Unfolding The Stone

Welcome to an evening with Terrence McKenna, Unfolding the Stone, Making and Unmaking History and Language,

being held Saturday, June 1, 1991, in Los Angeles.

This is tape TMK 91-1, tape one of a two-tape set.

Just a couple of announcements.

Lux Natura is being phased out slowly, so if there's anything that you people want that they have,

tonight's the night to get it, because it's all here in one place at one time.

It will still be available through your normal channels, but this is the time to get it.

Also, conference recorders are here, and they're doing duplications of this talk on site.

He's an old friend of all of ours, so I'd like you all to welcome Timothy Leary.

I, for one, am overjoyed to be here.

This is one of those special, special evenings that we will all treasure.

You know, as soon as I drove to that parking lot, and I saw people getting out of the car,

many of whom are still carrying uniforms and dazed expressions of grateful deadheads.

How many people are at the dead concert?

Yeah.

And they're coming over later.

They're just spending now, so believe me, we'll have an infusion of wildness there.

Terrence McKenna, he's a great deal to me.

I would say he's one of the five or six most important people on the planet.

I can't even think of any others.

Short-term memory loss.

I was talking, oh, by the way, I should tell you, Terrence and I keep meeting in the most wonderful, mythic, adventurous places.

I was doing a wild tour through Germany about a year ago, and we came to Heidelberg,

and we were being guested by some people that came right out of Hermann Hesse.

I mean, wizards and gnomes and, you know, that sort of thing.

Heidelberg.

And there in a restaurant while I was having a sandwich before performing with some cybernetic people,

there was Terrence McKenna.

And it was just so perfectly Hesse, a journey to the east.

And so we meet again here tonight.

You know, I was talking to Terrence backstage before we began,

and we both agree that what he will be saying tonight has been said over and over again

at all those high moments in human history when those who have gone within

and understood about the brain and the inner treasures,

we all come back and pretty much say the same thing.

The problem is, though, that once you say it, you know, you can't go on saying it and saying it and saying it.

And when Terrence came along a few years ago and was saying what I'd been trying to say,

but naturally, better, upgraded, up-to-date, I was so overwhelmed with gratitude,

and I publicly thank you for that, Terrence.

By the way, the role that Terrence is playing right now is one that takes not only vision,

but it also takes fucking courage.

We were saying backstage that Terrence and I are a small group of philosophers

who make our living, not in the ivory tower, if you call it a living,

but just speaking it, chanting it, raving it, ranting it,

and no one has ever done it with more poetry and elegance than the speaker tonight.

I'm going to say one more thing, and then we will have what we've all been waiting for.

Terrence reminds us that all human wisdom, all energy,

comes from our beloved synergetic partners, the vegetable queendom.

It all comes from the plants.

Now, a round of applause to the vegetables.

Now, we all know that the human body, we have to have food.

It comes from vegetables.

We have used vegetables over the years, the essence of vegetables in the form of wood

to develop fire, gas, oil, and so forth.

Oil, by the way, is the number one crack addiction of the modern industrial society.

But what we forget and what we look to Terrence for tonight

is to be reminded that plants have given us an even more important gift.

They give us the gift of vision.

They give us the illumination.

And throughout human history, there are the eaves and the pandoras.

Usually it's a woman who takes this wonderful vegetable

and gives it to humanity and says, be illuminated.

And now, for our illumination and our pleasure,

please join me in welcoming Terrence McKenna.

Well, I want to thank Tim.

That was a wonderful introduction.

I'm sure I wouldn't, I know I wouldn't be here tonight

if it weren't for Tim Leary.

He was the pathfinder.

He cut the way through the woods.

He gave us all permission to be very much the people that we are tonight.

And it's wonderful that one Irishman can hand it on to another

and that we can keep it in the Bardic tradition.

Before I get started, I want to thank a number of people

who put a lot of energy into this event to make it go.

Steve Marshank promoted and organized this.

He's been at it for months and months.

Roy, Roy Tuchman, Roy of Hollywood, and Diane.

They have supported me and given generously

of hundreds and hundreds of hours of their time

to put these psychedelic ideas across.

And believe me, you hang your ass out to dry

when you take this position.

Tim mentioned courage.

Nobody has had the kind of courage that Roy and Diane have had

to push that message into this town.

So we salute them.

And Eric Alley did the wonderful poster.

He's done them for these events for years.

He's a beautiful artist.

Christian Duffy and Jim Messick are here to see that you find your seat

and stay in it.

And we thank them for that.

And last and certainly most importantly,

Kat Harrison McKenna,

my partner in building the dream of botanical dimensions.

I sit up here and take the limelight and the glory.

It's Kat who fashioned botanical dimensions

into the functioning entity that it is.

She manages it from day to day.

We had a $51,000 balloon payment

that I talked to you about in Port Wainimi.

It's paid off.

It's finished.

The land in Hawaii will forever be dedicated

to the preservation of plants

with medical significance

and significance to the human family.

And that credit all goes to Kat.

So let's hear it for her.

And that brings me to,

for those of you who haven't followed this so closely,

to pointing out that this is a benefit for botanical dimensions.

That's why it was 17 plus bucks a pop.

And what is botanical dimension?

It's a small response on our part to a major problem.

You all know that the rainforests of the world

are disappearing at a tragic rate.

And maybe that process can be halted

through pressure on the World Bank

and the International Monetary Fund

and these enormous international agencies.

But whether or not the clearing of the rainforest is halted,

the loss of folk medicinal knowledge

on the part of these tribal societies

that have lived in balance and equilibrium

and respect with nature for millennia,

that is tragically going.

There's no question about it

because you can't put people into a museum diorama

and ask them to parade around in jockstraps

while the rest of us drive BMWs.

They move into the cities.

These people work in the sawmills.

They take jobs in the tourist industry.

And 25,000, 50,000 years of medical knowledge is lost.

And Tim did homage to the vegetables

even in today's high-tech world.

Fully 75% of all the drugs,

prescription drugs, other kinds of drugs

on the market, above ground, underground,

come from plants.

This is a priceless reservoir

of complex chemistry,

but it's meaningless

unless the human experiences,

the human lore is preserved.

And this is what Botanical Dimensions is about.

We have collectors in Peru

and other parts of the world

and we bring seeds,

rootstock, living plants to Hawaii

and there these things are grown.

as in a living library,

toward the day

when a more enlightened society

will have the wisdom

and the good sense

to team up with the vegetable world

and create a more humane medicine,

a more humane religion

that has some real life and light in it.

So, that's what we're doing out there.

Any help any of you can give us,

we're deeply appreciative.

Spread the word.

Since we began this project,

many imitators have sprung up

and this was our intent and our hope

and great good work is being done.

So, please support the conservation

of both Botanical and Medical Knowledge.

So then, before I dig into this,

let me just explain how it'll work.

