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I am most pleased and most happy to introduce our very special guest speaker tonight, Mr. Terence McKinney.

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It's a pleasure to be here. It's wonderful to see so many familiar faces and so many faces, period.

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I've never been to Port Hueneme before. Probably some of you feel the same way.

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But I've been doing a lot of traveling recently. I was in New York last weekend at the Open Center and in Prague two weeks before that.

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So this is the end of a long season of traveling. I'm not home yet, but at least I'm in my own time zone.

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I want to especially thank Andy Voth and the Carnegie Museum of Art in Oxnard for

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inviting me to participate. It represents a real commitment to free speech and First Amendment

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rights, I think, for an art museum. Art museums have been taking some knocks recently, and so I

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think they doubly should be commended for their courage. And I want to explain, as Andy mentioned,

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this is a benefit for botanical dimensions, which explains the

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difference between the two. And I want to explain, as Andy mentioned, this is a benefit for botanical dimensions,

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which explains the difference between the two. And I want to explain, as Andy mentioned,

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this is a benefit for botanical dimensions, which explains the difference between the two.

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That's a double price over the ticket. All of this money will go to the preservation of medicinal plants

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with a history of shamanic usage. That is the special focus

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of our botanical garden in Hawaii. And before I start the formal lecture, I'd like

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to just say a little bit about that. As you know, the rain forest of the world are being cleared out of

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very frightening rate. And perhaps voices are beginning to be heard to halt this destruction

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of the natural environment. But whether it's halted or not, the destruction of the knowledge

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of native peoples concerning the uses of the plants in the rainforest, this is disappearing

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without doubt in the next 30 years, because these people are moving into cities, taking jobs in the

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ordinary market economy, and thousands of years of accumulated folk medical knowledge is being lost.

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So the real world political work that Kat and I do is associated with botanical dimensions.

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We conceived it together many, many years ago. And then about six years ago, Kat took it over, put it on its

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official feet, made it a non-profit foundation, and has run it day to day since then with tremendous energy

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and efficiency. So I'd like to acknowledge Kat McKenna here, my better half. In fact, my only good half.

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And then I wanted to underscore what Andy said, a very special event two weeks from now at the Carnegie Museum.

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Roy Tuckman, Roy of Hollywood, bon vivant, counter-cultural figure, informational ferret of our time,

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will be recast as an experimental composer of great energy and imagination.

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Thank you.

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And I hope you'll all turn out for Roy. He's been a wonderful force in my life, and I think in the cultural life of Southern California.

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Both Roy and Diane have done a wonderful job in raising the quality of public dialogue in Southern California,

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which I think is a precondition for any kind of clear thinking about our future or our political situation.

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So, here's to Roy and Diane.

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Okay. Well, the theme that unites these lectures is creativity and the techniques by which the artist can refine his or her vision,

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expand the vision, communicate the vision.

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And...

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Before I get into that issue, I thought I would talk just a little bit about my notion of creativity per se.

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What is it in and of itself?

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And when I think like that, of course, I cast my mind back to nature.

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Nature is the great visible engine of creativity.

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Against which all other creative efforts are measured.

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And creativity in nature has a curious distribution.

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It's something which accumulates through time.

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If we stand back and look at the universe, we see that at its earliest moments, it was very simple.

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It was a plenum.

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It was without characters or characteristics.

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It was what in Hindu mythology is called the turaya, which is described as attributeless.

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And naturally, if something is without attribution, you can't say much about it.

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It takes a while for it to undergo a declension into more creative realms.

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And these creative realms are distinguished as domains of difference.

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The precondition for creativity is, I think, disequilibrium.

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What mathematicians now call chaos.

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And through the life of the universe, as temperatures have fallen,

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more and more complex compound structures have arisen.

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And though there's been many a slipping back in this process,

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over very large spans of time, we can say that creativity is conserved.

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That the universe becomes more creative.

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And out of that state of creative fecundity, more creativity is manifest.

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So that from that point of view, the universe is almost what we would have to call an art-making machine.

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An engine for the production of ever more novel forms of connectedness.

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Ever more exotic juxtapositions of disparate elements.

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And out of this, I believe, arises implicitly,

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a set of principles that we can then apply to the human artist in the human world.

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Nature's creativity is obviously the wellspring of human creativity.

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We emerge out of nature.

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Almost, and this idea, I think, was fairly present close to the surface of the medieval mind.

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We emerge out of nature.

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Almost as its finest work of art.

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The medieval mind spoke of the productions of nature.

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This is a phrase you hear as late as the 18th century.

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The productions of nature.

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And human creativity emerges out of that.

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Whether you have a model of the Aristotelian great ladder of being,

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or a more modern evolution.

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Or an evolutionary view where we actually consolidate emergent properties

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and somehow bring them to a focus of self-reflection.

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Now, I'm sure that we couldn't carry out a discussion of this sort

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without observing that the prototypic figure for the artist,

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as well as for the scientist,

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is the shaman.

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The shaman is the figure at the beginning of human history

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that unites the doctor, the scientist, and the artist

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into a single notion of caregiving and creativity.

