a book

now if

if Cyril Scott

were alive

today

and watched

MTV

I'm sure

that he

would

say

that

this

world view

embodied

in this music

was leading

rather than

following

the decline

of the

biosphere

and he would

see a causal

connection

and

I think

we can take

that as a

hypothesis

that maybe

can't be proved

I have no

faith in

experiments

that have

been done

with music

played to

plants

and so on

although

it might be

worth a serious

review of that

literature at some

point

I see what you

say

I think that

this music is

very harmful

to the ears

it's much too

loud if you

go to a

concert

it's harmful

it's physically

harmful

it's mentally

it's emotionally

harmful

and people

flock to this

and I think

it takes a long

time of listening

before you get

really tired

of it

and that has

something to do

with the

starvation of

the soul

for beauty

the disconnection

this is the

aesthetical side

of the

disconnection

of the human

species

from some

sort of

divine

guidance

which might

go under

the name

of harmony

or the

world soul

or whatever

if you're not

in resonance

with this

world soul

then you can't

have a future

so the

aesthetics

of the world

soul

well a lot

of what

you're saying

is

you're talking

about an

archaic

revival

these various

things that

you listed

the resumption

of ritual

the revitalization

of existing

religion

I agree

completely

with all

of this

the only

thing that

I would

add

and I know

you agree

is

feminism

comes in

here

somewhere

in the

form of

the

revitalization

of partnership

I'm not

entirely clear

sometimes you

seem to be

talking about

a revitalization

of the

forms of

the 15th

and 16th

century

and sometimes

much further

back

like all this

business about

organs

and churches

that's

relatively

recent

well

there's been

loss has been

going on

for 10,000

years

and in

different

ages

past

is something

that couldn't

be revived

in its

original form

we may

have to

use

video

and film

technology

so you're

saying

incremental

recovery

of the

Guilanic

perspective

well the

value of

getting

the

true

partnership

into the

church

would mean

that we

then didn't

have to

replace

the church

just because

it had

been on

the wrong

track

for

5,000

years

it has

to be

true

maybe it's

possible

without

rebuilding

the

Gothic

cathedrals

but isn't

this a little

like trying

to reform

the Soviet

Union

and keeping

the communist

party around

I think

the momentum

of these

institutions

makes them

hard to

reform

well the

organization

that collects

the money

and buys

the land

and so on

might be

totally

replaced

but I think

the architecture

is good

as I

think

that the

current

music

is evil

even though

an analyst

more expert

than myself

could

somehow

could maybe

see

dominator

forms

are built

into

the actual

architecture

of many

of the

cathedrals

I still

think it's

possible

to revive

them

that their

form would

take new

meaning

because of

the life

going on

inside

if we

have to

start

from scratch

figuring out

architecture

for a

partnership

society

then that's

going to be

very difficult

and I don't

know if we'll

have time

to succeed

well I think

beginning with

a revival

of gothic

cathedral

building

in the

high

matriological

style

of chartres

sounds just

fine

I certainly

think that

the romanesque

style

is a

dominator

style

and a

ponderous

and

uncomfortable

way to

do it

but I

love

the

gothic

and gothic

revival

I mean

this is

a celebration

of

vegetation

and lightness

and air

and

well

my own

sentiments

exactly

I mean

I'm very

interested

to hear

this

proposal

of

Ralph's

because

it's

something

that I've

formulated

and it's

starting

from a

different

point of

view

and

try to

follow

it

because

as a

practicing

member

of the

Church of

England

I

obviously

think

that

there's

a value

in the

traditional

continuity

of the

institution

I also

believe

that

the way

forward

is

since

it's

obvious

that

organized

religion

is at

one of

its

lowest

ebbs

ever

this

in a

sense

creates

an

extraordinary

openness

and

possibility

for

change

and

I

think

that

one

of

the

ways

in

which

modern

Christianity

could

reconnect

with

the

same

sources

of

inspiration

that

gave

rise

to

the

Gothic

cathedrals

is

partly

through

the

Gothic

cathedrals

themselves

which

at least

in

England

and

throughout

the

whole

of

Europe

are

all

still

there

practically

all of

them

are

still

would

at

least

connect

us

with

the

kind

of

ancestral

psyche

because

they're

still

functioning

they

put

us

into

that

particular

model

of

the

cosmos

that

they

have

cathedrals

like

temples

the

models

of

the

cosmos

and

they

have

all

the

things

that

interest

us

in

them

in

a

way

I

they

usually

dedicated

the

greatest

ones

are

dedicated

to

Our

Lady

who

was

seen

in

various

forms

particularly

the

form

of

Our

Lady

of

Wisdom

and

Sophia

in

the

Middle

Ages

and

they

have

in

their

windows

geometrical

designs

they

have

threefold

mandalas

fourfold

mandalas

fivefold

mandalas

then

there

are

rose

windows

with

these

extremely

complex

psychedelic

mandala

things

with

all these

stained

glass

windows

they

have

all

these

qualities

so

they're

one

way

of

reconnecting

us

with

the

sacred

places

of

Europe

and

they

connect

us

to

the

places

and

also

to

the

traditional

cycle

of

festivals

so

I

think

that's

one

important

route

I

think

another

important

route

is

vitalizing

the

tradition

of

the

Sabbath

you

know

Friday

evening

lighting

the

candles

with

the

invocation

of

the

Sabbath

bride

or

the

Shekinah

these

the

feminine

principles

involved

in

in the

home

and

in

space

and

time

and

in

the

world

and

embodied

existence

and

anyway

the

sacralization

of

time

is

another

way

that

can

reconnect

us

with

these

traditions

and

I

think

the

most

important

aspect

of

this

process

really

because

I

agree

with

Terence

about

the

archaic

revival

is

to

find

behind

the

existing

forms

and

existing

festivals

the

pre-Christian

roots

which

in

all

cases

are

the

ones

that

feed

the

particular

timing

of

the

festivals

and

the

particular

locations

of

the

sacred

places

and

which

ground

the

new

religion

in

the

old

and

connect

it

through

the

present

tradition

as

it

still

goes

on

there

is

a

continuous

living

strand

in

the

tradition

that

goes

right

back

to

the

pre-Christian

shamanic

societies

of

Europe

so

I

think

that

this

is

a

connection

that

can

still

work

it

works

for

me

I

find

it

actually

works

this

connection

I

find

it

does

make

me

feel

that

if

this

continued

sacralization

of

space

and

time

involves

recognizing

the

importance

of

sacred

places

everywhere

of

every

kind

including

the

hills

and

the

high

places

and

the

sacred

groves

and

the

national

parks

and

so

on

so

it

would

involve

a

much

more

animistic

version

of

Christianity

or

Judaism

and

it

would

involve

the

process

that

I

come

to

think

of

as

the

greening

of

God

this

new

greening

of

it's

theologians

who've

revived

the

whole

tradition

of

Hildegard

von

Bingen

and

the

greening

process

and

this

whole

hidden

strand

of

the

Judeo-Christian

tradition

which

may never

have been

a majority

strand

but

even

as a

minority

strand

can be

used

to

authenticate

feed

and

give

life

to

a

burgeoning

of

that

aspect

of

the

thing

now

when

that's

what's

needed

yes

well

it

possible

I'm

not

sure

well

what I

was

going

to

say

was

you

know

McLuhan

said

it

was

inevitable

in

the

sense

that

he

had

this

notion

that

he

called

electronic

feudalism

and

he

felt

that

the

consequence

of

the

shift

from

illiterate

phonetic

alphabet

cultures

which

existed

for us

as

recently

as

the

1940s

that

the

replacing

of it

with

electronic

forms

of

media

would

have

an

effect

on

the

ratio

of

the

senses

and

most

similar

to

the

ratio

of

the

senses

that

existed

in

medieval

Europe

before

the

invention

of

printing

he

based

this

on

the

idea

that

before

the

linear

uniformity

of

print

you

had

to

actually

look

at

manuscript

because

every

manuscript

was

different

because

it

reflected

the

hand

of

its

author

and

that

after

print

was

invented

people

no

longer

looked

they

read

and

this

was

a

very

situation

where

you

don't

actually

study

each

e

you

generalize

with

television

and

electronic

media

you're

again

returned

to

the

situation

where

you

must

assemble

out

of

a

gestalt

an image you cannot read it and he felt that the consequences of this shift in the sense ratio

would be global and immense that it would cause the fragmentation and dissolution of the nation

state which we certainly seem to be seeing in eastern europe and the soviet union and that

it would return people to a kind of pietistic fundamentalism homebound because electronic

media brings information to you and that all of these factors would conspire to create a an era

in which the gothic model would be very strongly expressed i from my own point of view with the

theory of the time wave see this uh coming in the mid 90s and expect it to be very strong and it will

be it will have many aspects in the same way that the middle ages are certainly an ambiguous period

of time i mean the glory of the gothic cathedrals is one side of it but it was a time of wandering

flagelance pestilence bigotry suppression of women hatred of outsiders insularity provincialism

barbarism so forth and so on but i think we're in an excellent position from mcglouin's point of view

and from my own reasoning from entirely different premises to experience something very much like

what you're advocating and i for one look forward to it well i think the conditions under which this

transformation could somehow take place would require first of all the decentralization that

one of the most patriarchal aspects of the church is the monolithic centralized government of it and

the just as there's the local movements uh the little national movements for the resumption of

languages such as welsh and so on and the return of the slavic the baltic states to local control and so

on i think also the churches would have to be returned to local languages in order that the festivals

could relate to the local hills wells and trees and so on and then on this local basis the

partnership of men and women emerging as a parallel movement within the society would

in the context of this emerging partnership the locally controlled churches would then be

transfigured so that their festivals had a new meaning and took place on the locally appropriate

days and and so on i mean that's just one level that um people would have to value their local

churches maybe they would have dances in it and actually have their marriages in it and and so on

and uh a lot of rituals would have to be rewritten and then there would have to be scholarship as to

the uh proper relationship of the ritual in the place and then there would have to be journals where the

scholarship was published or something and then there would have to be an educational system

something like sunday school where this uh new stuff or old stuff was taught and uh it could be that the

society is much too rigid for any of these necessary conditions to to be created what you've just

described sounded uh much more much more like a model of the anglican church than the roman catholic

uh i mean the anglican church has autonomous each country has its own the church of england is the

english church there's the church in wales there's the church of ireland there's the episcopalian church

of the u.s the episcopalian church of canada and then in all these african countries they have their

own there with black bishops and in each case each church is autonomous and some have decided to ordain

women and have done so like the episcopalian church in the united states and canada and in new

zealand some have not decided to do so yet like in england and so there's a kind of pluralism of

each finds its own way now it's not the um the thing is it's quite a flexible model

the anglicanism doesn't have the same problems with the pope and the the strong tradition of

authority it's a much more autonomous church and in in its organization each bishop has a high

degree of autonomy and each parish priest does too so it's in his own parish so it's it's that's one

model and it's not the only one it's not a perfect one but it's one but you've also said that religion

organized religion is at its lowest ebb and i think you told me that the attendance and

churches and anglican churches in england is it at its lowest ebb it's now running slightly under two

percent of the population two percent two percent so somehow the um the flexibility of this system

which does in that ending sound ideal for the purpose i'm describing in this fantasy is actually

of no use uh that has no attraction to people and uh so what would be necessary in order to reverse

this trend to make it really of obvious benefit to go there well you might first ask is it worth doing

in america attendance at church is much higher and it convulses the body politic because unable to

fulfill its sacral function the church has become simply uh a ruthless lobbying force for uh fundamentalist social

policy so i you know i think new institutions in your first statement you suggested replacement replacement

i'm i think we should build some new level to the ground and start over at least in america the anglican

church i think its great virtue as i understand it is that it's fairly harmless but in america religion

leads to hangings in my experience well the episcopal church in america in particular since rupert said

they're ordaining women that seems to be a really major change and maybe if this were the case in

england which i gathered is not not yet but it might be gradually increasing rather than decreasing

attendance in church well i think you see i think the the reason why i think the main reasons for

attending for people attending churches would have to do with an appreciation of collective participation

in ritual appreciation of the benefit of established forms and a continuous tradition

and appreciation of sacred place now i think that these are three strong arguments for going to

services you're taking place in a traditional ritual at a sacred place which has a validity and a

tradition behind it now i think any replacement of the church of england or of churches as institutions

if it were to be effective and if it were to sacralize political life would have to be more than just

vast numbers of proliferating tiny cults to have to be more than like more it wouldn't really work if

it were like the religious landscape of southern california you know with its sort of divisive cultism

there would have to be a certain validity to it where it could authenticate it would have to have a

valid mission the power of the ruler and the power of the power of the political system and and validate

the the entire workings of the political the body politic for that you need something like an established

church and you one of the problems of the united states it doesn't have one and it can't have

one for constitutional reasons so there's very little way in which the the the political life in america

could be sacralized since by definition it's secular now so there's a different problem here in america but

say in britain consider this possibility there is a there is in fact already an established church

which can fulfills many of the traditional sacralizing roles it's the custodian of the great sacred

places of england the great cathedrals and many other glastonbury abbey all these places

uh under the custody of the established church which on the whole fulfills this role extremely well

maintains their sacramity and so on now say that this is abolished or simply allowed to wither and and

disappear and say one wants to replace it with another institution which would be able to accept a

widespread claim to validity through all classes of society um how would one go about doing it

i mean the the one reason i don't think that's a feasible route to follow is that i think you'd

simply have a proliferation of endless small cults or sects and that you'd be left with a secular

authority which was and a whole secular official life which was thoroughly desacralized well one

answer might be you have to find uh a religious mission of sufficient consequence to command that

kind of loyalty mythology you need a unifying principle and attract this fellow that i mentioned dave

brauer of the sierra club he actually said you know to save the earth we need a an outbreak of religious

mania that would dwarf islam this is an idea which can send millions on the move this is the new

idea it counts above everything and it will sweep across national borders and topple dynasties and

melt away empires and he this is what got him tossed out of the sierra club i mean he called for a jihad

to save the earth and i think you know this kind of thing uh is worth considering the other thing i

wanted to say is i'm the big i'm a very big fan of the archaic revival but as we talk about a new feudalism

and look around the earth we might ask ourselves where is it that an archaic revival is actually underway

and how is it going and the obvious example is uh well took archaic revival seriously took

old religious form seriously the importance of resuming old rituals the importance of returning

to tried and true ways and it's i don't think the kind of not what we had in mind well they returned

to a time when the sacred thread was already broken you mean the 14th century or something like that

i mean the the the essence here is the actual connection to the sacred and um i think

uh now we can't have an archaic revival by going backwards exactly we we have to do our archaeology

of knowledge to the point where we understand what the essence of it was and to revive that would mean

to bring it into modern forms it would have to acknowledge for example that the total population

of the planet is larger now than them that means that recycling is mandatory that means that uh green

consciousness gaia hypothesis consciousness have would have to actually play a leading role in the

actual rituals performed on the various days and so on so the uh the the mandate i think to create a new

mythology that could organize different styles of churches on a path of convergent evolution would

be one that was intrinsically attractive because it actually offered a reversal of the present

trend that was somehow obvious to to people what about re-sacralization through religion as a slogan

and it would come to many people as being a new idea well the churches would have to be taken over i

mean where you have still a uh church government a world a government that's excommunicating uh

preachers for acknowledging the equality of women or something this is too far removed from the current

state of what the average person in our society knows to be attractive i think the thing is that

religious reform has to come through the a movement actually getting going and being practiced and

through example and you know it could spread either one could have the growth of a new religion like

say ayahuasca church or something like that spreading spontaneously an entirely new thing but sooner or

later i think to gain any authority it would have to undergo a kind of syncretism with the existing

structures of religion and it could be reinvigorated in that way that's one way it could happen

um so localization of control of the church would aid this process it would aid the process yes um but

and i said i mean the only other way it could happen as far as i could see would be through

uh neo-pagan religious movements starting up in various ways um they then have to go back further

than the sacred christian sites they'd have to connect with aboriginals well that would be this jihad to save the

earth an outbreak of paganism the the thing is that paganism emerging in a post-christian context

would be so heavily flavored with christianity uh that one could say that it was a kind of

neo-christian paganism well then shamanism the yet further brought back well jihads are not present

in shamanism in the same way i shouldn't think the thing is a jihad is a particular model with jewish

roots affected most by islam whose color incidentally is green and the point says that the green movement

should have a jihad one has to remember that all the shrines of the saints and the color of the prophet

is green but jihads they come out of the whole sort of judaic crusade jihad i mean the jewish holy walls

and so on that that's for the particular field from which the concept comes and the green mass movement

you see the most natural thing in a place like california would have decentralized movements

of small cuts each with their following a kind of entrepreneurial cult economy um with no

dominating giants and probably some secular anti-trust laws to stop any of them getting too big

so but that that wouldn't cause a mass movement a mass movement a crusade or jihad requires

a much more unified movement i think convergent evolution is a gentler way to go i think um

that there's uh a real gap a conflict between these two different strategies of starting a new system

based on the archaic revival or pagan revival on the one hand and um revolution of the churches

re-sacralization by religion on the other hand and that has to do with uh traditional church

practice of denying the validity of previous forms archaic pagan forms and particularly carried to the

point of revising history i mean pulverizing goddess figurines and statues and and so on

what would be necessary besides uh partnership of the genders local control a green politic and so on

within the ritual of the church would be an acknowledgement of the validity of the essential

religiosity of the pagan forms including the the goddess the worship of idols and so on and that means

that the bible might have to be here it is abandoned the bible might have to be abandoned as um

um sacred document of the church no reinterpreted reinterpreted that's a process that goes on

continually and the whole development of the christian religion like any other depends on the

series of reinterpretations of traditional texts so the the reinterpretation that's going on right now

is through the process theologians in attempt to develop the idea of an evolutionary god of an

evolution in the universe that's one major strand of theological interpretation and they have a very

strong case because the god of the old testament is not a potomic transcendent god outside history

he's a thoroughly hands-on interactive god who's who's present in within history even arranging details

like the passage through the red sea you know this is this is a this is an interactive process it's an

ongoing providence that's uh guiding the historical process that's the jewish conception of god a kind

of process god they would say and i think they're right that this is in fact the true judeo-christian

conception so a process evolutionary model is one revolution going on in theology another is um the

recovery of the feminine and and a recovery of the tradition of the shekinah the feminine presence of god

sophia the holy wisdom is the feminine uh wisdom principle which is the it could fulfill many of

the laws of the world soul which is feminine um and a revival of that whole tradition these revolutions

are actually occurring i guess i'm going to have to go back and re-listen to parts of the conversation

we just heard because every time they start talking about organized religion well my blood began to

boil just thinking about how those institutions have caused so much death and destruction

that i miss what uh people are saying next so i did like terence's suggestion by the way though of

leveling all the churches to the ground i'd like to think that he was talking about the institutions

themselves and not the old buildings because i think that some of those old churches would make a

great location for a rave just imagine a giant rave being held in all of the major churches of the world

all at the same time now that i think would be a way to begin the re-sacularization of the world

don't you think another way of course is to continue doing what i know a lot of you are already doing

and that is to create your own personal ceremonies and rituals for various days like the solstice gatherings

and full moon parties that seem to be sprouting up all over the place i've been uh quite fortunate to

have participated in several of these new uh homegrown festivals and i always feel better about life

afterwards so uh keep the flame going you ritual pioneers i'm really convinced that each time you

conduct another uh little ceremony like that you deepen the creo to the new basin of attraction that

our psychedelic community is working so hard to create and uh speaking of basins of attraction

there's a strong attractor starting to take shape in costa rica right now and that is the focus on the

2007 mind states conference that john hannah has planned you can find the details about this at mindstates.org

but here's a little detail that you probably won't find on the website just uh just before i started recording

this podcast i received the following information in an email that john sent out and he said for a short

period of time i am offering a 10 discount off of the early bird price to those people who are willing

to put down a 50 deposit that's 585 dollars on or before february 15th and pay the remaining 50 percent

on or before april first this benefits you by allowing an additional 130 dollars off of the conference

cost and also by allowing for the payment to be made in two installments creating uh less expense all at

once now by the way the uh the price he doesn't say this in his email but the uh price of the conference

includes not only the speakers but also meals and uh a room at the 2000 acre eco resort where the

conferences will be held and uh while i can't vouch for the food there what i can say about events like

this is that the community meals are where a lot of the magic takes place it was at a similar event

where i first met the shulgens when they came and sat down at a table where i was eating with a couple of

new friends that i just met and there's just something about these conferences that take place outside the

states that make them stand out maybe it's because they're smaller and and thus more intimate or

maybe it's simply because once you get out of this oppressively heavy vibe here in the u.s

life just seems a little lighter and more worth living anyway if you're interested in attending a

conference like this well i think this may be your only chance in 2007 so don't wait too long if you're

being called now where was i oh yeah john's email after uh mentioning the discount deal he then went

on to say that in the past he's had a sponsor who helped him with the upfront costs you know like

putting up the deposit for the hotel and things like that but uh this year he's on his own and so he's

doing this limited time discount offer to uh help with his upfront expenses that's uh the reason for

all this i guess so if you plan on attending here's a way to save some money and to help john out

as well you know he's certainly done more than his share of the heavy lifting for many of us who

never would have met had it not been for a mind states conference and uh speaking of john's conferences

i received an email from i will who said now don't get me wrong i do like the trial logs but i also like

to hear more of the other speakers you've featured in the salon so how about breaking up the trial logs with

some more of those mind states talks now and then well i will you've got a good point but i also don't

want to break the flow of this first series of trial logs so here's my plan for the next month or so

there are uh 10 tapes in the first series and we'll finish tape eight in the next podcast and then next

week i'll do tape nine and then do the last tape the following week then we'll take a short break from

the trial logs and i'll get out a few more of this year's palenque norte talks from burning man i know

that i've got mark pesci's talk and amanda fielding's talk uh ready to go and i think there are a couple more that

i didn't get out yet as well as for the trial logs as you may remember from the first podcast in the

trial log series these conversations were held somewhat regularly from 1989 through 1998 and thanks to ralph

abraham we've got copies of almost all of them but here's what i thought might be the most interesting

way to listen to them are you ready for this how about backwards now not that kind although maybe it

would be interesting to see if there's any hidden messages that we might hear by playing a mckenna rap

backwards but i didn't mean that kind of backwards what i'm thinking about is that instead of just

listening to the rest of these programs after this first series in chronological order it might

be more interesting to jump right to the last one the one they did in 1998 and since there were about

10 years between that trial log and the ones we're hearing now i'm wondering if their positions have

changed or just where their conversation drifted to over the intervening years of course the danger

here is that we might learn that they didn't have anything new to say after the passage of all that time

but my guess is that that won't be the case well it's time to wrap up for today but before i go i

should again mention that this and all of the podcasts from the psychedelic salon are protected

under the creative commons attribution non-commercial share like 2.5 license and if you have any

questions about that you can click on the link at the bottom of the psychedelic salon webpage which may

be found at matrix masters dot com slash podcast and if you still have questions you can send them in

an email to lorenzo at matrix masters dot com just so that you know the reason for the creative commons

license is to make this material more available not to restrict it just check out the creative commons

dot org website and you'll see what i mean thanks again to the good folks from chateau hayuk for

letting us use your music here in the psychedelic salon and for now this is lorenzo signing off from

cyberdelic space be well my friends

greetings from cyberdelic space this is lorenzo and i'm your host here in the

psychedelic salon in case you're joining us here for the first time i guess i should point out that

for the past few weeks i've been playing some recordings that were made at the esalen institute

in the fall of 1989 and again in 1990 the tapes of these conversations which the participants called a

trialogue were loaned to me by ralph abraham who is one of the participants in these discussions the other

two being terence mckenna and rupert sheldrake so far we've heard them talk about topics that run the

gamut from creativity and chaos to imagination the world soul and entities from other dimensions

today we're going to hear the second side of the eighth tape in the series which is titled the

re-secularization of the world and we'll pick up where ralph abraham was discussing the fact that

organized religions should acknowledge the validity of the so-called pagan forms of worship that had

preceded them i think convergent evolution is a gentler way to go i think that there's a real

gap a conflict between these two different strategies of starting a new system based on

the archaic revival or pagan revival on the one hand and revolution of the churches

re-secularization by religion on the other hand and that has to do with the traditional church

practice of denying the validity of previous forms archaic pagan forms and particularly carried to the

point of revising history i mean pulverizing goddess figurines and statues and and so on what would be

necessary besides uh partnership of the genders local control the green politic and so on within the ritual

of the church would be an acknowledgement of the validity of the essential religiosity of the pagan forms

including the the goddess that worship of idols and so on and the psychedelic and that means that

the bible might have to be here it is abandoned the bible might have to be abandoned as um sacred document

of the church no reinterpreted reinterpreted that's a process that goes on continually and the whole

development of the christian religion like any other depends on the series of reinterpretations of

traditional texts so the the reinterpretation that's going on right now is through the process theologies

an attempt to develop the idea of an evolutionary god of an evolutionary inverse that's one major strand

of theological reinterpretation and they have a very strong case because the god of the old testament is

not a platonic transcendent god outside history he's a thoroughly hands-on interactive god who's who's

present in within history even arranging details like the passage through the red sea you know this is

this is a this is an interactive process it's an ongoing providence that's guiding the historical

process that's the jewish conception of god a kind of process god they would say and i think they're right

that this is in fact the true judeo-christian conception so you have a process evolutionary model

is one revolution going on in theology another is um the recovery of the feminine and and a recovery of

the tradition of the shekinah the feminine presence of god sophia the holy wisdom

That's the feminine wisdom principle,

which could fulfill many of the laws of the world's soul,

which is feminine.

And a revival of that whole tradition,

these revolutions are actually occurring in theology, I don't know.

Well, is there a tradition of Old Testament scholarship

that can reinterpret stories about David and Melchizedek

or Jericho, I mean, all these...

Oh, well, they're all being reinterpreted all the time.

Melchizedek is, according to Father Beves' reinterpretation of it,

the figure of the cosmic priest,

who represents the priesthood of the cosmic religion,

which is the root of all religion,

and that's the religion which links us to the future of the cosmos,

to the earth and to the heavens, and to the cosmic revelation.

And this is also in the Old Testament, you see,

because Noah, who is saved by God after this catastrophe,

is given a promise to the rainbow,

and the rainbow is the sign of the cosmic covenant between God and Noah.

But Noah isn't a Jew.

He's the only man and woman,

his family's the only family that survives the flood,

and he's like the new Adam,

he's the father of all humanity, of all races.

It's only much later that you get to Abraham

and the founding father of the Jews.

So Noah is a generic father of humanity.

And so there's a cosmic covenant of Noah,

which is the basis of all cosmic religion.

And one can trace that in the Bible.

So it's not impossible,

in fact, it's already being done,

to reinterpret the Bible.

It's always being reinterpreted.

So one place would be getting rid of it,

the other would be reinterpreting it.

But the route that will be followed

within the organic development of religion

is reinterpretation.

So what's going on, then?

Is that the basis of optimism

about the future of our civilization?

Well, I think it's going on,

I think it's going on to some extent.

I think it needs to go on a great deal more.

And, you see, I think that the,

if one's going to have a syncretism,

one has to have things that can grow together.

And there's no way in which

a more priestess-based feminist element

could grow together with this tradition

than if it came into being.

I mean, it has to come into being.

And if the thing that can raise people

to the barricades of this jihad,

this green crusade,

is the flag of Gaia,

I mean, that seems to be

the unifying banner of the present movement.

It's the goddess, Gaia.

It's the great mother.

And as soon as you mention

that it's the great mother,

a lot of people start going off the idea,

which is why the Gaia hypothesis

is preferred by many of its proponents

to be veiled in the obscurity

of an antique tongue,

as Gaia, rather than Mother Earth.

Because Mother Earth reminds people of mothers,

and then of their own mother,

and tends to press buttons

which many people would rather not have pressed

when thinking about such abstract issues

as the future of humanity on the globe.

But that's the trouble with these metaphors,

or the strength of them,

that they do connect you

with these concrete realities of experience.

Anyway, if there were to be

a true Mother Earth religion developed,

it would obviously have priestesses

rather than priests,

because it's central figures of goddess.

It would be relating human life

to the Earth, first and foremost.

And it would tend to,

then our bodies return to the Earth.

It would get into whole material cycles.

It wouldn't have much emphasis

on the stars or the heavens.

And I think it would be very claustrophobic

for a lot of people before very long.

And people who'd want a religion

would also brought in the aspiration

for the stars, the heavens,

the greatness of the cosmos,

the space of the heavens.

Then you'd have the choice

of religious things.

Is there a god of the heavens,

or is there a goddess of the heavens?

Well, in ancient Egypt,

there was a goddess of the heavens

who arched over the body of the Earth.

And Christianity,

in response to that particular question,

offers one a choice of either.

Because God the Father

is the Father in heaven,

this tradition of the sky god.

He's the sky god figure.

But also,

Our Lady is Queen of Heaven,

having taken on the connotations

of Astarte

and the sky goddesses

of the Near East.

And her robe, of course,

is blue in colour,

coloured with stars.

So she's, in a sense,

the woman.

The soul of the world.

The anima mundi.

She's the anima mundi

of the soul of the world.

So,

so these are different models.

You know,

there are different models

on the market,

as it were,

already within the tradition.

But if this anima mundi thing

got going,

this is not a fine-tuning

of Christianity.

This is, at last,

the overthrow of it.

It's hard to paint.

Let's call it a revolution.

Yes, a revolution,

an absolute,

no more this patriarchal,

masculine,

dominator thing

that has descended down

through monotheism.

I mean,

it would be

the plurabilities.

Well,

I think

the Middle Ages,

in fact,

Leanne Mundi

was a widely named concept.

It almost broke out,

but then it was stressed.

But it was compatible

with the form

of the Christian church

they had at that time.

The Aristotelian view

of nature

was entirely animistic.

The Middle Ages

had a form

of animistic Christianity.

But they exterminated

all this.

No,

their church

didn't exterminate it.

The Protestant Reformation

tried to exterminate it,

and the Scientific Revolution

carried that process further.

But here's where

you have to distinguish

very sharply

between the Protestant tradition

and the Catholic tradition.

True.

Well,

we've done a good work here.

We've dreamed a dream.

We've visioned

a revolution of religion

in which there would be

priests and priestesses

and the acceptance

of psychedelics

as a sacrament

among some

and local control

and renewal

of meaning

in rites

and rituals

and so on.

And fortunately,

we've still got

the continual decrease

of attendance

in these churches

and the fact

that the revival

might already be underway

with the reinterpretation

of the Bible

and so on

is going to be

of no great use

unless,

as a matter of fact,

it becomes attractive,

which I think it's not.

There's somehow

a pretty strong habit

of revulsion at churches,

of hatred for churches

and all the sins

of the church

over these past centuries.

plus there's the competition

of scientism

as a new mythology

which is totally

disjoint from the church

and which has

so many errors

built into it

as far as sensitivity

to planet

and all the Gaia

and green concerns

that the syncretism

of the revived church

with science

would not be possible

without destroying

the revived church.

So somehow

this competitor

so attractive

because of the strength

of his weapons

and so on

the mythology

of scientism

this would have

to be dealt with

or other factors

whatever they are

which disincline people

to be attracted

to church

which makes church

repeller for them

whether revised or not.

What could be done

in the way of education

and media

what could be done

to reverse this?

