Visionplants

And now recorded live at the International Transpersonal Conference, Vision Plants, Transpersonal Challenge, with Terence McKenna.

This presentation will explore the model that shamanic use of vision plants provides for transpersonal psychology,

particular attention given to the role such plants play in personal integration,

deeper implications of shamanic use of plants, role of mind in the natural order, and the planetary future.

Basically for myself, my involvement with shamanism has been a deepening meditation over now about 20 years.

And it seems to me very fruitful because it continues to change and integrate itself ever more deeply into the meaning of reality at large.

So that, for me, shamanism has become a kind of overarching metaphor for not only personal being in the world,

but the historical adventure, the being of the species in the world.

So, I want to talk about it today, and as an advocate, I want to make it seem indispensable to living a life of right reason in the world.

I want to show that without shamanism, the notion of humanism itself is in a kind of jeopardy.

And probably most of us can find ourselves in agreement with that.

But then I want to leave most of us behind and go further and suggest that this humanness rooted in shamanism

is a humanness ultimately rooted in very complex, symbiotic relationships with plants and chemicals in the environment.

I want to argue, in fact, that people without plants are in a state of potential neurosis,

a state of existential wanting, and that, in fact, part of the Western dilemma is the sense of abandonment

that followed with the breaking off of these symbiotic relations with vision-producing plants

that characterized the rise of Western monotheism and even more characterized the rise of modern society.

Let me return then to the origins, because this is where I think the case can be made.

My interpretation of the time we're living through and this amorphous movement that we all somehow in some way are a part of,

which calls itself the New Age or what have you, I call it the Archaic Revival.

And the reason I call it the Archaic Revival is rooted in my conviction that it is, in fact,

a revivifying of the models and energy forms of Archaism.

And shamanism, then, is suddenly centrally highlighted.

Shamanism was the profession ni plus ultra of the upper Neolithic era.

And what was this profession precisely about?

Well, it was about exploring the envelope of cognition,

pushing against the linguistic membrane of what it was possible to say, symbolize, conceive, and communicate.

Now, why should one species out of all those competing on the earth attain somehow a kind of mega-adaptive ability

that causes a kind of compression of biological time into the phenomenon that we call history?

Is it simply, as our theologians have always been forced to conceive,

that divine agency entered into the mechanism of the world and somehow set a spark in motion

that kindled and grew into humanity?

Or is it, as the 19th century explored so exhaustively,

the possibility that incremental change can eventually initiate and insinuate into a situation

new states of higher order,

including even possibly the state of higher order that we call self-reflecting consciousness?

But somehow, this is no more than a gradual refinement out of previous states of nature.

Well, what I want to suggest is that it is a bit of both of these points of view,

the divine intervention and the evolutionary.

I think what evolutionary biologists have missed

in looking at the emergence of human beings out of the primate phylogeny

is, generally speaking, the mutagenic influence of foods.

The fact that a fruit-eating arboreal primate,

because of a situation of spreading dryness in the environment,

evolved into a pack-hunting creature of the grasslands with an omnivorous diet.

And omnivores, by their very nature, expose themselves

to a very large number of mutagenic influences.

I'm speaking now chemically.

Mutagenic influences that interfere with the correct copying of protein,

interfere with spacing of children, lactation,

interfere with mentation,

psychoactive compounds in the food chain.

And it's very interesting that as human beings transform themselves

into omnivorous pack-hunting omnivores,

you begin to see the first faint stirrings of self-reflection.

You begin to get the fire pits,

and later the chipped flint leavings of earliest Neolithic human tool-making.

What this says to me is

that there was a unique confluence of factors present in the evolutionary situation

that were capable of kindling

this ontological transformation

of what had previously been the animal mind.

And what I suggest this factor is, or was,

psychoactive plants in the environment,

specifically psychoactive plants in the grasslands environment

in which human pastoralism evolved in Africa over a million years ago.

So the plant must be African.

It must be extraordinarily noticeable in the environment.

It must not be a deep forest endemic,

because this is not where human evolution was taking place.

The only plant which fits this description

is a mushroom of the psilocybin-containing variety.

And it's very easy to see, I think,

that the presence then of psychoactive compounds of this sort

in the early human diet

set the stage for a number of structural and psychological changes.

Psilocybin ingested in low doses increases visual acuity.

Now, it's not difficult to see that in an animal

under evolutionary pressure in a pack-hunting environment,

increased visual acuity

will mean a more successful reproductive strategy.

This means that those animals,

not including the psychoactive substance in their diet,

will be mitigated against and fade from the scene.

And by this process,

a steady bootstrapping process,

self-reflection was born in our species.

How do we get from visual acuity to self-reflection?

Low doses of psilocybin give increased visual acuity.

Medium-range doses of psilocybin give an increased interest in erotic activity.

You should laugh.

There may not be too many laughs with this one.

