WEBVTT 00:01.460 --> 00:31.220 Well, let's see here. I think what we have to do is think in terms of the exhaustion of our own cultural forms. I mean, that's what we're living through, is the global dying created by the exhaustion of our cultural forms and the vitality of the cultural forms that we see in these so-called primitive, I call them pre-literate people. 00:31.460 --> 00:51.360 As Nicole pointed out, they have nothing, but what they seem to have that we cannot seem to get a grip on is a kind of dynamic equilibrium with their environment and peace of mind in the felt experience of the moment. 00:51.360 --> 01:21.360 These are the two things we don't have. As a society, we cannot seem to make peace with nature. As human beings, as individuals, it's very hard for us to be at peace with ourselves. 01:21.360 --> 01:43.360 Tremendous boon, as far as I can see. So I really think that there's a confluence here of themes and possibilities. It has this richly plotted texture that always lets you know that you're in the presence of a higher order of things. 01:43.360 --> 02:04.220 It's that the shamans, whom we admire, who we idealize, are seen to be at the center of this environment, the warm jungle, the tropics, the warm tropics, that we find it necessary to destroy. 02:04.220 --> 02:14.280 So it's a perfect image of us being at war, not only with ourselves, but with nature itself. 02:14.280 --> 02:26.720 And, you know, you've heard all about how the Amazon and the Congo Basin and Eastern Indonesia are all being cleared and lumbered and turned into cattle ranches. 02:27.020 --> 02:32.680 This is a tragedy, obviously. We understand and can perceive the dynamics of that. 02:32.680 --> 02:59.640 But how to make sense of a situation where, as the World Bank and the IMF attempt to halt this kind of destruction, on the other side of the coin, the United States State Department and the DEA and these agencies propose and are planning to carry out the defoliation of the Waijaga Basin. 02:59.640 --> 03:05.040 So there's a schizophrenia here that is not academic. 03:05.740 --> 03:11.860 I mean, are we trying to get the patient well or are we pulling the plugs one by one? 03:12.000 --> 03:16.120 We seem to be acting in both dimensions simultaneously. 03:17.040 --> 03:27.860 And I think it's because we have not, in this culture, awakened to the depth of the crisis that surrounds us. 03:27.860 --> 03:44.140 You know, there's a lot of kind of self-congratulatory back slapping going around these days over the fact that communists everywhere are in hot water and have to admit that they did it wrong. 03:44.140 --> 03:51.800 And this gives a lot of satisfaction to people who feel that that means we did it right. 03:52.100 --> 03:53.860 We didn't do it right. 03:54.460 --> 03:58.220 They did it wrong and now admit they did it wrong. 03:58.620 --> 04:05.000 We do it wrong and have yet to even raise the possibility of turning away from what we are doing. 04:05.000 --> 04:13.000 The internal contradictions of Marxism were based on a false definition of what people are. 04:14.000 --> 04:20.000 People do not respond to central planning, hortatory propaganda and stereotyping. 04:20.000 --> 04:37.620 Neither do people respond to an ethos of self-denial or a view of human beings that denies the fact that we have certain itches which must be scratched. 04:37.620 --> 04:50.100 So, you know, I think that the collapse of Marxism is only the collapse of the outer edge of the societal and civilizing assumptions that we have made. 04:50.360 --> 04:59.600 After all, Marxism is nothing more than the millenarian retread of Christian millenarianism. 05:00.240 --> 05:06.740 And so is modern science, yet another secular retread of Christian millenarianism. 05:06.740 --> 05:10.540 So, our culture is in trouble. 05:10.820 --> 05:11.680 Not trouble. 05:12.260 --> 05:15.160 We are at a terminal crisis. 05:15.540 --> 05:19.600 A bifurcation that can only go one of two ways. 05:20.100 --> 05:22.500 Horror beyond your wildest imagination. 05:23.380 --> 05:32.000 Or breakthrough to dignity, decency, community and caring beyond your wildest imagination. 05:32.900 --> 05:35.400 Now, where do you look for models? 05:35.400 --> 05:36.860 Where do you go? 05:36.860 --> 05:39.940 The answer is so obvious. 05:40.400 --> 05:42.080 You go to nature. 05:42.840 --> 05:47.580 Nature has been playing this game for three billion years on this planet. 05:48.100 --> 05:55.780 We have been playing the game, we, the apostles of Christian scientism, for about two thousand years. 05:55.780 --> 06:09.080 Nature has an economy, an elegance, a style, that if we could but emulate it, we could rise out of the rubble that we are making of the planet. 06:09.080 --> 06:18.060 You know, it was the geographer, Carl Sauer, who said, man found the planet, a climaxed primeval forest. 06:18.680 --> 06:26.800 He, and notice the gender here, he will leave the planet, a weedy lot, a weedy lot. 06:26.800 --> 06:35.220 Well, now this is a metaphor where you change climaxed rainforest for weeds, but it's also true. 06:35.720 --> 06:47.840 By clearing land, we promote the kind of plant evolution that stresses very rapid seed production and annular cycles of growth. 06:47.840 --> 07:01.460 In other words, weeds, and this tendency to find perfection and then to leave rubble in our wake has haunted us for the past three or four thousand years of our history. 07:01.460 --> 07:19.240 Now, with the ozone shield disappearing, with acid rain falling on the earth that can melt blocks of marble, with the CO2 levels rising, with the levels of strontium and chlorofluorocarbons, 07:19.340 --> 07:25.780 and you know the litany, we have now one last chance to fish or cut bait. 07:25.780 --> 07:35.560 And the place where nature has provided the models for how to respond to this situation is the climaxed rainforest. 07:35.920 --> 07:53.520 Only the climaxed tropical rainforest has the kind of complexity of signal transfer, movement of nutritional materials, movement of electromagnetic radiation that we find in the modern city. 07:53.520 --> 07:57.400 It is a cliché of modernity that the city is a jungle. 07:57.880 --> 08:00.480 The problem is it isn't jungle enough. 08:01.280 --> 08:13.420 And I think it's the task of the new shamans to take the metaphor of the jungle, which is a metaphor of tremendous wealth, 08:13.420 --> 08:32.060 tremendous variety, a tremendous outpouring of form and of energy and of potential fulfillment of various bifurcation patterns of flow to take that and enrich our own lives with it. 08:32.060 --> 08:41.200 And the way this is done is by empowering the presence of experience. 08:41.880 --> 08:52.100 The main thing that you get with these so-called primitive, preliterate people and with people like Nicole, who have spent time in this situation, 08:52.100 --> 09:01.100 is they are in the moment, they know how to have fun, they know how to work, they know how to live. 09:01.660 --> 09:09.920 And the reason they understand this is because they are focused within the confines of the felt presence of experience. 09:09.920 --> 09:12.940 They do not live by abstraction. 09:13.940 --> 09:17.580 And abstraction is the knife poised at our hearts. 09:17.580 --> 09:28.980 We are so much the victims of abstraction that with the earth in flames, we can barely rouse ourselves to wander across the room and look at the thermostat. 09:29.820 --> 09:37.140 That's the level of disimpassioning that abstraction has laid upon us. 09:37.680 --> 09:41.140 Well, hopefully this weekend there will be passion. 09:41.140 --> 09:50.500 There will be an effort wherever there is abstraction to drag it down into the felt presence of the moment. 09:50.500 --> 10:03.360 I think basically what we are are a kind of green anarchy, an effort to revivify social forms that have been atrophied in the West, 10:03.500 --> 10:09.940 at least since the destruction of the Lucis, probably in most places thousands of years before that. 10:09.940 --> 10:12.020 This is our last chance. 