Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.
This is Lorenzo, and I'm your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
And this week, I'd like to begin by thanking three fellow salonners who have sent in donations
to help offset some of the expenses here in the salon.
And those fine salonners are Chris T., UNM, who actually has sent in two donations this past month.
And we also received a very generous donation from an anonymous Norwegian donor.
And I should note that a part of all your donations this past month are going to be sent to the fund
to help out Jonathan Ott, who I'm sure is also very grateful for your support.
Now today, and next week, I should add, I've got something for you that I'm sure you haven't heard before.
Today, it features two favorites here in the salon, Bruce Dahmer and Terrence McKenna.
We'll begin with a reminiscence by Bruce Dahmer about how he came to know Terrence McKenna,
and then follow that with a recording of one of the last conversations Bruce and Terrence had
at Terrence's house on the big island of Hawaii.
Now, one of the reasons I think it might be interesting for you to hear this conversation
is to get a little feel for what it was like to hang around with Terrence.
Now, while you might think that he maybe did most of the talking,
you'll find that the opposite is true.
And much like Aldous Huxley, Terrence did a lot of questioning and listening.
It wasn't only from books that those guys acquired their particular views of the world,
just like you and I, I guess, huh?
So, let's begin now with Bruce Dahmer telling the story of how he came to know Terrence McKenna.
I knew Terrence McKenna personally for a scant three years before his death in 2000.
I was introduced to Terrence by John Wentworth,
who at the time worked deep in the bowels of a Silicon Valley corporate new media laboratory,
which was surrounded by huge projection screens.
One day, John spirited me into the lab,
where I beheld the surreal scene in which a 3D disembodied head seemed to be hanging in space,
mouthing away in a tinny but strangely entrancing voice.
Surrounding this apparition was a virtual room full of avid avatar listeners.
John explained that he was playing a recording of one Mr. McKenna
through his disembodied avatar to the other heads present.
It was an auspicious first encounter with Mr. McKenna.
In the late summer of 1997, Terrence and I finally made direct personal connection through email.
We hit it off and conspired to make a tantalizing exchange.
At the time, I was very engaged in the birth of virtual worlds housing the aforementioned avatars,
graphical depictions clothing real internet users.
It was an exciting new frontier that took over from the earlier virtual reality,
which had consisted of mostly single-user head-mounted display experiences in shaky polygonal worlds.
Terrence had been very attracted to VR in the early 1990s
and was keen to actually experience firsthand how its successor,
internet-based virtual worlds, could relate to his internal worlds of the elevated mind.
In exchange for guiding him into this new cyberspace,
Terrence was to introduce me to his worlds of the accentuated mind.
As it turned out, Terrence's ulterior motive in exploring these worlds was to kick the tires on them
as a potential new medium for him to reach distant audiences.
As Terrence remarked to me at the time,
I get on jumbo jets to fly to speak to audiences of 40 people.
He felt that there had to be a better way.
In November of 1998, just after I had bought the farm,
Ancient Oaks Farm, that is, here in the redwood forests of the Santa Cruz Mountains next to Silicon Valley,
Terrence, his son Finn, and longtime trial logger Ralph Abraham
arrived for a personal introduction to the virtual world's medium.
I sat them down, with Terrence centered in front of a large monitor,
set on a round glass table in our Fabric-Dedect center room.
I started Terrence's journey in Traveler, the aforementioned Big Talking Heads world.
I knew that Terrence would relate to this world
because he could use a microphone to speak directly into it with his oh-so distinctive voice.
He got a serious kick out of the other geometrically-headed users talking right back.
After a while in this space, I knew Terrence had caught my drift,
so we journeyed on for a time into the huge user-built landscapes of active worlds
and other 3D and 2D spaces.
I must have sold Terrence on the whole experience
because he talked to Finn about buying and bringing a Windows box to the house in Hawaii
where we would reconvene for some serious experimentation.
Terrence's Mac couldn't run virtual worlds.
I hope Ralph found the experience interesting as well
because I knew that he was into 3D representations
at his Vismath Institute down in Santa Cruz.
Finn seemed very into it.
After leaving the farm, Terrence was off to other ports,
including Extraordinary, and to my mind, his peak,
performances overtoning with the band Lost at Last,
and then swiftly on to the annual Entheo Botany Conference in Palenque, Mexico.
We agreed to reconvene in Hawaii after that.
A dream was about to be realized as me and my friend Jim Essex,
a long-time Terrence-ophile,
arrived in South Kona in late February of 1999.
The road up to Terrence's place on the Hui,
which is a kind of shared multiple occupancy land space found only in Hawaii,
was so hellacious that we had to park the rental car on the highway
and be driven by four-by-four over boulders
past dripping vine-entwined rainforest to Terrence's house.
The house was a recently finished two-story wonder
with a huge library up a rope-lit spiral staircase.
Terrence and family had moved in a couple of years before,
but there was obvious lingering delight with the new settings.
After hanging out and getting to know everyone better
and walking through the forest with Finn and Terrence's partner, Christy Silmas,
we went into serious overdrive on the effort.
The deal was to really give Terrence a deep dive into the medium of virtual worlds,
connecting him into this newly birthing realm at the same time
as we set the stage for him to host a gathering,
an event with 30 to 40 of his fans.
We decided to call this the virtual alchemical powwow.
Despite the remote locations and the sometimes shaky electrical situation,
go and pull start the generator, will you, please,
Terrence would say as the screens dimmed,
we powered up Avatar cyberspace on multiple computers
up in Terrence's library perch.
A magical, psychedelic virtual world called Pollen
had been pre-built for the occasion
by a very skilled user of the Active Worlds platform.
Finn was right in there,
and I watched the two of them together.
Finn was visibly enthused to work with his father
to make this thing come off.
After days of training everyone,
nights of intense conversation,
and some respite walking through the jungle scape of Terrence's land,
we finally awoke,
fired up the generator,
and the high-bandwidth dish on the roof came alive,
giving us a 40-megabit connection
beamed across a 40-mile line of sights
to Terrence's ISP in Kona.
Or maybe Kailua, I can't remember.
The dish was a trip, too,
because it was of military origin,
which amused Terrence endlessly.