Slightly higher doses of psilocybin

give an experience of the numinosum,

an actual contact with a mystery in the human psyche,

which is no less mysterious to us today

than it was to our ancestors

when the last glaciation was retreating against Canada.

I mean, don't kid yourself.

In the face of this,

the content of this symbiotic relationship,

modernism, rationalism, positivism,

all is exposed as just whistling past the graveyard

because the numinous depth of the mystery

that seems to have called us out of the animal mind

is completely impenetrable to modern analysis.

That's why even discussing its presence

is mitigated against so intensely.

Well, I don't want to spend too much time

on this early facet of the emergence thing.

I want to move ahead and show

that as pastoralism developed,

as the domestic relationship between cattle,

human beings and mushrooms

settled down into a self-reinforcing cycle of consciousness,

language arose, religion arose

of the goddess-oriented variety

and the connection of the cow to the goddess

is there at the dawn time.

There is no question about it.

Language seems to have been

the particular prerogative of women

in the early emergent phases.

This is possibly because

men were involved in hunting activities

where a great premium is placed

on silent stealthiness.

While women were engaged as gatherers

in the hunting-gathering phase,

women were engaged in gathering plants.

And as all botanists can tell you,

gathering plants involves an extensive taxonomic language

so that the difference,

the minute differences between cereal grains

and insects and all of these things

need to be linguistically defined

and characterized and characterized.

And to this day,

a taxonomic description of a plant

is a joyce and thrill to read

because, you know,

sub-apically glabrous

with lanceolate trifolium

and so on for many, many lines.

But in a strange way

that is a law repeated over and over again

through history,

each advance somehow outsmarts itself.

And the wonderful linguistic depth

which women attained as gatherers

through the production of folk taxonomy

eventually led them

to a terrible discovery,

the discovery of agriculture

because they learned that

rather than maintain this vast library

of shifting information

about seasonal plants

randomly distributed

or distributed according to the whims of nature,

they could in fact focus

on a very small number of plants,

learn how to grow these plants,

learn their needs alone

and at that point,

the retreat was on

and the dualism was fully in place

and there was that which was domesticated,

that which was of the hearth

and that which was of the ausland,

the howling unknown,

that which was beyond the pale.

I think it was Weston Labar,

great old anthropologist,

who felt,

he said,

hallucinogens can only be used

in hunting and gathering cultures

because when agriculturalists use them,

it makes it impossible

to get up at dawn

and go hoe the fields

and so suddenly the gods

become the corn gods

and the wheat gods,

gods of symbolizing domesticity

and hard labor

and that sort of thing.

And at this moment of agriculture,

which led to overproduction,

which led to trade,

which led to cities and so forth,

there is a beginning of the breaking away

of this symbiotic relationship

which had bound human beings

to nature to this time.

And I don't mean this metaphorically.

I mean, I want to be taken seriously

as proposing that the all we of modernity

is the consequences

of a disrupted symbiotic relationship

between ourselves

and vegetable nature

and that only a restoration of this

in some form

is going to carry us

into a full inheritance

of our birthright

as human beings.

Now, what did this symbiotic relationship

consist of?

What was the effect

of this psychedelic use,

this embeddedness

of language using,

cognition using,

but stoned primates

in the natural order?

Well, I submit to you

that what it was

or how it acted operationally

was as a feminizing pheromone

that the continuous exposure

to this tremendum

represented by the hallucinogenically

induced ecstasy

acted to continuously dissolve

that portion of the psyche

which as moderns

we call the male ego.

And I don't mean

that it only worked on men.

I mean that wherever

in human personalities

this certain catch

began to form

and build

like a calcareous tumor

in the personality,

the psycholytic presence

of the undeniable fact

of the tremendum

tended to dissolve this

back into Tao,

psychic hell,

however you wish to style it.

And that the evolution

of language then

setting up this movement

off into specialization

and the movement

away from nature

set up the consequences

of the ennui

which permeates

western civilization.

It is only in western civilization

that you get

this steady focus

on this monotheistic ideal

and working out

the implications

of what is

essentially

a pathological

personality pattern.

The pattern

of the omniscient,

omnipresent,

all-knowing,

wrathful,

male deity.

No one you would invite

to your garden party.

It's very interesting

that this ideal

is the only instance,

the only hypothetization

of deity

that I know of

that has no congress

with woman

at any point

in the theological myth.

The god of western civilization

has nothing to do

with women

and the presence

of the Sophia

and the presence

of the Mater Dolorosa

and all of these things

have only been tolerated

as heresies

in the western tradition

and it is the western tradition

that has

the most continuous break

with this symbiotic relationship.

In other words,

we have wandered

into a state

of prolonged neurosis

because of

the absence

of a direct pipeline

to the unconscious

and we have then

fallen victim

to priestcraft

of every conceivable sort.

