Monogamy represents a deepening of bonding into a kind of lifelong project that is entirely spiritual.
Not that it doesn't have a physical and an ecstatic and an erotic side,
but it all goes together to create something that should not be expected of adolescence
and should not be preached as the ideal at all stages of life.
And this is pretty much how it's handled in a number of non-literate societies.
Marriage is taken very seriously, but before marriage, a different set of rules obtains.
So that's not a solution for those of us who are already into middle age or beyond.
But it certainly gives indication of how we might think about it in raising our own children.
I want to add something, if I may.
I think the objectification of women, which is not unique,
it's only just marketed and packaged so very expertly in the West,
but the making women commodities really completely messes up the whole deal.
Because if it is just an exchange of commodities, I mean, why stick with one commodity?
And that is not just the Western thing, but it's just a collection of body parts,
like the pin-up girl or boy, which is sort of a way of getting into that.
And I think that it really hinges.
But it's very much the woman who's been the objectified one, Joan.
You know, I mean, the other one was sort of a kind of a blip of reaction in this transitional time.
And I think that's something we have to kind of get through before we can really work that out.
It's very hard to realize the power of woman as commodity in this society until you are away from it.
I remember, well, this happens every time, but I remember particularly in the Amazon,
we had been about three weeks up this river, a group of about six of us, women and men,
and we came to this village, and there was the obligatory meeting with the head man of the village
to let them know that we would be collecting plants in their area and so forth and so on.
And we had been away from Iquitos by now, I guess, a month.
And we came into the maloca, and it was dimly lit, and then he lit a little kind of a candle,
and there was a girly calendar of the most innocuous sort.
I mean, the kind that Sparkplug Company produced in the United States, you know, very mild.
And I was trying to deal with this guy, and I was absolutely riveted.
I could not tear my eyes from it.
And I was even thinking, it came upon me, was it conceivable that without blowing everyone's mind,
especially the fellow members of my party, could I get this away from this guy?
And so, and then I, and then of course, you know, we, other things happened, and time passed.
And then later, I was back in Iquitos, and I came upon this same calendar in a, in a libraria there.
And it had no power whatsoever, because in Iquitos, I was saturated in these images,
just the news vendors on the street, and this is very mild stuff, you know, it's a Latin Catholic country.
But the power of this image is why it's used to sell everything from cigarettes to debenture bonds.
It's, and it is dehumanizing.
It is dehumanizing because it takes us to, literally, to the surface.
Everything is flattened.
This is, again, this flattening of the primacy of experience,
reducing everything to a, a sensation empty of emotional content.
And if you can do it with women, you can do it with anything.
I want to stop on that, because if you take just that away with you,
as I think I said sometimes, either last night or today,
that what my work indicates is something that once you articulate it,
it sounds obvious, but somehow it's been overlooked.
And it's very simply this, that the way that a society structures
that most fundamental of all relations,
the relations between the female and the male half of humanity,
because that's what women and men are,
that that profoundly affects everything.
It doesn't just affect our individual life choices and roles as women and men,
which we, of course, experience, you know, very clearly,
and now we're really aware of it.
But it affects every one of our social institutions,
and that's really the objectification of women.
The domination of women is the template.
It's the model.
Because if you can do that to your female twin,
if you can do that to the person with whom you have the most intimate relationship,
then why not do it to somebody whose difference is not one of sex,
but of color or of hairdo or of politics or religion?
It's the template.
It's the model.
And so what I really want to say to you
is that these issues that we have been so thoroughly socialized
to think of as, quote, just women's issues
are the central core issues
that we'd better start paying attention to.
And I am very definitely making a statement here
that I passionately want to share with you.
Because it's so obvious, you know, if you really think about it,
but we've been so conditioned not to,
and of course the reason that we're so conditioned to think of it that way
is because if once we start thinking of this way,
then we are challenging the very basis,
the very foundation of the dominated system,
and it extends into everything.
And I really want to say this one thing,
and it's about language, because you've spoken about language.
I never used to be aware of anything, I think.
I mean, I think that's really the only way one can describe my former state.
But anyway, but I certainly was not aware.
I was aware of a slight sense of discomfort.
Well, not in slight.
When I went to college,
and everything was the study of man and mankind,
and all of the examples were male-centered,
because the message was very clear.
I was here, but I really had no business being here.
None of this was really directed to me.
But it was so, you know, wafty away,
and I thought I was uncomfortable because I hadn't found the right guy,
or wasn't wearing the right blouse, or, you know,
I mean, I had no consciousness.
But now it's very clear to me that the whole use of male-exclusive language,
the term man instead of human,
the term mankind instead of humankind,
the term he instead of she or he, or we,
that that's a way of really linguistically,
almost short-circuit,
circuiting.
It's really a way of short-circuiting any partnership circuitry
in our head, okay?
And it's tremendously important.
Have you noticed you've been using the word history a lot?
Is it a history?
And I was thinking you can use the word her story also.
Well, I was thinking about that,
because the title of this is the,
you know, of past history.
I was thinking, how about our story?
That's good, yeah.
Because I kind of like to move from prehistory to history,
to our story.
I know that sometimes we play with words,
because we just got married,
and I had the same experience of feeling,
real resistance to being owned and all of that.
And someone said,
Mrs. Charles Brink.
Oh, okay.
And I said,
no, but this is Mr. Linda Brink.
And, you know,
and I think sometimes the reversal thing,
it doesn't seem so,
I mean, it wasn't that it was awesome to be called that,
because I'm proud that he's married to him and his husband.
It was just that,
if you start reversing it that way,
and how absurd it sounds to call him Linda Brink,
it makes it,
then it makes it how absurd it is to call me Charles Brink,
you know,
where it doesn't sound so absurd otherwise.
So I think when we start noticing those things,
just to reverse them.
Yeah.
No, I think that's a very, very good thing.
But this is how we're all beginning to notice these things,
and it's fun.
It's a little uncomfortable,
but it's much more fun than that.
Well, there's a fellow,
Dr. Warren Farrell,
who's doing that.
He talks about walking in someone else's shoes.
He has interesting workshops,
because he has the women line up in rows according to their income,
and then he has the men stand on the chairs and turn around,
so that the men can see.
I think experiencing it really, really makes a difference.
David, do you want to add something?
Oh, okay.
No, you have to get up.
Watch your hands.
Yeah.
Yeah, playing with words keep us on the lot,
because then you can code it,
and so you can say history,
as you said,
as his story,
but mystery,
it's mid-history.
I want to say something about this question that Robin brought up this morning,
about the whole duality of us and them,
us being a partnership model,
and them being the nominators,
and I was really plagued by that in lunch,
and thinking about how to get away from this,
because in our own work together to shift this paradigm in the world,
if we come from a place of duality,
if we come from that place that Eve got to when she ate that apple of good and evil,
we got to that first duality of good and evil,
then in a first place we're shutting ourselves out from the garden of partnership,
and how I think we could get from the duality that's kind of naturally out there
in terms of the partnership and the dominance,
would be to see these people that are actually all of us as people in pain,
and I thought about that again when we were talking about male and female roles,
and seeing men as the dominators,
it's actually a kind of expression of pain,
that men have been so out of touch with themselves,
that they would see women as often,
and such an inability to make contact with themselves,
makes an inability to make contact with another,
and I see the whole pornography thing as kind of a painful for all of us,
an area where we have just fought after contact real desperately,
and not been able to come into contact,
because of not being in contact with our own pain,
and being in a state of normal,
and that there's a kind of sexuality that's been promoted in our culture,
where it just is an obsession,
seems to speak of that kind of pain of living in the mind.
Thank you for sharing that.
David wants, I think, to address this issue of dualism.
He talked to me earlier.
Oh, good.
Yeah, no, no, that's a very logistic perspective.
I think it's a good question for duality,
I think it's so important that it needs to be thought through
in a number of different perspectives.
All I want to share with the two perspectives that occurred to me
after Robin brought it up this morning,
see, I see it as absolutely essential for us to differentiate
what's partnership with, what's domination.
And it is very necessary to go through this us-and-them process,
and the same, there's two levels of meaning.
One is in philosophy, in dialogue.
You've got, in order to reach any progression,
one way of looking at it,
you've got to state the status rather powerfully
in order to get the antithesis stated powerfully,
in order to move beyond that towards the synthesis.
Of course, what we don't want is the synthesis
of the dominator in the partnership,
but that's the philosophical point.
The practical point is this.
If you look at the way a child grows up,
or if you look at how an excluded minority,
like the blacks, which is very familiar,
advances themselves,
in the case of a child,
the child almost always has to go through that period
that comes, it happens at earlier stages,
that becomes particularly inappropriate
during adolescence,
where in order to differentiate itself
from the parent,
it hates that parent,
goes through that period,
I'm not you, I don't want it.
So there's that necessary negativity
where they differentiate him.
Same thing happened with black people,
where there's a lot of white people
that felt awfully uncomfortable with black power.
They thought, oh, there's nothing worse
than Alchemax.
Well, Alchemax,
the whole black power thing,
was serving a very important function
because it was differentiating.
I'm not white.
I have nothing to do with white.
This was a necessary transition stage.
This is just necessary
for child to go through adolescence.
And I feel that there's a certain amount
of duality in the world.
It's absolutely necessary
as a transition
to sort of better state.
But in other words,
I feel that this needs to be articulated
because I feel
it's a very great danger
in saying,
we don't want to have animals.
We want everything to be lovely.
And yet, we do have animals.
And it is the dominator thing
and all that it represents.
Sure, these are people
that must be dealt with
in ways that they are us.
They are ideas,
but they are ideas embodied in people.
They are embodied in others.
And I think that this is something
that we must rest in
and not avoid.
Oh.
I just wanted to further discuss
that question that we talked about,
that asking the questions about duality,
what is the smallest unit of partnership?
And we were talking about that before,
whether it was two or one.
Whether that conqueror
inside me
and that partner inside me,
which is sometimes mind over body,
when my mind says,
go ahead and eat something
that's not good for me,
conquers the health
that I need to have.
I'd just like to hear,
maybe you both talk a little bit
about the idea of partnership
on an individual basis.
Well, I loved when you
earlier came
and posed that question
and said that your intuition
was that the basic partnership
really started, you know,
within us.
And I agree with you
because it's the whole thing
of seeing ourselves
as part of a larger whole
and honoring our body
and honoring our spirit
and honoring the fact
that they're, you know,
they're the same.
They're just different aspects
of the same.
So I see it, you know,
like a prison
where, you know,
you just see different facets
of it in different ways.
And yeah,
the smallest unit,
I think,
is every one of us.
So I thank you for that.
Yes.
Don't you think
that there's been talk
about ego?
Well, it seems to me
ego inflation
is what happens
when within the partnership
of the individual
a dominator model
is applied
because the manifestation
of ego
is the denial
of intuition
which is
a feminine function.
So people
who are strongly
egocentric
are living
in the self-created
hell
of a dominator
society
of one.
Yes,
you wanted to say something.
Besides the obvious reasons
like fear of change
and wanting to
maintain
status quo
or one system,
why do you think
there's this tremendous
reaction
or fear
or backlash
by the fundamentalists
against
the resurgence
of,
I mean,
in their literature
and sermons
and everything
against the resurgence
of
the return
to
the goddess,
the archaic,
the New Age movement,
anything that
snacks
slightly different
than their
traditional
or fundamental
values?
Well,
they are the bearers
of the
patriarchy
standards.
Their lineage
reaches
right back
to
pharaoh
and
they see it
being threatened.
Secularism,
which began
500 years ago,
threatened them
at every step
of the way.
That's why I said
last night,
I consider
this monotheistic
tradition
to be the single
most reactionary
force
in human history.
Their
bailiwick
is threatened.
the energy
that they
put into
destroying
the pagan
world
was
tremendously
ferocious.
It took
them
centuries.
In fact,
they never
completely
succeeded
in dismantling
the previous
world
of pagan
sensibilities.
And
theirs is,
I believe,
not a
natural
position.
Rian said
this morning,
you can do
anything you
want to
partnership.
It keeps
springing up.
It keeps
coming back.
It has a
natural ability
to recreate
itself.
I don't
believe this
is true
of the
dominator
culture.
I believe
that it
is
fragile
and
frightened
and
feels
itself
always
being
eroded
by the
simple
processes
that
reside
in
nature.
So
it is
an
untenable
position.
And
if you
have
an
untenable
position,
you
have
a
siege
mentality.
I
really
want
to
take
that
to
a
very
personal
sense.
I
think
that
it
is
fear
and
most
damaged
people
are
the
ones
that
really
are
the
most
imprisoned
because
we're
all
imprisoned
to
some
extent
still
by the
dominator
model.
But
in
these
people
the
grip
is
so
fierce
and
the
pain
and
the
fear
are
so
great
that
it
because
these
things
happen
on
various
levels.
One
is
the
systems
level.
Societies
are
living
systems.
They
tend
to
maintain
themselves.
That's
just
how
we
know
from
systems
theory.
But
just
on
the
very
individual
motivation
level,
for
example,
a lot
of
these
they
were
chanting
for
death
for
Brennan
and
it
was
all
in
the
name
of
we're
pro-life
and
it
was
wait
a
minute.
I
mean
what
kind
of
distortion
in
these
women?
Well
it's
terror,
it's
fear,
it's
pain
and
they
all
of
these
ways
and
that's
I
think
if
you're
asking
in
terms
of
the
mechanics
of
it
it's
very
complex
but
I
think
on
particular
subject
it's
really
the
call
to
face
the
pain
and
instead
of
looking
out
there
for
the
source
either
be it
God
or
outer
space
it's
you know
in which
so many
of the
patriarchal
religions
head
the gaze
in that
direction
in the
skyward
direction
and
why
your
question
about
mind
and
body
I
think
it
relates
to
what
Rihanna
is
talking
about
right
now
the
call
that's
being
made
and
I
think
the same
with your
work
is to
actually
face
very deeply
what's
going on
within
us
profound
alienation
between
mind
and
body
the
objectification
not just
of the
feminine
but of
eros
the
objectification
of the
body
and
whether
it's
you know
with the
visionary
vegetables
or simply
by attending
to breath
and watching
the content
of our
minds
produce
in the
way that
they do
coming to
really
as you
know
the
oracle
Adelphi
said it
beautifully
knowing
oneself
completely
becoming
completely
aware
hyphened
and deep
into
awareness
so you
know
I really
resonate
with
what you're
talking about
in terms of
coming into
this
partnership
model
mind and
body
and how
we live
this out
in relationship
with each
other
how actually
partnering in the
world
becomes a
context
wherein we
can discover
we get
very
extraordinary
feedback
when we're
off
and why
this
evasive
maneuvers
to stay
in relationship
to stay
in community
to persist
through the
points of
extreme pain
that all
of us
experience
in facing
ourselves
whether it's
on a
psychedelic
substance
or whether
it's
sitting
around
the
zathos
but really
knowing
oneself
profoundly
thank you
I was wondering
why
these
model
fundamentalists
white
south
now they
are not
in
very much
faith
I mean
white
south
are not
generally
mutilated
Arab
men
are not
what
men
are
they
are
they
are
all right
they are
I'd like
to really
reiterate
the issue
of the
selective
deadening
of
empathy
because
I think
that
empathy
this
awareness
that
we're
talking
about
is
so
much
part
of
this
unique
miracle
that
is
our
species
and
the
dominator
model
is
so
fascinating
because
here's
this
gift
we've
been
given
and
institution
after
institution
practice
after
practice
is
then
ingeniously
developed
to
deaden
that
gift
of
empathy
in
us
and
hey
but I
think
that
that's
really
one
of the
things
but you
can't
really
kill
it
off
you
see
no no
you're
right
you're
right
about that
but I
think
the
point
here
is
that
as long
as we
do not
face
our
own
pain
we
will
create
a
lot
for
others
if
wouldn't
that
the
dominary
mentality
would be
like
in a prison
but it
stays
penitentiary
if you
have taken
that
the feeling
of being
incarcerated
where you
had that
much
fear
where there
was all
that much
power
but see
I think
the
incarceration
image
is a very
apt one
I spoke
about
Theodor
Rojak
and he
spoke of
how the
19th century
wave of
feminism
really was
one of
the first
really
historic
frontal
challenges
to the
dominator
system
to what
he called
patriarchy
and he
said that
the reaction
to it
was one
of
terror
you know
but the
greatest
thing
was we
had to
keep
imprisoned
not only
you know
the women
and the
so-called
inferior
people
and the
enemy
but the
woman
that
every
man
as he
put it
keeps
locked
inside
his psyche
and I think
that's a
very apt
image
but of course
women too
can be very
cruel
and I think
it's really
very important
that we
disabuse
ourselves
of this
whole idea
that we're
talking about
you know
women are
terrific
and men
are
you know
forget it
because
the
dominator
model
distorts
both
women
and men
it is
true
that
the
caring
I mean
that's one
of the
ironies
you know
really the
most important
work in the
society
which is the
caring and
the nurturing
work of the
society has been
relegated to the
inferior group
you know
to women
and then we
wonder why
we can't have
social priorities
that are more
caring if those
very people are
excluded
from power
right
I mean
talk about
catch-22
here
so we're back
to the
women's
issues
aren't we
what concerns
me once again
is this new
role of the
feminist man
if you go
back and you
see this
image of
erotic
pan
who was a
consort of
the goddess
who if you
go into
history enough
was often
sacrificed
at the end
of each
year
as part
of this
refeeding
the goddess
back
there was a
blood
sacrifice
since the
man did
not bleed
and if
you look
at some
of the
minoans
frescoes
it's very
easy
they're
beautiful
and I
wish I
had some
of them
the role
of the
man
well I
mean
you see
a fresco
of a
man
with fish
he fishes
all right
I mean
you know
in other
words
it's a
productive
role
you see
the so-called
young prince
which is
really
fascinating
most of
the recovered
minoan
single figures
have been
attributed
to the
goddess
with a
female
priestess
as they
represented
but they
find this
one figure
of a
man
and they
decide
he's
the
young
prince
right
which is
very very
interesting
because
there's
not a
trace
of any
king
in the
minoan
culture
but nonetheless
he is a
beardless
youth
and he
has
flowers
and plumes
and he's
walking
through the
garden
I mean
it's hardly
your
macho
warrior
image
I mean
there are
other things
that men
can do
men
did the
bull
leaping
and that
was very
interesting
because it
was a
partnership
with the
women
if you
look at
the
blue
leaf
fresco
so they
obviously
just did
all kinds
of things
they just
didn't happen
to specialize
in killing
do they
make a
summation
is it
time
already
yes
one more
oh my goodness
yes I think
that we
should just
yes please
I see
technology
as a symbol
of dominance
of society
and I
wanted you
to address
the question
if you could
of what the
interface
and how
we get
to innovate
with society
with technology
I see
a clash
I'm so glad
you brought
that up
because that
makes a
wonderful
place
for something
that I really
felt that I
want to
very much
address
what I'd
like to
suggest
is that
we look
at technology
as
something
that is
really
a human
function
a human
capacity
from day
one
language
is a
technology
of
communication
isn't it
from
the stick
that even
chimpanzees
use
you know
to help
them
dig up
plants
and what
have you
that's a
technology
it's a
tool
our
tool
making
capacity
is really
an extension
of natural
functions
I mean
an airplane
does something
that a bird
does
but we
built it
so I
look at
technology
neither
as the
villain
or as
the savior
I look
at technology
as something
that we
I mean
other species
have some
technology
I think
dolphins
and whales
probably would
if they
had hands
you know
because they
seem to
have a high
intelligence
but they
don't
so we
have this
tremendous
capacity
for making
tools
you know
all the
way to
the most
extraordinary
things
that
we
we're getting today. That, I think, is a wonderful thing, and it can also be a terrible thing.
And we're right back to the issue of technology being used using the template of a partnership
or a dominator model of society. I'd like to suggest to you that the invention of machines,
per se, did not have to result in these dehumanized assembly lines where people themselves became
cogs in the machine. I would like to suggest to you that if this prehistoric shift had
not happened, that maybe the machines would have been used in a very, very different way.
I would like to suggest to you that the great breakthroughs in technology actually came in
what we may call more of a partnership-oriented era. In fact, all the basic technologies on
which civilization is built came out of that era. They weren't as glitzy as what we've
got today, although Mino and Crete had the first paved roads in Europe. It had folks in
it had indoor plumbing. I mean, it got lost again. You know, we don't find it again
until, you know, much later. But, I mean, they were what we would call, well, they compare
very, they're much more high technologies than a lot of the so-called developing worlds today.
Okay? So, let's look at technology in terms of this template. But the dominator system,
I've divided technology, really, and that's a whole new session, okay? By trying to categorize
it in terms of different types of technologies. And one is technologies of domination, of destruction.
And I'd like to suggest to you that technologies of domination and destruction, be it the use
of the greater musculature and the development of this, you know, of the bronze to kill of
the so-called classical warrior or the missile, that that's built into the dominator system.
And that really doesn't have that much to do with technology at all. And so that the issue
for us isn't, let's throw out the baby with the bathwater here. I mean, I don't want to
go back technologically. I mean, I think that we don't want to do that. What we want to do
is to use the most advanced modern technology. And it almost takes us immediately back to the
whole issue of how we use the hallucinogens. Because we're right back there. I mean, you
know very well that there have been experiments, not with some of the synthetic drugs, to use
them for mind control. I mean, that's the ultimate dominator technology, isn't it? I mean, thou
shalt not eat of the tree of knowledge, because I've just given you in your water supply, you
know, the chemical that makes you sort of, you know, completely pliable. Well, but I'm
saying, no, no, no, no, no. I made the distinction between hallucinogens and drugs, you know, and
pharmaceutically produced drugs. And there are experiments with that. But I'm saying that
let's think of technology with those two templates. And I'd really like to leave that as my formation.
Can you say it can't be done with hallucinogens? It's my powerful brainwashed engagement with
LSD. It's my powerful brainwashed engagement with the North. The partnership situation would
be democratic. Yes. And, of course, the other autocratic. And Antarctic. And the financial infrastructure would
be, one would be laissez-faire, private ownership, and the other would be shared, socialized.
Well, there would be degrees. And you might say capitalism and socialism, you know? Maybe
it was simplified, but that's what it gets down to. It's somewhat oversimplified, but certainly
a more equitable, you know, distribution of wealth, wouldn't you say? And an abandonment
of the notion of private property. Oh, great. No more real estate. Let's see, I don't, I don't
They killed a pope for shame. Let's end in tumult. Well, instead of ending in tumult, could
we end just almost on time? Yes. Oh, I thought we just had the sun in. That's nice. Now they've
got a few more moments. Well, it seems we moved around this afternoon. There's a great concern
as to how to realize this in the here and now, one-on-one, which is encouraging because
otherwise it remains an abstraction. Bringing these models forward into the present isn't
easy because the context for over a thousand or more years has been set by the dominator
culture. Nevertheless, what we have going for us is that the partnership way of thinking
thinking is really scripted into the bones of the planet. This is how it's always been
done. This is how nature does it. The Darwinian model of nature that we've inherited from the
nineteenth century is simply another dominator fiction used to reinforce dominator mechanisms.
The fact is that what nature really maximizes is cooperation, integration, and
and mutuality of support and relationship. What we're really trying to do, what becoming
post-historical means, I think, is removing the veil between ourselves and nature that the historical
experience has raised, because the historical experience has been an alienating experience, has
caused our perceptions to rise to the mere surfaces of things, and our feelings to be completely
undercut and invalidated. And what we have to do is feed more deeply into the context of being,
and the situation in which we find ourselves, and to see that we are of it. It's a seamless web.
The dynamics that rule the biological and natural world are the dynamics that are going to work for us.