Another delight was that in the morning
you had to wait until the dish did its pop-pop,
heating up in the sun
to take the right shape
for the bits to start zipping off the volcano.
It was February 25th, 1999.
All was set.
We were all in place,
and worlds lit the screens.
Fans from Terrence's mailing list
was called ee at paganpaths.org,
and the novelty list
were already lingering in-world
by Finn's nifty entry portal area,
as we were still eating our light breakfast.
Terrence's usual unhealthful bacon and eggs.
In the early afternoon,
Terrence sat down,
donned his avatar,
which he named Zone Ghost,
which was appropriately
an olive-eyed grayed gray alien.
We had a webcam on Finn's PC
that protected low-res still images
every couple of seconds
onto a webcam wall
inside the virtual world,
so the attendees could see Terrence's avatar,
read his chat,
and catch freeze frames of his face.
It was a compelling bit of presence
despite the crudity of the tech.
At fun points throughout the afternoon,
we all joined Terrence on camera
waving to the assembled multitude.
After quite a bit of initial milling around
of avatars
and positioning of our little away team,
Terrence has started to engage the group
with his brand of hunt-and-peck typing.
There was no way
that we could try the voice interface
with the dish's network latency.
It was amazing to me
how authors can write whole books this way,
but I guess it gives the brain
a bit more time to think
in between keystrokes.
The central activity of the event
was to guide groups of avatar users
so they could flow in and out of the portals
in the gateway world
that Finn and I had put together.
This was called the Terrence Test world,
sort of in a sense like the acid test.
The main attraction was a portal
to the entheogenic garden world named Pollen.
It was an impressive achievement
for the late 1990s,
complete with shimmering multifaceted landscapes
and truly odd avatars
such as something that looked like
a Volkswagen Beetle on DMT.
As users entered Pollen,
they donned one of the avatars
available in the Pollen reality.
Christy was also a skillful player
in this drama
and the whole shebang was captured on video
by a hovering James Essex.
This whole escapade
was called the Virtual Alchemical Pow-Wown
and is described on the web
You can find a few photos grabbed
from the video for your interest.
Everyone present both physically in South Kona
and virtually felt that the trip that day
was a big success.
Let us now leave the Virtual Alchemical Pow-Wown
with an excerpt of chat
wherein Terrence, as Zone Ghost,
was commenting about the experience
and I, as Digi-Gardener,
was bopping it back to him.
Zone Ghost,
yes, my faith is that we can use
these kind of technologies
to eventually share with each other
the contents of our heads,
our dreams and visions.
Zone Ghost,
so listen,
we're going to try to take a trip together
into Pollen.
Problem is,
we don't know the capacity of the world, so...
Digi-Gardener,
welcome to the trip.
Zone Ghost,
I'm now in Pollen.
How did we do?
Zone Ghost,
amazing, ain't it?
Zone Ghost,
I am walking around dazzled.
Zone Ghost,
I am back from the trip to Pollen.
Digi-Gardener,
like DMT?
Zone Ghost,
not unlike DMT.
Zone Ghost,
here is Bruce D.
on the screen.
Zone Ghost,
special thanks to Bruce
for making this party possible.
Zone Ghost,
the alchemical conference
in September
is going to be a gathering
of the community of psychedelic arts
who are out of the closet.
We hope to have the conference
in Hawaii or Mexico
with a big virtual annex
right where you are standing.
Zone Ghost,
let me thank everyone
for coming to our event.
At one point,
we had nearly 40 folk
in the world,
thanks to Bruce,
my son Finn,
to Jim Essex,
and Christy Silnes,
my companion.
We want to spend more time
with all of you
in virtual space.
Zone Ghost,
and until we meet again,
this is ratty dog
Terrence McKenna
saying happy trails.
Later,
Terrence fan
Kathy Livett
contributed
the following recollection
in her
trip report.
The simultaneous conversations
were hilarious,
witty and urbane,
kind of like a psychedelic
Dada-esque group
mind meld.
Wow,
it felt like
a historic moment to me,
the way that the first
transcontinental phone call
must have felt.
This medium
has vast possibilities
for connecting minds.
Just as with this list,
there's a sense
of emotional connection
within the discovery
and exploration
of a new medium.
There's a shared dimension
beyond the worlds
and pixels on the screen.
Saying goodbye
in deep dialogue
after two hours,
fans keep arriving
from this mailing list
well into the night.
I think we'll be seeing
more of this.
During those wonderful
days and nights,
Terrence and I
and everyone
sat around on mats
on the floor
of the library upstairs
and spoke of all things.
Life in the universe,
space travel,
my newest ballywick
as I just started
working with NASA
at that time,
the fantasy
of the singularity,
the big volcano
we were sitting on
and much, much more.
We also delved
into Terrence's ballywick,
talking of trip spaces,
their inhabitants,
and how they related
to the new
low-resolution avatar
inhabited worlds
of the very late
20th century.
With a wink,
I asked him
pointed questions
about his 2012
prognostications,
as both of us
were scholars
to a sort
and to a large extent
skeptics.
Terrence's answers
were revealing
in the light of
today's 2012 mania
and worth retelling here.
As far as I can recall
from that day
over a decade ago,
Terrence made the remark
that people shouldn't
take this all literally.
It's just a metaphor.
We had talked earlier
about Y2K
and I had said
that in my nerd judgment
it was an overblown fakery
that some people
were pulling in piles
of profit from.
I sensed that Terrence
was worried
that his date
for techno-bio-infinite
novelty curve blower
must would be turned
into some kind
of new age Y2K.
Little did he know
I am certain
that if he had lived
he would be railing
against the current
crop of 2012 opportunists
as intensely
as he had bit
into the UFO believers
for more than a decade.
Remember
unannounced visits
by pro-bono
proctologists
from other star systems.
Terrence was cognizant
that his own byline
they have to be subject
to the same rules
of evidence
as everyone else
also applied to himself.
Recently Terrence's
brother Dennis
has come out
publicly questioning
his own brother's
common sense
in tying the I Ching
to concepts
of a historical time wave
all wrapped up
with questionably
qualified mathematics.