10:12.540 --> 10:19.180 I have done the best I could in terms of trying to sift through all these options 10:19.180 --> 10:25.180 and as a communicator offer the best way out. 10:25.740 --> 10:29.160 And, you know, I could only do my best. 10:30.080 --> 10:31.440 And so that's what you get. 10:31.800 --> 10:36.120 I can't preach scientism because I don't believe in it. 10:36.120 --> 10:40.440 I can't preach Buddhism because I can't understand it. 10:40.720 --> 10:47.400 The only thing I can preach is the felt presence of immediate experience, 10:47.400 --> 10:54.760 which for me came through the psychedelics, which are not drugs, but plants. 10:54.760 --> 11:01.120 It's a perversion of language to try and derail this thing into talk of drugs. 11:01.640 --> 11:08.080 There are spirits in the natural world that come to us in this way. 11:08.800 --> 11:14.080 And so far as I can tell, this is the only way that they come to us, 11:14.160 --> 11:21.740 that is rapid enough for it to have an impact upon us as a global population. 11:21.740 --> 11:26.740 This weekend will be different because we will be hewing close to the source. 11:28.300 --> 11:34.220 Nicole is a priceless repository of information, more even than she knows. 11:34.320 --> 11:38.140 If I could declare her a national treasure, I would. 11:38.140 --> 11:43.400 Who knows what this woman knows? 11:43.480 --> 11:48.460 Who knows how much human suffering, the alleviation of how much anxiety, 11:49.100 --> 11:54.600 lies in the hands of perhaps half a dozen people of Nicole's caliber 11:54.600 --> 11:58.180 who have paid their dues in these jungles. 11:58.500 --> 12:02.420 This information is flowing through our fingers and disappearing. 12:02.600 --> 12:05.920 In another 30 years, it will be all gone. 12:05.920 --> 12:13.100 Every time I go to the Amazon, I can feel the way in which it's slipping away. 12:13.260 --> 12:17.740 When my brother and I go off looking for these unusual hallucinogens, 12:18.180 --> 12:24.740 often we have the experience where when we finally find the person who claims they know what we're after, 12:25.360 --> 12:27.060 the line goes like this. 12:27.060 --> 12:36.140 Well, I've never taken it, but as a child, I remember seeing my grandfather prepare it, 12:36.460 --> 12:38.880 and I think I can do it. 12:39.040 --> 12:42.900 If it weren't for us standing there asking that it be done, 12:43.120 --> 12:47.240 it would never have even risen into the gentleman's mind as a possibility. 12:47.620 --> 12:52.880 This is the knife edge upon which this knowledge is poised. 12:52.880 --> 12:58.100 If it can be saved, it gives me hope that we can be saved. 12:58.480 --> 13:03.720 If we can't save this kind of knowledge, we cannot save ourselves, 13:04.060 --> 13:06.800 because this kind of knowledge is ourselves. 13:07.180 --> 13:09.800 Culture is a garment which you put on. 13:10.160 --> 13:15.720 Medical systems are pieces of jewelry which you wrap around your throat or neck. 13:15.720 --> 13:22.040 Religious ideals are like objects which you push through pierced nostrils and ear lobes. 13:22.380 --> 13:28.440 If we cannot come to terms with that which allows us to give birth with ease, 13:28.780 --> 13:32.080 to die with dignity, and to live in health, 13:32.560 --> 13:34.860 then what kind of a future do we have? 13:35.140 --> 13:37.260 No future at all. 13:37.520 --> 13:44.640 So this is not a meeting of obscurantists or enthusiasts for some private vista of transcendence. 13:44.640 --> 13:47.980 This is a meeting of political activists, 13:48.360 --> 13:51.160 people who are socially committed to themselves, 13:51.520 --> 13:54.500 to each other, to the larger idea of community, 13:54.820 --> 13:57.580 and who understand that when you talk about Gaia, 13:58.140 --> 14:02.740 it's only an abstraction unless you talk about plants. 14:02.740 --> 14:15.440 The division between the masculine and the feminine is only trivially a difference between men and women. 14:16.300 --> 14:22.400 It is fundamentally a division between plants and animals. 14:22.960 --> 14:30.580 Plants are the enveloping feminine matrix of control and refurbishment. 14:30.580 --> 14:35.020 Animals are something invented by plants to move seeds around. 14:36.180 --> 14:42.880 An extremely Yang solution to a peculiar problem which they faced. 14:43.340 --> 14:47.440 So the Archaic Revival, if it means anything, 14:48.080 --> 14:53.440 it means reconnecting the Gaian mind, which is a vegetable mind, 14:53.440 --> 15:00.480 a feminine, enfolding, boundary-dissolving, planetary mind, 15:00.800 --> 15:04.220 that is not an abstraction, not a stereotype, 15:04.880 --> 15:08.540 not something used to create hortatory propaganda, 15:09.100 --> 15:11.440 but a living, breathing reality, 15:12.440 --> 15:17.460 a reality which is the only thing which stands between us and Armageddon. 15:17.460 --> 15:28.060 History is a kind of horrified realization that something has been lost, 15:28.060 --> 15:35.840 that there is an itch hard to scratch in the civilized context, 15:35.840 --> 15:45.400 that we have out of fear really descended into patterns of domination of each other, 15:45.400 --> 15:51.660 of the environment, of our children, of our social relations with exogamous groups. 15:52.060 --> 15:59.200 We have descended into a dominator pattern that is basically based on clutching, on fear. 15:59.200 --> 16:11.660 And I'm sure most of you have heard me argue that this is the consequence of ceasing basically to do enough halicinogens in the diet. 16:12.580 --> 16:19.600 That, in fact, what human beings were flirting with over many, many tens of millennia, 16:19.600 --> 16:26.420 let's say from 100,000 years ago to 15,000 years ago, 16:26.420 --> 16:40.860 human beings were in a flirtatious situation with a symbiotic relationship with this mind resident in vegetable nature. 16:41.580 --> 16:46.680 Now, you all know that what classic symbiosis is in biology. 16:46.680 --> 16:55.600 It's where, let's take the example of the little fish who lives in the sea anemone and big fish don't bother it. 16:55.680 --> 16:56.940 It gains protection. 16:57.480 --> 17:04.260 The sea anemone gains access to larger prey which come to investigate the little fish. 17:04.740 --> 17:08.980 That kind of symbiosis is genetically locked in. 17:08.980 --> 17:19.240 And if you take the little fish away from the anemone and put it, let us say, in an aquarium without anemones, 17:19.700 --> 17:20.940 it doesn't die. 17:21.120 --> 17:24.720 It doesn't go into an immediate physiological crisis. 17:25.460 --> 17:31.020 No, what happens is it simply has a low body weight and a short lifespan. 17:31.020 --> 17:34.340 In other words, it is under stress. 17:35.240 --> 17:46.000 And I believe, I hope I'm not deluding myself, but I believe that the lost secret of human emergence, 17:46.000 --> 18:00.920 the undefined catalyst that took a very bright monkey and turned that species into a tormented, self-reflecting, poet-dreamer, 18:00.920 --> 18:08.960 that catalyst has to be sought in these tertiary alkaloids in the food chain 18:08.960 --> 18:14.620 that were catalyzing higher states of intellectual activity. 18:15.580 --> 18:20.620 And I've pointed out to you, ad nauseum, I'm sure, 18:21.240 --> 18:25.480 the reciprocal feedback relationship that was working there. 18:27.060 --> 18:31.760 In the case of the mushroom, in the veldt situation in Africa, 18:31.760 --> 18:35.540 it was promoting at low doses visual acuity, 18:35.540 --> 18:39.560 which was feeding back into the hunting and gathering process, 18:40.100 --> 18:47.860 making those animals with this increased visual acuity more adaptively successful, 18:48.240 --> 18:50.740 hence more reproductively successful, 18:51.140 --> 18:53.700 hence they're outbreeding their competitors. 