I'll talk for a while,

then there'll be an intermission,

and then we'll come back

and given however much time is left over,

why there'll be a Q&A

and then we'll have a mic for you

to line up behind.

Okay.

All right.

First of all,

thank you all for being here.

I know we're up against the Grateful Dead,

my favorite band.

I'm going to quote them repeatedly.

It's a thousand to one chance

that this would happen

and it just shows

the world is stranger

than you can suppose.

So, the name of this talk

is Unfolding the Stone

and I wanted to talk about this.

It's a departure for me

because I think we've just been

through a real hammering

over the past ten months.

I mean, if you've still got

your optimism intact

and believe me, I do,

you've been through the fire.

This has not been an easy ten months

for the people of this planet

or the planet itself.

And so, I want to

sort of reach back tonight

and invoke

a vanished tradition,

get to the heart of it

and try to show

how we can bring this forward

in our lives

to empower hope

in the most dark of situations

and in fact,

even make these dark situations

the raw material

of a clearer, stronger hope

than might ordinarily be the case.

A few days ago,

I was talking to a friend of mine

and he wanted to tell me

the story

of sitting in the presence

of a 104-year-old Vietnamese monk

and the guy

had basically

kept his mouth shut,

the monk,

hadn't said much

around the monastery

where he just sort of

cleans up

but then he

announced he wanted

to talk about meditation

and he opened his remarks

by saying,

we are all

luminous beings.

Why then

do we not

appear

before each other

radiant

in our illumination?

And this is the conundrum of life.

This is the problem.

It was T.S. Eliot

who said,

between the idea

and the reality,

between the motion

and the act

falls the shadow.

And why is that?

As psychedelic people,

this is the problem

that we grapple with

in our own lives

and when we look out

at the world,

you've heard me say

many times,

we have

the vision,

we have the money,

we have the technology,

but why can we not

then appear

before each other

as radiantly

luminous beings?

And why cannot we

reclaim

our planet

from toxification,

disease,

overpopulation,

bonehead politics,

you know the list.

What's the hang-up here?

What is the problem?

Why is perfection

so distant?

well,

what I've learned

from life

and vegetables

and travel

and books

can be summed up

in two

Greek words.

it's the central message

of the philosopher

Heraclitus.

And he was always

my favorite philosopher,

but whenever I would

read about him,

he was called

the crying philosopher.

And I had to live

to be 44 years old

to understand

the poignancy

of Heraclitus' message.

He said in a nutshell,

Pantet Rhea,

all flows,

nothing lasts,

nothing is permanent.

And this is

the hardest

message

life has

to teach

because what it says is

your joy

is transient,

your anguish

is transient,

your fortune,

your home,

your dream,

your moments

of great ecstasy,

your moments

of great insight,

your moments

of great empowerment,

everything

is flowing

through your hands

at the moment

that you

are aware of it.

William Blake,

who in a way

set this engine

going

a couple of

centuries ago,

said,

what is

the price

of experience?

Is it bought

for a song

or wisdom

for a dance

in the street?

No.

It is bought

with all

that a man

hath.

His wife,

his home,

his children.

Now this is not

a pessimistic message

and William Blake

was not a pessimistic guy.

He was the same guy

who told us

that if we could

but cleanse

the doors of perception

we would perceive

the world

as it is,

infinite

in a grain

of sand.

How can we take

this poignancy,

this sense

of impermanence

and weld it

into something

which is paradoxically

indestructible

and has meaning

in our lives

and gives us

not only the strength

to carry on

but the power

to be exemplars,

the power

to stand up

before other people

and let them

then

feel

the power

of vision

in the paradox

of permanence

in the face

of the need

for indestructibility.

Well, to answer

that question

I felt

that we had

to leave

the narrow confines

of 20th century

thinking

and we had

to reach back

into

the byways

of human thought

that have been

by most of us

somewhat passed over

and forgotten

because after all

modern life

makes great demands

on us.

It's enough

to just keep

your checkbook

balanced

and your insurance

paid.