So you see the reason

for the lack

of attraction

in the church

is the presence

of an alternative attractor

as it were

namely the worldview

of scientism

which is rather like

the person

one of the big pluses

of scientism

emotionally for people

is which I have

since I was a convert

to scientism

at about age 14

I know very well

is that

a bit like you

I mean one can

look around

and everybody else

is praying

or appearing to pray

but one can somehow

see from a higher

point of view

because from the point

of view of scientism

all this is just

superstition

we've risen

man has risen

beyond it

through the advance

of science and technology

and we're superior

to the whole of religion

which is infantile

and part of the past

and this is part

of the worldview

of scientism

and I agree

that

you know

religious revival

depends on

a collapse

of faith

in scientism

but I think

that collapse

of faith

is happening

all around us

old style

humanists

secular humanists

you know

the campaigning

atheist types

you know

are a thing

of the past

and there's still

a few of the

older ones

around

and in America

you still find them

but you don't find

much in England

because there's

no longer much

to fight against

you know

it's not as if

society is totally

strangled by the

power of the church

that's very far

from being the case

it's dominated

far more by banks

financial institutions

military complexes

and in marginal

areas it may be

affected by the church

but for all

intents and purposes

it's free of its

control

so scientism

is I think

losing its

impetus

there's a widespread

public disillusionment

with science

which is reflected

in cuts in funding

for scientific

research

and closing

of science

institutions

which is actually

happening

but this just leaves

people stranded

having rejected

the church

in favor of science

and having rejected

science in favor

of nothing

and leaves us

with the dilemma

of today

well that leaves

the void into which

why not

psychedelicize

and sacralize

green politics

which otherwise

is in the hands

of a very boring

bunch of

materialist

breast-beating

neo-marxist

a clever conspiracy

between green

politics

and a revived

church

well or

I mean

I would say

that science

and green

politics

can be

sacralized

through the

psychedelic

experience

Rupert's example

of seeing

everyone bowed

with their head

in prayer

and from the

point of view

of scientism

knowing that

this is all

superstition

but the next

level up

is the

psychedelic

person

who knows

that the

scientist

is missing

the people

bowed in prayer

as a poor fool

and so it's

it's so wishy-washy

is its lack

of a forthright

metaphysic

and that they

are they

insist that

they're rationalists

reformed socialists

saw the light

Marxists

and all this

other stuff

and none

of that

is good

enough

to inspire

anybody

but a

green party

that used

a mystical

language

a psychedelic

language

a language

of integration

and control

and emotion

and all this

would have

I think

a tremendous

appeal

that's why

Rupert is so

keen for this

ayahuasca cult

coming out

of Brazil

because on

one level

it's simply

preserve the

rainforest

help out

little people

your typical

bleeding heart

rap

but on another

level

it's a psychedelic

religion

that makes

claims on

the imagination

the heart

the soul

and here's

an attractive

partnership

green plus

psychedelic

how about the

Ellisonian mystery

celebrated in

the cathedral

of St. John

the divine

yes

plant psychedelic

it has to be

understood

that this is

the way

to the guy

in mind

that these

things are

sacraments

not metaphors

real sacraments

that their

efficaciousness

can have

political

consequences

the two

forces are

brought together

oh it's

all going to

everybody's

going to try

and outgreen

everybody else

the trick

will be

to tell

the weasels

from everybody

else

no but they

very well

might

outgreen

each other

within the

current context

of desacralization

resulting in

only a slight

extension of

time

you see

that all

of the

I mean

it's a huge

system

and

green is

not enough

you know

to recycle

the plastic

bottles

it's not

enough to

stop cutting

down the

Amazon

drug

it only

earns

a slight

extension

in the

time

available

to evolve

a better

strategy

for all

the rest

the root

the population

explosion

for example

the exhaustion

of the energy

resources

this is what

will give

force

to the call

for fanatical

vigilance

it really is

a thing that

is ready made

for fanaticism

because you know

people used to say

if God

is on your

side

what fears

do you need

to do

well

if what your

mission is

is to save

the earth

it's very hard

to see

how you're

going to

negotiate

compromises

with people

who don't

want to

save the earth

well the answer

is you have

a range of

people like

you have

in the

environmental

room

you have

earth

firsters

who are

prepared to

go

further

they're

the kind

of radical

terrorists

and then

you have

other groups

like friends

of the earth

and greenpeace

which has

now become

more moderate

prepared to

negotiate

with the

powers that

be

but it's

the extremists

who set

the agenda

and then

the others

can only

moderate

in the wake

yes the others

can only moderate

in the wake

and I think

that's the

right-wing think

tanks in Britain

and America

have shown us

in the last

ten years

how a few

group of people

a few people

thinking out

extreme

policy options

or as they call

them

you know

future scenarios

just

20-30 people

think out

these sort of

programs like

privatizing things

and so on

and then

they set the agenda

then there's

sort of more

moderate institutes

that when the

debate's

stirred up

and the whole

attention of the

debaters shifted

over in that

direction

through creating

that as an

option

the debate

then a more

moderate institute

works out the

details

and they get it

achieved

well this is

classical

revolutionary theory

if 30 people

were willing

to wage

unconditional

warfare

against

anyone who

opposed

saving the

earth

headlines

would follow

huge debate

in the media

the immediate

softened position

directly behind

them

the further

softened position

everybody would

have to be heard

from

like these people

who blow up

lumber trucks

and dynamite

railroads

that are used

to bring the

wood out of

the forest

I mean

this is all

theater

well basically

this sounds

splendidly

optimistic

the bad news

is good news

the magnitude

of the problem

guarantees a

response

the response

will probably

succeed

the successful

green party

will automatically

negotiate a new

partnership

with the

reinterpreted

church

but frankly

I just can't

imagine

a holy war

resulting in a

peaceful

partnership

society

well I

I think

that this

is a very

desperate

situation

the hope

would be

that faced

with the

possibility

of a holy

war

they would

just

abdicate

and the

existing

institutions

would say

all right

we'll save

the earth

already

rather than

being hung

we'll save

the earth

sorry we

didn't move

faster

didn't quite

understand

what you

were signaling

now we've

got it

now we'll

save the

earth

by threatening

them with

chaos

absolute

turmoil

but

anyway this

green movement

if it's to be

effective as a

political movement

must have a

spiritual and a

mystical dimension

and I think that's

where the question

comes in of how

would it acquire

one without

either allying

itself to a

green form of

Christianity or

Judaism or

without inventing

its own kind of

priestess or

priesthood and

carrying out

its own rituals

now frankly I

don't see the

latter happening

I can't imagine

the green

politicians in

Germany or

things

psychedelics is

the obvious

alternative

well I think

there's a

time-screw

problem

because the

crisis is

coming

upon us

with the speed

of a tidal wave

I think that

in the long run

it will be

compared to

the deluge

it's the

flood

the abdication

of the great

institutions of

society from

their present

position and

the rate at

which they can

jump on to

the green

bandwagon is

quite fast

compared to

the time it

will take to

revitalize the

church to

reinterpret the

bible to

obtain the

sacred music

to institutionalize

the priest and

priestesshood of

psychedelic

exploration and

so on and

that people had

really better get

moving I think

in the revitalized

church movement

if they want to

be on the

bandwagon at

all

well there are

probably if it's

to be a

psychedelicized

green movement

the people who

could lead it

have been

training

operate in

those positions

but I think

your idea of

an order

within you know

you have this

model of the

franciscans and

so on

what it would

be the best

model would be

one of the

like the

franciscan order

yes

which would be a

kind of

autonomous local

chapters loosely

affiliated with the

church not in

opposition to it

working loosely

within it and

therefore being able

to affect the

whole network of

it

so a priesthood of

greens especially

the psychedelic

committee would

keep track

the psychedelic

order

the psychedelic

order or a

green order

it would be a

green order

and I think it

would be very

interesting to see

what happened

I think it would

have to have an

ecumenical quality

in other words I

think it would have

to be linked up to

a green order of

judaism because I

think they'd have

to work closely

together

if this movement

is to work

it's to be one

where the judaic

tradition which

called and the

christian world

developed together

I think in this

process in the

west because I

don't think that

it would work

otherwise because

so many influential

people in western

society are jewish

and if they're

always going to

be pulled towards

the sort of old

style zionist view

of israel and

stuff as the sort

of ultimate in

world politics

it's not going to

be very helpful

and so to come

into this raw

division I

think there

would have to

be green

christian and

jewish movement

different orders

yes different

orders but there

need to be

green mystical

orders associated

with every religion

that among

themselves would

have no discrepancy

as to their view

based as it is

upon this pure

channel and

therefore that

would serve as

a kind of neural

network connecting

up into a new

unity all of

these presently

very diverse

systems

that's right

the big green

orders of islam

green orders of

hinduism and

the green orders

neo-sufi and

neo-padawa

that's right

and the green

order in america

would have as

one of its roles

the reconnection

with the sacred

places of america

and their re-honoring

and appropriate

ceremonies

and the green

order in england

would have its

role of connecting

with the sacred

places

so rather than

a green party

a green order

party is too

much

the party has

already happened

but the party is

already there

there should be a

green order

and now I think

we're summarizing

our discussion

into an actual

proposal for

a way that

some of these

goals could be

obtained in a

reasonable time

and then through

the establishment

of a neural

network

intercommunicating

orders

associated to

the same

sacrament

all over the

planet

the entire

promise of the

intellect has

failed us

if it's necessary

for the catastrophe

to actually be

upon us

before people

will act

and yet that

seems to be

the case

about the

nuclear power

for example

there's a small

number of people

who will stand

up at the

barricades

and so on

but the

majority of

people will

still continue

to buy

nuclear power

and it's

really too

late

to wait

until the

tidal wave

crashes on

the shore

there will be

no response

no

we have

already too

late

the death

of species

or 30%

of the

species

and

the numbers

the state

of advance

of the death

of the

biosphere

is already

so great

that the

jihad

would be

upon us

if people

were able

to understand

what they

read

and to

project what

that means

and to

respond

with their

heart

so what

they need

are people

and organizations

which give

permission

to do that

and then

their anger

will rise

they won't

have to be

told what

to do

they will

know what

to do

if you just

connect it

up for them

they'll be

furious

well I

think that

part of the

problem

is the

denial of

the problem

and part of

the denial

is the

corrupt

the corruption

of the

news media

and not

reporting the

news

well and the

corruption of

science on

one level

I mean for

instance this

whole greenhouse

thing

they've been

hemming and

hawing for

15 years

saying yes

we now do

detect

and it is

it's no longer

colder warmer

it's happening

we're aboard

we're taking

this out of the

hands of the

mystics and the

chicken littles

and saying yes

we hard-headed

university scientists

we agree

well just as

the organized

religion needs

revolution

and reinterpretation

science also

needs

revolution

and reinterpretation

and the Gaia

hypothesis

revolution

and the

sciences

has forced

scientists of

different specialties

to speak with

each other

who had never

spoken with each

other before

and that is

a major

restructuring

of science

giving it the

capacity for the

first time

to actually

appreciate that

there was a

greenhouse effect

well science

for the first

time has

the capacity

to measure

its own

impact on the

world

I mean the

nuclear winter

studies

science plus

the CFC

problem plus

the CO2

problem

it's science

that created

these problems

and that now

reveals their

magnitude as

they bear down

upon them

so the

accommodation of

scientific view

of history

archaeology and

so on in the

church has to be

matched by an

equal

re-sacralization

of science

so I could say

sacralization

of science

we never had

this connection

in the past

that might be

an essential

connection in

order for us

to have a

future

yes the

purpose of

science

should be

the Greek

purpose

to understand

nature

not to

not for

technique

that all

came later

we need to

hold back

from applications

that's the

problem

I mean let's

just assimilate

what we know

at this level

try and save

the earth

but not

push deeper

into application

because that

is rape

that is

this violation

thing

where you know

Taoists don't

do it that way

they just are

content to

know how it

works

well

alright

the catastrophe

is coming

the revitalization

of the church

and the

revision of

science are

already

underway and

maybe in

order to

actually

nucleate

the social

transformation

that's implied

and which

will inevitably

result if we're

lucky

it requires a

certain

nucleation

site

a model

first

exemplar

of this

coalition

and that

might take

place somewhere

maybe in

England

in Holland

or someone

I would

guess

probably not

in the United

States

and then

from this

model

to spread

outward

in the

rapid

diffusion

amplified by

the media

and so on

yes a green

party

a psychedelic

maybe we should

be working on

this model

system in some

particular time

and place

well I think

one local way

in which it

could be

in which it

might happen

or could

happen is in

the northwest

of the United

States

where there

are in

place quite

large numbers

of people

who've already

ritualized

mushroom carts

and there's an

ongoing ritualized

mushroom cart

there which

is a

psychedelically

motivated

influence by

American Indian

chants and

American Indian

practices

involves an

awareness of

in some cases

at least the

American Indian

versions of

the four

directions and

the basic

principles of

localization in

sacred space

yet which is

disconnected from

churches as far

as I know

and which is not

integrated into

the green

political movement

but there's a

sense in which

ingredients exist

just to take

where we are

now I mean

the American

West

ingredients exist

I think for

such a syncretic

movement to

happen I think

influences direct

experience of

the these

ayahuasca churches

from the Amazon

could help to

nucleate the

synthesis

the syncretism

that hasn't

really happened

is the

formation of

the integration

of these orders

with the

Christian world

partly because

of a deep

suspicion on

both sides

and a kind

of stereotyped

anti-Christian

view that

people have

developed in

some kind of

reaction against

their Christian

or Jewish

background many

many years

before and

very rarely ever

re-examine them

it's an

impenetrable

barrier they

erect against

their ancestors

and the entire

tradition they've

come from and

try to function

somehow keeping

it all out but

it doesn't because

it comes around

the archetypes

work unconsciously

and so one

gets I've met

members of

the mushroom

cart who come

across to me

very much like

Southern Baptist

evangelists for

it and on

inquiry I find

their backgrounds

are Southern

Baptist

anyway this

is one area

where some

of the ingredients

namely green

politics

the existence

of such

carts and

an attempt

to reintegrate

them with

the Judaic and

Christian traditions

that's going on

so there's

there's a sense

in which

this is one

area where

such a

syncretism

could emerge

now in England

one would first

have to establish

the mushroom

carts and

there are lots

of people who

take the native

Sino-Sibi

mushrooms

and the people

who gather

them but I

don't know

whether they've

developed into

sort of cycles

because the

mushroom thing

here developed

I suppose under

the influence

of peyote

cycles and

living traditions

of sacramental

use of plants

and these living

traditions are

living in America

but I don't think

there are any

continuous living

ones in Europe

well the inner

order of the

proposed church

could grow

I'm sure

it's very

easily done

but they'd

have to import

the ritual

from America

or something

I think they

have to develop

their own

I think the

way to do

it

at least the

way that

the Ayahuasca

church

person that

we met

suggested

as the way

the way this

Ayahuasca cult

happened in the

Amazon was

first somebody

took it

and Our Lady

appeared to him

in the form

of Our Lady

of the Forest

and told him

to go into

the jungle

for seven days

living only on

roots and

berries and

so forth

alone

and at the

end to take

a large amount

of this

substance

the Ayahuasca

then she

appeared to

him again

as Our Lady

of the Forest

and revealed

the outlines

of this ritual

and its

essential forms

these things

have to be

channeled

they have to

grow through

a channeling

type experience

they have to

be revealed

rather than

invented

and so I

think that

say a

mushroom

cult

were to

grow up

in England

it would

have to

happen

spontaneously

under the

guidance

of

after a

suitable

prayer

I don't

know who

would be

the great

patron of it

and Glastonbury

would probably

be one of

its sacred

centers

but it

would have

to be revealed

the details

of it

I think

well there

is a

tradition

I guess

only not

continuous

because it

became extinct

is that right

so the

rediscovery

of the

druidic

rites

or something

could provide

the model

I think

that it

would have

to be

the thing

is

The Druidic rites are too far lost to be revived, and there was this 19th-century-based

attempt to revive the Druidic rites, and there are Druidic orders in England, there are quite

a lot of them.

They all quarrel with each other, and there's a plethora of these Druids.

But mostly they've taken their doctrines from Theosophists and reading esoteric books

and so on.

It's a kind of melange of Western esoteric knowledge that doesn't really have, to me

at any rate, any convincing continuity with the mysteries of the Druidic past.

So, in a sense, the tradition is lost, and it's hard to see how it could be recovered

without it being a rather theatrical reinvention.

Well, except if you look how the Mexican mushroom religion does it, it's very logical.

I mean, that's the way to do it.

You do it in small circles at night with intentionality.

There's song, there's prayer, there's silence.

It's not a leap of imaginative vision to conceive of one of these ceremonies.

No.

It's very easy to conceive of them, but for them to have a kind of authenticity in the eyes

of those who participate in them, they have to have been revealed rather than invented.

Well, they are psychedelic experiences.

The authenticity is going to come from the thing itself.

We're not talking here about reciting mantras.

I know.

But the thing is that the ceremony, I think, would need to be rooted in the spirit of the

place and that sort of thing.

There would have to be certain ritual elements for it to function rather than to be rooted

in the spirit of the place and to be part of a larger movement, such as we're talking

ourselves, namely a green order, which would be the kind of mystical branch of a larger

green movement.

Well, you see, what I'm trying to do in my book is argue that the mushroom was the earth

symbiote of humanity, and thus all human beings in all times and places connect as their...

So there's a gigantic creode.

Yes.

It should be possible to excavate it from any time at any place in the future.

That was the religion of human beings for the first million years.

It went a diminishing 10,000 years ago.

And so the creode is vast.

Is it controversial?

Yes.

When the decertification of Africa, it was broken up as recently as 7,000 or 8,000 years ago.

There were probably still intermittent mushroom ceremonies when it climatically was favored

to appear.

I really see it as a restoration of this lost symbiotic partner.

So it isn't even ultimately a matter of the psychedelic experience per se.

It means that psilocybin has some unique relationship to the evolution of the human nervous system.

It, in fact, turns the human nervous system into an antenna to the Gaian mind.

And then people behave appropriately in the same way that termites behave appropriately within the morphogenetic field of the termite.

If this antenna is not present in the human being, then the human being has to think up their own program,

and it's usually power-crazed, lethal, short-sighted, and grabby.

But if that's the case, do we know that the mushroom carts that have sprung up, for example, in the northwest of the United States,

have these led to, I mean, is your impression of the people who belong to them that these are people of an entirely different quality

from those who don't belong to such groups, and that they're appropriate and in tune with the Gaian mind?

Oh yes, they tend to be rural, they tend to be communal, they tend to be non-motivated in the economic realm.

In other words, they are living simply.

Voluntary simplicity is a concept they're well familiar with.

They have and value their children.

They're exemplifying the values that peasantry has always exemplified,

because they live near the land, you know.

They want for nothing, but they have very little.

That's my impression.

They haven't a plan to take over the Christian churches.

No, they are beyond it.

They are in the thrall of their religious relationship to the mushroom.

The save the earth part is sort of the political agenda.

But they're going to be absorbed by this political program sooner or later,

as the acid rain destroys their mushrooms.

Yes, well, I think they are more and more alarmed.

My audiences, until very recently, preferred me to dwell on the mystical, the trans-historical.

They love that.

And about a year and a half ago, people started questioning why there was no political content.

Now they demand.

There is definitely a shift on to make whatever your position is relevant to the encroaching crisis,

which everyone feels.

I mean, we may imagine, because we're intellectuals and because we deal with this data,

that it's more on our minds.

But the housewife doing her ironing, the school child on the bus,

people worry about the faith of the earth,

because the collective information field has now shifted its attention to this.

The only competition for that focus on the need to save the earth is this stupid anti-drug thing,

which is, you know, the need to preserve the purity of your precious bodily essences,

or something like that.

And in a way, the two are opposed.

It's an issue of how we relate to the vegetable matrix.

Yes.

Well, there we see the forces in opposition to the re-sacralization program gathering and arming themselves.

Yes, in their usual fashion.

But, you see, I think the psychedelic order is only one aspect of the re-sacralization program.

The other one, as I suggested the other day, is a revival of pilgrimage and sense of sacred time.

And this can be done in many contexts, and it can be easily incorporated into people's lives.

And moreover, I find that it immediately makes sense to most people.

I mean, most people, you say, you know, that the quality of time, certain times are better,

and to be conscious of these, and to the kind of historical fields attached to them,

is better than to be unconscious of them.

I mean, most people can see that, and they say, of course.

And the same with sacred places.

Most people can see that the reason why pilgrims and tourists go to these places

is because of some quality of the place, which is special.

And so, do you relate to the quality of the space consciously,

and ask the spirit of the place to inform and illuminate you on your visit there,

and give you its blessing?

Or do you treat it unconsciously, and say, well, people looked that way in the past,

but now we're scientific, we've risen above all that, that's just superstition,

but we're interested in coming to this place anyway,

for historical or archaeological reasons, and taking photographs of it, and going home,

but without opening oneself to the spirit of the place.

It wants relation to it being one of attraction to it,

and yet an unconscious barrier between one.

Now, if one puts it like that, I think most people can see that,

because most people really are going to sacred places,

and really are going to the wilderness, and so on,

because of a desire to make some such connection.

It's part of the romantic, private, subjective tradition of our culture.

But I think that making it explicit, and pointing it out,

and showing how, in simple ways, how pilgrimage can be revived,

and simple principles like going with an intention,

taking some offering, if possible, circumambulating the place,

to make it the cosmic centre, before entering it,

and simple principles of that kind.

It's fairly easy to re-sacralise tourism,

and that's something which is immediately available as a mass movement,

and through the impetus of the green movement,

I think, could be spread very rapidly.

Well, I think we've arrived at a certain vision,

characterized by, to me, surprising optimism,

and about the possible outcome of this program,

involving the green, the sacralisation, the psychedelic orders,

and the successful escape of the downward spiral,

up the down staircase.

We're talking about up the down staircase.

And the way it's emerged in our trilogue,

I think it sounds fairly plausible that it's possible,

and it's underway.

I'm sorry, I haven't the energy to summarize this,

because every time I try to summarize it,

you've added something further.

I think it's in good shape,

unless you feel a summary coming on,

and I'll just shut up.

Well, a diagram.

Ralph has this great idea to turn everything into diagrams.

Yes, well, we have a diagram in mind, definitely.

We have, through poking around, rediscovered the basic institutions of civilization,

the religious, the political, or the state,

and the relationship to the earth.

And then we've proposed a revitalization of each of these areas,

and found them already underway.

And then we've seen that the connection of these revolutionary movements

need to be provided as a kind of a matrix between them,

which would then integrate them into kind of a new social form

with a chance of having a future.

And this intracellular matrix between the roots

could grow by evolution from a kind of a nucleation event.

And so we've pinpointed something that actually we could do to provide this nucleation,

and that would be a pilgrimage involving some small number of people

from the green political movement,

and others from the new religious movements,

for example, the councils of ayahuasca and peyote cults in the Americas,

to give them a joint experience,

sharing the spirit of the field of a traditional sacred place,

particularly of the oldest roots of Western civilization.

I don't know if we will actually do this,

but we have at least dreamed up something we could do

that has the potential to have a lot of bang for the buck

in terms of giving people our idea for new society.

Thank you.

Well, as the saying goes,

a lot of water has passed under the bridge

since Ralph's optimistic summation of ways to bring the sacred back into human civilization.

I guess on one hand you could say that not much has changed,

at least on the surface.

But behind the scenes, at least in the psychedelic community,

I can say that my personal experience has been to see many of my friends move

from using psychedelic substances primarily for pleasure

into more of a mystical dimension,

which really isn't very surprising to anyone who has personally experienced these gratuitous graces.

So maybe the re-saclarization of the world is actually taking place, just like the trial loggers were hoping for.

I guess my main criticism of this thread of their conversation stems from the fact that for the most part they were speaking from a Judeo-Christian perspective.

Although Rupert did try to interject the Muslim side on a few occasions, for the most part they weren't able to also touch on the forms of Buddhism, Hinduism,

and the wide varieties of religious experience available throughout the Far East.

And it's not a criticism actually. After all, they were covering a huge topic in just 90 minutes.

And I'm mentioning this mainly because I know we have a large number of fellow psychonauts in that part of the world who also join us here in the Psychedelic Salon each week.

And I don't want you to think that your point of view doesn't matter. It does!

Unfortunately, us Westerners sometimes get so carried away with ourselves that we forget that we're only one small part of the human experience.

And I have to admit that I had to smile when Terence kept talking about saving the Earth.

While that expression was quite popular during the last century, it's become kind of funny now, don't you think?

I can see talking about saving our species, and to be honest, I'm not sure we're going to even make it as a species as long as most mammal species have survived so far.

But I'm pretty sure that no matter what us humans do, the Earth is going to continue along just fine.

There's nothing wrong with talking about saving the planet, but unless and until we humans can get along with one another and with the biosphere,

saving ourselves seems to be where the focus should be.

And speaking of focus, I'd better come clean here and admit that my focus on replying to your email has really fallen by the wayside lately.

I seem to go in spurts where for a few days I'll answer email as soon as it comes in, but then I'll start putting it off for a day or so until eventually my inbox gets so full I realize I'll probably never catch up.

But this kind of procrastination isn't anything new for me.

You know, on my last assignment in the Navy, I was the executive officer on a ship, which meant among other things that I was responsible for the smooth flow of the mountains of mainly unnecessary paperwork that bureaucracies seem to thrive on.

I can remember one program that the screw heads at the top of our system implemented, and it was supposedly intended to reduce the number of reports a ship was required to submit.

What really amazed me about this program was that the morons who came up with the idea required us to submit weekly, monthly, quarterly, and annual reports detailing how we eliminated the unnecessary busy work of filing stupid reports.

So, as you can probably guess, my first weekly report was to announce that I'd eliminated all of the reports about reducing paperwork.

For the first few months after refusing to send any more of those stupid forms into them, I was getting all kinds of threatening messages telling me that I was way behind in reporting on my paperwork problems.

But after a while, I guess they just got tired of bugging me, and I stopped hearing from them.

So I expanded that idea and didn't turn in any reports for a few months.

It turned out that there were actually a few people who seemed to really need the information that I was supposed to be reporting on, so I wound up doing about 10% of the required paperwork because they were essentially very squeaky wheels.

I guess this is just a long way of saying that I'm still not very good at paperwork, even the digital kind.

It's rude of me, I know, particularly because I so enjoy receiving your emails.

So, for what it's worth, if you haven't yet received a reply to an email you sent me, well, I want you to know that it really bothers me that I don't keep up with my email and I even lose sleep about it at night as I lay there and compose responses to the many thoughtful messages you've been sending.

And I promise to do better in my next life.

Well, I'm just rambling now, I guess, so I'd better close and let you get on with your lives.

Hey, it's been nice to be with you again, though, and thank you all for listening.

Before I go, I want to mention that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 2.5 License.

And if you have any questions about that, you can click on the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage, which may be found at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts.

And if you still have questions, send them to me in an email.

It's Lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.

Thanks, as always, to Jacques Cordell and Wells of Chateau Hayouk for letting us use your music here in the Psychedelic Salon.

And, for now, this is Lorenzo, signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

Be well, my friends.

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

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

So, how are you today?

All ready for another installment of the Trilogue between Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake?

As you probably know already, we're getting down to the end of the first series of conversations,

the three of them held at Esalen Institute in 1989 and 1990.

And, since we're going to hear the first side of the ninth tape in the series of ten,

my guess is that this particular talk was recorded in 1990,

although the cassette tapes weren't clearly labeled as to what year they were made, so we can't really be sure.

But, I hope you don't let the title of this tape throw you off.

If you read the program notes, you know that they titled it Education in the New World Order.

Apparently, when they held this conversation, the phrase New World Order didn't have the negative connotation that does today,

at least for some people.

But, as I understand it from their conversation, they used the term only to project their thinking into a utopian future

that didn't include the existing world order, which I think we can all agree is in some need of improving.

Anyway, I think you're going to enjoy this particular talk.

I know it gave me some new ideas about what's been going on with our current educational system,

at least here in the States, and I think they came up with some workable suggestions for making changes in it.

At least their ideas in this talk seem a little more practical than some of the more far-out plans

that they've come up with in the past.

So, let's join our merry trialoguers as they ponder what to do about the sad state of government-sponsored education.

Education in the New World Order.

Everybody agrees there's something wrong with the educational system that we have today.

I mean, even mainstream official educationists are worried about it.

There's something about it which doesn't seem to be working.

And, obviously, in the New World Order there'll be an educational system of some kind.

Every society or civilization has one.

So, one has to think, what kind do we actually want?

And, what, if we take a walk through it, what would it look like, the educational system in the New World Order?

Well, I think that the first thing about it would be that education would recognize that it is, in fact, a form of initiation,

that its entire archetypal role is that of an initiation process.

The education, in fact, the present educational system mimics the initiatory process, indeed, is a kind of initiatory process,

where you go through the different exams.

Like every initiatory, you have a training, you pass through a time of testing or trial.

And some fail, others pass.

And the past ones are the initiates.

And so, at every level, you have 11-year-olds, sort of 15-year high school graduations, college exams,

bachelor of arts, master of arts, doctor of philosophy.

And these higher and higher degrees and qualifications, each of which involves its test of initiation,

each of which, once initiated into that hierarchy in the academic grade within the academic hierarchy,

people have a kind of official certification of higher and higher levels of education,

recognized throughout our whole modern society, which pays great respect to things like academic qualifications.

You'll get better jobs, better employment opportunities, more respect.

And that's, of course, why everyone wants these degrees, and why, to the despair of educators throughout the world,

most college students passing through the universities seem to have so little real interest in the subjects they're studying.

They want to, in the third world, it's very clear, they just want the degree, because with a BA or an MA,

your entire social status has changed in India.

And your marriage prospects, the size of diary you can command, and so on, it's a quantifiable sliding scale of status.

Anyway, this is the present educational system we have, and the present educational system is based on an initiatory model.

And, in fact, I think it is an initiation into a model.

It's an initiation into what one could think of as the rationalist or humanist worldview or mindset, frame of mind, way of thinking.

And so one of the things that it does all along is to mean that the mind or the intellect is the predominant God-like point of view from which everything is seen.

So, when you teach school children literature within this framework of this system that we've got now,

this mechanistic, humanist, rationalist model, you don't just read them the great poems by sort of beating a drum

and bringing the magic of the poem and going into the myth.

You say, this poem was written in 1635 by so-and-so, who was born in so-and-so.

And you then learn all these facts about the poets, which you have dates of when they were born and died,

and that kind of thing, which you have to be able to know for exams.

And then certain stock ways of analyzing Shakespeare's plays, for example, for school exams,

where such-and-such a character does this role.

And here Shakespeare was borrowing from this tradition and putting this,

and taking the whole thing to pieces by this kind of detached analytical mind.

The same in the fine arts.

As soon as this mind gets onto the arts, you've got the same thing.

This was painted by so-and-so in the school of so-and-so, bought by so-and-so,

in such-and-such a collection, and so on.

So I think that all these ways of distancing the self

and bringing the rational, academic-trained mind as being the supreme point of view

is the initiation into which this educational system works.

It makes that the supreme arbiter, a kind of human reason.

And so it's this kind of rationalistic humanism.

So it is an initiation right now.

The present educational system is an initiatory system.

One has to recognize that.

And each of its levels, like commencement, graduation day from high school, and so on,

are attended by impressive public ceremonies, which, in the classic tradition of public initiation

and recognition to a higher grade or status, like a medieval guild or craft.

It's one of the few realms in which that kind of world lives on,

with these hierarchical gradations, with robes and all the apparatus in the realm of science

of a scientific priesthood, in fact.

And indeed it is the scientific priesthood envisaged by Bacon in the scientific world,

the academic model and the priestly role of the higher initiates in running and ordering society,

the more educated.

So we do have that kind of system, but in order to replace it,

we obviously have to have not only just tinkering with the present system,

which is entirely dedicated to that view of the world.

And when it extends its baleful influence over the third-world countries,

as I've seen it do in Indian villages,

as soon as the school comes in, and the secondary school,

these kids that go through that, they become alienated from tradition.

They want to wear pants instead of dotis.

They want to work in cities instead of stay in the village.

They want to have an office job sort of with, you know, sitting behind a desk

and being a kind of bureaucrat rather than getting their hands dirty.

All these classical archetypes of kind of Indian bourgeois aspiration take over,

and they're alienated from the village culture in which they were educated.

Most of them could drop off and go to the cities,

and the village is sort of... they sort of distill off, fortunately, for village life.

But this... you can see this whole new frame of mind being introduced in the entire third world

through the UNESCO and through educational things.

The first step is literacy. You've got to have them reading and writing.

Because then you can get across that what's in books is more important than what you actually feel or experience.

Because books... the world of books, huge libraries and stuff, scientific journals, is vastly larger than anything any one of us could ever read, comprehend or experience.

So there's this overwhelming weight of fact which one can't but be in awe of and respect.

And as soon as one, the more one's initiated into that world and the priesthood of the world of books and the written word,

then the more one's mind is bound up in that whole realm and the more one's beings assimilated to it.

And the less the realm of ordinary experience counts for anything.

In fact, it still counts, but it counts behind the diaphragm that separates from the educated public persona,

from the private domestic or romantic solitude or hiking in the wilderness weekend persona,

or holiday and barley persona.

These other wilder, freer aspects of the personality are relegated to free time, not in the educated part.

So, the alternative educational model would still be based on initiations,

but it would be based on going with the grain of initiation,

which is throughout the world what most people want to be initiated into a lot of things.

And they realize that being initiated into them means taking on a new social role, a new social pattern,

and usually these roles are in some sense sacralized, you know, guilds of craftsmen, etc.,

with their patron saints, and Indian castes, each with their own traditions,

you know, the potter caste, the weaver caste, and so on,

with traditions and skills which are passed on with them.

And the children with them want to be initiated into being a potter or a weaver if you're in that.

There's a respect and accord given to the initiates, which the young aspire to.

And you get exactly the same thing in our own society with driving.

I mean, nobody, adult, most adult people don't want to be the kind of people who either can't drive

or haven't qualified for a driving license.

And they have to go through a learning period and they have to be passed the test.

And once they've passed it, they join the club of qualified drivers.

Most kids actually want to be initiated into that.

There's a real power, a kind of magnetic pull about being along.

There's a glamour to it, which they want.

And a whole new freedom and a true initiation takes place.

And these are very deep and people want to be initiated into swimming, into sex,

into drugs of various kinds, into games, into skills and professions.

These are basic desires for initiation.

So, the model of education would be this initiation-based education,

of which the present educational system has many of the elements,

but in a kind of parody version, because these tests only operate in the written mode.

They only operate in the language mode.

All examinations involve sitting at a desk with a pen and writing,

that they entirely work through this written mode.

And there are initiations into the written world, as it were.

So, there are other kinds of initiatives.

And if you think about it, a lot of the present educational system could be transformed by recognizing its initiatory quality.

Like medical students, to become doctors, have to dissect a complete human corpse.

This is an absolute requirement.

And every medical student, when they first come into the dissecting room, undergoes an instinctive, deep-down revulsion

from this room full of partially dismembered corpses, something against which all societies have had taboos.

You know, the respect for the corpse and that sort of thing, the power of the corpse.

And to overcome all these traditional taboos, they have to adopt a highly detached and usually jocular attitude

with dissecting rooms full of people playing hockey, as they did in the Cambridge ones, with severed legs, using testicles as the hockey balls, this kind of thing.

A typical medical student hijinks in the dissecting room, where this kind of jocularity is forced as a response.

Say, instead of that, to become a doctor, you have to dissect a dead human body.

And to do that, you have to have a meditation on death first.

You maybe have to, like in a Tibetan meditation, spend a night in a graveyard.

And, you know, really confront what one's doing, the initiatory quality of confronting death in some kind of way.

This is a solemn moment.

And in most other trades, professions, skills, etc., there would be this initiatory way of doing it, which exists to some extent in voluntary organizations and clubs and hobbyists of every kind,

you know, who want to have their people pursue things because they're really interested.

There'd also be adolescent initiation rites somewhere in this, along, we mentioned that at Hollyhock, Jill and I were talking about vision camps, summer camps, where kids go,

and where there's a truly initiatory program now, involving a vision quest, for example, at least 24 hours alone in the wilderness.

These camps already exist in northern Vancouver Island in the summer, mostly for Indian youths.

And so there'd be this initiatory quality introduced throughout the educational system.

And computer modeling, for example, would be a very important part of the initiatory thing into mathematics,

which would be an initiation into the mathematical landscape, which is the hidden mystery of mathematics,

and to which most students of it never get an inkling.

They don't even know it's there, because mathematicians don't talk about it.

They pretend that it's this rational system of numbers and symbols.

But actually, the really good ones have these vivid visual imaginations, which is where it all happens, where the magic goes on.

Well, no, one of your great points is this can now be rendered visible through computer models.

You can enter into it, as you can, through fractal programs and that kind of thing,

and actually explore the mathematical landscape in the privacy of your home,

a moderately-priced diskette available from Aerial Press.

And so this obviously is part of it too.

So, and also within each branch of learning, there would be, through some, you'd learn about how to mend cars,

you'd learn from plumbers about the elements of plumbing, you'd learn useful things in schools,

and to be initiated by members of recognized trades or professions, like a plumber would teach you plumbing,

a real plumber, who's really part of the kind of plumbers union, you know, the really initiated plumber world.

And so you'd see that you'd have an entry into these different worlds through these initiations,

which could take place within the framework of ordinary schools.

And through acknowledging the tradition, which is in each of these cases a way of life,

a whole cultural tradition, not just a piece of book learning or things written on paper,

you'd come into the larger group dynamics, the social psyche,

the education would be integrated into the larger emotional and intuitive and social bonding aspects of one's life.

Anyway, one kind of educational system that has this initiatory quality to some extent is the workshop system,

and this is the principal alternative educational system that has developed outside the orthodox one.

And it's obviously the best model for actually replacing the present one,

a vast extension of the workshop system of education,

because workshop-type education involves people interacting as a group,

and it's impossible to forget the group dynamics.

It's not just a teacher in a classroom that are meant to be quiet,

although in fact what's going on is group dynamics of often turbulent kind.

The workshop makes the group dynamics explicit,

and is the model of people who actually want to do,

want to learn something together to make some new insight,

to make some new step or experience or transition,

which, at the end of which, Friday noon,

they'll have actually been through a kind of group initiatory experience,

which has involved a group bonding, a new shared way of seeing the world,

a new consensus reality emerging,

a new insight into self-transformation, etc.

Initiatory hopes, anyway.

The other thing is that, the other final point is that,

for the educational system to be transformed,

each branch of it, each profession of it,

that already exists as a kind of guild,

like mathematicians have their own kind of guilds, and biochemists,

and, you know, these are guilds with their founding fathers,

their honoured traditions, etc.

They're like guilds.

Each one of them has to, from within itself, within the group,

have a new vision of what it could be, like revisioning psychology,

you know, like Hillman's book.

There's the revisioning model, revisioning medicine.

What would happen if a group of doctors got together,

led in a workshop-type format at somewhere like Esalen,

and did things like shamanic chanting in a workshop format,

and then also discussed,

what was their original vision in becoming a doctor?

