conscious development of conscious alternatives but it was not until the amazon that i saw that
this was possible in a way that was accessible to me so then i concentrated on those people
those chemical families and that that then became the compass for all the work that i've done since
then and i regard the degree more or less as a joke because it was self-directed study they don't
really uh there is no degree in shamanism but my interest was basically one in the phenomenology
of religious experience religious traditions worldwide and primitive people against a
background of tropical nature and stumbled onto the mushrooms in the jungles of columbia in 1971
and was not even particularly interested in mushrooms at the time we were looking for a
less well understood drug that is still not discussed much in the literature that exists
in a very circumscribed area among three indian tribes and we went into the jungle to stay at a
mission that served these indians and the priest at this mission had cleared pasture and brought in
white cows and there were many many of these mushrooms and as soon as we started experimenting
with them i realized that what i had been told about psilocybin which was that it was analogous to lsd
but simply required a larger amount for the effect to be present was a complete simplification of the issue
and actually then psilocybin became the focus of my interest and by extrapolation the other
tryptamine related hallucinogens and a great dream of mine and of my brothers as well
was that the mushroom must somehow be made accessible to people so that they may judge for themselves the
difference and we worked with this over a number of years and in 1975 we succeeded in growing it by a method
that had previously been used only in the laboratory on commercial grocery store mushrooms to study their genetics
but it turned out to be perfectly adapted for growing this mushroom
within a matter of months we had written psilocybin the magic mushroom growers guide
and the information was moving out into society but more important from our point of view was
that the mushroom was again accessible to us so that we had psilocybin in a form that was
this certified pure by mother nature and that like initiated the second phase of uh our work with these
drugs which has carried us up to the present day and it's basically uh a project of taking the drugs
calling attention to uh the differences the uniqueness of the state and trying to attract other people's
attention to it because uh i have we have a very deep intuition of its importance for the cultural
predicament for mankind generally and uh this is how we come to where we are today basically you just
mentioned that the mushroom is really important for our country right now and you perceive yourself as
an advocate to bring in to our culture a new element like an easy way to reach altered states of
consciousness what can you learn from these experiences well the first thing that we can learn
is that they exist in other words that uh perhaps it's a truism in the 80s but at one point it was thought
that there were two states of consciousness awake and asleep now there is a gamut of these states but
i still don't believe that the people who deal with consciousness realize uh how mutable consciousness
really is there is a prejudice against the use of drugs because there is an inherent dualism in built into
western thought where people value the experience if it is endogenously produced produced through ordeal or
personality or dieting but is undervalued if it comes from drugs this has in my opinion held back
the western development of understanding consciousness because quite simply these states i do not believe
are accessible by any means other than drugs and this is heresy to a number of people but the evidence
that i lay in favor of that contention is uh the history of uh human art and literature and music and
painting is surprisingly uh empty of the motifs which exist in the tryptamine uh induced ecstasy and
always when i speak of hallucinogens i'm speaking of this limited family of drugs not lsd
or ketamine or ketamine or mescaline but psilocybin and dmt and combinational drugs which utilize strategies for making that effect uh noticeable
and my career is to point at this place in nature which i've stumbled upon and to say uh
uh what is this what do you make of this what are you the physicist you the psychologist you the after death researcher what do you make of this uh place and uh
even the most sophisticated consciousness researchers tend to hurry over drugs or to focus on one drug to
the exclusion of others and yet psilocybin has not received this kind of attention and treatment and
why that is i'm not sure i think that uh that the element of terror involved in doing it the fact that
it does not bathe your ego in a cloud of certitude or assurance that everything is going to be fine
it is much more cut and dried than that and uh it's a challenge it is uh when you are out in the billows
as i call it because it seems to come in in waves like sets of billows when you're out in the billows you
are against the power of mind up against the power of mind to such a degree that you know
that the entire enterprise hangs in the balance but no matter how much you've been told about dosage
and this kind of thing that the mind actually holds the key to life and death and that those parts of
your control board which are normally masked from you are suddenly unmasked and the buttons are there for
you to manipulate to the degree that you understand them and there is an element of risk i never tell
people that there isn't but i think that the risk is worth it because i think these bizarre dimensions of
beauty and information are actually uh it is an intimation of these things that gives human history its
coherency in other words this is not a peripheral issue to the general uh phenomenon of human becoming in
time it is actually because the evolution of the human species is the evolution of the human mind these
consciousness expanding agents actually anticipate uh an end state uh in the evolution of the human mind
and so they cast enormous reflections back over the historical landscape it is they which generate uh
religions and physics and messianic careers and outbreaks of uh uh great psychic uh accomplishment and
uh uh uh disgrace and uh until we understand this until we understand that there is a teleological
object at the end of human history and that it can be known we will continue to live the kind of
limited intellectual existence that has characterized the last 500 years or so of western development
so aside then tryptamine is in my opinion the uh the means to eliminating the future by becoming cognizant of