We can't all

spend our time

delving

in the libraries

of the

noetic

and gnostic

and hermetic

and magical

traditions

but I thought

it was worthwhile

to talk to you

about this

tonight

because we have

been through

such a difficult

ten months

and it was also

Heraclitus

the all flows

guy

who said

all is war

and what he meant

was

everything occurs

in the presence

of its opposite

and out of that

there is generated

the friction

the heat

and the light

that all

comes together

in an indissoluble

package

as part of life

so what I want

to talk to you

about tonight

and how it relates

to unfolding

the stone

is the notion

of alchemy

of all things

alchemy

as I'm sure

many of you know

is really

the secret

tradition

of the redemption

of spirit

from matter

but many of you

may imagine

that alchemy

is simply

a discredited

pre-scientific

obsession

of unbalanced

minds

interested in

changing

base metals

into gold

lead

into

the stuff

of commerce

this is

the benighted

reputation

that alchemy

has acquired

in a century

so

given over

to the literal

and the material

and the

non-spiritual

that it's lost

all touch

with the

adumbrations

of meaning

that vibrate

behind

the perceptions

of the alchemists

the central

conception of alchemy

is the conception

of the philosopher's stone

what is it

it's the universal

panacea

at the end

of time

it's

the chocolate cake

that your mother made

once a week

when you were a child

the panas

super substantiales

it's all things

to all men

and all women

if you are hungry

you eat it

if you're dirty

you shower under it

if you need to go somewhere

you sit on it

and you fly there

if you have a question

it answers it

it's something

that the human mind

senses in itself

and

related to

invoked

worshipped

over centuries

before the slow

rise of the patriarchy

and rationalism

and materialism

turned it into a myth

a fairy tale

it is not

a myth

or a fairy tale

it is

the burning

primary reality

that lies behind

the dross

of appearances

alchemy

is based on

a philosophy

called hermeticism

that was developed

in the first

and second

centuries

by Gnostic thinkers

Greeks

Jews

people inside

the Roman Empire

as it was beginning

to show the first

signs of degradation

and decay

who felt

a profound

disaffection

with their world

a disaffection

that on the scale

of those times

was as profound

as our own

existential disaffection

and the hermetic

philosophers

drew back

from the rise

of Christianity

with its doctrine

of the fall of man

and original sin

and the stain

of Adam and Eve

and that whole thing

and took a different tack

and made two points

which I think

we need

to recover

and live out

for ourselves

and the first point

was

that

man

which means

men and women

human beings

are divine

beings

not

lower than

the angels

higher

than the angels

the message

of the alchemical

and hermetic thinkers

and the corpus hermeticum

actually

uses the phrase

man is

God's brother

we have no idea

what it would mean

in our own lives

if we could

throw off

the notion

of ourselves

as fallen beings

we are not

fallen beings

when you take

into your life

the gnosis

of the light-filled

vegetables

the psychedelic plants

that have stabilized

the same societies

of this world

for millennia

the first message

that comes to you

is

you are

a divine being

you matter

you count

you come

from realms

of unimaginable

power and light

and you will return

to those realms

the second point

that these philosophers

wanted to make

was

that fate

can be overcome

fate

can be overcome

now for the greco-hellenic world

what that meant

was

the starry engines

of the machinery

of fate

that they saw

strewn across

the night sky

because they were

intensely aware

of the power

of the zodiac

the stellar shells

inhabited by demons

that extended

out to

the unimaginable

imperium

of the all-father

that was beyond fate

and into that world

of astrological

fatedness

which is such a strong

idea for the greek mind

the hermeticists

announced

fate can be

overcome

and they had a novel

answer

for how this could be done

it can be done

through magic

a word

not often enough

heard

in the present world

the overcoming

of fate

is achieved

through magic

and then

the stellar machinery

becomes

not an invasive

force

into one's life

but an empowering

force

now

some of us

may believe in astrology

and some of us

may not

we are all

strongly influenced

by the notion

of fate

of our powerlessness

in an existential world

Jean-Paul Sartre

said

nature is mute

and we

embedded

in the

media dense

message dense

programming dense

matrix

of these

hyper societies

that we have created

often feel

I think

like hapless

atoms

running

endlessly

according to the

blueprints

and programs

of unseen

masters

whether it's

the banking industry

Madison Avenue

whoever

we tend

to disempower

ourselves

we tend

to believe

that we

don't matter

and in the

act of taking

that idea

to ourselves

we give

everything

away

to somebody

else

to something

else

so

the rebirth

of a sense

of the stone

and its

possibility

within each

of us

entails

these two

ideas

our divinity

and our

power

to overcome

fate

there is no

inevitability

in our lives

unless we

submit

to the idea

of inevitability

and then

give ourselves

over to it

ok

I wish there

were more

jokes

but it's just

been such

a tough

goal

it's been a

tough goal

I have to

tell you

where

can we look

in the world

to see

some

confirmation

of what

I'm saying

how can

we draw

it down

from being

you know

an airy

fairy

wrath

of a

bardic

Irishman

well

I think

that the

place

to look

is history

now if

you go

to the

academies

to those

ivory towers

that Tim

was talking

about

and ask

what is

history

they will

tell you

that it's

a random

walk

an endlessly

pointless

fluctuation

empires

rise and

fall

migrations

of people

come and

go

that it

is

essentially

meaningless

I don't

believe this

I don't even

think there's

strong evidence

for it

because what

I perceive

when I look

at the world

not only the

world of history

but the world

of nature

which out of

which history

has emerged

I see

novelty

something

wonderful

maddening

paradoxical

and

ever increasing

ever more

conserved

every

iota

of novelty

that comes

into existence

is somehow

saved

and passed

on

that's why

when we

walk or drive

down

Melrose

we see

Egyptian

fashion motifs

we see

fashion statements

drawn from the

14th century

the 2nd century

Assyria

Egypt

Angkor Wat

all of the

novelty

of history

coalesces

in the living

moment

it's always been

that way

every society

in the moment

of its existence

has lived

as a

resonance

a completion

and

a distillation

good alchemical word

a distillation

of what has

preceded

before

and so

the alchemical

life

national

estate

also

the

photography

allows

to

live

their

consequences

and

closing

on

where

the

history

and

all of the

most

of the

eternity

as

faces

everywhere

as

we

do

That spirit can be redeemed from matter

Begins to get teeth when you connect the idea of spirit up to the idea of novelty

Which has not ordinarily been done, but you know novelty is the life of the party and the life of the party is to be

high-spirited and this is

What we need to?

Focus on as the thread in the dark labyrinth of the prison of the material world

That can lead us back to the light the universe is an engine for the production of novelty

It always has been since the first moment of the big bang 20 25 billion years ago

simpler states have been replaced by more complex states which have been set the stage for yet greater

complexity well the drift of this then is

that the emergence of language and tools and

Culture and higher ideals like courage and love and self-sacrifice

these are not

flukes

sports

mistakes

These are

Further steps along the way in the process of the great alchemical furnace of being

heating and casting and

dissolving and recasting and purifying and

recasting

alchemical gold and

so hard as the world may appear

Dark as the hour may appear in reality

We exist in a dimension of greater opportunity

greater freedom greater

Possibility than has ever been

the challenge then is to not drop the ball is to know this and to act on it and to

And to slough off all the leeches and backhandlers and weasels and crypto-fascist who want to deny that and

turn man into a machine for their own purposes

Alchemy

has always perceived this and has

Delineated stages in the transformational process and these stages are

Worth talking about not in the details, but in in the two

Bipolar states which define this

They used a bastard Latin and they called them the negredo and the albedo

the negredo is the precondition

For transformation and what is it?

It's shit

It's detritus

It's flotsam

It's debris

It's being HIV positive

It's being deep into your fourth marriage and sinking fast

It's bankruptcy

It's you know serum hepatitis

It's the

Inevitable dark night of the soul that comes upon us and these dark nights of the soul come upon all of us

Nobody gets through

This world

Without a little dung raining down on them

Believe me

I mean you may evade it for decades, but then there'll be a knock on the door

You know it's said that the millstones of fate grind slowly

But they grind exceedingly fine

So what do we do with that?

Well the answer is

We welcome it

This is what the alchemists awaited

The negredo the primal materia

The dark matter the chaos

The chaos

That is the precondition

Then for

Redemption

God knows we've got lots of chaos right now

I mean we have war famine revolution

Millions of homeless people on the move the nation-state is dissolving

The relief agencies of the world can't keep up the various

Secret societies mafias and cabals that have always tried to tie us into chains

They're all working overtime

We are in the negredo condition

Hallelujah

This means

That the kissing has to stop

But the fun can begin

The real fun

The other end of this bipolar condition in alchemy

Was called the albedo

Or albedo

Depending on whether or not you came from a coal mining town in Colorado like I did

The albedo

The whitening

And that means

That out of the chaos

Can come a new beginning a new reality a new hope and then the process is one of and the you see these alchemists existed in an

Philosophically more naive we quote more naive world than we do so they actually

Projected on to the processes of matter their own interior

Psychic condition so they did work with matter and fire and furnaces and retorts and what they would do is they would take

The primal material lead or excrement or something else and then they would heat it and

Turn it to ash and then calcinate the ash or pour solvents through the ash and get an extract and then heat that and sublimate it and

Out of this almost

Almost as a footnote came modern chemistry

But that was not the important side of it the important side of it was that they were projecting mental states on to the swirling retorts of their laboratory

It was like a magical mirror for them it was in fact dare we say the p word it was

Psychedelic what psychedelic means is getting your mind out in front of you by whatever means necessary