What was the, going right back to contact the original inspiration for each of them,

and then tell other people?

What was your, what did you see medicine could be?

What's your experience of it as you've actually come into it?

You know, limitations and so on.

And what could a new vision of medicine be?

A new kind of healing profession.

This kind of revisioning could occur within each of the,

you know, what could a real botany be within the botanical?

A real botany would be a science really related to the spirits of the plant world,

as well, with an understanding of their forms, names, colors, embryologies, and so on,

but essentially knowing in the greatest detail that,

and relating to the spirits of the vegetative kingdom.

So, this would be what the new professions would be like,

and they'd have to, they could be transformed,

I think, by a whole transformation of consciousness

that could come about in a group format within members of the profession,

a whole new vision, what it could be.

So, in summary, I think that in the New World Order,

the educational model would be an education through initiation.

The initiations will be things that people on the whole want to do,

and involve far more than just writing things down,

but actually a real mental, physical, and social competence

to do whatever it is that needs to be done,

which is what's involved in real guild initiations,

apprenticeships, and so on.

And that the workshop mode is probably the best model

for what the new educational models would be like.

And the professional groups that already exist

to transform these traditions from within,

which has to be done to maintain their organic integrity as a profession,

and hence the source of ancient traditions,

which can actually have a mythic power

and therefore help to transform.

All this might happen in a new millennium

and lead us into a new psychedelic world order.

Well, it's very interesting.

I agree.

I think you put your finger on it,

that this initiatory thing is the continuing thread

from the archaic that could lead into the future,

and that that means there's reason for hope.

The only thing I would really add to that

is that when I imagine the educational system of the future,

I think that part of our problem

and how we reached this historical impasse

was through accepting a kind of historical amnesia,

and that the education of the future

should have a tremendous focus on history.

The educational system currently in place,

I take to have as its sort of paradigm

the teaching of physics.

In other words, the conveying

of an extremely abstract,

mathematically-based description of nature

that ushers into high engineering competence.

And I would imagine

in an ideal educational milieu in the future

that perhaps the science of archaeology

might replace the science of physics

as the place where focus was to go.

Most people are not aware of the revolution

in information recovery ability

that has occurred in archaeology

in the last even ten years.

So that in a sense,

a kind of telescope into the past

is being erected by the world archaeological community.

And teaching this is a way of re-anchoring ourselves

from the post-industrial notion of history

as a kind of trendless fluctuation

or a class struggle

or some of these other very dis-en-souled models

of what the human journey through time is.

So I think we have fallen into a kind of historical amnesia.

This has blunted the acuity of our political decision-making.

And that part of reforming education

has to be to teach people that history

is a system of interlocking resonances

in which they are embedded

and they are going to be called upon to make decisions

which will affect the state of life on this planet

millennia in the future.

So without a complete knowledge of history

that is seamless from the birth of the universe

down to yesterday's headline,

we are not in a position to act toward our best interests.

And I take education broadly

to be the inculcation of attitudes

that cause us to act generally in the interest of all.

That's about it.

I think your other very strong point

is the power of the feudal guild model

and that, you know, this goes hand in hand

with the McLuhanist expectation

of what he called

an electronic feudalizing of society.

That this hierarchy of academic Kant

that has been built up

is in fact a sham,

a thing of squeaking gears

and creaking pulleys

that is left over from another age.

and that we should just understand

that education

is a kind of value-neutral medium

and that whether you learn

the Tao of waste disposal

or the Tao of 16th century Spanish literature

you are essentially tilling the same field

and that people have lost the sense

the sense of the how-ness

of their professionalism

and the educational system

has been contaminated by concepts

like of class struggle,

class difference,

this sort of thing.

Ralph, what's your take on that?

Well, I like these visions,

revisions, as far as they go.

I think the initiation mode

is a good one

in that it has

a traditional track record,

successful track record.

It engages the motivation of children

to try to proceed from the green belt

to the brown belt and so on.

And it also is,

as you correctly pointed out Rupert,

is the system that we have

in today's educational factory.

So, I think that this is excellent

as far as it goes

and I like the workshop mode

and I think I agree, Terence,

it would be valuable

to infuse the curriculum

of new dimensions of history,

archaeology,

and the revision of the past.

And the revision of the past

must be re-revised annually

and this mode would make that possible

because I presume

in the workshop model

you have in mind

asking a different plumber

every year

asking a different archaeologist

that would not be

a professor with tenure.

Oh no,

the ones that remain actually

professional plumbers

that would come in there.

Yes.

But still, I think that this

somehow doesn't

go far enough.

I feel uneasy

in that maybe

the main problems

in the current system

hasn't really been engaged yet.

And the trouble is

we don't know exactly

what they are.

And no, I think

this view is kind of

focusing on higher education

and maybe that's good

because lower education

will always be

on the way to higher education

and when higher education

is transformed

it will somehow

change the whole system.

And myself,

I took a shortcut in school

and left in the ninth grade

and never returned.

and then I entered early

in university

and I'm now starting

my fortieth year

so I can not really

suggest a revision

of the elementary school system.

Well, the inculcation

of feminism

and feminine values

are some kind of way

of feminizing

the whole system

in those early grades.

Yes.

That's probably

the most important vacuum.

Infusing the current system

with a new spirit

I think somehow

won't do it.

Among the rash of books

criticizing

the higher educational system

this year

there's one

Paige Smith's

The Death of the Spirit

which he's a historian

America's premier historian

and he spent half his book

complaining about

the current system

and the other half

discussing how it got that way

and I was pleased

to discover

that the higher educational system

of Europe and America

is not getting worse and worse

it was always this bad.

We can take fault

even if we go to the first one

which is when Ptolemy

gave this huge endowment

to the Alexandrian Museum.

Here we had professors

with lifetime tenure

and the responsibility

was to give one lecture

per week

or to contribute a poem

or amusement

for public display.

Sounds like a good

off chance.

So Pate Smith takes issue

first of all

with the tenure system.

Now I like the tenure system.

I would be out on my ear

years ago

if I didn't have

this very, very strong job security.

But somehow it's part of the problem

I think

and you have to ask

in your vision

of the new educational system

in the new world order

where the workshops

who is organizing this?

Where is the department

of administration?

The administration building

who is deciding

which workshops will be offered?

Which plumber will be?

And so on.

Will there be new emphasis

on feminist revision of history?

Will there be new results

from archaeology or not?

Somebody, after all,

is deciding

whether it's the PTA

or whatever.

How many people

are going to school?

All, a few, those who wish.

Rewards will be offered,

yes or no.

And these things

have to do with

nitty-gritty,

the nuts and bolts

of running a school system.

And as the system evolves

or devolves

would be more honest

since we don't expect it

to get better and better

in the course of time.

Somehow,

the paths of the devolution

the seeds would be contained

in this administrative system

put in place

in the beginning.

Who is in charge?

The students participate

in decisions

and so on.

Then, even with

the initiation model

I find some anxiety

in thinking about this

because we have

in the current initiation system

there are two different roles

in the initiation

that in the beginning

of your introduction

you alluded.

One is initiation

as with the corpse

and the other

is valuation

the accreditation

a guarantee

to the world

that this doctor

has reached

a certain level

of skill

and is therefore

accredited,

authorized

to dispense

antibiotic

medicines

by prescription.

That means

that

any initiation

there has to be

a test

and in the test

usually

verbal

as you said

although when I was

an engineering student

we had to pass

the welding course

the test was given

by a tensile test machine.

In the sciences

practical as well

of course.

so

I

as a teacher

always hated

this

testing

aspect

and claimed other people

should do it.

I'm only willing

to teach people

who want to learn from me

that is my only

role that

that I accept

but nevertheless

I must write letters

of recommendation

students who have been

friends who have

respected me

who now beg me

to assist them

by writing a letter

of recommendation.

I must say

that this student reached

a certain level

to know what level

the student reached

and whatever

I thought it was

I'm not sure

and even if I was sure

I wouldn't know how to say it

in a sentence.

I hate this role

and I hate grading tests

and trying to figure out

where to place the lines

between the grades

A, B, C

or whatever.

So the testing aspect

and the initiatory aspect

must not necessarily

be combined

into a single

tool

function

or whatever.

No.

So I like the initiation

I don't like the testing

and yet

if you don't have the testing

then the educational system

is somehow failing

its mission to society

in doing one of the things

that society

asks it to do

which is

to produce trades

but you see

I don't accept

plumbing

in the educational

curriculum

everybody should learn

computer programming

and other kinds of plumbing

of course

but

I think the heart

of the curriculum

the school system

should somehow

transcend

the trades

and the apprenticeship

for a profession

and the learning

of basic skills

walk, run, jump

eat

a complete diet

and so on.

Where is

spiritual value?

Where

is moral

and ethical value?

Where is the fabric

of society

as it were?

Where is that taught?

If not in the school

then embedded in

soap operas

or

where?

somehow

the curriculum

has to have

a spiritual

moral

well

social

values

which could fit

in the workshop

mode

which could be

consistent with

the initiatory

but have nothing to do

with the trade school

and the trade union

more

there would be some

maybe some spiritual elite

some professors

of moral

philosophy

we would have

Plato and Socrates

would be leading a workshop

something like that

then

I could see

that it fits

in this mode

but

somehow

whoever is arranging

the workshop

in plumbing

and who is arranging

the workshop

in spiritual value

these must be

I guess

differently qualified people

finally

I think

this

another thing

that has

crippled

the modern university

is the isolation

of specialties

and I don't see

in this new vision

a way

of dealing with that

I think that besides

the workshop

with one leader

we must have

workshops

with trialogue

leaders

so that the

interplay

of the different

specialties

could be

given

due time

in fact

equal time

with specialties

I don't propose

as many people do

to replace courses

and specialties

completely

with interdisciplinary

courses

I think

is kind of a partnership

mother earth

father sky

that there will be specialties

and equal time

for syncretists

to put it together

and obtain some

meaning

from

three or four specialties

and to free associate

upon all of this

relating

whatever is the subject matter

of a workshop

of the entire educational experience

to the progress

the future of society

and evolutionary challenges

presented to each generation

these are just some other problems

I think

not addressed

by your suggestions so far

and that somehow

these have to be

not addressed

individually

but taken into account

somehow

in the overall

design

of the educational system

for a new world

order

it means

the participation

of the community

in the selection

of the curriculum

it needs a certain rigidity

that resists

evolution

that's too fast

it needs

the partnership

of the

the special

and the general

it needs

the relationship

to life

not only in terms

of fixing the faucets

but also

in making moral decisions

in everyday

about how to

relate

to altruism

and selfishness

and

synergy

and

I have no idea

how to

how to do this

how to change the system

I just think

that what you've suggested

is the beginning

of an evolutionary track

very similar to the one

that we're now on

and in the course

of just a few years

or generations

would

would result in

the same mess

that we now have

we need

a newer

new idea

well

I mean

what's

obviously

the element lacking

from what I talked about

which you draw attention to

is

the kind of spiritual

dimension

because I was talking about

a reformed secular

educational system

taking for granted

the fact that

the present educational

system

is secular

now

if one can think of

a spiritually based

educational system

then it's in a completely

different

realm of possibilities

the problem however

is that

if it were Christian based

then all the Jews

Muslims

Hindus

and atheists

would object

you know

if it were Hindu

then

fundamentalist

Christian parents

would object

what's stymied

one of the

terrible

impasses

of the modern

educational system

is because of secular

pluralism

and because

the role

the importance

secular pluralism

has for

the modern political

ideology

which is this kind of

humanist

capitalist

free market

idea

an important feature

it means that

no one

spiritual

traditional practice

can be used in schools

except in

explicitly

Roman Catholic schools

or Jewish schools

or Muslim schools

which is why a lot of people

want separate

German Catholic

Jewish Muslim schools

exactly because they do

think this is important

but in the secular system

you can't do it

so there's a terrible

blockage there

and

the only way

to overcome this problem

would be to have a new

official world order

which could empower

accredited

etc

which is not

the secular state

because the secular state

by its very nature

is

desacralized

it's a humanist concept

so the thing is

that this revolution

would have to go

a long way

if you want the entire

package deal

a long way

we want to go a long way

some kind of new

religious consensus

into which people

could be initiated

now I think that's

perhaps hoping for too much

and my more moderate

suggestion

would be

firstly

that each initiation

has to involve

a real experience

at different levels

of the answer

so like archaeology

you wouldn't just

study in books

and see slides and videos

of these things

you'd have to go

to certain sacred places

and maybe spend the night

there alone

if it was that kind

or the day there

or whatever

so that you actually

came to know the spirits

of these places

that you've been talking

about

the kinds of places

you knew it directly

from real experience

and you'd also do this

kind of thing

if it had this vision quest

you'd have a group

initiation quality

to it as well

and the sense of initiation

into social groups

and the honor of groups

and so on

which would be

a series of self-regulating

societies

which would be models

then if for the entire society

to have a system

of regulation

you'd need to have

official state rights

like they do in Japan

through the Shinto religion

and the emperor

and as we do in Britain

through the monarchy

and still acknowledged

official state rights

like the royal opening

of parliament

praying for the queen

and that kind of thing

but most countries

don't have the possibility

of transforming

that system

in Britain we do

and I think the problem

is quite different here

in America

because there isn't

American politics

based on a different model

a desacralized model

Yes

so the alternative

is the American way

would be to have

a free for all

and how it would work

is this

each student

at age 17

would be given a book

of 55 workshop vouchers

and they'd be told

that to become an initiated

adult

they would have to take

55 workshops

over the next three years

or maybe 40 workshops

or whatever

and there'd have to be

five in the kind of

group dynamics

social myths

history

you know

understanding our society

and the kind of

social ethic

as well as direct

group experience

some would be

in philosophy

others in

natural history

and knowing about

the natural world

etc.

so you'd have some

stipulation on a minimum

number in each

and then there's simply

there's a computerized

centralized

Esalen

Hollyhock etc.

catalogue

far many more workshop

centers would spring up

all over

based on modified summer

camps etc.

and into

or modified schools

existing schools

and you'd have

local patterns of workshops

and you'd have also ones

to which people travel

and stay

and

this

the student's credential

on finishing

the use of

the 55 vouchers

would be the list

of

workshops

that had been

completed to the point

of initiation

then the

then it would be

the whole process

would be started by

some initiatory thing

into this pathway

each workshop would

itself have an

initiatory pattern

and the whole thing

would culminate

in some final test

which would

be the borderline

from the

student having

passed a certain

a test not only

involving intellectual

skills but also

skills in groups

also

some kind of

social

sense or

responsibility

as actually

done through

groups and

workshop learning

making group

dynamics conscious

and so on

that

and so

and then there'd be

some final test

that involved

all these

and it would be like

one of these

and it could probably

also involve like the

Eleusinian mysteries

a psychedelic

revelation

I think this would

be probably the best

way to have the

graduation thing

to have to have the

psychedelic initiation

thing

maybe mushrooms

would be the best

thing

oh absolutely

the archaic

return

the culmination

of the educational

process

and the archaic

mystery

which is where it

always ended

and besides

the fact that

you

addressed my

complaint

about the

lack of the

sacred

with actually an

interesting

covert plan

for the introduction

of the new world

religion

through these

religious aspect of the

initiations

for the

all

you

But there's also the possibility, since there's no school in this plan, there are workshop

centers all over the place, that ordinary courses of religion, ethics, and so on, according

to different traditions, would also be offering workshops and students according to their choice

of ancient tradition.

That's right.

Yes.

Judaism.

Neoplatonic and Neo-Pythagorean and so on.

Roman Catholic, Methodist, Islamic, Hindu, there'd be workshops in these Tibetan Buddhists led

by people in those traditions.

If you want to know about Judaism, you don't go to a religious education instructor who tells

you about it from a book, you go to do a workshop with a rabbi.

Yes.

And then the relationship between education and the job market would be imagined then through

some classified ads as a person wanted, must have three W courses, two E courses, and

one S, or something like that.

Right.

And then as these requirements of different industries became known, people seeking a certain profession

would see to it that they learned how to read, for example, or how to write a computer.

Yes.

Well, that would be one way it would work, yes, and I think that this educational system probably

would fulfill the needs of industry, though I hadn't thought of that way better than the

present one, because it would actually give a much better sense of the industry.

They're not interested in taking graduates who just think from books.

They complain all the time in Britain about how they don't want university graduates in

a lot of British industries, because their heads are too big, and they're too big for their

boots, and they don't respect practical experience, so they'd rather take people straight from

school.

Common path.

Well, English universities were started by the Church, but American universities, as

Page Smith points out in his book, were started by tycoons of business.

And each successful tycoon had to have, among his credentials, a university he'd started with

endowments.

So, besides, I think the vision, this is a good one, it's becoming, for me personally, more

and more satisfactory, and also plausible.

I think that some people have suggested, actually, that the public school system be replaced with

a voucher system.

Oh, this is an active proposal at the moment.

This is a Satcherite idea, too.

The point is, this voucher system is part of the current political orthodoxy, so it's very

easy to see how it might be realized in a new form.

Yeah.

Well, that's, I think, some... a question we have to face is, besides the envision of the

final product, also some idea as to the path that goes from here, point A, to there, point

it would be, and it's hard to see how to get rid of this entrenched public school system.

It would have to be, as we're talking about politics here, there would have to be a plebiscite,

you know, where the voters insist on the opportunity to control the school system, and that they

want a voucher system.

You simply privatize it, and you privatize the education, you have a voucher system.

You can't find it at any school, a well-known approved list, which is constituted by a new

kind of educational board, not the old one.

And the approved list includes Waldorf schools, you know, Montessori schools, it would include

Catholic schools, Islamic schools, and there would be a whole range of accredited schools,

including former public schools, which would now become sort of an autonomous town schools

or something.

They'd compete in the open market.

And this system would be extremely, it would be pluralistic, it would be extremely responsive

to what people actually want and what parents and students are really interested in.

And it would have the advantage of being very decentralized and self-regulating.

Well, they had me there for a while, but I have to admit that Rupert lost me at the end

there when he started promoting a voucher system for public schools.

Maybe we'll hear Terrence and Ralph's response to that in the second half of this trilogue,

which will be our next podcast.

But unfortunately, that won't be until next week.

I know, you were getting used to me putting out three podcasts a week there for a while,

and you were really kind to give me a pass when I cut it back to only two a week.

So it really does bother me that I'm going to have to cut back to just one podcast a week

for a while here, but I've got a really good reason this time.

At least I think so.

You see, I'm leaving for the East Coast tomorrow so that I can be with my children

and grandchildren to help celebrate my oldest granddaughter's eighth birthday.

So you see, I really do have a good excuse this time,

and I promise to get the second half of this tape out as soon as I get back next week.

But that means it'll probably be late Wednesday or sometimes Thursday before I get it out to you,

and hey, I really appreciate your understanding.

I don't know about you, but I do like the idea about a workshop-based system

to replace our current Western system of indoctrinating our children into the fabric of society

before they have the opportunity to make an informed choice on their own

about just where they want to fit in.

I know that if I had an education that taught me how to think instead of what to think,

I'm sure my life choices would have been significantly different than they were

when I was still thinking the way I was brainwashed into thinking by the culture that I was born into.

It seems to me that the way we educate those who come after us

actually changes the world more than any of us can do on our own.

So this is really a vitally important issue, at least in my humble opinion.

And another thing they got me thinking about was when Ralph was talking about the workshop model

for an education system, you know, the one that Rupert and Terrence had proposed,

and his primary question, as I understood it, was,

so who would decide which workshops would be given, and so on.

Basically, his question seemed to be who would administer this new system.

And I wonder how Ralph would frame this question now that the Internet has evolved to its current point,

which, of course, is still only a small glimmer of what it's going to be in 10 years.

You know, the amazing variety of courses and workshops that are offered right now

already boggle the mind, so I guess the question goes from who will decide what is offered

to one of how does one decide which courses and workshops to take.

And I guess the Joseph Campbell answer is the one I'd vote for, follow your bliss,

which I discovered is often easier to say than to actually do.

And I'm sure that many professional teachers would argue that something more structured

than the hodgepodge of today's Internet is needed to properly educate somebody,

but I'll tell you this, from the thoughtful comments I've been receiving in emails

from people who are less than one-third of my age,

all I can say is that they're sure learning a lot of important things

that I don't think you'll find in many school curriculums.

I'm just blown away by some of your comments,

and my guess is that a lot of what you've learned has come from surfing far and wide on the Internet.

I guess that's one reason I'm so hopeful about our long-term future.

You know, while the baby boomers are products of television,

their children are growing up on the Internet.

And, uh, wait till we see what their children are going to be like, you know?

They'll never know what life was like without a high-speed Internet connection.

I wish I could travel into the future

and hear what kind of stories my great-grandchildren will tell their children

about how hard life was when they were growing up.

I remember my mother talking about not having indoor plumbing,

and my big hardship was that our television was only in black and white when I was a kid.

And my children, of course, can say how hard life was before the Internet,

and at the rate we're going, it won't be long before children are hearing their parents tell them

what life was like before there was a holodeck in every home.

Well, I guess I'd better close before I get too carried away here,

but there is one more thing I want to mention.

And, uh, that is, did you get a chance to see the Comet McNaught the last few days?

I don't think it's visible in the Northern Hemisphere any longer,

but if you happen to live south of the equator, I think you still have a few days to see it.

And to be honest, I wasn't all that excited about seeing it at first,

but thankfully, my wife encouraged me to join her in watching it while we could,

and I have to tell you that it turned into a rather mystical experience for me.

To begin with, it was a lot bigger than I remember Allie's Comet to be when it was here a few years ago,

and when I looked at it through some binoculars, I was really blown away.

It was just huge, and as I looked at it, I tried to imagine what it would sound like

if I was riding it into our atmosphere, and when I did that,

I was suddenly struck by the fact that had that comet's path been only a tiny bit closer,

it actually could have hit the Earth, and essentially brought our great human experiment to an end.

I know that my words aren't really conveying what I felt at the moment,

but seeing that huge, fiery object speeding through space,

and knowing that if it struck the Earth, we'd all be done for,

well, that just made me intensely aware of how fragile our hold on life on this little planet really is.

Why we're spending so much of our time building weapons

instead of figuring out ways to divert these large objects that keep coming our way

is just beyond me.

You know, eventually, something as large as that comet is going to be heading right for us,

and the sooner we begin working on what to do about that inevitable problem,

the better chance we're going to have of solving it

before it solves all of our human problems once and for all.

So if you're living down under right now,

why don't you go out and do some comet watching the next few nights?

It really is inspiring.

At least it was for me.

Well, before I go, once again, I need to mention that this and all of the podcasts

from the Psychedelic Salon are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution

Non-Commercial Share-Alike 2.5 License.

And if you have any questions about that,

just click on the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage,

which you can find at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts.

And if you still have questions, you can send them in an email to

lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.

Thanks again to Chateau Hayuk for letting us use your music here in the Psychedelic Salon.

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

Be well, my friends.

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

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

Even though it's only been about eight days since my last podcast,

it seems like it's been a month.

Sorry about the delay in getting this week's program out to you,

but I just returned from a trip to the East Coast to visit my children and grandchildren.

And to tell you the truth, it's a little hard to get back into the swing of things.

Particularly when I logged in after being offline for a week

and found several hundred emails waiting for me.

But more about that after we hear the rest of the trialogue that we began last week.

As you know, I've been podcasting a series of conversations

that Terrence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake held at the Esalen Institute in 1989 and 1990.

And today's program is the second half of a tape from that series

that was titled Education in the New World Order.

And we'll begin where we left off last week when Rupert opened the conversation up

to a discussion of a school voucher system.

So let's rejoin the merry trialoguers and see where their discussion leads

with a topic that has caused a lot of controversy here in the States

in the last ten years or so.

And I'll pick up by playing a couple of minutes from the end of the previous podcast

with Ralph Abraham speaking.

I think that some people have suggested actually that the public school system

be replaced with a voucher system.

That's an active proposal at the moment.

This is a Thatcherite idea too.

The point is this voucher system is part of the current political orthodoxy

so it's very easy to see how it might be realized in a new form.

Yeah, well that's I think some a question we have to face is the

besides the envision of the final product also some idea as to the path

that goes from here point A to there point B.

And it's hard to see how to get rid of this entrenched public school system.

It would have to be if we're talking about politics here

there would have to be a plebiscite where the voters insist on the opportunity

to control the school system and that they want a voucher system.

You simply privatize it and you privatize the education.

You have a voucher system valid at any school.

The one on an approved list which is constituted by a new kind of educational board

not the old one.

And the approved list includes Waldorf schools, you know, Montessori schools

it would include Catholic schools, Islamic schools

I mean there would be a whole range of accredited schools

including former public schools

which would now become sort of autonomous town schools or something.

They'd compete in the open market.

And this system would be extremely, it would be pluralistic

it would be extremely responsive to what people actually want

and what parents and students are really interested in.

And it would have the advantage of being very decentralised and self-regulating.

School is a business that you've proposed.

Well right now, school is a business.

It's a professional career.

The only thing is that it's administered by money taken from us through taxes

and administered through a centralised bureaucracy

for a bureaucratic organisation.

Now school is a business, both ways we're paying for it

and it's not coming free either way.

But the way that you can deal with this is the voucher system

are issued by the government to each student

by the Ministry of Education.

When you're 18 you get a book of vouchers.

Probably the medical schools and attorneys and so on

would continue more or less as at present.

And they would have entrance requirements

that there's so many B courses for biology

or S courses for science or something like that.

But I think that the, you see, the voucher system

the workshop mode, like, you see, the other side of this

is the reform of the existing profession.

Because if you have a group of astronomers, for example

re-visioning astronomy

you know, a workshop weekend led by some astronomer

plus maybe Terence or you or somebody or me

or, you know, an outside person also to be part of the workshop

but maybe George lead in some chanting.

And then you go into

what's their original vision in astronomy?

What is it that's interesting most?

What could astronomy be again today?

Well, one thing it could be

is helping to reconnect people with the heavens

designing these hinges that we were talking about

setting these things where you know where Jupiter and things are

so that this goes into every school

and so that children actually learn about the heavens.

This would be, you know

then there'd be things where

people who are learning astronomy

go out at night

to have classes of light under the stars

and learn the constellations

and have tests in how well we know them

and stuff.

Astronomy related once more to the actual heavens

that would be the new vision in astronomy

which would be the direct experience

including maybe communicating with stars

and the subject of star spirit

together with

all the stuff on radio-pulsing nebulae

and quasars and stuff.

Yes.

So, and in each science

Gaia, geology, the new geology

would not only involve studying rocks

but studying them in the context of the sense of

the life of Gaia

a Gaian geology

it would, you know, be in a Gaian perspective

and which would begin and end with

ripe rituals that connect the geological profession

to its patroness and other earth.

Well, as the bond issue with the plebiscite

are put on the ballot

and passed

the students are issued their booklets

of 55 vouchers

and the new structure

is put in place

and simply begins.

There still may remain

a terrific lack of teachers

who would wish to

or be able

to offer such courses.

The ignorance of the meaning

of the ancient sites

and the significance of the stars

and so on

can't be overcome in a day.

So, chances are

in the new form

people would

continue teaching

exactly what they teach today

and that the

workshop of astronomers

to revision astronomy

and so on

would not

have

a very quick feedback

or maybe

any feedback

into

the curriculum

or the actual conduct

of the school

so that while they

envisioned

a new

astronomical profession

that the workshops

at all the workshop centers

kept on teaching

the old one

that somehow

there would have to be

a miracle

to get the whole system

onto a new track.

It wouldn't happen overnight.

The re-sacralization

aspect

that we

are mostly

longing for

could never happen.

Might never happen.

Well, I think

we need to trigger it.

Well, I think

that it would have to happen

in this new model.

You wouldn't just

get a booklet

of vouchers

through the post.

You'd go

to start your path.

You'd now be entering

the stage

of a kind of

apprenticeship

or learning.

There'd be an

initiation ceremony

and you could be

initiated

in any one

of a number of ways

through a Christian,

Jewish, Muslim.

Each religion could run

or if you didn't want

to have any of the

ones offered

by the various religions.

The new world religion

would always be

a possibility.

There'd be a new world.

There'd be a chance

for free enterprise

in this area.

Sort of new age

initiations with vague

stuff about crystals.

The green feminists.

Yes, that kind of thing.

There'd be all sorts of...

But you'd have to go

through one of these

initiations which would

be based on initiating

you on the path

you're going on

and calling in

blessings on your journey

and that kind of thing.

Then you get your book

cultures as part of this ceremony.

And this happens

at one of the sacred

place of your choice

and you're not forced

to go through

any one tradition.

So setting up

that particular system

of initiation

rates would be

the key step

for switching the whole

system onto a new path.

Yes.

You'd have to sort of

engineer that.

That would be

fairly easy though

because you'd say

the importance

of initiation

for the psychology

of children

is of vast importance

as now universally

recognized.

And you can make

a strong case

that therefore

our educational system

needs to have

a more initiatory quality.

We are a secular state.

Talking about the

27 million

young Americans

who are of the age

for this first initiation

this coming fall

and how exactly

are we going to

accommodate

this number of people

in a new system

with the production

of 3,000 to 5,000

new teachers.

Well, I'm not thinking

you're thinking

about a model

of overnight change

of the entire

American system.

I'm thinking

of a pioneering experiment

in a limited area.

That slowly grows

if it deserves to.

The thing is

the way that things

happen organically

in society

is you never convert

a system without

some prior model

of it working.

And whenever you try

and get any money

any persuading

if you can say

look this is

I've got it going

here it is

you can come and see it

you know

it's vastly more

persuasive

and short-term

does a lot better

guiding you

and say

look here are the plants

this is the botanic

garden

that's it

rather than

with a bit of paper

saying that this project

and you know

something concrete

and so

if the workshops

system is already

up and running

as a concrete

alternative

to the present

entry

that's its great

advantage

it exists

it exists in a

pluralistic free market

form

which is self-sustaining

so far without

state such a bit

that people do

because they want

to do them

and they want

to do them

because they know

that in the workshop

they'll on balance

come out feeling

better than when

they went in

so it's not much

growing now

but perhaps

if people did

have vouchers

then it would

suddenly start

a rapid expansion

I think it would

be a completely

new format

because at present

no one aged 18

goes to a workshop

it's a system

of education

entirely for the

middle aged

it's made

no contact

how could you

possibly

attract an 18 year

old to a workshop

what would be

necessary

is to talk about

psychedelic drugs

I get them

not quite 18

but 20

oh I think

if we did

dialogues on

morphic resonance

and chaos

and psychedelics

and try a lot

I think there are

a lot of

younger drugs

yes

if right now

they have to pay

385 dollars

they don't have

the money

they don't have

the vouchers

the problem

with the workshop

system

because it's

self-financing

it's expensive

what about

Esalen giving

what do you call

them

scholarships

for young people

that would be

yes

well that would

be alright

but I think

it would be

a kind of token

a token thing

at Esalen

I think

they maybe

have to have

some

young people's

workshops

here

that would be

two or three

a year

where they're

offered

at a much

reduced price

yeah

and that the

people who come

on them

have to be

recommended

by somebody

who's been

to Esalen

something like

that

so it would

create the

sense of

the Esalen

community

we have to

recommend this

because we're

really lacking

that generation

now

it's a serious

problem

you know

the Lindisfine

fellowship

which is just

one of these

many invisible

colleges

existing around

the globe

that I think

they're valuable

it's now proposing

to dissolve

itself on

its 20th birthday

because there is

no coming

generation

people are dying

of old age

and nobody

knows a young

person to

introduce them

to the circle

so this is

a tremendous

hole in our

bucket

exactly

well this is

exactly where

there's

a tremendous

scope to the

initiatory model

you see the

Esalen

coming to Esalen

is a kind of

initiation

whenever you

come here

for the first

time

it has an

initiatory quality

and most

people are the

initiates

who have an

easy familiarity

with things

like hot

tubs

and getting

wet towels

and that kind

of thing

so if you

create

there's one

group of

initiates

the teenage

workshops

the 18 to

20 year old

workshops

that happen

at Esalen

which are

initiations

into kind

of kristas

and the kind

of things

that happen

here

and you

talking

about

here

and so

on

which

to get

there

you have

to be

recommended

by someone

who's been

here

well

the fact

is

a lot

of teenagers

may not

know

this world

exists

or if

they do

have a

totally

distorted

view

but it

is an

independent

autonomous

adult world

and that's

exactly

what people

want to be

initiated

into

so

the sense

of a

kind

of somewhat

more

mysterious

realm

of possibility

that you

didn't know

about

this is a

real thing

there is

a whole

world

that I

don't know

about

that's

a good

idea

we should

end this

trialogue

and run

out

but you

see

things

like

in

schools

like

initiatory

things

you

could

do

here

like

I

did

on

my

rebirth

of nature

weekend

one of

the

thinking

the old

world

view

was

inadequate

the

problems

of the

mechanistic

world

view

it's

temporary

nature

in relation

to

resurgent

animism

the rising

tide

of new

attitudes

etc

the

temporary

nature

of the

mechanistic

predominance

itself

then

everybody

is happy

to go

and hold

a tree

and ask

it

questions

and sit

down

by

this

tree

oracle

is

very

effective

it really

works

now that

can be

done

and is

being

done

with kids

because the

Ohai foundation

has now

started

workshops

for school

teachers

to teach

them about

the kinds

of things

you can

do

you know

chance

fire

cycles

you know

vision

quests

tree

ceremonies

and they're

now

doing

this

with various

schools

including

bringing

them onto

the land

and doing

ceremonies

with them

from

15 schools

so they've

actually already

got something

going along

these lines

and so you

see this

initiatory

quality

so that if

you're doing

botany

then you

learn to

about tree

oracles

as part

of it

you know

you have

at the

beginning

of your

course

a tree

oracle

quest

at the

beginning

of each

term

and you

have vision

quests

of various

kinds

built

through the

system

so I

think

that the

esalen

and places

which could

be

centers

for these

quests

these

initiatory

journeys

that could

fulfill

an

immediately

and I

think

the age

range

they

should

do

during

the

initiation

is not

the key

one

from 12

to 13

I think

that's best

done

through

modified

summer

camps

specially

designed

but this

could be

the initiation

into

adulthood

at 18

or 21

so these

high school

that all

that would

remain

as it

is

well I

think

that the

model

of

trying it

out

with

initiation

at 18

all applicants

must be

or over

you know

this

would have

be a pioneering

thing

that we

could talk

to Steve

about

it could

happen

in six

months

time

right

here

now

the other

thing

we're

talking

about

is

to change

the

initiation

through

summer

camps

since none

of us

are in

elementary

or primary

middle school

education

but if you

are in

that

it's quite

easy

to do

the people

who we

were

Master

Andreas

their sons

are at a

very open

school

and I

said

why not

get

he did

the tree

ceremony

he really

liked it

why not

she used

to teach

that

why not

do it

in the

school

they do

a

tree

ceremony

they'll

and

the

workshops

how

long

are

there

these

weekend

workshops

week long

workshop

or

well

I mean

that's

this

these

are

all

details

that

one

would

work

out

but

obviously

there'd

need

to be

a whole

new

breed

of

workshop

type

leaders

so

another

thing

is

that

Esalen

Hollyhock

Omega

and

take

on

a

new

role

is

you'd

have

workshops

for

workshop

leaders

where

you'd

actually

train

people

how

to

do

workshops

you'd

initiate

them

into

being

workshop

leaders

and

where

better

to

initiate

them

than

in

a

workshop

here

so

you'd

have

these

and

then

instead

of

these

so

many

thousand

people

come

to

Esalen

if

some

attention

given

to

the

initiatory

structure

of

each

type

of

workshop

to

start

with

a

dedication

or

acknowledgement

of

the

spirit

of

the

place

and

the

powers

in the

light

of

which

the

workshop

is

being

done

if

it's

being

done

in

the

light

of

a

spirit

or

reason

or

emotion

or

of

holism

or

integration

or

whatever

I mean

whatever

what's

the

guiding

principle

an

initial

ceremony

and

a

closing

ceremony

and

chants

I mean

this is

a

pattern

of

most

workshops

anyway

and

so

initiating

people

into

workshop

reading

would

very

easily

very

naturally

be

modified

I think

and I

don't think

even one

would have

to write

the program

for it

I think

that people

have worked

it out

themselves

in the

workshop

format

somehow

standards

would be

maintained

for

workshops

at least

at the

most famous

workshop

centres

yes

there

would be

voluntary

it

wouldn't

be only the popularity of a certain workshop which guaranteed its continued

existence it would have to for example we wouldn't want to continue some

workshop that only taught that the body is the body well presumably the feedback

the automatic free market feedback mechanisms would regulate this because if

somebody know because corruption is a known mechanism for the downward spiral

of society and that worse and worse workshops become more and more popular

because they give the valuation the value of the accreditation to keep on the

initiation without you're actually doing anything other than sitting in the

hot bath and repeating three times the event of the event of the body of the

body well what you're implying is what you sought to avoid which is that there

has to be you know second entity which tests the workshop graduate to see

well I want to avoid that well it could be intrinsic and the industries would not

employ somebody that's from having graduated that is to say spent 55

vouchers they would insist on the courses from some of their favorite teachers or

institutions as obviously a bachelor's degree from Stanford is worth more than a

bachelor's degree from great west well a corporation could post a list of courses

that would enhance your likelihood of being hired by them and then you could

choose for yourself whether or not to include those in your as you formed your

curriculum so this is the self-organizational model yes self-organizational I

think it's quite good I think it sounds doable very very quality of most of these

schemes well we'd have to persuade I mean industries would have to suddenly start

opening their doors to graduates of a new system and this of course was a great

inhibition for students choosing UC Santa Cruz although they did because it was

considered a great experiment in its early days 20 years ago well you would have to go

to people like Lawrence Rockefeller and Andrew Mellon and people like that to get a group of

corporations to commit to accepting and hiring on the alternative yeah through the

great railroad magnates of today we've not yet endowed a university well you could go to