18:54.720 --> 19:00.720 At higher doses, psilocybin actually causes a generalized arousal, 19:00.720 --> 19:03.180 which includes sexual arousal. 19:03.560 --> 19:08.480 Again, it becomes a catalyst for increased reproductive success. 19:09.140 --> 19:12.700 More instances of copulation in a situation like that 19:12.700 --> 19:18.740 lead to more successful births of those into family structures 19:18.740 --> 19:22.600 where the alkaloid has been accepted into the food chain. 19:22.600 --> 19:30.280 Well, this would be only an obscure topic of interest to primatologists 19:30.280 --> 19:35.500 were it not for the fact that it is a crisis in consciousness 19:35.500 --> 19:38.100 which confronts us globally. 19:39.120 --> 19:44.000 Consciousness is the commodity that if we do not have enough of it, 19:44.240 --> 19:46.600 do not produce it fast enough, 19:47.060 --> 19:51.480 then the momentum of the processes we set in motion in our ignorance 19:51.480 --> 19:56.200 is going to sterilize the planet and do us all in. 19:56.200 --> 19:59.140 So we have to have consciousness. 20:00.080 --> 20:04.880 Well, then you look at the smorgasbord of ethnographic possibilities 20:04.880 --> 20:08.320 and you discover this institution of shamanism. 20:08.820 --> 20:11.700 It is the institution of planner, 20:12.320 --> 20:13.160 of visionary, 20:14.000 --> 20:15.000 of manager, 20:15.000 --> 20:18.200 of large system coordinator. 20:18.680 --> 20:20.220 That's what it's about. 20:20.220 --> 20:23.060 You call it magic on one level. 20:23.360 --> 20:24.560 You call it curing. 20:25.000 --> 20:28.480 You call it folk psychiatry 20:28.480 --> 20:31.620 or weather prediction. 20:32.020 --> 20:34.400 Shamans have been involved in all of these things. 20:34.780 --> 20:38.640 But as Nicole made so eloquently the point last night, 20:38.640 --> 20:41.020 to these deep forest people, 20:41.420 --> 20:42.440 it is ordinary. 20:43.260 --> 20:44.200 It is ordinary. 20:44.980 --> 20:48.960 They live in a different cultural dimension than we do. 20:49.340 --> 20:52.820 Dimensions which to us are completely value dark 20:52.820 --> 20:56.080 are to them completely transparent. 20:56.880 --> 21:02.340 And dimensions which to us are extremely rich and complex, 21:02.700 --> 21:06.080 the inner world of the nucleus of the atom, let us say, 21:06.080 --> 21:08.720 are for them totally value dark. 21:09.180 --> 21:13.500 They don't even cognize the possibility of asking the question. 21:14.400 --> 21:15.120 But nevertheless, 21:16.400 --> 21:19.980 the specialization in these various domains 21:19.980 --> 21:24.360 is not something where one is as good as another. 21:25.220 --> 21:31.980 Consciousness is the domain of immediate experience. 21:31.980 --> 21:37.640 How are we going to save this planet? 21:38.260 --> 21:41.500 How are we going to take the lethal cascade 21:41.500 --> 21:48.080 of toxic, technological, and ignorance-producing habits 21:48.080 --> 21:50.140 that are loose on this planet 21:50.140 --> 21:56.240 and channel them toward some kind of a sane and livable world? 21:56.240 --> 22:00.760 Well, the answer is emerging in culture 22:00.760 --> 22:04.820 out of the collectivity of global consciousness. 22:05.020 --> 22:07.420 It is what I call the archaic revival. 22:08.020 --> 22:13.160 It is this very large turnover in the mass mind. 22:13.300 --> 22:15.540 Some people call it a paradigm shift. 22:15.540 --> 22:20.140 It is an effort to recover the sensory ratios, 22:20.920 --> 22:22.460 the feelings, 22:23.300 --> 22:25.180 and the attitudes 22:25.180 --> 22:28.520 of 15,000 to 20,000 years ago 22:28.520 --> 22:30.120 before fear, 22:30.760 --> 22:31.720 before ego, 22:32.480 --> 22:34.180 before male dominance, 22:34.700 --> 22:36.060 before hierarchy, 22:36.520 --> 22:37.280 hoarding, 22:37.740 --> 22:38.240 warfare, 22:39.140 --> 22:40.020 propaganda, 22:40.660 --> 22:41.740 child abuse, 22:42.060 --> 22:43.680 all of these things. 22:45.540 --> 22:46.780 And the answer lies, 22:46.860 --> 22:48.740 as was indicated last night, 22:49.080 --> 22:52.440 in integration into the dynamics of nature. 22:53.560 --> 22:57.160 Well, so far as my analysis gives it to me, 22:57.820 --> 23:01.040 the only way you can abandon yourself 23:01.040 --> 23:02.640 to the dynamics of nature 23:02.640 --> 23:06.380 is to break through the language shell. 23:07.220 --> 23:10.740 You must cut through the aura 23:10.740 --> 23:12.460 of programming 23:12.460 --> 23:14.140 and cultural assumptions 23:14.140 --> 23:16.160 that surround us 23:16.160 --> 23:18.400 from the moment we are able to speak. 23:18.400 --> 23:20.660 The only way this can be done 23:20.660 --> 23:24.100 is by dissolving the boundaries of ego. 23:24.760 --> 23:26.040 Ego is a structure 23:26.040 --> 23:27.800 that is erected 23:27.800 --> 23:30.400 by a neurotic individual 23:30.400 --> 23:33.160 who is a member of a neurotic culture 23:33.160 --> 23:36.100 against the facts of the matter. 23:36.880 --> 23:37.700 And culture, 23:37.880 --> 23:40.060 which we put on like an overcoat, 23:40.060 --> 23:43.540 culture is the collectivized consensus 23:43.540 --> 23:46.420 about what sort of neurotic behaviors 23:46.420 --> 23:47.780 are acceptable. 23:49.940 --> 23:51.480 Now, I don't know, 23:51.680 --> 23:52.020 so, 23:52.720 --> 23:53.280 you see, 23:53.360 --> 23:54.620 what I see going on 23:54.620 --> 23:55.340 in the Amazon 23:55.340 --> 23:57.780 is a very radical, 23:58.160 --> 23:59.720 psycholytic therapy 23:59.720 --> 24:02.340 where they are dissolving, 24:02.600 --> 24:04.000 literally dissolving, 24:04.000 --> 24:05.820 the boundaries of self, 24:06.240 --> 24:06.780 culture, 24:06.780 --> 24:09.700 and ego assumption. 24:10.340 --> 24:11.560 And then what you discover 24:11.560 --> 24:14.040 is not the white light 24:14.040 --> 24:16.200 or what William James called 24:16.200 --> 24:16.820 a blooming, 24:17.200 --> 24:18.460 buzzing confusion, 24:18.720 --> 24:20.400 although in the first few minutes 24:20.400 --> 24:21.720 it can be like that. 24:22.160 --> 24:23.520 But what you really discover 24:23.520 --> 24:25.560 is sentient, 24:26.520 --> 24:27.440 organized, 24:28.020 --> 24:28.480 living, 24:28.900 --> 24:30.360 loving nature. 24:30.360 --> 24:32.720 that nature is a force, 24:33.280 --> 24:34.800 nature is a mind, 24:34.900 --> 24:35.840 a personality, 24:36.100 --> 24:38.600 organized with intentionality, 24:39.100 --> 24:41.820 organized with feeling, 24:42.380 --> 24:42.880 humor, 24:43.600 --> 24:44.220 grace, 24:44.740 --> 24:46.900 and conviction. 24:47.800 --> 24:48.420 Conviction. 24:49.600 --> 24:51.000 And if you can get right 24:51.000 --> 24:52.600 with that conviction, 24:53.340 --> 24:55.000 then that's the secret 24:55.000 --> 24:56.580 of dancing in the waterfall. 24:56.580 --> 24:58.240 That's the secret 24:58.240 --> 24:59.440 of the shaman's 24:59.440 --> 25:01.340 apparent transcendence 25:01.340 --> 25:02.320 of the rules 25:02.320 --> 25:03.860 of mundane statistics. 25:04.700 --> 25:06.480 Because that is what it is. 25:06.540 --> 25:08.900 The shaman doesn't violate physics. 25:09.300 --> 25:09.740 He just, 25:10.100 --> 25:10.740 he or she 25:10.740 --> 25:11.520 simply knows 25:11.520 --> 25:12.840 how to push 25:12.840 --> 25:14.020 the improbable 25:14.020 --> 25:16.360 to its greatest extent. 25:16.360 --> 25:20.040 And in Eastern philosophy, 25:20.240 --> 25:20.900 this is called 25:20.900 --> 25:21.560 the Tao, 25:22.220 --> 25:22.480 you know, 25:22.560 --> 25:24.200 abandonment to the flow, 25:25.020 --> 25:27.940 fitting of the small pattern 25:27.940 --> 25:29.620 into the larger pattern. 25:30.600 --> 25:31.240 Well, 25:31.400 --> 25:32.420 I think these things 25:32.420 --> 25:33.300 are very important 25:33.300 --> 25:34.420 because I think 25:34.420 --> 25:36.600 that psychology, 25:37.000 --> 25:37.660 psychiatry, 25:37.800 --> 25:38.800 psychoanalysis, 25:38.800 --> 25:40.520 it's a good idea, 25:41.060 --> 25:42.100 but it will never 25:42.100 --> 25:43.540 reach any kind 25:43.540 --> 25:45.380 of operational effectiveness 25:45.380 --> 25:46.980 until we look 25:46.980 --> 25:48.800 to these native healers 25:48.800 --> 25:50.260 all over the world 25:50.260 --> 25:52.480 and study their methods. 