the architecture of eternity which is modulating time and causing history how do you perceive in this
context the future of mankind and the human mind well i've said many times the human history is a a lunge
across 15 or 20 000 years of time from the primitive stone chipping primate to that creature which will walk
into a trans-dimensional vehicle and leave the solar system and human history and the concerns of the human
monkey far behind and this may take a thousand generations of people but as a biological fact as an emergent
process of planetary significance that is only a microcosm a microsecond of cosmic time
uh the immediate future of man lies in the imagination and in seeking the dimension where the imagination can be expressed
the present cultural crisis on the surface of the planet is caused by the fact that this is not
a fitting theater for the exercise of imagination it wrecks the planet the planet has its own
ecostemic dynamic dynamics which are not the dynamics of imagination in space the physical space that surrounds
the planet the modalities of imagination will be the limiting cases of what man can be done so i see
man becoming an artist and an engineer in other words flowing into our ideas perhaps more than we
dare even now suspect in other words uh a possible end state of that kind of technical uh evolution would be
the interiorization of the body of the human body the individual body and the exteriorization of the soul
and this seems to me to be what the recovery from adam's fall uh allegorically is getting at that the soul must be made manifest and eternal
and the body must be incorporealized so that it is a freely commanded object in the imagination
and what i mean by that is something like what william butler yeats is getting at in his poem sailing to byzantium where he speaks of the artifice of eternity
and talks about how beyond death he would hope to be an enameled golden bird singing sweet songs to the lords and ladies of byzantium
in other words it's the image of the human body become a an indestructible cybernetic object
and yet within that indestructible cybernetic object there is a holographic transform
of the body and it is released into the dream in other words the after-death state
is actually the compass of human history that we are attempting to undergo a complete death of the species
and as we struggle with this concrescence of thanatos there is there are problems like nuclear stockpiles
and all these things arise because the message that we're trying to read is the message we most fear to
hear which is uh that you must die to experience eternal life essentially but what this death that
we're talking about is is an understanding that the human the dasein the being of human beings desires to
be released into the imagination and until we confront death uh with the attitude that it is the after-death
state that needs to enter history there will be a great deal of anxiety it's like a birth uh you know a birth
is a death everything you treasure and believe in and love and relate to is destroyed for you when
you leave the womb uh and you are launched into another modality a modality that you would not perhaps
have chosen but this jew cannot do anything about so i uh i think these drugs anticipate this because i think that
time is the moving image of eternity as plato said and these drugs place you outside of time now the mechanism
of how that's done you can invoke bell's theorem or just call it pure magic but it does happen in the
here and now it is accessible it is not it is not something remote from us but somehow the clamor of the
modern world and in the search for answers people have feared to place themselves on the line and to
actually wrestle with life and death out there in those strange bardo-like dimensions not realizing that
there is no other way to win true knowledge i mean it cannot be easily come by there is no knowledge
without risk-taking and i see the human future emerging along the lines that the mushroom visions have
insisted upon the proliferation of electronic media the densification of information the breaking down of
consensus reality the breakdown of a coherent dogma at the center of physics all these things indicate that
it is slowly becoming understood that the modality of being is the modality of mind
and once that realization is placed in the center of someone's thinking about the world the importance of
these drugs will be seen to be paramount and once that culture places that understanding
in the center of its model of the world these drugs will then point the way
and we will be much closer to the end of history that i think we all
we all desire consciously or unconsciously a cutting of the gordian knot and a release of the human species
and individual into the dream basically and primitive people meaning pre-literate people
they just have circumvented the entire process of history they have leapfrogged over us they are already in the dream
they have accepted the drug on its own terms and uh and assimilated it and live with it the problem with that for them and for us
we are destroying their world and our intellectual equipment is such that we can never have that uh
that naive epistemological approach to these phenomena because we know about technique
technique we know that energy can be manipulated to achieve effects
and so it isn't enough for us to try to recreate uh the shamanism of pre-literate people
we have to go into the shaman space with the a priori categories of kant with the eudetic reduction of wittgenstein with the ideas of merleuponte and whitehead
all the intellectual equipage of our culture must be carried with us into that space
to attempt to map it in a way that will be relevant for us
and that will point the way toward a shortening of this period of uh and the accumulating shock waves
like the bow shock of uh ionized particles or energetic particles meeting the magnetic field of the planet
that's what the chaos at the end of history is were you just talking about the belt here no i'm talking
about a shock wave which precedes eschatology and is uh modern times basically i mean it has been increasing
throughout history but as we grow closer to this moment where the human mind will evolve into hyperspace
the confusion the amount of contradiction the amount of uh cue it's called in engineering just the
the amount of vibration in the system is increasing to the point where it seems like the system is about
to fly to pieces this signals to me that the onset of the uh of the primal crisis that when we have gone
through it we will then live in this uh in this realm of altered understanding that psilocybin and these