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And I think that, you know, to whatever degree art,

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over the past several centuries, has wandered in the desert,

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it is because this shamanic function has been either suppressed or forgotten.

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And different images of the artist have been held up at different times.

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The artist as artisan,

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the artist as handmaiden of a room,

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the handmaiden of a ruling class or family,

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the artist as designer for the production of integrated objects into a civilization.

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This notion of the artist as mystical journeyer,

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as one who goes into a world unseen by others,

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and then returns to tell them of it,

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was pretty much lost in the post-medieval and renaissance conception of art

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up until the late 19th century or early 20th century,

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where, beginning with the Romantics,

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there is a new permission to explore the irrational.

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This really is the bridge,

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the bridge back to the archaic shamanic function of the artist.

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Permission to explore the irrational.

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The Romantics did it with their elevation of titanic emotion.

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Romantic love, specifically.

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The Symbolists, in the mid-19th century,

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did it by a re-emphasis

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on the emotional content of the image

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and a rejection of the previous rationalism.

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And that emphasis on the image and on the emotions

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set the stage then for what I take to be

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the truly shamanic movements in art,

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which begin really with Alfred Jarry

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in the late 1880s and early 1890s.

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Jarry, you may remember,

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was the founder of something called

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the Ecole du Pathophysique,

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the pathophysical college.

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Jarry announced pathophysics is the science.

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The problem was nobody could understand

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what it meant or what it stood for,

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including Jarry.

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Jarry was tight with L'Entremont,

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who, you may recall, said,

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I am fascinated with that kind of beauty

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that arises when a sewing machine

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meets a bicycle on an operating table.

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See, this was a true effort

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to bend the boundaries of art,

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to create new permission,

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permission really for the unthinkable.

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And this, again,

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reinforces the shamanic function.

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What do we mean when we say the unthinkable?

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We mean the envelope of that

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which can be conceived.

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And for at least 200 years,

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the ostensible mission of the artist

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has been to test the conceptual

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and imagistic envelope

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of what the society is willing to tolerate.

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And this has taken many forms.

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The deconstruction of imagery

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that we get with abstract expressionism,

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going back into impressionism

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and the pointillists,

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or the permission for the irrational imagery

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of the unconscious.

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Surrealism and German Expressionism

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make use of this permission.

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Always the idea being

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to somehow destroy the idols of the tribe,

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dissolve the conceptual boundary

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of ordinary expectation.

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Well, in order to do this,

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it seems to me,

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there is a precondition

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for the creation of art,

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which I call understanding.

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And I don't mean this

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in an intellectual sense.

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I mean it in the sense

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that Alfred North Whitehead

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intended when he defined understanding

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as the apperception of pattern as such.

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As such.

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There's nothing more to it than that.

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You see, if we were to look at this room

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and we were to squint our eyes,

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and I'm doing this right now

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and I see that the room divides itself

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into people dressed in red

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and people dressed in blue,

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this is a pattern.

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And it tells me something

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about what I'm looking at.

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Now I shift my depth of field.

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Now I'm looking at where men are sitting

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and where women are sitting.

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This is a different pattern

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and it tells me more

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about what I am looking at.

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The number of these patterns,

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theoretically present

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in any construction,

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is infinite.

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That says to me then

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that the depth of understanding

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cannot be known.

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It cannot be known.

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Everything is imminent.

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William Blake makes this point, you know,

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that you can see infinity

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in a grain of sand.

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So understanding then

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is the precondition

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for creativity.

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And this understanding

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is not so much intellectual

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as it is visual.

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Visual.

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And in thinking about this,

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I realized

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what an influence upon my own ideas

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in this area

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Aldous Huxley was.

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Not the Huxley that we might

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ordinarily associate

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with my concerns,

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the Huxley of the doors of perception

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and heaven and hell,

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but the Huxley of a very modest book

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that he wrote in the early 50s

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called The Art of Seeing.

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The Art of Seeing.

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And in that book,

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he makes the point

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that a good art education

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begins with a good drawing hand.

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That to be able to coordinate

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the hand and eye

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and to see into nature,

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to see into the patterns present as such

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is the precondition

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for a kind of approach

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to the absolute.

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Now out of this process

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of seeing,

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which I'm calling understanding,

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the creative process

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ushers in novelty.

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And many of you have heard me speak of novelty

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in another context.

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In the context of nature

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as a novelty producing engine

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of some sort.

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And ourselves almost as

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the handiwork of nature.

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But this same handiwork of nature

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which we represent,

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we also internalize

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and re-express

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through the novelty

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of the human world.

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Well now,

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if we take seriously

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the shamanic model

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as a basis for authentic art,

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then certainly

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in the modern context,

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what we see missing

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from the repertoire

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of the artist

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are shamanic techniques.

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And it's for the discussion

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of these shamanic techniques

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I believe

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that I was brought here

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this evening.

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So I want you to cast your mind back

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to a great seminal moment,

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germinal moment

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in the history of human thought

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which was about 25,000 years ago

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when the great glaciers

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that had covered most

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of the Eurasian land mass

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began to melt.