Apple computer and go to some of these hit haberdasher and so forth listen these are big corporations

well you could start it actually with just a system a voluntary system right now you could offer these

scholarships where you have to be recommended by an alumnus of one of the existing you know Omega or

Esalen or something and and you get these scholarships for say five workshop lectures

down in over the six month period or something and with an initial beginning ceremony and ending

ceremony for the whole thing it's this kind of initiation into that up this could be started right away and you

know they could do them in their vacations or in their summer vacation you know that it could fit in

even with a standard student life pattern and but there'd be then this category of people had a

different kind of initiation and each of them when they went back to their college or university people

be curious about what they've done and whatever it is they've done whatever they said they did

would be quite intriguing to a lot of people so the new world system would actually begin with its

educational program and the new world system educational program would have to have a pilot project which I

guess would be the new village the new village schools the Hawaiian Island and then so we would have to seek a way to actually begin this pilot project with I guess it would take one leader one workshop leader one

ritualist who would make the arrangements for this first initiation the class of 92 yes and then there would be a few people coming of age maybe children of people we

know or something who would enthusiastically volunteer to be the first you know entrance of the class of 92 and and then if successful in design this attractor would then grow where we have to begin probably it would be here at

Esalen if we're here dreaming this up for some reason yes I think it would be called the the what would it be called the personal the growth no no it's

something like that had to be some kind of certificate you get from this this five workshop course and beginning and end things through places like

Esalen initiative education initiative education or initiative educational initiative initiative initiate

and an I I for short and and this when you're applying for a job with the new york times or you know bank or something like that you can have your degrees and you'd say I'm also initiative initiate from and they get to know that people have done this kind of thing if indeed it did do them any good were much cooler much better much more together much more aware of group dynamics you know sort of like Kelly

girls and so this would then become something that would be highly attractive to a lot of employers it would be detractive to others of the more conventional kind but the kind of people that have been from this course wouldn't want those jobs anyway

where the possible the corporate people who have passed through a place like Esalen would feel a subtle pressure to convert their hiring practices to recognize

and to send their children and to send their children to work together

and to send their children to work together and to be more together much more aware of group dynamics you know

and so this would then become something that would be highly attractive to a lot of employers it would be detractive to others of the more conventional kind but the kind of people that have been from this course wouldn't want those jobs anyway

yes and all the corporate people who have passed through a place like Esalen would feel a subtle pressure to convert their hiring practices to recognize

and to send their children and to send their children and to hire these kinds of people into their organization

and the feeling of a kind of a real kind of group or because there is this initiatory quality a feeling far actually more effective than the usual bonds from

college and alumnus graduation festivals I mean it's much more true

some colleges could be persuaded to offer transfer credit for a set of five workshops in this program

yes

so they would five workshops would count as one course it adds up about right

and it would be like an extension course or transfer of credit from a course taken into another university

that's right and that would mean that students from the more liberal minded experimental liberal arts

colleges and that kind of thing could give students these bachelors

yes they could have the freedom of the course of five weeks of the summer

yes they could take workshops in five different workshop centers or just one

and get a college credit for it

yes

you should be made minister of education

of the new world order

the new world order

the NWO

yes well it's a devious way of achieving the re-sacralization of the world

assuming always of course that corruption doesn't somehow annihilate the system as soon as it started

but I think centering it in a place like this which has inertia track record a good habit as it were

would give a good chance for success

I think so

I think a lot of

I mean if I had the chance of spending a weekend hanging around with my pimply teenage friends at home

or coming to Esslin and doing something that was a threshold of an entirely new

yes

meeting some pimply teenagers from far away

right

no I went to a summer camp when I was

of both sexes

yeah

from age 9 to 13 or something I went to a summer camp for musical prodigies

and no one went there unless they were interested in music

and anybody who was really interested in music went to this particular camp

it was a great escape from a small town in Vermont

because I went there there were a lot of kids from Philadelphia and New York and Miami and so on

and they were very exciting and mostly we played music together

but such things specialized camps to learn ballet you know sports and so on

they exist and some of them have track record

they have terrific reputation compared to other ones for the quality of the faculty

also the quality of the students

and such summer particularly the summer youth program at Esslin would give it a huge additional scope

and training workshop leaders would give them a bigger choice of workshop leaders in the future

so then they would be creating expansion of their own system

as they don't do now

they have to hand down serendipity to find new workshop leaders

and as the popularity of workshop type education grew in schools

those people in 16, 17, 18 got into an age group where some of their friends had been on workshops

and had come back

obviously changed in some way

and talking about this thing a kind of secret to which they were not yet privy

the only way they could have this experience was to go among these workshops and be part of it

they would really want to do it and a huge new market would open up in the sort of high school age

yes

we have to get this taste to Steve immediately

with our bill

well they may not want to expand Esslin but if Esslin wanted to expand as a business

and take on a whole national dimension

well they are very interested in all these strategies

and because it is a revolutionary educational concept

it is not simply a strategy for expanding revenue

it is actually a seminal kind of thing

if it took hold and it seems very sound

because the old method is breaking down

there is either some substitute off in the future

we are just looking at a generation in anarchy

largely in American education

but this does seem immediately feasible

this really could swing into action next year

next summer

and it could attract capital, you know, endowments

from people who see the value of extending our successful adult educational system downward

and nobody seems to have thought of this

there aren't any summer camps along these lines

there are traditional summer camps which are excellent

for everything

for tennis

for organists

and so on

but not for the new world order

but most of what goes on here could be extended down

I mean shamanic rattling

chants before sessions in groups

vision quests

shamanic type

all this stuff

is instantly adaptable

in fact it's probably a piece of chanting

so the Ojai Foundation has apparently had a similar fantasy

because they declared two or three years ago

that they were going into general education

I think that this is something that they're doing

and I heard about this

when we were at Hollyhock

but I didn't

I've never seen it in action

somebody talked about it

John Bloomfield talked about it

about a voucher system?

no, about Ojai training school teachers

and then the teachers can bring some of the groups to the land

and they do vision quests

they do tree ceremonies

they do medicine wheel circles

sweat lodges

all this kind of thing

and I suppose there are private schools that are participating

but the kids love it

it's an incredibly successful program

formerly they had to go to Berlin to be able to do this

but now they can do this right here

in the Native American heartland

so I think that there's plenty of scope for starting straight away

and

yes and for competing in systems and different versions

varieties, different flavors of the idea

could be instituted in different locations

yes

because there's an infinite market

essentially

for real education

as soon as it

as soon as

and right now

people under 25 are totally insulated from this

when I give talks in Germany and England

here in America

in the kinds of places I'm usually invited to give them

or conferences

the age range is from 35 to 50

exactly

when I'm invited to give talks in universities

which in many ways I prefer

not because I like the structure

you know

the kind of hierarchical structure

the professor

the lecture theatre

and all that kind of thing

but the face is full of bright eager eyes

yes

it's a totally different experience

and when I gave my lecture at the University of Bern

if you

on my German Swiss tour

the only university one I did

on the trip

it was much the best

it was

there were 250 people in the Botany Institute

I was introduced by the man who invited me

who was a visionary holistic botanist

who really likes the idea of morphic resonance

and understanding the evolution of plant form

quite enthusiastic

but all the professors from different faculties

students and so on

the whole thing in English

no translation

and the atmosphere was absolutely electric

I mean these kids have never heard these kids

this kind of view

I mean it was totally new

they're normally insulated completely

from ideas we take for granted

and they were extremely interested

very excited

everyone was excited

positive enthusiastic

it was a really wonderful event

one of my courses in history of mathematics

in Santa Cruz

have a very enthusiastic audience

and you know

my feeling is that

this is sort of the radical fringe

of the student population in Santa Cruz

so there's 10,000 students

I get 50, 60, or 70 of them

once a year

but these people are very responsive

and they love the hermetic arts

magic, astrology, alchemy, and so on

they're seriously excited

they're really turned on by it

and they do great research and study

and they know a lot already

because they've been studying in the closet

and this is their first opportunity

to come out and see that

other people are also interested in this

and connect up and have fun

and be able to do it together

so what we do is introduce this parallel system

which operates alongside the existing system

but it becomes so powerful and attractor

as it impacts on schools

as six, 17, 18 year olds

go to the Esalen

and other summer programs

and they go back

and tell their friends

you know

school is nothing like this

you know

it's really fun

I think this is our

really our best

and most revolutionary idea

everyone wants to do it

I think it's a good idea

and it'll spread enormously fast

I think if it becomes

something that slightly older people do

see the possibility of the CIA

instituting some negative publicity

action on us

such as older teacher

younger student

taking drugs

commuting with tree

or some kind of thing

such as

they're very paranoid

about this kind of

negative publicity

here ruining

and for this reason

they may not want

anybody age 16 or less

hanging around

because of the danger of scandal

make it 18 to 23

for a start

I think make it 18 to 23 for a start

and then the parallel

for the sort of

11 to 13

this kind of puberty initiation

the parallel

which is often associated

with transferring

to a different grade of school

or being in a

middle school

or whatever

that that whole thing

is ceremonialized

or at least puberty

through vision camps

but the people who best

handle that are the people

who run kids' summers camps

with

many of which do have

another dimension

and get back to nature

that kind of thing

yes

they have their watchdog

mechanisms in place

and they have campfires

and so on

better to

people from that world

come to a workshop

at Esalen

where there's an exploration

of new revisioning education

and the two are discussed together

and they go back

and work out models

that work there

meanwhile

this new one works out here

we can handle

the people at Esalen

can handle in general

this age group

I think

yes

18 to 23

yes

we'll start by

the revision of

higher education

as they call it

18 to 23

that's the university age

bracket

and this would

create such a powerful

competing attractor

because the more people

know that it's more fun

than that system

and the more the possibility

of doing it through

or within the traditional

system by vouchers

or going out

or getting credits

the more and more people

will want to do it

yes

and I think that it would then

the traditional system's

faults would become more

and more apparent

because more and more

people within it

would have seen

had another take

on what education

could be like

and I think that morale

would rapidly crumble

and be faced with

since they'd already

got it

by reform

they could introduce

more of that kind of thing

yes

teachers would be rushing

to take courses

in the new methods

so that they could compete

successfully with their

neighboring teachers

for students

who wants to have

their own mind

that's right

no this is free market

economics

working in yet another area

yes

because right now education

is one of the areas

that's been insulated

from free market economics

by being a state monopoly

run by a bureaucratic

institution

and operated by

an old-style hierarchical

priesthood

with higher universities

at the top

and higher degrees

at the top

and all teachers

in regular schools

are in awe

of all these people

with higher degrees

because they're lower

officially

like deacons

you know

there are bishops

out there

archbishops

and cardinals

and so on

so it would dismantle

or

it's one of the last

bastions

of the old

hierarchical order

now I

may be living

in dreamland

but I think

the ideas

they talked about

at the beginning

of today's

trialogue

about setting up

a network

of workshops

that young people

could attend

for free

is a really good idea

in fact

just last year

Sobe and I

were trying to

generate interest

in a similar project

where there would be

a series of raves

held

beginning in

say in Vancouver

and gradually

heading south

until they reached

LA or San Diego

and preceding each party

there would be

a series of workshops

where we would get

some of the

local elders

to come out

and exchange ideas

and lessons learned

with the generations

who are now beginning

to take over

but we never quite

got enough momentum

going to get that

little project

off the ground

however I still think

it's a good idea

in some form

or other

I know there are

really a lot of

psychedelic elders

out there in almost

every community

who would be willing

to participate

and in fact

there are already

a few places

where this type of

underground university

is taking place

besides the

oracle gatherings

in the Seattle area

I've heard of

events like this

that combine a party

with some lectures

or workshops

that are taking place

all the way

from Vancouver

down to Portland

and I've participated

in things like

cinnamon twists

learning parties

in LA

as well as the

underground university

programs

at the Blue Bongo

among others

so it's an idea

that seems to have

taken hold

and maybe now

is a good time

to try and expand

the concept

so that we can

reach even more

people

you know maybe

we can do some

of it online

which would significantly

reduce the costs

involved

and allow students

and other cash poor

people like me

to become more

involved without

having to incur

the travel

and other expenses

that usually go

along with the

workshop model

of course

the suggestions

for a new

education system

based on workshops

that the

trial loggers made

came over fifteen

years ago

and you know

not a whole lot

has really happened

on this front

during all that time

at least in the way

of free ones

and as my dear

mother said

shortly before she

died a few years

ago

everything is different

but nothing has

changed

and uh...

well maybe now

is the hour

to begin making

some of these changes

so if you have any

ideas on how to get

something like this

started please

pass them along

either in an email

that I can read

in a podcast

or on the notes

from the psychedelic

salon blog

which you can

participate in

if you want

you know

i had to laugh

with uh...

uh...

when rupert said

that a lot of teenagers

may not even know

or it might have been

ralph uh...

can't remember which ones

that a lot of them

may not even know

that the worldwide

psychedelic community

even existed

or uh...

if they did know it

that they had a totally

distorted view of it

and the uh...

the reason i had to laugh

is that it isn't just

teenagers who don't

know about this huge

community

as i've mentioned

in past podcasts

i was uh...

over forty years old

before i stumbled

into the tribe

as i like to call it

now as hard as it is

for me to believe now

i had no idea

that there were

millions of

highly educated

and very successful

psychedelic people

out there

and even if i had known

that there were so many

people around the world

who used cannabis

and psychedelics

on a regular basis

i'm sure that my

view of what they were

like would have been

completely distorted

you know here

here is what you really

need to know about the

psychedelic community

we're everywhere

i want to read something

here that uh...

dr german uh...

he was a previous

professor emeritus of the

criminal justice school

at uh...

beach state university

here's what he had to say

if the ears of all the

people in the nation

who had ingested

illicit substances

in the past six months

were to turn bright green

for one whole week

the nation would be

amazed

confused

astounded

and quickly taught

something very important

as they identified

friends

relatives

neighbors

doctors

lawyers

ministers

rabbis

soldiers

policemen

firemen

military personnel

businessmen

teachers

students

politicians

respected policymakers

administrators

supervisors

and workers

from a variety of private

and government institutions

everywhere

and uh...

by the way

dr german was the founder

of the graduate school

that trains uh...

many of the

l.a police department

among others

so

he knows what's going on

at a street level

and having met with him

myself

my guess is that uh...

he just might have green ears

too

though uh...

maybe that's what we should

all do next halloween

you know our

our only costume should be

to paint our ears green

i'm not sure what uh... we would

tell people who asked what the

point of painting our ears green

was but uh...

for those who knew what it meant

it might be a way to make a

whole new range of contacts

with our community

maybe we should try it first

in saint patrick's day

and most people probably wouldn't

think much about uh... why we're

doing it

or maybe i'd better get on with

today's program and leave the

realm of new ideas to you

actually uh... one idea that came

in a recent email from john

who uh...

who said uh... among other things

listening to your back catalogue

kept me going through a dull

software contract and has really

changed my views about a lot of

things and then he went on to ask

if i've ever been to

Amsterdam

well john just as you suspected

yeah i've been there a few

times and i guess my most

memorable trip there was for the

uh... 11th annual cannabis cup

which i think was way back in 1998

and uh...

i know that event is still growing

strong but uh...

it doesn't take place until next

november so if you're looking to

get together in Amsterdam with a

group of like-minded people before

then

you might want to consider the uh...

very first dope stock

which is going to take place i think

uh... on april twentieth this year

that my friends over at the cannabis

podcast network are putting together

and uh... you get the details about

that on their website which is

at uh...

www.dopefiend.co.uk

and uh... there are links and feeds

to uh... several other podcasts there

that i think you're going to find

quite interesting and uh... definitely

entertaining

john also said have you thought about

accepting donations for your work

this is how the dope fiend pays for

his bandwidth seems to work

well uh... yes i have been thinking

about it but uh... you know i know

you've got a lot of options on how to

spend your time and so i don't really

want to waste it by uh... sounding like a

preacher begging for money all the time

but that said i i do want to take a

moment here to thank two of our

fellow salonors who went way out of

their way and uh... searched through

the matrix masters website to find the page

where i kind of hidden a little paypal

donation button so uh...

jason and william

who i think actually is better known as

bill

i uh... i want you to know that i was

really touched to find your donations

waiting for me when i returned from my

recent trip

your uh... your generosity really means a

lot to me and particularly since you

both live outside of the u.s.

you know uh... interestingly your

financial help came the same day as i

received a notice from my web hosting

company that the

large number of downloads of these

podcasts was uh... causing them to

throttle back access to the site at

various times during the day and

that they wanted me to upgrade to my

own server

well uh...

the cost of doing that is still too

high for me right now so i've come up

with another plan and

thanks to the financial help some of

you have been providing i've opened a

companion site with another hosting

continue to grow in popularity

in fact this podcast is the first one

i've uploaded to this new server and i

hope that you didn't have any issues

downloading it

if you did please let me know because

over the next few months i'm going to

migrate all of the old podcast files

to this new server

in the process i'm going to do a

little cleanup on the file tags so

that these programs will be a little

easier to find and to manage in your mp3

players

you know as those of you who have

been with us for a while already know

i've gone through a number of different

iterations and file naming conventions

but i think i finally come up with a

way that'll make life a little easier

for you no matter what brand of mp3

player you decide to use so

i'll tell you more about the changes to

our website in the next couple of

podcasts but i think i've probably

gone on long enough for today

but before i go i also want to mention

that jeffrey just wrote to let me know

that he mentioned the psychedelic salon

in his blog on the ions website

which reminded me that i wanted to let

you know that i'm also shifting the

program notes to our new server and

and i'm posting them on the wordpress

powered blog that you can participate

in if you want and by participate i

don't mean just adding comments to my

post but you can post items yourself

it does require that you register but

that's only to keep the spammers from

taking it over so if you're interested

you can find the blog from a link on the

homepage at matrix masters dot com and

eventually you'll be able to click a

link under each post to dig it if you

want and i've already got the code

working for you to bookmark individual

posts to delicious also i've got a long

way to go before the new site is

finished but with the help from joseph

robert and a few others who have

volunteered to help i think we're

eventually i have a really interesting

place to meet online which finally

brings me to the last point i wanted

to make and that is that if you want to

help us build the psychedelic salon

community there are things that you can

do that don't require making a financial

donation which i realize isn't possible

for many of you and what would be the

biggest help right now would be for

some of you to go back through some of

the older programs the ones before

program number fifty eight when i

started posting the more detailed

program notes and to compile some

program notes for them that i could

put on the new blog and i think it'd be a

great service to our whole community if

you did that and all i'm really looking

for is to get the time into the program

and then the quote and who's saying it

and just in the format i've been doing

here lately and i think it's really

it's important to get some of these out

there because the search engines will

pick them up and it'll definitely help

attract more people to the psychedelic

salon so any help like that in any

other ways you can help to spread the

word about these podcasts will be most

appreciated well before i go i should

mention that this and all of the

podcasts from the psychedelic salon are

protected under the creative commons

attribution non-commercial share alike

2.5 license and if you have any

questions about that you can click on

the link at the bottom of the

psychedelic salon web page which you

can find that matrix masters dot com

slash podcasts if you still have

questions you can send them to me at

Lorenzo at matrix masters dot com

and thanks again to ralph abraham and

bruce damer for preserving and

digitizing these wonderful trilogues

and of course thanks again to

shuttle high up for letting us use your

music here in the salon and for now

this is Lorenzo signing off from

cyberdelic space

you

Be well, my friends.

Greetings from cyberdelic space.

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

So, how are you today?

I hope that the letdown after the holiday season,

coupled with some strange winter weather, hasn't dampened your zest for life.

I know that too much rain, fog, and just general dreariness can get to you after a while,

but before long, spring will have passed us by,

and the big panic will be getting ready for your holiday,

or something like Burning Man or some other exotic location like that.

But in the meantime, I guess we just have to press on.

And that's just what we've done with this first series of trialogues,

because today we're going to hear the first side of the last tape in this series.

But when you hear Terrence McKenna begin by saying that this is the last of the trialogues,

please don't despair, because there are really many, many more hours of trialogues ahead here in the salon.

What he was referring to was the fact that this recording is the last of the 1989 series of trialogues

that they held at the Esalen Institute.

And as it turns out, they continued having these three-way conversations until the summer of 1998.

At least that's the last one I've got a recording of.

Today's program, which is the first side of the tenth cassette tape in this series,

is titled The Apocalypse.

An interesting title, don't you think?

So, without any further introduction, let's hear what Terrence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake

have to say about the apocalypse as seen from their perspective in 1989.

We've reached the last of our trialogues,

and so it's fitting that we should cast our minds toward last things,

since this both seems to be the theme of the crisis of the present moment,

and also the unique, unifying thread throughout the Western religion

that most insistently of all religious systems on Earth,

it is the Western systems that have insisted in appointing an end to their world,

the cyclical worlds of Hinduism are cycles of time so vast

that they lose all force on the popular imagination.

But what uniquely distinguishes Judaism, Christianity, and Islam

is this insistence that God will come tangential to history

in a way that will create a scenario of last days,

of a great uptaking of souls into the mystery of God,

this idea, which is called apocalyptic in its more catastrophic version,

and millenarian in its more pastoral version,

is the idea that is the necessary correlative to the concept of Eden

and the unique moment of man's creation by God.

If man's creation occurred at a unique moment in the history of the universe,

then presumably after the expiation of the sin of Eden,

God will gather man once again into the mystery.

So this idea, which when encountered outside the religious framework in individuals,

in a secular or desacralized vocabulary,

is labeled pathology,

the expectation of eminent transformation of the environment

with the individual somehow playing a central role,

this recognized pathological symptom in the individual

is nevertheless the driving force behind much of our own civilization.

We, as educated rationalists,

the most rational 5% of society,

in spite of our pretensions to intellectual revolution,

we are far, I believe, from feeling the real force of what this is.

But at the folkloric level,

the attractor of the end of the world is very strong.

And you may recall some five years ago,

the Secretary of the Interior was asked

why he wasn't saving more of America's forests.

And he replied that since Jesus was coming,

he saw no reason to save the forest

because the end of the world was imminent.

So I find this thinking very interesting,

and I have personally certainly experienced its power.

What is this intuition of the end of the world?

And now that we're beginning to gather more data,

that science is actually beginning to pay back

on the promises made in the 18th century

and give us a complete and deep description

of at least the physical and astronomical universe,

what we're seeing is a highly chaotic domain.

There isn't a stable body in the solar system

that isn't deeply pockmarked with asteroidal impact

from the inner planets to the moons of the gas giants.

There is tremendous visual evidence

of catastrophic episodes

throughout the history of the solar system.

So we discussed in another meeting

inconsistencies in nuclear theory

with the output of neutrinos from the sun.

Is there a problem there?

Human history itself, to my mind,

can be seen as a kind of shockwave

attendant upon the eschatology,

that if we were to imagine for a moment

that God or a super transmundane mind

were to enter into the ordinary biological

and evolutionary life of a planet,

then I think we would have to agree

that there would be some kind of shockwave of anticipation,

some kind of sense of the eminence

of the disruption of ordinary events

before it was, in fact, imminent.

And this very brief period

which we have experienced over the past 20,000 years

is this thing, I believe.

And these religions

which have anticipated this thing

in this rather crude end-of-the-world scenario

are somehow on to something,

something that is, I think,

a message coming from the biological level,

if you will,

about the inherent instability of the world.

Ralph's models and Prigogine's models

and all this has established the role

of the unexpected perturbation

in the creation of the cosmos,

but I don't think we've quite factored it in

to our day-to-day model of what's going on.

One of the startling things that I find

when I look back on my own life

of slightly more than 40 years

is the number of things

that have happened in my life

that we were told would never happen.

I mean, I have seen presidents assassinated,

human beings landed on the moon,

robots to Mars,

all of these high improbabilities

in a single lifespan

which we all share.

So I think that

we are sort of on automatic pilot

with our assumptions

that in spite of all our theory-making

we are living in basically

a probabilistic,

synchronistically flattened universal plane.

What if the urgency

and the uniqueness

of the human historical moment

actually signaled

yet more urgent

and even more exotic moments to come

and that we are somehow witness

to a major phase transition

in the career

of self-reflecting bios

in the universe

and that for us

it's the end of the world.

but, you know,

this is a meaningless phrase.

It's simply

a complete systemic reorganization

on the scale of metamorphosis

in Lepidoctora.

It's just a complete meltdown

of the previous world system

and then a recasting

at the behest of higher mind

Gaian mind

the world soul

it isn't clear

but

if we could strip

the provincialism

from the message

of these apocalyptic

religions

I think they are

they explain what history is

they have a deep

intuition

of instability

and

in the same way

that I described

the reluctance

of plants

in a botanical garden

to venture out

on an unstable

tree limb

I think

these apocalyptic religions

are trying

they are all

prophetistic religions

they are trying to

extract something

out of the human future

that is of no casual interest

it may in fact involve

the survival

yes or no

of

the planet

so I'm interested in ideas

like

that

the transcendental

object

is

somehow

leaking

information

back into the past

at a 3% rate

or something like that

that

shamans

and mystics

and psychedelic travelers

are in fact

getting

a very

incomplete

low-grade

signal

about

this event

that is

I think

based on what we talked about

last night

somehow built into

the structure of space

and time

that

the presence

of our minds

indicates

that we are

very near

this enormous

concressing

singularity

minds cannot exist

except within

you know

25,000 years

of complete

concrescence

of one of these things

they do not arise

in parts of the universe

where

concrescence

is not

approaching

its climax

so

I don't really know

the relevance

of all this

for theory making

if in fact

the

concrescence

is upon us

then really

all we can do

is chat about it

as it comes down

around our ears

over the next

25 years

and it

we are

in

such a tidal

grip

of the field

that it really

doesn't matter

we can only

observe it

knowing

having you know

the meager satisfaction

that we made

a

amusing

model of it

if longer periods

of time

are available

then

you know

it might be

worthwhile

to undertake

to study

this phenomenon

and its role

in human history

and so forth

and so on

but it

it's more than

simply the

calendrical pressure

from the approach

of the second

millennium

it's also

all these

graphs

drawn by

very straight

people

of

resources

and

population

density

and demand

for hydroelectric

energy

and levels

of strontium

and milk

and all

of this stuff

I mean

who can look

at all this stuff

and not say

it's either

the yawning grave

or

there's going to be

a complete

the lake

is going to

turn over

there's going to be

a complete

system

reversal

because

this cannot

go on

it's

abiotic

and I think

life has

a terrifying

tenaciousness

I mean

life seized hold

of this planet

a billion years ago

a billion and a half

two billion years ago

and managed it

through hellfire

again and again

managed it

back

towards stable

equilibria

that were

supportive

of biota

and you know

there were

asteroid

infalls

and continents

ground to dust

and we don't even

know what went on

and life

kept hold

of this chunk

of ground

so

I think

the advent

of intelligence

must signal

a crisis

of a greater

magnitude

that's why I

suggest

that the

stellar dynamics

should be looked at

very carefully

or something like

that

it's a different

order of magnitude

and it's seeping

into our religions

and into our

politics

and into our

psychedelic experiences

and into the

general imagination

I think we're

standing on the

lip of a

hyperdimensional

volcano

of some sort

toward which

all history

is being

poured

at a great rate

we have the

peculiar

good fortune

of fulfilling

the wish

conveyed

in the

Irish toast

may you be alive

at the end

of the world

so that's it

gentlemen

now we can just

kick this around

some questions

come up

yes

there seem to be

two stages

to this

apocalyptic

vision

this particular

one

first is

the first

stage

is

the

confidence

in an

apocalypse

coming

sometime

and the

other

component

is

the

location

of the

date

20 years

or so

hence

you mean

in my

personal

belief

yes

so

in

about

the first

one

it does

seem

sort of

logical

somehow

that if

there was

a big

bang

at the

beginning

and there

would be

a big

bang

at the

end

and

the

creation

story

in

genesis

and the

precedent

myths

might

somehow

be seen

to imply

that

but I

don't

know

I

wouldn't

think

that's

enough

to go

on

but then

you said

that in

these

traditions

Hebrew

Christian

Islam

that there's

a definite

tradition

of an end

in the mild

form

well

what is

it

exactly

what is

the

secretary

of the

interior

referring

to

he's

referring

to

in the

gospels

or somewhere

no

in the

revelation

of

Saint

John

this

thing

is

laid

out

it's

very

complex

angels

come

and pour

down

diseases

oceans

boil

it takes

a long

time

there

are

plagues

of

scorpion

like

creatures

that

come

from

the

interior

of

the

earth

certain

people

are

marked

with

a

sign

and

they

are

the

elect

and

this

it's

just

this

completely

bizarre

production

that

is

the

most

puzzling

pieces

of

literature

in

the

Christian

canon

the

textual

basis

for

this

fantasy

is

entirely

this

revelation

of

Saint

John

the

divine

that's

right

is

the

apocalyptic

the

millenarian

or

both

yes

because

at

the

end

you

see

the

twelve

gated

city

the

new

jerusalem

a

flying

saucer

comes

I mean

you can

tell

I mean

the

description

is

you

know

it's

covered

with

jewels

it

has

twelve

gates

it's

God's

kingdom

come

to

earth

and

it

comes

to

receive

the

elect

and

as

the

oceans

boil

away

and

the

damned

are

dragged

into

hell

for

eternity

these

people

with

these

special

things

shining

in

their

heads

go

into

this

thing

to

be

with

God

in

eternity

and

the

whole

thing

is

flushed

we'll

have

the

sunglasses

specially

ready

to

sell

them

in

this

textual

basis

for

this

fantasy

is

there

any

idea

about

the

date

well

yeah

the

at

the

time

of

Christ

the

people

who

immediately

followed

Christ

expected

it

within

their

lifetime

amen

I

say

unto

you

this

generation

shall

not

pass

away

until

these

things

are

accomplished

it

was

expected

immediately

and

there

was

this

like

weird

there's

been

disappointment

after

disappointment

well

yes

there

was

this

weird

year

period

where

they

didn't

get

the

serious

job

of

getting

organized

together

because

everybody

was

standing

around

waiting

for

the

end

of

the

world

and

then

after

about

years

people

like

Origen

and

Eusebius

and

these

people

came

forward

and

said

listen

enough

of

this

waiting

for the

end

to get

the scene

it's

seriously

overdue

yes

let's

get

organized

and

get

our

hands

on

some

real

estate

now

that it's

so seriously

overdue

and people

have been

disappointed

time after

time

yes

I would

think

that the

force

of

the

prophecy

has

declined

in

any

case

I

just

want

to

ask

you

this

have

you

any

way

of

guessing

why

the

secretary

of the

interior

thought

that

the

end

was

coming

imminently

I

know

why

you

think

so

yes

because

there

are

all

these

fundamentalist

cults

in

the

United

States

some

whose

adherents

number

in

the

tens

of

millions

who

believe

that

you

know

in

that

it's

happening

that

it's

underway

I

mean

within

the

spectrum

of

Christian

belief

you

can

go

with

the

Seventh

Day

Adventists

who

hold

the

most

extreme

position

which

is

that

it

occurred

in

I

love

that

position

and

that

we

are

now

living

in

the

millennium

this

is

the

millennium

can't

you

tell

so

that's

the

most

right

wing

view

and

then

there

are

those

who

undergo

the

formality

of

at

least

locating

the

date

decently

in

this

is

one

of

the

weird

things

about

millenarian

speculation

the

person

who

discovers

the

key

to

the

millenarian

date

it

always

is

just

a few

years

ahead

now

I

just

have

a couple

more

questions

for the

direct

examination

then

we'll

turn

the

witness

over

for the

cross

examination

how many

what

percentage

more or less

of the

human

population

of planet

earth

at the

moment

is

involved

in

this

Hebrew

Christian

and

Islam

religion

however

if you're

trying to

count the

adherence

to the

apocalypse

theory

you have

to count

all the

adherence

of

scientism

as well

because

they

too

with

their

you know

greenhouse

effects

and

CFCs

and

acid

rain

that's

another

story

I do

think

that

might

be

even

a

bigger

danger

but

that's

another

story

right

now

I'm

after

the

revelation

of

Saint

John

the

divine

no

this

is

the

end

of

the

world

scenario

of

scientism

and

then

we've

had

the

end

of

the

world

scenario

of

nuclear

holocaust

hanging

over

for

decades

that's

right

that's

a

ready

to

hand

scenario

oh yeah

the ocean

but it's

coming from

the same

culture

but I

just

wonder

how

much

credibility

to

give

to

the

Christian

apocalyptic

vision

when

less than

half

the human

population

is

involved

doesn't

it mean

that

just

that

half

of

the

planet

would

be

vaporized

while

the

other

half

kept

on

growing

because

they

I don't

think

it's

a

vaporizing

what

it

astronomical

chaos

and

craters

on

all

the

other

bodies

and

fall

of

neutrinos

from

the

sun

and

so

on

catastrophic

scenarios

you

mean

yes

well

the

positive

scenarios

are

simply

more

far-fetched

I mean

one of the

ones I've been

playing with

recently

that I

really

like

is

that

it

ain't

no

big

deal

it's

just

that

time

travel

is

discovered

it's

a

technological

artifact

it's

done

in

laboratories

the

door is

open

on this

little

tunnel

and

you

just

walk

through

and

history

ends

history

ends

just

bang

it

ends

and

that's

the

end

of

history

and

all

you know

waiting

for

stuff

to

happen

and

all

in

this

weird

jelly

of

stiffened

dimensionality

and

boy

aren't we

glad

we've

got

that

behind

us

and

to

the

people

who

were

born

in

it

the

previous

mode

of

existence

would

be

mere

rumor

and

it

kind

of

time

machine

where

he

hypothesized

this

notion

of

a

principle

which

works

like

this

time

travel

is

possible

once

it's

discovered

you'll be

able to

travel

into

the

future

when

you're

in

the

future

you'll

be

able

because

before

that

moment

there

were

no

time

machines

and

how

can

you

take

a

time

machine

into

a

universe

where

time

machines

don't

exist

with nobody

knowing

it

yes

so

there

is

this

physical

barrier

to

time

travel

past

the

moment

of

discovery

of

it

backward

before

that

moment

well

I

thought

this

was

very

interesting

because

I

what

would

it

be

like

if

this

kind

of

time

machine

were

discovered

and

so

I

imagined

that

it's

December

22nd

AD

at

the

Lacherera

World

Temporal

Mechanics

Institute

and

they're

counting

down

and

the

lady

tempo

knot

has

been

strapped

into

the

time

machine

and

they

count

down

and

they

push

the

button

and

she

sails

off

into

the

future

now

the

interesting

question

is

what

happens

right

there

in

the

next

moment

millions

of

people

arrive

from

more

popular

part

of

the

universe

millions

of

time

machines

arrive

from

all

possible

parts

of

the

future

sneaking

through

the

bushes

pretending

they

were

there

all

the

time

asking

for

groceries

to

see

the

moment

this

historic

moment

the

first

time

travel

which

defines

the

barrier

as far

as you

can

go

in your

time

machine

and people

say to

each

other

have you

been

to

the

edge

it's

35,000

years

from

here

have

you

been

back

and

seen

the

Abraham

machine

take off

well

so I

loved

this idea

and

and I

held

it

for

about

hours

as a

great

gimmick

and then

I

realized

that

there

was

a

peculiar

problem

with it

which

has to

do

with

the

grandfather

paradox

that

one

of

these

people

from

the

far

future

could

stop

off

on

their

way

back

to

see

Ralph's

machine

take

off

they

could

stop

off

and

kill

their

grandfather

and

set

this

paradox

in

motion

which

has

been

the

defeat

of

all

time

travel

schemes

so

then

I

had

what

I

believe

is

a

serious

delusional

breakthrough

which

was

I

said

aha

there's

something

oh

well

here's

the

model

that

you

have

to

have

to

understand

the

next

stage

of

this

argument

about

the

apocalypse

you

know

how

the

Bernoulli

gas

laws

work

so

imagine

a

imagine

a

vacuum

filled

elliptical

tank

we

introduce

a

burst

of

oxygen

at

one

end

of

this

tank

now

according

to

Bernoulli's

laws

what

happens

it

diffuses

evenly

throughout

and comes

to a

state

of

equilibrium

correct

well

let's

think

for a

moment

of

the

planet

now

we'll

make

a

geometric

model

one

dimension

down

think

of

how

today

on this

planet

we have

all kinds

of different

levels

of cultural

achievement

like we

have

central

Tokyo

and Beverly

Hills

but we

also have

Amazon rainforest

people

and pygmies

and berbers

and all

these

people

well

now if

you think

of

cultural

values

and technological

prowess

and scientific

acumen

as

particles

in this

gaseous

environment

then

which way

do you

think

values

are moving

in order

to establish

equilibrium

well

the answer

is obvious

more people

in the Amazon

are interested

in what the

Japanese

are thinking

than Japanese

are interested

in what

Amazonian

Indians

are thinking

in other

words

the higher

state

of cultural

accomplishment

is slowly

swamping

all

less advanced

states

of cultural

accomplishment

without

arguing

about

advanced

but

one culture

is swamping

another

okay

to return

to the

time travel

problem

then

a weird

effect

would ensue

upon the

invention

of this

forward-going

kind of

time travel

that I'm

hypothesizing

it can be

described

with several

different

linguistic

models

one way

of saying

it is

when the

lady

tamponaut

goes off

into the

future

the

all of

the rest

of the

future

unto

as

wordworth

says

as long

as date

shall

give a

name

to time

all

of that

future

undergoes

some kind

collapse

and happens

instantly

it happens

instantly

so that

the

most

advanced

state

of

human

accomplishment

even if

it

is

be billions of years in the future and absolutely beyond our ability to imagine in any way will

appear one millisecond later on the other side of this barrier.