25:52.960 --> 25:53.880 And their methods 25:53.880 --> 25:56.180 are chemical 25:56.180 --> 25:58.580 and personal. 25:59.000 --> 26:00.200 It's a combination 26:00.200 --> 26:01.860 of care, 26:02.600 --> 26:03.300 attention, 26:03.920 --> 26:04.580 intention, 26:05.160 --> 26:06.120 and chemistry 26:06.120 --> 26:08.360 that allows consciousness 26:08.360 --> 26:09.920 to be made malleable 26:09.920 --> 26:11.800 and then recast 26:11.800 --> 26:14.560 in other forms. 26:15.420 --> 26:15.820 So, 26:16.280 --> 26:19.240 I find myself 26:19.240 --> 26:20.000 this weekend 26:20.000 --> 26:21.740 explaining myself. 26:21.860 --> 26:22.620 That's what I feel 26:22.620 --> 26:23.400 like I'm doing. 26:23.760 --> 26:24.960 Why does someone 26:24.960 --> 26:26.020 who extols 26:26.020 --> 26:27.240 the self-transforming 26:27.240 --> 26:28.160 elf machines 26:28.160 --> 26:29.940 of the DMT space 26:29.940 --> 26:31.840 also claim 26:31.840 --> 26:33.900 to be a conservationist, 26:34.300 --> 26:36.020 also, you know, 26:36.100 --> 26:37.520 have a mathematical 26:37.520 --> 26:39.120 dog and poodle show? 26:39.480 --> 26:39.760 Well, 26:40.040 --> 26:40.640 it's because 26:40.640 --> 26:41.920 all of these things 26:41.920 --> 26:43.080 emerge out 26:43.080 --> 26:44.600 of the concrescence 26:44.600 --> 26:46.400 of consciousness, 26:46.860 --> 26:47.700 its intention 26:47.700 --> 26:49.020 toward its own 26:49.020 --> 26:49.720 transformation. 26:50.400 --> 26:52.140 Nature is the answer. 26:52.540 --> 26:52.740 Not, 26:53.080 --> 26:54.420 it's not enough 26:54.420 --> 26:55.880 to be like 26:55.880 --> 26:56.640 Wordsworth. 26:57.340 --> 26:58.340 It's not enough 26:58.340 --> 26:59.080 to, 26:59.560 --> 27:00.760 this is not, 27:00.960 --> 27:01.340 you know, 27:01.600 --> 27:02.460 Mao Zedong said, 27:02.540 --> 27:03.240 the revolution 27:03.240 --> 27:05.000 is not a dinner party. 27:05.000 --> 27:06.460 And certainly 27:06.460 --> 27:08.160 the ecological revolution 27:08.160 --> 27:09.520 is not a dinner party. 27:09.900 --> 27:10.820 Poetic sensitivity 27:10.820 --> 27:11.860 to the death 27:11.860 --> 27:12.660 of the planet 27:12.660 --> 27:13.260 is not what 27:13.260 --> 27:14.680 we're striving for here. 27:15.020 --> 27:16.420 What we're striving for 27:16.420 --> 27:17.580 is to halt, 27:17.760 --> 27:18.420 overturn, 27:18.900 --> 27:20.520 and back out of 27:20.520 --> 27:21.660 the impending 27:21.660 --> 27:22.600 death of the planet. 27:22.840 --> 27:24.560 It is very clear now 27:24.560 --> 27:26.440 that consciousness 27:26.440 --> 27:27.680 will decide 27:27.680 --> 27:29.600 that the planet, 27:29.740 --> 27:30.480 there are not 27:30.480 --> 27:31.840 rosy futures 27:31.840 --> 27:34.420 of suburban housing 27:34.420 --> 27:35.840 and Ratatouille 27:35.840 --> 27:37.220 to be extended 27:37.220 --> 27:37.960 endlessly 27:37.960 --> 27:39.140 into the future. 27:39.460 --> 27:40.580 We are approaching 27:40.580 --> 27:41.700 a bifurcation 27:41.700 --> 27:43.140 where it is either 27:43.140 --> 27:43.820 going to become 27:43.820 --> 27:45.460 heaven or hell, 27:45.840 --> 27:47.060 one or the other. 27:47.440 --> 27:48.220 And I think 27:48.220 --> 27:49.300 that this 27:49.300 --> 27:51.300 archaic intuition, 27:51.620 --> 27:52.460 which I see 27:52.460 --> 27:53.800 reaching clear back 27:53.800 --> 27:55.920 to the birth 27:55.920 --> 27:57.120 of the 20th century 27:57.120 --> 27:58.380 and the 19th century, 27:58.540 --> 27:59.320 back to people 27:59.320 --> 28:01.000 like Alfred Jarry 28:01.000 --> 28:03.060 and Guillaume Apollonair 28:03.060 --> 28:03.740 and the 28:03.740 --> 28:06.060 paraphysicians, 28:06.500 --> 28:07.460 the surrealists, 28:07.600 --> 28:08.220 the physicists 28:08.220 --> 28:09.460 around Einstein, 28:10.160 --> 28:10.680 Freud, 28:11.280 --> 28:12.220 modern art, 28:12.720 --> 28:13.620 modern dance, 28:14.060 --> 28:14.500 jazz, 28:15.140 --> 28:17.160 all of this stuff 28:17.160 --> 28:18.380 is an effort 28:18.380 --> 28:19.240 to reclaim 28:19.240 --> 28:20.100 the primitive, 28:20.880 --> 28:21.640 to reclaim 28:21.640 --> 28:22.580 the archaic, 28:23.000 --> 28:24.060 to reject 28:24.060 --> 28:24.760 all that 28:24.760 --> 28:26.040 powdered wig 28:26.040 --> 28:27.120 algebra 28:27.120 --> 28:28.340 that comes down 28:28.340 --> 28:30.680 through the French-English-German 28:30.680 --> 28:31.260 tradition 28:31.260 --> 28:32.360 of constipated 28:32.360 --> 28:33.440 male dominance. 28:34.140 --> 28:35.340 And instead, 28:35.540 --> 28:36.060 you know, 28:36.120 --> 28:38.360 intuit, 28:38.720 --> 28:39.620 that's what it is 28:39.620 --> 28:40.840 in Freud and Jung 28:40.840 --> 28:42.500 and the New Age, 28:42.620 --> 28:44.340 intuit our way out. 28:44.700 --> 28:45.340 But now, 28:46.080 --> 28:47.740 the intuition 28:47.740 --> 28:49.060 is rising 28:49.060 --> 28:49.940 to the surface. 28:50.320 --> 28:50.940 We no longer 28:50.940 --> 28:51.700 have to 28:51.700 --> 28:53.380 operate 28:53.380 --> 28:54.040 without 28:54.040 --> 28:55.840 the presence 28:55.840 --> 28:56.820 of the goal 28:56.820 --> 28:58.460 firmly in hand. 28:58.540 --> 28:59.000 The goal 28:59.000 --> 28:59.680 can now 28:59.680 --> 29:00.480 be stated. 29:00.880 --> 29:02.160 What this is all about 29:02.160 --> 29:03.720 is a return 29:03.720 --> 29:04.880 to archaism 29:04.880 --> 29:06.660 with the lessons 29:06.660 --> 29:07.220 learned 29:07.220 --> 29:08.380 in history. 29:08.720 --> 29:09.480 That's where 29:09.480 --> 29:10.400 we were happy. 29:11.020 --> 29:11.800 The fall 29:11.800 --> 29:13.020 was a fall 29:13.020 --> 29:14.460 into a veil 29:14.460 --> 29:15.180 of tears, 29:15.820 --> 29:16.820 into a world 29:16.820 --> 29:17.720 of 29:17.720 --> 29:19.020 limitation 29:19.020 --> 29:19.900 and pain 29:19.900 --> 29:20.600 and suffering 29:20.600 --> 29:21.400 and infectious 29:21.400 --> 29:22.220 disease 29:22.220 --> 29:22.940 and so forth 29:22.940 --> 29:23.440 and so on. 29:24.100 --> 29:24.560 It's 29:24.560 --> 29:26.320 a prodigal journey 29:26.320 --> 29:28.500 into a lower dimension 29:28.500 --> 29:29.920 that can now 29:29.920 --> 29:30.840 be ended 29:30.840 --> 29:32.080 by a collective 29:32.080 --> 29:33.460 cultural decision 29:33.460 --> 29:35.400 to commit 29:35.400 --> 29:36.340 to this 29:36.340 --> 29:37.300 Taoist, 29:37.820 --> 29:38.720 shamanistic, 29:39.260 --> 29:40.300 feminized, 29:40.800 --> 29:41.740 cybernetic, 29:42.300 --> 29:42.880 caring, 29:43.560 --> 29:44.260 aware, 29:45.020 --> 29:45.760 present 29:45.760 --> 29:47.260 kind of being. 29:50.600 --> 29:51.320 is in our 29:51.320 --> 29:52.020 very best 29:52.020 --> 29:52.740 moments. 29:53.400 --> 29:54.280 But we have 29:54.280 --> 29:55.040 to extend 29:55.040 --> 29:55.960 those very 29:55.960 --> 29:56.840 best moments 29:56.840 --> 29:57.420 to fill 29:57.420 --> 29:58.640 whole lifetimes. 00:00.000 --> 00:07.860 You know, think of the number of people who suffered and died that we could sit under this tree this morning. 00:07.860 --> 00:14.700 I mean, in the last million years, nine times the glaciers have ground south from the poles, 00:15.040 --> 00:22.000 freezing the world into ice and confining human populations to subtropical valleys and the warm tropics. 00:22.480 --> 00:29.120 Nine times the interglacial periods have come and human populations have spread out over the earth. 00:29.120 --> 00:39.940 They had, they didn't have radio, they didn't have antibiotics, contraception, statistical analysis or the partial differential equation. 