We didn't fall here out of the sky. We weren't made by a jealous God who set us loose in a kind of reservation.
We are of the staff of this place, and its dynamics can be our dynamics. The problem is one of awareness,
realization, recovery of this perception, sharing it, revivifying it, and realizing it. That's all.
I really have a need to clarify the private property issue, because I really don't equate the partnership model
with the abolition of private property, and I want to really clarify that. I think that it's much more complex than that,
as I speak in the chalice and the blade, that what is going to be emerging, I hope, is a whole new economic model
where we put in central value the caring work that has traditionally, of course, been relegated to women
and to so-called effeminate men. And we have that opportunity now as we move from industrial to post-industrial society,
because we have to redefine what is productive work. And I really wanted to leave it with this idea that I think
we're going into a post-capitalist and post-socialist era. And forgive me, I don't need to have the last word,
but I did want to say that.
Well, I'll have the first word tomorrow.
This is KPFK Los Angeles. We have been listening to the evening of the first day of the seminar,
Man and Woman at the End of History, with Terence McKenna and Rian Eisler.
Rian Eisler is the author of the current book, The Chalice and the Blade, which has been highly recommended by Helen Caldecott
and Dan Ellsberg and Terence McKenna. And Ashley Montague said,
the anthropologist said, it's the most important book since The Origin of Species by Charles Darwin.
So that would be the most important book in about 140 years, which, well, that's heavy praise indeed.
The Chalice and the Blade. We will continue with the second day of the seminar next Tuesday night,
Wednesday morning at midnight on Earth Tuesday.
I'd like to thank two subscribers, by the way, Marlon Rojas of Los Angeles and Mick Lydell of Northridge.
And Marlon has not subscribed for a while, but he's back.
And Mick is a starving musician.
I know a Mick who's not a starving musician.
Anyway, he's subscribing for McKenna, Johnny Otis, Alan Watts, Roy, and Reggae.
Terence McKenna. Oh, the tapes and Terence's appearance in Los Angeles, which is now not two months away,
not three months away, not two months away, not a month away.
Ten days, a week from Saturday, Terence is going to be in town.
More about that in a minute.
The tapes of Man and Woman at the End of History.
This is a set, sorry for the squeaky book.
This is a set of five cassettes.
And they are available from the Ojai Foundation Wild Store.
I believe the set of five is $40.
Man and Woman at the End of History.
Their address and phone, if they answer the phone, I guess they do, is Ojai Foundation, Post Office Box 1620, Box 1620,
Ojai, California, 93023.
The Ojai Foundation, Box 1620, Ojai, California, 93023.
And again, the seminar is Man and Woman at the End of History.
The phone number of the Ojai Foundation, area code 805-646-8343, area code 805-646-8343.
The monumental seminar, which we started last week with Terence McKenna and Rhianne Eisler, entitled Man and Woman at the End of History.
We worked our way up.
We did about a third of the seminar last week, and we'll do another big chunk tonight as our Earth Tuesday program.
Man and Woman at the End of History took place at the Ojai Foundation in June.
And the description of the seminar is thus.
This seminar examines how one of the most fundamental human relationships, that between male and female, shapes our relationship to technology and ultimately to culture and nature.
We will look at the forms of relationships between women and men in the shift from a society based on domination to one based on partnership.
This is an exploration of how feminism, technology, and the telling of a new story will contribute to rescuing us from history.
Rianne Eisler is an internationally known scholar, social activist, futurist, and author of The Chalice and the Blade, which I add has been extolled by Terence McKenna, Daniel Ellsberg, Helen Caldecott, and Ashley Montague, among others.
The Chalice and the Blade.
She is co-director of the Center for Partnership Studies and a member of the General Evolution Research Group, a multinational group of scientists concerned with the social relevance of new theories and discoveries.
Terence McKenna has spent 25 years researching philosophy, somnism, and ethno-pharmacology.
He is co-author of The Invisible Landscape and co-founder of Botanical Dimensions, a non-profit refuge for endangered and rare plant species.
So, we will get right to the seminar.
There has been a break, and the gang is gathering at the end of the first break.
KPFK Los Angeles.
Shall we take up where we left off or start somewhere else?
Is it the same thing?
Yes.
Well, as I recall at the close of the morning, what we had come to was talking about the primacy of the shamanic experience and where it fell as a causal factor into the genesis of partnership society and its dissolution into dominator society.
To me, that's tied up with, and I indicated this at the end of the morning, with the issue of the primacy of personal felt experience.
And that this is what, this is the cultural domain over which the turf war is fought between the dominator and the partnership way of thinking about things.
Empowering ourselves through immersion in the felt moment is the partnership way of being.
It is immediate, it is emotional, it is trans-linguistic, and it feeds itself, it nourishes.
The other way of relating to experience is through a set of canonical abstractions that are the unique property of a professional class that speaks a special language that the rest of us don't understand.
And for millennia, at least beginning with classical Greece, this has been how we in the West have done it.
The mistake you see was when the Greeks stopped being fishermen and pulled their boats up on the sand and began to talk philosophy.
That cut them off from the felt presence of immediate experience.
So, partnership is revivifying immediate experience.
Well then, what are the limits of immediate experience?
And this leads, in my mind, directly to the question of the psychedelic plans.
It is possible to go from birth to the grave without ever having a psychedelic experience.
But it's also to make that same pilgrimage and never have a sexual experience.
Well, since the center of my ethos is empowering the felt presence of the immediate, to me, those things are abominations.
That withholding of involvement in the parameters of what one can know, but more importantly, what one can feel.
And this is a hard thing to put across in the present milieu because, believe it or not, very few people have had the psychedelic experience.
The shamanically centered, thousand-volt center of the mandala experience.
And it isn't about who has taken drugs and who has not.
I constantly talk to people where, by careful questioning, you can satisfy yourself that, though they've taken ten different kinds of drugs,
multiples of times, they never actually touched the pith essence of the experience.
Because the drugs, the plants are not a sine qua non.
They are necessary but not sufficient.
What is also necessary is a good heart, clear intention, and a setting which reinforces and focuses what is being attempted.
But, to me, the big news...
I wonder if the back will go next.
Last time I didn't mention it and then I swore, you know, I should mention it.
Your world is falling apart all around you and you just keep going.
Anyway, to me, the really big news is that there is this dimension of reality that is accessible to 90% of everyone in some form or another,
but that is secret because of the need in this culture to preserve sort of this flat earth myth.
It isn't a flat earth but a mute nature.
That's the myth that the dominated culture must keep in place.
Sartre actually said this.
He said, nature is mute, therefore the world gives no compass for the formation of human ethics.
This is psychosis, this kind of talk, because nature is not mute.
You need only have ears to hear, and the ears to hear the message of nature are the practices and techniques of ecstatic shamanism,
which is still alive and well in the Amazon, in Indonesia, in Southeast Asia.
It has only been lost to us as we've made this peregrination into a dominant fantasy about nature.
I mean, Rian mentioned this this morning, the conquest of space, smashing the atom,
all of these metaphors of violence and unrestrained domination,
as though somehow nature has to be violated to be understood.
My brother, whom some of you know, I'm sure, is a brilliant neurochemist and biochemist,
said something to me once which has stuck with me.
He said, they build enormous atom smashers and instruments for studying high energy in nature,
but it's perfectly obvious that the most interesting things in nature
go on at voltages considerably below that of a flashlight battery,
in leaves, in organs, in fertilized eggs and sperms and spores.
And these are the subtle processes in nature.
What 2,000 years of pursuing a dominator theory and trying to understand nature has brought us to,
is the potential for nuclear Armageddon and an inability to solve the three body problem.
which means essentially we have remained in an extremely infantile situation with regard to the living state.
And the living state is the precondition of our being.
This is why I think Rupert's work is so important.
He offers a new understanding of the living state and upon that new biology,
that new empowering of life to be perceived as what it is,
I think there will be a new sociology that will empower us to see ourselves as we are and as we can be.
So that's why I think the psychedelic experience is so important because it sets the parameters of possible immediate experience.
And it's been sold back to us in vitiated form by every tin horn guru since the last glaciation.
But what they're selling is, you know, their interpretations, their metaphors, their poetry imposed upon it.
And Rian has brought me close to seeing this, that the real news is that it is within us,
that we need not genuflect to these hierarchies which actually play havoc with the truth that is there to be perceived.
It's not a matter of seeking the answer, it's about facing it, facing it.
And this means nature, which is the goddess, which is the feminine, which is the symbiotic and partnership ground,
out of which humanity comes, men and women.
Who might respond to that?
You're not serious.
You touch, you're like fireworks, I told you that yesterday.
You just illuminate so many things so quickly and then pass from one to the other.
But I will do it in my own non-linear fashion.
I guess since you ended with the goddess, I would like to begin with the goddess.
I had requested that somebody bring a book.
Do we have it here, the tellus and the blade?
And I forgot.
I do.
You have a copy.
Because on the cover is a picture.
And sometimes a picture can speak louder than a thousand words.
This is just one of thousands and thousands and thousands of figurines.
Not all of them look like this.
I want to make that very clear.
But she happens to manifest something that I think is very important in terms of our conversation
and our celebration here.
Because what she, if you look at her, I think you can see her because of the great, you know, contrast with the red.
If you first look at her, you can see, of course, the breasts.
And that, you know, that's female.
But actually the shape is phallic, isn't it?
So she's androgynous, isn't she?
And then the other thing that you see, if you look at her very closely, she has a beak.
She's a bird goddess.
She's part animal.
Of course, the angels are the descendants of the bird goddess.
Does she have leaves too?
Is she part plants?
Not in this picture.
And that's a very interesting thing because, as a matter of fact, there are many incisions on many of the...
and early language, early writing, if you will.
I guess one of my favorites is the cross.
I want to tell you about the cross because we're talking about different meanings of different things,
of different basic symbols, including the symbol of shamanism,
depending on which of these two possibilities for us, these two marbles,
which are abstractions, of course, we orient to.
And it's very interesting because many of the early figures of the goddess had, in size in them, the cross.
But it was in the... very often it was like the X form of the cross.
And what it stood for, of course, was the unity, the various points of the compass.
Because these people were very sophisticated astronomically, as you probably have surmised,
any of you who have looked at Stonehenge reproductions, for example.
But even if you go back way into the Paleolithic 20,000 years ago,
they were already into some really remarkable record-keeping.
Some of it may have been, as a matter of fact, begun with women's menstrual circles, cycles.
I think that arresting fact, that blood, the life-giving blood comes, must have really inspired some women to try to figure out
when would this essentially supernatural event be experienced again.
But I want to stay with the cross.
Then, later on, in Egyptian hieroglyphics, the cross is still, you know, a symbol of light.
But when you move into the Dominator era, which you begin to find,
and you find it way before the Romans and way before the Crucifixion,
you find that the Assyrians had this lovely habit of impaling people on crosses.
You see Tiglath-Peleza, you know, this whole panorama of the whole city practically impaled.
I mean, just brutality.
So the cross became what? It became not a symbol of life and regeneration,
but it became a symbol of brutal death.
And, of course, then comes the early Christianity, Jesus,
preaching a partnership of spirituality, associating freely with women, violating,
even in the official Gospels you find this, of course,
his disciples marveling that he associates with women
and with no one else present like the woman at the will.
You know, I mean, Khomeini's Iran, you could probably get killed for doing that.
And so it was in this very rigidly male dominant,
you know, very hierarchic, violent society that he was, you know, challenging.
And he broke those taboos and he preached partnership.
And, of course, what we do in these hybrid societies,
the women are ignored, basically, and ridiculed and forget it,
but the men are usually crucified and canonized.
And so, well, you kill them, and then you say,
oh, weren't they wonderful, Martin Luther King, Gandhi, you know,
I mean, all of, so that's, you know, so of course, you know,
he gets crucified on a cross.
But early Christianity tries to, again, revive the old symbolism, doesn't it,
of the cross, as a symbol not only of dying on this awful thing,
but the old symbolism of life and regeneration, rebirth, the rebirth.
And, of course, Christianity, obviously, is a very direct descendant of the old religion,
only a very interesting thing happened along the way, folks,
which is that the Great Mother, you know, the Goddess,
but at first she was dropped completely.
And then when the Troubadour movement,
and this was a time of tremendous partnership resurgence,
and we don't have time for it, but it's very, very fascinating,
because the Troubadour courtly love has some relationship to Tantric yoga,
and we won't go into that.
But, I mean, I just want to leave you with that,
because it's really extraordinary, the commonalities we begin to see.
But the Troubadours introduced this thing called neriology,
which the Church authorities say, this is unheard of.
It has never been heard of.
Well, nonsense.
It was a revival of the ancient worship of the Goddess,
and the people danced in the streets of Lyon, you know,
when the Church finally co-opted it and said,
okay, folks, we'll accept it.
But she is now the only mortal figure in the Holy Family.
So we've got this real absurdity of a Holy Family
with a Divine Father and a Divine Son,
and some parvenu, you know, this woman who just happens to come along, right?
So we maintain the dominator character.
And, of course, that went along with what then the Cross again becomes,
the Cross as a symbol of the Crusade, of the Inquisition.
It again really truly becomes a symbol not of life and the love of life and of regeneration,
but of death and the Ku Klux Klan.
with its white cross is a very, very good modern illustration.
And the reason I think I went through this with you is not only because intrinsically
it's so interesting to really reclaim some of our basic and ancient symbols, because
all of these symbols can have so many meanings is what I'm really trying to say, depending
on what prism we use for it, but to really lead into perhaps a look at shamanism from
that perspective, because I have sort of a sense about the shamanic experience that
we're talking about a number of experiences, and I feel sort of a need to say again that
I feel that there are many paths to what, I don't even know that we need to call it the
shamanic experience, because shamanism per se, as you pointed out, is the healer, that is
the healing function, and it may mean not only physical healing, but spiritual healing, which
we are now rediscovering, folks, it's related, you know, the ancients kind of understood
that.
But now we're beginning to understand, you know, with holistic medicine that, you know,
that the two go together, that, you know, nature and spirituality are related.
Perhaps we can speak about it as the ecstatic experience, the experience of gnosis.
And I would say that there are many paths to the experience of gnosis, that the use of nature
that involves not only the use of plants, but the use of even our own breath, which is a
way, you know, through meditation, it involves sexual, you know, tantric yoga has the remnants
of what I think was a view of sex as sacrament, still in it, but of course it's become very
male-centered.
You know, everything is he gets access to Shakti, which is of course, you know, the creative
force, the goddess, through the woman, but somehow she's become this passive agent of
the whole thing.
Go ahead.
I'm sorry.
It's very little.
The guide is very big and has a tiny little woman on it.
And isn't that amazing?
Because you see Shakti, of course, if the whole concept is that you have access, well,
look, I mean, the vulva, the vagina was sacred in the Paleolithic.
You see what we call the inverted triangle, and it's sacred.
And you see that in Indian iconography.
So, yes, I mean, this was, you know, the idea that this is a cunt, you know, our worst
and most contentious swear word would have been such blasphemy, as it should be, again,
to us.
We have to reclaim, really, the spirituality of our sexuality.
But I think the sexual experience can be, not always, you know, I mean, it doesn't mean
that it's going to be very serious in town all the time, either, but it can also be another
avenue that is a natural avenue.
So I would like to perhaps put this in the context of larger paths.
And, of course, we all know about the paths of having that aha experience of the oneness
through fasting, through chanting, through all kinds of hypnotic things.
But there's no question in my mind that the plant experience is one of the quickest
and one of the most powerful avenues.
But the real issue, and I want to really talk about it, I was talking to you earlier,
I want to put it in the modern context, in the 60s, because that's a very important case
history for us, and we must learn.
If we don't want to learn from the past, we really are in deep trouble.
What happened in the 60s, as you know, was that, yes, that the use of hallucinogen was part
of this awakening, you know, the flower children, the counterculture.
But then some really dreadful things happened.
And what happened, of course, was the co-option of the drug culture as, again, the opiate of
the people.
The politics, the true politics, in the sense of transformation, not Republican, Democrat,
or, you know, Reagan, or, you know, whatever.
But the true politics of transformation, from the dominator to the partnership, society,
got completely co-opted, didn't it, through the drug experience.
And historically, the use of opiates, for example, in China, is a very vivid example,
but hashish, you know, you name it, you've got it, has literally been a way to get people
to accept the most miserable, the most virulent, the most brutal of oppression from their overlords.
So I think that it's so important, if we're talking about this as a technology, that it
can be a technology of domination just as easily as it can be a technology of actualization.
And I'm not going to dispute it, but you're saying that some of the natural plants are
less likely to be used that way, that it's mostly the chemical ones, but I'm not a hundred
percent sure, because look at the opiates.
Well, I don't think opium was really a problem, number one, until the British, as a matter
of state policy, manipulated opium production in the Far East, and then secondly, until the
invention of morphine and the family of synthetics.
I mean, opium use, as you mentioned, goes back to Minoan times and probably earlier.
No, we have a remarkable ability to pervert.
And I think it was Ludwig von Bertolanski, one of the founders of General Systems Theory,
who said, people are not machines, but in every situation where they are offered the opportunity
to behave like machines, they will so behave.
We have to be, this maybe brings up something we should talk about because it was requested,
and it seems germane here.
And this is the problem of addiction and habit.
And addiction is merely a special type of habit.
And I think we can agree that habit, in all forms, kills what we want to bring to flower in life.
Because as a habit sets in, attention can go elsewhere.
And then that part of life is somehow unautomatic.
It has become a machine-like function.
So we are now being told that we are in the midst of a tremendous political crisis that goes under the banner of the drug problem.
But the drug problem is an addiction problem.
And the addiction is, in my mind, the addiction of intelligence agencies to vast amounts of untraceable money.
This is the addiction which drives the global drug problem.
But, of course, it is true that there are chemical dependencies.
And this is a very interesting thing about human beings.
Something, and I'll talk about this a bit more tomorrow,
but something about our ability to be omnivorous, to eat all kinds of things,
has lain us open to perhaps manipulation is too strong a word,
but certainly to evolutionarily selective pressures that are not ordinarily present.
Because, you know, most animals eat a few foods.
Many animals eat only one food.
Our ability to be omnivorous has exposed us over the last four or five million years
to a vast number of mutagenic and synergistic compounds
that may have been responsible for such things as the prolongation of adolescence in our species,
the way in which lactation occurs.
A number of physiological factors in our makeup that we take for granted
may be fairly recent acquisitions having to do with our omnivorous diet.
And drugs come into this at some point, too, because, for instance, in the case of psilocybin,
very small amounts of psilocybin in the diet are not detectable at all as a psychological impression,
but tests have shown that very small amounts of psilocybin in the diet confer increased visual acuity.
Well, you don't have to have studied too much evolutionary biology to know that
if you have a population of animals and something in the food chain is increasing the visual acuity of some of them,
those animals are going to have a more successful reproductive strategy than their competitors,
and that trait will be reinforced and strengthened.
So we have been sculpted by nature through our foraging habits,
and Rian stressed the notion of template, and I think that's very important.
Human beings are templated out of nature.
We have been shaped by unusual evolutionary forces.
And when you look at us, we clearly play an unusual evolutionary role.
We are some kind of trigger species for mode shifts that affect the entire planet.
And if you take the notion of Gaia seriously, and don't simply think of Gaia,
if you don't simply replace the old man with the long white beard with a beautiful young woman as an abstraction,
but actually try to, what is Gaia?
Gaia is the set of integrated informational control systems
which regulate and maintain and stabilize all life and all biological processes on this planet.
And the way this is done is through chemical messengers, enzymes, stimulants, depressants, enhancers,
all of these things push and pull on the morphogenetic field in which everything on the planet is bound.
To me, the great miracle on this planet is us.
We are the great unlikelihood.
If this planet were as it was even five million years ago,
Darwinian mechanics properly modified would be sufficient to account for what was present,
natural ecosystems, animals in competitive and adaptive relationships.
But we really are as alien as an alien spacecraft would be.
We are the great imponderable here.
And I think that nature is at play with itself and is calling out of the primates a gene swarm that is in self-reflection of what is otherwise a planetary intent.
And that's why we feel why our hearts are so open to these ineffable emotions about destiny and transformation.
And someone this morning asked about history and what was it good for.
It's the long turn of the spiral.
You know, the prodigal son is somehow in a better position for having made the peregrination, the journey into alienation,
and then returns enriched to the tribal encampment.
I think of European civilization as a prodigal phenomenon,
but a prodigal phenomenon that will be redeemed when we return to the tribal societies we split away from six, seven thousand years ago,
but return now with a tremendous empowering knowledge of how to realize the shamanic dream.
But I don't see this as a product of ego, of decisions made by far-seeing men and women.
It's much more like a dance.
It is a dance to which we respond in our souls, and often we don't understand why we do the things that we do.
But ultimately, as Rian said, it's the unweaving and reweaving of a tapestry into a finer, clearer pattern.
And to return this to the subject of addiction and how it fits in, addiction is falling away from clarity,
falling away from the felt presence of the moment, and everything addicts,
and everything must therefore be viewed with a certain amount of wry suspicion.
I think we didn't get where we were by making unfounded assumptions.
We got to this place by being very careful where we put our attention.
And I think we've done rather well.
There's a kind of denigration of the historical process,
but that's if you come from the school that believes we're fallen angels.
If you come from the school that believes we're risen eight, then we haven't done too badly.
That's right.
That's exactly it.
And culture is an addiction.
That's why I maintain in the question of the psychedelics,
we have to define these things operationally.
And really, the psychedelics are the enzymes which dissolve habitual behavior patterns
and return us to a tabla rasa where then new instructions can be etched in
and new pathways explored.
That's the reason that the psychedelics are so unsettling to the establishment
because they are not part of the quote-unquote drug problem
because they involve very small numbers of people and very small amounts of money,
but very big ideas and very large willingness to question the idols of the tribe.
And that's much more unsettling than a few illicit millionaires.
I'm just interested because you started out by talking about the importance of context
and the importance of the proper, whatever proper means, but in order to have that gnosis experience.
And if we're living in the midst of, because I don't know about whether or not the partnership ever existed in purity.
You were saying it was an ideal and there was probably, my sense of it, because I haven't done that much reading,
but my sense based on what I know about myself and what I've seen around me, the way people are,
there was probably, I think, always a mixture of dominant relationships and partnership relationships
and that you could have a balance that was predominantly partnership and a balance that was predominantly something else.
And it's, I don't know, because I've never seen it, you know, where people were exclusively working in partnership.
But to get back to context, how can you, the co-opting seems such a natural thing because we live in a dominant paradigm,
so that if you're going to do psychedelics and dissolve, say, your own ego and defenses and stuff like that,
what are you going to put in its place without having seen the model?
What kind of context can you construct for yourself so that you're doing that and you can be pretty safely?
And the reason I'm asking is because I've seen people, well-intentioned people,
who intended only to dissolve their ego so that they could be something better, become something very dysfunctional.
And so that's why I'm asking the question and I wonder if you would address that context issue.
Is it to me?
Whoever would like to talk about it, I think it needs to be brought up.
Maybe we both have something to say.
Rian mentioned the sixties as a less than ideal situation as it turned out.
If you look back at the literature of the underground in the sixties,
certain things that we take completely for granted are totally absent.
One of them is any sense of the historical context of hallucinogenic and shamanic ecstasy.
There is no talk of shamanism.
There is a little bit of talk about peyote, but no real awareness that those people in the 1960s thought they were discovering something brand new,
not the oldest religion in the world.
The way we create a context, to address your question, is by creating a community.
We can advance no faster than the envelope of language in which we are embedded.
And the material manifestation of our linguistic sphere is our affinity group, our community.