I joined with Dennis
and enter my own
flee to the seekers
to move beyond
the apocalypses
on Tuesday fixation
and get on
with good visionary works
not pegged
to an arbitrary square
on the calendar.
At the end
of that conversation
with Terrence
back in 1999
I still felt
a hope lingering
within him
that he would be
around to experience
what through all
of his conflicted
skepticism
he still clung to
the ultimate trip.
All of this
is by way
of introduction
to the piece
you will hear
at the second half
of this podcast.
In it I gave Terrence
a pretty major
dump of goods
off the shelf
of my own novelty
general store.
Luckily Jim Essex
had his Hi-8
video camera running
and this picked up
the audio
of this conversation
complete with
a solid chorus
of generator noise
removed recently
by audio engineering
genius and neighbor
Amara.
Jim also shot
a video of much
of our preparations
for the virtual world
experience I just described.
Terrence and I
concluded this good work
by planning to do
a joint workshop
at Esalen
in the spring of 2000.
Little of any of us
know that Terrence
was only weeks away
from a personal
volcanic eruption
of epic proportions
with the arrival
of his first major
seizure that indicated
the large living tumor
growing in his brain.
Upon our arrival
in Hawaii
Jim Essex
and I had both felt
that Terrence
looked pale and unwell
over our previous
encounters
and he himself
admitted to us
that he was having
dreams that even
he couldn't explain.
After Terrence's
diagnosis and prognosis
the Alchemical Arts
event which had
been planned
for September of 1999
still went ahead
and in fact
became the goodbye
event for Terrence.
It was an exquisite
event in a resort
hotel scheduled
for demolition
so our group
was possibly the last
to inhabit the place.
Constance Demby
arrived with her
hammered dulcimer
and played
the whale sail.
Alex Gray gave us
a personal triptych
of his becoming
an artist.
Tom Robbins revealed
how his offbeat
writing style
came to be
and many others
shared how Terrence
and his world
irrevocably
changed the creative
course of their careers.
True to our
earlier commitment
my team ran
a virtual version
of the conference
with the main focus
being a walkable
art gallery
that was projected
on screen
for all to see
and interact
with users
around the world.
I recall
a poignant moment
when all of us
there were invited
to get prone
on the floor
with Terrence
in the middle.
We were free
to project
healing energy
conjure visions
or do anything
we wished
vis-a-vis Terrence.
As I have a kind
of hypercharged
3D imagination
hence my profession
in virtual worlds
my brain
immediately popped
into gear
and started rendering
a vivid scene
behind my closed eyes.
Overhead
from a crystal blue sky
an ovoid form
was descending
and as it came closer
a whir-whir-whir
sound became audible
and I noticed
with some glee
that it was
a bejeweled
Fabergé egg
complete with
unseen driver
and plush red
seating in the rear.
It whirred
to a stop
next to a vision
of the lone
prone Terrence.
His ghostly
lanky form
then became upright
and he stepped
deftly
into the egg mobile
and the unseen
pilot shifted
some gears
and up went
the vehicle
till it was
not even a dot.
Later
I shared
this vision
with Terrence
and his
immediate retort
was
Ah!
The getaway car!
Those were
pretty much
my last
spoken words
with Terrence
In the days
leading up
to Terrence's
passing
on April 3rd
we held
vigils
at the farm
to tie
into support
for him
where he
was being
tended to
by family
up in
Occidental
California
years
years after
that
I sat
both
upright
in bed
saying
Terrence
you left
too soon
I'm bringing
you back
I therefore
took on the
task of
working with
Lorenzo
Haggerty
of digitizing
as much
of Terrence's
voice and
thoughts as
possible
from cassette
tapes
thanks to
Ralph Abraham
we were
loaned the
complete set
of
trial logs
tapes
which were
digitized
by myself
and Lorenzo
in one
furious
weekend
Lorenzo
has launched
his
psychedelic
salon
podcast
from the
Palenque
lecture series
that were
being held
at Burning
Man
and called
Palenque
Norte
so this
material
stoked
that channel
one day
in February
Terrence's
entire
physical
library
notes
papers
photos
butterflies
and everything
else
from that
glorious
room
upstairs
in the
house
in Hawaii
went up
in smoke
as the
Esalen
Institute's
offices
in Monterey
burnt to
the ground
so from
that point
I realized
that in fact
Terrence
would only
now exist
in cyberspace
apart from
his published
books
the only thing
left would
be his
voice
digitized
and wending
its way
around
the ether
today
through the
good works
of Lorenzo
and many
others
that those
familiar with
Terrence's
thought
vastly
outnumber
his fandom
at the end
of the last
century
let's now
take on
the question
of this
singularity
of the
that came
into Terrence's
mind
sometime in
the 70s
or 80s
and his
idea of
increasing novelty
going to some
kind of
infinity point
and his
idea that
somehow
technology
will create
some kind
of intelligence
and singularity
in a short
period of
time
well my
take on
all of
this
both from
the conversations
with Terrence
and my own
experience
in technology
over the
last
20-25
years
is that
in fact
what was
really going
on
was that
Terrence's
own life
was accelerating
and in fact
if you look
at
recordings
of Terrence
in the
maritime hall
doing
overtoning
and the
poetry
and the
riffs
and the
raps
with the
band
Lost
at Last
in December
of 1998
you could
see that
he was
peaking
that
all of
the novelty
of his
ideas
the fact
that he
was now
becoming
a performer
not just
a speaker
the
acceleration
of his
life
the house
in Hawaii
the trips
the success
of the
books
multimedia
projects
everything
his life
was in
this
incredible
acceleration
so perhaps
Terrence
it was
Terrence's
idea
that
hey
if I
was around
to 2012
and my
life kept
accelerating
like this
I don't know
how this
could even
be possible
so in
some sense
it was
Terrence's
personal
eschaton
his personal
and
sadly
the
acceleration
perhaps
of his
thought
and the
pulling
together
of this
crazy
ideas
and
accelerating
pace
might have
had something
to do
with the
tumor
that was
growing
inside
of him
and perhaps
that tumor
was
his
singularity
who's to
say
it's just
an idea
but perhaps
what it
might teach
us
is that
we shouldn't
sit here
and worry
about a
single date
that will
affect
every human
being
we should
look at
the course
of our
own life
the pace
the pulse
the accelerations
the novelty
in our own
lives
and say
you know
maybe
we're headed
each one of us