00:40.340 --> 00:43.060 And yet somehow they managed to get us here. 00:43.460 --> 00:50.260 Are we then, as the heirs of that wave front, of the inheritors of a billion-year process, 00:50.700 --> 00:54.920 are we in one generation to turn it into a massive pottage? 00:55.360 --> 00:57.820 I think not. I certainly hope not. 00:57.820 --> 01:08.300 I would like to believe that we could make that leap to conscious awareness that would allow us to take hold. 01:08.900 --> 01:14.960 Now, the problem, it was easy the first ten years that I sat before you, 01:15.380 --> 01:18.800 because what we were doing was getting to know each other, 01:19.100 --> 01:21.640 to verify that we in fact existed, 01:22.060 --> 01:26.640 that I wasn't crazy, you weren't crazy, so forth and so on. 01:26.640 --> 01:30.960 Now, what looms ahead is the mess of politics. 01:32.020 --> 01:35.580 And this, I'm sure you have no stomach for. 01:35.920 --> 01:37.120 I certainly don't. 01:37.320 --> 01:42.220 I'd rather be stoned and rocked in the arms of the goddess. 01:42.220 --> 01:50.340 But as a matter of fact, this dominator thing is not going to be unhooked and put to bed without a struggle. 01:51.040 --> 01:54.220 Everyone is going to have to be counted. 01:54.220 --> 02:03.780 I've talked to you in recent months about memes, memes being the smallest potential units of ideas. 02:03.780 --> 02:05.460 They're like genes. 02:05.460 --> 02:18.840 We are the nucleus of a mutant meme, the meme of plant consciousness, hallucinogenic consciousness, shamanistic consciousness. 02:18.840 --> 02:26.180 We have to refine this meme, replicate it through repetition, and spread it through society. 02:26.180 --> 02:33.820 In the same way that a plant sheds seeds into an ecosystem, the idea will compete. 02:34.240 --> 02:36.420 The idea is a good one. 02:36.820 --> 02:45.080 It's adaptive, it's clever, it's tough, it's invasive, it can make use of many contexts to promote its own existence. 02:45.080 --> 02:50.120 But it can't do any of that if we don't replicate it and get it out. 02:50.680 --> 02:56.940 So I see these kinds of meetings as an opportunity for building community, 02:57.540 --> 03:04.700 as an opportunity for people to look around themselves and connect with the other people who are here. 03:05.000 --> 03:14.620 We cannot be told from the rest of the population unless we self-select and gather together at a single point in space and time. 03:14.620 --> 03:17.540 When we do that, we recognize each other. 03:17.540 --> 03:24.400 When this meeting is concluded, we will merge back into the larger stream of the body politic. 03:25.100 --> 03:34.500 But carrying this meme of the Gaian resurgence, the Gaianic wave that must come. 03:35.060 --> 03:41.180 I mean, people say it's so wonderful that you articulate these feminist ideas and so forth. 03:41.360 --> 03:43.420 I do it because I don't want to be dead. 03:43.420 --> 03:47.980 I do it because I don't want my children to have no world to live in. 03:48.240 --> 03:49.480 There is no choice. 03:50.140 --> 03:56.180 The walls are high and the current is moving very fast. 03:56.600 --> 04:04.820 What we need to do is merely keep our spirits high and learn to sing the song. 04:04.820 --> 04:16.620 My friend Ralph Abraham is a proponent of this school of mathematics called chaotic attractors or dynamics. 04:16.620 --> 04:31.440 And this is the notion that many processes are not pushed from behind by the momentum of casuistry as in the ordinary Newtonian model of process, 04:31.440 --> 04:37.220 but that there are what he calls attractors or basins of attraction. 04:37.220 --> 04:42.100 And these are things which lead processes forward. 04:42.740 --> 04:50.000 For instance, a somewhat trivial example would be if we had a large bowl and a marble. 04:50.000 --> 04:54.280 And every time we released the marble up near the rim of the bowl, 04:54.280 --> 05:03.640 we would notice that it unfailingly rolled to the bottom of the bowl and located itself somewhere near the center of the bottom of the bowl. 05:03.640 --> 05:09.600 We could say that the bottom of the bowl acts as a basin of attraction for the marble. 05:09.600 --> 05:22.020 In other words, the marble finds that its energy state is most at equilibrium when it locates itself in the trough of the bowl. 05:22.260 --> 05:28.260 So there is a way of analyzing processes to see them as though they were led rather than pushed. 05:28.740 --> 05:33.380 And I think it's fruitful to see human history this way. 05:33.380 --> 05:42.800 You see, what we deny as a culture, as a culture of materialist, positivist, reductionists, 05:42.800 --> 05:49.860 is the presence of spirit in the world, in ourselves, or in nature. 05:50.520 --> 05:56.400 And so Western science is very concerned to deny what is called telos. 05:56.920 --> 05:59.680 Telos is a Greek term for purpose. 05:59.680 --> 06:05.800 The same idea as the attractor that I was trying. 06:05.800 --> 06:12.420 If you have a target, if you're driving a car toward a goal, the goal is your telos. 06:12.820 --> 06:16.180 It decides how you will steer the car. 06:16.940 --> 06:25.380 Well, it has been for the past 150 years extremely fashionable in sociology and biology because of Darwin 06:25.380 --> 06:38.200 to deny telos in nature, to say that, you know, any apparent order in nature is made up of the disorder of random mutation 06:38.200 --> 06:43.120 meeting the disorder of natural selective processes. 06:43.600 --> 06:52.240 And these two streams of converging disorder create a kind of apparent or virtual order, which is an illusion. 06:52.240 --> 07:03.180 And when you take this Darwinism and put it into historical theory, theory of human processes in time, 07:03.720 --> 07:08.680 you get the modern position in academic philosophy about history, 07:09.000 --> 07:14.240 which is that it is, and the official phrase is, trendlessly fluctuating. 07:14.240 --> 07:23.820 That's what we're asked to believe we are embedded in, a 10,000-year-old process of trendless fluctuation. 07:24.240 --> 07:27.080 In mathematics, this is called a random walk. 07:27.520 --> 07:31.960 It means you just go over here a few steps, and then you go this way, and then you go back. 07:32.020 --> 07:36.480 You're like a drunk, lurching around in this face space. 07:36.480 --> 07:44.900 And this is the highest vision of human purpose that the reductionist vision can offer. 07:45.320 --> 07:51.740 Well, what the intuition of religion is, especially Western religion, 07:52.100 --> 07:59.560 and I wouldn't even bother to mention it, except that it also is the strong intuition of a lot of psychedelic experience, 07:59.560 --> 08:05.820 that there is some kind of attractor in the historical phase space. 08:06.200 --> 08:09.820 There is something which is drawing everything toward it. 08:10.040 --> 08:18.220 It's like a higher dimensional entity that casts an enormous shadow over the human landscape, 08:18.220 --> 08:23.560 so that, you know, at sitting around campfires 50,000 years ago, 08:23.900 --> 08:33.600 people felt this vague tug toward organization, order, cognitive activity, epigenetic activity. 08:33.760 --> 08:41.000 Epigenetic activity means coding stuff not in your genes, but in dance, gesture, ritual, 08:41.000 --> 08:48.680 and ultimately in clay and on paper and in electronic storage methods. 08:48.680 --> 08:59.200 This proliferation of complexity is a response to and an anticipation of this transcendental object 08:59.200 --> 09:01.980 at the end of historical process. 09:02.560 --> 09:05.720 You see, if it weren't for our presence on this planet, 09:05.720 --> 09:16.200 even modern science at its present primitive state could give a fairly good accounting of what's going on, 09:16.200 --> 09:23.200 that out of complex polymers arose supercomplex polymers, which were self-replicating, 09:23.980 --> 09:27.080 and that was life, and then you have an animal population. 09:27.460 --> 09:33.660 But the fly in the ointment of this rational model of reality is ourselves. 