That's why I think one of the most important things about these kinds of get-togethers
is for you people to see and recognize each other.
Because the awareness of these things is still a very closely held thing.
And you should recognize in each other your affinity group.
You are self-selected by yourselves to be here today.
And in the spirit of the partnership and ignoring the hierarchy,
I abhor all this guru-worship and all this stuff because it's just a bunch of crap.
Nobody knows anything more than anybody else.
Transformation is a community project.
It can't be anything else.
Oh, give him a chance.
But Rian, you might want to say something about that.
Yes, I do want to say, well I agree with you completely,
that the creation of community is essential.
But I would define community more broadly in the sense that it is not enough
that we have our little islands, if you will.
Because in order to survive in the, quote, real world,
we either change that world or we're constantly being pulled into dominator modes
of thinking and of rationalizing what we do and of behaving.
So that's the first point.
I would like to say that there are some very clear strategies
that I think are very, very important.
One of them, it has been until now, generally sort of been thought of
as being perhaps impractical.
It relates to this whole idea of education,
but education on a far deeper level than what we've often talked about it.
And of course it also relates to this whole notion of morphogenetic fields,
of a kind of a telepathic kind of thing that happens with images.
Now, I think that one of the most important tasks that we have before us now,
and we are all creative people, I mean our creativity really,
the dominator model and creativity are antithetical to each other,
so the image of the starving artist is very appropriate, you know, for the dominator model,
very inappropriate, you know, for a society that values, you know, the creativity
that would be more of a partnership society,
is for us to create images that are not just, I think, the age of protest, you know, of being against.
I met a lovely young woman, a 16-year-old young woman,
and she said, when I read The Chalice in the Glade,
I go to a school where the kids are always protesting against everything,
and I suddenly realized that what they're protesting against is the dominator system,
and that what we really have to do is to move beyond that
and to begin to create the images that are appropriate to a partnership society.
So I'm talking in terms of ideas, in terms of visual images, in terms, of course, of media, the arts,
to begin to replace, because if you go into, this is one of the things with the use of, you know,
what is in your imagination?
If your imagination is so overcrowded with dominator images,
are you really going to be able to surface, you know, and have this confirmation?
So I think that's a very practical thing.
Those of you who are in the media, take it very, very seriously, please.
And it's fun, anyway, to work this way.
And I think, if some of you are in the media,
I spent an evening with some of the Hollywood people recently.
Basically, what we were talking about was this idea that now is the time,
because people at a certain point of addiction get to saturation,
and the addiction to violence, and to depersonalized, you know, mechanical sex.
And, you know, I mean, I think we've gotten to the point where people are just sort of like,
oh my God, they're hungry for something else.
This is our moment. This is our opportunity.
So images are extremely important.
And I don't mean, because we live by stories. That's another thing.
People live by stories. We don't, I mean, science tells us stories, too.
And the selfish gene story, which is an upstate, of course, of original sin, you know, I mean, what else is new?
You know, now it isn't us, but it's the, you know, it's the gene somehow, the selfish thing.
You know, we live by these stories.
So it's up to us to bring out new stories.
And the stories can be from science. It's very important that they be from science.
Stories from biology that are showing us that in the body, for example, there's, if you will,
much more partnership, much more cooperation going on than there is hierarchy.
You know, for the organism, you know, the liver and the heart, I mean, they're not just by themselves.
It all sort of interconnects and interrelates.
Because I know the brain is in charge, though. All the oxygen goes to the brain.
Well, the oxygen goes to the brain, but is the brain in charge, or is the brain part of a larger neurological system
that really is a transmitter and also an imager for us?
I mean, I think that there's much more than the brain being, you know, the general in charge here.
That's the picture we've been given, of course, right?
Because it fits with the pyramid model.
But is it the brain, or does the...
I mean, we've been talking about really gnosis, knowledge.
Is that really coming from the brain?
Or is that something else, some other receptor that we have?
Is the brain perhaps a receptor, a transmuter, a converter, a creative agent, rather than a general?
I prefer that image, and I think it's more accurate.
And I think if you talk to people today who are doing the work with the brain,
they'll probably move more towards, you know, the reality of that second image.
And the other thing, I hate to say it to you people, but we do have to talk about economics.
I mean, it's all very well to talk about the, you know, about the mystical experience and about imagery,
but we have to restructure. We have to restructure.
And we have to restructure the whole darn planet, so that it's more of a partnership.
And that doesn't mean that there won't be some people who have more and some people who have less,
but it's absolutely inexcusable with our level of technological development,
including birth control technologies, to have the kind of idiocy.
But you see, the lunacy is part of the dominator system, because it's not by accident
that the most rigidly dominator systems are the ones who are so rabidly against family planning,
who are so rabidly against reproductive freedom for women, who are so rabidly against any other role for women,
any other definition for women, other than basically male-controlled technologies of reproduction.
You know, breeders, breeders preferably of men's sons.
I mean, that doesn't have to be, right?
So, using the most advanced technologies to move into a partnership era is one of the most extraordinary challenges.
And I think that that's really what this is about.
It is not just to sit and contemplate ourselves, but to actually use this in an action mode, too.
And putting out important ideas is very important, too.
That's part of the action.
I just want to go back to the 60s for a minute.
You said that you thought that drugs, the drug culture, got co-opted.
Yes.
That culture got co-opted by drugs.
It seems to me that in the 60s, the certain drugs, again, to not just talk about drugs generically,
but certain drugs have more to do with creating a sense of partnership than anything that I know of,
at least in my lifetime, through my own direct experiences, study, reading, anything.
Direct drug experiences seemed to lead to a very radical change of mentality of a massive group of people.
That's right.
And I think it's a mistake to think that those drugs,
that there was anything wrong or anything really weird happened regarding those particular drugs.
There were new drugs that came in.
Cocaine came in, which is interesting to me because it seemed to change.
It became a very, that seemed very much in that dominant model.
Yes.
But marijuana and the mushrooms, LSD, they seemed very much in the partnership model
and seemed to perpetuate that.
And I'm glad you made that distinction because clearly all of us who lived through the 60s
knew that the use of grass and the use of the hallucinogens, it was a community building.
It was really, to a very large extent, a building of partnership.
And that is not what I meant.
What I meant was that, well, part of it was the cocaine coming in.
But part of it was also LSD, I think.
And it was just the whole idea of shifting from drug as a revelation experience,
as a transformation experience, to one that has a terrific function in the dominator society,
which is the addictive, which is to keep you right there without taking any action.
That is what I meant, and I'm glad you clarified that.
Yes.
I think what reared its ugly head and shot down the 1960s was process.
And the fact that, I don't, I have no problem with LSD per se, but it has one quality which
really flaws it.
And that is that a single chemist in his basement can produce millions and millions of doses.
That immediately raises it to the level of a social menace.
Because when you talk about millions of doses of a deconditioning agent, it means you're going
head-to-head with the tough guys.
And also when you're talking about being a single person, being able to make millions of doses,
then you're talking about multiple millions of dollars.
And immediately the possibility of keeping things from getting out of hand is, I think, really diminished.
The key is plant compounds and substances which have inherent trickle factors in them,
where you can never get too much together at any one time, and nobody can ever get too rich,
and everything.
Then the mystery stays.
This is, the plants are like this, and this keeps them going.
But I wanted to say something more about this context, and sort of not in great detail and
semi-tongue-in-cheek, but to show you how context works and how dominator society both insidiously
invades our conception of things and also might be equally insidiously plotted against.
One of the things that we take utterly for granted, I think, is the calendar.
We live in a calendar of 365 days.
It's a solar calendar.
That means that relative to the fixed stars, the equimoptial and sosticial points are fixed.
And this is a lie, or it perpetuates a misconception.
It perpetuates the conception that things endure, and that flux is an illusion.
The solar calendar has built into it deep propagandistic assumptions in favor of the dominator model.
And to see what I mean, just imagine, however seriously you care to, that we changed the calendar
to a calendar with a day length of 384 days, so that our year was 13 lunations, and had
19 more days in it than the solar year.
If we were to adopt a calendar like this, all holidays and great festivals would do what
is called precessing.
They would move 19 days a year, so that when you were a child, you would recall Christmases
in winter.
If we were to be born 19 days a year,heiten will embed usこれは durante kal etc 7 terrestris
in winter.
I like to know titles.
I like to see who you are doing that.
We've collected it.
But you would recall that in your adolescence, Christmas fell in summer, and so forth.
And every 19 years, the great festivals would return to where they had been relative to the fixed stars.
Well, this may seem fairly abstract and removed from common experience,
but in fact, because this is sort of the great frame in which all the other little frames are suspended,
we operate at a tremendous disadvantage because we are embedded in a patriarchal solar calendar
which reinforces the false notion of permanence and stability.
The I Ching hexagram 49 is the hexagram revolution,
and you might turn to it expecting a treatise on courtly politics or something like that.
But what you actually read there is the news that the magician is a calendar maker.
A strange notion, but precisely addressing what I'm trying to say,
that this is one of the ways in which we might revision our world
to accentuate flux and flow and change and the transience and the coming to be and the falling away
rather than this constipated, death-denying, paternalistic, solar kind of point of view.
So that's one notion of how context might change.
And it's an interesting idea.
It's not illegal to advocate calendrical reform.
It's probably not ever occurred to anyone.
But believe me, in prehistory and in early Chinese history,
tremendous battles were fought, and these were issues of great importance
because the founders of new dynasties understood
that the way to establish their reigns was to sweep away
all previous calendrical conceptions and establish a zero year
and then create, in that context, all the subcontexts of their political agenda.
Well, it's the new order.
And I think that that's so interesting because we are, of course,
well, many of us, and I'm sure many of us here,
are going back to the celebration of some of the most ancient festivals,
the nature festivals, the solstices, the equinoxes, the full moon, the young moon.
These were the most ancient holy days
because they were congruent with the rhythm of nature.
And I think you're quite right.
What the solar calendar does, it sort of nullifies
that whole cyclic spiral quality of life.
But I want to get back for a moment in that context
to the issue of the use of psychedelics
because the use of them as a medium through carefully thought through
and reconstituted, certainly going back to some of its ancient roots,
as we're doing here, you know, with some of the music,
but also adapting it for today and for tomorrow.
That, and also, that really relates to the whole issue of calendar, too.
I mean, to the issue of when.
When are the times of the year when you do this?
Because regardless of anything else,
if we are to engage in this practice on a random and very frequent basis,
we're not going to have a very productive economy.
I mean, it's just a very simple equation, you know,
because it's sort of easy to wash the way then
and to really not be creative.
You know, so it's an issue.
I think we have to address that issue, don't we?
And it goes with the issue of calendar.
It goes with the issue of ritual.
I mean, these things are all interconnected.
Yes, your remarks make me think of something Omar Stewart said,
who was a botanist and anthropologist,
and I don't know how serious he was,
but he felt that the great transition in plant consciousness
came with the invention of agriculture,
that the hunting peoples could take the ecstatic hallucinogens
because you could sleep in the next day.
But once you got into agriculture,
corn became the important plant,
and there was no more getting stoned
because everybody had to get up early
and get out there and hoe the corn.
Oh, of course, we don't have to get up early
and hoe the corn today, but still.
Does that mean we can get stoned?
There is something to it being a holy thing.
No, I agree.
And a sacramental thing.
And that really relates to woolly days
and to this whole notion of it being done within a context
that we have to create.
I mean, we have to do nothing more or less than to create a culture.
But fortunately, we have a lot of the strands to work with.
Yes, a successful psychedelic trip
absolutely kills the desire to do it again very soon.
So it's a self-limiting experience.
Yes, it's a self-limiting experience.
And the way to know whether you're doing it correctly or not
is if what you're doing doesn't make you afraid,
you're not doing it right.
On that note,
we might want to think about the 10-minute stretch and...
Wonderful.
So we thought for this closing session this afternoon
that we would hope to hear from you
and I vow to give shorter answers.
We've made a pact here.
The two of us just go on.
So we want to hear from you.
I just want to make one quick suggestion
to hear it addressed at some point
because I know that some people are curious about this
and that is not everybody may know
that both of you are involved in wonderful relationships,
probably modeled for marital.
And there might be a few words you could say
about just certainly the issue of dominator versus partnership
comes up in marriages and relationships constantly
and how we can take some of these really wonderful ideas
in terms of how we define Gaian consciousness
and bring it down to how we get out of an argument.
That might be just...
How you both deal with it must be terribly illuminating.
Well, I'll start.
I am in a committed long-term relationship.
Many of you know my partner, Kat.
We've been together since 1975.
We met in 1967 in Jerusalem, actually.
But we were on different paths
and didn't really see each other for nine years.
And we have two children,
Finn, a boy, ten,
and Clea, a girl, seven.
And Rian said yesterday
that partnership is preferable because it's fun.
It certainly is fun.
It's also a great challenge.
It is the challenge, I think.
There's a wonderful saying
that addresses the problem of ego
in the dominator situation.
It's Uzbekistani, this saying.
It's that a man may be a fool and not know it,
but not if he's married.
So partnership is a wonderful opportunity
for humility
and for seeing oneself
as others see them.
And, well, it's everything.
I can't say enough about it.
It's the coniunctio.
It's the great challenge.
It drives one to distraction.
It is perhaps the transcendental object
that is most personally experienced
by each of us.
I think it's fair to say
that in our individual lives
where magic is most present
is in the matter of forming partnerships
and bonding.
I mean, you know,
a typical example is
that you can see a woman
across a crowded room
speaking as a man
and something passes between you
and then later you find out
that, well, she's the daughter
of the corporation president
or the university chancellor
and doesn't speak English
and is already married
to a French count
and so forth and so on.
But lo and behold,
circumstances evolve
and she divorces the French count,
she learns to speak English,
she gets an apartment
across the hall
and this falls into place
like magic,
in fact, magic.
And so we can summon this power
to the things we care about most
and what we care about most
is I think falling into this,
the dyad.
I really think that people
come in two pieces
and you sort of have to put
the pieces together
and then you get
a curious beast indeed
that can maybe ride
a longer distance,
I'm not sure.
What's your story?
Well, my story I'd like to share
with my partner, with David.
Do you want to go first, David,
or should I?
Okay, I'll go first.
I'll come on down.
Okay.
I started off
my partnership with David
only 11 years ago
and it was
a miracle
is what it was.
I had a friar at marriage
and that was really a very
terrific learning experience,
I guess one says
about the unpleasant thing.
But it was a classic
dominator relationship
and we were both miserable.
I mean, I was really
getting pretty good
at manipulating, actually.
This is what you have
to get to
if you're in a
dominator relationship.
And it really brings out
the worst in everybody.
You know, the guy
who's supposed to be the,
who never, you know,
I mean, he never apologizes.
He always, you know,
he knows.
I mean, by golly,
you know, his ego.
And, of course, you know,
he knows that this isn't working
and so he's very tense
about the whole thing,
you know,
as he leaves his laundry
for you to pick up
on the floor.
And you hate it
and you begin to hate him.
And so you start manipulating.
And so after a while,
you know,
you're both miserable.
I mean, that's really
the classic pattern,
isn't it?
That, and people stay,
and the whole difference
between dominator relationships,
as far as, you know,
heterosexual long-term relationships
and partnership relationships
is that the bonding
and one is really coercion.
I mean,
well, it used to be,
you know,
the story of Don Jose
killing Carmen.
I mean,
if you dare leave this guy
for somebody else,
he'll kill you.
That's a pretty good motivation
not to go right there.
But a lot of it,
of course,
more recently
has been economic,
you know,
especially for the women.
You know,
they just couldn't get out
of this rotten situation
so they kidded themselves
and everybody else.
So now we're starting
from scratch, right?
And we're all saying,
wait a minute,
this old stuff
has made everybody
literally ill.
And so I was so blessed.
I found David
and David found me
and we met
and he came over for lunch
and he never went home.
Actually,
he did go home
because I had an appointment
with an accountant
that afternoon
and I had told him
that I was going
to go to a movie
that evening
and he said to me,
you really have to go
to that movie?
And I said,
no,
I don't have to go
to that movie.
So he came back
and I have to share
something with you
which is sort of funny.
I was so scared
of getting married again
because getting married,
you know,
especially in my generation,
you carry that
dominator luggage
of wife,
husband,
you know,
and that programming.
So we waited 10 years
and we finally got married
and it was wonderful
because it was
the three of us,
we were married
by a woman
which was really
terrific experience.
I mean,
just the three of us
and she was a gorgeous,
wonderful woman
wearing this beautiful robe,
these colorful robes
and we all cried
and David read me his poetry
and I read him my vows
and it was a sacred moment
for us.
And so,
we do have arguments,
I mean,
in case you're interested
and partnership
doesn't mean perfect either
but we also have
developed some techniques
for working them out
sometimes.
Why don't I tell you
real quickly
of the techniques
that we use
and then let me share
with you
two or three
sort of interesting
stories to me
centering around
how we met
because they seem
to have various morals,
various dimensions
of meaning.
But the technique first,
I really found this
tremendously useful
and it was
Rian's idea
and it was
her reinterpretation
or reworking
of an idea
out of co-counseling
and the idea
is simply this.
Contrary to the image
that people
might like to believe,
we do have
tremendous conflict
because we both
only reach
the place we are
by being,
developing
really strong
egos,
strong,
but more than
strong egos,
strong identities.
I think there's
a difference.
Yeah,
let's say strong
identities.
Strong identities
and...
Good story.
Now this is
important contextually.
This is what
I wasn't going to
get into
because I was
thinking to myself
I'm working
on an article
right now.
Rian has written
her half.
It's called
The Partnership
Society,
Social Vision
and Personal
Practice.
She's done
Social Vision
and you've heard
parts of it.
I'm working right
now on personal
practice and
thinking all this
through and I
thought to myself
shall I share
any of this?
And I thought
I don't have it
thought through
well enough.
But I feel
I should add this
to what I was
going to say
on this conflict
of strong
identities,
not egos.
We're going
through this
period, see,
where there's
been this
traditional
male-dominant
female-submissive
relating of
the sexes.
And in trying
to get out of
it, there's an
awful lot of
role reversal
where the women
are becoming
strong, forceful
and talk a lot.
And the men
are becoming
more submissive
and sitting back
and taking it
and so on.
Now, this is
actually, if you
look it over,
this is a
necessary part
of the
transition, but
the transition
only, because
if that pattern
prevails, then
we're lost, because
all you've got is
the flip side of
the coin once
again.
You've got the
woman, too
dominant, talking,
calling the shots
too much, feeling
guilty about it,
and that makes
her do it even
more.
You've got the
man sitting
there silent and
seizing and
seizing until he
explodes, and
this leads to
actual violence,
physical violence
in some cases,
because the men
are more muscular
and so on.
No, but it
hasn't in my
picture.
No, no, but
I'm looking out
at the general
picture.
So what I see
that we must be
moving towards
is not this
situation where
you've got one
partner or the
other.
It's the dominant
one and the
other one is the
submissive thing.
The tip-off to
what's wrong here
is when it
becomes an
inflexible,
invariant
pattern.
Once you get
into it,
as the bulk
of you already
know, I'm
just trying to
articulate what's
gone through the
heads of a lot
of you in
relationships, you
discover progressively
that there are
certain situations
where one party
should be dominant
because that
particular party
knows a hell of a
lot more about
whatever it is in
that situation
than you do.
And there's other
situations where
you've got the
expertise and
you've got the
contacts and
you're down with
the secret things
to be the
flexibility and
knowing each other
well enough to
know when to
flip it to the
other one and
let the other
one take over
and so on.
But we've got to
move toward this
situation where
you've got not
strong and
weak or weak
and weak.
Another one of
these patterns is
the weak and
the weak.
And that's not
so bad, you
know, where
people actually
admit, you
know, I got
imperfections,
you've got
imperfections.
Let's work
together to
perfect ourselves.
It doesn't
always work, as
a partnership
society model
to me is
strong and
strong, where
you've got two
strong identities
and they work
out this, you
know, according
to the situation
and their
relationship with
nature, with
all of nature
and all of life
is strong too.
Anyway, enough
to that, that's
sort of an
overall thing.
Co-counseling.
Technique.
Oh, co-counseling,
yeah, because
this is something
very practical.
Okay, you've got
these two strong
identities and
they've come to
the, both of
them are very
tempted and
have already
regressed,
already regressed
partly into that
monstrous
situation, the
dominator system
that's got
them.
Now, what we
do, well,
actually it isn't
what we do, it's
almost invariably
Rian says, in
effect, now look,
let's have a
session.
And that's my
cue to get
out of my
defensive, withdrawal,
seething,
rah, type
thing, too.
The routine we
both go through
is, first you
say, you're
forced to say,
oh, what is
it?
I always forget
what it is.
It comes out
of re-evaluation
and co-counseling
and you start off
by saying what's
new and good.
Which really
brings you into
the here and
now.
So you're
forced to say
what's new
and good.
And you may
say, there's
absolutely nothing
new and good.
And the other
party says,
uh-uh, you
must think of
something new
and good.
So then you
think, well,
it's a beautiful
day.
That functions.
Then you have
to think of
what's good
about myself.
And you'd say,
I don't feel
that there's
anything good
about myself.
And once again,
you must think
about coming
good about
yourself.
And then you
say, well,
I can play a
good harmonica.
And then comes
the difficult one
in these quarrel
situations.
What's new and
good about the
other person?
And then you
come up with,
well, I think
you're pretty or
something like
and that
fulfills it.
Then you go
into your
deep session
where you
unload, you
know, and you
just unload
everything.
And the sacred
rule here, the
key to this
whole method
working, the
other party
cannot interrupt.
No defensive
feedback, because
once there is
the slightest
defensive feedback
in this situation,
you're right in
that argument
cycle.
You know, you
said this and I
said this and so
on.
You said each
party unloads and
the other one
can't say a thing
until the windup
is, then your
windup is, isn't
it what we're
looking forward to?
Yeah, the windup
is something I'm
looking forward to.
Oddly enough, by
the time you reach
that point, you
say, well, something
I'm looking forward
to, and usually
you feel much
better and you
can really
legitimately look
forward to
something.
And both parties
do this.
And if you do
this, you'll be
absolutely astounded
at how it will
improve your
relationships and
how much you
will actually be
building, helping
to build the
floor of the
partnership society
in a very
practical way.
How do you
figure out who
starts?
Usually you
know.
Who starts
the unloading?
Usually you
know.
Yeah.
Because it's
the person who's
really ready to
go.
Yeah, it's the
one with the
biggest build-up
that should
start.
Thank you,
David, for
sharing that.
Let me just
share one of
them, which
was centering
around how we
met.
Terrence was
talking about
seeing across
the crowded
room that
phenomenon.
And the
interesting thing
that happened to
me was I had
left my first
wife after a
typically
dominator,
unsatisfactory
type relationship
and so on.
And I was
lonely and
wandering in
Los Angeles and
dating women
and thinking,
gosh, there's
got to be some
simpler way of
going through
this process.
Because I'm a
psychologist and
I've had years
with ETS and
involved in test
development and so
on, so I figure
there ought to be
some simple test
I can develop.
So, actually,
you know, I went
through the
standard way of
thinking, you
know, the list
of 300 questions
and then it
sunk in on me.
So, I boiled
it all down.
Is there a
psychologist here?
Well, maybe
there's somebody
out there who
knows about a
guy named
Webb and
unobtrusive
measures.
I thought, ah,
this is something
for Webb's
unobtrusive
measures.
An unobtrusive
measure is
something seemingly
innocuous that
tells you an
awful lot about
the person
without a lot
of questions.
So, I boiled
it all down to,
without going
into the
reasons, I
had two
questions.
One was, or
the ideal
woman, was
did you love
your father?