A similar situation

which may give us

some objective perspective

on our own

haunts

the fate

of those portions

of Indo-European humanity

that went east

instead of west.

In other words,

the whole story

of Indian civilization

is the story

of

a masculine,

static,

hierarchically organized

system

coming into place

in the wake

of the loss

of the secret

of Soma,

the loss

of the portal

to another kind

of vegetable gnosis.

Well,

so,

provided then

that I have

made my case

and convinced you

that this is all

gospel,

what kind

of options

are there

to someone

who believes

this?

Well,

what that means

is a brief survey

of the anthropological

opportunities

to explore

hallucinogenesis

presently afforded

by societies

living throughout

the world.

There are,

of course,

the psilocybin

complex

discovered

by Gordon

Wasson,

the magic mushrooms

of central Mexico

which may have

played a role

in the Mayan

and Toltec

civilizations

and the wider

ranging

pantropical

stropharia cubensis

psilocybin

cubensis

which

originated

in Thailand

but is distributed

throughout

the warm

tropics.

Interesting,

all of these

shamanically

sanctioned

hallucinogens

are in the

Indole

family

a very

narrow

family

of compounds

with the

exception

I almost

blew it

with the

exception

of mescaline

which is

in a different

family

a kind

of

amphetamine

but all

the others

including

the morning

glory

complex

with its

LSD

like

alkaloids

chenoclavine

and

ergonamine

the

psilocybin

complex

which involves

as I said

several

pandemic

species

and many

highly

indemnicized

species

especially

in the

pacific

northwest

the

Iboka

cult

of

Gabon

and

western

Africa

which is

sort of

the exotic

cousin

of all of

these

things

but nevertheless

structurally

an indole

and then

the short

acting

tryptamines

and the

beta

carbolines

the short

acting

tryptamines

can be

used

separately

the

beta

carbolines

though

hallucinogenic

in themselves

are usually

used as

monoamine

oxidase

inhibitors

to enhance

the effect

of short

acting

tryptamines

this is a

highly

evolved

pharmacology

and

shamanic

complex

in South

America

one of the

peculiar

puzzles

of

shamanic

anthropology

and

ethnobotany

is

the

clustering

of

hallucinogenic

plants

in South

America

why are

the old

world

tropics

the

tropics

of the

Malukas

in Indonesia

not equally

rich

in

hallucinogenic

flora

no one

can answer

this question

but certainly

Mesoamerica

and the

new world

seems to

be

the great

home

of these

things

you notice

that I

don't

mention

any

synthetics

in the

list

this is

because

I would

sort of

like

to

peel

away

the

vision

producing

plants

from the

whole

straw

mundang

of the

drug

problem

and the

drug

issue

which is

a whole

other

kettle

of fish

and

has to

do

with

the

fates

of

nations

and

trillion

dollars

scamola

and

who knows

what else

I

prefer

the

organic

hallucinogens

and recommend

them to

other

people

because I

think

their long

history

of

shamanic

usage

is

the first

seal of

approval

that you

must look

for

I mean

if these

things have

been used

for thousands

of years

then you can

be fairly

confident

that they

do not

cause

tumors

or

miscarriages

or

that

this

has

because

nature

is far

richer

in exotic

and poisonous

and mutagenic

and psychoactive

chemicals

than the

human

pharmacopoeia

I

mean

many

things

are

avoided

there

are

many

potential

hallucinogens

that are

not

utilized

by

human

beings

so

there

has

been

a

certain

trial and

error

selectivity

applied

to

these

things

I

think

it's

important

to

confine

oneself

to

compounds

which

are

least

insulting

to

the

physical

brain

not

because

the

physical

brain

has

anything

to

do

with

the

mind

particularly

but

because

it

certainly

has

to

the

brain

should

probably

not

be

introduced

into

it

one

way

of

judging

how

long

a

relationship

between

a human

population

and a

plant

has

been

in

place

is

to

see

how

benign

the

compound

is

in

human

metabolism

and

if

you

take

some

plant

and

your

knees

are

feeling

rubbery

three

days

later

or

your

eyes

aren't

in

focus

hours

later

then

this

is

not

a

benign

compound

this

is

not

a

compound

where

there

has

been

a

primary

hallucinogen

involved

in

human

origins

because

these

things

bear

a

weird

resemblance

to

human

neurochemistry

the

human

brain

and

indeed

all

nervous

systems

run

on

5-hydroxytryptamine

serotonin

nn-dimethyltryptamine

is

the

hallucinogenic

compound

of this

amazonian

complex

is

the most

powerful

of all

hallucinogens

in the

human

system

and yet

clears

your system

in a matter

of minutes

this argues

for a great

antiquity

of the

relationship

between

these

things

so

then

having

discussed

options

it

would

remain

it

seems

to

discuss

techniques

since

it's

almost

what

Huxley

called

the

gratuitous

grace

all

conditions

for

success

can

be

present

and

one

can

still

fail

although

not

if

all

conditions

for

success

are

present

and

one

does

it

over

and

over

again

maybe

there's

a

maybe

there's

a

temporal

variable

there

I'm

not

sure

but

technique

to me

is a

kind

of

I'm

reluctant

to

talk