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And human populations

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that had been islanded

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from each other

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for about 15 millennia

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began to re-contact each other

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and reconnect.

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And out of this comes

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what is called

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the Magdalenian Revolution

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from 18,000 to 22,000 years ago.

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And what it is,

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is nothing less than

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a tremendous explosion

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of creativity

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and aesthetic self-expression

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on the part of the human species.

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We find

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for the first time

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bone and antler technology

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takes its place

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along with stone technology.

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Musical instruments appear

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over a wide area.

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And cave paintings,

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some paintings in areas and recesses

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so remote from the surface of the ground

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that it takes several hours

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to reach them,

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are painted and set up

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in dramatic tableaus

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specifically designed

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to bring together

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sound, light, and dance

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in hierophanies,

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extravaganzas of aesthetic output

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that invoke

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a kind of transcendent other

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that human beings

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for the first time

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are trying to come to grips with

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and make some kind

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of cultural statement about.

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And this pulling into matter,

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of the ideas

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of human beings,

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first, you know,

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in the forms of

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beadwork

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and chipped stone

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and carved bone,

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within 20,000 years,

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ushers into the kinds of

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high civilizations

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that we see around us

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and points us toward

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the kind of extraplanetary

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mega civilization

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that we can feel

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operating on our own present

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like a kind of great attractor.

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Now, this whole

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intellectual adventure

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in exteriorization

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of ideas

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is entirely

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an aesthetic adventure

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until very recently

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utility is only

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a secondary consideration.

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The real notion

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is a kind of

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seizure

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by the tremendum,

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by the other,

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which then forces us

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to take up matter,

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clay, bone, flint,

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and put it through

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a mental process

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where we then excrete it

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as objects that have

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lodged within them ideas.

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This seems to be

23:31.540 --> 23:33.540
the special, unique,

23:33.540 --> 23:35.540
transcendental function

23:35.540 --> 23:37.540
of the human animal,

23:37.540 --> 23:38.540
is the production

23:38.540 --> 23:39.540
and condensation

23:39.540 --> 23:41.540
of ideas.

23:41.540 --> 23:43.540
And what made it possible

23:43.540 --> 23:46.540
for the human animal

23:46.540 --> 23:49.540
is language.

23:49.540 --> 23:51.540
If you're seeking

23:51.540 --> 23:52.540
the thumbprint

23:52.540 --> 23:54.540
of the transcendental

23:54.540 --> 23:59.540
on the myriad phenomena

23:59.540 --> 24:00.540
that compose life

24:00.540 --> 24:02.540
on this planet,

24:02.540 --> 24:03.540
to my mind,

24:03.540 --> 24:04.540
the place to look

24:04.540 --> 24:06.540
is human language.

24:06.540 --> 24:08.540
Human language represents

24:08.540 --> 24:10.540
an ontological break

24:10.540 --> 24:12.540
of major magnitude

24:12.540 --> 24:14.540
with anything else going on

24:14.540 --> 24:16.540
on this planet.

24:16.540 --> 24:17.540
I mean, yes,

24:17.540 --> 24:18.540
bees dance

24:18.540 --> 24:20.540
and dolphins squeak

24:20.540 --> 24:21.540
and chimpanzees

24:21.540 --> 24:22.540
do what they do,

24:22.540 --> 24:25.540
but it's a hell of a step

24:25.540 --> 24:27.540
from there to

24:27.540 --> 24:29.540
Wallace Stevens,

24:29.540 --> 24:32.540
let alone William Shakespeare.

24:32.540 --> 24:34.540
Language,

24:34.540 --> 24:36.540
is the unique province

24:36.540 --> 24:38.540
of human beings.

24:38.540 --> 24:39.540
And language

24:39.540 --> 24:41.540
is the unique tool

24:41.540 --> 24:43.540
of the artist.

24:43.540 --> 24:45.540
The artist is

24:45.540 --> 24:46.540
the person

24:46.540 --> 24:48.540
of language.

24:48.540 --> 24:49.540
And I've,

24:49.540 --> 24:50.540
you know,

24:50.540 --> 24:51.540
given a lot of thought

24:51.540 --> 24:54.540
to this because

24:54.540 --> 24:58.270
the work that I've done

24:58.270 --> 25:00.270
with psilocybin mushrooms

25:00.270 --> 25:03.270
and the observations

25:03.270 --> 25:05.270
of psychedelic plant use

25:05.270 --> 25:07.270
in the Amazon

25:07.270 --> 25:10.270
centered around ayahuasca,

25:10.270 --> 25:12.270
lead me to the conclusion

25:12.270 --> 25:14.270
that it is the synergy

25:14.270 --> 25:16.270
and catalysis

25:16.270 --> 25:18.270
of language

25:18.270 --> 25:20.270
that lies behind

25:20.270 --> 25:22.270
not only the emergence

25:22.270 --> 25:24.270
of human consciousness

25:24.270 --> 25:26.270
out of animal organization,

25:26.270 --> 25:29.270
but then its ability

25:29.270 --> 25:31.270
to set a course

25:31.270 --> 25:33.270
for a transcendental dimension

25:33.270 --> 25:35.270
and pursue that course

25:35.270 --> 25:38.270
against all the vicissitudes

25:38.270 --> 25:40.270
of biology and history

25:40.270 --> 25:44.270
over 10 or 15,000 years.