And if the
answer was
yes...
But say
why, because
you had a
relationship
where they
were discussed
on both
sides, you
know, ambivalent
towards the
mother from
David.
Now, the
reason why
this was a
profoundly
well-grounded
question was,
in my own
case, I
had an
ambivalent
mother, and
so I had
grown up with
a very leery
sense toward
women.
I was
married first
to a woman
who had had
a very awful
father, and
she grew up
very, very
leery of men,
so that when
we had an
argument, we
both depart,
you know.
The message
from below
was, you
made a
mistake
hooking
up with
that
opposite
sex.
And so I
thought to
myself, I,
because that's
my background,
I must find
a woman who
had a good
relationship and
loved her
father.
Then, when
we get in
an argument,
I'll
withdraw, but
she will
follow.
Simple as
that, but
very, very
good.
Anyway, so
that was one
of my
questions, did
you love
your father?
And the
other one, I
collapsed
literally
everything else
in, who
is your
favorite
composer?
And the
answer had
to be
Mozart.
So, I
met Rian, and
we fell in
love almost
immediately, and
then I
thought, I've
got to try
the test.
I thought to
myself, what
if she
failed?
I'm madly
in love with
her, I
can't bear
to give
her up, but
what if she
fails my
test?
And so, I
held off a
week.
And finally,
she happened
to mention,
just spontaneously,
something about
her father, and
I thought, oh,
here it comes,
I've got to
help.
And I
said, tell
me this.
How'd you feel
about your
father?
And she
says, I
love my
father.
And I
thought, boy,
50%.
And then, about
another week went
by, and I
said, and we
were talking about
classical music, and
I thought, oh,
here it goes.
And I thought to
myself, as I
started to ask
the question, I
said, what if she
says Sibelius, who
happened to be my
least favorite
composer?
And I
said, oh, by
the way, who is
your favorite
composer?
And she
said, Mozart,
of course.
If I had
known that I
was the
existent, I
had not a
clue.
Anyway, that's
not only how we
met, but that's
what locked it
on.
It was a choice
of the heart
completely
legitimized by
science.
I just
comment on
monogamy in
terms of the
dominators, the
partnership.
Want me to
start?
I love you
to start.
Well, you
know, I think
that the issue
really relates
to this whole
question of
coercive versus
voluntary bonding.
The dominator
model is
well, think
of the whole
idea, you
know, of
the first
form of
slavery that
we have
archaeologically
documented
was actually
the enslavement
of women
from conquered
communities.
Even in the
Bible, you
know, it
says these
wonderful
directions,
always supposedly
from Yehovah,
kill all the
women who have
known a man,
kill everybody
as a matter of
fact, but only
those real
children who
have not known
a man, you
keep for
yourself, right?
I mean, this
is supposed to
be God's
command to you.
But anyway, so
it was a very
coercive kind
of situation
if you look
at it, you
know, from
that perspective
as women are
seen as
property.
And a lot
of what we've
seen has been
the coercive
bonding.
But I'm also
convinced that
given the
tremendous bonding
that comes from
mutually satisfying
affection through
sexual relationships,
the sharing of
the peak
experience, and
the friendship,
that is
impossible.
I mean, how
can you have
friendship as a
matter of fact
in a Muslim
dominator marriage
where the women
live in complete
apartheid?
I mean, good
morning, you
know, let's
go and, you
know, do it
for a few
minutes, maybe
you'll give
me a son, and
then goodbye.
I mean, that's
not very conducive
to voluntary
bonding, is it?
So I'm very
convinced that
this whole issue
of monogamy or
not monogamy
really can only
be looked at,
you know, in
terms of these
two situations.
That's not to
say that that
kind of positive
reinforcement, you
know, as
Skinner would
say, you
know, of the
sexual bonding, of
the affection, of
the friendship
that would
motivate you to
want to stick
around, you
know, with that
one person, you
know, quite a
lot, that that
would necessarily
be an exclusive
union.
I don't know
that, but I
think that there's
a lot that in a
partnership kind of
relationship would
really bring people
to want to stick
around with each
other because it's
just more fun and
because there are
advantages to a
partnership for
all kinds of
reasons, you know,
bringing up
children, but again,
if we have more
of a clan
situation where
there are, you
know, more
parents for each
child, so to
speak, that
exclusivity no
longer, you
know, becomes the
issue.
I think it's a very
complex issue and
the issue is
becoming a very
real one today with
the AIDS epidemic
and I want to say
something about
AIDS which may
strike you as
being rather
strange, but if
you think about
it, it's very much
a product of
traumatic trauma,
traumatization, a
tearing of tissue
which is really a
dominator form of
sex and the
rapid spread of
it through the
homosexual community
of course was
largely due to
this and the
fact that it's
spreading like
wildfire in
certain parts of
Africa, it has
to be related to
the genital
mutilation and
the scarring and
the weakness of
the tissue, you
know, that that
builds in as well
as some of the
really brutal kind
of sexual practices.
So it's almost like
nature giving us
some feedback here
that what the
sexual revolution is
about is not
brutal, mechanical,
you know, screw
everybody and
everything inside,
that it's about
something, about
maybe beginning to
reclaim sex of
sacrament a little
bit, and friendship
and bonding, and
that's not a moral
position, it's just
simply a way of
looking at it from
a perspective that
may be more
congruent with what
we all kind of
would enjoy.
So that's my
answer, it's not
an absolute
answer.
Well, naturally,
I think like
everyone who's in
a committed
relationship, I've
given this
considerable
thought, and
it seems to me
what the
tension about
monogamy in
modern society
can be traced
to, or the
sense of
perhaps dissatisfaction
with monogamy
can be traced to
the
distortion and betrayal of adolescence and that the problem begins in adolescence by
repressing adolescent sexuality and this then creates a sense of irrecoverable loss and
this weird sort of haunting feeling that you didn't get it right and so life is not
being fair to you and then a multitude of sexual encounters is looked to as an answer to this
so but I think that monogamy represents a deepening of bonding into a kind of lifelong project that
is entirely spiritual not that it doesn't have a physical and an ecstatic and an erotic
side but it all is goes together to create something that should not be expected of
adolescence and should not be preached as the ideal at all stages of life
you like to do do you like to ask questions
a warlike application of people a tribe or whatever if you look at how they socialize their babies you can see that they seem to be very roughly in the United States and I wonder whether you have seen that in the warlike tribe and perhaps perhaps something different in the Australian
sexual representation
You put your finger on a very, very important, essential element of this system, of how the
dominator system maintains itself, regardless of how it really came about, and we talked
a little about that yesterday, and maybe we'll talk about it more today, what happened subsequently
was that the ways of maintaining the system became institutionalized, they became habitual.
And one of the ways of maintaining the system, which may have started with privations, you
know, with trauma, if you will, with the kind of thing that Reich called, you know, the things
that need to character armory, it may have started from natural reasons, you know, environmental
reasons, but then it became part of child-rearing, and it's not accidental that so many of the
most warlike of these tribal societies that we still see today practice very barbaric forms
of genital mutilation.
Because that's a way of traumatically beginning already, very, very early, you know, be it
genital mutilation of women, I don't know how many of you know that millions of women
in Africa and in many of the Muslim nations have their clitorises cut off.
I mean, we don't like to talk about it, and yet I must talk about it, because we must understand
that these are not just quaint ethnic customs, neither was it the quaint ethnic customs, you
know, the foot binding that performed, you know, and really mutilated the foot of Chinese
women.
These are all practices that become institutionalized in a dominator system of society, and we must
recognize them as such.
But, of course, it was also for males.
The original circumcision of males in many of these cultures is really horribly painful.
So, yes, from these very extreme forms to less extreme forms, and the fact that today,
look, a tremendous partnership trend, as Alice Miller, by the way, any of you know the work
of Alice Miller?
She's fabulous.
And she put her finger on it, because what she talks about is the institutionalization of
dominator ways of child-rearing, and birth, well that's another subject, I mean, what we've
done with birth.
But you see, these are all the ways that we've done it very cleverly to maintain the system,
which is killing us, so it's time to leave them behind.
But the thing that happened is that today, look, we no longer say, spare the rod and spoil
the child.
We call it child abuse.
That is a very powerful partnership trend.
Okay.
You were about to go into what a leadership structure would be like in a partnership society.
All right, I find that so fascinating, because again, it's emerging.
And you know where it's emerging most visibly?
You're going to laugh.
It's in the corporate literature.
Pick up Fortune magazine, and you find these big articles saying, what we need is a new
type of leader.
And what do we need specifically?
Well, we don't need this guy anymore, you know, the model of the manager as the cop,
as the controller.
But they're finally discovering that that inhibits creativity, and productivity thereby.
What do we need?
We need a leader that can inspire other people to work together in teams.
I mean, it's very, very interesting.
I mean, obviously this is preparing the kind of leadership that can provide leadership in
a partnership society.
But I really want to say that these two images from the title of my book, The Chalice and
The Blade, to be most visibly and dramatically conceptualized these two very different styles
of leadership.
You know, The Blade is a leadership through fear.
You will enjoy this, or else.
I mean, you better obey, or you'll be punished.
And The Chalice has, from remote antiquity, been the symbol of spiritual leadership, hasn't
it?
Of regeneration, of creativity, of transformation, of illumination, of bringing forth in us, eliciting
in every one of us, our greatest creativity, our greatest potential.
That is the symbol of that kind of leadership.
Can you talk about the Victorian era, how they raised children, and how that kind of
set the world up for World War I and World War II?
Well, you know, that would take another hour, probably, to really go into it.
But there is a fascinating work by a man called Theodore Rojak, who basically put his finger
on what some of these periods of warfare are really about.
And he talks about World War I, and it was really a resurgence of the masculine, close
masculine.
Okay, I really have to say masculinity and femininity, even what we associate in Jungian
terms with the yin and the yang, are very much products of dominator stereotypes.
And as we unravel and re-weave, we have to leave behind this idea that, you know, the
feminine is passive and cold and dark.
I mean, consider it for a moment.
It doesn't sound very good.
And that, you know, the masculine is the active.
As a matter of fact, you know, in many of the earlier symbology, it's quite the opposite.
So we have to untangle the symbols.
But the point of it is that Rojak points out, as have others, that it was a resurgence
of the masculine ethos and contempt for women, contempt for the feminine.
And so the Victorian era, of course, you know, being a predecessor of that, but it's much
more complicated in the Victorian era, because in the Victorian era, some of the rejection
by women of sex was also a rejection of servitude.
Just as women going into convents in the Middle Ages was a rejection of a form of family organization
where they were really male chattel.
You know, they were sexual and economic property.
So it's very complicated.
I won't go into a lot of detail.
Yes.
Yeah.
Last night, a woman brought up about the condition of women as single parents.
And I was thinking in terms of the partnership shift and changing modes, what would you comment
on the tendency of women to give up almost entirely on having a male partner as parent,
and poor parents, at least in America, male parents, that gave up on the idea of continuing
to nurture their children or starting to nurture them once they separate from their mothers?
See, ours is a period, I think, that you'll agree with me, parents of transition.
It's a period that we would call a period of tremendous systems disequilibrium.
And we know, in terms of our own personal histories, that for patterns that have been very, very rigid
to change, we have to go through a very painful time, very often, as the old patterns begin
to disintegrate, so that they can reform into something new.
And I see a lot of what's happening with the family as fitting into that.
There are both trends towards partnerships and still trends towards, you know, a dominator
society.
I mean, you know, it's a constant tension between the two right now.
But getting specifically to the issue of the single mother, I don't think that it's accidental
that so many of the young men who have come out in this newer generation, who are rejecting
the old male stereotype to varying degrees, came out of single mother homes, single family
homes, single parent homes, because they did not have that, you know, if you cry, your
father's going to beat you kind of thing.
That's just one part of it, you see.
But the real problem, you know, where are the good men?
I mean, that's really one of the issues.
Well, the good men are in every man.
But they have a tremendous struggle coming out at this time.
And, of course, the 80s were a tremendously important period of hammering back in again
the ideal of masculinity as the dominator.
So it was a setback in very, very real ways, not just legal, but on the mythopoetic.
And we live by stories.
Those stories really set us back.
So I think what I'm saying to you is that this is part of the dislocation that we're seeing.
I think that there will be some kind of regrouping as we move with very, very, there will continue
to be family, but it won't be the procreation-oriented, male-headed, so-called patriarchal family.
We're going to be seeing much more partnership families.
And these units will not only be units of women and men.
It will be also of men and men and women and women, of old people.
In other words, family will be redefined more in terms of the clan, of the extended family,
but, again, not the patriarchal clan.
That's as long as we do our work and we make it move in this direction,
because obviously the choice is up to us.
It's not going to happen by chance.
Sharon, do you want to say something on this?
Because I think you're right that the clan motif is what is gaining ground.
I think the nuclear family was such a theater of violence for the male ego to exercise itself.
Every man a king.
This is the banner under which the nuclear family flies.
And certainly the people in the Amazon that I'm most familiar with,
there are extreme dominator societies in the Amazon,
and then there are societies that seem to have a more equitable arrangement.
And it always seems to involve a larger social grouping than the family.
As early as the 1950s, Marshall McLuhan was talking about what he called electronic tribalism.
And this, I think, is coming to be.
The nuclear family, as it is glorified in the 20th century,
is largely an economic unit created out of 17th and 18th century forces.
So it is not written adamantine.
It is not in the genes.
It's a very temporary arrangement.
While the other, the clan arrangement, does have a morphogenetic field of millennia.
And so I agree with that entirely.
You have many more.
Yes.
I was curious, when you were talking about the invasion,
why was it that they didn't look at the partnership model and say,
well that looks better than what we have, let's integrate.
And so I have a feeling there is something very insidious in the dominant model
that makes it blind to the benefit of change.
I think you have answered your own question.
Yes.
Can I say something about that?
Yes, please.
I recently have asked this very same question,
and I have an idea which I will try out on you,
which is I think that the trigger event in this scenario that you are asking about
was the domestication of horses.
And that that happening at that time,
which it's known that it did happen at that time,
changed the relationship of these peripheral nomadic peoples.
And they suddenly saw opportunity, easy pickings.
And so they mounted horses.
It was an extension of the hunting psychology and began to be predatory upon these societies.
Before the domestication of the horse,
it was unthinkable because populations could not be rapidly transported and attacked
and successfully overwhelm sedentary populations.
We're going to talk more about technology,
but that's just one of the early instances where it was definitely technology
that tilted events in favor of the dominator as against the partnership society.
I think that's a very important element,
and I'd like to expand it further to suggest that if we talk technology,
we think of the first technology really after foraging is gathering and hunting.
Because animals forage.
But gatherers and hunters do store.
You know, they have containers and they share,
which is very, very human, of course.
But then you get this bifurcation, don't you,
of people who become primarily agrarian,
although they do domesticate some animals,
and others who become in the more arid, you know, less hospitable areas.
But still sustainable to a certain extent.
They become pastoralists.
And it's occurred to me that there may be something about
the dependence on meat in a pastoral society
where you raise little animals that you kind of like, you know,
because they're so cute and loving,
but you know that you're going to kill them,
that that's the whole purpose of the whole, you know, exercise here,
that that in itself may be part of the process.
And there's so many parts of this process of the character armoring,
of the deadening of empathy.
But I would suggest that maybe in that technology itself there are,
and I'm one, as we discussed yesterday,
I don't see one cause.
I'm not a biological determinist or an environmental determinist
or at least that determinist.
I see a multiplicity of factors.
Because complex systems, you always have a multiplicity of factors.
But I would suggest that that's another factor.
But it doesn't seem like you're very close to those force invaders.
I don't know how they got that.
Well, those are later...
I mean, the...
See, most of the societies about which we have written history are...
In fact, all of the societies about which we have written history,
I could almost say, are already infected by what I think of as the dominator virus,
which is spread by war.
I mean, war really spreads it.
It's like a virus that spreads the dominated system.
And so that, again, is a...
You are the woman who asks all these marvelously three-hour questions.
I love it.
That's a very complex thing.
But I do have to tell you that, for example, in Finnish folklore,
and I happen to know this because I've traveled to Finland several times,
and have...
In fact, my book, The Chalice of the Blade, has been acquired for publication.
It will be published in Finnish.
Well, it's been acquired for publication in Germany, France, Italy, Finland,
and also Brazil by now.
It's been marvelous.
It's been really extraordinary.
But the thing about Finland is that there's earlier folklore there,
indicating very definitely an earlier partnership tradition,
with overlays, then, of the other things.
So it's very complex.
Yes?
When you talk about history and prehistory,
I always think of history as being the period where you have written records.
That's right.
Written history.
And when you link history, therefore, with the dominator theory,
is there some, or the dominator model,
is there some link, do you feel, between the process of writing and the dominator?
No.
Is that merely coincidental, or...?
Well, let me answer that question by giving you some information.
The evidence now is, again, a UCLA archaeologist, Gimbutas, Maria Gimbutas, has...
Well, she has discovered it.
Some of these were Vinka tablets, which were thought to be classical Greek colonies,
and some obscure, you know, scripts.
She has discovered that there is a language, a written, a written language, a symbology,
if you will, of writing, that ambidates Sumerian.
You know, supposedly it started in Sumer about 3,200 years ago.
I could never understand that, because, you know, it was found in a temple,
which was still a temple dedicated to the goddess and the priestesses.
But presumably, the priestesses did the writing to keep mercantile records.
And I could never understand why we, as a species, would do our first writing,
just to figure out how many pots of something we own.
It didn't make sense, you know?
And, of course, what this earlier writing was, was a mythical, poetic, symbolic,
sacred language, which she is trying to decipher.
But the most important example of a historical society,
which still maintains its orientation primarily to the partnership model,
is Minoan Crete.
And, British archaeologist, excuse me, Greek archaeologist,
Nicholas Flayton, who excavated Minoan civilization
on the island of Crete and Santorini and surrounding areas,
very, very extensively for over 50 years,
they're suggesting that the legend of Atlantis,
the legend of this ancient civilization that was far more advanced,
that sank into the sea.
Then, again, it's based on a garbled folk memory of this earlier civilization,
which, if we have time, I can tell you a little about
because it's so extraordinary.
Because, you see, there were, in that time, at the end of Minoan civilization,
which by then had already, was, by then shifted into Mycenaean,
which is the, you know, the hybrid society, which was the huge invaders
and the earlier ones, there were tremendous cataclysmic events,
tremendous volcanic eruptions, earthquakes, enormous tidal waves,
and literally, like in this little island.
What's left of it is little.
Santorini, because about two-thirds of the island,
was literally swallowed by the sea.
And the first one to suggest this theory was Pyrrhodon Marinathos,
who was the head of the Greek archaeological service.
So it's tremendous detective work that we're doing.
And, of course, that's what archaeology is about.
It's really, I think of it as a space journey into our past,
but also into our future, because of the implications.
You know, like, it's like time travel into our past,
but really the importance is for our future.
Yes?
Can you speak about how the choosing of homosexuality for men,
given the history in many different societies,
where the initiation rites were so painful,
that men would choose to be another man's second wife
or would not go through into being initiated into a man
because of the dominator society?
Can you speak?
Can you repeat the question?
Homosexuality.
Why don't you say it to yourself more loudly,
because I don't want to clarify.
I'm just curious about the choices that men have made
into homosexuality because of dominator societies,
and then not being able to express themselves in a feminine way,
having a relationship with the goddess, perhaps.
And also in history, how different tribal societies,
the initiation rites were so painful that oftentimes,
like in Native American societies and in Africa,
in different places, they would choose to be a man's second wife
rather than be initiated into the domineering, controlling,
all-powerful male in the society.
And I just wonder how that relates to homosexuality in society today
and to AIDS.
Well, that's a four-hour question.
But I'm going to try to answer at least part of it.
I think clearly, just as we have completely distorted heterosexual sexuality
into either calling it simple and, you know, something that you only do for one reason, folks,
and that's to impregnate a woman, right?
I mean, not for pleasure, not for bonding, you know,
how that, you know, puts a barrier to communication.
Because, of course, lack of communication is the sine qua non.
It's the stuff of which dominator society is made.
So all of the institutions are designed to prevent it or to equate what we've done.
We see it so much in the modern pornography industry, which is, again, a resurgence, really, of dominator models,
the erotization of dominance, right?
I mean, so heterosexuality has been completely distorted by the dominator model,
and we're trying to reclaim it.
Homosexuality, equally so.
And the example, and you have really, you know, by giving the examples that you did,
have pointed out some of the ways in which people, men, have been pushed into it in some tribes.
But, of course, as Genet, you know, the French writer pointed out,
the classical, if you will, the traditional homosexual relationship is a parody.
It's a caricature, an exaggerated caricature of the male-female dominance subservient,
the sadomasochistic relationship that is supposed to characterize, you know, the male-female relationship.
And what I want to suggest to you is that the misogyny, you know, that is part of the culture,
and it's not only part of the homosexual community, it's, you know, part of the whole dominator system.
All of these things interweave in a complex way to make us do, to make us confuse sex,
which is an act of giving pleasure and taking pleasure, with an act of giving pain and receiving pain.
I mean, it's an amazing thing.
And the thing I want to end with is the Greeks.
Now, you know, classical Greeks was a hybrid society.
There's a chapter in The Chalice and the Blade on the Greeks.
And I've had some very, very interesting feedback from classical scholars, who have said,
wow, you know, I mean, that really, the archaeological data, bringing it together this way,
really explains a lot of what was happening there.
But consider homosexuality in Greece.
Of course, this so-called cradle of democracy, where women lost their votes.
You know, I have to tell you this, I have to digress.
I just haven't.
St. Augustine tells a story which is a wonderful clue.
He says that the way that Athens got its name was that there was this contest
where they were going to either name it after the, you know, Pluto, the god of the underground,
you know, the war god of the underground, or Athena.
Athena, of course, is a direct descendant of the goddess, except she now has become
this insane combination of the goddess of wisdom and war,
which, you know, only the dominated system can do that, but that's okay.
And apparently the women, and there was one more woman, they voted for Athena.
So, in punishment, now listen, in punishment, St. Augustine relates that women lost the right to vote.
And we're told that Athens is the cradle of democracy.
And, of course, that's very interesting, because half the population in Athens were women, right?
And they were literally under house arrest.
I mean, the apartheid was so great, you know, they were segregated into the women's quarters.
And 90% of both men and women were slaves.
So we have this, you know, very free society, right?
Which is sort of a joke, but it's a hybrid society between some of the earlier, you know,
the Noan, very definitely.
I mean, as Clayton points out, you know, the Noan tradition flourished still, you know,
in the beautiful art, and in many of the...
We don't have time for the whole thing.
But the thing that I wanted to tell you was about homosexuality, which is so fascinating.
The accepted norm for homosexuality, and the only way it was tolerated,
was if it was between an older man...
The older man...
There's no...
Yes.
I mean, Terrence mentioned this idea of a northern people mounting on horses
and coming back and dominating the cradle cultures.
Could you talk about the fact that these people were essentially the sons of those that had been exiled
from those cultures in the first place?
Because no one leads the cradle cultures voluntarily.
Somehow they didn't conform, or there was something in their psychology
that they couldn't cooperate, and they were sent away.
And they went into northern areas, they had a hardened, they had a...
So their survival qualities were much more difficult, and that created a different psychology.
And then when they found the vehicle, they came back and essentially destroyed the culture
that had, at some point earlier, rejected them and thrown them out.
And that's always like the return of the prodigal only this kind of a difference.
Well, you know, that's a very interesting theory that you propose.
Unfortunately, I don't have any data.
See, it's very difficult.
I mean, we can hypothesize on what happened and how it happened.
But the hard data just isn't there yet.