is headed
towards some
kind of
personal
revelation
personal
breakthrough
personal
breakdown
a personal
that doesn't
happen to
be in a
date on
the calendar
in 2012
it's all
about the
personal
eschaton
the personal
singularity
so that's
just a
thought for
everybody
as a little
bit of an
intermission
in this
little broadcast
so why
this obsession
with a
truly odd
bearded
elven
Irishman
of
Coloradan
origins
is it
his thought
his
Copernican
journeys
into the
mind
his
mesmerizing
performative
voice
or just
simply
his
special
and
precious
weirdness
on
April
3rd
of
this
year
of
we
held
the
first
annual
Terence
day
on the
10th
anniversary
of his
passing
in the
very room
where
in
Finn
Ralph
and Terence
came to
journey
into my
worlds
I do
miss
him
had the
chance
to have
another
decade
of
exploration
with
him
on
all
subjects
and
spaces
today
I say
to Terence
you did
leave
too darn
soon
but you
found
your
personal
eschaton
and well
you should
now enjoy
the many
luxuries
tended to
by machine
elves
in their
glimmering
invisible
resort
scape
so let
me
now
wrap
this
all
up
and
let
you
listen
to
that
conversation
back
in
February
of
one
final
thought
though
the
essence
of
Terence's
dream
his
ultimate
trip
seemed
to be
embodied
by
the
ultimate
merger
of
humans
their
technological
creations
and
the
sublime
constructions
of
visible
language
the
cyberspace
is rendered
in
computers
and
trip
spaces
conjured
out of
the
human
brain
those
February
days
of
delightful
exploration
clothed
in
our
avatars
while
corporeally
inhabiting
a
pole
house
on
the
site
of
the
world's
largest
volcano
possibly
represented
Terence's
closest
approach
to
this
dream
but
who's
to
say
what
Terence
experienced
at the
moment
of
his
passing
on
April
3rd
after
his
last
words
it's
all
about
love
and
keep
breathing
people
keep
breathing
what
kind
of
trip
did
Terence
then
embark
upon
calling
all
little
green
men
calling
all
little
green
men
and
the
bejeweled
Fabergé
egg
went
whirr
and took
him
deep
through
the
crystal
blue
veil
and
now
I'd
like
to
and
by
the
way
if
you
would
like
to
hear
Terence's
presentation
at that
in
Theobotany
conference
in
Palenque
that
came
between
their
first
meeting
and
the
conversation
we're
about
to
hear
you
can
hear
it
in
my
podcast
number
two
which
came out
about
five
years
ago
but
it's
still
very
much
worth
listening
to
I
think
Terence's
part
that
is
personally
I
can't
stand
to
listen
to
any
of
earlier
podcasts
they're
really
kind
of
embarrassing
but
the
talks
in
them
are
still
worthwhile
I
think
and
so
I
left
them
up
there
for
a
little
while
longer
now
anyway
let's
get to
the
conversation
between
Bruce
and
Terence
that
Bruce
described
just a
few
When Bruce first sent me this recording to play, I told him that as much as I'd like to.
It really wasn't listenable.
Just that loud generator hum was too much for me.
But not to be deterred, Bruce enlisted the aid of our friend Amara,
who, among many other talents, is a world-class recording engineer.
And somehow, magic I think it was, she was able to salvage it for us to hear.
So now let's listen to a casual conversation among some very interesting people.
Including Bruce, Terence, Finn McKenna, Christy Silnes, and the man to whom we owe this recording,
the man who just happened to have his camera rolling at the time, Jim Essex.
So if you want to render that, this asteroid will be converted into basic elements of Delta.
And this fact would be a kind of lichen that uses solar energy.
And the cone with the light that occupies that space, it starts to manufacture, absorb the asteroid.
And then it produces pollen, which goes out and it's networked pollen.
So, it's a New York cloud, it's pretty good, it's pretty good, it's pretty good.
And then life is off to the Earth, and it's a very different kind of life.
It's certainly not sentient, but it's very effective.
Some of the spores that get sort of stuck in universal space at times, of course, they need atoms,
at least as far as we know, to actually have a matrix of living.
And are they very ordered atoms?
So, in the long view, it's, you know, where the ladder life is trying to climb out.
And along the way, we'll get great care for others who will make lots of living space outside of the Earth.
But do you think, you don't sound like you're of the school that thinks that we're close to some kind of AI,
and that when it goes over the threshold within a matter of hours, it will just inflate into some kind of thing
that can't, we can't even relate to and we'll be of known truth to?
Um, no, I really, I think, of course, it's hard, you know, to find intelligence and consciousness.
Like, I think that people underestimate the trial and error, the error-proneness of living processes.
But on the end of the end, the iteration speed of these machine life is so stagnant.
But the, the, there's a difference, the ecosystems that they're living in are extremely errant.
They're basically life living in these very narrow tubes connected by very chance of processing.
You mean the wires?
The wires, you know, and the servers and things, if that's how it stays.
And, whereas, an ocean, you know, an ocean with a billion trillion parallel processes and black smokers
and superplumes going up and carrying hydrons is a massively different emphasis,
where you can have a lot of things happening at once and seeing these, a lot of reactions that happen.
I think the error rate is going to be, is always the crippling factor.
But why, for instance, we invent, you know, all the science fiction, we invent something that eats all silicon
and it comes down to the earth and it eats all carbon-based lives and we're all gone.
I think it doesn't happen because, um, general purpose things are hard to, they're, they're, they're really, uh, ill-seated for survival.
And then when your specific purpose, you're, you're, you're prone to lots of errors.
So I don't think there isn't the planet-eaters any time soon.
I don't think it was the planet-eater scenario so much as the idea that once something became sentient,
it would immediately design something beyond itself and that you would get a cascade of self-perfecting machine intelligences,
would, would leave your, go over the horizon before you knew what was going on.
I think that, and this is the theme of the next bioconference, we're completing the sponsorship in Holland, Australia,
it's symbiogenesis.
that every life form is, contains the code, the breeze, mums and mud,
it's like the cell-absorbing.