25:44.270 --> 25:47.270
Language has made us

25:47.270 --> 25:48.270
more than a group

25:48.270 --> 25:51.270
of pack hunting monkeys.

25:51.270 --> 25:52.270
It's made us a group

25:52.270 --> 25:53.270
of pack hunting monkeys

25:53.270 --> 25:55.270
with a dream.

25:55.270 --> 26:04.060
Out from that dream

26:04.060 --> 26:07.060
has given us

26:07.060 --> 26:10.060
our glory and our shame,

26:10.060 --> 26:11.060
our weaponry,

26:11.060 --> 26:13.060
our technology,

26:13.060 --> 26:15.060
our art,

26:15.060 --> 26:16.060
our hopes,

26:16.060 --> 26:18.060
our fears.

26:18.060 --> 26:20.060
All of this arises

26:20.060 --> 26:22.060
out of our own ability

26:22.060 --> 26:24.060
to articulate

26:24.060 --> 26:26.060
and to communicate

26:26.060 --> 26:27.060
with each other.

26:27.060 --> 26:28.060
And I use this

26:28.060 --> 26:29.060
in the broadest sense.

26:29.060 --> 26:30.060
I mean, for me,

26:30.060 --> 26:33.060
the glory of the human animal

26:33.060 --> 26:36.060
is cognitive activity,

26:36.060 --> 26:40.060
song, dance, sculpture,

26:40.060 --> 26:44.060
poetry,

26:44.060 --> 26:47.060
all of these cognitive activities.

26:47.060 --> 26:50.060
When we participate in them,

26:50.060 --> 26:52.060
we cross out of the domain

26:52.060 --> 26:54.060
of animal organization

26:54.060 --> 26:57.060
and into the domain

26:57.060 --> 27:00.060
of a genuine relationship

27:00.060 --> 27:02.060
to the transcendent.

27:02.060 --> 27:05.060
As you know, shamans,

27:05.060 --> 27:08.060
in all times and places,

27:08.060 --> 27:10.060
gain their power

27:10.060 --> 27:12.060
through relationships

27:12.060 --> 27:14.060
with helping spirits,

27:14.060 --> 27:17.060
which they sometimes call ancestors,

27:17.060 --> 27:19.060
sometimes call nature spirits.

27:19.060 --> 27:21.060
But somehow,

27:21.060 --> 27:22.060
the acquisition

27:22.060 --> 27:24.060
of a relationship

27:24.060 --> 27:27.060
to a disincarnate intelligence

27:27.060 --> 27:29.060
is the precondition

27:29.060 --> 27:31.060
for authentic shamanism.

27:31.060 --> 27:35.060
Now, nowhere in our world

27:35.060 --> 27:38.060
do we have an institution like that

27:38.060 --> 27:40.060
that we do not consider

27:40.060 --> 27:42.060
pathological,

27:42.060 --> 27:45.060
except in the now

27:45.060 --> 27:49.060
very thinly spread tradition

27:49.060 --> 27:51.060
of the muse

27:51.060 --> 27:53.060
that artists,

27:53.060 --> 27:55.060
alone among human beings,

27:55.060 --> 27:57.060
are given permission

27:57.060 --> 27:59.060
to talk in terms of

27:59.060 --> 28:02.060
my inspiration

28:02.060 --> 28:05.060
or a voice which told me to do this

28:05.060 --> 28:08.060
or a vision

28:08.060 --> 28:10.060
that must be realized

28:10.060 --> 28:12.060
or realized.

28:12.060 --> 28:15.060
The thin line,

28:15.060 --> 28:17.060
the thin thread

28:17.060 --> 28:19.060
of shamanic descent

28:19.060 --> 28:22.060
into our profane world

28:22.060 --> 28:24.060
leads through

28:24.060 --> 28:27.060
the office of the artist.

28:27.060 --> 28:28.060
And so,

28:28.060 --> 28:30.060
if society

28:30.060 --> 28:32.060
is to somehow

28:32.060 --> 28:34.060
take hold of itself

28:34.060 --> 28:37.060
at this penultimate moment,

28:37.060 --> 28:39.060
as we literally waver

28:39.060 --> 28:42.060
on the brink of planetary extinction,

28:42.060 --> 28:44.060
then the artist,

28:44.060 --> 28:46.060
like Ariadne,

28:46.060 --> 28:48.060
following her thread

28:48.060 --> 28:50.060
out of the labyrinth,

28:50.060 --> 28:52.060
is going to have to follow

28:52.060 --> 28:54.060
this shamanic thread

28:54.060 --> 28:56.060
back through time.

28:56.060 --> 28:57.060
And you know,

28:57.060 --> 28:59.060
one of the most disempowering things

28:59.060 --> 29:01.060
that has been done to us

29:01.060 --> 29:03.060
by the male dominant culture

29:03.060 --> 29:08.060
is to brush out

29:08.060 --> 29:10.060
our footprints

29:10.060 --> 29:12.060
into the past.