about

it

because

it

seems

so

obvious

to

me

what

good

technique

is

I

mean

you

sit

down

you

shut

up

and

you

pay

attention

is

basically

the

good

technique

and

then

the

footnotes

add

on

an

empty

stomach

in

a

dark

room

feeling

comfortable

and

then

sit

down

shut

up

pay

attention

it's

something

which

happens

behind

the

eyelids

it

is

not

eudetic

hallucination

although

it

begins

like

eudetic

hallucination

I've been

talking about

this kind

of stuff

now

for about

ten years

publicly

like

this

and

one

of

the

major

things

the

major

conceptual

and

linguistic

problem

to

get

over

is

to

actually

convey

to

people

what's

being

talked

about

because

probably

I would

assume

95%

of the

people

in this

room

have

something

under

their

belt

which

they

else's

and

that

these

things

range

from

mild

tingling

in the

feet

to

language

fails

and

the

thing

to

put

across

is

the

reality

of

the

presence

of

this

thing

and

this

is

the

importance

in

talking

to

a

group

with

an

interest

in

transpersonal

psychology

the

not one

of

seeking

the

answer

but

facing

the

answer

the

answer

has

been

found

it

just

happens

to

lie

on

the

wrong

side

of

the

fence

of

social

toleration

and

legality

And so we're just forced into this strange little war dance where everybody knows

that psychedelics are the most powerful instrument for the study of the mind conceivable.

And yet, you know, a lot of people are still ratomorphically involved in the academic and

university system trying to ignore the fact that the tool has been placed in our hands

like the 16th century when the telescope has invented.

We have proven that we are not large enough to take the tool into our own hands without

a social and intellectual transformation.

And I think it must begin in the field of psychology by acknowledging that if

if what we are involved in, if what this paradigm transform is, is the archaic revival and

that we really can create a caring, re-feminized, eco-sensitive, global world by going back to

these very, very old models, then it isn't going to be possible to do it on the strength

of political exhortation and rap alone.

It's going to have to rest on an experience that just shakes you to your roots, that is

real and that is generalized and that can then be talked about and dissected.

We need to acknowledge the depth of our dilemma and the real truth, I think, that we know about

our options out.

I mean, we're playing with half the deck as long as we tolerate that the cardinals of government

and science should dictate where human curiosity can legitimately send its attention and where

it cannot.

I mean, it's a, it's a essentially preposterous situation.

It is essentially a civil rights issue because what we're talking about here is the repression

of a religious sensibility.

In fact, not a religious sensibility, the religious sensibility.

not built on some con game spun out by eunuchs, but based on the symbiotic relationship that

was in place for our species for 50,000 years before the advent of history, writing, priest

craft, and propaganda.

So, it's a clarion call to recover a birthright, however uncomfortable that may make us, a call

to realize that life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism

is based on, is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego, and its fear of dissolution

in this mysterious mama matrix which is all around us and which apparently extends to infinity,

and where our historical future actually lies.

This is the other thing, it is now very clear that techniques of mind-human interfacing, pharmacology

of the synthetic variety, all kinds of manipulative techniques, all kinds of data storage imaging

and retrieval techniques, all of this is coalescing toward the potential of a truly demonic or angelic

kind of self-imaging of our culture.

And the people who are on the demonic side are fully aware of this and hurrying full tilt

forward with their plans to capture everyone as a 100 percent believing consumer inside some kind of

beige-furnished fascism that won't even raise a ripple.

So, so the shamanic response in this situation, I think, is to push the art pedal through the floor.

This is again one of the primary functions of shamanism and the function that is tremendously

synergized by the psychedelics. They are in fact, if, as I spoke of them earlier, pheromones which

dissolve the male ego, then they are also pheromones which synergize the human imagination,

cause us to connect and reconnect the contents of the collective mind in ever more architectonic,

implausible, and yet self-fulfilling ways. That I really think that the only escape from

the trap which post-industrial, male-dominated, politically manipulative, drug-running,

urban technocracy has in store for us, the only escape is a forward escape,

a kind of rushing past it and brushing it aside by virtue of an immense expansion of unpredictable

creativity. But what shamanizing means in the ordinary folkloric level is healing and the art

function is somewhat in the shadow. But in the face of the need for a planetary healing, the art-making

function of the shaman is going to stand front and center. Because what this art-making function

is, is generating a new guiding image of ourselves. This is why it relates so fundamentally to psychology.