So then I thought, my God, we're not inventing time travel here.

What we're inventing is a god whistle.

That's what it is.

It's a god whistle.

You create this technology and it just takes the entire future history of the universe up

until its conclusion and compresses it down into the next few milliseconds as the thing

spins down and then you are face to face with the end purpose of all evolution and all process

and all pattern and all energy, space, time and matter.

You come out next to the big girl and this would work, I think.

This is not the edge of the west, it's the edge of the rest.

The edge of the rest, yes.

So, there you have it, a complete fulfillment of the monotheistic intuition of apocalypse

and what it is, it's wonderful.

It's that we figured it out.

It's like the universe is this huge conundrum and you're in there and you're suffering and

it's just this weird dream and then there's science and religion and magic and you're fumbling

and you're fumbling and then you slowly go toward this thing and it turns out it is.

The stone is real.

There is alchemical gold and when you grasp this to yourself then, you know, time ends, space

ends, matter ends, everything ends and you go into the conclusion, the payoff, the jackpot.

It's, you go over the cusp and you meet the management.

Probably this hasn't happened yet.

No, 2012 I think.

That brings us to the second question.

As to this 2012, as already discussed, there were different alternatives in the interpretation

of this date as based on the time wave by itself, such as a reflection point of zero novelty

and so on.

So I think that this particular apocalyptic fantasy of yours is actually a syncretism between

the apocalyptic paranoia on the one hand and the time wave on the other hand.

Because even if one is convinced of apocalypse but not knowing when, it's not necessary to

associate it to the year 2012.

No, no, it certainly isn't.

It isn't necessary to associate it with that.

That's a more, that, you know, you enter into the slippery realm of human judgment and data

fields and this and that.

The fact that it fits it so well and that without the time wave there is all this millenarian

and apocalyptic pressure because of the turn of the millennium seems pretty suggestive

to me.

The Mayan thing is another coincidence.

I mean, really, the Mayans and the Christians were within 12 years of each other in a way,

if you take the year 2000.

We have the coincidence of several sacred documents.

Yes.

The Revelation of St. John the Divine.

Yes.

The time wave, another sacred document in software form.

And the Mayans.

The Mayans.

And the Judeo-Christian calendar, or the Gregorian calendar.

No.

No, I don't think a round number like 2000 has got anything to do, I mean, it didn't happen

in the year 1000.

No, but there was millenarian hysteria like you wouldn't believe.

I mean, they didn't get any work done for two years.

You see, Ruth Benedict had studied 60 different cultures and she charted them out by all different

parameters and finally she sorted them into three bins.

The Apollonian, the Dionysian, and the paranoid.

Now, it just happens that a paranoid culture, having this paranoid religion, or at least with

a paranoid element in it contributed by St. John the Divine, happened to get these extraordinary

technical powers, which are great generators of toxicity and so on.

Well, the term paranoid is designed to make you not like it.

The implicit point of view in calling it paranoid is one of scientism.

Having been called paranoid, I know that this is what they do.

If you're labeled this, nobody's going to look into it.

It makes the implicit assumption that there's nothing to be paranoid about.

Yet, in fact, we live in a very peculiar and dynamic and unsteady universe, and it's very important

to us as creatures to have stability, equilibrium, and evenness of conditions.

So, to argue it isn't paranoia, it may well, in fact, be a sensitivity to the...

They always say that.

Yes, that's fine, but the fact is, from my point of view, I mean, I'm just a person hanging

around here.

I've never read the Revelation of St. John the Divine.

Maybe I will, or maybe I won't, if I do read it.

I certainly don't believe that it's any kind of document with any credibility.

You see, I know that there are some fundamentalist Christians around who take every word of the

Bible very seriously, and they believe it.

But here is, like, somebody, as far as I'm concerned, somebody's paranoid fantasy was

put down in a book that other people take seriously, so now they're paranoid too.

I don't think Revelations is the interesting thing to discuss.

What's the interesting thing?

Where...

Possible scenarios of sudden catastrophic phase transition in the natural world.

Well, now, nuclear winter, I believe in that.

Well, but these are mundane.

I mean, I outlined one for you that had a little teeth in it.

There are others.

You know, collision, this thing we talked about where the two...

The arrival of the space people.

...the matter and antimatter universes collide and leave a photonic shell under the aegis of

a new physics.

Well, that might be scheduled for five billion years hence.

Hard to get excited about.

Or tomorrow.

There is no way to predict when such a thing would happen.

And the notion that it's far away...

Thank you.

You see, the presence of minds is the signifier of nearby singularity.

It's totally hypothetical anyway.

It's just a model.

That idea that minds signify the nearby approach of the singularity?

No, the universe and the anti-universe in the synchro clash.

Oh, yeah, I know.

But you can put 20 or 30 of these things.

There are all kinds of...

I think the asteroid collision, I mean, a comet, I mean, that's likely.

There was a near pass recently.

I think it was last month.

Oh, yes.

And did you see when it's coming back?

2012.

And it's going to come closer.

That's it.

That's the last song.

Now I'd leave it myself.

I clipped it out of astronomy magazine.

I knew people would doubt.

They said...

Exact computation is impossible.

That's late in 2012.

No, but the author was some fan of yours.

No, it was Astronomy Magazine.

It was Lick Observatory or something.

All right.

I'm ready to admit that there are a number of coincidences about the year 2012,

and some of them are ominous.

Well, I'm very hopeful, and I lead the movement.

I know.

Any credibility to St. John the Divine.

No, zero.

I don't give St. John the Divine any credibility, except that...

The only thing is that from the morphogenetic field point of view,

there's quite a number of people believing St. John the Divine.

Now that I have to take seriously.

He felt a quaking in the Force, that's all.

But it's up to cooler heads to figure out what this quaking of the Force is.

I mean, we have much better techniques than John the Divine.

See, nuclear winter is much more likely than any of these other things we've discussed.

Well, but see, I don't think a nuclear war is likely.

But without a nuclear war, just with continued toxification, CO2 outgassing, CFCs,

this and that, the scenario is totally apocalyptic.

See, I think we are facing a serious ecological crisis,

an evolutionary challenge of unprecedented...

You know, James Lovelock...

If we don't have a miracle every day, we're not going to make it.

The present extinction is one of the eighth largest catastrophes of the planet in its lifetime.

So far.

And so that's happening now.

Like, we are in something that big.

I mean, to be the biggest one, it'd be the apocalypse.

Well, that's why you don't need John the Divine to tell you that there's an apocalypse underway.

The scientists say...

But it may not be a fatal one because there's not a prophecy with any credibility to me

that says there isn't some way to make it through.

Although, I have to admit, I'm extremely doubtful of the intelligence of the species to find it.

Well, it depends on what's causing the problem.

If you think man is the problem...

Man is the problem.

Well, what about this sudden appearance of large and repeated glaciations in the last five million years?

This indicates either something is wrong with the sun or the geodynamics of the planet.

There never were glaciers before.

This is supposed to be called...

No, there never were glaciers before.

Glaciers are new in the life of the Earth.

They're not something that you see back and back and back.

And all parameters of planetary stability become more and more unstable as you approach the present.

Now, is that just that the older a planet is?

I believe we're hovering in a field of chaos, yes.

Well, so maybe man is the problem, or maybe human beings are the answer.

Well, the Earth could zip off its orbit and head out to space.

That's a possibility.

But it does seem to me that the ecological catastrophe

is the appropriate interpretation of the apocalyptic vision at the present time.

I agree with that.

Well, so do I.

But I don't think there are alternative views,

because historically speaking, this millenarian apocalyptic tendency in Christianity,

which inspired millenarian movements through the ages, inspired, among others,

the Pilgrim Fathers to come to a new world in America, which was seen as the chosen land.

You know, it's all part of the same kind of thing, this prophetic tradition of...

And it also inspired Bacon's vision of unlimited progress through science and technology,

through organized research, the transformation of nature, man's conquest of nature,

through putting nature on the rank and torturing her.

This man's dominion over nature was there in order to bring about a kind of millenarian state,

a technological utopia, the first technological utopia, where there'd be peace and prosperity,

and there'd be these wise scientist-priest figures running everything,

and always finding out ways to make things better.

So it's the idea of a kind of new Eden or a new promised land,

flowing with milk and honey, material abundance, etc.,

through the scientific control and conquest of nature.

Well, it's that scenario which is now causing the economic catastrophes.

That scenario has actually worked.

And there's a sense in which the apocalyptic scenario we find ourselves in

is a product of the apocalyptic myth of history.

Yes, good point.

So it's, in a sense, a self-fulfilling prophecy.

And I think that the tendency of mythic, the myths of science have an interesting dynamic,

because they start with the Faust myths, where Faust sells his soul to the devil

in return to unlimited knowledge and power for a fixed period, 24 years.

But when you get to the later development, at the end of the period Faust is dragged down to hell,

and then in Goethe's Faust, because he's an enlightenment figure who believes in progress,

Faust is actually taken up to heaven.

He's rescued from the demons at the last minute.

That all became implausible.

And the modern form of the Faust myth was Mary Shelley's Frankenstein,

where the scientist is destroyed by his own creation, no longer by any supernatural machinery.

But the whole of the kind of supernatural machinery of Faust becomes natural destruction by his own monster,

in the case of Frankenstein.

And it's obvious that the nuclear threat has a Frankenstein quality to it.

And it's also obvious that the destruction of the environmental ecological crisis

has this kind of mythological base, which is apocalyptic.

Well, we have to do surgery on the mythological base, due to the self-fulfilling prophecy mechanism,

that while we don't understand it exactly, we can see it working in history.

So, in connection with revision of the religion of the West, I think one good thing would be a modification of the revelation of St. John,

or a relegation of it to another place.

I mean, it has to be, I think, reinterpret...

reinterpretation was the word you suggested.

I mean, you need to switch the vision onto another track.

Yes.

Yes, well...

Yes, because self-fulfillment is out of control.

How can we control the apocalypse so that, even though the self-fulfilling part of it can't be stopped,

it can be steered toward a tolerable conclusion?

Well, first, on historical note, that the revelation of St. John the Divine is not a unique phenomenon in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

It's in a succession of apocalyptic books which are bounded around the time of Christ,

because many people believed that the end was literally at hand.

St. John the Baptist's message was, repent for the end is at hand.

It was a period very similar to our own in the sense that the idea of the end being at hand was widely believed,

only too credible to them for whatever their reasons were.

The book of Daniel in the Old Testament is an apocalyptic prophetic book

and is a precursor of the revelation of St. John the Divine.

These are just two examples in a large and extensive literature.

It pervades the teachings of Jesus, this apocalyptic sense of the changing of everything.

So, where was I?

About Daniel.

Oh, yes, Daniel, that it pervades the thing, and it pervades, it comes very early on,

because the promise of the, to Abraham, it starts with Abraham.

God promises Abraham that he'll take him and his descendants to another land,

he'll give them a land.

There's a promise of a land where wonderful things will happen.

Abraham's children shall be as the sands of the sea,

and he shall be the father of many nations.

And these are promises about things that haven't happened but will happen.

And through faith in these promises, history is made.

And there's a passage in the eleventh chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews,

which is, in the New Testament, a doctrine to Jewish Christians.

And there's a whole sermon on faith, how the entire motor of history for the Jewish people

was this faith in what they hadn't yet seen.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the passage begins.

And by faith Abraham went out to find a strange land, not having seen it,

or even glimpsed it afar off.

By faith Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt to the promised land.

And then, by faith Noah built the ark, knowing not for what or when.

And so when the rains came, he'd already built this ark,

and everyone else was drowned and he and his family took off.

All these things are done by faith.

And it ends with this thing about how we are moving by faith towards a new state, a promised land.

Because if we belong to the cities of the world as we know them, we'd go back to those cities.

But we're moving onwards, and it ends with that famous passage.

We are strangers and pilgrims in this land.

So there's this sense of being on a journey through time towards some destiny in the future,

which can be a different place like America.

The Pilgrim Fathers were inspired by this mythology to come to America and see in it a new promised land.

It's inspired the migratory ages of the northern Europeans for centuries now, this vision.

And it's also inspired the attempt to change the world through science and technology.

But it's so deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition that mere tampering with the Book of Revelation won't make it go away.

It's fundamental to the entire historical orientation of the religion.

As I was listening to this talk with you just now, it dawned on me that none of the speakers had actually defined the word apocalypse.

So I took a quick look in my dictionary and learned that the first definition of the word, at least according to the Oxford Dictionary, means revelation.

And the second definition goes on to say that it especially means a revelation about the end of the world.

So the question, at least for me, becomes, what do we mean by the end of the world?

Are we talking about the physical end of this planet?

Or are we only really talking about the end of the human species, our world?

And now that I say that out loud, it strikes me as rather presumptuous to call this place our world.

We're certainly a part of this world, but to call it ours seems to be the root cause of how we got ourselves into this mess in the first place.

But hey, you already know that.

I guess I should refrain from preaching to the choir, at least for today, huh?

So, let's talk about some of the email I've been receiving.

First of all, if you sent me an email message recently, you might have received one of those automatic replies asking you to verify that you're a real person and not a spammer.

I'm sorry to put you through this inconvenience, but before I turned on that feature, I was receiving close to a thousand spams a day.

And now most of that has gone away.

But in the process, I accidentally deleted some of your email that the new procedure was filing in a folder that I thought was junk, but it really wasn't.

The bottom line is that I've decided to sweep the decks clean and take the pressure off myself about answering all of the emails that have stacked up in the past few weeks.

And if you're one of the more than a hundred people who I've not answered yet, well, I truly am sorry about not replying personally to your messages.

Particularly because I get so much enjoyment out of hearing from you.

But if I don't draw a line and try to go forward, my backlog is going to continue growing and I'm going to keep losing sleep at night by feeling guilty about not answering you.

So, I'll try to do a better job at responding from here on out.

And when time permits, I'll also read a sampling of the thoughtful comments that I've been receiving.

Like the one I got the other day from Steve, who writes from South Africa and says,

What caught my ear was the concept of the underground university.

Since we are kind of involved in education and designing edutainment programs, I have an idea.

Go and have a look at www.gurteen.com, which is designed as a knowledge cafe or knowledge sharing community.

Maybe setting up something which allows members to make connections with each other in the underground university.

A place where everyone is student and professor simultaneously.

For our part, we have a life skills program that we'd be delighted to make available on such a system.

Well, Steve, that's kind of you.

And I do like the offer of setting up something that allows members to make connections with each other in a sort of an underground university kind of way.

So, if any of you knows of something like that already underway, please let me know and I'll pass it along.

Or, if you've got some ideas on how to do this as a part of the psychedelic salon, I'd also like to hear about it.

I also received an interesting email from Connor, who writes from down under in Australia.

And he wrote to say that he and his girlfriend have begun a podcast called Dictionary Psychedelica.

And he went on to say that he is an 18-year-old who has just begun university and has become fairly disillusioned with a society that is manipulative and restrictive and often just plain stupid.

And he continues, Australia is a big continent, so we're trying to find some way to connect the Australian psychedelic community and a podcast seems like it might offer just that.

Well, I really applaud your efforts, Colin, and you bring up a point that several others have also mentioned, and that is how can we all continue to get ever more interconnected through a wide range of special interest podcasts like these.

You know, almost every week somebody tells me about their new podcast, and I always go out and download an episode to check it out.

And now, to be brutally honest, I can't say that some of the early programs will keep me coming back.

But, hey, that was true of the podcast from the psychedelic salon.

And even though I still have this crummy old microphone and still don't quite know what I'm doing, they are getting slightly better.

So I've decided that before I plug any new programs here in the salon, it might be best if you've already produced eight or ten shows so that the early learning kinks have been worked out and that you're sure you're going to keep podcasting on a regular schedule.

That said, if you want to check out the first couple episodes in Colin's new podcast, you can find it at dictionarypsychedelica.blogspot.com.

And Colin finishes email by saying, do you know of any other good podcasts that look at the psychedelic world and consciousness expansion?

Well, as I've mentioned before, my current favorites are the programs on the Cannabis Podcast Network.

And also, I think you might like some of the programs that KMO does over at the C-Roam.

You can find links to these and a few others on our main podcast page, which is at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts.

Before I go, I should mention that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are protected under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 2.5 license.

If you have any questions about that, you can click on the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage, which may be found at matrixmasters.com slash podcasts.

And if you still have questions, you can send them to me in an email at lorenzo at matrixmasters.com.

Next week, I'll be back with the conclusion of today's trialogue.

And I'll also let you know what I'll be podcasting in the future and when I'll be podcasting some more of these trialogues.

Thanks again to Chateau Hayouk for letting us use your music here in the Salon.

And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space.

Be well, my friends.

Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.

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

So, are you ready to wind up these trialogues for a while?

Well, if you've been with us here in the Salon since last December, well, you know that I've been working my way through the first series of trialogues tapes that Ralph Abraham loaned to me for podcasting.

Now, the tapes were labeled 1989 and 1990, and I've been told that these conversations, which took place between Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake, actually took place first in September of 1989 and again the following year.

But there wasn't any marking or other indication on the tapes as to which year they were actually recorded.

In any event, today I'm going to play the last side of the tenth tape in the series where they conclude their conversation about the apocalypse.

Now, if you're a long-time listener to these podcasts, you'll also remember that I kind of screwed up and didn't get tape four digitized.

And of all the tapes to miss, the one that I thought had the most interesting title was tape four.

It was called The World's Soul and the Mushroom.

But don't give up hope.

Right now I'm trying to raise the funds to rent a car and return to Santa Cruz where I can not only interview some of the original merry pranksters who are still around,

but I also hope to re-borrow that tape number four from Ralph and get it digitized and into podcast form for us.

But for now we'll just have to imagine what exotic thoughts it may hold.

So let's pick up at the end of last week's podcast where Rupert Sheldrake discusses the historical origins of the Christian view of the apocalypse

as a journey through time and as the source of human migratory urges.

And after we hear today's concluding talk, I'll come back and let you know what's in store from the Psychedelic Salon in the weeks ahead.

Well, first one historical note that the revelation of Saint John the Divine is not a unique phenomenon in the Judeo-Christian tradition.

It's in a succession of apocalyptic books which abounded around the time of Christ

because many people believed that the end was literally at hand.

Saint John the Baptist's message was repent for the end is at hand.

It was a period very similar to our own in the sense that the idea of the end being at hand was widely believed,

only too credible to them for whatever their reasons were.

The book of Daniel in the Old Testament is an apocalyptic prophetic book and is a precursor of the revelation of Saint John the Divine.

And these are just two examples in a large and extensive literature.

It pervades the teachings of Jesus, this apocalyptic sense of the changing of everything.

So, where was I?

About Daniel.

Oh yes, Daniel.

That it pervades the thing and it pervades, it comes very early on because the promise of the...

To Abraham, it starts with Abraham.

God promises Abraham that he'll take him and his descendants to another land, he'll give them a land.

There's a promise of a land where wonderful things will happen.

Abraham's children shall be as the sands of the sea and he shall be the father of many nations.

And these are promises about things that haven't happened but will happen.

And through faith in these promises, history is made.

And there's a passage in the 11th chapter of the epistle to the Hebrews,

which is in the New Testament, a doctrine to Jewish Christians.

And there's a whole sermon on faith, how the entire motor of history for the Jewish people

was this faith in what they hadn't yet seen.

Faith is the substance of things hoped for, the passage begins.

And by faith Abraham went out to find a strange land not having seen it or even glimpsed it afar off.

By faith Moses led the people of Israel out of Egypt to the promised land.

And then by faith Noah built the ark, knowing not for what or when.

And so when the rains came he'd already built this ark and everyone else was drowned and he and his family took off.

All these things are done by faith.

And it ends with this thing about how we are moving by faith towards a new state, a promised land.

Because if we belong to the cities of the world as we know them, we'd go back to those cities.

But we're moving onwards.

And it ends with that famous passage, we are strangers and pilgrims in this land.

So there's this sense of being on a journey through time towards some destiny in the future which can be a different place like America.

The pilgrim fathers were inspired by this mythology to come to America and see in it a new promised land.

It's inspired the migratory ages of the northern Europeans for centuries now, this vision.

And it's also inspired the attempt to change the world through science and technology.

But it's so deeply rooted in the Judeo-Christian tradition that mere tampering with the Book of Revelation won't make it go away.

It's fundamental to the entire historical orientation of the religion.

We need to direct it towards a...

Well, the momentum can't be...

I don't think the momentum of the technological effects of all this can be stopped.

Or at least certainly not in a short...

But we're not considering the possibility that I mentioned at the beginning now, which is that there is this intuition is of something profound.

That it isn't simply a lethal neurosis, it's the actual anticipation of what is now made inevitable.

by all this technology well in that case there's no problem no we're not going to reject the

inevitable just as you said suggested sort of like get used to it happening well get used to

the fact it could happen at any time you see terence is so much like saint john in in both

in his john the baptist form and and in the saint john the divine um this work that in in the gospels

there's these passages of jesus which terence could easily quote and add to his armamentarium

is this what christ told me no it's his prophecies in st luke's gospel about how when the kingdom of

heaven comes when it will be like a thief in the night and you know in the parable of the of the

seven wise and foolish virgins who are not ready for the end many stories that say that you know

when it comes it'll come suddenly and you won't know when it's coming and um you have to live

peace in the night and no man will know the moment of my coming well i'm i'm yielding now to

terence's view that there's no way to save this vehicle that the the basic scriptures are riddled

with a self-fulfilling prophecy of apocalypse and either there is an inevitable apocalypse on the

horizon or in case there's not one might be created by the self-fulfilling prophecy the mechanism of

paranoid delusion then we would have to defuse the time bomb of the bible that's a good way

of thinking yes and the core people should be allowed to let the apocalypse happen not make it happen

yeah which we if if culture is a plant ourselves up for this it's now going to be very delicate to

to ride this through understand it stop it back out the myth of apocalypse is this then one of the

major weaknesses of this system from the evolutionary point of view it's what enabled us to understand

and discover the evolutionary point of view the evolutionary point of view is the apocalyptic

vision of history writ large surely i mean the very fact that the notion of human progress

made progress requires the beginning the middle and the end to even got it yes and the thing is that

from the idea of human progress which was widespread by the end of the 18th century the idea of biological

progress i.e the same process recognized in the human realm but extended to all life was seemed

increasingly plausible to many people because the idea of life is totally static and the whole of

nature is utterly frozen with only humans developing in this mode you see when hegel showed the dialectical

development of thought it was a fairly obvious idea that marx and others took up of thinking of the

kind of evolutionary development of matter as well in other words seeing the evolutionary process as not

just a human one but involving all life and then since 1966 the entire cosmos with big bang cosmology so

i would say that the big bang cosmology which is an apocalyptic vision of history with an explosive

beginning and therefore implying an explosive end is simply a projection well i shouldn't say simply

but is a kind of projection of this judeo-christian model of history it's not just confined to churches

and synagogues it's something which has come to the myth which encloses our entire scientific world view

which has grown up within this judeo-christian matrix yes and it started in the human realm then it

spread apocalyptic it seems inevitable it is inevitable it used to but you see the evolutionary

view gives us a sort of vast time scale for this process it basically it's still in the same model

it says sooner or later maybe in five maybe ten billion years our sun will explode it will follow

the course of a grade three star or whatever it's classified as not that we know what the course is

but the typical course of such a star we say airily having observed stars for a few a few years

and big supernovos that tell us what happens when a star blows up the things that we've observed

occasionally you know like one in the 1987 anyway so the theory is it's just a star it will like

any other star burn out it'll either become a red giant or a black hole i've forgotten which it'll

become but at any rate that's that's the end for us so the scientific world view actually does have

the same thing it has i think the sun becoming a supernova or a red giant and killing everything

in the solar system that would be our end and it would be one that mirrored the big bang as a kind of

incandescent beginning that's the scientific view that is an apocalyptic it's just that it transfers

the apocalypse to the remote future conveniently so that you don't you don't have to it doesn't get

rid of it it's it's it has it and the heat death of of the old thermodynamic 19th century universe the

steam engine running out of steam was a kind of slow but inevitable ending of time the heat death of

the cosmos was when entropy was at a maximum and processes work and that kind of thing came to an end and

so it was a country that you see so now we're down to this we're accepting the uh apocalypse myth

because it's an integral part of the historical concept as the israelites invented it and we can't

do anything about that and um nevertheless this has no implication at all as to the overall longevity of

our human habitation on earth no i disagree so therefore the paranoia of our culture is manifest in the

assumption that is happening tomorrow except that there's ample evidence it isn't paranoia who else

has nuclear stockpiles who else has agent or nuclear who else has cfc's dissolving the ozone hole this is

not paranoia paranoia the earth is on fire haven't you heard there's no reason to worry about being too

paranoid you can lift your foot off that pedal it's okay you can go with that intuition now the planet

is on fire to fasten the fire to a complete um incineration in a certain year no matter what the

response no that's not what's being said you can interpret it as the smeared apocalypse that takes

200 years but still ends with everybody dead at the end of it or the fast apocalypse that takes 15 minutes

and could happen today or tomorrow there are all these styles of imagining it but the thing the style

matters i think this but all the possibilities are really the projection of the um apocalypse in the

year 2012 i think is actually damaging of our chances of having a future no i think it's a way to manage it

if it's just it could be tomorrow it could be 200 years from now that's a little weird why not manage

ourselves through a narrow neck in a state of high awareness by you know there should be tremendous

pressure on governments to get rid of nuclear stockpiles by 2000 yeah to actually well but to use

the calendar as a club saying you know do you want to enter the third millennium armed like barbarians do

you want to be just like king canute he was who was in charge at the turn of the last millennium

you want them to hold you up to king canute and say canute bush two viking warlords two knotheads

or do you want to drape yourself in the olive of peace and be you know the savior of the world the

unifier of mankind and so forth and so on it's my great what i'm suggesting is that the coupling of the

apocalyptic vision of the revelation of saint john with uh the concept of the end of time in the year