The hard data that we have is what happened when they came in.
That we are beginning to acquire.
And I think with time we'll also get more and more clues.
But I think you have been feeling some very interesting theories there.
Yes?
You speak for a second about how to discriminate between group partnering
and partnering that is fostered by the dominant society to gain economic profit.
And I can go back to the...
Again, the Canadian countries worked in work pods years ago.
And I think we looked upon it without any sense of being threatened by it.
The Japanese do the same thing.
And now it's a key element of the industrial complex to duplicate them
because we're threatened by them economically.
Well, again, that's a very interesting question, especially the Japanese phenomenon,
which is such a mix of the really very paternalistic and very dominator
and yet a basic partnership understanding.
And I don't even know how to begin to answer that except to say that
we have to be very careful with the terms that we're trying to reclaim.
I mean, I'm trying to reclaim for us the term partnership.
And you're quite right.
We need to make distinctions between the way that it's been used, you know, conventionally.
And also, well, we want to reclaim terms like family and tradition.
Because these traditions are much, much older, okay?
And they lasted for much, much longer.
So, I mean, this is part of our reclamation work.
Now, the second part of what you're saying, which is the issue of economic competition,
the dominator system artificially creates scarcity.
And that's an area that I explore in some of the later chapters of the Chalice and the Blade.
But I think it's something that we really need to understand very, very clearly.
See, all of these things are tremendous opportunities for work.
Tremendous amount of research.
Once we see that there is what the dynamics are of the dominator system,
then we can begin to also create the alternatives and to come out of it.
So, I would have to leave it, you know, in these very general terms.
Yes, David?
Oh, thank you.
This, this, by the way, I did introduce David.
And that's David.
I just want to talk quickly to your point.
Because I'm both a social psychologist and I'm a refugee from the business world.
No!
And, from the viewpoint of the social psychology to work by a, one of the great geniuses of
this
the consensus, and he found the power of that work. Now that went into a lot of literature
that went to the corporate world, and there were a lot of training groups, and a lot of
consultants made their living for many years going into the corporate world. They were
hired by the hierarchy to go in there and, in a sense, build the illusion in the corporate
world that it would all be, you know, boy, you've got a say in this, you've got a boy
here.
But unfortunately, everybody knew, including the consultants themselves, that it was a sham because when you really got down to the core of it, it was still Mr. Bigg falling the shot and you got fired and fired and no 60-day notice for a plant closing, it just walked.
And overnight, the whole partnership thing could be thrown out. The interesting thing that's happening, you mentioned Japanese, the interesting thing that's happening now is because the Japanese have this system that on one point has a lot of hierarchy, but also there's a lot of this teamwork stuff in a general.
Because that system is now present economically so deeply, at last the corporate world is being forced to be honest and the consultants now can go out there and sell what amounts to the partnership way of thinking in the corporate world with some hope that it may catch on simply because the people up there and the people that invest in all these industries are really scared.
They can see. They can see. They're going down the drain unless they become true. Unless they really make this partnership thing work. That's why it's very, very exciting in the business.
Well, I'll go.
I can see.
To respond just a little further for the sound and to respond to your initial question.
Can you stand up?
To respond to your initial question, I think there might be just a slight, well, not a danger maybe, but a problem in where there would be a difference between the true partnership type of society
society which goes on and is economically sound for itself and doesn't seek to exploit
another party, you know, a bunch of people for that type of economic gain.
And now it might be just a little insidious if a typically male-dominant society, the
domineering society, can bring women into its domination philosophy and incorporate what
used to be a very powerful and good partnership type of society into a domineering society
and just use those, the aspect of the partnership to exploit other people in the same way that
the male-dominant society has done for so long.
It would be not fortunate if that were to happen.
But you've brought up the whole problem of co-option and that's really the danger and
that's why the clarity is so very, very important for us at this time so that we can understand
that it's not enough to give it lip service.
We have to live it.
And you know, it's not easy because every one of us, I mean, people say to me, are you a
liberated woman?
And I, you know, I mean, nobody in my generation that I can think of could even remotely make
such a claim.
We are carrying a tremendous amount of dominator stuff in us and so that, you know, our main
task is, well, it's not our main task.
We have to do everything.
People say, what do we have to do?
The answer is everything.
We certainly have to work on ourselves a great deal in order to do that.
Yes.
Some folks that I see is in schools you see a lot of teachers actually starting to go over
to trying to teach cooperation and trying to preserve and honor children's self-esteem.
And I think that's what's going to be a good thing.
Because that wasn't the model with humiliation and authority in schools and that quickly changes
them.
Now, and I think that's a very important element because the dominator system thrives on this
idea that I'm just groveling.
It's no accident that most of the world religions which are dominator, you know, they have tremendous
partnership elements in them, but they also have this tremendous overlay of dominator stuff
that you literally grovel before the deity.
I mean, I'm this poor worm and, you know, forgive me my sins.
And that's really where I think that the shamanistic experience is such an important element to sort of
really reconnect with our innate worth.
Yes, it's a dignified religion.
But it's interesting what you were saying about our being formed by our past.
We need to recall and define ourselves, I think all of us, as the adult children of male chauvinists,
and perhaps create support groups, and disentangle ourselves.
We need to disentangle ourselves.
Oh my god.
But see, the thing is that we're all trying to disentangle ourselves.
I'm just looking at Sid Kelsheim, who's sitting in the audience, and who sent me a wonderful
manuscript trying to understand, from a different perspective, some of the things that we've been
of the things that we've been talking about when we look at our past and i think this is the real
empowering aspect of of of of this new knowledge this very old knowledge really of our past is
that we can then look at the full history and that's a very important empowering element in us
to to validate those impulses in us is not being radical or new or any of the stuff that we're being
told but it's being very very deeply rooted i think that there are two people way in the
back yes oh robin can you stand robin because it's almost impossible to hear unless you stand
is there any way that we are going to get beyond the dualism in this between the dominator and
partnership the bad guys and the good guys the repudiation of all our ancestors the last three
thousand years as having taken a disaster of courage to try to get us to our destruction
and that we are the only people who are going to be in three thousand years of history
well that whole issue of not throwing out the baby with the bath water
is how i think about it i guess that's sort of a very
i think that the dualism is only a dualism of possibilities it's an issue of free choice
in the ultimate sense i think that as a species we're very flexible and we have
i would say we have these two basic choices we have many many many other choices and these two basic
choices are very very complex uh so i'm not in the least bit suggesting this is i'm not suggesting
that this is an issue of women against men you know i mean i always stress this in my work
that it isn't it's the question of the kind of organization the kind of vision and the kind of
actualization of the vision the kind of structure that we choose i don't think it's an issue of
pointing the finger robin and saying look at the terrible things that you did to us because it's
the terrible things we did to ourselves and we all know that there is this shadow part of us and i
mean if you want to take it you know to that level uh sure there's always the you know that other
possibility we have a choice of being very cruel we have a choice of being very kind but what we're
discovering is that these are not just personal choices that these are choices that are very very
very much related to our social structure social environment and this whole idea of healing ourselves
uh you know trying to heal yourself in a dominated society is so like going up on a down escalator
so that's what we're talking about it's not a question of finger pointing
and of uh you know of saying this is a you know this is bad in fact the the whole attraction of
partnership is that it offers a positive a positive path or rather many positive paths because it is
a pluralistic i think that's really what i want to stress it's a pluralistic path and you you had a uh
yeah um i'm curious if you know of any evidence that would support the notion that the shamanic or
sacramental use of psychedelic plants is in any way related to um whether or not a civilization of
society becomes you know more towards a partnership and more towards a dominant mode well and that is
one of saran's arguments and i would say this that well let me first clarify something what i just
said is that i see many paths and so i see many paths to shamanism and i see the shamanic experience
in as as not an elite experience i see the shamanic experience as something that every one of us
is capable of and demonstrably so and i see many paths to that spiritual mystical
knowing the real knowing of our oneness with one another and with the world
uh now i think that there's absolutely no question that the plants do provide a very powerful avenue
to that and however my sense about the plants providing a powerful avenue as i told parents
and maybe we can talk about that some more is that it has to be also in the context of a number of
social support systems because our imagination having been so filled with dominator images can through
the hallucinogens also go in some pretty horrific uh you know non-healing paths now to specifically
answer your question there's very serious evidence uh because after reading kirsten's work and he
writes as eloquently well not quite as eloquently because i speak like a magician but you write so
eloquently i i was i i said all right maybe i really start looking at it with new eyes which was
such a gift from you and of course i saw on some of the bulgarian artifacts you know you know in the
balkans some mushrooms absolutely no question you know there are these statuaries of these mushrooms
and uh we know that most of the imagery of the art of lutheria is sacred religious
so there was no question but it was an isolated instance it was just one uh i know that no one
used the poppy to probably know and as you will i think confirm the poppy does not necessarily
come for hallucinatory you have to do a lot of treating of it so one could say that maybe you know
that's an indication that they use plants you know for the shamanic experience and your favorite
example i should really let you talk about this oh you're doing well well i'm also very fascinated by
the uh the uh uh uh the early neolithic uh well actually the africans uh those are your emotive
arguments arguments yeah i think well please talk about it because you can talk about the formal
quotient even i can yes well i will talk in detail about this um i'll maybe just say a little bit now
it ties back i enjoyed your exegesis of genesis this morning but the one symbol that you didn't dwell on
or mention was the fact that the issue was an issue about plant use
that uh eve was tossed out of the garden because she ate of the fruit of the tree of life and involved
adam in that the serpent was the minion as you said of the goddess and the serpent said if you eat of this
plant you will become equal to yawa and yawa apparently agreed with this assessment that the plant was a true rival
that the union of the plant and the woman was a worthy rival to his suzerainty in this situation
and the expulsion into history was essentially removal from access to the fruit of the tree of knowledge
and it's very interesting and ties in with what we said last night about monotheism that monotheism
gives permission for this image of the ego which is uh powerful not to be questioned paternalistically
domineering etc um even and perhaps unconsciously in ryan's choice of symbols the chalice
is the symbol of partnership and transformation and unity but it is quite simply a utensil for holding
something which you drink a sacrament it the chalice without the sacrament is simply a vessel so i will talk
probably tomorrow a lot about this and of the scenario of human uh the emergence of human self-reflection in
africa and how it relates to mushrooms and the partnership society and the goddess
is my argument and i'll just say this here against the absence of overwhelmingly convincing physical evidence
is first of all that the truly central mystery of a religion is never portrayed or spoken of it always
is only symbolically indicated and to my mind the coincidence in the ancient middle east of goddesses
with cattle they're always mixed up together well the third and secret term in that trinity is the mushroom
the goddess and the cattle are linked uh in association with the mushroom which is never mentioned
so uh we'll talk more about that but at for instance millard site uh you pronounce it so well yes
actually it's spelled c-a-t-a-l but it's called chateau
chateau the overwhelming motif is of cattle lovingly and beautifully portrayed 16 000 years earlier at altamira
the motif is cattle lovingly and beautifully portrayed in the tasseli frescoes in the central sahara it's
cattle and i think the the cow is the fusion symbol both for the goddess and the mushroom because it is the caring attitude the gentleness the the
giving of milk and of nurturing and all of this that makes the cow and the cow goddess
uh the major symbol carrying this thing uh in the neolithic i write in saying that you're a magician
with words because you do present a very very uh potent argument i would uh still say that i believe
that while i have no doubt that the use of plants so much was lost of the knowledge of plants we were
yesterday talking about how some of the last vestiges of that in the west uh were burnt with the witches
the so-called witches the wise women who were burnt at the stake not at the well the church of course was
going into the medicine business but it was much more complicated than that they were actually healing
people with these old methods and so much of this lore has been lost i have no question that plants that
our evolution and the intimate symbiotic relationship with the plant world uh are is fascinating and yet to
the really recounted story and you are one of the main killers of that story but i would still say
that there are many paths in my estimation through the shamanic experience to the gnosis to the knowledge
and that the ancients used many of these paths that it was not exclusive to the use of the the plant
and i would also really want to stress this point that it is tremendously important i think for us to
understand that when the ancients use the plant and specifically the hallucinatory
revealing you know the plant not as addictive that was one of the questions the plant you know the
the present as the addictive use and the revealing use when they used it for not to escape because
see so much of the dominated system requires escape through addiction so it's tremendous because
it's such a miserable reality who wants to live in it so you know you escape through addiction to alcohol
or to mechanical sex or to bulimia or to anorexia or to opium you know the opiate of the people
or to religion etc so it's very dangerous at this point i think to really not understand that it has
to be very carefully embedded in ritual that is geared to partnership and that that is the key
and i would hope that perhaps you can explore that in in to some measure because i'm convinced that when
the ancients used these incredible plants you know that that certainly we put them into another universe
another reality which was much more real than you know than the experiential one and that they really
sort of uh had very highly developed telepathic and other abilities because they found all these sites
you know that are sacred and so on but we now know have some power too but this was deeply deeply embedded
in in ritual very carefully very deliberately and that if we are to use the plant again
then it has to be done by again very carefully very deliberately and most important very lovingly
yes i think psychoactive drugs exist along a spectrum of effects and to talk deeply about drugs we're going
to have to share everything that we've been educated in the matter which is a kind of blurring of
distinction in order to empower a general condemnation as sociologists or as people looking at how these things affect
culture what you want to pay attention to is the operational effect and the spectrum runs from total addiction
to a total dissolving of all uh behavioral patterns and some compounds reinforce a narrowing of the focus of consciousness
unexamined machine-like activity related to the acquisition of the drug and then at the other end of the spectrum
there are compounds and plants which dissolve uh machine-like unexamined activity dissolve behavior patterns
and which um expand the focus of consciousness tremendously and the truth that is hard to hear
is that human beings have never existed independently of the effects of one group or the other in other words
the myth the idea of a drug-free society is an utter fiction and always has been because we are symbiotic
creatures with the vegetable kingdom or queendom and this symbiotic relationship is most apparent to us as self-reflecting entities
in the subtler effects of what we might very broadly call foods so that when you look back through history
you're looking at opium sugar coffee tobacco hallucinogens and these are all pushing and pulling us along the spectrum
of addiction and constricted consciousness versus dissolving of social programming and reconnection to the larger
natural surrounds and so there are uh dominator drugs and dominator use patterns and there are partnership
drugs and partnership use patterns that reinforce open-endedness and creativity and this sort of thing
but what is not available as an option is the notion of the drug-free society because foods themselves
impinge on the neurological functioning and the level of neurotransmitters and the degree of alertness
and attention and this sort of thing i found myself a couple of weeks ago saying uh a person who does not
take drugs is like a computer that does not use software it doesn't do anything and so then
the question is not a kind of moralistic pontification against drugs but an intelligent awareness of choices and
options based on historical experience well that's all i really want to say about that but that it's
important to make that point because we are going to have to increase the sophistication of our own
understanding of the drug oops problem because part of the articulation and implementation of the partnership
society is going to revolve around this issue of re uh reconnecting with these shamanic tools and re-realizing
how to what a truly uh intense degree we are a symbiotic creature if we are if we do not maintain our
our connections to the vegetable world to that source of gnosis then we wander in alienation and existential
self-doubt i that's why there is as you doubtless picked up this difference between rian and i on this
point she is more in this case the sociologist and i am more uh the biological determinist because i really
think the embedding in nature is far more real and strong and intense than we know because we are of
course the apex of a long a long process of alienation you're talking to me and you're saying and you're
saying that it sounds like i'm saying this is the mechanism by which it happened and therefore um i'm
closing out uh other options and well i am a frank propagandist for this point of view um nobody was
saying it till i was saying it i think it's fine if one person says it uh i'm interested in seeing it
demolished the way to a truth you don't have to be uh you don't have to fear to test truth if it's true
it can withstand any sort of onslaught uh softened yes softened and penetrated by another medium
yeah i love that metaphor i would like to suggest that maybe this afternoon uh when we talk about
technology we can speak of slaps as technologies in uh and and how their use really differs
definitely through the template of the partnership and the dominated society because i think that really
to a very large extent that's we have to address that issue to to really emulsify
where you were starting to get into the dominator drugs versus the partnership drugs
as you're going to get very excited am i right in assuming that at some point this afternoon and
tomorrow you are going to say okay here it is i'm blocking it out and listing one versus another i
think this is an extremely valuable contribution because in my own experience with the whole
application of the dominator partnership model see if you take every area politics economics
child raising and so on you apply this model and all of a sudden by being able to push them to
to that camp or that camp you gain a tremendous clarity and i think that this has moved forward
the whole controversy about the drug scene right here yes when are you going to do that
well if not this afternoon certainly tomorrow but it's on my agenda for sure
i'm interested in what both of you are saying and i'm thinking as i'm sitting here and i really don't
know how to word it that i'm sure there must be and is ancient knowledge about um not eliminating
i'm not limiting the drug possibility but or getting caught up in the dogma of any kind but that
the ability for people to be inducted by those people who carry the vibration in their central nervous
system for instance in perhaps ancient rituals ancient groups where as they hung out as perhaps a group
not necessarily the guru dominating idea but that you could be you know a person that sells shoes but
who carries the vibration which is an induction into the energy field um which would do exactly the same
thing as uh affect idyllic experience and that it is possible um for hanging out with people
in ancient times where they i always think of the serpent in terms of the
the final central nervous system which of course the egyptian fed is coming this way which um and the
master on the feminine marriage which is the partnership so you know i'd be interested in anything
you had to say about that also in a balance with the central shamanism well i think shamanism is the
institution that you're indicating i mean it is we forget
in the modern presentation of shamanism that the really central motif of it is curing which is transferring
energy from one person to another and leading people to higher states of adaptive activity.
It is the exploring of the invisible world which is stressed in psychedelic shamanism
is not simply an academic concern of the shamans.
They are doing this in order to acquire power and the purpose for acquiring the power is
to heal.
That is the end result of the whole thing.
And I think as this archaic revival moves along and as the partnership notion becomes
better understood, the shamanic model as a characterological map for each of us will make more
and more sense because it is an empowering of direct and immediate experience which is
what the dominator thing sucks away from us.
We are turned into citizens who are kind of sociological placeholders who receive their
orders from the organs of media that pass it on from the establishment.
The dominator thing to function must undercut the notion of the uniqueness and the freedom
of the individual.
And shamanizing works in the here and now to empower felt experience.
And so that causes me to think that those sensitivities, those ratios of feeling are what are going to
be engendered in the new people who will live in and perpetuate the post-historical partnership
society.
You know, in my experience of shamanism, there is such a range, an extraordinary range of how
shamanism manifests itself.
And I think one of the best examples is the contrast that Michael Harner drew between the
Hivaro culture or the Shuar culture and the Amawaka, who used the same major psychedelic,
banisteria as his copy, but where the social behaviors of these two groups who live in a relatively
proximate situation is highly contrasted, the Amawaka being much more partnership oriented
and the Hivaro or the Shuar being much more dominator oriented.
And I think that's just one of many, many examples, the Yanamamo are another good example, where
the use of maybe 15, 20, 30, 40, 50 different kinds of cultivated hallucinogens doesn't seem
to abrogate behaviors which are quite dominator based.
So, you know, my question is, it's like drawing an idealistic Musovian picture of the Neolithic.
And it's my usual, and I have some experience in shamanism, personal and direct, in terms
of my, you know, past 20 years in the area, to just say that it's really, I think, as dangerous
to characterize the Neolithic idealistically as it is to characterize the range of behaviors
found in the shamanic cultures idealistically, but rather to look realistically and discerningly
at these particular, at the trends that arise within these great range of cultures that we're
talking about here, and then from the dark mirrors or from these problems that we perceive,
the moral and ethical problems about interrelatedness or the lack thereof, that do occur, for example,
in some shamanic cultures, that we need to, you know, be discerning.
Yes.
Well, when you do field work, the first thing you discover is that all academic categories
are artificial.
What dealing with shamans is about is dealing with individuals, and some of you may know
that you know, F. Bruce Lamb's book, The Rio Tigre and Beyond, where a essentially urban
mestizo shaman involved in rosewood gathering expeditions in extremely remote areas of the
Amazon comes upon extremely unassimilated, uncontacted people and takes ayahuasca with them and discovers
that they don't know what they're doing, they don't know how to make it right, and he makes
it for them and says, you don't do it that way, you do it this way, and it knocks their
socks off.
So this is a case where, that illustrates your point, that if you are romantic about these
things, if you have synthetic notions of what constitutes cultural purity and that sort
of thing, you're going to get into trouble.
Shamanism from the inside is very much an attitude like the very best attitudes that you meet
in scientific research.
It is a desire to know, to find out, to explore, and dogma is sort of the shockwave which trails
along behind it.
But dogma serves a function of social ordering.
When you get in with these guys and women who are doing this stuff, there are no social
rules, because they are extra-environmentals.
That's what shamanism, another possible definition of shamanism, it's the condition of being extra-environmentally
related to your own culture, so that you can set the paradigmatic agenda.
Everyone else is inside the context of the language, but you are creating the context.
And so you have a very, very different relationship.
So yes, I would agree.
Yeah, I mean, I would say what you're talking about, you know, as you characterized it,
is something that Jose once called neo-shamanism.
That is, that we look at a range of cultural and psychological and social behaviors that
are deemed shamanism, and then we extract from that range a type, a type which actually
becomes an archetype or an ideal type to which individuals like us can relate.
But, you know, my problem with that is that once you enter the domain of shamanism, it's
rather like Christ's 40 Days in the Desert when the devil came along or when Mara came along
to Buddha.
There is a point in the journey which is definitely characterized by the experience of temptation
and the possibility of things going awry, so to speak, of things going in ways that are
anti-social and anti-environmental against the grain of compassion or against the grain of
correct relationship with environment is there.
Well, there's no knowledge without risk-taking.
And this is what the New Age doesn't want to hear, that, you know, the belief is current
that it can be packaged or it can be gotten from a guru or something like that.
The fact is, you know, it really comes, I think, in a dimension where there is real risk
and real fear, and that's a tough mountain to climb.
If you've climbed it a hundred times, you still won't want to climb it the hundred and first time.
And I think shamanism throughout history and prehistory and worldwide has always suffered from this.
It's very rare that you meet someone who would prefer to shamanize rather than to talk about it, you know?
And it's the shamanizing that is important, not the talking about it.
I'd like to say something on that.
And it's this that I think that the points that you make are very important, that we can't really talk about the shaman.
Because the image that immediately springs into our minds when we think of the shaman, for example, is male.
Because that's what's been presented to us.
And yet if we look at some of the oldest scenes of what was probably shamanistic dancing in Paleolithic caves,
it is women, some of them pregnant.
And that gives us a clue, which of course is very interesting, of, you know, some of the early perception of the shamanistic experience
as being very much connected with women's mysteries.
The mystery not only of birth, which is an enormous mystery, but also the cyclic, menstrual, lunar cycle.
And that, I think, is really very, very interesting, that when we talk about shaman again,
we sort of disengage ourselves from the stereotypical notion of what is a shaman
and this whole idealization of the shaman, because the hero, I mean, shamanism can also be used
to incite people into a hypnotic trance to go and disembowel other, their neighbors, you know?
And has so been done.
And one could even say that Hitler, in a sense, used some of the shamanic techniques of, you know,
this torchlight, you know, the trappings of...
So it's very, very dangerous, I think, to idealize it.
And again, I am glad that you, again, stressed that we need...
It's very, very important, as I said, that we not idealize these earlier Neolithic cultures
that are now coming to light.
The informative thing about them is not that they were ideal cultures,
because they were not ideal cultures.
The informative thing is that what they seem to tell us is that the early direction
of our cultural evolution in the mainstream seems to have been orienting towards the partnership model more
than towards the dominator model.