drugs anticipate and it isn't a coincidence that they anticipate them it is uh in fact uh what eschatological
time is is what they reveal that's why the cultures we find using them are eschatological and historical
cultures what is the belthereum you're talking about well the belthereum is simply an interpretation
of an experiment in quantum mechanics which seem to suggest that information is non-local in other words
that everything about everywhere can be known here and now because somehow all information is cotangent to
every point in the matrix i don't pretend to have the background to judge the bell theorem what i would
say about it is if it isn't true something like it must be true to account for the informational content of
these drug experiences if you just take a simple behaviorist model what is in your head if behaviorist and
reductionist evolutionists are correct what is in your head should be very uh adapted to the here and now
it should be efficacious information that bears on your survival instead what we find when we
take these drugs is a density of information an alienness of information an inapplicability of
information to the human condition that suggests that information is available that has no bearing
on the life of the individual or his the success of his evolutionary strategy and i just cannot believe
that these things are built into the human psyche i have as i said i was involved with union ideas and i those
archetypes and those archetypal processes are not what i'm talking about i'm talking about the thing which for
want of a better word we call the alien or the extraterrestrial the thing which comes out of the drug
experience that is unenglishable beautiful but so bizarre that it seems to exceed human categories some
people talk about entities yes it can present itself as an entity it can present itself in a number of
different ways it is uh it is uh it is the central mystery of our age we are so alienated uh restart them the
the relationship of intellectuals alive today who are familiar with the state of modern science and
that sort of thing to a question like the existence of extraterrestrials is approximately in the same
place or degree of closure as the relationship of 15th and 16th century intellectuals to the real properties of matter
in other words they had only a tenuous grip on the real properties of matter and consequently alchemy
could exist could project the hopes of human psychic transformation onto inert matter
because so little was known about the real nature of matter that it seemed a reasonable place to expect
these kinds of things to happen the present state of thought uh today is that it's highly likely that
there are extraterrestrials somewhere out among the stars our state of the state of the development of our
chemistry astrophysics uh linguistics etc etc makes it reasonable for us as moderns to expect that so then
consequently we go into our heads and there seems to be the extraterrestrial uh it may be a true
extraterrestrial but it is odd that it is hidden itself in the place where we expected to find it
and this causes me to assume that actually it's something far more profound than an extraterrestrial
it's something which to gain our confidence is disguised as an extraterrestrial because
its real nature is so much more devastating than that that that is the way in which it insinuates itself
into our lives so that we can dream of a hegemony of organized intelligence out in the galaxy that we will relate
to and be assimilated into what i think is going on is that actually the most intelligent life form on the
planet is not uh man and his institutions it is the a the overmind of the human species which is a diffuse
organism of uh technical artifacts like computers and information transfer and retrieval systems
and human beings and but human institutions are like myths woven by the individual human cells that make up
society the real controlling uh modality on the planet is never visible and it is this group mind and it controls the release
of ideas into history by designating certain people as geniuses and it's uh if there's a certain kind of imbalance
a certain kind of religion will arise to collapse that imbalance if uh if uh technical advancement is
outstripping the evolution of ethics a religion can step in to freeze
uh these uh these developments so that one can catch up with the other and i think the whole consciousness
movement and that has evolved over the past 20 years is an attempt to map to verify and to open a dialogue with
this thing which is the other we call it the other we call it the alien but it is actually the overmind of the
species and it it seeks this dialogue it has been waiting all these millennia to uh for us to essentially
come to a point of intellectual maturity where we did not then require messiahs religions and these various
crude fine crude interventions into the human experience which keep us from destroying ourselves
this is also what jung called the collective unconscious right but he he painted it as a very
passive kind of thing more like a data bank or a place where all myths and all memories
were i think of it as a god a kind of god and i think it it is active in three-dimensional space
it can be active in something as uh personalistic and uh circumscribed as uh a string of coincidences
which you experience which seem to be turning your life in a certain direction that you may not have
expected or it can be active uh in in something like the worldwide phenomenon of flying saucers flying
saucers are nothing more than miracles and they occur essentially to bedevil science because science is a human
institution that has arisen in the last 500 years that is the dreams of displacing the overmind without ever
realizing that it exists science dreams of this place of preeminence but science creates alienation
species survival problems all of these things now then the overmind which can be thought of simply like a
cultural thermostat it clicks on when the clash of contradiction between the ethics of a society and
some other institution in this case science becomes too great
this governing device clicks on and it begins producing those events most destructive to the institution
that is seeking preeminence in this case science so the inexplicability of the flying saucer phenomenon
is its central uh reason for being and all the effort to reduce it to something uh metal ships from far
away or anything else is doomed to failure because its very reason for being is to undermine those kind of
ontological systems uh why we're talking about this is because psilocybin
makes, inducts you into the flying saucer experience.