So that you can relate to it as a thing in the world and then work upon it

So from the nigredo to the albedo there were a series of

These stages now. I said a few minutes ago that

magic

was the key and by magic I mean the

reclaiming and the reconstruction of language

To a sufficient degree that it becomes at first

Possible then probable then inevitable to each one of us that

miracles can happen

Miracles can happen the Grateful Dead have a song we need a miracle every day

We do need a miracle every day. Well, is that too tall an order? I

I don't think so

Years ago one of these talking vegetables said to me

said mind conjures miracles out of time

out of time

time is

The primal material on which the alchemical process works the alchemists again in their naive way

believed that

precious metals

diamonds gold sapphires actually grew in the earth because for this alchemical point of view

Everything was a lie and my friend Rupert Sheldrake is

Leading the charge to create a new birth of that perception

Inside science the idea that nature all of nature is alive not simply

Organic cellular nature, but that the earth itself is a living being

So mind conjures miracles out of time and the proof

That this can be done and it's an incontrovertible proof and I defy any naysayer or bring down to overcome it is

ourselves

We are the proof that mind can conjure miracles out of time if it weren't for us

There would just be birds and foxes and coral reefs and glaciers

But nature was not content with that level of novelty

million years ago a hundred thousand years ago nature grew

discontented and said you know let's

Raise the ante let's go to higher stakes poker in this planetary game

Let's the monkey speak let them build fires

Let them elaborate tools

Let them March forward on to the stage of creation and remember I said the hermetic faith was that humankind was the brother

Could act as the brothers and sisters of God not?

Motes in God's creation, but co-partners in

In the invocation out of being of yet greater

novelty why?

for play for fun

Just the cosmic madness of it all the pure

cussedness of it all

To raise the stakes higher and higher and higher

now I keep going back to this thing of can it be done because I want to convince you because I'm so certain I

love

Herman Melville and his rhetoric and

Friends of the whale bear with me

For Herman Melville the whale was not the endangered creature it is today

It was the dark cosmic God of

Christianity that haunts us and tries to pull us down and there's a wonderful speech in Moby Dick where?

Starbuck the first mate you remember wimpy little starbuck

He stood for christian right reason and he says to captain a have to seek revenge on a dumb brute seems blasphemy and

They have said

blasphemy starbuck

Speak not to me of blasphemy

I would strike out the Sun if it insulted me

For could it do that then could I do the other for there is ever a sort of fair play and

that's the point of that rap there is a sort of fair play

You've been told from the cradle that the deck was stacked against you fall of man original sin so forth and so on

It's bullshit. It's absolute bullshit

there is a sort of fair play and

If you can get in touch with that in your life, you know

When Mohammed wouldn't come to the mountain the mountain came to Mohammed that's fair play

and

If you can have that perception the world will begin to work for you

It will begin to move toward you as the mountain move toward Mohammed

the mushroom said to me once

Nature loves courage

Nature loves courage and I said

What's the payoff on that and it said it shows you that it loves courage because it will remove obstacles?

You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by

removing impossible obstacles

Dreaming the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under it will lift you up

This is the trick. This is what all these

Teachers and philosophers who really counted who really touched the alchemical gold

This is what they understood this is the shamanic dance in the waterfall

This is how magic is done

It's done by hurling yourself

into the abyss and

discovering that it's a feather bed and

There's no other way to do it

This is why I have always taken the position that as modern people you know

We can't go out and

Set armies marching or launch religions and who would want to anyhow, but

To the people who say adventure has fled

It's all humdrum. I just know you know that they have forgotten the five grams of psilocybin sitting in their refrigerator

I mean Magellan may have had excitement

Rounding the horn, but you in your living room later tonight

Can put him in the shade if you have the courage to do the things that are necessary to do and we know what they are

And of course the first thing to do is to tell society to fuck off because they don't know what's going on

This is a matter between the person and the plant the person and the planet and

all the detritus of history all the games that people have tried to lay on you

You know they just want to get you down in the ditch that they're in

We know this because aboriginal societies

Have never broken the faith the living gnosis is still there

Not for people who paint themselves blue and dance around buck naked, but for us as well

But it takes an act of courage not a weekend at Esalen

not a

A trip to the ashram way where they tell you that if you'll sweep up for a dozen years then they'll hand on a whammy no

the speed with which you can reach death is

under 45 seconds if you know where the elevator shaft is and

You do you do I don't have to tell you I've been telling you

Well, so

I

There's one more alchemical

Metaphor or stage that I want to mention here

Because I think it refers to this psychedelic possibility

Not all the alchemists included this stage in their in their

recensions of the work

But for me, I think it's central

Again in their church

church

bastardized church Latin they called it the cauda pavones

the peacock's tail

Now the physical basis of this is if you've ever

Played around with metal and fire

You know that there are certain metals that when they pass to a certain temperature range

Iridescent colors

Play across the surface and sometimes even freeze and in

the

the glazing of

Pottery at low temperatures in rock who what these pottery masters are aiming for are these wonderful

Iridescent surfaces that play across the glaze and then can be frozen into it well. This is the peacock's tail and

and

In alchemy this was thought to proceed the final whitening the passage into the pure

uh

the

The goal

really and rather than see the present world as

Exclusively a veil of tears and the black prison and none of these metaphors are mutually exclusive

You see the alchemists the great strength of our chemical thinking and the way in which it is

Is completely antithetical to science and in fact why science has so much contempt for it?

Is because the alchemists have the wisdom to see that?

Everything occurs in the presence of its opposite that it's not

either or

It's both and they call this the coincidencia

Appositorium the cult the coincidence of opposites the union of opposites this is a great truth

Because I think all of us live under the rubrics of am I good am I bad am I?

Lazy am I obsessed and the answer is that it is never one or the other it does a tremendous

injustice

Injustice to being

To ignore

The union of opposites now science in order to do its work which is essentially a technological work not a deep philosophical work

It's a minor art

Science that's all it is. It's a minor art. It's the art of the physically possible, but it has presumed

Presumed

To be the arbiter of all thought all feeling all worth my god that the

Hubris of Rene Descartes to divide the world into the primary and secondary qualities

And what are the primary qualities?

Motion

Mass

Spin

Momentum

And what are the secondary qualities?

Color

Feeling

Taste

Tactility

It tells you that you're nothing you never touch reality you live in that world of sense and therefore can only aspire to the real world to some kind of mathematical

Disembowelment

Disembowelment of your own

What your own body what your own feelings are telling you?