We need a new paradigmatic image that can take us forward through the narrow neck of historical forces

that we can feel impeding and resisting this more expansive, more at ease, more human,

more caring dimension that is insisting on being born. And so, in terms of political obligation,

in terms of reforming and trying to save the soul of psychology, in terms of trying to goose along,

connecting up the end of history with the beginning of history, all of this impels us, I think,

to look at shamanism as the paradigmatic model, to take its techniques seriously,

even those which challenge the divinely ordained covenants of the constabulary.

Because if, if we don't do that, as I said, we're not playing with a full deck.

You know, years and years ago, before the term psychedelic was settled on,

there was just a phenomenological description. These things were called consciousness-expanding drugs.

Well, I think that's a very good term. Think about our dilemma on this planet.

If the expansion of consciousness does not loom large in the human future,

what kind of future is it going to be? Now, to my mind, the psychedelic position

is most fundamentally threatening when fully logically thought out because it is an anti-drug

position. And make no mistake about it, the issue is drugged. How drugged shall you be?

Or, to put it another way, consciousness. How conscious shall you be? Who shall be conscious? Who shall

be unconscious? And imagine if the Japanese had won World War II, taken over America, and introduced an

insidious drug, which caused the average American to spend six and a half hours a day consuming enemy

propaganda. But this is what was done, not by the Japanese, by ourselves. This is television.

Six and a half hours a day. Average. That's the average. So there must be people out there hooked on

24 hours a day. Or I visit people in LA who have one set on in every room. So they're racking up a lot of

time for the rest of us. You see, what is needed is an operational awareness of what we mean by drug.

A drug is something which causes unexamined, obsessive, habituated behavior.

You don't examine your behavior. You just do it. You do it obsessively. You let nothing get in the way of it.

This is the kind of life we're being sold on every level. To watch, to consume, to buy. The psychedelic

thing is off in this tiny corner, never mentioned. And yet it represents the only counterflow toward a

tendency to just leave people in designer states of consciousness. Not their designers, but the

designers of Madison Avenue, the Pentagon, so forth and so on. This is really happening. I mean,

it's only a matter of how tight you draw the metaphor that you realize, you know,

I've been coming and going from Los Angeles recently a lot. And when the plane swings out over the

eastern part of the city, looking down, it's like looking at a printed circuit.

All these curved driveways and cul-de-sacs with the same little modules installed on each end of them. And you

realize, you know, that as long as the Reader's Digest stays subscribed to and the TV stays on,

these are all interchangeable parts. This is this nightmarish thing which McLuhan and Wyndham Lewis and

others foresaw the creation of the public. The public has no history, has no future,

lives in a golden moment created by credit which binds them ineluctably to a fascist system that is

never criticized. This is the ultimate consequence. This is the ultimate consequence of having broken off

this symbiotic relationship with the vegetable, feminine, maternal matrix of the planet. This is what ended

partnership. This is what ended balance between the sexes. This is what set us on the long slide.

We can now examine the options available and put in place archaic options which will restore this

balance. And to the good credit of people like Dick Schultes and Gordon Wasson and Albert Hoffman,

we have, in this century, taken into our hands the tools, the information, and the means to do this. But psychology,

there had better not be a Nuremberg because not enough people have stood up for this. People have

contented themselves with ratomorphism for 25 years when they knew in their hearts that it was wrong.

Feeling guilty out there?

You could cheer to show that it wasn't you.

So now I think, you know, the culture crisis grows ever more intense. The stakes rise ever higher.

If there were ever a time to be heard and be counted and try and clarify thinking on these issues,

it would be now. Because, you know, there is a major attack on the Bill of Rights underway in the guise of a so-called drug bill.

And somehow the drug issue is even more frightening than communism, even more insidious. McCarthy told

America that communism was under the bed. He was wrong. Ronald Reagan and George Bush tell America

that drugs are in the living room. And they're right. It is here. It is real. It is the hydrogen bomb of the third world.

And the quality of rhetoric, the quality of rhetoric emanating from therapists and psychologists and psychoanalysts

is going to have to radically improve. Or we are going to have happen to us what happened to genetics in the Soviet Union. We're going to be

lysenkoized. We're going to be made lily white. And all opportunity for exploring this dimension

is going to be closed off. Almost as a footnote to the suppression of these synthetic poisonous narcotics,

which are mostly dealt by governments anyway. But the psychedelic issue, as I said,

it's a civil rights issue. It's a civil liberties issue. The reason women couldn't be given the vote

in the 19th century. There was a very simple overpowering reason that was always given. It would destroy society.

And that's the reason given. This was also the reason why the king could not give up a divine right,

the right of consequentity. Chaos would result. And this is why we're told drugs cannot be legalized,

because society would disintegrate. This is just nonsense. Most societies have always operated in the light of various

habits based on plants. The whole history of mankind could be written as a series of made and broken

relationships with plants. Think about the influence of tobacco on mercantilism in 17th and 18th century

Europe. Think about the influence of coffee on the modern office worker, or the way the British

influenced opium policy in the Far East to rule China, or the way the CIA used heroin in the American

ghettos in the 1960s to choke off black dissent and black dissatisfaction with the war. History is about

these plant relationships. They can be raised into consciousness, integrated into social policy,

and used to create a more caring, meaningful world. Or they can be denied the way sexuality was denied

until the force of the work of Freud and others just made it impossible to maintain the fiction any longer.