And of course, in reality, we're always talking about a matter of degree.
I mean, there is...
I was going to say there's no such thing as a pure dominator of partnership culture.
Some of the examples I gave you come pretty darn close.
But on the other hand, people being human beings, even the most oppressed of beings,
somehow find subtle ways of finding partnership modes,
even within the most horrible dominator structure.
So powerful is that part of us.
But I really want to stress that.
Yes?
As Mr. Terrence, I will confess, I know very little about Mr. Monsley.
I've been busy in other areas.
The more I hear you talk, the more a bell is going off in my mind.
Now, one of my great interests in my particular area of research has been charisma.
The original Max Weber sense.
It happens to be an extremely powerful concept for analyzing all kinds of things.
Creativity, social change, and so on.
The interplay between the charismatic individual bearing the charisma,
and the institutionalization, the bureaucratization of the charisma,
which is an extremely powerful tool in sociology.
Now, my question is...
See, I keep hearing, when you're talking about the shamanic experience and the shaman,
I keep getting the message off.
Ah!
That relates to charisma, the charismatic individual, the visibility.
You were saying something about extra-environmental...
How did you phrase it?
How did you use that thing?
You're able to transcend the web.
You're able to transcend the social web, the environmental web.
Yes, you become an extra-environmental.
Yeah.
And, of course, this is the key, not only to individual creativity,
it's the key to the individual who goes beyond the boundaries, the norms,
any system of society, any system of cognition or of emotion,
can take this to the next step.
And, of course, the point that Rihanna is making is that
that person can also take the next step, which is the wrong one, as Hitler did.
How do you relate, or how do you think the shamanic experience and the shaman
in relation to the idea of charisma and the charismatic?
Do you mean charisma in the generally understood sense of social magnetism,
or do you mean in the more philosophical sense of an empowering from on high
and a descent of spirit into matter?
We should identify what it is and then deal with it after life.
After life?
A healthy drug called food.
Oh, time to eat.
Well, this is rich stuff, and I'm interested to go into it,
and I'm very interested we got to a good place,
because the real question is about this experience,
about how there's something that some people here know what is meant,
and some people don't, and it's very hard to be halfway in between,
because we're talking about something real.
This transcends ideas.
It's an experience accessible in the world,
and it casts the argument Rihanna is making in a whole new light,
and it casts our relationships to each other in a whole new light.
So we will pick up this theme in the afternoon.
What time do we begin?
What time is it?
We conclude at 5.
Oh my God, it's already 1.
Well, 2.
2.
Well, let's start 2.30.
2.30, and then we can run.
We can go to 6.
Okay, well, 2.30 then.
2.30, yeah.
We also need to get to some of the very important questions you raised yesterday,
and we've got quite a lot of questions.
This is KPFK Los Angeles.
We've been listening to the beginning of a seminar at the Ojai Foundation
on Man and Woman at the End of History with Terence McKenna and Rian Eisler.
Rian Eisler, the author of Chalice and the Blade.
The seminar comes in, oops, 5 tapes,
and they're available from the Ojai Foundation.
The 5 tapes are $40 total,
and again, it's Man and Woman at the End of History.
The Ojai Foundation address and phone number is Ojai Foundation,
Box 1620, Ojai, California, 93023.
Ojai Foundation, Box 1620, Ojai, California, 93023.
Five tapes comprising Man and Woman at the End of History, available for $40.
Can you all hear what I'm saying?
Yes.
And how many of you can see what I'm saying?
Before I tell you the story that I came here to tell, I will talk a little bit about the practical side of what we've been discussing in the past couple of days, as it impacts on the life of my partner and myself.
We're going to talk a lot this morning about plants, and it will be about plants as they were used thousands of years ago and in places far distant from here.
But implicit in what I'm saying is very real-world work that we're doing in Hawaii to preserve plants with a history of human and shamanic usage.
Because our focus of interest is the Amazon and shamanism, we've concentrated in that area.
But throughout the world, there are, as you know well, very fragile ecosystems on the brink of disappearing forever.
But even more fragile than these natural ecosystems is the web and legacy of human understanding that has been gathered through the millennia by the native peoples in these areas.
And throughout the warm tropics especially, the impact is very great.
The young men and women are not apprenticing themselves to the elder shamans.
The men go off to work in sawmills, the women become waitresses, they are being sucked into the engine of world capitalism.
And in a single generation, this legacy of plant information that reaches back 20, 50,000 years will in large measure be lost.
We're seeing this in the Amazon, much has already been lost.
So Kat and I and Richard Evans Schultes of Harvard and Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham, Ralph Metzner, Frank Barr,
a number of people have gathered together and formed a non-profit foundation whose showcase project is a 19-acre botanical garden,
a botanical garden in Hawaii that preserves these plants and supports native collectors in Peru and other places,
so that this botanical material can be preserved with no real plan for it other than its preservation.
It is there available to psychotherapists, biochemists, homeopathists,
anyone who has a legitimate angle on these things.
So I want to mention that to you this morning because we always are soliciting support,
not only financial support, but donations of time and equipment.
And if you come to the Hawaiian Islands, you could put us into your loop at times when we are there,
and we would be happy to show you around.
The garden is at about 2,200 feet above sea level with 70 inches of rainfall a year,
which at 19 degrees north, which is what it is,
approximately duplicates what's going on in the montane rainforest of the equator at about 8,500 feet,
which is the so-called cloud forest.
So it's a beautiful place.
It's a highly charged place because magical plants from throughout the world are growing there,
and I mention it to show that we don't entirely live in our heads in these matters.
The big island.
The big island of Hawaii.
The big island is larger than all the other Hawaiian Islands combined,
and it has fewer people than any other island.
It's where, if old Hawaii lingers on at all,
it's probably in the desolate districts of the big island.
Well, so that's enough of that.
Now I want to address the concerns that we've been dealing with over the past two days,
and from my perspective,
we sort of designed this weekend with the notion of showcasing Rian's thoughts,
and I think we've done that very well,
and for those of you who haven't had a chance to hear her,
she very kindly has promised to join me this afternoon.
She didn't originally intend that,
but we have a very fertile kind of dialogue going among all the people who have been here
over the past two days,
and so we will return to that.
To put what I'm going to say this morning in context,
I just want to briefly review the basis of her theory.
It is quite simply that the absence of patriarchy does not imply matriarchy.
The natural and most long-running form of human organization is what Rian has named partnership society.
Partnership societies were the norm up until, pick a number, 4,000 years ago, 3,000 years ago,
in any case, eventually falling with the fall of Minoan Crete to Mycenaean invaders around 1000 BC,
and that set us into the era of dominator cultures, which she believes, and I agree with her,
is a temporary, I won't say aberration, a temporary necessary adaptation,
but one that we can now move beyond.
My, Rian's approach is basically to say what happened,
that there was partnership society,
and then she's very insistent that there was a confluence of factors
which caused the shift from the partnership society to the dominated culture.
I, being cast more in the fanatical mode,
prefer to think that there was one major cause,
and that its adumbrations can be explicated by the methods of archaeology,
good logic, and a little visionary imagining.
And so I want to tell you the story this morning.
Remember, I said yesterday, the best idea will win.
And so we're sort of in a contest in the manner of the great Celtic poetry contest of old,
where the person who can dream up the best idea will have the satisfaction of seeing it realized.
And if you want to do that kind of total revisioning of the position of human beings in the world,
I think you have to take, at first, a deconstructionist approach,
and take away everything that impedes the construction of the new point of view.
So I want to take away a number of notions and just get rid of them.
One notion is that nature is a competition of tooth and claw,
and that the swiftest, the fiercest, the meanest will always come out on top.
This is just a notion that was attractive to a Victorian gentleman
who happened to be in charge of a world-screwing empire at the time.
Any modern biologist will tell you that what is being maximized in biological systems
is cooperation, integration, mutual reinforcement, and mutual meeting of need.
Obviously, if an organism can insinuate itself into the energy loop of another organism,
it will have more of its own energy to play with.
And this is the strategy that is operating, especially on the microbial level,
in the earth, around the roots of plants.
You know, there are mycorrhizal relationships, fungi that surround the roots of plants,
mediate and buffer the liquids passing into the plants,
and in turn have a release of nutrients that supports them.
We see symbiosis in all kinds of situations in nature.
What has never been really even suggested, let alone researched,
is that perhaps the unique qualities that attend our own species
are somehow reinforced and stabilized by our own symbiotic relationship,
that we are also symbiotes of some sort to other organisms in nature.
Now, a symbiotic relationship can be broken apart.
The little fish which live in the protection of the tentacles of anemones,
and thereby draw larger fish in for the anemones to feed upon,
can live in the absence of the anemone.
But when they do, they produce smaller individuals
that experience a shorter lifespan,
and the population is generally more limited.
So, when a creature that has evolved a symbiotic relationship
is through catastrophe or design separated from the other member of the pair,
life goes on.
But there is a sense of burden,
a sense of moving against the flow,
a sense of abandonment.
Well, this sense of abandonment being moved against the flow
is a very good description of the psychological set
we inherit at the beginning of our history.
Because, as we discussed a little bit yesterday,
our history begins with us being tossed out of the garden
by Jehovah as narc,
because the woman had exercised her right
to conscious self-exploration and awareness
by eating of the fruit of the tree of life.
It suggests to me that it was the relationship
with the fruit of the tree of life
that made early human beings somehow co-equal
with the dragon god who was the keeper of the garden.
So that the fall into history
is a mythological way of saying
that we were separated very early
from something very dear to us.
It was rent away from us.
And inevitably the image that must come into all our minds
is the image of a child being separated from its mother.
Well, in the present dialogue within the New Age
we've gotten to the point of sharing the notion
that we have become separated from the mother, our Earth.
But it operates at the level of a kind of poetic notion
or a reassuring abstraction.
I mean, how do we reconnect to our mother, the Earth?
By talking about it?
Is it done through agriculture?
Or is that a violation of the mother?
How is it to be done?
Well, what I'm going to say this morning
is sort of a blend of myth, mania, and science
where we take the best from each category
and try to weave together an argument
that would convince a skeptic?
So those of you who have heard me do this before,
bear with me.
It grows in my mind.
I adumbrate detail.
It has to be made tighter and tighter
and ever more convincing.
Because the goal is
if we can change the myths about our origins,
we can change the expectation about our future.
Because the future, the post-historical future
is somehow going to be a revivifying of the myth of origin.
So if we go into it with the wrong myth,
we may get in trouble.
And I think a patriarchal, egocentric,
Apollonian, Solarian myth
that would send us sort of as insect robots
to the stars in spaceships the size of Manhattan
needs, is unbalanced.
Needs a certain leavening.
Okay, so enough with prologue.
Here is the story.
The story begins...
a long time ago and it really it has no beginning because at its inception it's locked in to
the geological and geophysical mechanics of the planet it begins somewhere in the last four
million years with a slow drying trend across the northern hemisphere of the planet affecting
especially the tropical forests of Africa which at this time are unbroken from north to south and over
the next million and a half years Africa grows progressively drier not desert it was not even
desert as recently as Roman times Pliny describes the Sahara Desert as the breadbasket of Rome but over
a million and a half years Africa grew drier and the great tropical forests were replaced by a lush
grassland environment a grassland environment broken by enormous oases of remnant rainforest and in this
remnant rainforest the arboreal primates that lie far back on our family tree began to respond to
environmental pressure and began to shift from a fruit eating large almost entirely fruit and
insect eating diet to a more omnivorous diet because of the limitation of protein they also began to
experiment with descending from the trees to hunt small rodents and small animals that were inhabiting the
grasslands which were rich with evolving cereals of different sorts now while all of this was going
on ungulate animals animals like bison and cattle and buffalo and wildebeest and ibex and antelope were evolving in
great numbers on the African belt so this drying trend was creating the savannas of the world there never before had
been savannah land on this planet but it was coming into being in the interior of Sumatra across the
African belt and in parts of India and this special ecology of ungulate animals was evolving now the primates
who had been living in the trees already had a highly evolved pack signaling system as you know if you've observed howler
monkeys are monkeys or woolly monkeys in the jungle they they have a language of chirps and squeaks and shouts
that is fairly uh uh dense at least in the in the existential moment meaning they're not talking philosophy
they're tending to business
so uh attending this exploration of the surface this leaving of the trees was a tendency toward
bipedalism which reinforced the already existent tendency to binocular vision that had evolved in
the arboreal environment so you see there's a kind of confluence here of factors bipedalism omnivorousness
binocular vision pack a repertoire of pack signals a social mode of existence already very old
and into this situation comes uh the opportunity to evolve in the grasslands into a larger pack hunting group
that is now including meat in its diet and that is uh competing uh with these animals of the belt
there was a very interesting conference held a couple of years ago in which very straight
paleontologists concluded that the great wave of extinction of the giant mammals that went on about
three million years ago uh was actually a human induced phenomenon and this is why uh the woolly mammoth and
dimetrodon and the giant tree sloth and the giant armadillo and these huge huge the irish shell these huge
animals that used to roam the planet no longer exist the human impact was already happening that far back
rian's bailiwick seems to be sort of from the invention of agriculture to the atomic bomb the area that i'm
interested in is has that embedded in it i'm interested in sort of the time from the last glaciation to the
first starship whatever that may be and um okay to make a long story slightly shorter the critical factor
that enters in when you look at the evolution of human beings is a sudden and unexplained doubling in
brain size about 50 000 years ago before that time the human brain had enlarged itself only about 12
percent in the previous two and a half million years but suddenly 50 000 years ago the brain size
doubled at the same time the neanderthal flowering came to an end and they began to fade
the last neanderthal skeleton that we have is 20 000 years old so over a period of 20 000 years these
two species shared the planet the x factor the thing which changes everything is in my opinion the fact
that these pack hunting baboon-like proto-homanoid primates encountered in the process of trailing
behind these large mammalian herds that had evolved in the grassland they encountered the manure of these
creatures and in this manure were the coprophytic psilocybin containing mushrooms specifically
sterfariocubensis and i have observed the habits of baboons in east africa and it is they they are
creatures of the belt they are omnivorous they scramble around and every time they come to a cow pie
they flip it over because they're looking for grubs and bugs which make up a major part of their diet
and they sniff they're great sniffers and food testers well the mushroom in this kind of environment
is an extremely noticeable uh natural object i've seen sterfariocubensis mushrooms the size of dinner
plates in amazonian pasturage standing on stocks 14 inches high and the thing has you know this pearlescent
phallic lunar solar uh it's everything it's the perfect sacramental plant for a partnership society
it is as strongly phallic and solar as it is lunar and feminine uh it's associated with the moon and yet
it has you know this brilliant golden yellow color and it is yet a thing of the ninth and is taken in 19
to enter into the mysteries of the night mother so um looking for support for this idea and i
mentioned this earlier i discovered that in the 1960s roland fisher at the university of maryland
had given psilocybin to graduate students and then given them standard visual acuity tests
and he had discovered that small amounts of psilocybin actually increase uh scoring on a standard visual
acuity test and he was a very straight viennese guy and but he had this health and quality and he said to
me you see my little friend this is as if i needed convincing this is a case where uh intoxication on
a drug actually gives a truer picture of reality than the absence of the drug and it was true it
was empirically so you see better well you don't have to know a lot about evolutionary theory to know
that if there is a food or in the food chain of a population of animals that can confers increased
visual acuity and this animal is a hunting animal then those individuals of the species that have this
enzyme alkaloid steroid whatever you want to call it in their diet are going to have a selective
adaptive advantage and that their reproductive strategy will triumph and so forth and so on
so this was astonishing to me because this is an argument which is very appealing to the straightest
kind of evolutionary biologists and then i began thinking about the ignored role of foods in evolution
and the fact that we are omnivorous through what appears to be a series of chance events
uh which i just discussed uh which i just discussed this omnivorous habit lays us open to tremendous
numbers of mutagens stimulants depressants uh quasi sterilizing agents uh spermicides ovicides uh neurological
enzymes of all sorts and so really this is a great untapped area for evolutionary biology to
look at is it possible that the unexplained extension of adolescence in humans was somehow in effect
synergized by steroids in the diet what about the fact that women uh have a hidden ovulation unlike
other primates there are a lot of questions about our sexuality and uh lactation menstruation
uh all of these enzyme controlled processes that might be very suggestively made by studying the effect of
steroids alkaloids halicinogens and whatnot in the proto-human uh diet i don't know how many of you know but
the birth control pill is made from dioscorea which is yams thousands of acres of mexican land are in these
steroid-rich dioscorean yams from which um i forget the names of the pills is it ortho know them but
whatever they are it's made well uh yam sweet potatoes are a stable of human populations in the tropics
and yet when you look at them chemically there's a gradient from food to powerful reproduction affecting
drugs and if if primitive populations were not aware of this or perhaps were aware of it
then they wouldn't have been using these effects or being subject to these effects so this is a rich area
leave alone the subject of the hallucinogens i mean you could look at stimulants and neurotoxins and
and all these other things i named but of course my special interest was the hallucinogens because what
i was interested in was the emergence of consciousness and this doubling of brain size how could it have
happened so quickly well the scenario that i'm left with is uh that uh once this visual acuity thing
was being reinforced in these pack-hunting primates the next level of discovery and i suppose all these
discoveries i'm going to talk about were made almost simultaneously was that twice the dose that
increases visual acuity makes sexual activity extremely interesting prolonged variegated and unusual
and it's fairly clear that these primate looking at all the other primate species and their social
activity and carrying on i mean we don't call it monkey business
so so here you have this thing impacting so far in two critical areas number one survival you can see
better to hunt your food and flee your enemy number two it's an aphrodisiac and the stimulant this this
will have an even more intense driving effect on the reproductive strategy of those individuals that
are using it quite simply they have sex more often so naturally they have a their reproductive gene pool
is advanced but neither of these things fascinating though they are is to my mind the major stimulus
that put this thing so center stage in calling us out of the monkey body and toward angelhood because after
all uh it's good for monkeys to see better and monkeys do enjoy sex but the way in which we differ from monkeys
is our free command of mental constructs not present in the immediate environment in other words memory
memory is the key to culture i think you have to have memory as a precondition for language because
if you don't have memory what good is language you have nothing to say memory is the precondition for
writing for all forms of epigenetic coding etc so to my mind what's interesting about these these vision
enhancing sexually stimulating alkaloids in the food chain is their impact on consciousness at yet higher
doses at conscious at uh doses four or five times that which affects visual acuity you are suddenly
conveyed into the realm of for want of a better word we would have to call it the holy or the tremendum or
the mystery or the mysterious and at this point suddenly the historical experience of the last 10 000
years falls away and is practically useless we are no better positioned to understand the thing encountered
on high doses of plant hallucinogens than were the people of the late neolithic it remains utterly overwhelmingly
incomprehensible it remains you know a living breathing mystery experienced in the here and now and so as
gordon wasson and others were quick to point out it becomes the compass for the religious quest and the
understanding of that mystery and abiding in that mystery becomes then the compass of the historical and prehistorical
religious uh quest of human beings and uh in this culture this comes as news i guess because
uh for over two thousand years we have been the victims of a dominator culture that left no stone unturned
in trying to stamp out and suppress direct access to the logos which was what these psychedelic sacraments
that haunt prehistory uh were all about what was happening at elusis what was happening at delphi what was
happening in the pagan mystery religions of the proto-hellenic period was all the technological uh groping
toward and accessing of the mystery eden i believe was this world of the african grasslands of 12 to 25 000
years ago when uh in great pinnacles of wind-cut stone that rose above the desert a partnership society based on
human equilibrium in the gender question pastoralism in terms of a lifestyle and access of the goddess
through her gift of the mushroom that was this warfareless edenic paradisical time and it was it
persisted until fairly recently it persisted until four or five thousand six seven thousand bc then the
desertification of the sahara became really serious and those people those neolithic people moved east
and became the neolithic pre-dynastic civilization in the nile valley and then still further in the
tigris euphrates drainage the the tribal people who by a thousand years preceded the civilizations that we
know so much about sumer and so forth and they carried with them a goddess religion that was i am willing to
uh suggest was uh where the central mystery was the mushroom now the the psychological dominance of the ego
is something that came to be in the wake of these disruptive migrations out of the home range of the
lead to a search for all kinds of substitutes uh probably the invention of asceticism uh
the and the rise of a priestly class the shaman in the absence of uh the sacrament that is truly living
becomes a theologian and a dogmatist and begins to put in place precepts and uh prohibitions and suddenly
nature is no longer friendly and supporting suddenly nature must be dealt with through a system of taboos
and and uh sacrificial uh uh efforts to propitiate this sort of thing this is indicative of alienation
even though we find it at very uh primitive levels of society that we might at first brush be willing to
embrace as expressions of a pure lifestyle but i really don't think so i think that uh uh
the notion of sacrifice which has been written about by freud and zimmer and all kinds of people
already indicates an uncertainty about our relationship to this other that previously
you know we were her children we were entirely embedded in her her rhythms her needs her energy flows
and um the reason why i think all this is important other than being a an academic argument among
primatologists and anthropologists is because of what i've called the archaic revival the fact that
we are trying to grow toward a new model of how to be in the world and if you this is not the first time a
society has been slammed to the wall and if you are a student of history you know that when societies
reach great crises points their reflex is inevitably conservative and to pull back
and the form this pulling back takes when the situation is truly desperate is to look back into the
past for a stabilizing model that worked once before the last time this happened uh in a context that
we're probably all familiar with is when the medieval world began to crack the pieces because of uh
those spices that were being brought in from the east they seem to have a real need to put pepper on
their steaks uh there may have been more than spices in those via in those uh genoan cargo boats but anyway at
the end of the medieval world the christological eschatology began to crack apart the jews were turned
loose to be bankers the italian city-states were turned loose to make money and pounds began to spring up the uh
lost platonic corpus uh was translated into european languages and a whole new world came into being
and the feeling of alienation and uncertainty and anxiety was assuaged by looking back into the past
and saying we need a model and the medieval gothic model won't work we will become like rome at its most
grandulous grandulous we will become like greece at its most clear and philosophically brilliant this is
called classicism it was invented in the 1400s you know uh 2000 years after plato taught suddenly it was
decided in europe that a platonic society would be created and we are the inheritors of that society we
live under roman law and greek aesthetics and so forth and so on because people who were sick of
the medieval world decreed that it should be so and the model worked up until the late 19th century
when the greek analytical method met the instrumentalities of the industrial revolution
and we began to get the new science or the big science the science that was not about a country
gentleman making notebook scratchings on the warblings of birds and the flow of streams but where you
actually say my god we can go for it we can understand we can extract the energy from the stars
we can light the fires of heaven in the deserts of our planet this whole faustian kind of science
where suddenly it isn't about understanding it's about power and about calling this power down upon your
enemy so we are now 80 decade eight decades in to this era of mastery of energy and tremendous faustian power
and we need a new model and i think that the new model is such a huge form emerging onto the historical stage
that's that we shouldn't be deluded that uh it's something which has come about since uh
the early 70s or that it was invented in the 60s it reaches at least back to the late 19th century
i mean people like alfred jarry and renee claire and marcel de champ and these people they were enunciating
long before freud and young the presence of the unconscious as a frontier into which the locomotive
of marxist history looked like it was headed with no return ticket in sight and that's actually what
happened in the dreams of 19th century rationalism the utopian schemes of bellamy and marx and all
these people ran smack into the world of the unconscious the world of the shaman the world of
the psychedelic experience of modern art of sexual liberation of the stream of consciousness novel
cubism futurism space flight all of these things and these are well it's interesting to see for
instance how modernism was invented by picasso uh in some tellings of the story but he couldn't do it
until he had studied all these primitive masks from the coast of west africa and this is what everybody
was who was anybody in paris in 1915 was decorating their apartments with were these images of uh the
primitive so we are i think returning to the archaic mode that's at least what is the shining hope
and what opposes it is the momentum of historical society which is linear and cares to extend
itself centuries into the future male dominated technocratic uh uh object worshiping and superficial
in the most unsuperficial sense of the word i mean we have raised banality to uh an archetype
hana rent wrote a book called the banality of evil well you know i agree with the conclusions of the
book but if if evil is banal what is not you know this is a kind of pulling of energy out of the felt moment
so uh marshall mcleughan saw it tim leary saw it bucky saw it probably everybody and their dogs
saw it coming what is happening is a kind of meltdown of print created values and a kind of release into a new
cultural space but it's a cultural space that is new only to us it is easily recognized as the cultural
space in which shamans of great ability and courage have been operating for the past 50 000 years they
can show us the way we can find our own way by following bare example the big news is that orthogonal
that means at right angles to orthogonal to the entire historical process is enough we are called to
higher things and are passing through a series of bootstrapping self-transitions that are synergized by
the psychedelic plants in our environment and whose end state is anticipated in each of us as a microcosm when we
surrender our egos and submerge ourselves in the great raging mystery of being that is all around us
all the time everywhere oh wait let me try and see somebody i don't i can't remember that you look
okay the question is that i mentioned that there is therapeutic work going on with ayahuasca
um it's very uh much underground and hush hush because the legal status of these things has never
been defined let me make that clear they should be but ayahuasca is neither illegal nor legal there has
never been a case involving it in the united states so it's in a kind of limbo and and we should all be
discreet about it and let these therapists do their uh work eventually of course it will be defined uh
if you're interested in more information about that kind of thing why write me but i will say about it
that there's no preconception here of the psychoanalytical theory what i really respect in these
therapists is that they are doing it as closely to the way that it's done in the amazon as they can
and uh really uh often in the amazon the brew is watered or the dough they pull punches on the dosage
because they don't want crazy gringos running amok and blowing their minds so the the search for ayahuasca
can be uh pursued perhaps now in north america with the even greater hope of success than in south america
but we always have to be reference back to the shamanic forms because that's the only guidance we have
i mean they may not know everything about it but they do have a thousand or more years of tradition
that can be our guide now when you actually deal with these ayahuascaros you discover they're not like
priests they are not dogmatic they're open to experimentation too and you can suggest
things and they know that chemicals lie behind this they're not naive but they also know that the
spirit lies within it they are also not naive in the way that we are naive so it's a tremendously fertile
partnership to deal with these shamans they will share their knowledge and we need not come to them as
as inferiors or uninitiated people what they really respect are peers and this is what everybody really
respects this is why i think that the guru chela relationship is so damaging because in the first
place nobody knows enough to be
a guru, and nobody knows so little that they should define themselves as a follower. It
just doesn't work that way. Back up to him.