09:33.660 --> 09:42.600 We are clearly imbued with a higher dimension, which we call spirit, 09:43.340 --> 09:50.180 in a way that ordinary matter, when imbued with a higher dimension, is called life. 09:50.820 --> 09:58.440 In other words, we represent a different ontological level in the career of organization, 09:58.440 --> 10:06.220 because we hope, we despair, we plan, we remember, and we misremember. 10:06.600 --> 10:10.960 You know, we lie, we fabricate, we delude ourselves and other people. 10:11.120 --> 10:14.420 All of these things are uniquely human functions. 10:14.420 --> 10:21.840 Well, I think that shamanism, which is the focus of our concern here, 10:22.100 --> 10:26.260 is a kind of anticipating of the whole pattern, 10:26.860 --> 10:33.920 and that this is really the way to think about shamanism when thinking of it as a force 10:33.920 --> 10:40.520 that can steady and complete an individual human life. 10:40.520 --> 10:46.160 The shamanism are not in history in the same way that we are. 10:46.680 --> 10:50.080 By having access to this higher dimension 10:50.080 --> 10:57.820 that they go to in their trance states and their states of intoxication, 10:58.240 --> 11:03.380 they gain a fractal overview on process, on life. 11:03.380 --> 11:06.800 I mean, after all, isn't that what we mean by wisdom? 11:07.480 --> 11:13.100 Is wisdom is understanding how things really work, 11:13.640 --> 11:15.060 how they really work. 11:15.420 --> 11:19.840 Love affairs, the raising of children, the managing of corporations, 11:20.400 --> 11:22.100 the prosecution of wars. 11:22.360 --> 11:24.540 How do these things really work? 11:24.540 --> 11:30.960 Not the deluded and fumbling attempts of the proponents of this or that school, 11:30.960 --> 11:37.560 but a Taoistic insight into the actual appropriate dynamics of everything. 11:38.020 --> 11:41.760 Well, how do you gain that kind of an insight? 11:42.400 --> 11:47.540 The answer is, you must have a superior model. 11:48.320 --> 11:50.280 You must have a superior model. 11:50.280 --> 11:55.020 Now, if you believe, you know, that the world is composed of three levels 11:55.020 --> 11:57.840 and they are held up on the back of a woman 11:57.840 --> 12:01.020 who sits on a giant tortoise who floats in space, 12:01.200 --> 12:03.320 this is a model of the universe. 12:03.760 --> 12:06.260 It can take you a certain distance. 12:06.760 --> 12:10.040 But what model of the universe 12:10.040 --> 12:17.520 can actually offer reassurance in all kinds of situations? 12:17.520 --> 12:19.840 Well, strangely enough, 12:20.040 --> 12:25.540 I think that these models come from the frontiers of mathematics, 12:26.260 --> 12:29.040 that it is not mere coincidence 12:29.040 --> 12:33.660 that the storms of visionary hallucination 12:33.660 --> 12:36.100 that the shaman encounters 12:36.100 --> 12:40.760 are very much like the storms of form and color 12:40.760 --> 12:45.140 that are spewed out of a Cray-3 supercomputer 12:45.140 --> 12:49.240 when it conducts a thousand iterations per second 12:49.240 --> 12:53.280 inside the Julius set or the Mantlebroth set 12:53.280 --> 12:57.800 or one of these other compound complex mathematical objects 12:57.800 --> 12:59.580 that we are beginning to see. 13:00.180 --> 13:02.940 You see, mathematics, up to this point, 13:03.180 --> 13:05.440 has been a computational science 13:05.440 --> 13:09.700 because mathematicians used pencils and blackboards and chalk 13:09.700 --> 13:11.900 to describe their objects. 13:12.400 --> 13:18.820 And consequently, an excruciatingly difficult vocabulary 13:18.820 --> 13:23.500 kept most people from appreciating what mathematics was about. 13:24.100 --> 13:27.600 Now, the computer is to modern mathematics 13:27.600 --> 13:31.780 like the telescope was to 16th century astronomy. 13:32.300 --> 13:34.180 The computer becomes a window 13:34.180 --> 13:40.300 into domains of hyper-complex computability 13:40.300 --> 13:43.060 that previously could barely even be conceived, 13:43.660 --> 13:46.320 but that now, at a rate of millions 13:46.320 --> 13:49.840 approaching billions of iterations per second, 13:50.400 --> 13:52.840 Ralph works on the MMPP machine, 13:52.980 --> 13:55.580 the multiple parallel processing machine 13:55.580 --> 13:57.360 at Goddard Space Flight Center, 13:57.640 --> 14:00.800 it does 800 mega-flops per second, 14:01.360 --> 14:06.120 800 million floating-point decimal calculations per second. 14:06.580 --> 14:10.500 Well, you can dream dreams with a machine like that, 14:10.700 --> 14:11.920 and strangely enough, 14:12.240 --> 14:14.800 at the edge of the super-technology 14:14.800 --> 14:16.420 of the Dominator culture 14:16.420 --> 14:18.320 at Goddard Space Flight Center 14:18.320 --> 14:20.060 with guys, high priests, 14:20.220 --> 14:22.380 standing around in white coats, 14:22.720 --> 14:24.440 when you get it up and running, 14:24.440 --> 14:28.100 what you see is what an ayahuasca shaman sees 14:28.100 --> 14:30.780 on a Saturday night in the Amazon. 14:31.300 --> 14:33.860 You see that you are navigating 14:33.860 --> 14:37.340 through a complex, higher-dimensional phase space 14:37.340 --> 14:41.500 where, by varying the inputs of amplitude and frequency, 14:41.980 --> 14:44.160 in one case, using an electronic box, 14:44.280 --> 14:46.660 in the other case, using the human voice, 14:46.660 --> 14:50.940 you sing your way through a mathematical domain 14:50.940 --> 14:55.460 which is a higher resonance of reality, 14:55.460 --> 14:59.680 and you learn how the world really works, 14:59.920 --> 15:01.200 how things happen. 15:01.620 --> 15:03.580 Well, how the hell do they happen? 15:04.140 --> 15:05.540 Well, on the simplest level, 15:05.620 --> 15:06.940 they happen like this. 15:07.320 --> 15:08.420 They have a beginning, 15:08.420 --> 15:10.500 they have a middle, 15:10.500 --> 15:12.660 and then they die away 15:12.660 --> 15:14.300 as an oscillation, 15:14.880 --> 15:16.100 a damped oscillation. 15:16.520 --> 15:18.740 Now, this simple truth 15:18.740 --> 15:20.900 to which we all nod, assent, 15:21.440 --> 15:22.400 is in fact 15:22.400 --> 15:24.560 the hardest thing, 15:24.820 --> 15:26.860 the hardest swallow there is 15:26.860 --> 15:28.900 for the Dominator ego 15:28.900 --> 15:30.900 and the Dominator personality. 15:30.900 --> 15:33.860 Because what this simple truth says, 15:34.240 --> 15:35.560 things come into being, 15:35.900 --> 15:38.140 they achieve their inflorescence 15:38.140 --> 15:39.420 and they fade away, 15:39.920 --> 15:42.380 is, as Heraclitus put it, 15:42.620 --> 15:43.520 Pantithrae, 15:43.820 --> 15:45.320 all flows. 15:46.040 --> 15:48.200 Nothing lasts. 15:49.060 --> 15:50.680 Nothing is saved. 15:51.460 --> 15:52.600 And this is, you know, 15:52.700 --> 15:55.060 our glory and our agony 15:55.060 --> 15:57.080 that, you know, 15:57.420 --> 16:02.600 the people we love 16:02.600 --> 16:04.060 and the people we hate 16:04.060 --> 16:06.440 are swept away by time. 16:07.100 --> 16:09.040 Empires, dynasties, 16:09.580 --> 16:12.660 continents are swept away by time. 16:13.200 --> 16:16.240 And yet our search for security 16:16.240 --> 16:20.300 is cast in the Dominator culture 16:20.300 --> 16:22.860 as a search for permanence. 16:23.880 --> 16:24.420 You know? 16:24.660 --> 16:26.080 I want to buy a house. 16:26.840 --> 16:28.860 I'd like to get my trust fund 16:28.860 --> 16:30.420 functioning a little better. 16:30.420 --> 16:32.500 I'd like to pay off 16:32.500 --> 16:33.720 X, Y, and Z. 16:34.040 --> 16:34.220 You know, 16:34.300 --> 16:35.660 a search for permanence. 16:35.980 --> 16:37.400 So what you do 16:37.400 --> 16:38.840 when you do that 16:38.840 --> 16:41.260 is you set yourself at war 16:41.260 --> 16:42.880 against the cosmos, 16:43.520 --> 16:45.860 which is a heroic stance 16:45.860 --> 16:48.260 if you're trying to produce 16:48.260 --> 16:49.520 Melvillian opera 16:49.520 --> 16:51.380 out of your life. 16:52.020 --> 16:52.300 You know, 16:52.400 --> 16:54.680 Ahab says in Moby Dick, 16:54.680 --> 16:58.060 he's talking to his first mate, 16:58.220 --> 16:58.880 Starbuck, 16:59.180 --> 17:01.500 who signifies Christian right reason. 