This choice of how quickly we develop into a mature community able to address this issue is entirely with us, I think.

And certainly people like Stan Grof and others have worked valiantly to keep this kind of thing alive,

but my god, you can count them on the fingers of one hand. So that's really all I wanted to say.

I left a half an hour for questions.

At this point, Vision Plant's Transpersonal Challenge continues with an informal question and answer period.

To make it easier for you, the listener, to follow along with this segment,

Sounds True will repeat the questions from the audience.

The first question, why don't you mention that DMT is an endogenous neurotransmitter and a Schedule 1 drug?

Yes, DMT, the most powerful of all hallucinogens, occurs in the human brain as a normal part of metabolism.

It also is a Schedule 1 drug, so you're all holding and this might be the basis for some kind of case to just show what absolute poppycock all this nonsense is.

People have been made illegal. Probably they should have thought of that sooner as a solution to the drug problem.

It seems to me that often psychedelic insights are co-opted by the larger society and perverted.

Don't you think that this is what happened in the 1960s?

And my other question is, can you say anything about people who experience difficulties with mushrooms in terms of electrical storms and seizures?

You know, understanding passeth everywhere.

The information is really neutral.

These things, how they work, the information they carry back to us, how we apply it, sort of depends on the moral order that we're embedded in.

To a large degree, I think the 60s were probably misplayed, but on the other hand, it seems to be the last decade when anything happened.

The lid has been utterly on ever since. It's an illusion, all this change. There is no change.

I mean, we're living in some kind of weird eschatological hiatus while the people who rig the game try to send out for new batteries or something.

I don't know what's going on, but there's a sense of an immense, there's energy for change, change building.

When it comes, which I don't think will be before this election, but when it ultimately comes, I think it will probably be fairly spectacular.

It's astonishing, actually, the way in which change has been halted.

Everyone is running around saying, change, change, change, but on the other hand, there is a curious sense in which things have become eerily dreamlike and still,

while we just teeter on the edge of the end of history, and the same personalities, the same design elements, everything has looked the same in the galleries for 20 years.

Perhaps there is an eerie suspension, perhaps because the 60s did anticipate so much that it took 20 years to live them out.

As to your other question about physical difficulties with mushrooms, the literature is not large.

It's generally considered fairly safe.

That doesn't mean it isn't strange, and it doesn't mean people don't become alarmed.

A friend of mine recently thought he was having a heart attack, and after he'd been taken to the emergency room and put on 10 machines and all this stuff,

he said to the doctor on duty, he said, is the mushroom doing this to me?

And he said, no, no, you're having an anxiety attack.

We get these all the time from people who haven't taken mushrooms.

So, this is an oasis of liberalism I didn't expect to find.

Sir.

How would you explain the widespread use of sacred substances as party drugs in our culture?

Why doesn't this occur in native cultures, this use of sacred substances as party drugs?

Well, I think it took place in our culture because there was no one to guide us,

and that the real truth about it is the real experience is so deep and so boundary-dissolving that it's frightening.

And a lot of people took these things only in order to be able to say that they had done so.

And if they had a light trip, they just said to themselves, thank God, it didn't work for me.

And now I can say I know about it and pretend to be an expert, but I saved my ass.

The feeling I got in the 60s from the people who didn't want to take it was they knew damn well they were crazy.

You know, they just mentioned to them accessing the unconscious and they just froze in mid-step.

In the traditional shamanic situation, there are elder shamans who know what you're shooting for

and they won't let you out of the box until they're satisfied that you've gotten the whammy.

So there's no evading it. So, yes, I think that's a good point.

The way it should be taken is reverently, in a calm, quiet, empty, clear situation.

And then the question of the sitter, certainly there should be no more than one other person there.

And, you know, I outrage people and give probably bad medical advice by saying, you know,

it is very good to do it by yourself.

But, you know, it just can't be beat because then there's no game.

You know, there is no surface. There is nothing to maintain.

But that's not for the beginner, I think.

But nobody should do therapy who hasn't had these experiences

because this is where you see the full spectrum of what the human organism is capable of.

And it's astonishing. I mean, yes, sir.

Do you feel the awareness or enlightenment of the sitter is a powerful factor in the nature of a psychedelic session?

Absolutely. That's why having a sitter is no casual decision.

It would almost be better not to have a sitter than to have a bad one, you know,

because then they're going to become your problem here.

Would you comment on the difference between having a psychedelic session in a dark room

compared to being in a natural outdoor setting?

To me, this really revolves around pharmacological issues.