So in the cow de pavones the peacock's tail this is where the contradictions meet and

Generate heat and light and and

Excruciating sense of poignancy and meaning and identity and

Our world as we experience it tonight is

Quintessentially another good alchemical word is

Quintessentially that coincidencia

Appositorum now where do we meet this most dramatically in our own lives? I think we need it in

The phenomenon of birth of birth if you

Had just parked your flying saucer in the bushes

And came from a world where sexuality was unknown and people were grown in vats or something

And you came upon a woman in the act of giving birth

It would appear to be a catastrophe and progress

A tragedy

At the limit of tragedy

Blood is being shared

Anguish is on the surface

Real agony

Pervades the situation

And yet and yet

Nature in her wisdom

Has bound pain and ecstasy

Death and completion

Regeneration

Regeneration and dissolution

Into that experience

In such an indissoluble fashion

That no woman can miss the point

No woman can miss the point

Unfortunately men have traditionally averted their eyes

This has gone on in a hut at the edge of the village

Nobody wanted to be there

Maybe the shaman would be there

But he was loaded in order to be there

And the mystery of mysteries

Goes on outside the sight of men

Now in our world

We are caught in this kind of metaphor

A cosmic birth

A birth of planetary scale

Is underway

There is agony

There is no doubt about it

I remember an embryologist

Who once taught me

Pointed out

That the fetus in the womb

Is literally sculpted

By the hand of death

That the immature hand

Of the fetal organism

Is a webbed claw

And that it isn't that the flesh retracts

To form the human hand

It's that the cells in between die

And slough off into the amniotic fluid

And are carried away

The fetal child is literally

Sculpted into life

By the hand of death

And our world

Is in this kind

Of a circumstance

There are no rational solutions

At this point

We are now in the hands of the miracle makers

The shamans

The mind of the planet

The life of the ocean

And the atmosphere

And it's going to get tougher

And so we have to forge

The indestructible adamantine stone

Of alchemical hope

Because heavier challenges

Lie ahead

A hundred years from now

Two hundred years from now

I cannot but imagine

That this planet will be empty

Of human beings

Not because we have become extinct

But because we have gone

To our fate

And it's unimaginable at this moment

Because we are in

The planetary birth canal

We are at the peak

Of transition

Right now

And the walls

Are literally closing in

We are being suffocated

We are fighting

Like a strangled man

To try and save ourselves

And yet we have to believe

And I invite you to educate yourself

About the history of the planet

There is no reason not to believe

That we will come through

We will come through

There is light

At the end of the tunnel

There is a meaning to history

But it's an alchemical meaning

History is a vast alchemical engine

For the forging of an alchemical humanity

And I don't have the answers

Believe me

Whether we go

To another star

Whether we become

Eight angstroms high

And all live in a block of metal

Underneath Mount Everest

Whether we march off

To the heart of the sun

The scenarios are endless

Because the human imagination

Has such a power

To bootstrap itself

To higher and higher levels

What would Paleolithic man

Have made of the religion of pharaonic Egypt

What would the pharaohs have made

Of the engines of war and hydraulic machinery

Created by the Romans

What would the gothic scholastic enlightenment

Have made of the age of cybernetics

Psychedelics and virtual reality

The imagination

Is the alchemical deus ex machina

That can lift us

Out of time

Out of the negrado

Of history

And into higher and higher

And higher states of being

Now there is no reason

To simply then ride along

In this process

Because another perception

Of the alchemist

That is central to getting this all

Lined up so that it works

Is the idea of the macrocosm

And the microcosm

What does that mean?

It means that the world truly is fractal

In the most profound sense

Meaning that what is going on

On some very large scale

Is condensed

Intensified

And recapitulated

On smaller scales

So that the dynamics of a love affair

Are the dynamics of an empire

Both are the dynamics of the evolution

Expansion

And extinction of a species

There is only one way

That things can happen

And whether we're talking about

Microphysical events

Or the life of an entire solar system

The curve of binding energy

Is going to be the same

So that means that

This redemption of spirit

From matter

That is the historical process

That we are embedded in

We can do our part

By working on our small section of this

Which is our self

This is why alchemy was so fascinating

To the union

Psychologists

Because they saw

That this work of redeeming spirit

From matter

Is nothing more

Than the work of redeeming

The self

From the contaminated dross

Of the traumatized

And damaged psyche

That we each inherit

From our passage

Through the parental

Chick pile

We each have that

Gift

To deal with

That negrado

Is within ourselves

And this is why we're in therapy

And this is why we take psychedelics

And meditate

Or do whatever we do

Because we all have

This dross

Within us

And this is a great gift

It means that we can begin

Consciously

The process of distillation

And sublimation

And casting

Of ourselves

Into

That golden being

That luminous creature

That this hundred and four year old

Vietnamese monk

Sensed

And evoked

To my friend

But it's more than that

We do that

We do that alchemical work

To perfect

Our own sense of the union of opposites

Our own sense of the presence

Of the living alchemical stone within

In order that we may then

Participate

Act in

And be part of

The transformation of the planet

And it is an immense

Transformation

And there is no reason to doubt it

Because the emergence of organic life

From what preceded it

Is as dramatic a miracle

As anyone could imagine

The emergence of language

From mute bestiality

Which is only a hundred thousand years in the past

Is as dramatic a miracle

As anyone could imagine

The emergence

Of a planet

Instantaneously unified by electricity and media

Is

The emergence of a planet instantaneously unified by electricity and media

And this is only 50 60 years in our past. It's still going on is as dramatic a miracle as anyone could imagine

It's absolutely irrational to not be filled with the fire of consuming hope you just have to

overcome the leveling that we inherit from these empty

Existential scientific ideas, and when we do that and lift our eyes to the real living

spiritually

Empowered reality that exists in nature in society in our lover in

ourselves then you see that

the peacock's tail the cow de pavones is a

a

Transcendental object at the end of time an enormous

Unspeakable something that beckons

across the historical landscape

that casts an enormous shadow that reaches clear back to the earliest moments of the universe that we have always

Been in the grip of that iridescent

Strange attractor it has propelled our poetry our art our best moments have always been

When a tiny scintilla another good alchemical word a tiny spark of that?

alchemical completion

Burned for a moment in our mind in our life in our perception and we

Occupy a special position in regard to this

millions

Thousands of generations of human beings have come and gone and could only glimpse this in the ecstasy of

Eroticism and psychedelic empowerment and ritual magic

but we are

the last people

Beyond us lies the mystery if we have but the courage to move forward

Into that abyss to believe that nature will reward the dreamer

Then we can complete that wonderful irish toast which says may you be alive at the end of the world

Because it's that close it cannot wander much longer all of the preconditions

Have been been met and the peacocks tail grows daily

whiter and more radiant and more brilliant as we

Since now breaking into our dreams breaking into our waking lives the presence of this attractor

It has always given people meaning that we are the privileged inheritors of that meaning

And we have been the privilege of putting it all together in one piece and

And standing ready at the end of history to go into the mystery and be completed

So that's the end of my song

Take a break and we'll be back in 15 minutes and if you've got questions and God I hope you do we'll deal with them

Thank you very very much

Do you know what insomniac dyslexic philosophers do?