2012 makes most likely the response of the secretary of the interior who said well so what i mean there's

nothing we can do about it so let it go going back to the revelation john which i would have seen

i could have seen this discussion go on with never a mention of it that's just an obscure christian text

interesting to fanatics but the overall world but the whole idea or a decision that idea is evoked in

people's minds through use of the word apocalypse our subject here well i called it the end of the world

good that's much better it was my notion that let's die off and the bible the end of the world

all right the proposal of the end of the world happening in a fixed year is not inclining people

to do something about nuclear stockpiles by the year 2000 like who cares if the last 12 years have or do

not have nuclear stock no i didn't link the two together i meant that the year 2000 everyone wants

to celebrate the millennium by feeling like there's a new style a breath of fresh air a new order

so the year 2000 forget 20 peristrika in the united states there should be that would be something

a thorough examination on the part of everybody of their society as we approach the third millennium

that sounds good that would be a fine thing i think you know it's interesting when they tested the first

atomic bomb at trinity site at alamogordo of the 19 physicists who observed it there were six who

believed that the temperatures were high enough to ignite the atmosphere and that the entire planet

was in a uh there was a 30 chance that the entire planet's atmosphere would be set on fire by this

experiment and they went forward they had no reason to believe that this wouldn't happen that would be

an interesting experiment yeah it's not hot enough now i wondered how it was a close one that was a close

one and this comet coming back in 2012 looks like a close one that's the definition of a close one that's a

close one and the the the toxicity the population explosion what about projecting the population

explosion to the year 2012 how many people would that be that continue to pace and he figures he used

that probably approaching 10 billion 10 billion people and ozone if you take the ozone hole which

we know that's a problem propagated at the present rate of phase there will be no ozone hole so you've

got 10 billion people no ozone hole uh the impact of that single parameter is totally unknown the carbon

dioxide emission continues that's a whole other issue the acid rain continues uh nuclear proliferation continues

propaganda runs rampant meanwhile pharmacology brainwashing surgical reconstruction all of this

stuff has made new leaps toward great fascist accomplishments i mean it's a pressure cooker world

that we're describing and i think under such conditions of cultural compression forms of novelty will erupt

that are totally unpredictable in the present context and that these are the forces that will create the end

of the world i mean i think of it sort of like the dmt wave hits the planet or something like that which is

happening everything is knitting together it cannot be stopped i mean there will be cellular technology and

human machine interface and uploading and downloading of clones of people and memories and places and

everything the boundaries are dissolving into some kind of techno biological informational soup of

intentionality but what is its intentionality it's not in the hands of any person in the organization

anything we can figure out it's just the guyan will and it's incomprehensible what is happening on this

planet it is like the metamorphosis that goes on inside the chrysalis except this is a planet

that is having its forests liquefied its oceans boiled its populations moved its genes streaming in

all directions with all these exotic toxins mixed in and uh it has this it isn't for death that it's moving

it's moving towards some kind of other thing not death yes well this is the new the new gospel of

saint john is is what you're raving gnostic apotheosis this is the green version of the apocalyptic vision

that the apocalypse is actually this this is the edge poison through the rampant infection of the

well but is it poison i mean you have to remember that oxygen was a deadly gas that totally destroyed

the biotic organization of this planet and in fact a billion years was spent responding to the presence

of oxygen yet it is the basis of all present life yes no i think we're at the edge of the apocalypse

an apocalypse without having the complete sterilization of the planet something on the uh on that order

that took a mere billion years to recover disaster all of the evolution of of life on the planet begins uh

again from scratch at the microbial level that's right at these asteroid strikes nothing larger

than a chicken you have to say that that satisfied the original saint john's description of the apocalypse

yes so that's it then the green version the green reinterpretation of the of the bible identifies

the present moment as the apocalypse oh i'm sure it's not even in 2012 we're on the edge of the apocalypse

it's a time storm 47 it's a time storm whose diameter is impossible to estimate and all we know

is that the barometric pressure is dropping faster than you've ever seen it drop and there's an eerie

stillness and the light in the sky looks very strange but nothing has happened yet it does seem to be

here out of hand as far as uh you know the scale of something that we could interact with and

in any way i mean we're the passive observers of this problem well if we could model it well i are

we the passive i mean we're all tragic you mean well maybe we can prepare so dynamics the apocalypse must

have its own inner laws and dynamics this is what we're attempting to do i assume yes but it also i mean

before we uh get into the actual mechanics the i think a bit more speculation is called for

surely not assuming that human consciousness doesn't simply become extinguished at death

we have the question of what happens when millions of people die together and what happened in hiroshima

when all those people died or in dresden and the fire bomb attacks caused this fireball and firestorm in

dresden all these people suddenly die together they all pass through the state of the death experience

not the near-death experience because this is for real the death experience which from the descriptions we

have involves going through a tunnel entering a new kind of realm in a different order of reality rather

like to the birth canal but into another dimension now however we conceive of what happens at death

leaving aside only the materialist hypothesis that all just goes blank um the end of the world through

any of these scenarios billions of people more than ever before dying at once or by the by the million

um is going to create an extraordinary flux of souls to put it in traditional language an unprecedented rate

of flux um an in an unprecedented um passage and perhaps those who die in the same moment through the

same cause undergo some kind of fusion there may be some kind of um psychic being a kind of humanity what

one way of picturing it in christian terms is that what's happening to the earth is a global crucifixion

the human the whole of humanity is undergoing a kind of crucifixion and there'll be a moment when

the crucified body of humanity through the there's a collective moment at which humanity gives up

the ghost or or at least large sections of it the nuclear scenario incidentally rough according to its

script since the second world war is essentially meant the auto-destructive christendom

because all nuclear targets bar those in turkey which is on in nato but nato and warsaw packed

countries with the exception turkey are all christendom and there's western christendom in

western europe and the united states and there's eastern christendom in the soviet union in greece

and essentially a nuclear weapon a nuclear thing would be the auto-destructive christendom which would

be very much in the self-fulfilling prophecy mode of you know this particular apocalyptic but the

environmental one is much more global it's no longer as we shift from our focus of attention to

the dangers of nuclear war not that there's any reason to shift from it all the weapons are still

there but or as the fashion changes and we turn our attention to the global thing we now see that

this isn't just christendom it's everybody anyway if it does involve everybody then part of the omega

point or the thing that terence is trying to uh describe obviously involves some kind of

transition in consciousness which might be achieved through mass death and might be achieved without

mass death through something like that i think turns rather vividly portrayed on one occasion as being

like a kind of collective bmt experience the glory the glory i'm not sure that i can explain the glory

right oh they also call it the rapture the rapture yeah the eminent expectation of this thing that they

call the rapture which will be the opening note they're carried up into the heaviness in the

rapture they're actually born aloft their clothes are left behind as they leave the automobile going

vertically to the sky yes the one the rapture you see it's interesting because we all die

uh there is an apocalypse built in it's just that it only happens to you and so every human life

becomes ultimately an approach to this question of final time what difference does it make that you're

the only one that's going to die after all that's the one you're standing in yes so it isn't that if you

don't live in the age of the end of the world you don't get to deal with the question of final time

it's just that in this age the death of the individual and the death of the species are somehow

both possible to contemplate yeah and the death of the other species and the death of the other it may be

you know i mean lots of traditions teach that life is organization for the purpose of creating a kind of

after-death vehicle or some kind of structure in a higher dimension which is it carefully made will

survive some kind of transition that is potentially uh could fail and that you're supposed to spend your

life doing this the sun were to explode then the entire biological shell of organizational soul

created in a fraction of the same well i think it certainly makes a difference the way it certainly

makes a difference to the way that individuals face death in what they believe happens to them

afterwards and people who've had near-death experiences where they've experienced this going through a

tunnel as altered state of consciences out of the body experience so they have the sensation that

there's something in them that leaves the body and survives it an experience which i think is related to

lucid dreaming which in turn is related to dreaming which is the experience we all have every night

whether we remember it or not of traveling in other realms with another body not the same as the

physical body in bed but an implicit body at least and if the state of being after death

is like dreaming without being able to wake up so that when we die we're captured in the realm of our

dreams we pass through this tunnel when we enter a realm which is more like the realm of dreams than the

life of waking experience that there is indeed a post-mortal active life in in such a form

um a form glimpsed in dreams in some kinds of psychedelic experience where the barrier that's

penetrated is maybe like the membrane or the barrier that we penetrate at death and they may therefore be

akin to near-death experiences which i think dmt probably is um then if there is indeed this state of

individual survival after death we have to ask ourselves what would be the state of collective

survival if indeed our billions of people were wiped off the afternoon most people don't want to

think beyond that moment it's a catastrophe we must do everything that we can possibly do to avoid

and let's start by recycling our beer cans that's the usual approach but if you carry it through

um and see what might happen afterwards a vast numbers of people going through this barrier at

the same time collecting a kind creating a kind of group mind of a kind never before seen post-mortal plane

possessed of a powerful imagination perhaps i mean if all of them passed through and believed in the

new jerusalem the new jerusalem might indeed manifest in this plane and there might be some kind of

um post-mortal state which is the attractor the point is that the the there are various ways of

thinking of of of what it is that's drawing people to this millennium both in expectation and in dread

i mean this is the approach of another metaphor is that is the last judgment meeting meeting god

as terence put it like the mind of god coming into history um the the it's a mixture it's no longer

just a loving god but it's the it's the image of god that certainly has the shadow side in it

because it's the the the it's a dreadful moment the judgment yes day of wrath and doom impending

as the da's era puts it um it's an interesting question as to why the apocalypse is such a strong

attractor and the attractor is that somewhere beyond that all the doom and and and this moment there's

some other state of being which is extraordinarily blissful compared with anything we know here

and is utterly more perfect and it's the same fantasial dream that was the recovery of eden the

going to the promised land the coming to america the transformation of the world through science and

technology there's something quite magical and infinitely attractive that's motivated the entire

historical process and if in terence's view what we experience as some kind of shock wave coming back

from the future but this thing is happening going to happen and its approach is sending back these

kind of shock waves through time quite a i mean a powerful image i think because then we have to

consider that this that this this is what really is happening it's the blissful state or whatever this

might be that is actually acting as a historical attractor so powerful an attractor is it that do as we

whatever we do we can't escape from it once that's been conceived and and and allowed to infiltrate

not just our religion but our entire secular political intellect and scientific and intellectual life

so the justification for the omega point concept of to show down is actually this uh

mechanism built into the apocalypse vision the emiga point is apocalypse it's it's it's

the chardin's conception of the apocalypse not just at a human level but at a cosmic level yes yes it happens

to all nature and let me just add one more ingredient to this particular line of thought when we were at

hollyhock recently brown swim came up and was talking about his cosmological views

and he was exploring the idea that the universe like a developing organism has ages at which things

happen it has an inbuilt cosmological time it's not like the old universe where galaxies were coming

into being others were dissolving it just all went on forever in endless cycles there was a time when

atoms came into being first in the universe there was a time when galaxies formed or at least the great

majority of them there was a time when planets could form planets couldn't have formed a minute after

the big bang there was only a time after supernovae had been in exist stars had formed in stardust from

supernovae the time when planets could form so in a sense just as in a developing embryo the development

has particular times or phases or synchronize so if there were life on other planets that the stage

it's at might not be that very different from the stage ours is at so i said to him this was

the most interesting line of thought and if since i'd also been thinking about parallel evolutions and

their possible effect on ours through morphic resonance interplanetary morphic resonance similar

gaia's in other solar systems planets of the species gaia will be in resonance with ours

and planets of the species venus will resonate with venus and so on but we're interested in

gaian resonances and i said well how far you know into sort of rough estimate order of magnitude

in in time do you think they'd be from within a billion years of where we are within a million within

500 000 within 50 within five you know what just where would you put it he said just guessing

50 to 500 000 years of where we are

so there might be you see similar processes really a big bang i don't understand why he assumed that

because of this developmental theory i understand that but my guess would be 500 million years i mean

you have to be reasonable no yes but take into account morphic resonance if there is indeed morphic resonance

between the planets so that when a new form appears on earth it's vastly more likely to appear on other

planets you could have a greatly accelerated evolution on other planets until they almost caught

up so if any got in far in the lead the morphic resonance effect would tend to make the others

catch up a little bit like how the time works yes it's cosmic synchronization principle

then yes place you can check this is 4.5 light years away and that may not be suitable

so there is a sun-type star in centauri 1.1 solar masses if there were an oxygen-rich water-heavy planet

there you could it could be a twin earth haven't we been here somewhere before

this island earth what are you doing about your apocalypse problem but the thing is you see that the

the christian apocalyptic version the vision has several forms one's the local human one which just

happens to people like the jews going to the promised land didn't change all nature it just

meant they got other people's vineyards and took over other people's fields and killed the native

inhabitants or reduced them to some second-class status a repetitive pattern in history and um but

that this was a limited vision of where this whole process was then we then it got more and more

elaborated this apocalyptic vision until entire the showdown it's the end of the evolutionary cosmos

and it's not just the big crunch it's much more immediate than that somehow

And so it's this attractor pulling forward, so it's this cosmic vision, but the thing is that

it seems to us unlikely, given our standard old-fashioned cosmological view,

that anything that happens on Earth would affect the rest of the cosmos.

But if lots of Earths are synchronized, and if there are these, you see,

then we do indeed begin to get the sense of the possible cosmic apocalyptic.

I don't know how much...

That's an interesting idea, if it's interesting.

That the end time of the cosmos...

The end of the soul of the world.

The end of the, yes, or the total transformation of the soul of the world.

That it may be a maturation process, or that's...

Because present cosmology hasn't got very much to offer in the way of what happens in the future.

As you've got endless expansion, which seemed persuasive to people in the 1960s,

when it was generally believed that economies could go on expanding forever and forever.

So the cosmos went on forever.

Then people got worried about the big stock market crashes at all going,

the whole thing ending in tears.

Then we got more big crunch scenarios on the market, you know.

It may be just enough dark matter to...

Then they say it's close to the indeterminate value they can't tell.

Exactly. Now they've got into a very subtle position,

which I'm sure the medieval schoolmen would have admired as a solution to the problem,

saying that we're hovering on the very brink between an ever-expanding and ever-collapsing,

that's so close to the margin that it's impossible ever to tell. Yes.

So, but, you know, these are rather uninteresting visions of the future.

Well, you've actually created another mechanism for an apocalypse.

It happens somewhere else.

Yes.

And then by this kind of imploding process, once one pops...

It's a chain reaction.

It would be a chain reaction.

And the stars would fall from heaven, and the lights of the galaxies would go out,

and that's the end.

Well, it's similar to this time travel problem of collapsing time.

The god whistle, yes.

The god whistle.

That's right.

It's a spatial version of the god whistle.

Yes.

A synchronization of god whistle, cosmos-wide.

Yes, a cosmic chain reaction at a certain developmental stage that just pulls everything down into it.

We have to believe that the universe is stranger than we can, supposedly.

Yes.

And that's the way, by avoiding closure and keeping that in front of us, I think we will not go far.

The trouble is that at the apocalypse, if it happens, the hermeneutic cycle will come to an end.

Yes.

If it happens in 2012, I'm sure I'll get no credit whatsoever for having been run.

It'd be a bit late for a credit to be much value to, wouldn't it?

I suppose so.

Well, a raptural new Jerusalem might existence in another universe.

I mean, only this universe will pop.

Yes.

Well, what is it, this new Jerusalem, that everybody leaves this machine of sapphire,

and emerald, and chalcedony, in which there is, you know, a world of delight?

This is the covenant.

This is the fulfillment of the covenant, is that the ocean will boil, everything will be lost,

and do not give up the faith, because at the landing of the ark, the covenant was made,

not with Abraham, but with Noah, with humanity, and it will be redeemed.

There was all this, yes, the pledge will be redeemed, the promise will be kept.

Don't throw away your coupons, they'll be cashed in due time.

That's right.

The promise will be kept, I think it probably will be kept.

Well, I do believe we've transformed the apocalypse myth,

suitable for the purple and green church.

You think that we've, uh...

We've transformed it, yes.

Well, the green church of Brazil already has a version of the apocalypse myth, which is,

they believe in very strongly, and in theirs, the dragon in the last days comes and eats up the forest.

They say it's an Inca prophecy, and burns and destroys.

A dragon, incidentally, which is prophesied at the very beginning of Anglo-Saxon liberal political theory,

in Hobbes' model of Leviathan, because the dragon that's destroying the Amazon forest is the great monster Leviathan,

which society, in Hobbes' view, is the aggregate, like cells in the body.

Individuals are like atoms in the body of Leviathan.

There's a dragon in the revelation of Saint John.

Yes.

Heaven crushes the head of the serpent.

So here's the serpent, which is, and in the last days, the struggle between the serpent and the forces of light grows ever more intense.

People are forced to take sides, because it no longer is possible to sit on the fence, because the fence itself is crumbling.

And there will be an intense polarization through the 1990s, in their view, you know, towards the coming of the millennium,

because these forces become ever more powerful, preparing for the final battle.

Well, this is a fairly traditional version of the millennium.

This is already one adopted by what one could call a green church.

And it's one that sees the struggle that's going on as being of uncertain outcome, in a sense.

Although, through faith in the victory over the dragon, the victory will be achieved through faith.

So it's another form of seeing faith motivating, faith in some future state, motivating the struggle.

And it's a powerful inspiration.

And actually, without some such inspiration, I don't think the green movement can function properly.

And that means that any apocalyptic vision that either sees the apocalypse as inevitable,

or as something we can't do anything about, is, as you were suggesting earlier, perhaps destructive in its effect.

But an apocalyptic vision which sees it as a process in which we're participants, and to which we can make some difference,

then unleashes this kind of heroic archetype.

Incidentally, I think that both the conquest of nature and the environmental movement are under the

aegis of the heroic archetype.

In one of them, the hero is saving humanity from the ravaging powers of destructive nature,

like the battle of doctors against cancer.

In the other one, the environmentalist is saving the virgin nature

from the onslaughts of this destructive dragon of Leviathan, which is devouring the forest,

polluting the world, shitting everywhere.

So anyway, they're both under this archetype.

And maybe it's too late for us to escape that particular heroic archetype either.

Because the only thing that can motivate the green movement is a heroic archetype,

whether it takes the form of actual guerrilla fighting, or whether it takes the form of

non-violent resistance, a kind of Gandian and Christian version which will generate martyrs

who will then have this great archetype of appeal.

But only some such millenarian faith, I think, could motivate the green movement

sufficiently fast enough and sufficiently deeply enough to change the scenario.

And so I think that this is another way of saying we're so in the fold of this millenarian

in its field, that only another millenarian scenario could possibly help undo it.

Rubbing it out, getting rid of it, forgetting it, suppressing it,

psychically engineering it out of our psyche, I think we're past all that.

That's why a jihad to save the earth doesn't sound like a half-bad alternative.

If like me, you listened to last week's podcast before picking up on today's,

you probably right now have your head so full of new thoughts that you don't know where to start

thinking about these things first. One of my favorite lines in today's podcast was when

Terrence said, people should be allowed to let the apocalypse happen, not make it happen.

And I wonder if I'm the only one who had to stop for a minute when Terrence called Bush a knothead,

had to stop and remember that he was talking about Bush I, the father of the current knothead

in the White House. I can hardly imagine what the good bard McKenna would think about the

moron in charge today. And actually, you know, it's kind of sad in a way to hear Terrence,

Ralph, and Rupert talk so positively about their hopes for change in this new millennium.

I guess that way back in 1989 when this talk was recorded, no one on the planet could imagine how

a single psychopath like Bush Jr. could make such a horrible mess of things. But enough of the dark

side. Let's go for a little light. And I don't know a better way to lighten up than to kick back and

listen to a podcast that the sounds of the worldwide weed. In case you missed it,

Queer Ninja's World Music Podcast is back online after several disasters that included a flood and

a trip to the emergency room. Hey Ninja, it's good to have you back again. And even though the

Dope Fiend did a really good job of filling in for you, I think it's safe to say that your beautiful

podcasting personality was greatly missed by listeners all around the world. And it seems like

Queer Ninja wasn't the only podcaster to suffer a series of near disasters recently.

From what he's had to say on his latest podcast, it sounds like KMO has had a battle with the elements

as well. But hey, they just keep on podcasting and you can find links to their programs on our website at

matrixmasters.com slash podcasts. You know, a couple of you also have written to ask why some of the back

podcasts you've already downloaded have begun showing up in your aggregators as new material.

Well, I'm sorry for any confusion or inconvenience that is caused by this, but I'm in the process of

moving all of the MP3 files to a new server. But never fear, any of you who have made direct links

to the programs from your websites, I'm not going to remove any of the original MP3 files from their

locations. This move is just to point new people to these somewhat refurbished files.

And by that I mean, I've tried to fix the problems in the ID tags that cause some of the old programs to

be difficult to find in your directories. I've finally gone to a consistent naming format that I think

will work on most of the popular MP3 players. And once this project is completed, all of the programs

from the salon should show up in one place and be numbered consecutively, which will make it a lot

easier to find a specific program that you may want to go back to for another listen. Of course,

all of this work isn't going to help you if you've been with us for a long time, unless you want to

download the refurbished files. And in that case, if I were you, I'd wait until I let you know that the

project's completed, just in case there are any more last-minute revisions that I need to make.

And by the way, our new server and the improved performance it promises as our audience continues

to grow is thanks to some of you salonners out there. In the past few weeks, I've noticed that

several copies of the Shulgin's books were ordered from our Amazon store, along with several other books

and memory cards and stuff like that. And I want to thank those of you who ordered through our Amazon

store because we get a 4% commission on your purchases. And while it only adds up to a few

dollars a quarter, it all does help. And I'd like to give some particular thanks to Yarev and RJ,

both of whom very generously made donations to the salon this week. And I'm very happy to report

that thanks to our wonderful donors, all of our out-of-pocket expenses for the first two months of

this year have now been covered. So Yarev, RJ, Jason and Bill, all of us here in the Psychedelic Salon,

thank you for your very kind generosity. Thanks for keeping us going. And where will we be going from

here you ask? Well, there are a lot of choices, but here's what I'm planning on doing in the next few

podcasts. Next week, as promised a while back, I'll be playing the recordings that I made at Burning Man

last year of Mark Pesci and Amanda Fielding's talks. The following week, I plan on presenting an

interview that I'll be doing with Daniel Siebert, who many of you know as the proprietor of sagewisdom.org

and who is perhaps the world's leading researcher and expert on salvia divinorum. And I'll also be

interviewing Nick Sand hopefully sometime next week. So if you've got any questions for the creator of

Orange Sunshine, well, please send them to Lorenzo at matrixmasters.com and I'll ask Nick for you.

Also, in the next week or so, I'll be interviewing Matthew Palamary, who is a novelist and shamanic

traveler of great repute in some of the more esoteric circles out here in the West. And there are a few

other interviews that I'm trying to set up as well. So if you heard KMO's interview with the Dope Fiend last

week where they were suggesting that I do more live interviews, well, I guess you can tell that I heard

them loud and clear. In fact, with all of the podcasts that I've done of Terence McKenna talks,

it was kind of a surprise that it was my interview with Sheldon Norberg in podcast 64 that brought the

complaints from my web hosting company. You know, apparently the number of simultaneous downloads

of the great Sheldoni's talk actually swamped the servers. So I guess it's fair to say that I've got

your message, and we'll be peppering these podcasts with some live interviews from time to time.

In fact, one of the interviews that I hope to do sometime this year is with Graham Hancock,

whose new book, Supernatural, is something you're going to be hearing a lot more about on

these podcasts in the months ahead. I'm about two-thirds of the way through it right now,

and my wife already finished reading it. So we've been having a lot of discussions about what we

think is a truly seminal work, and if you're like I was about 20 years ago and are having to fend off

your friends, relatives, neighbors, and co-workers who try to make you feel guilty about using entheogens,

then I think this book might really be for you, one you might not want to miss. I don't have time to

go into it more today, but I think that the historical and scientific connections that Graham

Hancock makes in Supernatural make it really clear that there is no more important work to be done

today than what is being done by you brave psychonauts who are taking great risks to venture into entheospace

and search for what Guy Noir calls the answers to life's persistent questions. Anyway, it's a great book,

and I hope we can get Graham as one of our guests here in the salon one day.

I haven't even mentioned the interview I did with Myron and Gene Stolaroff when Mary C. and I stayed

with them late last year. I hope to get that edited and then in podcast format before too long as well.

Not to mention the fact that there are still quite a few trilogues left to hear. I haven't scheduled the

exact date yet, but the next series of trilogue podcasts will be from what I believe is probably the

last one they held, which was in June of 1998. And I thought that rather than continue listening to

these three-way conversations in chronological order, it'd be more interesting to jump from the first ones,

which we just concluded today, to the last one in an attempt to see how, if at all, their thoughts on

some of these topics might have changed in the intervening years. So there are a few of the programs

that will be coming your way in the weeks ahead. And if you have suggestions for other interviews or

program topics, please let me know and I'll see what I can do to accommodate you. Before I go,

I should mention that this and all of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are protected under the

Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 2.5 license. And if you have any questions about

that, just click on the link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage, which you can find at

matrixmasters.com slash podcasts. And if you still have questions, send them in an email to

Lorenzo at matrixmasters.com. And thanks again to Jacques Cordell and Wells, otherwise known as

Chateau Hayek, for letting us use your music here in the Psychedelic Salon. And for now, this is Lorenzo,

signing off from Cyberdelic Space. Be well, my friends.

Linguistic Bob Chicks.

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

Well, today's program is the first of what will be a long series of podcasts of the famous

trial logs held by Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake.

I first heard about these lengthy conversations when I read a little book that provided a few

highlights of the first two public trial logs that were held at Esalen in September of 1989 and again

a year later. Although the book was published in 1992, I didn't come across it until the summer of

1998 when I was attending a workshop that Terence McKenna was holding at Omega Institute in upstate New York.

The bookstore there had all kinds of interesting items that us East Coasters seldom came across.

Books like Sasha Shulgin's Pacal along with copies of most of Terence's work.

Since Ralph Abraham and Terence McKenna were going to be conducting a dialogue one night while I was

there, on a whim I bought a copy of Trial Logs at the Edge of the West. Mainly, I have to admit, to

get the two of them to autograph it for me. Well, I got their autographs all right, but I also got a

whole lot more. For one thing, their dialogue that hot August night was the inspiration for me to write

The Spirit of the Internet. The other was the great ideas that I found in the Trial Logs book. By the way,

if you would like to hear the dialogue between Terence and Ralph that night, all you have to do is go to my

website and download podcasts number 19 and 20. And I'll give you the address URL at the end of the

program. So now we flash forward eight years to a meeting that Bruce Dahmer and I had with Ralph

Abraham a week ago. And if you can, just try to imagine my astonishment to be back face to face with Ralph,

who I'd only previously encountered just long enough to get his autograph. And there find myself

the recipient of a big dusty old box of cassette tapes, which were Ralph's collection of the majority

of the public trial logs that the three of them held. To tell the truth, I'm still flabbergasted at my

good fortune. The reason I'm telling this story is for those of you who may find yourselves right now

in the situation I was in just 10 years ago. At that time, I was still living in the cubicle world

of corporate America. Granted, I was earning a nice salary and had a generous expense account and was

flying around the world in an attempt to help my company get people interested in doing business on

the internet. But in my quiet moments, to be quite honest, I was really a miserable wreck.

And how I got from there to here still seems like a strange and largely unplanned journey,

but that's not the point I'm trying to make. The point is that no matter how bad the situation you

think you're in right now, even if you have no resources and don't have the connections you think

you need to be able to move into the flow of the worldwide psychedelic community, you can still do it

as long as you don't give up on your dreams. Well, enough of my story, I guess, at least for now.

Let's get on with the trilogues. So here's my plan. Each week I'm going to try to, first of all,

podcast some of the many other talks I've got stacked up, along with a few live interviews I've

scheduled. Then I'm going to attempt to get two more podcasts out each week, those being part of

this long series of trilogues that these three unique minds held during the period from 1989 to

1998. My plan is to publish them in the approximate order in which they were given so that we can

follow the progression of their thinking over that decade. In all, I've got about 50 hours or so of this

material, so this project is going to take a little time to complete, but I think it's going to be fun

and an interesting series. So, without any further ado, let's get right to today's program, which is

from the introduction tape to the series, appropriately titled, Cast of Characters.

This is an experiment. It's also sort of living theater, because Rupert and Ralph and I have, by

natural inclination, been discussing the kind of things we're going to discuss this weekend privately

and with each other in many circumstances in all times of the day and night for a number of years.

So, it's our natural mode. It's just that we've never done it before with a lot of people looking on. So,

hopefully, we can attain to the level of spontaneity and non-recursive chance-taking that goes on in those

kinds of conversations. Maybe that's enough to say. I should introduce my two co-presenters. Most of you know

them already, of course. Rupert Sheldrake is the author of A New Science of Life and The Presence of

the Past, books which stirred more controversy in British biology than it had seen in 30 years,

and got the British journal Nature to call his first book A Candidate for Burning, which

suddenly turned the thought of Rupert Sheldrake into a civil liberties issue, because that's pretty

strong talk. Rupert's idea, which he will, I'm sure, unfold for you in his inimitable style,

is very dear to my heart, because they dovetail and support each other. We're both rowing our canoes

the same way. Rupert and our colleague of many years standing and my acquaintance since 1972,

a hell-raiser from the 60s, the man who, well, no, I won't even say that,

a hell-raiser from the 60s, a man who brought mathematics to a new fever pitch in the field of

dynamics and systems modeling. Ralph has been sort of the rock of Gibraltar, of the psychedelic end of

eggheadism, at least for many people that I've lived around. So, he runs the Center for the Study of Visual

Mathematics in Santa Cruz, is a professor at UC Santa Cruz, author of Foundations of Mechanics and

countless other books, plays, papers, and so forth and so on. So, it will be the three of us attempting to

sort of weave together our different perspectives on a very large and sort of hard to grapple with

paradigm shift that is taking place in the way the Western mind does its business with reality.

And, you know, it may be the last paradigm shift we ever get. So, when this cat lands,

it's going to have to land on its feet, because immediately facing it will be the theater of activity

that is the consequence of the old way of doing it, which was a very bad way of doing it. So, we have to

be prepared for a whole new dynamic, a whole new way of linking systems together, thinking about

solutions, thinking about the past and ourselves in the world.

Okay. Right. Well, I'm Rupert Sheldrake. As you've all gathered, I'm here with my wife,

Joel. Where is she? Oh. There she is. I just said I was here with you and you vanished, but then you

appeared just on cue. And with our little boy Merlin, who you may see around, he's nearly two,

and with our babysitter from England, who's called Mandy, who's just 18. Six weeks ago, she was in her

village in Yorkshire. And then she came to work with us and didn't realize that within a few weeks

she'd be at Esalen. Well, she's here too. I'm a biologist by background. I studied biology because

I was interested in animals and plants. And when I was studying it at Cambridge, I began to have terrible

doubts about what I was doing, because everything that really interested me about animals and plants

somehow vanished when I got into the biochemistry laboratories. I was majoring in biochemistry

and I did a PhD in biochemistry there. But there's a curious thing about biochemistry. You're

doing biochemistry to study the molecular basis of life. Yet the very first thing you do in the

laboratory is kill whatever you're studying, grind it up, extract the enzymes, and then in a test tube

study the properties of some of these molecules extracted from this killed organism. And it began to

occur to me that perhaps this wasn't the best way to understand life. But I didn't quite know

what to do about it because everybody else thought it definitely was the best way to study life, and

in fact there was no other valid way. So this set me thinking. And I then came to realize there was a

whole tradition of biology called vitalism which had tried to adopt a totally different approach to

the understanding of life, a school which flourished in the 19th century and which went on until the 1920s,

when it underwent a transformation into the organismic or holistic philosophy of nature,

which really treats the whole of the universe as alive. This was a totally new idea, a new perspective

for me. And I began to see that the science of biology could be reformed, that this idea that living

organisms are truly alive, rather than being just machines, whereas the official doctrine, the

mechanistic theory, says living organisms are just complicated machines. Believe it or not,

still the official doctrine of academic biology and academic medicine. And this set up a tremendous

tension, and I began to see there was a new way of doing it, and I began to see the outlines of a new

theory. I had several insights into how this might happen. I stayed at Cambridge for about seven or eight

years doing research. Then I went to India, where I worked in an agricultural institute. These ideas went

on developing. I then saw how…

I could bring them all together in a synthesis and into a new way of seeing how biology could be done.

And I wrote a book while still in India called A New Science of Life.

In it, the basic idea I'm suggesting is that there's a kind of inherent memory

in all kinds of animals and plants.

Each species has its own collective memory.

So each member of the species draws on this collective memory and in turn contributes to it.

This means that the instincts of animals, for example, the behavior of cuckoos,

the spinning of webs by spiders, are like a memory, a habit of the species.

This inheritance takes place by the process I call morphic resonance,

by a kind of invisible, intangible memory,

a kind of resonance between present and past organisms of the same kind.

The same theory helps explain how our own memory works

by a resonance between our own past and our present states.

It leads to the idea that our memories aren't stored in our brains,

but that we're tuning into them by this process of morphic resonance.

Anyway, this theory, which I'd been developing,

as the more research I did, the better fit I found it made with the facts.

I found there was already considerable circumstantial evidence for this idea.

But as you can imagine, this idea wouldn't be very popular in the realms of academic biochemistry,

and it didn't win over instantly all my colleagues in the biochemistry department at Cambridge either.

So when my book on this subject was published, which I wrote in India,

there was a considerable controversy in the scientific world.

The theory is testable by experiment. Various experiments have been done, it is being tested.

I've been developing and working on this theory for the last ten years.

My last book, The Presence of the Past, that came out recently, develops it in more detail.

And currently I'm writing a book called The Rebirth of Nature,

which is about the idea that the entire cosmos is alive rather than just inanimate and mechanistic.

What difference that makes?

Well, when A New Science of Life came out in 1982 in America,

it came out a year earlier in England,

I came to California because it was published in Los Angeles by Tarcher.

I'd never been to California before.

And I suddenly found myself in a wonderland which I hadn't even thought about.

I'd lived in India for the previous seven years.

Before that I'd spent most of my time in Cambridge, England.

I had been educated in America at Harvard, spent a year there doing philosophy.

But California was something that I hadn't even dreamed of.

I found myself here at Esalen.

I found an extraordinary new range of things going on I hadn't known about.

And when I was in San Francisco, a friend who I knew from Europe said to me just the day before I left,

there's somebody you must meet, he's called Terence McKenna.

He said, you get on this bus in San Francisco, you get off at Santa Rosa two hours later,

and Terence will appear in a large 1956 Buick or whatever.

And that'll be Terence McKenna.

I didn't know much about Terence, so I went up there.

And in this large 1956 Buick, we headed off into the woods in Sonoma County, where Terence lives.

And there I met both Terence and Ralph, who was there for the day.

We had a most interesting time.

I found that part of my interest in these other realms of reality, of course,

like many people in this room, was stimulated by experience with psychedelic substances.

This was before I went to India.

When I arrived in India, I found that India is a kind of psychedelic realm anyway.

It's just an amazing place.

So, in Terence I found somebody who knew about that whole realm,

who shared with me an interest in India, since it played an important part in his development.

And who had views about the nature of reality which complemented my own in an extraordinary way.

My own theory is about memory and habit in nature.

Terence, I found, had developed a theory about novelty and creativity in nature.

A theory about the quality of time and the creative process,

as it is related to the ongoing flux of events.

And Ralph had a kind of mathematical theory,

which was just the kind of thing that the view of nature I was trying to develop needed.

The idea of nature being drawn by goals or attractors in the mathematical science of dynamics.

There's this model of reality being pulled from ahead by things called attractors.

It's a teleological, animistic view of nature,

which dressed up in the guise of mathematical models,

which I found most fascinating.

And so, for me, the meeting with Ralph and Terence was a step further towards

seeing how one could begin to dream of a world in which nature was seen as alive,

in which the imagination permeated all reality,

in which animals and plants are seen as part of the living texture,

the living components, the cells in the life of Gaia,

and Gaia in the life of the cosmos as a whole.

In fact, a view of the world as alive,

which recalls in some respects the old cosmologies of the ancient world,

where the cosmos was seen as a living organism,

where they thought of the whole cosmos as having a soul,

the soul of the world, the anima mundi.

And so, I found Terence and Ralph, both people,

who were interested in looking at trying to form a new understanding

of what we could call the soul of the world.

So, our discussions over the years, over the last seven years,

have spun around many aspects of these things.

And when the idea came up of us coming here together at Esalen

to do something together in public,

we've so far talked a great deal in private,

and reacts synergistically in a way that I found extremely stimulating and inspiring.

When this opportunity came up,

I was delighted that it was possible to be here,

and I'm delighted you're all here.

And what we're hoping to do is to talk about aspects of the world's soul.

And it turned out, when we were discussing this,

that each of us seemed to be representing a principle.

And these three principles in interaction form a kind of trinity.

And the structure of our trialogue is going to reflect the different interactions of those principles.

The principle which I'm representing is the principle of evolutionary creativity.

How is it that the whole of nature is somehow creative in an evolutionary sense?

The basis of my entire theory suggests that the laws of nature are not fixed eternal truths that have always been there,

but habits which have evolved in the course of evolution itself.

So, I think there's a kind of habit principle in nature.

There must also be a creative principle in nature to give the universe its evolutionary and yet regular way of behaving.

So, in these trialogues, I'm going to be representing the principle of evolutionary creativity.

The evolutionary principle including the habit that builds up and the creation that leads to new forms.

Well, in many ways my history is similar to Rupert's, in many ways different.

I think what we share most notably was a very early involvement in nature and a fascination with what used to be called natural history,

natural history, which means bugs, rocks, butterflies, and stars.

And my own life has not been particularly academic.

I graduated from the University of California, but managed to stretch the degree-taking process out over 12 years that went from 1965 to whatever that is.

And a lot of traveling in India, I thought I was an art historian.

In my early LSD experiences, I seemed to see motifs and structures that gave me an interest in Tibetan Buddhism.

And I went to India with the intent of studying the Tibetan language and quickly found that the whole thing was just overwhelming and that I was just, you know, a human atom in the sea of India.

And that the notion of encompassing or understanding what this was, was clearly the task of a lifetime.

And several times in my life I have acted out this sort of ricocheting relationship between the humanities and the sciences.

At times, at times, you know, losing myself in the study of certain schools of poetry or literature or painting.

And then at other times spending years reading philosophy of science and epistemic basis of physics and this sort of thing.

Always trying to get a resolution on the content of my experience, my lived experience, which included the psychedelic experience, which for me from very early on was this kind of tremendous mystery or conundrum which was set down in the middle of my being.

And it still continues like that.

I keep returning to that, testing all the ideas against the fullness of experience that that represents.

Well, for me, just having the sort of mind that I do, this meant model building and an interest in the models of others.

And in the 1970s, I carried out a critique of scientific method and the implicit philosophical assumptions of science and convinced myself that it was pretty much just whistling past the graveyard.

That they, you know, it was all done with smoke and mirrors.

The actual understanding of what it means to be a living thinking organism is nowhere tangential to what science is telling us about the world.

And so I became interested then in revisioning causality.

It seemed to me that the problem lie somewhere with the definition of time, that there had been a misunderstanding.

And I, of course, when you read dissident views on time or when you did in the 50s and 60s, you read Carl Jung, who wrote about what was called synchronicity, which he called an a-causal connecting principle.

And I spend a lot of time on that, but it isn't ultimately satisfying.

If you analyze it carefully, it isn't ultimately an explanation.

It's more like a counter mapping.