17:02.120 --> 17:03.240 And he says, 17:03.460 --> 17:05.460 he's raving about 17:05.460 --> 17:07.380 going after the whale. 17:07.800 --> 17:08.660 And he says, 17:08.840 --> 17:09.760 you know, 17:09.900 --> 17:12.480 we'll chase it over both sides of earth 17:12.480 --> 17:14.760 and round perdition's flame. 17:16.760 --> 17:17.440 And, 17:17.520 --> 17:19.660 and Starbuck says, 17:19.660 --> 17:22.740 to seek revenge on a dumb brute 17:22.740 --> 17:24.300 seems blasphemy. 17:25.100 --> 17:26.220 And he says, 17:26.720 --> 17:28.280 blasphemy, Starbuck, 17:28.720 --> 17:31.340 speak not to me of blasphemy. 17:31.640 --> 17:34.080 I would strike out the sun 17:34.080 --> 17:36.140 if it insulted me. 17:36.700 --> 17:38.220 For could it do that 17:38.220 --> 17:39.920 than could I do the other 17:39.920 --> 17:41.080 since there is ever 17:41.080 --> 17:43.040 a sort of fair play? 17:43.040 --> 17:46.040 Well, 17:46.320 --> 17:46.860 you know, 17:46.920 --> 17:49.000 this is locker room talk. 17:49.340 --> 17:50.020 The notion 17:50.020 --> 17:50.900 that there is 17:50.900 --> 17:52.140 fair play 17:52.140 --> 17:53.320 between 17:53.320 --> 17:54.680 a man 17:54.680 --> 17:56.380 and a nearby star 17:56.380 --> 17:57.180 is 17:57.180 --> 17:59.160 the finest expression 17:59.160 --> 18:00.460 of the dominator ego 18:00.460 --> 18:01.320 I can imagine. 18:01.460 --> 18:02.160 And of course, 18:02.600 --> 18:02.820 you know, 18:02.880 --> 18:03.600 the story 18:03.600 --> 18:04.540 of Moby Dick 18:04.540 --> 18:05.260 can be read 18:05.260 --> 18:06.120 on many levels. 18:06.280 --> 18:06.920 But finally, 18:07.280 --> 18:08.260 it is the story 18:08.260 --> 18:08.760 of the submersion 18:09.440 --> 18:11.200 of the male ego 18:11.200 --> 18:12.180 in the oceans 18:12.180 --> 18:13.180 of the unconscious 18:13.180 --> 18:14.160 born 18:14.160 --> 18:15.760 to its destruction 18:15.760 --> 18:16.780 and transformation 18:16.780 --> 18:18.440 by an encounter 18:18.440 --> 18:20.340 with the maternal matrix 18:20.340 --> 18:21.420 in the form 18:21.420 --> 18:23.360 of the vagina dentata 18:23.360 --> 18:25.960 of the sperm whale 18:25.960 --> 18:26.620 and everything 18:26.620 --> 18:28.020 that it symbolized. 18:28.500 --> 18:28.840 So, 18:29.020 --> 18:29.640 I don't think 18:29.640 --> 18:31.160 we want to go that way. 18:31.440 --> 18:31.860 I don't think 18:31.860 --> 18:33.520 we want to set ourselves 18:33.520 --> 18:34.420 up 18:34.420 --> 18:35.820 as the crusaders 18:35.820 --> 18:37.060 for permanence. 18:37.440 --> 18:38.500 But that means 18:38.500 --> 18:40.640 softening 18:40.640 --> 18:42.400 to the fact 18:42.400 --> 18:43.540 of the flow 18:43.540 --> 18:45.500 and of the impermanence. 18:46.020 --> 18:47.000 Nicole has made 18:47.000 --> 18:47.640 the point 18:47.640 --> 18:49.040 very eloquently 18:49.040 --> 18:50.280 that these people 18:50.280 --> 18:50.880 in the Amazon 18:50.880 --> 18:52.300 have nothing. 18:53.100 --> 18:54.280 The wonderful thing 18:54.280 --> 18:55.180 about the Amazon 18:55.180 --> 18:55.720 is 18:55.720 --> 18:56.300 that 18:56.300 --> 18:58.100 nothing lasts. 18:58.620 --> 19:00.180 Nothing is worth having. 19:00.660 --> 19:00.900 I mean, 19:00.980 --> 19:01.580 a book? 19:02.060 --> 19:02.800 Forget it. 19:03.160 --> 19:03.760 Clothing? 19:04.400 --> 19:04.900 Houses? 19:05.380 --> 19:06.340 Everything is just 19:06.340 --> 19:07.200 swept away 19:07.200 --> 19:08.400 by the incessant 19:08.400 --> 19:09.920 recycling of material. 19:09.920 --> 19:12.120 So all that is permanent 19:12.120 --> 19:13.660 are values, 19:14.440 --> 19:15.060 personality, 19:15.580 --> 19:16.180 strength, 19:16.440 --> 19:16.880 honesty, 19:17.160 --> 19:17.740 decency, 19:18.260 --> 19:18.660 dignity. 19:19.040 --> 19:20.060 These are things 19:20.060 --> 19:21.420 which can be erected 19:21.420 --> 19:22.620 against the flow 19:22.620 --> 19:23.680 and have some 19:23.680 --> 19:25.280 hope of permanence. 19:25.840 --> 19:26.020 So, 19:26.420 --> 19:27.000 I think 19:27.000 --> 19:30.120 shamanism 19:30.120 --> 19:32.360 is permission 19:32.360 --> 19:33.860 to transcend 19:33.860 --> 19:33.980 to transcend 19:33.980 --> 19:35.020 anxiety 19:35.020 --> 19:37.480 by accepting 19:37.480 --> 19:39.280 the transience 19:39.280 --> 19:40.940 of all form. 19:41.700 --> 19:42.240 And this is 19:42.240 --> 19:43.960 a truth 19:43.960 --> 19:44.720 of the universe 19:44.720 --> 19:46.420 that cannot be ignored. 19:47.000 --> 19:48.320 So once it is 19:48.320 --> 19:49.420 integrated, 19:50.580 --> 19:50.900 then 19:50.900 --> 19:56.040 it's as though 19:56.040 --> 19:56.860 resistance 19:56.860 --> 19:58.480 in the electrical 19:58.480 --> 19:59.040 circuits 19:59.040 --> 19:59.900 that surround 19:59.900 --> 20:00.740 your integration 20:00.740 --> 20:01.580 into the world 20:01.580 --> 20:03.000 begins to fall. 20:03.000 --> 20:04.200 you accept 20:04.200 --> 20:05.600 that the present 20:05.600 --> 20:06.200 moment 20:06.200 --> 20:08.180 is the richest 20:08.180 --> 20:09.320 apex 20:09.320 --> 20:11.080 of being 20:11.080 --> 20:12.160 that on the 20:12.160 --> 20:12.660 downside 20:12.660 --> 20:13.680 back into the 20:13.680 --> 20:14.320 past 20:14.320 --> 20:15.700 it shades off 20:15.700 --> 20:16.620 into memory 20:16.620 --> 20:17.840 and its vagaries. 20:18.500 --> 20:19.280 In the future 20:19.280 --> 20:20.640 it shades off 20:20.640 --> 20:21.400 into 20:21.400 --> 20:23.700 a series 20:23.700 --> 20:25.040 of adumbrations 20:25.040 --> 20:26.400 and anticipations. 20:26.400 --> 20:27.700 I think 20:27.700 --> 20:28.180 that the 20:28.180 --> 20:28.640 shamans 20:28.640 --> 20:29.280 gain 20:29.280 --> 20:30.500 this tremendous 20:30.500 --> 20:31.400 authenticity 20:31.400 --> 20:32.980 that you feel 20:32.980 --> 20:34.140 in their presence 20:34.140 --> 20:35.100 the good ones 20:35.100 --> 20:36.160 because they 20:36.160 --> 20:37.000 have seen 20:37.000 --> 20:38.240 the end. 20:38.660 --> 20:39.300 They have a 20:39.300 --> 20:39.800 model 20:39.800 --> 20:40.620 of how 20:40.620 --> 20:41.920 process happens 20:41.920 --> 20:42.700 and so they 20:42.700 --> 20:43.620 don't push 20:43.620 --> 20:44.420 and they 20:44.420 --> 20:45.440 don't clutch 20:45.440 --> 20:46.960 and then 20:46.960 --> 20:47.900 energy 20:47.900 --> 20:48.920 flows 20:48.920 --> 20:49.700 through them 20:49.700 --> 20:51.100 and our 20:51.100 --> 20:52.000 civilization 20:52.000 --> 20:53.240 has to 20:53.240 --> 20:53.600 learn 20:53.600 --> 20:54.160 this. 20:55.520 --> 20:55.800 You know 20:55.800 --> 20:56.160 I think 20:56.160 --> 20:56.620 I said 20:56.620 --> 20:56.980 at one 20:56.980 --> 20:57.400 point 20:57.400 --> 20:57.880 in this 20:57.880 --> 20:58.440 weekend 20:58.440 --> 20:59.580 only 20:59.580 --> 21:00.680 Gorbachev 21:00.680 --> 21:02.080 is taking 21:02.080 --> 21:02.840 the position 21:02.840 --> 21:03.300 that 21:03.300 --> 21:04.520 we did 21:04.520 --> 21:05.300 it wrong 21:05.300 --> 21:06.680 and that 21:06.680 --> 21:07.220 we need 21:07.220 --> 21:08.700 to deconstruct 21:08.700 --> 21:09.580 and yet 21:09.580 --> 21:10.780 every society 21:10.780 --> 21:11.640 did it 21:11.640 --> 21:12.200 wrong. 21:12.760 --> 21:13.240 We all 21:13.240 --> 21:13.760 did it 21:13.760 --> 21:14.260 wrong. 