In other words, a metaphor for it would be to say
that psilocybin is a means of triggering the so-called abduction experience
or the close encounter of a third kind.
Once you realize that, once you've satisfied yourself that that's true,
a number of experimental avenues are opened up,
a number of different approaches to what's going on are suggested.
I mean, here we have alien entities eager to transmit information,
eager to carry on a noetic dialogue,
and we seem to be ignoring the opportunity
because our categories mitigate against us correctly appreciating it.
Are these entities coming from outer space,
or are they more proud of us?
It's impossible to tell.
This is the game that you must play with them,
is through dialogue trying to figure out
if this is the previously unseen human psyche
or whether it is actually a thing coming from the outside.
And it is not an easy thing to decide
because we are so alienated from the self
that we don't really know what it would be.
So it's not important to know the context.
It's more important to know the content of the data.
The content is very interesting, yes,
because even if we were somehow to verify
that Bell's non-locality theorem applied
and that these were real entities around a real sun
somewhere in the universe,
it would make them no more or less real.
In other words, it's a hang-up
to demand that they appear in three-dimensional space.
I have this hang-up, so I don't put it down.
I always think of the apostle Thomas,
because you'll recall Thomas was not present
when Christ returned.
When he rose from the grave,
he appeared to the apostles in the upper room,
and Thomas was not present.
Then later he was there,
and the apostles said,
listen, the master was here,
and it was wonderful,
and he said,
getting too many little brown cigarettes,
that's preposterous.
And at that point,
Christ walked in,
and he said,
he said,
Thomas,
come put your hand into the wound
so that you will believe.
And so he did,
and so then he believed.
Well, the moral of the story,
as I read it,
is Thomas was the doubter.
Consequently,
Thomas was the only one
who was allowed to actually touch
the resurrection body.
It was because he doubted
that he was vouchsafed
to this position of preeminence.
And I'm like that.
I mean,
I would like to touch the incorporeal body.
I would like to call the saucer down
and observe all of its workings.
But this is a spiritual aspiration
that cannot be advanced
by any human technique or activity.
This is just something you pray for.
In the meantime,
the job is to map it
and describe it
and explore it
and try to direct the attention
of other people,
more intelligent than myself,
to this astonishing fact,
really.
I mean,
I am troubled by the fact
that so many strange claims
are made today,
so many forms of aliens
and channeling
and voices in the head
that when I began all this
ten years ago,
I was afraid to speak
because I sounded mad
even to myself.
and I sounded like a voice
in the wilderness.
Today,
the situation has changed
to the point
where I can barely
make myself heard
amidst the clamor
of people
who have various entities
from Atlantis
and beyond the grave
and Zeta Reticuli
and what have you,
clamoring to be heard.
So I take it out of faith
and I ask you
to take it out of faith
that I am
more objective
and somewhat more interested
in hard facts
than these other channelers.
I would like people
to take a look
at this phenomenon
and then tell me
what they think.
And it involves risk.
People fear to do it.
Careers are placed
on the line.
It is not easy
to make a career
out of taking
a psychedelic drug.
It is not a thing
which mixes well
with the politics
of any institution,
a university,
a research institution.
I can't think.
Perhaps this is why
shaman
are the primary sources
of information
about it.
Are you a shaman?