It tells you that connectedness can occur differently than in the stream of cause and effect, but it doesn't exactly explain to you why this is.

So then I became interested in other views of time and elaborated my own theory, which Rupert mentioned about novelty.

I began to see that what I was groping toward was the notion that time is not a flat plane, but it's some kind of topological manifold.

Some kind of surface over which events flow, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, in the same way that water makes its way over a landscape.

And where flow is rapid, phase transitions occur and turbulence enters the picture.

And turbulence is mathematically a very different creature from laminar flow.

Ralph is an expert on all of this.

But anyway, I wanted to follow very deeply and to its ultimate conclusions, this notion that what we had left out of our model of the world was the idea that time is actually composed not of a homogeneous medium, but of some set of elements.

Or interconnected parts which are in flux.

And out of this I created progressively more and more formal models.

And they were like novelty engines.

And before the word fractals was even invented, these curves, these recursive equations that I was working with were in fact fractal of the fractal type.

So I think what's happening, you know, is there's a general awareness of a need for new mathematical objects and new models of process to connect up the world in a meaningful way.

I think it was P.W. Bridgman in one of his essays said that a coincidence is what you have left over when you apply a bad theory.

You know, if you're getting a lot of coincidences after you get your theory in place, then maybe the theory is not so good.

Well, our world is haunted by coincidence.

The main difference between our world and the world that science tells us we're living in is that science denies the quirky, freaky, cosmic giggle, high plottedness, completely improbable, totally quirky humor that binds everything together.

And that makes it something other than an engine in which atoms blindly run in Whitehead's phrase.

Well, this kind of thinking and looking for colleagues and support led me first to Ralph, who was great, good support.

But, you know, he held my hand long years before I even thought I understood him.

I'm not sure I understand him now.

And by him, I mean only the tiny iota of him, which is this crusty little theory out of which we make our bread.

And Rupert, I read The New Science of Life and had read all the other radical biology which preceded it and knew that there hadn't been anything for 15 years.

That, you know, Schrodinger brilliantly anticipated the discovery of DNA and then Joseph Needham and L.L. White and, well, Eric Jansch should be mentioned actually as a precursor of us all, I think.

I mean, Eric Jansch was a great pioneer, a great soul, and he saw very deeply into whole systems, as did Ilya Prigozhin, the Belgian thermodynamicist.

And I think a lot of all of what we're doing comes out of that.

What Prigozhin showed that just brought down the house was that there could be perturbations of physical systems that were unpredictable and that would cause the whole system to actually move to a more ordered state than the initial state.

And this perturbation to higher states of order looks suspiciously like a violation of the supposedly inviolate second law of thermodynamics.

So that looks, you know, like a doorway into an energetic hyperspace, somehow a way around the no free lunch rule.

We'll talk more about this, but these guys, Prigozhin and Jansch anticipated and were in many ways inspirational to what we all are doing.

So then, before I hand this on to Ralph, in terms of the way the weekend will be structured, and to give us something to hang all this on, Rupert mentioned the triadic structure of the dialogues,

and that he would be representing the creative evolutionary impulse, I will represent the divine imagination, the imagination, a la William Blake.

In other words, this domain, this legacy of the human mind in which culture and dream and personal and historical aspiration takes place.

We're seeing all of these things as aspects of the world soul.

You see the notion of morphogenesis, the notion of fields that shape form.

Eventually, this question of how intelligent is the world soul, or how mind-like is the Gaian control system,

is just going to give way to the perception that the answer lies probably to the left of, well, more mind-like than yourself.

Because it is not we who are in a position to define these things.

So, the notion of the world soul is properly vivified and pictured and endowed with qualities and properties that are exponential.

So, I will take that position.

My great concern, as far as these dialogues is concerned, is novelty.

Novelty, the emergence of the unpredictable and the truly new out of the background of the recursive and iterative processes of nature.

How can there be novelty?

And what exactly is it?

And since very clearly we are the cutting edge of its self-expression,

then unraveling this question about what is novelty is going to take us very close to the question of what is human nature?

What are we doing in this phase space?

What is the nature of the turbulence that we necessarily have to describe as ourselves?

Next of all, I'd like to introduce Terence McKenna.

This is Terence, you weren't.

Oh yeah, sorry about that.

Rupert, Terence, I'm Ralph.

So, creation, imagination, my mask is chaos.

So, I was brought up in a field of music, but I was attracted to mathematics early.

And when I was 14 I played in the State Symphony.

After that I started in mathematics, and I became a professor at Berkeley when I was 23.

I had an easy way in mathematics, and the way the system works, the carpet is unrolled in front of you.

You know, you can, you have a few choices, but basically before you even know what's happening,

the carpet is unrolled, and you're down the runnel into whatever you can do that's useful to the system.

In this process, I lost nature.

My interest in anything natural atrophied.

I mean, as a child, I suppose I was interested in everything.

And for this loss, I mean, I don't know the names of trees, for example.

I can smell them, but I can hardly tell them apart.

But there was a great gain, because I love it out there.

I love to be off the planet.

I always did, and to this day I spend very little time on planet Earth.

So, it went on in this way, and by 1967 I was a professor at Princeton.

I had written three books on mathematics that you need a microscope to read.

And I had been studying for a long while chaos, but we didn't call it chaos then,

and we didn't see in it any role in the natural world, or in social transformation,

or in the evolution of consciousness, because we didn't think about anything out there.

You know, we're just working on this.

Personally, my expectation was that anything I invented, or discovered, or assisted in developing,

would become abundantly useful in the human sphere in about a century or so.

So, one day after my third book was done, and I was exhausted, and I looked up,

and all the students were out in the courtyard demonstrating about the Vietnam War,

and to open the university to women students, and so on.

I said, what exactly is going on?

Here, they said, take this.

And so, like many people in that year, or around that time in 1967, my career had a bifurcation.

And I went off the track, and maybe I was, as far as the track was concerned,

I might have been permanently burned out by then.

I mean, morning, noon, and night in the world of mathematical symbols, it's enough, you know.

So, I went off the track with psychedelics, with meditation, but especially with searching,

with trying everything, and eventually I was living in a cave in the Himalayas.

And I got, again, a call to come back.

And when I returned to California, I was standing on a street corner in Santa Cruz, in white pajamas.

And a car stopped. An old friend from a previous lifetime said,

there's somebody you have to meet. Get in the car.

I had nothing to do. It sounded okay.

And in that time, I believed that everything goes perfectly.

You just go along with the flow, as they said.

I didn't know it would be a two-hour drive.

So, I got in the car, there was the two-hour drive to Berkeley,

and I was literally dumped out of the car on Terence's front step.

I never heard of Terence at that time, in 1972.

And I went in, and what happened then, I would still say,

although we've had many wonderful talks and exciting, thrilling, and nutritious times in the meanwhile,

that that was quite a miraculous chat.

Many subjects came up, not psychedelics.

I mean, many subjects came up.

And every subject was the occasion of a discovery of a most miraculous resonance of ideas.

How to grow mushrooms, outer space, I don't know.

Anything you could think of, all passed by in the course of an hour or two.

In this way, we became friends.

And this habit we had, this activity that we do,

I mean, we never go for a hike or something like that.

We sit in the evening and talk, and what happens is synergistic, miraculous, growth, evolutionary.

Well, I found, I did in the course of time return to mathematics,

even doing what I had done previously, chaos, but then chaos had become known.

You see, my estimate of a century was off.

It was a numerical error, one of my worst, one of my best.

Because life is a lot more fun since a hundred years became ten.

See, like it's going faster now.

And I began in my work to think about applications to the problems of the world,

to the evolution of consciousness, to the destruction of the planet, and so on.

And in this revitalization of my work, and eventually the whole field of mathematics,

my conversations with Terence, whereas I think we thought of them as just good fun,

that they did have a really fundamental influence on everything I've done since.

So fun, or I would say fun is insulting, I mean thrilling, because of going to the edge,

going beyond the edge, having company there, finding things which you can bring back,

and they work, and become part of everything you're doing.

And along the way, Terence introduced me to this person he mentioned, Eric Yonch,

who bothered me to write a paper.

And that was the first time that I had tried writing for a journal or a book or something,

the kind of thing that we had talked about, which I always considered to be just a little too far out

to be, you know, condensed onto paper, to show to people who read.

I mean, who are they? They're scholars in universities or something.

So Eric Yonch bothered me to write in this way, and what came out, I think,

although I wrote many in a way more practical, understandable, and valuable things in the meanwhile,

if they're worth anything, they seem to be worth more than that.

Nevertheless, that paper contained as a kind of clairvoyance the very definite prefiguration

of everything that's happened between then, 1975, and now,

which is quite a lot of development on the frontiers of mathematics,

of reconnection between mathematics and the other departments in the university,

most especially the social sciences, the things, therapies, and the understanding of society and history,

and all what might be the most valuable when we come to try to interact with the creation of our future in a conscious way.

Then, a little later, as Rupert said, I was in Terence's living room.

The phone rang, Terence answered, and he says,

we have to go to the bus station to pick up Rupert Sheldrake.

That sounds vaguely familiar. Who's that?

So in the car on the way to the bus station, Terence gave me, as only he can do,

the compressed, into a nutshell, poetic essence of Rupert's book on the hypothesis of formative causation.

And we plucked the lad from the bus station and took him home to the spider web,

and then we found, I felt, another miracle, and that the synergy of two was extended to three.

For me, a totally unexpected new frontier.

I mean, the close relationship of two people is well known,

and the close relationship of three people is known but rare.

And in the time since 1982, now there's seven years of this,

I think we have all been nourished in many ways and inspired by our relationship,

by the reception of information from the

field that takes place without effort in the context of our talks in private in

the living room. So this weekend, as described as an experimental weekend, I

think there are several different experiments, and one is to see if our

trialogue can be exported or shared, and they have already been a few experiments

with dialogue, sharing dialogues in public, some more and some less successful.

Trialogue is the next frontier, because it's very problematic even in private.

And another experiment that we will have to attempt this weekend is the more clear

identification or the self-consciousness of what each of our roles is in the

process that takes place. So my role is chaos, and the reason is that actually

Rupert and Terence have very well expressed their expectation for the assistance of

mathematics in the development of their own thought. You need models, you need

structures, and there is this new language of attractors, which seems to apply not

only to the physical, but also the biological, and not only the biological, but

also the social sciences. So this language, before chaos theory, was already a useful

tool, an important technology for model building, for trying to understand the

complex, the mysterious. But particularly with the advent of chaos theory, providing

us with models for chaotic phenomenon that opens up to view, to the process of the

mathematical assistance of understanding, opens up to this view all of those

processes, which previously were too complex to submit to any kind of

understanding, verbalization, dialogue, beyond some kind of wave of the hand,

exciting, it's a miraculous, this also works, but it does, a kind of a poetic

resonance phenomenon, in which without words, essentially, the idea is transferred

from one individual to another. So it's opened up. These complex phenomenon,

characterized by chaotic, irregular, that is to say, not well ordered in the previous

paradigm, space-time structure. For example, relationships among people, the states and

change of states of society, the whole process of history, the intuitive

experience, subjective experience of relationship, and so on. All of this, what we

always wanted to come under the view of a better understanding. Suddenly, it's

possible, but although it's possible, it's not done. But we can do it, so we can try

to do it. And that means, if this is at all possible, that when these tools would be

applied in the areas of thought, you know, what these two guys are thinking about,

what they have told you about, that the possibility there is to escalate those

areas, presently troubled by a certain vagueness, a certain difficulty in

communicating the definite, what you think about it, to somebody else. The vagueness

which makes possible the condemnation of orthodox scientific community trying to

burn the book, and so on, can sweep that confusion away through the application, the

construction, the provision of the same kind of definite, mathematically trustworthy models. In

these areas, consciousness, creativity, imagination, novelty, evolution, conscious participation in

the creation of a future, well worth living and able to live in a long-term basis on this planet.

We are trying, as the frontier of our own, our experiment then, is not only to somehow reproduce or

share something we have done, but to continue our process over the frontier of our own understanding,

to a new understanding for us, and including you in the process.

One of the things that comes out of chaos theory that is very important, I think, for everybody to

keep in mind, because it is anchored in the bedrock of mathematics, for whatever that's worth, is that

the flutter of the moth's wing can trigger the hurricane. This is not a poetic statement,

this is the fact of the matter within this kind of description of nature. In other words, very small

changes create cascades into where whole states shift and are perturbed, and this is the kind of

situation that we are facing as a society and a planetary species. We have the resources, we have

the knowledge, but what we seem to lack is the will to implement these things, to actually step back from

the abyss. So it has to come through a change of mind, and this new mathematical stuff is telling us

that the intimations of mysticism, the intimation of a possibility of transcendence is all firmly grounded.

We just have to now, it's almost as though mathematics is the extreme cutting edge of human understanding.

How can we quickly export these new understandings that release us from a need for closure,

that free us from an either-or universe? How can we quickly export these models from

the realm of research mathematics into the realm of daily life? Well, I think that the way it's done is

through replication of memes and generation of new ideas. So for me, more and more, the motivation to do

these kinds of groups is, I really see it as politics, almost at the viral level, that we are trying to create

new languages and new concepts, and not only create them, but teach them to you, and we ourselves repeat

them over and over again, and you feed back into this, and then we refine the meme, and then a meme is like a gene.

It can be replicated. It can be replicated. It can be replicated by either being simply repeated,

or by being told to others who then repeat it. And we have not seen language as the playing field of

the creation of the new paradigm, but that's really where it is. We can transform ourselves

no more quickly than we transform our language. And the way we transform our language is by really pushing on

the envelope of the act of communication. You know, the caterpillar in Alice in Wonderland says,

say what you mean, and mean what you say. I do. And this is the thing. A search for clarity in a new domain of language.

Rupert's notions revision causality. That means induct you into an entirely new way in which things happen. And this is, after all,

where we're all spending a lot of our time. The models that Ralph is working with show that the world is

not an engine running down toward a heat death, but a tremendous kaleidoscope of unpredictable, creative,

open-ended activity on every level. I mean, it's really a dazzlingly kaleidoscopic

vision. It's like a, it's like a Sufi hierophany or something, but we're seeing it on the screens of

computer simulations of this mathematical domain that is also the neural domain, that is also the social

domain that is also the eco-planetary domain. This is not error. This is not mysticism. This is the real

facts of how it is, how the world fits together. It fits together through the infusion of its invisible

soul, the mathematical and field-oriented structures that make it into a whole, a cosmos in which we are

living and which we can find our way in if we will open ourselves up to this image, see ourselves as

microcosmic reflections of this macrocosmic order, the soul of human beings as a reflection of the world

soul, and then building of a modern vocabulary to describe and revivify these things and hopefully make

the world into a better place. Well, I think that's the notion. Do either of you want to say anything?

Yes, I can't resist telling the story about the bunny.

I'm going to tell you the story about the bunny, which is the fastest traveling meme in London right now.

The story happened recently in London according to the friend of friend network through which it travels.

Two neighbors on bad terms with each other. One lot of neighbors have a dog. The other have kids who

have a bunny that lives in a hutch in the garden, or the yard as you say in America. Well,

the woman with the dog in one house was on bad terms with the other, and when one evening there was a

scratching at the door, she opened it, and there was her dog with the dead bunny in its mouth, all covered

with mud. She was absolutely horrified. She couldn't bring herself to tell the neighbors what had happened.

It was just too awful. So she panicked. The only thing she could think of was to wash the bunny,

which she did, and then she shampooed it. And then with a hairdryer, she fluffed it all up until it

looked as good as she could make it look. And then when the neighbors had gone to bed, she crept into their

garden and put it back in the hutch. And then she went to bed. In the morning, as she'd expected,

the dreadful moment arrived when there were sobs and cries and sounds of astonishment and agitation

from the garden next door. So, after a while, she went and looked over the fence and said to them,

what's the problem? And they were all looking into the hutch. The kids were shrieking. And she said,

what's the problem? Is the bunny dead? And they said, yes, yes, it died yesterday morning,

and then we buried it in the garden. Thank you all very much for coming. I appreciate it.

So now the stage is set and you know a little bit about these three characters. In a couple of days,

we'll pick up where this tape left off and begin with side A of tape one in the series,

which is titled, Creativity and Imagination. And although I know it's never wise to talk about

something that isn't finished yet, I'm going to put some pressure on myself and let you know about

the revisions I'm making to the Psychedelic Salon website. In case you've never visited our site yet,

there are two ways to get there. One is via matrixmasters.com slash podcasts. Just remember,

you are the master of your own matrix. So it's matrixmasters.com slash podcasts. Or you can go to

www.psychedelicsalon.net. And both addresses will take you to the same page. But what I'm in the process

of doing right now is to rebuild the podcast section in a more friendly format. So before too much longer,

each new podcast will have more detailed program notes, and we'll also have a place for you to

comment on the programs. Starting with this podcast, my program notes are going to be a little more

detailed. For example, I'm going to provide the number of minutes and seconds into each program

when Terrence, Ralph and Rupert each begin a new rap. That way you DJs out there who are looking for samples

of Terrence's words of wisdom can find some of his quotes a little bit easier.

There will be some other features as well, mainly I'm going to provide a better way for you to

contact me via email. Right now I'm getting close to a thousand spam emails a day, and as a result I'm

afraid that my spam filters are not letting some of your comments get through. And I do read all of them

that get into my inbox, and I'm trying my best to reply to them whenever I can. But by having an email

form on the website, I think I can better ensure that your comments, suggestions, and complaints

will have a better chance of getting through. So if you've sent me an email and haven't heard back,

I'm sorry about that. Your comments and ideas are important to me, and so I'll do my best to give you

a clear channel sometime in the near future. Before I go, I want to give my deep appreciation and thanks to

Bruce Dahmer. Without his efforts, this collection might never have seen the light of day. Not only

did he make the initial contact with Ralph about the tapes, he also stayed up with me for three days

and nights helping to rip these cassettes into digital format. And you'll be hearing a lot more from Bruce,

by the way, in a new podcast channel that I'll be kicking off after the first of the year.

Also, my sincere thanks and appreciation go out to Ralph Abraham, who not only participated in these

great conversations, but who also preserved them for all of us to hear. And also, thank you to

Châtel Hayouk for the use of your music here in the Psychedelic Salon. You guys are the greatest.

I really appreciate it. And for now, this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space. Be well, my friends.

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

And with me, at least virtually, is fellow salonor and regular donor, Mark C., whose long-time support

I really appreciate. So, hey, thanks again, Mark. Now, I've got something for you today that you've been

waiting to hear for quite a while now. At least that is if you heard my podcast number 67 that I

posted on the 22nd of December back in 2006. That was when I was podcasting the first of the

trial log tapes that Ralph Abraham loaned to us to use here in the salon. And as I told you in the

introduction to that program, one of the tapes in the series didn't get digitized. And what happened

was that Bruce Dahmer and I were up for several days in a row doing the digitizing of a whole box

of cassette tapes that Ralph had loaned us. And somehow during the night, I mistakenly recorded

tape three in the first series twice and overlooked tape four. What really got to me was the fact that

the missing tape was labeled, at least according to the notes that I made at the time, it was labeled

the mushroom and the world soul. So I shared a sense of disappointment with you when that tape went

missing. Well, here we are not even four years later. And guess what? Bruce and Ralph hunted that tape down

and digitized it for us so we can play it today. I guess it was probably about 20 years ago that I

wrote a little short story titled The Crayon Drawer, which was about setting yourself up for a

disappointment with too high expectations. And guess what? I'm still doing that to myself. I was

sure that this talk would reveal the final secret that I'm searching for or at least be another

interesting talk about mushroom consciousness. But alas, once again, I set myself up for disappointment

because unless I missed it somewhere, the word mushroom didn't even come up once.

In fact, it took them almost 30 minutes to even get to the world soul part. And interestingly,

at least to me, is the fact that they've been talking for almost an hour before they discovered

that they were talking about different concepts. If I heard them right, and I'm going to listen again

with you right now, Terence thought of the world soul as some sort of Gaian entity while Rupert and Ralph

were conceptualizing about a cosmic level entity. Actually, that was one of my favorite parts,

to be honest, because it let me know that even guys as smart as these three can have a breakdown in

communications like I seem to have on a more frequent basis than I like to admit. Like that guy in the

movie says, what we have here is a failure to communicate. And that may just be the biggest problem

we humans have created for ourselves, I guess. The fact that even when we think we know what

somebody is talking about, we probably are only coming up with an approximation of what they're

thinking. But rather than any more of me approximating what was said, why don't we just listen to it

now and see what Ralph Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake, and Terence McKenna had to say about the world soul

way back in 1989. So, would anyone like to say anything? Anything you'd like about what you think's

going on, what you're, what other things you'd like to see examined, what you think about it, anything?

I wanted to ask if the chaos, the whole idea of chaos is there are different stages, different

transformations, different cycles of chaos. You may have been talking about it the whole time I missed it, but

I didn't hear that there were different growth periods and so forth. You mean in the mathematical models

for chaos? Yeah. Is there like stages of being? Is there differentiations? Well, there's the simplest

and intuitively most meaningful descriptor of the mathematical models for chaos is the dimension.

And the dimension is roughly the number of independent actors required in cooperation according to some

game rule, which can produce that particular kind of chaotic behavior. And this number is not an integer,

it's called, so it's called fractal dimension. Then, thus you have a, it starts more or less with one.

Because one is too simple to be chaotic. But some very chaotic systems have fractal dimension 1.1,

and then it goes up to infinity. The largest that's been actually observed is around 600, because

it's extremely difficult to measure this parameter. But still, according to Terence's theory of the novelty

wave, we should know just what form the transition to chaos would take. I mean, wouldn't you expect the

novelty wave to be involved in the transition to chaos? Well, in principle, they have to be the same thing.

You know, you can push the fractal model to the point of reductio ad absurdum. Ralph and I were talking about

this this morning. Everyone's fond of saying that coastlines and forest distributions and all this stuff

are fractal. Well, doesn't this imply that there is then a global fractal? There is a fractal dimension,

which when you feed it into your computer and wrap the data around a sphere, the continents and oceans of

Earth should appear. And in principle, again, to the absurd level, you should be able to then telescope

in on that portion of this data that is wrapped around the sphere that corresponds to Northern California.

And on your computer screen should appear Esalen, hung on the cliffs of Big Sur, with us sitting in a room

inside discussing the matter. That would be the perfect proof of the power of that metaphor.

But obviously, this is not going to happen, or at least I assume that the world is not that quirky,

that there would be many a slip twixt the fork and the tongue before you got that clear a picture. But

this is the, I've had experiences with fractal reality, which proved to me, you know, it's sort of eerie

magical power. An example of a shamanic encounter with the fractal would be, there was a vast beach,

a vast beach in both directions. And I began walking on this beach, and I came to a, the beach was

absolutely empty, and I came to a black stone of a certain size sitting there, and I noticed it. And

then I kept walking on this beach, and after quite a long while, I came upon another black stone,

exactly like the first one, so strikingly like the first one, that I was just, you know, transfixed by

it. And then an idea came to me, which is a way of saying that, and then the Gaian world soul

touched me with information. And I put down the second black rock, and turned back the way I had

come, and counted off my steps to return to the first black rock. It was like 765 steps.

And so then, having reached the first black rock, I continued in that direction, and began counting

my steps again. And in 770 steps, I came to a third black rock. These are the only three black rocks on

this beach. Well, you see, what was happening was nature was operating as a huge multiple parallel

processing computer to solve all the wave equations inside this bay, or in this coastal region, and was then

depositing these rocks. They were like the the residuum of the solution to this equation. Well, being able

to see into nature like that is, to my mind, to see into the workings of the world soul, which is why I tell the story.

Because we've mentioned the world soul here, but it is not part of the loop of creativity, chaos, and imagination. It's somehow,

it's the umbrella, and the subject, about which all that is in orbit.

So if, I just want to see if I have something straight here. If form arises out of chaos,

then can I assume that the same is true for morphogenetic fields? They also are formed out of chaos. And if that is true,

are those morphogenetic fields modulated by the novelty wave, in terms of their density of novelty?

Well, I think that new morphogenetic fields come into being in the indeterminacy of processes in the world.

So in that sense, they're born out of chaos, or they take form in chaos. The thing is, for a new

pattern to arise, you have to have a space for it to arise in. And if everything's full up with patterns,

you know, just like if in a discussion, everything's full up with people talking, like us. And, you know,

there's no space for other things to happen or get in. And I think that creativity depends on

having sufficient indeterminacy around for a new pattern to rise up within it. But the question is,

we come back to the question we've been talking about so much. How does the new pattern rise up within

it? Is it pulled up from above, from the ocean of chaos? Or is it pushed up from below? And, or is it both?

And so, my question also, is the relationship between that process and the novelty wave? Is there some

relationship between... I'm trying to correlate, sort of, all three of yours. All right. Well, the thing is,

that the novelty wave, as I used to understand Terence's idea, was that there was this novelty wave

that was principally manifested in human history. I now realize that he's claiming that the novelty

wave is a cosmic principle of the first magnitude, that the entire universe... it implies the expansion

of the universe is not just a smooth expansion, but the universe itself is expanding at the rate of

the novelty wave, which could be empirically tested by looking at red shifts in galaxies from day to day

to see whether they're fluctuating according to the novelty wave. We've just worked out a series of

experimental tests of the novelty wave, of which this is one. And if that's the case, then all novelty,

all new form, would come into being in accordance with this novelty wave. And the periods when the

novelty wave was plunging into novelty, as Terence puts it, you'd get a lot of new patterns and forms

emerging. At other periods, you'd get fewer. But this wouldn't tell us where the fields or patterns

came from. The novelty wave only tells you the rate at which novelty appears in the world. It doesn't

tell you what the novelty is. So neither morphogenetic, nor morphic resonance, nor the novelty wave

theory actually get to grips with the problem of creation, how a new thing comes. Terence just says

there'll be a lot more new things happening.

None of them are deterministic.

No. I've got this point of view down to a sort of an aphorism, which you can take to management,

which is, if you want the world to work for you, you have to know how the world works.

Amen.

That's all.

Really a stupid question.

Will you believe in randomness?

No. I believe it's perhaps theoretically possible to design an algorithm,

but I don't know how you would test it. It seems like the randomness is the least likely

thing. Nowhere in nature do you encounter it. It's only necessary. See, I think the probability,

the probabilistic view of nature is part of what's going to have to go down in flames. And all these

smooth curves that have been assumed to describe processes never actually examined are going to

have to give way to novelty waves of some sort. Maybe not my novelty waves, but somebody's novelty waves. And

that the fine-grained structure of the universe is very highly complexified and that averaging and

sampling techniques and all these things smooth that out and then give a false picture.

that this is part of the revolution, to get rid of the notion of probabilistic descriptions of nature.

I don't agree with that at all.

Oh, you don't? Well, have it go at it.

Well, I don't know. Just briefly, I would say that the...

I mean, it touches on one of our basic themes, actually,

because if there's no randomness in the universe, then what do we mean by chaos?

Yes, well, chaos...

Ironically, in the chaos revolution, as a technical jargon of mathematics,

I mean, on level three, we're talking about mathematical models

which share in whatever is the intuitive meaning of chaos.

So originally, when these models arose, they were called strange attractors.

Then we saw that they were ubiquitous in nature, so they couldn't be so strange.

So there was a looking for the word, and somebody suggested they be called chaotic attractors.

There was objection on these grounds that actually these models were the opposite of what chaos meant,

because they have order.

So, as I understand the question, I think that the question refers to random or chaotic behavior,

which is outside the realm of these mathematical models for chaos, which are highly ordered, right?

Like, after the chaotic attractors of level three are done doing their job of mimicking nature,

is there a little left, nothing left, or a lot left?

Is that the question?

Yes.

And, as I answered privately already to this question, I think that there is, beyond our can, you see, there's a lot left.

And we don't know if in the future that models for this lot left would emerge or not.

But since our evolution is an infinite process, I wouldn't say it's endless,

but if given sufficient time to continue our present evolutionary path with science, mathematics, computers, and so on,

I should think that the amount of so-called random, that in the sense of our ignorance of any structure in it,

behavior in the universe would be on a sharp decline.

Nevertheless, there is space for novelty in the world of these mathematical models for chaos.

There is novelty, mutation, and discovery of totally new patterns.

That's still in the picture, even if there was nothing really random left.

I don't think that we need random mutations in order to have the evolution of new forms and so on.

No, but what we do need is a universe that's sufficiently open and undetermined for new forms to have space to arise in.

Because if all of nature's already geared up to follow predetermined waves, patterns, forms, etc.,

that are all in Terence's computer or somebody else's,

then there's not much space left for something truly new that hasn't already been built into these waves to emerge.

And my view would be that the novelty wave is a concept of the quality of time,

but as time goes on, as the universe develops, the complexity of the novelty wave might be developing too,

but not according to some simple algorithm, but in a way that's truly unforeseeable.

Well, this arises out of its resonances with its own past.

It's in the realm of the resonances that this very difficult-to-quantify complexification accumulates.

I suppose my problem is that I think that the phenomenon comes first, the spontaneity and the creativity,

and all these are attempts to construct sort of string and ceiling wax models of what's going on,

and these models will always be inadequate to encompass the phenomena.

Yes, all models are provisional, that that's what preserves the open-endedness of the thing.

The great intellectual emotional change that will accompany the paradigm shift is people will be able to accept not having a full explanation,

because they will understand that the depth of the mystery exceeds explanation,

that it's always provisional, it's always string and ceiling wax.

The novelist Don DeLillo introduced in one of his novels the concept of what he called the value-dark dimension.

And what this means is that part of reality about which nothing can be known.

Now chaos is in there somewhere, but much of this value-dark dimension in principle could be known.

And so then the task of human becoming and of mathematics and these intellectual tools is to cast light into the value-dark dimension.

And that gives a great sense of discovery and meaning to life, but it's not reducible.

Eventually there is a domain in the value-dark dimension that is value-dark in principle.

The physical analogy that we have for this is a black hole, which, you know, just no information leaves it.

The value-dark dimension is like this.

We have to build into our theories these kinds of trap doors and escape holes so that we don't get trapped inside another illusion.

You see, I was thinking before Terence started speaking just now that this attempt to tame chaos by having mathematical models of it is the modern version on a rather abstract plane of the old myth of Marduk and Tiamat,

the solar hero conquering the sea monster, the dragon of the deep, the serpent of chaos.

And then you get Horus, the Egyptian god, who has a hawk form, a flying mind, an all-seeing eye, the dollar bill, the eye on the dollar bill is like the eye of Horus, the single all-seeing eye, the sun.

This solar principle slaying the hippopotamus, which is the Egyptian equivalent of the sea monster.

Then you get St. George and the dragon, which is the Christianized version of the same story, where St. George is a solar hero, shining light, piercing the darkness of the dragon.

Then Terence went on to say how there's this darkness of all these processes going on, but the light of reason could come in and through equations,

fractal, mathematics, et cetera, model them and in some sense gain a control or prediction over these powers of darkness and the dark unknowable powers or unknown powers.

And then Ralph said, we can model some of these chaotic processes.

That's right.

And because there might be a large, a small, medium or large residuum, but let's assume it's large, then we could build models and model some of the others.

And then, from there, it's easy to slide in this very familiar creode to the statement, well, in principle, it should be possible to model it all.

It's the modern version of Laplace.

It's the modern version of the idea that somehow, in principle, the whole of reality could be engulfed within some kind of mathematical model.

In other words, that the world's soul is in some sense subject to the supreme mathematical mind, which is superior and transcendent of and prior to the whole natural world.

So it involves, it slides over into a kind of metaphysics that's very traditional for mathematicians, you see.

We've got to have a talk about this, Rupert, and we've got to have a talk about it right now.

Because you have, no matter how many times I try to correct this, you persist in a bad habit, a deep rumble.

And this habit is an arcane form of mathematical anxiety.

And it's based on the conception of the mathematical, I mean, it hasn't advanced past the time of Plato.

Because your objection to models for chaos is based on inappropriate view of this Platonic ideals.

There are too many of them there, too complex, and they don't exist yet.

You see, the models are coming into existence by a process of evolution and discovery.

And I don't think it would be at all appropriate to suggest that Plato or anyone before the invention of the computer could even imagine these, you see.

So it's part of the evolution, the evolutionary, the creative aspect of the world's soul, as a matter of fact,

which, for sake of discussion, we could think of now in only two layers.

One layer where there's the world of matter and energy, where there are the discovery of new fields in evolution,

and the other in some kind of mental level, including verbal description and mathematical models as an extension of language and so on.

Now, obviously, these two levels are in a process of co-evolution.

And if there is Gaian unconscious supplying new forms out of chaos for employment as the raw material of evolution,

then it's either supplying this raw material to both of these levels, the mental and physical,

or there are two levels to the Gaian unconscious, one for each.

But probably there's a connection in, as it were, a triangle.

And the idea that whatever we could conceive, perceive, grok, whatever comes into consciousness,

could have a mathematical model is not to conflict with creation because it's not necessary to assume that mathematical models already exist,

that all are there.

There is the same infinite possibility of discovery, invention, and novelty in this mental plane as in the material.

Why not? What's the difference?

Your bad habit, I think, is to be thinking that one or the other of these has to have precedence over the other,

that either the mathematical model is abstracted from the material observation,

or the material world concretizes, condenses around a mathematical model.

This is unnecessary. It's just a process of co-evolution,

sometimes the left foot ahead and sometimes the right. Why not?

Fine. That's great. Wonderful explanation.

But, you see, I think that whereas you're the mathematician and yet not a Platonist,

Terence is, I think, much more platonic.

I think he thinks of the novelty wave as coming from some kind of higher realm

and actually somehow underlying the kind of behind-the-scenes mechanics of the cosmos.

Do you think like that?

Yes, I do think like that, but I'm not sure whether it's simply a mathematical description

of an enzymatically mediated process on the surface of the earth,

or, as you indicated, can be raised to the level of a higher principle.

It is determined, but only in this fairly weak way that sets the schedule of events,

but doesn't announce what the acts will be.

But I'm troubled by my Platonism.

I mean, I know enough of modern philosophy to realize that there are certain naive aspects of it

that haunt it, that that's why I try to follow Whitehead, because I think he was a Platonist,

he was a superb mathematician, and he also was haunted by the difficulties inherent in a strict platonic interpretation.

I don't want these forms to be eternal.

I want them to somehow arise internally out of the ongoing process of the world.

But I haven't quite figured out how to get these ducks all in a row.

Well, Whitehead preceded the computer revolution.

True.

And at that time there might have been some question as to the pre-existence of all mathematical forms,

yes or no.

By now, there's no question.

Well, but Ralph, I don't quite understand this.

I've heard you argue in the past that mathematics might be culture-bound,

that we might visit a distant planet and discover people practicing incommensurate mathematics

that nowhere came tangential to our own.

I never said these things.

Well, it is an interesting idea, but it pretty much shoots the world's soul out of the water,

because then you just say, well, you know, this mathematical truth is not truth at all, it's simply local style.

I want the world to know that it's one, two, three here, and it's one, two, three everywhere.

However, that the mathematics is a world of its own.

It's a landscape with hills and valleys, and much of this terrain has not been explored.

Some features have been identified by various travelers who came back and gave their reports.

The mathematical equivalent of Terence McKenna is maybe Whitehead, I don't know.