29:12.060 --> 29:14.060
We don't have a clue

29:14.060 --> 29:16.060
as to how we got here.

29:16.060 --> 29:19.060
Most people can't think further back

29:19.060 --> 29:22.060
than the first Nixon administration,

29:22.060 --> 29:24.060
let alone,

29:24.060 --> 29:25.060
you know,

29:25.060 --> 29:27.060
the arrival of the Vikings,

29:27.060 --> 29:29.060
the fall of Catalhoyuk,

29:29.060 --> 29:31.060
the melting of the glaciers,

29:31.060 --> 29:33.060
so forth and so on.

29:33.060 --> 29:36.060
We have been disempowered

29:36.060 --> 29:37.060
by

29:37.060 --> 29:39.060
a rational tendency

29:39.060 --> 29:41.060
to deny

29:41.060 --> 29:43.060
our irrational roots,

29:43.060 --> 29:45.060
which are a kind of embarrassment

29:45.060 --> 29:46.060
to science,

29:46.060 --> 29:48.060
because science is

29:48.060 --> 29:50.060
the special province

29:50.060 --> 29:52.060
of the ego,

29:52.060 --> 29:54.060
and magic and art

29:54.060 --> 29:56.060
are the special province

29:56.060 --> 29:58.060
of something else.

29:58.060 --> 30:00.060
I could name it, but I won't.

30:00.060 --> 30:02.060
It prefers to be

30:02.060 --> 30:04.060
unnamed, I think.

30:04.060 --> 30:06.060
So,

30:06.060 --> 30:08.060
how seriously then

30:08.060 --> 30:10.060
are we to take

30:10.060 --> 30:12.060
this,

30:12.060 --> 30:15.060
I'll call it an obligation,

30:15.060 --> 30:18.060
to follow the shamanic thread

30:18.060 --> 30:20.060
back into time?

30:20.060 --> 30:21.060
Well,

30:21.060 --> 30:25.060
I think that it is

30:25.060 --> 30:28.060
a matter of saving our own souls,

30:28.060 --> 30:31.060
that this is the real challenge.

30:31.060 --> 30:32.060
You know,

30:32.060 --> 30:35.060
I love to dig at the yogans

30:35.060 --> 30:38.060
by saying nobody ever went into an ashram

30:38.060 --> 30:41.060
with their knees knocking in fear

30:41.060 --> 30:43.060
over the tremendous dimension

30:43.060 --> 30:45.060
they know they were about to enter

30:45.060 --> 30:48.060
through meditation.

30:48.060 --> 30:50.060
Still truer

30:50.060 --> 30:52.060
and more sad,

30:52.060 --> 30:53.060
still more true

30:53.060 --> 30:55.060
and more sad

30:55.060 --> 30:58.060
is the notion that very few of us

30:58.060 --> 31:00.060
pick up our sculpting tools

31:00.060 --> 31:02.060
or our airbrush

31:02.060 --> 31:04.060
with our knees knocking with fear

31:04.060 --> 31:07.060
because we know we are

31:07.060 --> 31:09.060
invoking

31:09.060 --> 31:11.060
and acting with the muse

31:11.060 --> 31:13.060
at our elbow.

31:13.060 --> 31:15.060
And somehow I think the artists

31:15.060 --> 31:17.060
need to recover

31:17.060 --> 31:24.100
this sense of mystery.

31:24.100 --> 31:26.100
One of the most depressing things to me

31:26.100 --> 31:28.100
about the art scene,

31:28.100 --> 31:30.100
and I had a chance to reconnect with this

31:30.100 --> 31:32.100
because I was just in New York,

31:32.100 --> 31:34.100
is

31:34.100 --> 31:39.100
it now has a kind of directionless quality.

31:39.100 --> 31:41.100
You can go into a gallery

31:41.100 --> 31:45.100
and you cannot tell whether it is 1990,

31:45.100 --> 31:49.100
1980, 1970, or 1960

31:49.100 --> 31:54.100
because a kind of eschatological malaise

31:54.100 --> 31:57.100
has settled over art.

31:57.100 --> 31:59.100
All notion

31:59.100 --> 32:01.100
of any forward movement

32:01.100 --> 32:04.100
toward a transcendental ideal

32:04.100 --> 32:06.100
has been put aside

32:06.100 --> 32:09.100
for the exploration

32:09.100 --> 32:13.100
of idiosyncratic vision.

32:13.100 --> 32:15.100
And I grant you

32:15.100 --> 32:18.100
this is a tension

32:18.100 --> 32:20.100
and perhaps in the question period

32:20.100 --> 32:22.100
we can talk about this.

32:22.100 --> 32:24.100
There is a tension

32:24.100 --> 32:26.100
between the individual vision

32:26.100 --> 32:30.100
and the notion of an attractor

32:30.100 --> 32:33.100
or a collective vision.

32:34.100 --> 32:36.100
Which wants to be expressed.