Are you an exploring shaman?
I'm an exploring shaman.
I wouldn't claim
to be a shaman
but I think anybody
who takes these things
and goes out
and tries to navigate
through
and make maps
and bring back data
is a shaman
for sure.
Do you want
that everybody
takes this drug
down this order
and take the drug?
No, I don't think so.
I think it's very
dangerous.
I do not tell people
that it's safe
because I don't have
the faith
that it's safe.
I know what
the pharmacological
literature says
and it says
that it's safe
that at the doses
where these effects
occur
there can't possibly
be a problem.
but this seems
to me
to be
the naivete
of materialists
and we shouldn't
be in a hurry
to believe them
even though
it might make us
more comfortable
to do so.
In other words
it's saying
the drug
may not be toxic
but you may be
self-toxic
and you may discover
this in the drug
experience.
So you have to
you have to
hone yourself
and be clean
and you never
know if you're
clean enough
until it's too
late
because each
journey into
that dimension
is a total
existential
commitment
and
the element
of fear
is always there.
I mentioned
this this morning
but I think
the fear
validates it.
I'm not
I think it's fine
to take drugs
for pleasure
but it should
be labeled
as taking drugs
for pleasure
and the high doses
of psilocybin
that are necessary
to elicit entry
into these places
it requires
as it says
in Hamlet
you must screw
your courage
to the sticking place.
Mankind evolving
towards a
teleological goal
would you comment
on that?
What is the goal?
I think there is
a final goal
in the name
of the history
but speaking
relative
to the history
of the past
four or five
thousand years
I think the goal
is as I said
to invert
the relationship
of body
and soul
so that the
body
becomes
an image
in the imagination
and the soul
becomes
an exteriorized
solid state
piece of circuitry
which maintains
everything else
in stasis
and I'm not sure
if people
even realize
what I'm
picturing my mind
when I say this
but I think
that the destiny
of man
and what man
will make
be his destiny
just because
of how we are
is release
into the imagination
and this is
what all our
after death
scenarios
say
whether they are
true or not
and they may be true
and this is what
poetry aspires to
art aspires to
its release
into the imagination
we are creatures
of the dream
and once this is
articulated
with sufficient
clarity
and it's
happening now
but I think
the work we do
with these drugs
we are the
earliest pioneers
in what over the
next hundred years
will lead to
an understanding
consciousness
almost as a
thing apart
from the monkey
body and brain
we are
consciousness
we may not
always be
monkeys
we fear
the dehumanizing
effect
of so many
computers
and emotions
euphoric emotions
not related to
sex
and all these
things
we fear them
we say
we are moving
further and further
from nature
deeper and deeper
into our own
psyche
but this is a
dualism
our psyche
is nature
and we are not
we cannot move
away from nature
by exploring
these places
so I believe
you know
that a
technological
recreation
of the
after death
state
is what
history
pushes toward
and that
means a
kind of
eternal
existence
where there
is an
ocean of
mind
into which
one can
dissolve
and
reform
from
but there
is also
the self
related to
the body
image
but in the
imagination
so that
we each
would become
in a sense
everyone
I would
live at
Versailles
and you
might live
at the
Taj Mahal
and someone
else might
live at
Buckingham
Palace
but what
you would
see
if there
were an
exterior
observer
what you
would see
is only
that man
had become
a coral
reef
of circuitry
in space
and on
the planetary
surface
but this
is a very
extreme view
of the
history of
man
because it's
essentially
gnostic
it says
we are not
now
what we
yearn to be
and are
destined to
be
we are
not
I don't
see history
as a process
of accepting
and coming
to terms
with
monkeyhood
I see
that it
will
inevitably
seek to
transform
and transcend
monkeyhood
and this
will be
very frightening
I mean
it's frightening
imagine
if even
a 15th
century
person
were to
be in
this room
with us
and the
value
systems
the clash
of
assumptions
about what
is important
and unimportant
and this
will be a
much more
intense
change
and whether
it is good
or bad
rests on a
question
that I have
no answer
for
and the
question is
is man
good
and this
I maintain
is the
central
thing
to dig
at
and we
cannot
know
and there's
evidence
pro and
con
I have
the faith
that man
is good
so I
don't
I don't
fear this
future
but if
someone had