I have a, I guess it's a prejudice.

It's so strong in me that I think it's a piece of revealed gnosis.

But I have a prejudice in favor of outlandish visual hallucinations.

To me, that is the sine qua non of the experience.

That, for me, always defines success.

Well, the kind of hallucinations that I'm talking about actually require silent darkness in order to form.

Now, if you take something like psilocybin or one of these that I mentioned out in nature,

nature is, you know, wonderful, filled with light,

extremely affirmative, complex, and you can dissolve into it.

And I guess there's something of the scientist in me, I guess.

And I wanted to see what it was, the ding-on-si-sh, the thing in itself,

with no music, no pretty scenery, no tactile sensation.

Just what can it do with pure velvet darkness behind closed eyelids?

And the reward is, that's where it works best.

Because then there is nothing for it to interfere with it or to set it thematically in one direction or another.

Finally, you can see what is this bird on its own, you know.

And so that's why I recommend darkness and isolation.

As a person who has never taken psychedelics,

could you describe for me what a typical psychedelic trip is like?

Let me begin by saying each one is different, but I won't stop there.

In the case of psilocybin, like most of these indoles, they vary,

but you take it on an empty stomach.

I do not fast elaborately, maybe six hours of not eating.

And then you take it on an empty stomach in silent darkness.

And I always basically calm down and ritualize the space as soon as I've taken whatever it is.

I mean, we were amazed in South America with these ayahuasqueros.

They would stop everybody talking, everybody would knock back their hit of ayahuasca,

and then the party would continue as though nothing had happened for 30 minutes.

And then they would call the meeting to order.

Then it would happen 10 minutes later.

But the way I do it is I sit for the hour or hour or 20 minutes leading up to it,

and I carry out what Catholics call an examination of conscience.

This is where you think of the commandments, whatever they may be,

one by one and decide if you've violated any of them since the last time you did this.

And I do this not in a planned fashion or out of piety, but more out of fear.

Because if I were to discover a huge violation, I might, well, I don't know what I would do.

The purpose seems to be to anticipate any bad trip in the hour and 20 minutes before it actually comes on.

And then at about the hour or hour and 20 minute mark, with your eyes closed,

you begin to see what is called streaming, just streaming lights.

And it's sort of what you see when you press on your eyelids.

These things you see when you press on your eyelids,

don't do it if you're wearing contact lenses,

are called phosphine imagery.

And there can be a wave of that.

And then there's a feeling, a full-body feeling as these.

You can almost see thousands of these drug molecules

fitting into their receptors in the synaptic cleft and the electrical energy beginning to rise and then there is

what Mersilliard brilliantly named the rupture of plane and

The rupture plane is fairly rapid. Well, then once the plane is ruptured you're in some other plane

and it is

then

Then it is what it is and this is what you don't find out till you get there. It's some kind of x-ray of your

self

but you're unrecognizable to yourself and

there is

information the most startling thing about these indole

hallucinogens is the information that we're not talking here about geometric

Patterns and and whirling

Fizz gigs and stuff like that. We're talking about

scenes

songs

strings of imagery

Bursts of poetic flight that hover between being felt seen and tasted that go on for minutes on end as though

Meaning itself has somehow taken on a self-replicatory life in the visible surface of the mind and

Then it's all about you know how you come to terms with this

If you are very have always been a very tight-ass

denying

rational

fearful

Sort of person

Well, then you're just completely

completely

Appalled

Because boundary has dissolved

You don't know whether you're Agnes or Angus

You don't know whether it's up or down and you know

It it looks to you. It's like the E.B. White cartoon. It looks like a megalomania

megalomania to me Martha

so

And you know the old style model was that you're supposed to swing from heaven states to hell states and that the Tibetans have something to say about this

Well, I don't know. I think it's pretty much up for grabs. It's I don't know it

Builds in a fugue of images and meaning that finally leave the realm of the sayable

And then it just goes off into what Wittgenstein called the unspeakable

And there you know, it's the peace that passeth

Understanding and all things are made right, but you can't say very much about that when you come down

Could you comment on your experience with the personality of the mushroom with the mushroom as an entity?

Oh, yeah, how could I have gotten this far?

Yes

I would have been remiss not to mention it because I think it's the central conundrum

At least for me personally, and I would think for any rational

Person dealing with these things

We're not just talking about

passive agents of

Transformation and slideshows of alien worlds and stuff like that

The central mystery is that the thing is animate

That that there is at the center of these experiences

An organized intellect key an ally a spirit and other and then I vow

Relationship is possible

And this is just now this leads us to the to the edge of simply

Wild hyperbole and out into the realm of the utterly improbable

We have no place in our world view for something like this

I mean is it an extraterrestrial

Is it Gaia?

Is it as some unions have said

Merely autonomous fragments of the personality of that have slipped from the reins of the ego's control

And now return to haunt us as gnomes, kibiri, water spirits, and sylphs of the air?