32:36.100 --> 32:37.100
But to my mind

32:37.100 --> 32:40.100
this is the same dichotomous tension

32:40.100 --> 32:43.100
that haunts the individual

32:43.100 --> 32:47.100
in his or her relationship to Tao.

32:47.100 --> 32:52.100
You know we don't want to be lost in ego

32:52.100 --> 32:54.100
but on the other hand

32:54.100 --> 32:56.100
if we completely express the Tao

32:56.100 --> 32:58.100
we have no sense of self.

32:58.100 --> 33:01.100
The ideal seems to be

33:01.100 --> 33:03.100
a kind of coincidencia appositorum.

33:03.100 --> 33:05.100
A kind of literalizing

33:05.100 --> 33:07.100
of a paradox

33:07.100 --> 33:09.100
where what we have

33:09.100 --> 33:11.100
is Tao

33:11.100 --> 33:14.100
but we perceive it as ego.

33:14.100 --> 33:17.100
And in the application of this notion

33:17.100 --> 33:18.100
to the art problem

33:18.100 --> 33:19.100
I would say

33:19.100 --> 33:21.100
what we need is a situation

33:21.100 --> 33:24.100
where schooling

33:24.100 --> 33:26.100
if you want to put it that way

33:26.100 --> 33:28.100
or a tendency toward a coherent vision

33:28.100 --> 33:30.100
expressed by many artists

33:30.100 --> 33:32.100
is spontaneous.

33:32.100 --> 33:35.100
Each artist imagines

33:35.100 --> 33:38.100
that they are pursuing their own vision.

33:38.100 --> 33:40.100
Yet obviously

33:40.100 --> 33:43.100
they are in the grip of an archetype

33:43.100 --> 33:46.100
which is rising through the medium

33:46.100 --> 33:48.100
of the unconscious.

33:48.100 --> 33:51.100
Now the last time we saw this in American art

33:51.100 --> 33:53.100
was in abstract expressionism.

33:53.100 --> 33:57.100
Which was probably in terms of the values

33:57.100 --> 34:01.100
in terms of tension

34:01.100 --> 34:07.100
and the amount of emotional gain

34:07.100 --> 34:11.100
between one artistic moment and another.

34:11.100 --> 34:14.100
The break between abstract expressionism

34:14.100 --> 34:16.100
and what preceded it

34:16.100 --> 34:19.100
was the most radical break in American art

34:19.100 --> 34:21.100
in this century.

34:21.100 --> 34:23.100
Abstract expressionism

34:23.100 --> 34:26.100
actually carried us in

34:26.100 --> 34:28.100
to a confrontation with what

34:28.100 --> 34:30.100
the quantum physicists were telling us.

34:30.100 --> 34:32.100
That the universe is

34:32.100 --> 34:34.100
field upon field

34:34.100 --> 34:37.100
of integrated vibration.

34:37.100 --> 34:39.100
That there is no top level.

34:39.100 --> 34:41.100
There is no bottom level.

34:41.100 --> 34:43.100
That the ordinary structures

34:43.100 --> 34:45.100
of provisional space-time

34:45.100 --> 34:47.100
are simply that.

34:47.100 --> 34:50.100
That if we can rise out

34:50.100 --> 34:52.100
of the human dimension

34:52.100 --> 34:54.100
then we discover these larger

34:54.100 --> 34:56.100
more integrated dimensions

34:56.100 --> 34:59.100
where mind and nature

34:59.100 --> 35:02.100
somehow interpenetrate each other.

35:02.100 --> 35:04.100
A vision like that

35:04.100 --> 35:06.100
a coherent vision

35:06.100 --> 35:08.100
has yet to announce itself

35:08.100 --> 35:12.100
here in the post-history

35:12.100 --> 35:16.100
pre-apocalypse phase of things.

35:16.100 --> 35:29.120
Well, I guess I have a kind of

35:29.120 --> 35:32.120
reactionary side

35:32.120 --> 35:35.120
when I think about the creative endeavor.

35:35.120 --> 35:38.120
I believe that

35:38.120 --> 35:41.120
the psychedelic experience

35:41.120 --> 35:45.120
as encountered by each of you

35:45.120 --> 35:47.120
in the privacy of your own mind

35:47.120 --> 35:54.120
or as encountered by a pre-literate society

35:54.120 --> 35:56.120
somewhere in the world

35:56.120 --> 35:59.120
that that psychedelic experience

35:59.120 --> 36:01.120
is in a way

36:01.120 --> 36:03.120
the Rosetta Stone

36:03.120 --> 36:06.120
not only for

36:06.120 --> 36:08.120
understanding the

36:08.120 --> 36:10.120
encryption

36:10.120 --> 36:13.120
that our own lives represent

36:13.120 --> 36:15.120
each to ourselves

36:15.120 --> 36:17.120
but it's also

36:17.120 --> 36:19.120
a Rosetta Stone

36:19.120 --> 36:21.120
for encoding

36:21.120 --> 36:24.120
the historical experience.