a doubt
even a
small doubt
about that
then they
would be
repelled
by this
and I
take all
these
movements
which
want
zero-sum
growth
and
reject
technology
reject
space
colonization
reject
drug
experimentation
as
artificial
these
people
would be
very
alarmed
by this
kind of
a point
of view
but they
do not
seem to
realize
that the
momentum
toward this
kind of
thing
is now
so great
in terms
of human
culture
and that
sort of
thing
that there
can be
no turning
back
we are
either going
to change
in to
this
cybernetic
hyperdimensional
hallucinogenic
angel
or we are
going to
destroy
ourselves
the opportunity
for us
to be happy
hunters and
gatherers
integrated
into the
balance of
nature
that fell
away
15,000
years ago
and cannot
be
recaptured
Gerard O'Neill
made it
in answer
to this
very objection
he said
the earth
is the
cradle
of mankind
there is
no question
about that
but you
do not
remain
in the
cradle
forever
and this
is a
birth crisis
that we are
going through
the entirety
of human
history
has been
the story
of the
monkey
becoming
the flying
saucer
and it
is taking
just that
long
in geological
time
but we
for some
strange reason
happen to be
living through
the final
moments
of that
process
right now
and it
is
a turbulent
chaotic
multidimensional
metamorphosis
that is
there's never
been anything
like it
on this
planet
before
it's
absolutely
astonishing
information
which was
locked
for
kiliocosms
of time
into the
DNA
of plants
and animals
has through
the hand
and articulate
voice
of man
been able
to bootstrap
itself
out of
the DNA
and into
these
culturally
validated
rapidly
operating
electromagnetic
codes
and languages
and this is
allowing its
development
its evolution
to proceed
at a rate
so fast
that
the transformation
is taking place
essentially in our
lifetime
and psilocybin
is central
to this
because psilocybin
casts a
spotlight
into the
darkness
into which
we are moving
and shows
that this is
what lies there
it is
the human
soul
essentially
the oversoul
of mankind
calling
history
toward itself
across
the dimensions
and it's
taking only
a moment
but on the other
hand
it's taking
20,000 years
and it is
the great
great
adventure
of becoming
and we are
very very
privileged
to be in
this
final ticking
out of the
last seconds
of the third
act
do you have
any comments
about the
fact that
DMT is
located in
the human
brain
well I think
that puts
in some sense
as a strong
piece of evidence
for the argument
that I've been
making
not only
is DMT
endogenous
in the brain
but beta-carbolines
of the sort
that occur
in onelosca
are endogenous
in the brain
as well
these things
as I mentioned
this morning
the shift
of a single
atom
on the ring
structure
of one of
these molecules
can cause
a compound
to go
from inert
to highly
active
well that
means then
that it's
probably
reasonable
to say
that we
are as
close
to shifting
the level
of endogenous
hallucinogens
in our
head
we are
probably
only a
one gene
mutation
away
from that
happening
and if you
know anything
about how
biological
evolution
works
it isn't
that a
change
a mutation
occurs
and the
mutation
is found
to be better
adaptive
than the
previous form
and
hence
the mutation
dominates
that is not
the way
evolution
works
the way
it works
is
you have
the normal
expression
of the
genotype
in a
population
and then
you have
mutations
being thrown
off all
the time
and they
are usually
quenched
except in the
situation
where the
environment
shifts
so that new
selective
pressures are
operating in
the environment
when new
selective
pressures
begin to
operate
a gene
that was
previously
without
consequence
may suddenly
have
immense
consequences
so then
every
member
of the
population
that you're
looking at
that has
that gene
suddenly
is in
a much
more
advantageous
position
to advance
their
evolutionary
strategy
and I
think that
certainly
modern
existence
has changed
the selective
pressures on
the human
genome
and now
it is
people who
are far
out
that's
simply a
gloss
it is the
people who
are far
out
who are
gaining
advantage
in the
evolutionary
jostling
for
efficacious
strategies
and this
you're right
Frank
this is
happening
on the
hardware
level
on the
level
of endogenous
tryptamines
and that
sort of thing
I think
schizophrenia
is
essentially
in a way
a disease
of modern
times
and it
is
no it's
always existed
of course
but the
incidence
of it
and the
incidence
of
schizoid
if not
schizophrenic
personalities
and types
is because
the
modalities
of evolutionary
selection
are
shifting
it's
as though
if you
think
of a
rainforest
that