21:15.660 --> 21:16.380 Capitalism 21:16.380 --> 21:17.420 it's wonderful 21:17.420 --> 21:17.900 that you 21:17.900 --> 21:18.320 can get 21:18.320 --> 21:19.280 a safety pin 21:19.280 --> 21:20.400 at 4am 21:20.400 --> 21:21.160 within a half 21:21.160 --> 21:21.700 mile of 21:21.700 --> 21:22.120 anywhere 21:22.120 --> 21:22.620 in the 21:22.620 --> 21:23.540 United States 21:23.540 --> 21:24.160 and I'm 21:24.160 --> 21:24.540 sure the 21:24.540 --> 21:25.060 Russians 21:25.060 --> 21:26.400 wish they 21:26.400 --> 21:26.900 had it 21:26.900 --> 21:27.560 so good 21:27.560 --> 21:28.220 but is 21:28.220 --> 21:29.360 that the 21:29.360 --> 21:30.320 be all 21:30.320 --> 21:30.660 and the 21:30.660 --> 21:31.220 end all 21:31.220 --> 21:31.880 of cultural 21:31.880 --> 21:32.600 values 21:32.600 --> 21:33.160 that you 21:33.160 --> 21:33.700 can walk 21:33.700 --> 21:33.900 the 21:33.900 --> 21:35.080 fluorescent 21:35.080 --> 21:35.840 lit 21:35.840 --> 21:36.700 aisles 21:36.700 --> 21:37.480 of Kmart 21:37.480 --> 21:38.660 and congratulate 21:38.660 --> 21:39.420 yourself 21:39.420 --> 21:40.240 that whether 21:40.240 --> 21:40.800 it be 21:40.800 --> 21:41.880 gas can 21:41.880 --> 21:42.720 sanitary 21:42.720 --> 21:43.500 napkin 21:43.500 --> 21:44.420 or whatever 21:44.420 --> 21:45.580 it's there 21:45.580 --> 21:46.160 waiting 21:46.160 --> 21:46.880 for you 21:46.880 --> 21:47.720 I don't 21:47.720 --> 21:48.320 think so 21:48.320 --> 21:49.160 I think 21:49.160 --> 21:50.020 that we 21:50.020 --> 21:50.840 have built 21:50.840 --> 21:51.360 in the 21:51.360 --> 21:52.000 termination 21:52.000 --> 21:52.460 of our 21:52.460 --> 21:52.900 world 21:52.900 --> 21:53.480 just as 21:53.480 --> 21:53.840 surely 21:53.840 --> 21:54.360 as the 21:54.360 --> 21:55.000 Marxist 21:55.000 --> 21:55.500 world 21:55.500 --> 21:56.320 built 21:56.320 --> 21:56.760 in a 21:56.760 --> 21:57.420 tripwire 21:57.420 --> 21:57.860 into 21:57.860 --> 21:58.160 its 21:58.160 --> 21:58.640 social 21:58.640 --> 21:59.240 mechanism 21:59.240 --> 21:59.820 it's 21:59.820 --> 22:00.100 just 22:00.100 --> 22:00.700 that we're 22:00.700 --> 22:00.940 going to 22:00.940 --> 22:01.200 have to 22:01.200 --> 22:01.440 pay 22:01.440 --> 22:01.660 the 22:14.420 --> 22:14.960 long 22:14.960 --> 22:15.340 long 22:15.340 --> 22:15.760 time 22:15.760 --> 22:16.000 to 22:16.000 --> 22:16.400 figure 22:16.400 --> 22:16.800 out 22:16.800 --> 22:17.440 all 22:17.440 --> 22:17.680 the 22:17.680 --> 22:18.240 angles 22:18.240 --> 22:19.120 what 22:19.120 --> 22:19.380 I 22:19.380 --> 22:20.380 find 22:20.380 --> 22:20.820 myself 22:20.820 --> 22:21.160 more 22:21.160 --> 22:21.320 and 22:21.320 --> 22:21.560 more 22:21.560 --> 22:21.960 leaning 22:21.960 --> 22:22.460 to 22:22.460 --> 22:23.320 is 22:23.320 --> 22:26.500 sharing 22:26.500 --> 22:26.900 the 22:26.900 --> 22:27.440 meme 22:27.440 --> 22:27.680 of 22:27.680 --> 22:27.880 the 22:27.880 --> 22:28.900 irrelevance 22:28.900 --> 22:30.000 of 22:30.000 --> 22:30.660 conservative 22:30.660 --> 22:32.140 institutions 22:32.140 --> 22:33.080 history 22:33.080 --> 22:33.660 is not 22:33.660 --> 22:34.340 a process 22:34.340 --> 22:35.160 for which 22:35.160 --> 22:35.720 you ask 22:35.720 --> 22:36.420 permission 22:36.420 --> 22:37.640 history 22:37.640 --> 22:38.220 is just 22:38.220 --> 22:38.640 something 22:38.640 --> 22:39.480 you make 22:39.480 --> 22:40.480 and then 22:40.480 --> 22:41.280 other people 22:41.280 --> 22:41.960 pick up 22:41.960 --> 22:42.800 the pieces 22:42.800 --> 22:43.660 Henry 22:43.660 --> 22:44.660 David Thoreau 22:44.660 --> 22:45.200 understood 22:45.200 --> 22:45.980 this very 22:45.980 --> 22:46.340 well 22:46.340 --> 22:46.760 when he 22:46.760 --> 22:47.100 wrote 22:47.100 --> 22:47.520 his 22:47.520 --> 22:48.540 famous 22:48.540 --> 22:49.140 treatise 22:49.140 --> 22:49.380 on 22:49.380 --> 22:49.820 civil 22:49.820 --> 22:50.940 disobedience 22:50.940 --> 22:52.760 the 22:52.760 --> 22:53.140 growth 22:53.140 --> 22:53.340 of 22:53.340 --> 22:53.760 culture 22:53.760 --> 22:54.040 is 22:54.040 --> 22:54.320 something 22:54.320 --> 22:54.580 that 22:54.580 --> 22:55.080 comes 22:55.080 --> 22:55.540 out 22:55.540 --> 22:56.420 of 22:56.420 --> 22:57.040 the 22:57.040 --> 22:57.660 animal 22:57.660 --> 22:58.380 body 22:58.380 --> 22:59.220 Rousseau 22:59.220 --> 22:59.600 called 22:59.600 --> 22:59.740 it 22:59.740 --> 22:59.980 the 22:59.980 --> 23:00.540 general 23:00.540 --> 23:01.160 will 23:01.160 --> 23:02.940 you 23:02.940 --> 23:03.140 know 23:03.140 --> 23:03.760 man 23:03.760 --> 23:04.660 proposes 23:04.660 --> 23:05.160 and 23:05.160 --> 23:05.640 God 23:05.640 --> 23:06.620 disposes 23:06.620 --> 23:07.440 but 23:07.440 --> 23:07.580 in 23:07.580 --> 23:07.720 the 23:15.200 --> 23:16.300 proposes 23:16.300 --> 23:16.780 but 23:16.780 --> 23:17.220 that's 23:17.220 --> 23:17.600 all 23:17.600 --> 23:18.200 and 23:18.200 --> 23:18.500 now 23:18.500 --> 23:18.720 what 23:18.720 --> 23:18.860 we 23:18.860 --> 23:19.000 are 23:19.000 --> 23:19.460 involved 23:19.460 --> 23:19.760 in 23:19.760 --> 23:20.220 really 23:20.220 --> 23:21.060 is 23:21.060 --> 23:21.220 a 23:21.220 --> 23:21.660 debate 23:21.660 --> 23:22.040 about 23:22.040 --> 23:22.440 human 23:22.440 --> 23:23.080 nature 23:23.080 --> 23:23.900 who 23:23.900 --> 23:24.220 are 23:24.220 --> 23:24.620 we 23:24.620 --> 23:25.260 what 23:25.260 --> 23:25.580 are 23:25.580 --> 23:25.900 we 23:25.900 --> 23:27.260 the 23:27.260 --> 23:27.620 French 23:27.620 --> 23:28.380 cartoonist 23:28.380 --> 23:29.120 Mobius 23:29.120 --> 23:29.660 put it 23:29.660 --> 23:30.400 very well 23:30.400 --> 23:30.880 in his 23:30.880 --> 23:31.260 book 23:31.260 --> 23:31.940 where he 23:31.940 --> 23:32.300 asked 23:32.300 --> 23:32.520 the 23:32.520 --> 23:33.040 question 23:33.040 --> 23:33.820 is 23:33.820 --> 23:34.360 man 23:34.360 --> 23:35.000 good 23:35.000 --> 23:36.440 this 23:36.440 --> 23:36.640 is 23:36.640 --> 23:36.820 what 23:36.820 --> 23:37.000 we're 23:37.000 --> 23:37.240 going 23:37.240 --> 23:37.460 to 23:37.460 --> 23:37.900 find 23:37.900 --> 23:38.400 out 23:38.400 --> 23:39.160 and 23:39.160 --> 23:39.900 my 23:39.900 --> 23:40.340 feeling 23:40.340 --> 23:40.660 is 23:40.660 --> 23:40.840 that 23:40.840 --> 23:40.940 it 23:40.940 --> 23:41.260 isn't 23:41.260 --> 23:41.940 decided 23:41.940 --> 23:43.140 yet 23:43.140 --> 23:44.200 that 23:44.200 --> 23:44.800 it 23:44.800 --> 23:45.280 is 23:45.280 --> 23:46.620 you 23:46.620 --> 23:46.780 know 23:46.780 --> 23:47.200 H.G. 23:47.260 --> 23:47.480 Wells 23:47.480 --> 23:47.940 called 23:47.940 --> 23:48.520 history 23:48.520 --> 23:49.020 a race 23:49.020 --> 23:49.400 between 23:49.400 --> 23:50.080 education 23:50.080 --> 23:50.440 and 23:50.440 --> 23:51.180 disaster 23:51.180 --> 23:52.160 well 23:52.160 --> 23:52.420 you 23:52.420 --> 23:52.540 know 23:52.540 --> 23:52.760 they're 23:52.760 --> 23:52.920 in 23:52.920 --> 23:53.060 the 23:53.060 --> 23:53.320 home 23:53.320 --> 23:53.900 stretch 23:53.900 --> 23:54.340 neck 23:54.340 --> 23:54.520 and 23:54.520 --> 23:54.820 neck 23:54.820 --> 23:55.060 it's 23:55.060 --> 23:55.480 clearly 23:55.480 --> 23:55.880 going 23:55.880 --> 23:56.060 to 23:56.060 --> 23:56.360 be 23:56.360 --> 23:56.880 a 23:56.880 --> 23:57.280 photo 23:57.280 --> 23:57.940 finish 23:57.940 --> 23:58.560 but 23:58.560 --> 23:58.780 there 23:58.780 --> 23:59.080 is 23:59.080 --> 23:59.400 a 23:59.400 --> 24:00.460 responsibility 24:00.460 --> 24:01.300 on 24:01.300 --> 24:01.720 everyone 24:01.720 --> 24:02.160 who 24:02.160 --> 24:02.660 sees 24:02.660 --> 24:03.160 this 24:03.160 --> 24:04.140 to 24:04.140 --> 24:05.040 communicate 24:05.040 --> 24:05.400 it 24:08.400 --> 24:09.380 for a copy 24:09.380 --> 24:09.680 of this 24:09.680 --> 24:10.100 recording 24:10.100 --> 24:10.540 please 24:10.540 --> 24:10.920 call 24:10.920 --> 24:11.420 sound 24:11.420 --> 24:12.340 photosynthesis 24:12.340 --> 24:13.440 at 24:13.440 --> 24:17.340 415-383-6712 24:17.340 --> 24:19.140 or write 24:19.140 --> 24:19.880 post office 24:19.880 --> 24:20.200 box 24:20.200 --> 24:21.320 2111 24:21.320 --> 24:22.580 mill valley 24:22.580 --> 24:23.620 california 24:23.620 --> 24:25.820 94942 24:25.820 --> 24:27.220 copyright 24:27.220 --> 24:27.940 sound 24:27.940 --> 24:28.820 photosynthesis