Well, my political agenda is much more modest than that. I am just interested in keeping
the dialogue going, meeting with groups of people like this, and knowing, because we
have the support of institutions like Ovi, that we can meet and discuss this. There does
seem to be, apparently, this drug issue is going to be a big deal and lies directly in
front of us. And what we're being asked to decide in this presidential election upcoming
is, do we want to go full steam ahead into total fascism in order to solve the drug problem,
or are we willing to think of, God forbid, legalizing some of these things and ceasing to beat upon
each other because of the issue of drugs? I think that the whole thing which is holding
back legalization is the Judeo-Christian uncomfortableness with the notion that somebody might have
fun in a way that you disapprove of. Because drugs like heroin and cocaine are certainly a
social scourge. But on the other hand, so is Valium and alcohol. And to hold your nose at
one and condone the other is just total cultural schizophrenia. So I think what we need to do,
and this may be coming out of necessity, is entirely disconnect the drug issue from morality. The
notion that people who do certain drugs are bad and people who do or do not do certain other
drugs are good, is infantile and preposterous. What needs to be done, I think, is to, first of all,
legalize all plants. That's very simple. Legalize all plants. Okay, then what are we going to do about
these synthetic, addictive, hard drugs like heroin, cocaine, alcohol, so forth? They should be decriminalized.
And if we're going to sell alcohol in this society, if we're going to peddle Valium, then we should
sell all the rest and tax them very highly. And if there's a price to pay in addiction as we go through
the process of educating people, the taxes from these substances will be used to pay for that education
and those addiction centers. Because the cost in destroyed lives and ruined societies will be far less.
Far less. Coca was no problem in South America for centuries. Now the Coca trade is just screwing up everything.
I cannot go to my favorite areas of the Amazon and botanized because missionaries who grow cocaine have given orders
to their Indian slaves to shoot anybody who comes into those areas. This is a totally culturally corrupting force.
And it is money, not drugs, money that is corrupting it. And the major problem is, as I said a couple of days ago,
the addiction on the part of governments and intelligence agencies to funny money. That's what's going on.
The whole Vietnam war was a front for a junk running scheme, a junk running scheme, which made a huge amount of money for
a lot of creeps, which destroyed the political will of the ghettos to seek social justice in America.
That all just fizzled out. They killed Martin Luther King and everybody else and then flooded the ghetto with junk.
The cocaine thing is a direct replay. You know, Ronald Reagan is tiptoeing around whether or not he should be
friends with Mikhail Gorbachev, when look who he is friends with. The utter scum of the earth.
The most outrageous ragtag band of classic gangsters you've ever seen.
The real sub-human filth. They call them authoritarian regimes and make a distinction between them and communism.
And say, well, these authoritarian regimes, at least they're not communist.
Well, I'm telling you, it's just a scam to addict a whole bunch of people to drugs and then get the money to support wars in isolated and forgotten parts of the world.
So, very noticeable in my own area was for years we couldn't get hashish in the Bay Area.
Or when somebody had it, you know, it was a crumb. And suddenly, about seven years ago, there was all the hashish you wanted.
And people were quoting prices on tons and then megatons.
Well, this doesn't mean some hippies broke through.
This means...
You know what it means. It means that the Mujahideen needed money to support a war of national liberation against the Soviet occupation.
And they had no hard currency. All they had was hash. And so, the hash ships were allowed to unload the megatons of hash.
And the money was turned into weapons. The weapons buyers, the weapons dealers from Israel and South Africa and the United States cashed in and made fortunes.
And perhaps it was a just war in Afghanistan.
I love hash. I'm not knocking that. But I'm pointing out that that was their way of supporting the Mujahideen was to just institute this smuggling thing.
And this has been done again and again. And they make no distinction between a harmless drug like hashish and truly horrible, truly horrible drugs such as heroin.
I mean, heroin is really, I think, a dubious drug. I think I've talked to a pretty, white, squeaky clean kind of middle-class yuppie crowd.
But I've known junkies, lots of junkies. And it would stand your hair on end.
And here's a drug which turns human beings into cockroaches, literally, before your very eyes.
And, you know, you don't need that. It's insectoid, programmed, unexamined, machine-like behavior, raised to a degree that's just horrifying.
So, for us, as a psychedelic community, we're going to have to mind our P's and Q's because the issue isn't about us.
The government isn't trying to get rid of drugs because it doesn't want people jumping out of buildings.
It doesn't want people making mega fortunes that it's not getting any tax revenue out of.
So, psychedelics have never been big money-makers.
Nobody is getting rich off psychedelic drugs that I know of.
I mean, maybe a few people are having modest lives lived in fear that at any moment the man will kick down the front door and drag them away in front of their wife and child.
But nobody is getting rich on psychedelic drugs. That's all going on in another domain.
So, our problem is a more serious problem.
It's that the psychedelics are deconditioning agents.
This is the real, I don't want to use the dominator metaphor,
but the real knife poised at the heart of the establishment is the deconditioning potential of psychedelics.
That's what made the 1960s such a tumultuous thing.
The CIA didn't care that people were selling acid.
They cared that LSD was changing people's minds.
And so, the reason I keep speaking and keep talking and hope that you all will keep thinking and speaking and talking
is because we have to build a community that understands itself, that understands its members, that understands where we stand,
because eventually the psychedelics will have to be dealt with as all these other drug issues will have to be dealt with.
So now, for us, is a period of getting to know each other, recognizing who we are, empowering ourselves,
getting our rap straight, knowing where we stand on these various issues that will be thrown at us,
and then, you know, speaking and being exemplars.
I mean, I wish that the people who are so concerned to ban drugs could see this group of people.
I mean, I think we're quite presentable.
I think we're making a contribution to society, and we are good citizens were it not for this one issue,
which then makes us, of course, a hated outlaw minority.
And I invite each of you to look around you, at the people near you, and realize this is your affinity group.
These are the people who can help you, and these are the people who can really blow it for all the rest of us.
So, partnership for us is no abstraction.
It's, as Ben Franklin said, if we don't hang together, we'll all hang separately.
This is the man in the blue.
Yes.
I would take the substance in silence and go into it a little further from that point on.
When I took acid years and years ago, I had wonderful trips.
And I heard that there were people around me jumping in buildings, trying to fly.
Could you get into the process of how you deal with anything that might be uncomfortable?
I mean, what actually happens?
Yeah, I mean, from your experience.
Well, the model is basically the same for all of these things.
You fast for six hours until you have an empty stomach.
It isn't really even fasting, it's simply emptying your stomach.
And then you take it in silent darkness.
I always smoke cannabis.
If that's not your thing, you should have some other means of slightly steering the situation.
It can be singing.
It can be a meditation.
Whatever it is that you need to have a small oar that you can dip into the psychic water,
if you need to shift the public things a little bit, then I don't do anything the first hour.
I just sit there and worry, basically, about what is about to happen.
I don't know whether it's harder for me, but what I always think about is my public image.
Because I say, you know, okay, you're Mr. Big Shot, you're Mr. Psychedelic, and now it's coming at you.
And you're always telling everybody how they can do it, and how to borate the cabbage, and how it's this and it's that.
But you know that you don't know jack shit.
And you also know that now it's just between you and me and him, and it's coming at me.
And so I think about all of this, and then hopefully I get it squared away.
Usually it just comes down to, well, it's too late.
Too late.
And thank God nobody is here to see whatever is about to happen.
And then I just sit, and it comes in a wave.
It comes in waves.
Sometimes it's gentle.
If it's going to be a moderate trip, the waves will begin, just like incoming surf.
But sometimes you realize, you know, you see it coming at you, and you realize that it's a thousand miles wide,
and ten miles high, and there's nowhere to run.
And it's just like the rolling shockwave of an atomic blast.
And you just lay down, and hope.
And many, many times on these psychedelic trips, I find clarity and courage.
Empowering it in each other, giving permission for it in ourselves, and looking toward a future that is endlessly bright with the possibility of human transformation.
It is in our hands.
That's not a metaphor.
It is literally going to belong to those people who most earnestly and courageously define the limits of what is possible for the human mind and body and community.
So you are that.
And I salute you, and I thank you, and I hope to see you all soon, somewhere else.
Good luck.
This is KPFK Los Angeles.
We have been listening to Terence McKenna, and with him, Rhianne Eisler, the author of The Chalice and the Blade, in a June 1988 seminar at the Ojai Foundation in Ojai.
If you didn't hear the whole thing, which we've just concluded, it's on five cassettes, and you can get the five cassettes for $40 from the Wild Store at the Ojai Foundation.
Again, the seminar is entitled, Man and Woman at the End of History, with Terence McKenna and Rhianne Eisler.
And that's available from the Wild Store, box 1620.
Multicolored, highly polished, contorting, filled with intent, never previously seen, and profoundly other.
And yet, isn't it interesting, this is the commonest of all the hallucinogens in nature.
This is the one that is most like what is happening in the metabolism of the ordinary human brain.
So, to me, DMT is a very interesting and profound kind of thing, because it's like a super convincer.
This is for people who think that people who talk about the power of psychedelics are soft-headed, you know?
You can invite any critic to invest five minutes in informing themselves in the facts of the matter.
I mean, they may have an excuse for why they can't spend nine hours with you, but five minutes?
How does the effect of DMT differ from the effect of 5-MeO DMT?
Well, whenever you ask someone a question like this, what you're going to hear is a subjective answer.
The question was, how does 5-MeO, 5-methoxy DMT, differ from DMT?
I've seen people using 5-MeO DMT therapeutically go through what must have been extremely profound inner dynamical fluxes.
My own experience with 5-MeO is it's exactly like DMT, except that you don't hallucinate,
which is like saying it was exactly like an Italian dinner, except there was no Italian dinner.
So what you have with 5-MeO DMT is you have this enormous emotion, this, you know, I think it's called boundary dissolution.
All boundaries dissolve and there is this enormous emotion of relief, of acceptance, of melting into some kind of unspeakable unitary state.
But that's all.
It may be enough.
It may be that if you're graced for the onslaught of the tidal wave of alien hallucinations, you may be sort of, what, what?
You know?
Because this enlarge emotion comes and goes.
It blows through you like a wind.
I am interested in 5-MeO.
There's a fact, and since it's a fact, I think I should share it with you, that you should know about 5-MeO,
which is when you give it to sheep, they drop dead.
And, you know, so I guess the moral of that is, if you're a sheep, you better not do this.
Are we sheep or are we men?
But, you know, staggers is a thing that ranchers, sheep ranchers, have to be aware of,
because they come upon their sheep with their little cloven hooves in the air trembling.
Well, that's from eating Phalaris arundinaceae, which is a range grass that contains 5-MeO-DMT.
And these tryptamines are highly psycho- and physiologically active.
It's thought that it's tryptamines that control heart rate, not psychoactive tryptamines,
but an entire other family of tryptamines that are being secreted in the neurospinal fluid.
So there's a lot about this that isn't understood, and work goes forward, but not on the psychedelic tryptamines.
That is, of course, a no-no.
One of my gripes that I don't know if I got around to in this weekend
is the fact that science prides itself on its open-minded impartiality,
and yet psychedelic research is utterly forbidden.
You can research any horrible thing you want,
how much ethyl-xylene it takes to create tumors in rats and all this horrible stuff,
but there's no human research being done by or on human beings on this planet to speak of
because it's professionally the kiss of death to become involved with this.
To my mind, this is like possessing the telescope and refusing to reform astronomy.
You know, I mean, we come upon these things, they are gifts of knowledge,
and we need to integrate them into our growing paradigm,
or else our paradigm will become just another story.
Back here, yes.
Does the CIA have extensive data on the surgic acid?
The question is, does the CIA have extensive data on the surgic acid?
Well, they had a program in the 50s and 60s called MK Ultra.
They amassed vast amounts of detail and data on these compounds,
but we don't really know what they concluded.
I think that the psychedelics are surprisingly slippery in the hands of the managers of dominator institutions.
You know, when they first had LSD, they thought,
Oh, this is a truth serum.
We'll give this to our agents so that they can extract information from people they meet in foreign locations.
Well, then six months of that theory, they changed their minds and said,
No, what it is, is it's the antidote to a truth serum.
Give this to somebody and they can't tell you what they know.
So we'll make all our agents take it when they're captured,
so nobody can get information from them.
And then they decided, you know, that it was neither and it was a this and it was a that.
I have asked this question, because I'm concerned about it, of the voice in the mushroom.
The question being, what if these things fall into the hands of people who are not well intended?
And I can only tell you what the mushroom said.
It's not entirely satisfying to me as a paranoid rationalist.
But what it said was, this is not your concern.
These things are of the good.
And the good, the light cannot be corrupted by the darkness.
The darkness passes right through it.
It's as though it didn't even exist.
And I think there's truth to that.
People are always asking me, why is it that I'm not dragged away kicking and screaming?
It's because it's utterly unimportant what I'm doing from the point of view of anybody in any position of authority.
We are all labeled flakes.
We are all seriously deluded people.
But as long as we remain less than 5% of the total population, there's no problem.
You know, I mean, democracy is very tolerant.
It tolerates all kinds of cults, belief systems, sexual orientations, and so forth.
As long as we don't threaten the power structure in ways that it can recognize, that's the truth.
As long as we don't threaten the power structure in ways that it can recognize, I don't think there's any problem.
And I ask you not to worry.
Yes.
In Mexico and here, have had peyote.
I don't really understand.
To talk about peyote a little bit?
Well, I mean, this is safe.
Pardon me?
You mean, what are they doing?
What is it all about?
Well, wherever there's hallucinogenic plant use in a traditional culture, there's shamanism.
The shamanism of the American Southwest is a complicated study.
It's not clear how old the use of peyote is.
We might like, without examining the facts, to think that it's millennia old.
But the evidence seems to be that thousands of years ago, the hallucinogen or the empathogen of choice was sephora secundifolia,
which comes closer to being an ordeal poison.
If you're not familiar with the concept of an ordeal poison, there are traditional groups of people in the world whose path of transformation leads them not through hallucinogens,
but through plants that you take them and you think you're going to die.
And you have all the convincing symptoms of the immediate onset of death.
And then you don't die.
And you're so damn relieved that you straighten out your life and behave like a decent person.
And so this is the ordeal poison approach, and it's very highly evolved in Madagascar and Malaysia and places like that.
Sephora secundifolia was a kind of ordeal poison, and apparently in the last thousand years, which isn't that long,
it has been replaced by peyote, probably coming out of the Tarahumara, who carried it then to the Plains Indians generally.
If you're interested in this, a major landmark in ethnobotanical publishing in the last two months was the publication of Omar Stewart,
who's an old botanist, very well thought of guy.
Omar Stewart's life work, The Peyote Religion, has just been published by the University of Oklahoma Press.
Beautiful book.
I urge you to take a look at it.
What?
It's called The Peyote Religion by Omar Stewart.
Yes.
I'm interested in, I remember the experience of having this very deep inside,
and then coming back into my life, and feeling that this veil sort of,
that it's been under the same, and having this sort of inspirating,
that it's a very deep inside my life.
And I'm wondering how you talk about that or approach that in your current work and feeling about the devil.
So the question, as I understand it, is how do you hang on to what you learn in these peak experiences?
Or give it up.
What?
Or give it up gracefully.
Well, or give it up gracefully, although I'm more in sympathy with the questioner.
I've always thought of the psychedelic experience as like ocean fishing from a boat.
And the idea is to let down your net and to bring up something useful.
And the nights spent on the empty ocean are beautiful.
But if you return with empty nets, then what have you done for your tribe?
But on the other hand, sometimes you let down your nets and something the size of a freight train goes through.
And you'd best just row for sure.
But there are the intermediate catch.
And I think that this question that you ask is very important.
That this, and I don't really have an answer, I have techniques.
But the goal is always to bring back as much as possible.
Because at the peak of, say, a six or seven gram mushroom trip, you cannot believe what you're seeing.
And you cannot, even in the act of beholding it, you cannot imagine what you're seeing.
I mean, finally, it actually goes off the scale.
And you say, you know, all veils have been ripped away.
All truths revealed.
This is it.
You wanted it.
You've got it.
But then, you know, you have to work your way down from that summit over hours and bring back snapshots of it.
The only thing I can say is it's a matter of repetition and persistence and using every trick you can think of, including voice-operated tape recorders, note-taking.
And when I really have what I think is a slam-bang insight, I repeat it to myself like every 20 minutes for the next few hours as I navigate through successively diminished states of higher consciousness until finally I emerge and I still have understood the mystery of why my little finger exactly fits my nostril.
For no more punchline.
You're out super cool into the draft head of the audience on the screen.
Hoorwest.
One more punchline.
In the back.
Scooam.
What is it? Well, I'm not... Oh, it's a drug.
Well, hush my mouth. To be public humiliated.
How many times in my life will this happen before I finally shuffle off the stage?
Two CB terms.
Oh, it's two CB. Okay, got it.
Well, first of all, to your question about ayahuasca, which requires some explanation for some of the other people here.
Ayahuasca is a fascinating, combinatory, hallucinogenic substance that is made in the Amazon over a very wide area.
And what it is, is it's the monoamine oxidase inhibiting harmine from a very large woody vine combined with the DMT that occurs in Socotria viridis.
So it's interesting immediately because it's a combinatory shamanic hallucinogen.
There are very few of these in the world.
Notice that with peyote, datura, mushrooms, iboga, morning glory seeds, it's one plant and the process is to eat it.
But with ayahuasca, it's two plants.
And the first thing is they must be correctly combined and cooked in certain proportions by a person of good heart and clear intent.
So unlike any of these other things, they bear very intimately upon themselves the stamp of the human being who created them.
And it's a very intense experience because it not only is a full-fledged visionary hallucinogen, but it's also a strong purgative and pneumatic.
So that you are being cleaned from stem to stern while you are watching these visions roll by.
And it's taken in the upper Amazon in a ritual setting on a weekly basis among the mestizo populations there.
And when made right is extremely powerful, lovely experience.
It's interesting to contrast it with the mushrooms because the mushrooms have this eerie, we came from outer space kind of global science fiction overview.
Ayahuasca is entirely of the mother.
It is grounding, it is of the earth, the flowing rivers, the dark banks, the jungle, the people, the small malokas.
It just carries you out into the world of the earth and the people upon it.
But the hallucinations can build so that they have a quality of intensity and concreteness so that you would swear that you would smoke DMT.
It's just that it took you three or four hours of careful manipulation of breath and attention to reach where DMT put you whether you want it or not in about 30 seconds.
But this is perhaps a better way to go at it.
I'm very interested in Ayahuasca and how it has formed culture and civilization in the Amazon.
And it's unusual that you ask the question even because so few people have heard of it.
But it is beginning to be used in psychotherapy in this country in a ritual context very discreetly.
And I think it holds out great promise.
The reports coming out of these small groups of people who take it reverently and ritually are of tremendous healings and reorientations of neurotic personality structures and that sort of thing.
Which is exactly how it works in the context of the Amazonian situation.
Over here.
By the revelations of Philip K. Dick do you mean the incidents that happened to him and that spawned books like Valus and the Divine Invention?
Well, I won't spend too much time on this because I don't know how many people know who Philip K. Dick is.
I think it was Robert Anton Wilson who coined the term chapel perilous.
This is when something happens in your life and it all begins to fit together and make sense.
Too much sense because it's coming from the exterior and it seems to either mean that you're losing your mind
or you are somehow the central focus of a universal conspiracy that is leading you towards some unimaginable breakthrough.
I don't know what that's about. I've experienced it.
Maybe anyone who leads a long and eccentric life has these periods where they seem to have caught the wave
and are being carried toward unimaginable revelations and situations quite beyond their will.
This is what happened to Dick and the explanation for these kinds of things would lead us quite far afield.
I would just say briefly and bravely that I think vortexes of connectedness seem to haunt time like ghosts.
And they're not material objects so they're too subtle for science to pick up.
They're something known to shamans, poets, gamblers, people like that.
And these vortexes of coincidence and connectedness can work either for or against us.
And if you don't have a model that contains the possibility of these things,
then when they come upon you, you will become highly agitated and think you're losing your mind
or you're being contacted by aliens or something like that.
I call it, and I don't think I'm the first, but I call it the cosmic giggle.
And, you know, it comes after you sometimes.
And you just have to be...
I call it, and I don't think I'm the first, but I call it the cosmic giggle.
And, you know, it comes after you sometimes.
And you just have to be able to wrestle with that particular angel when it turns up on your doorstep.
Yes, this lady.
I call it the cosmic giggle as well as enlightening, or enlightening kinds of experiences without us.
And the second part of my question is, is it possible to have, as we run into anyone,
who's so sensitive to substances, be they hallucinogenic substances,
if they were playing food, in some instances, that they can't tolerate or would be way over the mark,
if they were to take such things?
Oh, yes, absolutely.
I mean, you meet people who are extremely delicately poised.