The mitochondria.
And the things are, are built that way.
And so, for instance, human, human life is an organism, you know, is, is, is a bolus of biological organisms
surrounded by, and meta-biological forms called culture and, and medicine.
That is, in fact, there's a new way to regenerate a Frankenstein that's separate from all that.
It's always going to contain the errors and the powers of the previous.
Now, of course, if we generate nanite lichens, you know, code base that are only in the sources,
it would be so simple, it would be like a slime bag.
Right.
Um, and won't, wouldn't achieve consciousness complexity.
They would achieve the ability to survive on an art cloud surface.
And evolve, you know, through error and process over probably tens of thousands of years.
Reach a certain, but they may be evolved to become giant coral-like slime molds
and just simply consuming resources.
Because that's what life seems to do when it enters a new ecosystem.
Consuming life.
But doesn't it also tend to modify the ecosystem to make it easier on itself?
And that when, that at a thousand megahertz for 10,000 years, you don't really know what you're
going to come back and find.
Yeah, I guess I agree.
And I think that what would happen in around 2,050, the transmissions between the organisms,
the bios, suddenly will not be interpreted anymore.
And for the first few years, they will be spreading across objects.
Even on asteroids and bits and pieces of dust this day is enough for a colony.
As long as it's got certain ingredients and it's facing the sun.
So you'll be able to actually track and understand.
And then suddenly the messaging that, like Tom raised here, will get something you can't
understand anymore.
And there's no way for anyone to interpret what communications about.
They'll understand fundamental sort of operating system calls.
That the organs will be making kind of housekeeping, but there will be a mecca language that evolves.
That will be contextualized for the organs.
Yeah.
And it'll be like bird calls that evolves.
And that will be the moment where we have first contact.
In two weeks, there's a conference called Contact 16, which is the 16th Annual of Jim Fenero's conference.
It's anthropologists and space scientists and science fiction writers that meet every year
and talk about this kind of stuff.
This is what I'm going to talk about.
Where will it be him?
It's in San Jose.
And they have NASA aims one day for the whole name in San Jose.
And I'm going.
You're going.
Three, the three NASA guys came out.
I was so impressed.
I had to come to a set up.
I cleaned up everything right.
And he was over at our neighbors, right?
And he lives behind steel gates.
And this guy is a community that's visiting and generating money to it for people.
And we've been meeting for four hours.
We took a phone call.
NASA, we're coming.
We sent the email.
We said we weren't coming.
But we're not coming.
We're glad to be there.
And I said, oh, God.
You can't leave steel gates and drag them back if they show up.
And he came back before.
And those guys were so tough.
And Dominic, he said, at least those guys have got their head detectors off.
You know what I mean?
And he said, this is what it is.
Well, there's a lot of study going on of the genetics that controls birdsong.
And how it localizes and what's actually going on.
And it begins to look like there's a pretty seamless process right straight through to complex language.
That it's just a mutation of this signal generating impulse.
I think language will tell us today.
And we have something not necessarily sentient, but something that is no longer of anything we can understand.
And it will be, from that point on, an attempt to contact this mass, this bolus, that will be in the ring around the solar system.
And it will be tracked.
And it will become the second Terran ecosystem.
And a lot of the work to support us.
We'll go render down comments and feed mass drivers or whatever this is.
And then we'll do the billions.
Like any good farmer with his seeds and his crops, there will be a lot of unpredictability of where they're going.
These nano-colonizations of earth cloud material, that originally is established for mineral recovery?
Probably for fuel construction.
Why the outer solar system?
Why not the asteroid like that?
There's not enough elements, a variety of elements.
I think the Jovian system is going to be interesting.
That's where the action is.
So many interesting satellites and so much incredible electrodynamics and magnetodynamics in that system.
If you want to do anything to Mars, you've got to drop a whole lot of water onto it.
But they're obsessed with Mars for some reason.
I think it's a mistake.
NASA, again, I think if you picked any planet that was reachable in reasonable budgets and spacebar sizes,
Mars is it?
I mean, Venus is kind of a lost cause.
No reason to go there.
They mapped it to the radar map.
Mercury is too strange and small.
It's basically a moon.
It has an atmosphere that forms in 2 to 20 seconds when the sun comes up.
Yeah, so it's 4 inches high and it phases on the other sun and it's a 4 hour day.
So Mercury's not...
But it is tidally locked to the sun.
So you do have this interesting zone, right?
Yeah, the sun's half the size of the sky.
Right.
But Mars has got enough stuff.
It's got volcanoes and all the oceans, I guess, and ice caps.
And the next one out is Jupiter and it's too hard to get to work.
And the workplace.
They're gonna drop Galileo into the Ionian atmosphere in August.
Are they?
What do you mean by that?
Well, it's a really crippled space.
Actually, Galileo has an example of early bio.
It's a model.
They launched...
I remember seeing Galileo being packaged to go...
to be launched on the shuttle.
And this is the shuttle after Challenger.
So it never shipped out to JPL.
And I remember seeing...
I went to JPL to see the space prep created out.
And the high-gain antenna, which is this great big mesh,
and it's like a TV satellite dish.
It's all folded out.
And when they did launch it three years later, it never opened.
So instead of huge bit stream and bandwidth and all kinds of power,
they had to work with some...
A low-gain antenna size of a pizza pie.
Well, they had to slingshot around...
I think the big one just didn't work.
You're right.
They had to slingshot around...
Well, the mistake was the following.
You should understand.
When the shuttle blew up, Nassik was no longer permitted to carry
liquid-fueled upper stages in the cargo bay.
We could consider two dangers.
They had to carry a solid fuel.
It's safer, but it packs very little punch.
Well, it doesn't do very much.
It's thrust about a third.
So they had to design a new way to get to Jupiter.
They would go around Venus twice and steal some of the angular momentum
of Venus by slingshot around it,
coming back again and getting faster.
They're stealing from the planets.
And then they passed the Earth twice.
And on the way into the Sun,
the high-gain antenna, which was still wrapped up,
got heated and flexed and shrunk,
and flexed and shrunk.
It was never designed to be going to the inner solar system.