Well, I don't know

but

Who does know?

The point not to be lost sight of is that again, this is real

This is not rare. This is common

on psilocybin

What the what you don't get with I don't believe anyway

But what you don't get with yoga

What you certainly don't get with mystical experience

Is any degree of on-command repeatability

Of these bizarre mental and physical states

And yet with something like DMT

If you get somebody who who is transported into a realm of self-transforming

Chattering machine elves

Chances are they will get elves every time

Well imagine the impact of this on the rational mind

That you can be swept into a space where you

You have to entertain the possibility that

Is this a ufo abduction or am I dead or am I just simply

God forbid totally insane now

Or what is happening

The animate

Intellecti at the center of the experience is I think the greatest challenge

For psychology for historical assimilation of this phenomenon generally

Because what is it I mean our science

Is trained to allow the slim possibility of extraterrestrials

And so our electro I mean our radio telescopes

Point to the stars shifting millions of signals at a time

Searching for a radio civilization

But what is it going to do to the forward thrust of historical continuity

If right next door in the human mind

There is an other so other that it cannot be

Assimilated and yet so accessible

That it's only a matter of choice to stand in its awesome presence

I don't have the answer to this question

I think it's amazing that I'm able to articulate the question

Because it is

You know it is it is against 500 years of

of expectation and programming that we are finally able to

To wake up almost as from a fever

And say my God nature is alive

It's talking to us it's alive

No you know this is not a metaphor

I am not a romantic

This is not an artistic or aesthetic stance

Nature is alive

Someone is on the line

Well and then you know

As far as who

I don't rush in to say

I mean I'm very wary of anyone who claims to know who

Because the the problem seems to me one of great subtlety and depth

How can we know who is the other until we know who is the self

And perhaps one problem will cast significance on the other

Speaking of the self isn't any discipline or spiritual path

Ultimately the threshold looking into the light of the one who sees

And if one can do that without physical substances influencing the body

Look through that window and experience that luminous beingness

Isn't that sufficient without the use of physical substances?

Well, I think that's the challenge that the temporary encounter with this thing sets us

That yes, if we can encounter it temporarily

Through these shamanic means

Then must it not become the historical arrow of our becoming

What must we not then recognize that this numinosum

Must rise into history as a fact of realizing the eschaton

That's what I think that actually that the shamans are seeing and have always seen

Some kind of trans-historical object

Some kind of vast

Hypostatization of ourselves as deity

That is casting a shadow back through time

And that all magic all religion all vision is an anticipation of this future state

What excites me is the notion that we may have reached the point in this process

Where we can consciously know that that is what we are doing

That that is what we are about

That our task is the architectonic expression of the divine other

And then set about it without any more haggling and tail dragging

In other words to realize what our destiny is will cause us to move toward it with much greater

Facility and smoothness this woman at the door

I have a son who was in a fog for two years using dope

What do we say to our children about this?

Well

This this is a real problem

I think it goes to the general state of the drug problem

Which is it is one of utter ignorance and victimization

When the government whines and yaps about education

But they're not doing any education

I mean the what do you mean by dope?

I mean they have so linguistically impoverished us

That we can't even make a distinction between

Marijuana, methamphetamine, cocaine, LSD, what have you

A whole new vocabulary of consequences

Has to be created

That's what I said earlier

What we don't want is

Habitual, obsessive, unexamined activity

We don't want it in commerce

We don't want it in drug use

We don't want it in social relations

We don't want unexamined habitual forms of activity

That are obsessively expressed

What we do want is conscious, caring, self-examining, inquisitive

We don't want to survive thinking people and institutions

So whatever mitigates against that

Has to be seen as a drug

And things like television, money, propaganda

All of these things then are seen as great evils

Which they may not have been seen that way before

We have to get smart

You have to be smart to use drugs

You have to be smart to survive a planetary catastrophe

Now our ancestors were smart

They got us this far

It wasn't easy

Five times the ice moved south from the poles

Five times the human family was islanded

And divided by walls of moving ice

It hasn't been easy all the way along

Until a hundred years ago

There were no inoculations for infectious diseases

Most women died in childbirth

Many children died in childbirth

The average lifespan even in western societies was 35 years old

So it's going to be tough until we get to heaven

There has to be intelligence

And you know one way to be intelligent is to decondition

Our lives are not going to make sense

If we tolerate propaganda in our lives

You cannot be half slave and half free

You cannot be half hip and half yup

You know

So the main thing with the drug thing is to get smart

Get real smart fast

Or you will lose your children and your mind and your freedom

Because all this is at stake

This audience is has supposedly a stake in psychology

In transpersonal psychology which means the destiny and fate of the human mind

So getting smart about the the natures and opportunities of chemistry

Archaic and modern should be right at the top of the agenda

We're going to have to end this

Thank you for your tolerance