36:24.120 --> 36:27.720
Art is

36:27.720 --> 36:29.720
this endeavor

36:29.720 --> 36:30.720
to leave

36:30.720 --> 36:32.720
the animal domain

36:32.720 --> 36:34.720
behind

36:34.720 --> 36:35.720
to create

36:35.720 --> 36:37.720
another dimension

36:37.720 --> 36:38.720
orthogonal

36:38.720 --> 36:40.720
to the concerns

36:40.720 --> 36:45.720
of ordinary history.

36:45.720 --> 36:48.720
And this orthogonal domain

36:48.720 --> 36:49.720
to my mind

36:49.720 --> 36:50.720
is

36:50.720 --> 36:52.720
glimpsed

36:52.720 --> 36:53.720
most clearly

36:53.720 --> 36:56.720
in the psychedelic experience.

36:56.720 --> 36:58.720
The psychedelic experience

36:58.720 --> 36:59.720
shows you

36:59.720 --> 37:01.720
more art

37:01.720 --> 37:03.720
in an hour and a half

37:03.720 --> 37:05.720
than the human species

37:05.720 --> 37:06.720
has produced

37:06.720 --> 37:08.720
in fifteen or twenty thousand years.

37:08.720 --> 37:10.720
Now,

37:10.720 --> 37:12.720
this is an incredible claim.

37:12.720 --> 37:14.720
This is why I make it.

37:14.720 --> 37:20.720
The energy barrier

37:20.720 --> 37:22.720
which separates us

37:22.720 --> 37:25.720
from this tremendous repository

37:25.720 --> 37:28.720
of transcendental imagery

37:28.720 --> 37:29.720
is very low.

37:29.720 --> 37:30.720
You know,

37:30.720 --> 37:33.720
it's a matter of a little personal commitment

37:33.720 --> 37:34.720
and

37:34.720 --> 37:36.720
the substances

37:36.720 --> 37:38.720
which make the transition possible.

37:38.720 --> 37:40.720
The perturbation

37:40.720 --> 37:42.720
of brain chemistry

37:42.720 --> 37:44.720
is easily done.

37:44.720 --> 37:46.720
What is not so easily done

37:46.720 --> 37:48.720
is the assimilation

37:48.720 --> 37:50.720
of the consequences

37:50.720 --> 37:52.720
of this act.

37:52.720 --> 37:54.720
Ordinarily,

37:54.720 --> 37:55.720
we assume

37:55.720 --> 37:57.720
that consciousness

37:57.720 --> 37:58.720
is channeled

37:58.720 --> 38:00.720
between

38:00.720 --> 38:02.720
tremendously deep walls

38:02.720 --> 38:04.720
that there is no way

38:04.720 --> 38:07.720
to force

38:07.720 --> 38:10.720
a confrontation

38:10.720 --> 38:11.720
with the other

38:11.720 --> 38:13.720
or the transcendent

38:13.720 --> 38:15.720
or the unconscious.

38:15.720 --> 38:16.720
We tend to assume that,

38:16.720 --> 38:17.720
you know,

38:17.720 --> 38:18.720
we're going to have to do

38:18.720 --> 38:19.720
double duty

38:19.720 --> 38:20.720
at the ashram

38:20.720 --> 38:21.720
for three decades

38:21.720 --> 38:22.720
before you're

38:22.720 --> 38:23.720
vouchsafed

38:23.720 --> 38:24.720
even a glimpse

38:24.720 --> 38:26.720
into these places.

38:26.720 --> 38:29.720
This is not true.

38:29.720 --> 38:31.720
Culture,

38:31.720 --> 38:33.720
and this is my message

38:33.720 --> 38:34.720
to artists

38:34.720 --> 38:35.720
and to anybody else

38:35.720 --> 38:36.720
who cares to notice,

38:36.720 --> 38:38.720
culture

38:38.720 --> 38:40.720
is a plot

38:40.720 --> 38:41.720
against

38:41.720 --> 38:42.720
the expansion

38:42.720 --> 38:44.720
of consciousness.

38:44.720 --> 38:45.720
And this plot

38:45.720 --> 38:48.720
prosecutes its

38:48.720 --> 38:49.720
goals

38:49.720 --> 38:50.720
through

38:50.720 --> 38:52.720
a limiting

38:52.720 --> 38:53.720
of language.

38:53.720 --> 38:55.720
Language

38:55.720 --> 38:57.720
is the battleground

38:57.720 --> 38:58.720
over which

38:58.720 --> 39:00.720
the fight

39:00.720 --> 39:01.720
will take place

39:01.720 --> 39:02.720
because

39:02.720 --> 39:05.720
what we cannot

39:05.720 --> 39:08.720
what we cannot say

39:08.720 --> 39:10.720
we cannot communicate

39:10.720 --> 39:11.720
and by say

39:11.720 --> 39:12.720
I mean

39:12.720 --> 39:13.720
dance,

39:13.720 --> 39:14.720
paint,

39:14.720 --> 39:15.720
sing,

39:15.720 --> 39:16.720
meme.

39:16.720 --> 39:18.720
What we cannot say

39:18.720 --> 39:21.720
we cannot communicate.