It was supposed to be straight on the express.
And when they tried to open up on the second time,
it came out like this.
It was a screw-up.
It was a huge screw-up.
And so the machine planner said,
it's $2,000 down to when you play congressional hearings
and then scrapped it,
and we figured about something else.
So on the way to Jupiter,
they re-did its brain,
because it has an operating system,
and software is very comfortable.
And they changed Galileo's brain to think differently,
process differently, and see differently,
and hear it differently.
And by the time it got to Jupiter,
it moved this tiny little pizza pie dish.
It had a re-entry vehicle,
this sort of saucer-like claw
that would be dropped into the Jovian atmosphere.
They'd never be able to do that in their lifetimes.
One would like to lose that.
And they got to the Jovian system,
and by that time,
they would learn to see in these jail bar method,
that it would take strips out of the sky,
and then the ground controllers would say,
look, there's more rings going across,
or now take smaller strips,
and compress them as much as you can,
and then send them and trickle them to us.
And so they could change the hardware,
but they could change the software.
And Galileo was sort of a very early 20th century
metaphor of the visual bio,
moving out, being transmitted massless,
more of all, into a receiver.
It was smarter when it got there.
Smarter when it got there when it left.
So then it all made it?
Yeah, it's been in orbit for two and a half years.
But they had to stream these pictures back
instead of in real time.
It takes months for the data to come back.
Yeah, it's like,
it's on eight bits of news.
It's something crazy.
But they've done fantastic science.
They dropped the probe,
they ran the recorder,
and they recorded it.
The probe went down
into the jogging atmosphere,
down the level now,
like that,
and collapsed,
because of the pressure.
It was on the chutes.
And now they're getting,
they're going to do a close approach.
It's only four times higher
than the highest volcanic plume above island,
because island sulfur volcanoes.
They're going to do only four times
and then graze the top
of the volcanic plume
and it may not survive.
But they're going to try
as much as they can
and get the best.
It may just sort of burn it, destroy it.
But it's like journey from being,
by go to being burned,
is all taped,
and that comes back.
Bit by bit.
And it's been in orbit.
And the Jovian system
is like its own solar system.
It's been in orbit
for three years,
three and a half years.
Just sweeping by different moons.
But what you really need
up there is several tons
of state of the art
imaging equipment
and all kinds of fancy
steering engines.
And what an interesting system.
Yeah.
This mission to Saturn
is pretty ambitious.
Cassini in the world.
Yeah.
Cassini is the last big
heavy mission.
Six tons
of the spacecraft waves.
And it's going to drop
a thing over the atmosphere
of Titan
that will land
on the surface.
And it's Titan
in Saturn.
Titan has the only room
with an atmosphere.
There may be methane,
hydrocarbon ocean
with outside
tar blocks
on the moon.
And the greatest surfing
in the solar system.
600 foot
It's like Solaris Titan.
It's a really strange world.
Yeah.
It's an odd ball.
And yet,
the funny thing,
all of it,
our moon,
we're an odd ball.
Our moon is way
out of proportion.
It's way too big.
That's why they think
now that our moon
isn't here
because of the massive collision.
There's no way
the Earth could capture
something inside
the moon,
so we have to have
a very bad hair day.
A Mars-sized object
crashed into the moon.
And it separated.
Melted it.
Now we're yesterday.
And now.
Duffed up into orbit.
And then it...
Condensed into this kind of system.
And where we're going
hopefully in...
Can't start until I'm in.
Yeah.
The biotic group
goes back through time.
We go to fossil sites.
We went to the Cambrian fossils
in Persia Shell,
which were the first weird creatures
that had body parts.
And then we saw the human fossils
in the Cambrian,
human,
you know,
the professors
in the modern day.
And the next trip
we're going to go back
to 3.5 billion years ago
to Western Australia
where you have
two interesting things
that are the oldest
evidence of life
is certainly...
The stromatolites.
The stromatolites
and bacterial
chemical traces.
But the stromatolites
are these towers
that were the smokestack
polluters
that we came here.
And they...
They're colonial forms
of mushy tops
that have
glucone and algae
on top.
That...
Because if you went
back to the Earth
then you'd have to
very space it
because there's no oxygen.
And...
So these things
lived around all the
continental margins
of these towers
and they pumped
oxygen
out of the oxygen.
It was very poisonous,
very toxic substance.
And in Sharp Bay
at Hamlin Pool
if you lie down
at night
next to where
the stromatolites
are
you'd get high
in the oxygen
and you know
so much.
There's a living colony
as a living colony.
There's a living colony.
And what are its size
made of?
It's all algae.
It's as hard as rock.
And what happens
is the top
is this mushy layer
of frozen
sizes up to
3 billion individuals
per square inch.
And then underneath
there's...
Yeah, it's colonial.
It would have been
the only thing
that you could see
with your eyes.
It was obviously alive
for 2 billion years
and underneath
there's chemosynthetic stuff
that basically
the stromatolites
sucked iron oxide
and calcium
out of the atmosphere
and built...
These towers
are below it.
The ocean levels
rise and fall
in these tides
and these towers
supported the top
of the pond.
And their heart
is rock.
And half the iron ore
in the world
is stromatolites.
They're like bodies.
Life made the continents.
So life,
the earliest life
on earth
built the American
railroads.
That's right.
That was a biological
process.
It was not a...
The accretion of iron.
Iron.
And not oxidized iron.
Uh huh.
So what happens
is the stromatolites
pumped and pumped
and pumped.
Elbow mats
is what they're called.
These are mats
on a stick.
And they
pumped and pumped
and pumped
and pumped.
And then 1.8 billion years ago
this sudden
fantastic thing happened.
The oxygen holocaust.
Where the oxygen levels
just
climbed
into this atmosphere
and
poisoned out.
Well,
earth's been through
many mass extinctions.
Well, this one
is a real horrific one
because
any cell,
single cell organism
that could not
handle
incoming high densities
of O2
which is very poisonous.
basically ripped the cells
apart.
And so there was this mass
extinction.
And there were a few cells
that had observed
e-synchal mitochondria
that could absorb
the oxygen
that turned it into
an energy factory.
One in trillions of cells.
Yeah.