They sit up all night wondering if dog really exists. It's also an intelligence test

Also, I'd like to point out to you just to keep you current that

Nina Graboi who is an old friend of mine and of Tim's

Has a new book out called one foot in the future and this is a lady who lived a life that went from the center of nazi Europe to

Millbrook and beyond and it's a wonderful book. It's out in the bookstores, and I just call your attention to it

Okay, let's have some questions here

Okay, can you hear me I can hear you this is not a joke

I'm afraid I'm more serious again

I believe that among the fundamental rights that people have to fight for for self-empowerment

One of them is the right to commit suicide

Just like the right to take psychedelics and all that

And I'm wondering if in your world travels

You might have come across some wisdom

about plants that people have taken

For say relatively easy suicide

Like hemlock and what you know about them

well

With your point, I mean I think people should be free to do whatever they want to do with themselves

The classic answer is obviously the poppy

Opium and its products

Even I mean this is the modern instrument of

Dying is morphine injection unto death in the minoan civilization

the fascination with poppy's

Reached such a proportion that when they translated the linear be text at first

They took the symbol for poppy's as the symbol for wheat because the tonnage of

That was being recorded as being produced and used was so huge

So yes the waters of left they the waters of forgetfulness

So the poppy will carry you to the gates of death and beyond if that's your intent

Now

I just back to the issue of empowerment

Usually any derivatives of poppy you have to go through doctors or authorities

In fact just decide here people who are dying in the hospitals. I understand

They don't even give morphine anymore

Well, why bother with the derivatives the poppy grows it's still a relic ornamental in many

Suburban gardens

I noticed in someone's garden recently poppies that had been as

Expertly etched as if we were on the highlands of laos

So the gnosis of it hasn't died

You're right that the

Heroin and morphine are extremely controlled drugs, but again the poppy is there

If I were making drug policy, I would

Promulgate what I think of as the vegetable drug act and simply say

Plants are legal all plants should be legal you know people hold up

Opium as the scourge of mankind and yet it was used medically for three thousand years

And it was only in the I think in

1603 that the British physician John play fair was the first person to notice that it was addictive

So it took 3,000 years of using it before anyone actually came to grips with the fact that it was addictive

Can I ask you quickly about hemlock? What do you know about that about what hemlock? I?

Know about it. I think it's a rather painful way to go

Actually, I go back to the opiates because some herbalist told me it wasn't well

It will deliver you into charm boat for sure

But your impression is that it's my impression is that the poppy would be the way to go. Okay. Thank you

Thanks for keeping it light

Yeah

Hi Terence, my name is Joao and I was born in South America in the Amazon

And after that I went to Germany to study chemistry thanks to Sandos Basel

And in there in Germany, I think people think of you know in a way that that

You want to educate the society, you know, this is an alchemy

Society and in a way, I guess we learn

For example, just Christ was one of the first

alchemists and the Romans

Tried to make a mock of him because he was saying, you know, he was the put of sign on the cross saying

I n r I and people say said oh, this is Jesus Nazareth, you know, and it was not

I was was the Latin word that we learn in chemistry was Igna

Learning chemistry was Igna

That's what a

Renovator integral means that nature is

Renovated by fire. So what Jesus Christ was telling to everybody was that we have an aura

You know like gold and gold in Latin and stuff is aureus

And what we have to do is do alchemy with our fire with our core

to trust mutate

the very elements we have in our body and

Trustment our solar becomes something more purified

I was a really interesting

Well, yes, I mean you make an interesting point

Christ

Can be seen in this alchemical context because what he was saying was what I claimed here tonight is the alchemical

Faith he was saying that man is divine this doctrine got

raked over the coals by the patristic fathers

But the career of Christ is very interesting because there does seem to be this confluence of

elements that hint at a

Transformation that was not simply spiritual but that was spiritual and

physical at the same time

You know one of the most puzzling instance

Incidents in the Gospels. I can't remember which one it is, but

after the resurrection when the

When the Marys go to the tomb

There's this amazing encounter between the risen Christ and the Marys and he actually says

Touch me not woman for I am not yet completely of the nature of the father

But yet he is resurrected

He is speaking he stands before them alive

But he says touch me not I am not yet completely of the nature of the father so you're right there is this

alchemical

Suggestion in the life of Christ the story about Christ that I always like to tell because it seems to vindicate some of what we've indicated here tonight is

It's a wonderful story. You know Christ is said to have appeared to the Apostles in the upper room

40 days after the crucifixion I believe and

and but the Apostle Thomas was not present and

So then Thomas comes after this incident and and the Apostles gather around him and they say the master

Was with us he came in the flesh and Thomas says the equivalent of you guys have been smoking too much of this red

Lebanese that you've been getting

and then

Christ comes again. Oh, oh and he says in that incident Thomas says

Unless I put my hand into the wound

I will not believe it and so then Christ comes again to the upper room and he

Looks over the assembly and he gestures Thomas forward and he says Thomas

Put your hand into the wound and so he does

Now different people have different interpretations of what's going on here and

Thomas is always called them in Christian exegesis Thomas the Doubter

My interpretation of what's going on here is that because Thomas doubted

He alone of all the Apostles

Touched the resurrection body

He alone was vouchsafed this immense privilege and it was because he doubted so it's a tremendous

Inspiration to doubt

Which is what I urge you all to do about this kind of thing

On the other hand, I I went back to the Amazon to meet my roots there with young young manos and my cubitaries

Indian for two years. I was teaching Portuguese and Spanish and

What I learned from there is that when they take drugs when they take the herbs, you know

They they take it to be good warriors, and that's what my concern in society is right now

That in here we we take any kind of like, you know

excite

Substances to the service to the nervous system. We don't understand why we're trying to become a warrior in that way

Well, no, you're right that this Yanomami Folkway is

Definitely about the male aggression and this sort of thing

But I also wonder if in that situation

They actually encounter the reality of the literating

Psychedelic ecstasy that comes with the

When that those substances which are DMT specifically are purified out no, I'm not I my method is skeptical

There's it goes back to the Thomas the doubter story. It's not a cult of the primitive

It's not a cult of the that ancient is best

It's a cult of experience

Direct experience is what needs to be empowered and you have to trust your own

intuition there are horrifying

Experiences that can come as a result of plant use in Madagascar

Madagascar the modern Malagasy Republic

There's not a highly developed

Psychedelic usage, but they have concentrated on and developed what are called ordeal poison

And they have about a dozen of these things and what these are are

Plants that you take the preparation

You believe that you're going to die you want to die you beg to die and you don't die

Instead you come through it, and then you're so damn glad that you came through it that it's an ecstasy

Just the mere fact of having lived through it you see

So

Isn't it what we have right now with all the ventilator systems. That's right

Sure

Thank you once one has acquired the bundle weed

How does he consume it?