We have, then, a process of discovery of the already existing landscape,

and also the modification and evolution of that landscape through the interaction of the human consciousness.

So, although, one, two, three here, and one, two, three everywhere,

there is still, we could land on a foreign planet and find that they had explored, excavated, and modified

a region of the mathematical landscape never visited by us.

Well, so little of mathematics has to do with numbers.

You know, I mean, with the integers, there are all these, I mean, I think once you figure out what mathematics is,

every single one of us could invent a new branch of it.

It's basically paying attention to the rules operating among defined sets of objects.

Well, I don't believe that mathematics is the result of creative activity on part of people, that it's been invented.

It hangs together with an integrity which is beyond the capability of the short history of human consciousness.

Does it hang together, or is it an archipelago of islands?

The...

The people who are doing advanced number theory have nothing whatsoever to say to the super-algebrists,

who don't have anything to say to the fractal people.

No, it's absolutely a single landscape, and all is tied together in complete integrity, and...

A wild-eyed claim.

Yes.

And in principle, argument.

Well, it doesn't matter too much.

These are just impressions of travelers having returned from a distant land.

I think, I mean, what's come up here is...

I think it's time for us to face this front on, the soul of the world.

We have seen in our travels, and we know from reports in the Library of Congress,

that other people have seen in their travels different parts of the world's soul.

Mathematics here, sensory experience there, the Babylonian history here,

the chaos of the unconscious providing the novelty, and so on.

How do we put it all together?

What is the precedence of the existence of this thing and the human imagination?

Now, as far as mathematics is concerned, we have to speak about this another time.

Animal mathematics.

I mean, animal...

Mathematics has been extensively traveled, mapped, experienced, and used in the biological world long before human species evolved.

And I think that the location of this mathematics is a file drawer in the guy in mind, in the cosmic mind.

So, just to include this discussion on the origin of mathematics in the all and everything,

I think we've come, repeatedly, come to this juncture and turned aside.

What is the relationship between the evolution of the world's soul?

Does it evolve? Was it there before the Big Bang?

What does it have to do with our perception, exploration, excavation, archeology of knowledge?

What is only what exists, what is perceived by our species, what comes into our consciousness?

I mean, what is it, the relationship between our archeology of knowledge and the actual existence of the soul of the world?

There.

What is it?

So, what is it, Rupert?

You must have a notion since the past is your bailiwick.

Well, I mean, I can only say that, you know, I have a few...

I think one can deduce several things about the soul of the world.

One thing that I deduce is that since the world we live in, as we experience it,

is full of colors, qualities, sounds, smells.

All the things that reach us through the senses are experience, all based on the senses, and on sensory qualities.

The procedure of science since the 17th century has been to ignore sensory qualities

and take only what were called the primary qualities of substances, namely their weight, position, momentum, etc.

Things which could be assigned numbers and treated mathematically.

And so the mathematical process from then on, I won't say right up to the present,

because these computer graphics are now colored.

But, I mean, that's an attempt to get something a little bit back of sensuous reality into the thing.

But this abstraction left behind all the qualities, the smells, the colors.

And we're then led to believe that qualities, my seeing red, your hearing middle C, you know, the smell of a rose,

or the smell of lavender, that these qualities are somehow just subjective, just in our minds.

And then, but the reality outside us is objective and mathematical and doesn't possess qualities.

They're inherent only in the mind of the subjective observer.

It seems to me that the world soul's imagination is going to work not just in terms of numbers, mathematics, geometry, and form,

but also in terms of qualities.

I think that the world soul will have, as its imaginative activity and as its sensual experience, a world of qualities.

It will have colors, smells, vastly more colors, vastly more smells and tastes than we've ever experienced.

All possible tastes and smells that exist in the world would, in some sense, be present as felt subjective,

if you like, subjectively felt realities within the world soul, as the experience of quality.

So, I think, although mathematical aspect is one aspect of the world soul,

this world of qualities forms and the kinds of things we directly experience through our senses as we walk around and talk to people,

and the kinds of things we experience in our dreams, a colored world of changing forms and sounds as well.

That the world soul will, in some sense, be a world soul of qualities as well as quantities.

I think it's heaven.

No, it's not heaven. It's the soul of the world.

It's the soul of the world. It's the soul of the world contains not only everything that's in the world,

but also the imagination that has given rise to all things in the world,

and that is continually active and giving rise to new forms and possibilities.

Does that mean that the soul of the world is not evolving, but already there?

The soul of the world is continuous...

Now, let me take another view of the soul of the world, another way of looking at it,

this way much more conventional, because I think we can bring them together.

According to Big Bang Cosmology, what they're trying to do is to deduce how there can be a unified field in nature.

This was Einstein's goal, to find a unified field theory.

How could there be a theory which would give us the idea of a single cosmic field,

a primal field of the whole universe, the primal field,

from which the electromagnetic, the gravitational, the quantum matter fields,

and all other fields and phenomena of nature in some sense come forth?

Well, Einstein couldn't find that because he was just trying to do it by pure mathematics,

or by applied mathematics.

What's happened with the Big Bang theories?

Instead of saying we've got to treat it as if it's an eternal problem,

they say, look, let's crank the whole universe back in our calculations,

right back to the very beginning.

The temperature rockets up to billions of degrees centigrade.

Everything changes.

Things don't behave the same way they're behaving here.

And things become more symmetrical.

And crank it further and further until you arrive at a state of primal unity,

where nothing is differentiated at all.

The electromagnetic and the gravitational fields are not separate from the field of the world.

The world field, the primal field, which is supposed to be the base of all the fields of nature.

And according to super-string theory, this field has nine dimensions of space and one of time.

As the universe develops and expands, symmetries break,

and the fields of nature, as it were, crystallize out within it.

All the forms and patterns of things that develop in the world have their own organizing fields

that are all derived in time from the world field,

which still remains as the all-encompassing field of the world.

All these fields remain within it.

It still is there as the field from which they arise and in which they develop.

And so the world field, since it contains everything within it,

has a kind of evolutionary quality because it embraces everything that's happening.

Yet it is at the same time the source of all the fields of nature.

This is the conception towards which modern cosmological speculation is pointing.

If within this vision of the developing world field, giving rise to fields within it,

very similar to Plotinus' idea of the world soul, giving rise to all the souls of nature within it,

If the evolutionary process is ongoing, then memory is inherent within this field.

The field has a memory of everything that's happened within it already.

And this memory would also work back on the imagination of the world soul,

because the imagination depends on memory.

And so it would be an imagination with an ongoing memory in a world whose physical body, as it were,

were shaped by the habits that nature had built up within this world field or world soul.

And so far this conception that I've now been talking about, growing out of standard contemporary science,

still has this kind of black and white mathematical abstract quality to it.

And what I was trying to do before was to say that any reasonable conception of the world soul

would have to have not just this kind of mathematical scaffolding,

but also something that was full of a sensuous reality of colors, tastes, smells and qualities.

Well, don't you think the way to move toward that?

I mean, if we take... why do we use the word soul for the world soul?

It's because we sense an analogy with the soul of the individual as we imagine it.

Well, then if you begin to carry forward that analogy, I think you get into some fairly astonishing places.

If the soul of the individual is a non-localizable, non-material essence that survives death,

that is somehow like a higher dimensional form that is erected through the process of life,

and then the body dies and the soul is released into the higher dimension that is its source and home,

which is, I take it, the basic notion of a soul.

In another context, I have thought, not thinking about the world soul, but the individual soul,

that the seizure of DMT is very... we've talked about this, how it is almost like a simulacrum of death itself,

and that you seem to see into an ecology of souls.

Well, then, talking about the world soul, is the world soul the invisible, unseen, organismic structure

that has been erected through the evolution of Pisces on this plane?

And is, in fact, the destiny of the world soul, uncomplete until it severs itself from the matrix that created it?

And that, actually, all this global crisis and inner searching and turmoil is the dawning realization

that what we are facing is actually the death of the world soul,

and that the death of the world soul means its severance from the dimensions which allowed it to accrete and form,

and that when this happens, this is what all these projections which sail off the ends of their various graphs are about,

that what we are witnessing is the death agony of the world soul.

Well, I must say I'm feeling very uncomfortable with this discussion,

and I'm astonished to think that I would be sitting here thinking of you guys, of all people,

you know, to accuse you of thinking small.

But I find the whole idea extremely claustrophobic,

that the world soul is going to be confined in a space-time continuum of four or ten dimensions,

and that the world soul had no chance of existence until the Big Bang provided matter and energy or something.

I just can't buy this, Rupert, your suggestion that the world sensorium even should come into existence only after a Big Bang.

Even though I'm doubtful about the Big Bang, suppose so,

I still think the whole idea of soul is to suggest the aspiration of eternity for consciousness or unconsciousness,

or some ultimate essence of the life experience.

It could be that solar systems come and go, universes come and go,

and the soul, as it were, incarnated in one universe after another.

After a Big Bang, there may follow a collapse to an end, followed by another Big Bang.

I don't know, but the idea of the world soul coming to an end once and for all because of a nuclear winter or something,

I think this is very confining.

Well, no, I'm not suggesting that it ceases to exist.

I'm suggesting that it is liberated into another dimension.

Yes.

I mean, yours is the Hindu model and Terence's is the Christian.

No, it's not.

I'm talking about an existence of the world soul which is beyond space and time.

No, the idea is that the soul, it comes from this realm beyond space and time.

It's incarnated in a body, but its true destiny is not in the body and it doesn't,

and then the body dies, it's reborn in another.

But always it remains in touch with Brahman or the source from which it's come,

which is far greater than any of its embodied existences can be.

So why are we rejecting this, or at least this magnitude of conception of the thing?

Well, I'm just saying this is one possible traditional model,

is that the universe would die and it would be reborn

and it would be a reincarnation of the previous cosmic soul.

But I was just...

contrasting it with Terence's model, which is the Christian eschatological model, which

takes the... you'd have the death of the universe, the universe would reach a culmination.

In the words of St. Paul, the whole creation groaneth in travail.

The idea was that the whole creation, the entire universe, was groaning in travail for a new

order to be born.

Something new would be born out of not just humanity, not just this earth, but the whole

cosmos.

Out of bios would become some totally new order of existence.

Now that would correspond roughly to your notion of the world soul, in some sense, its embodiment

coming to an end.

And presumably you'd mean not just on this earth, but in the entire cosmos, a kind of dissolution

of the cosmos.

Yes, in its most extreme version.

Yes.

Well, that's the most extreme version of Judeo-Christian eschatological thought.

You know, it's the...

It's the...

Well, I am actually... it is the most extreme, and out of devotion to my theory, I give assent

to it.

I...

My personal notion of the world soul is not as metaphysical, I think, as either of you.

You really can... you really are into it as God Almighty.

Oh, no, I'm not.

And I'm into it as sort of the largest, smartest creature imaginable.

But it isn't the thing which hung the stars like lamps in heaven.

It isn't the... the world soul is not the force which spins the galaxies on their axis.

The world soul is something that has arisen out of biology.

It's an organism.

It is as much within the universe of space and time...

Well, I don't want to say that, no.

But it is within the universe of space and time in some sense.

It didn't make the universe.

No.

It's an inhabitant of it, but on a scale that we... that make us mere atoms in its... within

its form.

That's my notion of the world soul.

So I shy away from...

Well, I'm roughly...

Rejecting pet rocks, huh?

Well, no.

As a Whiteheadian, I also have to agree that, you know, consciousness penetrates down into the

crystalline and metallic and like that.

But the quality of the consciousness, this aboriginal consciousness, what is it?

How recognizable would it be to us as consciousness?

I'm not sure.

Also I'm not as interested as I think you are, Rupert, in always dematerializing it.

For instance, yesterday you gave all these wonderful examples of processes on the Earth

which could be physical processes going on in the Gaian mind, the tides, the atmosphere,

so forth.

Magma.

But then you said, but actually it's more elegant to think of it as somehow superseding matter.

But I think, you know, that planets are living forms, and that mind is a projective force,

and that, you know, for instance, it would be possible to convince me that human history

was a message beamed to Earth from Jupiter, and that Jupiter, with its metallic ices and

exotic chemistry is actually a kind of thinking organism that reaches out to try and impact

in other chemical regimes and energetic regimes where it can image itself in the form of a message.

So I like to create complex structures out of available material that sort of stay away

from this God-almighty thing, because the whole...

Fortunately, Jupiter's not the only one.

Yes.

Well, the solar system is very interesting, but what's going on beyond the solar system in terms

of the novelty wave, universal constants, morphogenetic fields, and all that?

I think that's where all our theories, at least Rupert and mine, become basically just chit-chat.

Our models seem to go out and...

Well, I think that we're all involved in a kind of compromise.

What we need here is a CODA group or something, that we have to reprogram ourselves out of this

childhood conditioning in the Hindu, the Judeo-Christian, and the scientist.

And whereas our work, thought, talk, and relationship are very much inspired by our own travels to

the spirit, where we have seen, felt, and so on, the largeness of the world soul, when we discuss

or try to bring down into language or relate to ordinary reality, then I think there's a kind

of tendency to conservatism, which ends up kind of looking like anthropocentrism, where we have

identified too much, we have compressed what we have experienced on a grander scale, down

to the human scale, and related too much to human consciousness and human history.

Well, but when I look at human history, I see the accumulation of a sense of urgency long

before anybody started worrying about ecocide and all that.

I mean, it's almost as though the world soul is a thing which wants to live and senses instability

and is trying to build a lifeboat out of the clumsy material of protoplasm.

It has an infection.

Yes.

Well, or it could be solar instability.

This is my fear, that it actually senses the finite life of the sun, and through the crude

medium of protoplasm, it's trying to build a lifeboat for itself to cross to another star.

But how in the world can you cross to another star when the only material available is protoplasm?

Well, it takes 50 million years, but there are strategies, and it has to do with these epigenetic

languages, and then a creature which deals with matter and abstracts and analyzes, and

you get technique, but it's all an enzymatically mediated process.

It's a plan in the mind of the world soul to survive.

It seeks to live.

Isn't there in our experience of the Logos, the Divine, and so on, the feeling that we

have gone beyond the physical plane of protoplasm and so on?

Is this not already a kind of star travel?

Yes, but then, you know, why is there this increasing urgency, century after century?

It's been going on now for 15,000 years, increasing anxiety, increasing the following of Creodes, increasingly

irrational, unless there's a real problem with the stability of the environment.

And man, if there is a real problem with the stability of the environment, the last 10 years

of human history make perfect sense.

It was an evacuation.

It was a frantic project to find an answer, and that's why these things were allowed to

tear loose, which poisoned the oceans and stripped the continent.

The world soul, I think, is in communication with us in the culminating moment of human history,

that this is all being scripted for a purpose and toward an end, unglimpsed by us, but tied

up with the survival of everything.

Do you mean the Gaian soul or the cosmic soul?

Well, the world soul is the Gaian soul to my mind.

Oh!

Well, to my mind, it's the cosmic soul as well, because the anima mundi is the soul of the

universe.

Well, see, that's too large a concept, because the earth, its problems, the star...

You can easily write it up here.

Cosmos, Gaia, Terence, no problem.

No, we have a local problem.

It's all confined within about 12 light hours of this star.

I guess I'm looking for something more than this annealment of perspectives and backgrounds

and lore and so forth into some sort of, uh, I like the festival talk.

I mean, that made a lot of sense to me, uh, as, uh, as a mechanism, or, uh, well, I'll just

look back into it.

But as a, as a way of, uh, doing something, of holding the hand of this, this dying structure,

a little hospice on the, on this, uh, going away of this, this hard time.

And is there something that you see that, that we can be doing to mediating this transition

so that it's less dangerous to the, to the planet?

Well, I think you have to act as though it all rests on our hands, I mean, responsible

activity and that sort of thing, but not in a context of hopelessness, which is usually

how that's put.

You know, the response that my wife and I have is to run a botanical garden and preserve plants.

Somebody else, you know, gets people to get off infant formula and return to breastfeeding.

All of these things, what you have to do is, you know, it's an old cliche, but act locally,

globally.

But I think it's fine that we're all on track, everything is unraveling at the proper speed,

we just need to, uh, just try a little bit harder, like the Grateful Dead says, you know,

just a little bit more, just a little bit more.

Well, let me, uh, try and say something about that too.

I think that if we're trying, there are several steps in this.

One is that the recognition that nature's alive rather than just a machine raises the question

we've been discussing.

If it's alive, if it's animate, what sort of thing might the world soul be?

Nature, on this model, not just having a body, which the materialists recognize, but a body

and soul, like we have, um, a living body.

Um, then there's also the question of how consciousness fits in.

These are all just thinking about the larger problem.

But when it comes to seeing the world as alive, if we see the planet as alive, then it means

we can change our relationship to it.

And, um, since most traditional peoples in the past and our own ancestors saw the planet as alive,

there are many traditional ways of relating to the ongoing larger life of the cosmos.

One such way is through the observant observation of seasonal festivals.

And I thought that Ralph's description last night of how in many parts of the world there's

this festival where you get a kind of chaos, a reenactment of chaos, and then the conquest

of chaos by the forces of light and order.

Um, it was a very good summary of these principles.

We actually still have the traditional seasonal festivals.

And actually in America, Halloween is the main time at which there's the return of the chaos.

And Halloween is All Hallows' Eve, the eve of the great festival of the dead, November

the first and the second, All Saints' Day and All Souls' Day, and the old Celtic festival

of the dead, which was the beginning of the British New Year.

And at that crack in time, the dead became present.

There was a kind of crack when the past and the chaos and the confusion of times took place.

And there was a reversal of the social order where people, as in these chaos festivals,

kids, servants, and people in inferior positions can take a dominating role and demand what they

want of others, and the servants become the masters.

And if the masters don't play, then the result is chaos.

The modern American version of this entire cosmic drama is, appropriately enough, trick

or treat.

And, you know, the, um, so I think we still have these.

We've got the mid-winter festival in Christmas.

We've got the spring festival in Easter.

The next great festival is September the 29th, the feast of St. Michael and All Angels, the

angel festival.

Um, so there are a whole traditional set of seasonal festivals which, I think, connect

us to the larger life of the cosmos.

And I personally find observing these a great help in, in locating not just my life but our

collective life in the cosmos.

Um, so that's one way.

Another way, I think, is, since we can't relate to the outer regions of the cosmos very

much except by looking at distant stars or galaxies through telescopes, we can relate

to the earth.

And I think that if we recognize the sacred places of the earth, which are places where

people, they're places with stories, places where people have felt a connection of where

they are in that place, uh, to larger dimensions of reality.

Uplinks.

Pardon?

I'm sorry.

Uplinks.

Uplinks, or downlinks in some cases, because some places like caves connect one to the heart

of the earth.

And these, these sort of portals to upper or lower realms of, uh, reality, uh, these sacred

places are traditionally observed in all societies.

People traditionally go there.

I mean, medieval churches, cathedrals, temples, Stonehenge, megalithic monuments, et cetera.

There's many examples around the world.

These were traditionally places of pilgrimage.

And pilgrimage still goes on in many parts of the world.

What it's been replaced with in Protestant, the Protestant north, which suppressed pilgrimage,

is tourism.

Tourism's a kind of secularized form of pilgrimage.

And I think the biggest paradigm change we could have, which would really begin to relate

us back to the earth, is to turn tourism back into pilgrimage.

So that when you go to a place, um, when you go to a foreign country, when you go to

the pyramids, the great cathedral of Chartres, you know, the national parks of America, Yellowstone,

Yosemite, and so on.

And so on.

That these are sacred places.

That national parks are America's sacred groves and high places.

And, um, that by turning both in our own lives and helping to promote a mass movement, whereby

tourism's turned back into pilgrimage.

We'd have hundreds of millions of people are going around the world as tourists.

If they became pilgrims, the whole world would be linked up at the sacred place of the earth

in a kind of global network.

So, I think that a sense of recognizing the life of the earth, recognizing the soul of the

world, the animating principle of nature, uh, one of the ways we can really relate collectively

is through sacred places and sacred times.

I think that's excellent.

And I think that ties in and lays over you throughout the old song about acting locally and thinking

globally.

But I think this linking process that's rapidly changing now has redefined the locality to

one of global.

It's a global locality.

We can be everywhere at once on it.

Well, and the other thing you can do that should probably be mentioned is, uh, you can notice

who your affinity group is.

The thing really is a meme competition, a meme war.

And we need to clarify communications among ourselves and then replicate these memes and put

them out there because they are like viruses infecting the body of dominator society and

competing within the body politic for attention, loyalty, and energy.

If we don't put the meme out into the environment to compete, then it never is an issue.

Whether it can gain, uh, ascendancy or not.

So I hope that get-togethers like this empower every person who attends to be, to become then

a transmitter for the new meme.

Because, you know, by spreading rhythm around you, uh, get a dance, basically.

What I've been involved with is the, uh, is carrying that one step further, um, plans for

seizing the media for broadcasting means, ideas, and so on.

The overall theory is that the, uh, problems can be solved.

They're not easy to solve.

Like, uh, the crack problem could be solved.

It may not be easy, but certainly it won't be solved if nobody's working on it.

So, at the root of many problems is the denial of the problem.

And the fact that we maintain unconsciousness of the problem.

So, in, uh, many different therapeutic strategies, we have the idea that if something can be brought

into consciousness, then the problems will be found.

It might work out.

Certainly not without that.

So that would be the first step.

And over these past five years or so, I've been, um, little by little, working out and publishing

plans for putting consciousness of these problems into the media.

For example, the, the political weather report is an idea that within the ordinary weather report

there would be some graphics showing the current prevalence of international terrorism

and, uh, cutting down the jungles and the pollutants and, and things like that.

Even this morning, we had a new thought in this direction of, uh, an intervention through, uh, the daily news.

And that would be the publication of the recent variation of the speed of light

as measured by astronomers aiming their instruments at nearby galaxies,

or the red shift, just sharing this information with people.

So, uh, a problem as a species is to, uh, the, the habit of not denial and repression of problems.

I mean, it is difficult.

Nobody wants to talk about, uh, the, uh, population explosion, for example, every day.

And if we don't talk about it every day, I don't see what can be done about it.

So, uh, another suggestion along this festival line, but a little different, is the Sabbath idea,

that with a certain frequency one day would be set aside for just thinking about things,

that this would be a crack in the shell, a window through which, uh, denial could be transcended

by some kind of group of practice that we could, uh, develop within the families, as it were.

And, uh, particularly important, as somebody has pointed out recently,

to pay more attention to long trends, long-time slow-developing trends,

because our minds are programmed to focus on, uh, uh, uh, short-term trends, emergencies.

Uh, emergencies that are just over the horizon.

So we're always planning and thinking about doing something that's right upon us.

And the trouble is that the really serious problems that are going to kill us are developing bit by bit by bit.

Somebody has a wonderful analogy to this.

He tells, he tells me, I believe this is true,

that if you put a bullfrog in a pail of water and set it on the stove,

the bullfrog will sit in there until he dies.

And afterwards, you can boil that bullfrog,

because increase in the heat is at no point sufficiently rapid

to cause him to sense the emergency and to jump out.

And so he sits in there thinking, no problem, you know,

it's just getting a little warm.

Well, we're in the same condition as that bullfrog.

We're sitting in that pail of water, and goddammit, it's going to boil us.

Can't clean.

Well, I guess I wanted to slide in a plug for the thing that houses consciousness,

and that we seem to be overlooking the innovative mobility of the nervous system.

And I'm wondering if the chaos that's going on on the planet now

isn't forcing this innovative nervous system into some sort of evolutionary funnel,

and that it will not be technology or all of that that takes us from the planet,

but something that rises out of potential.

Well, certainly the stress in the environment of all kinds,

chemical and behavioral and so forth,

is creating a tremendously intensified rate of mutation.

I mean, it would be nice to believe that it isn't a flight out to the stars

through some biomechanical Faustian deal that we cut,

but that we could just go into the imagination.

that the imagination could be found to be somehow a place as real as any other place,

and then we could just migrate there.

I mean, this is the science fiction fantasy of hyperspace,

a certain brand of hyperspace that I find very attractive,

and that I've actually seen things which lead me to believe this may not be impossible,

but it's not something that lies developmentally directly ahead out of orthodox science.

It's magic, you know, to open a doorway into the surface of a planet 10,000 light years away,

and just step through and take our civilization and everything with us.

This would be a neat solution.

I wonder if we'll be so lucky, but I hope so.

And that would be the body.

I see that this portal is somehow in the body,

that the psychedelics and the way in which it's the doorway to that kind of an escape

is somehow in the perfection of the body.

So that's good.

That's a good point.

I'm not sure I know how to ask my question.

I think I'm directing it to you.

If you comment on the relationship between what you're talking about

and what's happening to the state of formal or traditional religion in the world today,

I don't see with people elsewhere that there is really a reaching for things to replace,

religion that they don't believe anymore.

Well, I mean, I think it depends where you are and whereabouts you see the process going.

I think there's a widespread awareness there's a problem with the environment,

and there's a widespread awareness that this problem's got a great deal to do with us

and the way our social and economic systems are set up.

In other words, we're polluting, spoiling, raping, defoliating, et cetera, of the world.

I think my own reading of the mood is that it's a kind of Jonian phase.

I don't know whether on Terence's novelty wave we're entering a resonance with the period of St John the Baptist,

but St John the Baptist's role was to say to people,

repent for the end is at hand.

Well, Terence is the local representative of the St John the Baptist principle.

And you see, he proves to us all the ends at hand by his novelty wave,

and then he engages us all in discussing what'll happen at 2012 when the novelty wave reaches infinity.

It's the end of the world.

You can have a variety of opinions about what that might mean.

You know, will it mean there's no more gasoline for cars in Los Angeles?

Will it mean that the cosmos is dissolved into the entire cosmos?

Anyway, the end is at hand.

Some extraordinary transition is about to come upon us.

We're nearing the year 2000, which as a millennium will inevitably bring millenarian sentiments into the air

in the sense of a change of era.

So, at any rate, we're nearing the end of an era.

So there's a sense of an impending end, which is one element of St John the Baptist's message.

The other is a sense of repentance, a sense of awareness of what we've been doing,

and the fact this can't go on. We have to change our consciousness, metanoia, this change of mind,

this moving into a higher perspective on what we've been doing.

That, I think, is the present religious mood of the age.

And John the Baptist offered initiations into new ways of seeing, a sense of death and rebirth through drowning,

holding people under just long enough that they had a near-death experience.

I think that's what was going on.

They come up from the water in the Jordan, and they say they've been born again.

They've seen, they've died and they've been born again, and they see everything in a completely new way.

So, this seeing things in a new way is part of the initiatory experience.

Not many people here have had it by drowning, either deliberate or accidental.

But quite a number have had it through psychoactive substances, or near-death experiences, or in other ways,

which have opened a new vision of reality.

So, I think that's the phase we're in.

And I think that what people will be looking for, as they were at the time of St. John the Baptist,

is some new way of relating everything together, a new religion that will link them back.

And whether this will happen through a return to the traditional religions in a new and reinvigorated form,

or whether through the emergence of new ones, I don't know.

I myself foresee a reinvigoration of the traditional religions, in particular Christianity and Judaism.

And this may seem a peculiar prediction, but I think that the alternative, you see, we've had the last 20 years,

we've had a New Age melee of imports and exotic forms of religion from all over the place.

Hunas from Hawaii, Ramakrishna Mission, Tibetan Buddhists, Vipassana Meditation, Rajneesh, Maharishi, Sufism.

The world has, Shamanism from Africa, the world has been scoured for all these traditions.

They've all been tried out, many of them in California.

And the result is the place where most of them have been tried out most, Los Angeles, is Los Angeles.

It's obvious that these are not the answer.

So I think that the, I myself think that the way I've seen my own way forward, at any rate,

is reconnecting with the Christian tradition and relinking through the traditional festivals and sacred places and pilgrimage

to a traditional sense of location in the cosmos, in space and time.

I'm not saying this is the only form of rooting one needs. It isn't.

But it's certainly very helpful to be rooted in those ways through traditional forms, I find, in my own experience.

Now, I think it's also, some people feel easier with making up their own rituals or finding their own sacred places.

But an individual religion will never work in bringing about a collective transformation.

And what we need is a collective transformation, not just individual ones.

We've had 20 years of people trying to change themselves without much attention to the collective.

So I think we have to have a new religious and political movement which goes along with individual transformation.

And I think the green movement in politics is the beginning of this new consciousness taking on a mass political form,

where it's already beginning to change the way the world is run in the political landscape of Europe, at least.

I hope that that's not what's going to happen.

I mean, I hold monotheism responsible for the mess that we're in.

All from, you know, Abraham, not this one, right on down to the present moment.

I think it is the metaphor which is responsible for the dominator breakout and that until we get a more polytheistic, nature-oriented conception of reality,

we will be pretty much under the gun.

So this is a place where we're far apart.

It's probably because I was raised Catholic, so I'm ready to hang the Pope.

I should move by polytheism.

Pardon?

What do you mean by polytheism?

Well, see, I mean, Rupert and I agree that what is needed is a revivification of old forms of ritual,

but when I say old, I mean 15,000 years ago.

He means 1,500 years ago.

Uh, I think...

I think...

that we have to get into again it's this thing about closure the attraction of monotheism is

obvious it's elegant everything is reduced to one god and this drive to reductionism and to

elegance is fine in a philosophy class but the psychological consequences of imaging yourself

against a a single god is it flows back into psychology as empowerment of the ego and all

of these dominator societies had this unitary solar Apollonian fixation and you know the Rupert's

very concerned with the presence of the past maybe this is lies behind his openness to Christianity

because for my money monotheism is the single most reactionary force in all of human history

I don't even know what is running second because it's so clear you know atheism it's so brief it's

so brief I mean it's had 70 years Christianity and Judaism and Islam I mean this thing will not die

you know you just get it under control in one place and it sprouts a hydra headed new model that

and then it rolls another millennia or two and it's you know very bad on relationships between men and

women and and things like that so what I preach is what I call the archaic revival the going back into

it's a paganism but it's even older than what is normally thought of as paganism it's paleolithic

shamanism based on boundary dissolution through psychedelic drugs and in its original recension

through group sexual activity that is not possible it doesn't it's not important to me to preserve that

aspect of it in a modern context because these were private tribal people that was not a society of

minions how can you have orgies in a society of minions but I think that you know we have to go back

10,000 years ago was where the mistakes were made and you know agriculture was the beginning of the end

that was the beginning of the end and how we're going to step back from our cultural momentum toward

the lethal I don't know it's going to be a very delicate dance there is only one leader on in the

world at the present moment who actually has a public stance of repentance Mikhail Gorbachev knows that the

world he inherited was put together by paranoid megalomaniacs and his job is to very carefully

dismantle this time bomb while the anti-communists and the and the anti-soviet factions are take great

glee in his discomfiture but the fact of the matter is every society is now riddled with contradictions

and needs to be very very carefully deconstructed so that it doesn't explode our system doesn't work

we don't have to stand in line to buy potatoes but you know we have love canal and staggering rates of

fetal deformity and uh five million dollar houses being smashed down to put up fifteen million dollar

houses that have people sleeping on the heating grates in front of them so uh i think we need a very

radical reconstruction of society and i don't think we're going to be able to save much of monotheism

and once it's all i think there's something else is that if you have a system even like the one that

prevailed in ancient rome or ancient greece uh of multiple cults multiple religions and the various

mysteries some of which are known and some of which are private some of which are so extremely private

but they're lost some of them we only have their names and i presume there are some we don't have

it creates inherently a situation of competitive viewpoints multiple ways of looking at the world

whereas the monotheistic religions with the unified priesthood and frequently the inquisition tend to

route out the dissidents they tend to remove the alternate ways of looking at the world and they

tend to enforce a high level of conformity and yet that is the sort of situation that will lead your whole

society over the edge there will be nobody to provide alternatives

well obviously we've reached a point of uh opened up lots of questions i'm i think you know the model

of pluralism for me is los angeles you know that is the most pluralistic religious society anywhere i

should think um so you know is that better the i i think there there are hundreds of questions that

terence has suddenly landed on us and um here at two minutes before the end well i'd just like to end

with one question myself just in 30 seconds which is if one's to recognize the goddess of america how

does one do it you know there's no recognized feminine principle of the americas of the american

continent in europe you know europa herself is a goddess or at least a feminine hero hero heroine

um so there's columbia now is columbia the goddess of america most americans i've asked haven't a clue

who she is except from a picture on columbia motion pictures um she british columbia district of columbia

columbia river republic of columbia named after columbus 1492 500th anniversary 1992 just two and a

half two years away two three years away is the 500th anniversary of columbus uh coming to america

so is columbia she's a female personification american named after columbus but she has no content

no one knows anything about her no one's dreamed her the women's movement have ignored her

then if we want the goddess of the land another candidate arises our lady of guadalupe

her title in the pictures of her is queen of mexico and empress of america this is her title

that she's given her shrine was built over the temple of the earth goddess of the aztecs her her

shrine is at tin of titlan now engulfed by mexico city is she a better candidate now terence perhaps

or some may say well because she's been adopted or christianized by the roman catholics then it's

tainted with monotheism shouldn't have anything to do with her then who else you know if one is too

picky um then one's going to end up with the present situation which is nothing a kind of vacuum

and so i think the problem is to find our way through columbia is good well i think columbia

but then she needs to be dreamed and and we're just beginning this process yes i agree it was columbia

who rose spontaneously out of the crowd in tianamin square i mean it was the goddess of liberty

it was a direct connection and that was the archaic revival i mean democracy is a step away from

anarchy i thought it was a tremendous drama that this would happen that way i think columbia

it is the goddess re-emerging we need a kind of closure we're going to european

that's right but then which one would you choose if you had buffalo woman would she mean much to

people whose buffaloes have been killed off and oh yeah i i think there that we're now we're now just

after 11 30 which is our destined ending moment we end in a moment of uh uh where we're obviously

ready to go on non-closure obviously ready for another weekend starting right now yes so well

perhaps gaia we're perhaps we to unify consciousness it isn't a western hemisphere goddess we need

but simply a recognition of gaia and then her local shrines and manifestations her many uh her american

form her american form and thank you all very much you were a wonderful group thank you you're listening

to the psychedelic salon where people are changing their lives one thought at a time democracy is a step

away from anarchy so says the bard mckenna and that at least to me is as good an argument for democracy

as uh any i've heard maybe we should try that out someday and uh see if we can finally evolve to a

more highly organized state called anarchy and in case you're afraid of anarchy i should point out

two shining examples of successful anarchy in action one is the burning man festival and the other is the

internet both highly functioning anarchies of course i'm sure that there are fellow slaughters who would

take issue with this and hopefully they'll state their positions in the comments section of the

program notes for today's podcast and i i guess i should mention that i've set the comments to be

moderated which only means that i'll personally read them before they get into the public view so if

you're trying to reach me and i've seemed to ignore you along with several hundred others who have sent

emails so i should add that you shouldn't think that i'm picking only on you but post a comment on the

blog and it won't become public until i approve it so if you write a personal note to me i'll just

respond without posting in it as a comment if you'd like well like you the events of the summer are

pressing and so this will have to do it for now 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 through psychedelics salon.org or dot us or dot com or dot net

and if you're interested in the philosophy behind the salon well you can hear all about it in my book

the genesis generation which is a novel that's available as an 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