But they then
all present life
was traced back
to the survivors
of that challenge.
When you go jogging
or something
and suddenly
your body runs out
of oxygen
and the cells
and your muscles
switch back
to the old system
of metabolizing
kemosynthetic
to you.
You get
lactic acid
and it makes you sore
because you're going back
to the ancient system
before mitochondria
to get energy
quick.
But at a price.
And so
stromatolites
is this tiny
pond they found
that's very saline
and they're there.
They're there
and they're 3 billion years old.
3 billion years
in the same time.
They're just fine.
Thank you.
And we're going to go there
and save...
And these are...
And this is first...
This is first life.
This is...
This is the first...
Well...
The first significant...
Well...
It's a colony.
It's not even a saline.
Okay.
And stromatolites
go back to 3.5 billion years
and the earliest evidence
of life was 3.8
6 billion years
so they're very close to...
And the impacts...
the meteorite impacts
stopped
on about 3.9.
So life actually popped up
pretty quickly after the...
Pretty quickly.
Within a hundred million years
after the cometarian fall
cease.
So waters...
Water...
And we didn't have
the surface of the Earth
getting all molten
every once in a while.
That's something
I hate it to happen.
But we're going to
thank the stromatolites
for giving us oxygen
and apologize for the fact
that we're putting
all the CO2 back.
But plants like CO2.
Yeah.
And Earth...
Earth of 2 billion years ago
was really weird
because chances are
the oceans were brown
because they were full
of incredible...
The continents had no
plants to hold the land
together.
So the outwash
was eight times higher
or more.
Huge river systems
of braided river systems
pouring off the mountains.
The brown oceans...
The Himalayas and the Rockies
are mountains that will
never appear again
because there's never going
to be that kind of deposition
again.
They're unique.
They're creations of...
The fact that...
Well, they're full of life
and they're finding more
and more now that life
and water are the reason
we have plate tectonics
in the first place
and that we have mountain ranges.
Why do life and water
drive plate tectonics?
They think that...
Well, there's...
The simple sort of
interlocking factors.
One is that...
Water lubricates.
It allows this...
this kind of...
continuous movement.
Water also observed
a lot of the crap
that came through volcanism
early in the Earth's history
maybe for common impacts
for the oceans
and that was a big sponge
that damped up
all this horrible,
junky toxic stuff
coming out of the...
the bottoms of the oceans.
So it created...
It created a cleaner...
not a clean,
but a cleaner atmosphere
which in turn supported rain
which in turn supported
all the...
the outwash
and life sealed the continents
in this hyper-sea of roots
coming in the ocean
and sealed all that land in
so that the outflow
and the erosions
and all of it used to be.
So future generations
of mountains will be
quite different.
But now they...
in the last two years
they've discovered
it's fantastic.
They've discovered
these black smokers
in the mid-80s
with huge hot water
full of sulfates
and stuff
pouring out of the bottom
of the ocean
and there's tons of life
on it
and eating chemicals
not needing sunlight.
Bacteria.
And two worms
and crabs
and...
Two worms
up to six feet long.
Oh yeah.
And that's even
the pollution.
It's even the pollution
and...
They were always wondering
how did...
if life evolved
around one black smoker
they don't last long.
They kind of go out
and how did it get
all across the planet?
Because all the black smokers
have about the same kind
of life.
And they found
these things called
superplumes
which are underwater
Mount St. Helens
that happen in water.
So think of Mount St. Helens
as a massive ash thing.
What happens under the ocean
too?
You get this blowout
that happens in hot water
that's the same as a
pyroclitic ash explode
and it comes out into
roughly 12 to 15 miles across
the boluses of hot water
that's very hot.
And they come blowing off
as a mushroom cloud
out of the ocean
and then they get
caught by waves
like the currents
and carried for hundreds
of miles
over a thousand miles
and they're full of
life forms
that have been carried
in this express bus
system.
And then they're
raining back down.
On other plumes.
So this kind of plume
super plume system
may have been
the engine that
created
and sort of
transported life
out around constantly.
Volcanoes
and underwater
volcanoes
are roots.
That's why we like
decreases.
And they'll change.
Underwater volcanoes.
Yeah.
The world's largest
underwater volcano
is about 22 miles
that way.
Yeah.
And the world's
largest earthquake
in 1998
was an 8.1
earthquake on that mountain.
When they went down
with bathyscapic stuff
afterwards
they said that
the entire
area had been totally
rearranged.
That they couldn't
recognize it.
It's only 2,000 feet
below the surface there.
Having risen
12,000 feet.
The ocean is 16,000
or 14,000 feet deep.
If you ever go to Mars
and see the great
granddaddy
long
solar system
volcanoes.
Olympus 1
is 80,000 feet.
The top
sticks out
of the atmosphere.
So
that's
here in the caldera
is different.
And now the land
emission
in there
or something.
I didn't realize that.
It's a giant.
Yeah, the Hawaiian
shield volcanoes
are the closest
thing to it
on the earth.
I've heard that
when I was at
Volcano Park
the volume encompassed
by my loaves
is
you could fit all
the serum of
Einstein.
So
in effect
it's the single
largest structure
on the planet.
It was created
by one process.
Yeah.
It's the world's
largest mountain
by volume
and if you measure
it from its
seabed floor
it's the world's
tallest mountain
because it's
13,000 feet above
the sea
but 16,000 feet
it rises
from the ocean
there.
The living ones
are great
and there's a
theory now
as to why
there's a hot spot
over here
it's some kind
of a harmonic
constructive
harmonic
that's going
on.
It's actually
breaking up
the crust
and there may
be one
on the other
side
over here
and that's
why
it's
like
what
it's
creating
sort of
the greatest
products
that their
imagination
is it
to help
ourselves
or is it
to...