Technical questions here detail freaks cooks and recipe mongers

For the benefit of those not initiated into this it's interesting

You know Aboriginal human beings have searched the world for psychedelic sources and have been such as in the Amazon very successful

but not

Exhaustively successful so that it's recently become known

in the phytochemical literature that a plant

Desmanthus Illinoisensis which this gentleman is referring to the Illinois bundle weed

appears to have the

one of the highest concentrations of dimethyltryptamine of any plant that's been looked at and it has no history of

Aboriginal usage and

And the question is how to activate this into a usable psychedelic

Probably

The way to do it would be to attempt to create an

Analog to the South American drug plant drug

Ayahuasca by combining the bundle weed with a North American source of a beta-carbolene

Carbolene such as harmony which is what's in ayahuasca and that would activate it and the obvious

candidate for that would be a

Succulent plant that grows in the deserts of New Mexico and

Nevada

Pagamon harmola and

Pagamon harmola combined with

Desmanthus Illinoisensis in the correct proportions

Would probably deliver a stunning

psychedelic experience

Would you eat it or smoke it?

Drinking you would boil them together no smoking you can't it's too diffuse in these things

No, you would you would perform an alchemy you would boil the two for many hours in a large volume of water

Pour off the wash add new water boil more hours pour off the wash combine the two

Fractions get rid of the physical material and drive it down until it looks like thick coffee

But you know don't be consumed by your

Alchemical investigations, I mean proceed carefully with this stuff because it's going to work if you get it, right

In the absence of a scale how might one measure?

Five grams of psilocybin dry psilocybin spring for the scale

Terence I was here the last time you were in LA. I think she's about a year and a half two years ago

And I mentioned at that time I felt there was a need for

Something set up where the in-between times that you aren't here

There could be some interaction between we who are here

And I don't know what the reaction was but it finally ended up with your town with somebody please take this lonely guy out for dinner

But I may come out that I wasn't but the truth is you know when you live out in Balfour California, which is really like you know the boondocks

You're not in the midst of daily

Interacting with people you know of your nature or like and mine now. I know Roy Tuchman

Did I have a meeting of listeners for KPFK?

I think about two weeks ago, which is great this first time I think he's done that and I didn't make it

But I really is and what I did last time was simply volunteer myself as anybody wanting to further get together or

Explore something some type of organization

Or some type of group are you familiar with the Oetney reader?

Uh-huh now they're eight would you see their March April issue where they were

championing salons

Where they have a lot of heat for that too because people said what are you talking about salons when the world is the flame?

But I thought it was a good point to push it

Yeah, but my understanding I resuscribe to them that they're going to match up their readers in areas in the country to see if they can ferment some of these salons

I think it's a great idea for empowering the individuals

For that message of hope, you know, it's hard to hang on to hope out in the boondocks

And it's like we need something besides every two years a shot in the arm type of thing or just listening

You know to Roy which he was great. I mean, I thank God for him, but some interaction

I think with the people well, yeah, no you make a very good point

I mean what I often say at these kinds of events is it's a

unique

Moment when you all self-select to be here

I mean this is a city of what 14 million people something like that and you have self-selected

Even over being at the dead concert to be here, and so this is some kind of a core

community and it is true that we look like everybody else there's no real way to tell so

Whatever you need

somebody in this room has it and

and

It's we've reduced the problem from finding them in a city of 12 million to finding them in a crowd of 800

That's about the best I can do for you, but I

Urge you I urge you to look around you and see who's here and

Remember it's tricky of course because you know motivations are complex and loyalties are complex

And not everybody knows who they work for but nevertheless we have considerably

Simplified the problem of community by gathering ourselves into this room this evening

And I I don't like these big events because I don't like sitting up here in the light and looking out over the sea of faces

I against guruism leader trips and and anyway the whole

The whole point of this message has to be that

It's for everybody nobody is special if it can only happen to some kind of elect

Then it's got no impact no ability to save the planet. It's a human mystery. It doesn't belong to the

Intelligentsia it doesn't belong to the wealthy. It doesn't belong to the Irish

regardless of how we kid around about that it's it got to be for everybody so

Take this man seriously here. He is second year in a row pleading for community somebody taking the dinner and

Community is the backbone of the thing when I first started doing this one of the most empowering

Experiences that I could have after talking to a crowd like this if someone would come up afterwards and say to me I thought I was crazy till I talked to you

till I heard you talk

And what they meant was that they had done psychedelics in the 60s and they had seen the elves and the machinery of joy

But then it had all other people had turned to market analysis and international banking and what-have-you and it all seemed to flow away and so

people need to find

like-minded people and

As I say this is about as far as I can go for you

And then you have to do the rest but this is your affinity group

This is your family

Yeah, you you have narrowed it down

There still seems to be a little hit-and-miss what I did last time I didn't want it before I sat down

I said anybody was interested. I was you know

I was going to stick be somewhere stand here and about 14 people to my surprise came up, you know

We switched the names and addresses. I mailed out just the names and addresses. I really didn't follow up it and

Those people are tonight. I need you need someone better to do a newsletter than me, but I'm willing to support

You know the people getting together and and just be a focus point of them getting together. So I'll stand

Yes, it's right this man. He'll be outside

And and just explore you know how we can get together as more often than once every year and a half or two years and whatever that may take

sounds good

I was interested in your concept of fate. It reminded me of the quote by you and what he says that fate is doing willingly that which I must do and

I was wondering about this concept of fate you were talking about the Greek thought of fate as

as as the one thing that you couldn't go beyond you know even even Zeus himself was terrified of the fates and what the moira and

the idea of not being able to pass beyond the physical body not being a path beyond boundaries

that we are bounded by faith even the gods themselves and yet you were talking about the concept of the alchemist believing

About going beyond one's fate. I find this idea very delicious

You know I thought maybe you could elaborate on the idea of going beyond one's fate or this kind of freedom in me

Yes those the way they did it as I

Briefly indicated that didn't get into was through magic and the kind of magic was

Um the following it was the styles of Renaissance magic that developed in the wake of the translation of this hermetic corpus it

Previously magic had been

Sort of as the cartoon

Image we have of it the lonely wizard off in the woods grinding up his

potions and toads or

that sort of thing

But in the Renaissance in the courts of the Demi of of

the Demi the Medici court

people like Marcello Faccino and

Campanello and these people

took the idea of

Astrological associations in other words that

Plants and minerals and odors and this sort of thing could all be associated

to

Given zodiacal signs and they created a theatrical style of magic a

ceremonial magic where by

Say you wanted to counteract

Saturn aspect of some sort well then by choosing

the opposite

The herbs and gems and perfumes associated with the opposite sort of situation and

Gathering them to you you could make a model of the universe a new model of the universe and they did this in round rooms and built or

oreries and

Practiced a kind of ceremonial magic

That made them then the companions of princes and the the dark figure of the lonely

Magician in the woods was replaced by the renaissance

Magus who was manipulating political realities counseling

popes and

Taking

Magical power into his hands specifically for the purpose of counteracting the machinery of fate

fate it had to do with this idea of if if fate is decreed by God's cosmos

But man is the co-creator with God then by setting up a magical

microcosm the ordinary asterisms the ordinary

Influences of astrology can be

Deflected and if you're interested in this sort of thing

Dame Francis Yates wrote a wonderful book called

Giordano Bruno and the hermetic tradition and there's another book by D.P. Walker called

Demet demonic and spiritual magic from Faccino to Campanella

These are not easy books to find try the Bodhi tree and William and Victoria daily down on melrose can help you out if they were easy to find

What fun would it be and part of the quest is getting this stuff together?