has
been
above
water
million
years
all
evolutionary
niches
have
become
occupied
everything
is at
steady
state
there
is
not
going
to be
any
dramatic
radiation
of a new
species
because everything
has been
worked out
and the
energy
flows
are so
tight
nothing
can gain
a leg
up
on that
situation
but if
you clear
a thousand
acres of
forest
and reduce
it to
rubble
essentially
open land
then what
are called
invader
species
come in
there
and they
very quickly
gain
dominance
where in
the jungle
at steady
state
you never
see those
plants
you never
see
weedy
annual
heavily
seeding
plants
in the
jungle
the jungle
strategy
is for
enormous
plants
which
produce
small
numbers
of
seeds
and
this
is
again
an
analogy
to
the
modern
situation
that
modernity
is a
desert
and we
are
jungle
monkeys
and so
new
evolutionary
selective
pressures
are coming
to bear
upon
the
human
situation
new
ideas
are coming
to the
fore
psilocybin
is a
selective
filter
for this
the wish
to go
to space
as a
selective
filter
for this
just
the wish
to know
your own
mind
this is
part of
the picture
this is
what's
happening
it's
inevitable
it's a
very good
thing
I think
if you
have
faith
that man
is good
and
my
I
follow the
renaissance
platonists
on that
I think
man must
be the
measure
of all
things
what
else
could
possibly
serve
with
certainty
that's
all I
would say
about
that
you
stated
earlier
that
psilocybin
is coming
from
outer
space
there's
a possibility
that
there's
mushrooms
there's a
possibility
of that
Fred Hoyle
and an
associate of
his
have
come to
my aid
on this
saying
that
spore
bearing
life forms
because
spores
have
the
capacity
to
survive
in the
conditions
of
outer
space
that
spore
bearing
life forms
may
over
truly
large
scales
of time
percolate
out
through
the
galaxy
and serve
as a
basis
for the
evolution
of life
on
various
planets
or
insert
themselves
there
I
don't
I
on
these
matters
of
specific
fact
like
is
the
mushroom
an
extraterrestrial
and
that
sort
of
thing
I
haven't
the
faintest
idea
the
mushroom
itself
is
such
a
mercurial
elusive
zen
sort
of
personality
that
I
never
believe
a
word
it
says
I
simply
entertain
its
notions
and
try
and sort
through
them
and
I
found
that
to
be
the
most
enriching
approach
to
it
to
know
that
the
option
of
believing
that
is
there
on
hard
evidence
is
very
exhilarating
as to
what
is
really
going
on
the
mushroom
assures
me
that
I
haven't
got
even
the
faintest
grip
on
what
is
really
going
on
but
something
is
going
on
can I
ask
another
question
what
do you
think
is
evil
and
can
these
mushrooms
be
misused
well
I
think
anything
can
be
misused
most
evil
is
trivial
and
if I
could
speak
off the top
of my
head
the only
evil
that
associates
itself
with
mushrooms
is
taking it
but
taking
too
little
in
other
words
evil
is
there's
a word
I want
it
isn't
twiddle
but
something
like
that
evil
is
when
you
play
at
things
not
in
play
in
the
Hindu
cosmic
sense
but
where
you
fiddle
with
things
you
muck
with
things
because
you
don't
want
to get
your
feet
wet
you
want
to
be
even
if
they've
taken
it
or
times
they
have
managed
through
low
doses
and
strong
defenses
to
always
keep
the
demon
at
bay
that's
the
demon
with
a
D-A-I
to
keep
the
demon
at
bay
and
they
don't
know
what
they're
talking
about
you
must
take
a
sufficiently
large
dose
so
that
you
enter
into
these
places
not
to
knock
him
personally
because
he's
a
very
nice
man
but
as
an
example
Roland
Fischer
whose
work
you
may
know
I
talked
to
him
and
he
has
given
Psilocybin
he
says
to
about
15,000
people
at
NIMH
and
now
he's
retired
to
Mallorca
but
oh
you do
yeah
and I
said
to
him
I
make
of
what
and
I
said
well
what
do
you
make
just
specifically
of
the
hallucinations
you
say
you
gave
it
to
all
these
people
you
took
it
six
times
what
happened
when you
closed
your
eyes
and
looked
at
the
hallucinations
he
said
I
never
closed
my eyes
I
was
highly
agitated
throughout
and
I
just
realized
these
things
which
seem
to
me
as
natural
as
breathing
just
slide
right
past
people
I
mean
of
course
you
do
not
eat
for
a
few
hours
before
you
do
it
of
course
you
lie
down
in
darkness
and
compose
your
mind
and
look
at
the
darkness
behind
your
eyelids
and
of
course
you
invoke
it
through
the
wish
to
have
it
come
to
you
these
are
things
as
simple
as
they
can
just
stop
fidgeting
long
enough
to
see
it
so
that
so
my
idea
of
that
as
evil
is
anything
which
trivializes
a mystery
would be
evil
and since
this is
a mystery
any
dismissing
of it
or
constantly
taking it
at low
doses
for
hedonic
purposes
I mean
there's nothing
wrong
with that
but that's
not the