I mean, there are people who, you know...
Well, consciousness can be just synergized into all kinds of tizzies,
by things other than these overt hallucinogens.
I am somewhat thankful that I'm cut from more lumpen stock,
because I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I began to have a hallucinogenic experience,
not in the presence of a hallucinogen.
The states of mind that I'm interested in, that come out of these shamanic plants,
are so radically different from ordinary states of consciousness,
that I wouldn't care to access them, except through the technology of the plants.
And I often get asked this question, are there other ways to do it?
Certainly claims abound, you know, and you meet people who say,
I don't need drugs, I'm seeing little dancing mice when I close my eyes.
Congratulations.
But I've never been entirely convinced, you know,
it's really hard to convince yourself that we're all talking about the same thing.
That's why I perhaps rattle on more than I should.
I've had the unsettling experience of, and I won't use any names,
but meeting someone who had done research on psychedelics for 20 years,
had given it to over 500 people, who had taken it over 150 times.
And I said, we discussed the possibility that they were professional,
so they had always had off-the-shelf chemicals.
And I said, well, you should try fresh mushrooms,
and see if you think there's a difference.
And they debated the 1960s in large measure with their rhetoric about psychedelic drugs.
So I had no idea.
And so we have to keep leaning on each other.
We have to keep comparing notes and make sure we're talking about the same thing.
We're not talking about, I mean, on the way to the mystery,
along the way to the mystery lie the realms of loving everybody,
moving fields of geometric color, past lives, you name it.
But these are just milestones on the way.
When you finally get to the thing, the way you will know that you've arrived
is that you will be struck dumb with wonder.
That you will say, my God, this is impossible.
This is inherently impossible.
This is what impossible was invented to talk about.
This cannot be.
And it's then we're in the ballpark.
You know, then we're in the presence of the true coincidencia applausitorum.
There are all kinds of drugs and techniques and hot water and massage and this and that
and vitamin therapy that moves you all over the map,
makes you feel all kinds of different ways.
And, you know, you see people experience all kinds of personal breakthroughs
under massage and rebirthing and all these things,
but I don't think that's what we're talking about.
I think we're talking about something profoundly other,
that it is very hard to get this thing out into the mainstream,
because literally words fail us.
It is a translinguistic object.
It is the most...
It is...
If a flying saucer were to land in Central Park tomorrow,
it would be not as mysterious and challenging to our conception of ourselves
as this psychological state is, which lies at the center of all this shamanic dancing around and probing.
There is something profoundly bizarre accessible to us here and now.
And it's a complete puzzle to me why there is so little talk about it.
We live in a society completely obsessed with sensation.
You know, people shoot cocaine, jump out of airplanes, go on tiny rafts across the Pacific,
cross the North Pole on a roller skate, whatever it is.
And yet, all in the name of adventure.
Well, you know, by God, if you want adventure, there's adventure out there.
There's adventure that will sink you to your knees with tears of joy streaming down your face.
It isn't far away.
It isn't for people you never heard of, or universities, or you don't need a lot of funding.
You don't have to be a professional.
All of this stuff.
I mean, everybody talks about the mystery within and how it's all right here.
But I don't think people realize how literal all this stuff is.
The world is not only stranger than we suppose, it's stranger than we can suppose.
The weirdest, wildest, most bizarre, unearthly thing you can imagine in your most demented state of fantasy falls far short of the beginnings of the truth.
I don't know.
Sure.
Speak up.
The question is, how do you do it right?
And you talk about shelf life.
I've talked to people recently.
I've said, have you taken five grams of mushroom?
Yeah, I walked around to Dead Show and saw cartoons.
No one has said yes, except for one person.
Yes, I saw voices.
Yes, I saw an alien landscape.
Well, I think the way to do it right, and this is self-serving advice, but nevertheless, if not me, who?
Is to grow it.
To grow your sacrament.
Because then a whole bunch of imponderables are removed.
The bad karma of dealing with some form of criminal syndicalism.
The uncertainty of not knowing what it is you actually have on your hands, how old it is, what conditions of care and attention it was created under.
Plus, the discipline, and now I'm speaking of mushrooms, which is what I know very well, the discipline of growing mushrooms will itself prepare you to take them.
Because if you can grow them, you need to be a lot less concerned about whether or not you can take them than the person who simply buys them and takes them.
Because to grow them you must be clean, conscientious, punctual, attentive, self-disciplined, cheerful, able to face adversity, willing to take chances, full of courage.
These are qualities necessary to grow the mushrooms.
And never leave home.
And of course, never leave home.
Sedentary, permanent life, in love with isolation.
You're perfectly content.
So if you're all those things, and you will not succeed in growing mushrooms unless you are, well then you've already passed through a great initiation.
And anyway, you know, the living world, the satisfaction of working this alchemy.
I call it the changing of rye into mold.
And cynical souls have suggested, yes, and from mold into gold.
But I wouldn't advocate that step.
What you don't use you can give to your friends, but the growing is a real partnership.
You will be amazed at the productivity of this organism.
I mean, what a workhorse.
You give it 112 grams of rye in a jar, and it will produce close to 45 dried grams of mushrooms.
That's a conversion rate of close to 30%.
That's an unheard of level of efficiency in a biological process.
This stuff loves to work with, for human beings.
And it's a tremendous insight into natural processes if you're alienated from all that.
And people say, oh well, it's terribly technical, and this and that.
It isn't technical.
It's no more technical than canning jam.
It's about at that level.
It involves hot water, pressure cookers, gas heat, standing around, that kind of thing.
But it's the reenactment.
It's a real shamanic empowering.
It's a calling forth of the ally before your eyes.
And then you see it, and then you have it, and then you're beholden to no one.
Plus you've empowered yourself by learning that you could do this thing.
Someone who hasn't overheard you.
That was actually the question I wanted to ask more or less, but short of you.
Are there other ways of not growing it yourself that you can properly prepare yourself for them?
I mean, I gather the shamanistic cultures, they have a long experience of proper preparation.
Well, that was the question, how do you obtain it in good karma?
You're asking the question, how do you take it in good karma?
The advice is pretty straightforward and simple.
First of all, obviously, you have to have an intent to use it properly for spiritual growth and self-exploration.
I think that goes without saying in talking to a group like this.
Then the practical and operational question is, how do you do it?
Well, here's how you do it.
You take it on an empty stomach, in silent darkness, in a place where you are comfortable.
Now, people don't like this advice.
It's very simple advice.
And the number of people who will come to me and say,
I remember what you said, but I took it at 9 o'clock in the morning and I wanted to listen to Mozart.
And there were people moving around in the house.
Forget Mozart.
You know, Mozart is great without the adjunct of these things.
Mozart can stand on his own.
My notion of what you're trying to do when you take one of these things is,
you want to see the quintessence of what it is.
You want to see what it is.
So, put darkness behind it so that everything you see is only it.
Put silence behind it so that everything you hear is only it.
And then pay attention and sit still.
And that's all there is to it.
Sit and watch the back of your closed eyelids with the expectation of seeing something.
I mean, you've all meditated.
Well, God, that's the most boring thing on earth.
This is exactly like that.
This is exactly like meditation, except instead of that dark ochre background
that settles in with the little phosphenes floating by,
instead of that is a Niagara of transcendental imagery.
So, I would say that meditation is a great model for it.
You know, sit down, shut up, breathe deeply,
and look with attention at the back of your closed eyelids.
And I guarantee you, it will come.
It will manifest.
I don't know, I feel like everybody should get a chance.
Berta, you haven't asked a question.
Have you seen these lives?
Yes, good question.
One of the mystique of ayahuasca is that there are certain very tightly defined motifs that occur in it.
And these are being swallowed by an enormous serpent, and then somewhat unpredictably, since it's a South American drug,
the presence of black people, and the jaguar motif.
Those three.
The serpent, the jaguar, and the black person.
And the answer is yes, very strongly.
Not only myself, but other people.
This is really interesting to me, because I'm interested in, you know, where are these images?
That's what I've always asked.
That's why I'm so interested in the hallucinations, you see.
People...
You'll hear spiritual teachers say,
Well, hallucination is a distraction, and that's all lower bardo stuff, and you quickly get past hallucination.
Not me.
I'm fascinated by hallucination, because I want to know where it's coming from.
How can it be that in sitting in silent darkness by myself for half an hour, I can see more art than the human race has produced in 15,000 years?
That's not trivial.
You can't dismiss that as an impediment to spiritual progress.
That's a mystery and a miracle.
Where are these images coming from?
If they're coming from us, why don't we recognize them?
Why is the main quality about them something which astonishes?
Where we say, I could never have thought of that.
And yet, you know, you're seeing it.
It's filling your head.
And so I wonder about the images in ayahuasca.
Are they in our bones and our genes?
Or is it a morphogenetic field of the local area?
Where do these things come from?
Naranjo, Bertha referred to him in her question, did experiments with urban Chileans who had never been to the jungle.
They also got jaguars, black people, and giant serpents.
And I've taken ayahuasca in Northern California, and the blackness is the most puzzling to me because the jaguar and the serpent, these are power animals.
But why blackness?
And not blackness as honkies.
Imagine it.
I'm convinced it's blackness as black people experienced it.
I mean, it's this wonderful, it's very alien to an Irish lad like myself.
I mean, it's like going to the Apollo, is what it's like.
It's like being at the Apollo.
It's this tremendously warm, open, funny, smart, savvy thing.
Why?
Why should it be there embedded in that experience over and over again?
I don't know.
Why should the experience of the alien be embedded in the psilocybin experience?
the sense of this thing which can communicate, but which is not human and from another whole order of nature
and with an entirely different conception of time and destiny and history.
Who are these?
What are these channels out there?
It's a very interesting question.
To me it implies, what I talked about this morning, the existence of another dimension,
a dimension so vast that it will completely dissolve the concerns of industrial male-dominated scientific civilization.
We've gone as far as we can with that.
And we're coming back now to really facing the mystery with the things we learned on the peregrination through history.
And we're better equipped than ever before to understand these things.
But nevertheless, as the thing begins to lift the veils, you realize that it is still as mysterious as it ever was.
Sir?
Here.
Good.
In the 60's, MDA was thought to maybe help enhance community.
Can any of these drugs that you're talking about be used as a tool to help accelerate the partnership spirit in family, in community, and in larger groups?
Good question.
Do these natural hallucinogens, can they be used to facilitate the formation of partnerships and partnership societies?
Well, the answer is certainly.
Ayahuasca is a good case in point.
The way ayahuasca is used in the Amazon among the very traditional off-river tribes is it's used to create states of group-mindedness among the elders of the tribe to make social decisions for the group.
In other words, before, when ayahuasca was first encountered, the chemical in it was named telepathine.
This is what these European chemists named it.
Later it was discovered that it was the same compound as had already been isolated from the giant Syrian rue called harmin.
So the rules of nomenclature meant that harmin would be preferred over telepathine, but these states of group-mindedness are very, very real, and they occur on psilocybin in my experience as well.
I didn't talk about it too much this morning in my anthropological graph, but you can imagine the power that a kind of group telepathy would have in ensuring the survival and cohesion of a primitive group experiencing great pressure from the environment.
So, in a sense, that's what these things may be good for.
It's possible to suggest that our ability to use language was something originally synergized out of our animal organization by environmental pressures in the presence of hallucinogens.
There is something about communication, and I think this leads me to a favorite subject of mine.
I think that the ways in which we communicate with each other are still evolving and still can gain energy from being explored with psychedelic compounds.
Some of you, I'm sure, know my notion about what I call visible language, and I referred to it this morning when I said how many could see what I was saying.
Visible language is the notion that language need not be something heard through the ears.
language sufficiently empowered might be beheld with the eyes.
This is what great poets are able to do and great singers of song and tellers of stories.
They're able to use language so creatively that without noticing that anything has happened to you, the listener,
you begin to see what is intended rather than to hear it.
And I take this very seriously because on psilocybin I have actually both beheld the intent of other people and also been able to cause them to behold my intent.
It's what Philo-Judeus called the more perfect logos.
He said the more perfect logos is a logos which goes from being heard by the ear to being seen by the eyes without ever crossing over a quantized moment of transition.
So imagine how much, you know, we always think that telepathy would be a situation in which I would think something and you would hear what I was thinking.
But what if telepathy were, that I would say.
something and we both would
see what I mean
and could just walk around
and look at it. And I think
we unconsciously anticipate
this in the ways in which
we talk about communication
because we say
she spoke very clearly
I see
what you mean
he painted a picture for us
in other words we always
reach into the domain of the
visual metaphor when we
wish to indicate
a higher order of
clarity in speech
and I think
from taking ayahuasca in the Amazon
with these shamans that what we take
to be beautiful
shamanic songs
are for the people who are
intoxicated on the
hallucinogen not songs
at all but works
of visual art
that are seen
that are looked at
we again
the visual metaphor
we talk about
a tapestry of sound
these really are
these icaros
these magical songs
they really are
tapestries of sound
and when you are
when you use
psilocybin
you can experiment
with your own voice
and discover that
a certain sound
is actually
the color violet
and another sound
is you know
chartreuse
shading into
lemon yellow
I mean
in a way
I'm trivializing it
because it's much more
complex than this
but what you discover
is that sound
can be seen
and that thought
can be beheld
I think our brain
the evolution
of our brain
chemistry
hovers
just under the threshold
of this thing
becoming explicit
and it's a hard thing
to talk about
obviously
because we're talking
about speech
and communication
intent
itself
but
again
by looking back
into the past
we can obtain
an image
which maybe
helps us
how did language
as we know it
and as I am using it
at this moment
come to be
must this not
have been something
which was for
thousands and thousands
of years
just under the surface
of our ability
to take hold of it
and cognize
and then
suddenly
it gelled
there was a phase
transition
and people
got the idea
that you could
signify
with sound
that you could
cause an image
of a thing
not present
to come into
the mind
of your hearer
by naming
it
and this is
a tremendous
almost
a miraculous
ability
and you know
people talk
about gorillas
and dolphins
and chimpanzees
and there is
language there
but the miracle
of human language
the things
that we can do
with it
the way
that poetry
can set armies
marching
and the way
messiahs
take control
of the destiny
of whole
millennia
of people
it's all
through
the spoken
word
it's all
through the
power
of images
beheld in the
privacy
of the individual
mind
somehow linked
to little
mouth noises
and these
little mouth
noises
go across
space
and enter
through the
ear of the
hearer
the hearer
consults
his or her
dictionary
and reconstructs
the blueprint
of the intended
thought
and this very
crude process
is what holds
us together
our religions
our governments
our hopes
our fears
so a
transformation
in the
linguistic
domain
would
create
great
cohesion
and I
believe
that the
proper
view
of these
psychedelic
compounds
is as
enzymes
if you're
not entirely
clear on
what an
enzyme is
an enzyme
is an
organic
catalyst
now what
is a
catalyst
a catalyst
is a
compound
which causes
a certain
chemical
reaction
to progress
at a
faster
rate
without
the
catalyst
itself
being
consumed
in other
words
it drives
the chemical
process
and these
hallucinogens
in the
natural
surround
drive
and
catalyze
and synergize
the process
of consciousness
in our
species
and what
it comes
down to
in practical
terms
is the
synergy
of language
emergence
we cannot
move into
the future
any
faster
than the
rate
at which
we
transform
our
language
and
language
transformation
and evolution
has up until
the present
moment
been left
pretty much
to find
its own
way
there has
never been
really
a culture
with a
conscious
intent
of
transforming
its
language
yes
here
I agree
with you
and I
think
there's
another
aspect
of it
that I've
observed
in
communication
and that
is
there's
like
listening to
Buckminster Fuller
is an interesting
process for me
I've listened to him
a lot of times
from my early
childhood
and
sometimes
when I
just
I don't
try to
understand his
words
I switch
into another
mode
I've had
times
when I
could
understand
everything
he said
without
understanding
his words
some of
his words
so I
think
there's
a lot
of
communication
that goes
on in
that
other
place
that I
think
we
has always
been
my
faith
but
if
you
pronounce
a
word
clearly
it
will
be
understood
you know
and
I
don't
know
if
it's
working
for you
or not
but
it's
how
I
learned
all
these
big
words
is
somebody
said
them
to
me
and
I
knew
exactly
what
they
meant
so
I
think
we
that
we
would
all
probably
recognize
so
we
really
need
to
experience
and
experiment
with
empowered
speech
and
what
it
can
do
isn't
it
interesting
that
we
have
millions
and
millions
of
words
for
things
like
leptons
and
quarks
and
ratchets
and
these
kinds
of
things
we
have
about
five
words
for
emotions
we
have
love
hate
disgust
and
then
you
know
a
few
others
but
if
you
will
still
your
mind
for
a
moment
and
direct
your
attention
to
your
heart
you
will
see
that
your
heart
is
as
busy
giving
out
complex
vibrations
as
your
mind
is
the
vibration
the
complex
vibrations
given
out
by
your
mind
you
can
usually
transduce
into
speech
and
start
saying
I
want
I
think
I
know
this
and
that
but
when
you
turn
your
attention
to
your
heart
most
of
us
are
totally
inarticulate
and
even
the
most
articulate
among
us
in
matters
of
the
heart
still
inherit
a
tremendously
impoverished
vocabulary
it's
very
hard
to
say
what
you
really
mean
when
you're
talking
about
your
feelings
because
they're
such
feathery
delicate
creatures
and
the
words
that
convey
them
are
such
sledge
hammers
of
statistical
averaging
and
misunderstanding
this is
another
dimension
out of
the
sixties
come
concepts
which
are
always
ridiculed
by
the
orthodox
concepts
like
the
vibes
and
laying
an
ego
trip
and
but
what
this
is
the
first
halting
steps
toward
creating
a
new
language
about
emotion
and
feeling
and
it's
too
bad
that
it
was
broken
off
or
that
it
didn't
proceed
at
the
rapid
rate
at
the
end
because
we
cannot
really
the way
I see
moving
into
the
future
it
as
we
can
describe
to
each
other
where
it
is
we
want
to
go
this
is
again
like
restating
the
idea
that
the
best
idea
will
win
what
we
need
to
do
is
all
hone
our
ideas
clarify
our
thoughts
rest
of
world
culture
so
it's
always
about
stretching
the
envelope
of
language
seeking
to
say
yet
more
clearly
what
we
mean
to
adumbrate
and refine
and indicate
nuance
with ever
greater
clarity
that
that is
what
communication
is
and
when
it's
done
perfectly
it
becomes
a true
partnership
in
art
one
example
you
used
before
Terrence
is
the
octopus
that
you
were
mentioning
changes
its
body
and
communicates
physically
without
verbal
connection
as a
dancer
I
appreciate
that
and I
thought
maybe
you
could
make
a
comment
this
is
the
part
of
the
evening
where
we
start
requesting
a
favorite
song
the
octopus
blues
briefly
I
talked
about
visible
language
a little
earlier
and
John
reminds
me
of
a
into
all
of
this
which
is
nature
always
provides
models
for what
we
want
to
do
no
matter
how
advanced
or
unadvanced
nature
always
provides
the
model
so
I
had
this
idea
about
visible
language
years
and
years
ago
but
in
the
past
couple
of
years
I
discovered
everybody
seems
to
discover
mind
in
the
water
for
Lily
it
was
dolphins
for
other
people
it
has
been
whales
for
me
it
was
octopi
cephalopods
and
I'll
talk
about
them
a
little
bit
first
of
all
they
have
extremely
well
evolved
eyes
there
have
eyes
as
good
as
human
eyes
and
in
fact
it's
always
held
up
as
a
great
example
of
parallel
evolution
that
these
two
utterly
unrelated
organisms
could
octopus
eye
unless
you're
an
anathomist
so
but
who
would
want
to
but
octopi
are
cephalopods
they're
mollusks
they're
related
to
escargot
and
banana
slugs
the
evolutionary
distance
between
them
and
us
is
tremendous
I mean
their line
and our
line
divided
about
million
years
ago
compared
to
dolphins
are
like
the
boy
and
girl
next
door
compared
to
this
organism
this
is
an
alien
organism
okay
so
it's
been
known
for a
long
time
that
these
octopi
could
change
color
and
it
was
always
thought
that
this
was
simple
camouflage
that
they
change
color
to
match
their
background
but
observation
being
the
key
to
scientific
advance
people
notice
that
generates
polka
dots
and
traveling
bars
and
what
are
called
blushes
and
striping
and
all
of
this
sort
of
thing
so
then
it
was
realized
they
are
communicating
with
each
other
this
is
how
octopi
communicate
they
are
actually
almost
like
creatures
turned
inside
out
because
they
have
a
tremendously
advanced
nervous
system
which
is
on
the
surface
of
their
skin
and
this
nervous
system
controls
these
specialized
cells
called
chromatophores
which
change
color
so
that
what
an
is
how
an
octopus
looks
in
other
words
they
are
their
own
thoughts
they
are
like
a
naked
nervous
system
they
are
pure
linguistic
intent
and
when
you
see
them
they
not
only
are
able
to
change
their
color
but
because
they're
soft
bodied
they
psychedelic
extreme
is
in
the
benthic
octopi
the
very
rare
deep
water
octopi
that
live
below
meters
in
the
deep
ocean
where
no
light
ever
penetrates
and
how
have
they
continued
their
dialogue
into
this
abyssal
darkness
it's
by
evolving
light
organs
all
over
their
of
these
things
they
are
psychedelic
idea
complexes
transforming
themselves
lighting
themselves
sending
traveling
lines
of
lights
and
stripes
and
dots
well
to me
this is a
model
for
the
human
future
of
communication
if you
think
of
the
way
we
seem
to
require
titular
animals
for
instance
the
titular
animal
of
19th
century
industrialism
was
the
horse
realized
as
the
locomotive
which
was
measured
in
thousands
and
thousands
of
horsepower
that
was
very
impressive
to the
19th
century
mentality
the
20th
century
mentality
realizes
its
titular
animal
which
is
I
think
the
hawk
the
soaring
raptor
which
is
definitely
a
dominator
symbol
is
realized
in
high
performance
fighter
aircraft
you
know
that
is
to
be
like
a
gigantic
bird
of
prey
the
titular
model
the
titular
animal
for
the
future
is
I
would
suggest
the
octopi
because
it
is
probing
the
frontiers
of
communication
and
self
reflection
in
fact
the
octopus
may
contain
the
hint
of
what
to
turn
ourselves
inside
out
to
objectify
the
mind
so
that
it
can
be
beheld
and
freely
seen
so
that
we
can
each
see
the
soul
of
the
other
and
then
to
interiorize
the
body
so
that
it
is
a
freely
commanded
object
in
the
imagination
that's
I
think
what
we're
headed
toward
and
it
is
anticipated
by
the
psychedelic
state
and
will
be
hardwired
through
the
feminization
of
cybernetics
and
it
will
release
from us
the
tremendous
pressure
of
limits
that's
what
we
really
feel
is
limits
and
we
sense
that
in
the
imagination
there
are
no
limits
we
just
don't
know
how
you
historical
one
it's
a
cultural
transformation
we
have
to
exteriorize
our
minds
interiorize
our
bodies
and
create
a
psychedelic
cybernetic
partnership
collectivity
that lays
the
basis
for
a
new
self
image
of
what
humanness
can
be
this
is
what
I
experience
in
distinction
to
most
other
animals
in
the
religions
which
we
generate
in
distinction
to
most
other
animals
in
the
great
collective
works
of
art
and
social
dreams
that
we
generate
in
distinction
to
most
other
animals
we
are
called
to
higher
things
and
are
passing
through
a
series
of
bootstrapping
self
transitions
that
is
anticipated
in
each
of
us
as
a
microcosm
when
we
surrender
our
evil