But that's the basic theory of renaissance magic is to create a microcosm

to counter the fatalistic machinery of the macrocosm yeah

Hi, hi, I've heard you talk a lot about themes repeating themselves a lot and one of the things I thought about what time?

themes in history repeating themselves oh yeah and one things i thought about is um popular western

music how it changes and recreates itself and i'm just curious about your insight on that

and it's in its role in using music as a language to communicate things in the future and so forth

well it seems there are a couple of questions here i mean there's an impulse which comes and

goes in music which is to be evocative of the spirit i mean you feel it in van morrison and

you feel it in locatelli and then you flash back another 200 years and you get it in johannes

okagum these people where it's liturgical but it's liturgical because there was no other space

in society for that music this question really reflects on the previous question music is the

divine medium of exchange between man and these higher levels and what i've always felt about

rock and roll and i feel about i feel it about what i do as well is that it's such a pale reflection of

what it wants to be and could be i mean at a dead concert you know when they get to noodling you actually

begin to feel the dimensions shift and you actually feel the possibility of a doorway opening into another

dimension this is sacral music in the highest sense of the word it goes back to the pythagorean

it goes back to the pythagorean theory of octaves and the mysterious relationship of the

shortening of a string to the diminution of the tone and also resonance resonance is a very strange

phenomenon thinking of it in terms of we pluck the string of a cello here and a piano sitting across the

stage emits a sound i mean this is action at a distance incontrovertibly which was always the goal of

magic and always what was denied by science as a possibility you see we forget that it wasn't until the

middle of the last century with helmholtz and faraday and those people that feels gained any kind of

respectability at all and and the science of the mid 19th century resisted the idea of fields very

furiously because it looked to them like magic the newtonian model of the cosmos is all little hard

balls moving through empty space and reacting in absolutely calculable ways we now live in a world

where you know if i had an fm radio beside me i could demonstrate to you that hundreds of messages are moving

through every cubic centimeter of space and time and we think nothing of this it seems trivial but in a way

it's a realization of the magical intent one of the things i didn't say in the main body of my talk is

how in spite of sciences resistance to magical ideas how thoroughly it has unconsciously realized the major

points on the agenda of magic for thousands and thousands of years electricity was something that you would see

if you took an amber rod and a piece of cat fur and locked yourself in a darkened room and let your eyes adjust to the darkness and then

furiously stroke the cat fur and then you would see a little static electrical discharge and this was a parlor trick of

magicians from the hellenistic period on well who would have imagined

imagined that you could light cities with that that you could move pictures and sound of of uh political activities and theatrical

performances and propaganda from one side of the planet to the other in the wink of an eye with that

science did that but it has in a way created an entirely magical world which we have grown blasé to

because uh along with it has come some fancy mathematics that i would wager to say that not a person in this room

could fully explicate and yet because that mathematics exists we think that this is all very humdrum

you know it took marshall mcleughan to say that the age of electricity was nothing less than the descent of the holy ghost

onto this planet i mean that electricity is the third person of the trinity

nothing like dabbling in a little heresy here but that's the fact of the matter folks

let's do one more here and then we yield to uh convention

hi jaren how are you fine uh once i went some new years eve i went to a concert i'm sorry to a church service

where we had communion and then i'll hold like wolves and from there moved to a grateful bed show tonight

i went to a grateful bed show now i'm here would you like to howl like a wolf

okay there oh i just read some rupert sheldrick recently he's like the art i try to do it's

resonant systems he's talking about all the way a friend came to me and said if you're going to this

ask parents if demand this and when the bundle weed is really six percent dmt no point six probably

closer point eight i think i said once it was six percent and my mailbox filled with letters from

people better informed than i so i'll pull back on that any rep any references that i can on that

quantity i can't give it to you off the top of my head but if you talk to me it's print it's known i

think it's in the journal of phytochemistry but maybe if you talk to the guy who asked the other

question he's well informed this obscure plant is certainly getting a high profile here this evening

and since uh and since robert brought up the notion of interacting so elegantly i would be willing to

have a salon if someone is interested and uh on the net on internet or use net i'm um

usc bang coriolis bang d-van very good so here's another person interested in building community and

they offer the possibility of another dimension of community which is a computer networking

possibility that preserves uh the anonymity and that is very important to this kind of uh work

i just want to leave you with one story because it sort of fills out the theme

uh and shows how peculiarly the spirit moves and how the coincidencia positorum is present in so many

unexpected situations i think somewhere in the body of my talk i got to dig in at cartesian logic or

cartesian rationalism as you know modern scientific materialism was founded by renee descartes uh french

philosopher of uh the 17th century but what the historians of science have been at great pains

to keep from view is the following story which is attested to in descartes own journal when he was a young

man of about 22 years old he decided to go soldiering and wenching around europe which was something young

men of that era did and he joined a hapsburg army which was on a mission to lay siege to the city of

prague in bohemia to suppress uh and what was essentially an alchemical revival i won't go into

the details but a young prince of the northern leagues and his queen who was the daughter of james of

england and was named elizabeth after her grandmother had managed to gain control of the empire had been

elected in fact he was called frederick the elector palatine and this hapsburg army was sent to destroy

this protestant alchemical reformation and it did so laid siege to the city and killed this young man and

his queen fled to the hague and then they retreated across germany and on uh i believe it was the 17th of

august of of that year which was 1619 the beginning year of the thirty years war they made camp at ulm in

southern germany and just as an aside ulm later was the birthplace of albert einstein but that night

descartes had a dream and the dream in the dream a radiant angel appeared to him and said

the conquest of nature is to be achieved through number and measure and in that moment renee descartes went from being

a nobody to being the founder of modern science modern science was founded at the direction of an angel and the angel

showed how it was and to this day modern science has made all of its strides through the application

of number mathematical analysis and measure that is the secret of the scientific conquest of nature and

it's a secret that was imparted to renee descartes by an angelic entity so i'd like you to leave this

evening wondering who do we work for and how does it work thank you very very much good night

this marks the end of the talk thanks for listening