whole story
and nobody
should
think
that that
gives you
a pedestal
from which
to speak
about it
you really
have to
do these
heroic
amounts
and
integrate
them
this is
something I
haven't even
talked about
in this
interview
but these
things are
very state
bounded
a term
which
Roland
Fisher
in fact
coined
that simply
means
that they're
very hard
to retain
and remember
what exactly
happened
at the
peak of
the flash
and you
come down
and you
say
well it
was very
strange
there was
information
there were
entities
but I
just can't
get back
to it
the way
to overcome
that
is to be
as psychedelic
in your down
life
as possible
and by
psychedelic
I mean
ideas
cognitive
activities
you should
dance
you should
read
you should
think
you should
paint
you should
sculpt
you should
converse
you should
constantly
involve yourself
in cognitive
activities
because
taking these
drugs
is one
of the major
cognitive
activities
and then
if you
have
a grip
on human
history
where the
human enterprise
has been
where it's
going
if you
have been
many
places
it's
easier
to map
I'm
reminded
of
there's
an
alchemical
aphorism
I think
it's
attributed
to
Athanasius
Krishna
where he
says
the oldest
books
the farthest
countries
the deepest
forests
the highest
mountains
this is
where you
must seek
the stone
and what
he means
is you
must simply
acquire
experience
because
it is
only in
the
acquisition
of
acquired
experiences
that you
have a
reservoir
to draw
on
when you
seek to
make
metaphors
and
analogies
about
the
alien
thing
when you
invoke
the god
then you
can map
back onto
it and say
well
it's like
this
it's like
that
knowing
that it
is not
that
or
this
but
the fund
of analogies
is there
to give
you a
grip on
so there's
an obligation
to experience
deeply
and richly
and thoroughly
and intellectually
and then
you can map
back onto
it
but it's a
dialogue
between
you and
it
where you
are discovering
new things
about yourself
and it
and
trying
to
trying to resolve the question, are we the same thing?
And I haven't resolved the question.
My suspicions flow one way and then another way, but I think it is without a doubt a living
mystery existing in the presence, available to anyone sincere enough to seek it.
And for me, that was a life-transforming discovery and revelation, because I didn't
believe there were any mysteries, I believe there may have been once, but to discover one
right in our midst, and it cannot be reduced, it cannot be pulled apart into its constituent
functions, it is truly a unitary mystery, and it's accessible in our lives right now, without
kneeling at anybody's feet, without following any regimen of denial or the assimilation of
any belief system.
And this is very big news, I think.
The mystery has always been there, I'm sure, but our society is so bizarre and has led us
so far astray that we have to rediscover it, and this process is happening.
This is what the twentieth century is all about, and we are still tip-toeing at the edge of it,
even though great men, great women, great mappers of consciousness have come and gone, we are
still at the very infancy of this thing.
And it calls out to us, it beckons, it says, do more, see more, know more, and be more a part
of it.
Well, you know, during your talk, I thought about one experience a reader and I had in
India when we were in the phantom caves.
We were looking at the lingam, and you know, when we would look out of the caves, you could
see across the bay, you could see an atomic plant.
And these two things just look really identical.
Well, the mushroom, could any symbol be more appropriate of the ambiguity of human transformation?
What mushroom is it that grows at the end of history?
Is it stropharia cubensis, or is it the creation of Edward Teller?
This is an unresolved problem.
It's supposed to go on for another 20 minutes or so, or at least 10 minutes.
But anyway, I just put all my records away.
We'll figure something out here.
Something's happening.
KPFK, Los Angeles.
We've just been listening to a talk by Terence McKenna, M-C-K-E-N-N-A.
And this was entitled, the interview was entitled, Psilocybin and the Sands of Time, which took
place at Esalen in December of last year, December 1982.
If you are interested in this tape, or other Terence McKenna material, or any allied material,
you can contact Dolphin Tapes, Post Office Box 71, Big Sur, California, 93920.
That's Dolphin Tapes, Post Office Box 71, Big Sur, California, 93920.
He has a book, and as I remember, although nobody has it in stock, it's called Invisible Landscapes.