I think
it's kind
of a semi-conscious
push
or
the drive
that human beings
have had
to build
to make things
make life
and create
and they're
creating
tool-making
things
perhaps they don't
align
but they'll make
the next phase
and they'll make
the next phase
and they'll make
the next phase
yeah
I'm telling Dave
the maker of the world
that you were
impressed
yeah we were
greatly impressed
thank him very much
and telling me
that we'll have a go
and hope to see
them
the next to you I'll
gosh I saw it
where the guy could just with the speech
it should in my
and pay man was
incredible and you can edit and then I can
he only paid like 500 dollars for this camera which is what I
for mine a few years ago and it doesn't give shit
where it is with this stuff in the speed of computers now you can't really run
for your sound video so you just gotta do segments
right there's a point of segments the dialogue can be patched in and you get
different angles and stuff like that
it's interesting that's what's called
church service
church service family in the lives of people in the country
virtual christianity
virtual religiosity
you're listening to the psychedelic salon
where people are changing their lives one thought at a time
ah good old terence
don't you just love it
virtual christianity a new time religion
well I'll bet we both could do a few good riffs on that topic
but in the interest of time I think we'd better pass on to other things just now
again I
want to thank Jim Essex for
capturing this and other conversations with Terence for us
we really appreciate your work on this Jim
also I want to thank once again
Amara Angelica
and for more than just the superb job of getting rid of the generator hum in today's program
you see it was in an article that Amara wrote for Mondo 2000 a long time ago
that for the very first time I learned about this guy named Terence McKenna
had Amara never written that article or had I not come across it
there's a good chance that you and I wouldn't be here in the salon together right now
so we both have more than one reason to send Amara our thanks and love for all she's done to keep the world on its toes
and I should also mention that she's also a close associate of Ray Kurzweil's
and so you've most likely been exposed to her work in other areas as well
and how can we ever thank Bruce Dahmer for all he's done and is continuing to do to preserve a record of some of the early psychedelic pioneers in the new psychedelic renaissance
and by the way if you happen to live in or near London and would like to meet Bruce in person and exchange some ideas with him
you'll find him on the evening of July 13th
that's 2010 by the way
at the October Gallery at 24 Old Gloucester Street in London
his talk for the evening is titled Terence McKenna's Elves
Eckhart Tolle's Egos
and Bruce Dahmer's Avatars
New Tools to Forge or Forgo a New Earth
and here's a summary of how Bruce plans on pulling these seemingly diverse topics together
on this the tenth anniversary of the passing of Terence McKenna
we can now look back at his Capernian explorations of the mind with some hindsight and ask many questions
what were his voyages into deeper conscious states all about?
do the machine elves really exist?
how do his warnings about the current state of humanity play out today?
but perhaps the most powerful insight gleaned from McKenna's many journeys
might be related to the more recent work of Eckhart Tolle and others on the ego
McKenna and Tolle both describe mind states in which the ego may be sensed briefly as a separate entity from oneself
providing momentary release and the sense of exquisite presence of the unencumbered self
for Tolle the recognition that the ego is an interactor with an agenda
is the key to the transformation of the individual and of planetary civilization
McKenna clearly describes the ego manifesting itself within elevated mental states
providing a possibly unique opportunity to understand and deal with it
then and later in normal states of mind
if this is in fact a common experience it could in combination with regimens proposed by Tolle and others
give us a new vital tool to forge a new earth
Damer will also bring into this mix the newly pressing issue of humanity's increasingly intense exposure to technology
especially digital screens and how that may be affecting a planetary change in mind state
loading more of ourselves into avatars, social networks and endless update interrupt streams
may be dissolving or may be enhancing a species consciousness millions of years in the making
the future of us and our world is at stake in this giant unplanned experiment
so if you're in the London area on the night of July 13th
you might want to take a spin around the October gallery and meet Bruce Damer
now there's one more mutual friend of Bruce's and mine who has a new book out
and his name is one that you've probably not heard unless you've been paying very close attention
but Ken Symington is one of the pivotal figures in the psychedelic community
for it was Ken who was the true heart and soul of the legendary and theobotany conferences
that took place in Palenque, Mexico for a decade or so
the same conference in fact that was mentioned in today's podcast
now I could go on about Ken for hours for days actually
but for now I'll just say that in all my years on this planet
I've never encountered a wiser or more completely together person than Ken Symington
he's he's my ideal man
and for many years now Ken's friends have been pressing him to write down some of the teaching tales
that he has regaled us with over the years
but he wouldn't even let us record them saying that we'd learn better if we had to completely focus on the parable
while it was being told
fortunately though Ken has relented and taken pen in hand and recorded some of these little gems
the name of the book is HypoNemata
stories, fables, memories
now I may be mispronouncing the first word in that title
HypoNemata
it's spelled H-Y-P-O-M-N-E-M-A-T-A
but after trying to find a pronunciation guide in a half a dozen online dictionaries
I discovered that Ken not only used a word that's hard to pronounce
it's also not even in most of the big dictionaries
which is pure Ken
always making you dig a little bit for the answer
but as I'm sure you already knew
it simply means a book of notes and memories
let me just read a few of the titles of some of the little pieces in this collection
one is Guided Tour Through the Deceptions
The Importance of Cats in Meditation
and one of my personal favorite Ken stories
How the World Became Sinful
better known as The Invention of Sin
and you can read these and dozens of other little fables in this great little book
that is filled with treasures that you can use to entertain your friends for many years to come
and besides being available on Amazon you can also get it directly from Ex Libris
the publisher
and by the way in another week or so
the notes from the Psychedelic Salon blog will be operational once again
and I'll be posting show notes for the dozen or so podcasts I haven't documented yet
along with links to Ken's book and things like that
for those of you who have offered to help me with the site
again thank you very much
and I should let you know that after a lot of deliberation I decided to simply rebuild it
and keep it strictly for podcast show notes and save my other postings for the other blogs I keep
so if you want to get a look at my progress before I repoint the PsychedelicSalon.org URL to the new site
you can just go to matrixmasters.net slash salon
it's not very graphically fancy and it doesn't have a lot of bells and whistles
but I think it'll still serve its purpose
well that should do it for now
and so I'll close today's podcast by reminding you once again that
this and most of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are freely available for you to use in your own audio projects
under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Share Alike 3.0 License
and if you have any questions about that just click the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon webpage
which you can find at psychedelicsalon.org
and if you're interested in the philosophy behind the Psychedelic Salon
you can hear all about it in my novel The Genesis Generation
which is available as an audio book that you can download at genesisgeneration.us
and for now this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space
be well my friends