39:21.720 --> 39:24.720
We can conceive

39:24.720 --> 39:25.720
of things

39:25.720 --> 39:28.720
that we cannot communicate.

39:28.720 --> 39:29.720
But,

39:29.720 --> 39:30.720
and I think

39:30.720 --> 39:31.720
every one of us here

39:31.720 --> 39:33.720
has done that

39:33.720 --> 39:35.720
and that's a thrilling thing.

39:35.720 --> 39:36.720
That is

39:36.720 --> 39:38.720
the deep homework

39:38.720 --> 39:39.720
that the psychedelic

39:39.720 --> 39:42.720
inner astronaut

39:42.720 --> 39:43.720
sees things

39:43.720 --> 39:45.720
which no human being

39:45.720 --> 39:48.720
has ever seen before

39:48.720 --> 39:50.720
and no human being

39:50.720 --> 39:51.720
will ever see

39:51.720 --> 39:53.720
again.

39:53.720 --> 39:54.720
But in fact

39:54.720 --> 39:56.720
this has no meaning

39:56.720 --> 39:57.720
unless

39:57.720 --> 39:59.720
it is possible

39:59.720 --> 40:01.720
to carry it back

40:01.720 --> 40:04.720
into the collectivity.

40:04.720 --> 40:05.720
And

40:05.720 --> 40:07.720
what motivates me

40:07.720 --> 40:08.720
to talk

40:08.720 --> 40:10.720
to groups like this

40:10.720 --> 40:11.720
is the belief

40:11.720 --> 40:13.720
that we do not have

40:13.720 --> 40:15.720
centuries

40:15.720 --> 40:16.720
of gently

40:16.720 --> 40:17.720
unfolding

40:17.720 --> 40:18.720
time

40:18.720 --> 40:20.720
ahead of us

40:20.720 --> 40:22.720
in which to

40:22.720 --> 40:23.720
you know

40:23.720 --> 40:25.720
gently tease apart

40:25.720 --> 40:26.720
the threads

40:26.720 --> 40:27.720
of the human endeavor

40:27.720 --> 40:28.720
and create

40:28.720 --> 40:30.720
a bright new world.

40:30.720 --> 40:33.720
That's not our circumstance.

40:33.720 --> 40:34.720
This is

40:34.720 --> 40:35.720
a fire

40:35.720 --> 40:36.720
in a madhouse.

40:36.720 --> 40:37.720
And

40:37.720 --> 40:38.720
to get a hold

40:38.720 --> 40:39.720
on the situation

40:39.720 --> 40:40.720
I think

40:40.720 --> 40:41.720
we are going

40:41.720 --> 40:42.720
to have

40:42.720 --> 40:43.720
to force

40:43.720 --> 40:44.720
the issue.

40:44.720 --> 40:45.720
Well,

40:45.720 --> 40:46.720
one way

40:46.720 --> 40:47.720
of forcing

40:47.720 --> 40:48.720
the issue

40:48.720 --> 40:49.720
or

40:49.720 --> 40:50.720
a chemical

40:50.720 --> 40:51.720
definition

40:51.720 --> 40:52.720
of forcing

40:52.720 --> 40:53.720
the issue

40:53.720 --> 40:54.720
when you're

40:54.720 --> 40:55.720
talking about

40:55.720 --> 40:56.720
a chemical reaction

40:56.720 --> 40:57.720
is catalysis.

40:57.720 --> 40:58.720
We want

40:58.720 --> 40:59.720
to catalyze

40:59.720 --> 41:02.260
consciousness.

41:02.260 --> 41:03.260
We want

41:03.260 --> 41:04.260
to move

41:04.260 --> 41:05.260
it forward

41:05.260 --> 41:06.260
in order

41:06.260 --> 41:07.260
to make

41:07.260 --> 41:08.260
it faster

41:08.260 --> 41:09.260
toward its goals

41:09.260 --> 41:10.260
whatever those goals

41:10.260 --> 41:11.260
are.

41:11.260 --> 41:12.260
Well,

41:12.260 --> 41:13.260
I believe

41:13.260 --> 41:14.260
that to the present

41:14.260 --> 41:15.260
moment

41:15.260 --> 41:16.260
language

41:16.260 --> 41:17.260
again in the broadest

41:17.260 --> 41:18.260
sense

41:18.260 --> 41:19.260
speech

41:19.260 --> 41:20.260
dance

41:20.260 --> 41:21.260
musical composition

41:21.260 --> 41:22.260
language

41:22.260 --> 41:23.260
has just been allowed

41:23.260 --> 41:24.260
to grow

41:24.260 --> 41:26.260
like topsy.

41:26.260 --> 41:27.260
It's

41:27.260 --> 41:28.260
been a kind

41:28.260 --> 41:29.260
of

41:29.260 --> 41:30.260
every man

41:30.260 --> 41:31.260
for himself

41:31.260 --> 41:33.260
situation.

41:33.260 --> 41:34.260
Now

41:34.260 --> 41:35.260
what we really need

41:35.260 --> 41:36.260
as we

41:36.260 --> 41:37.260
see ourselves

41:37.260 --> 41:38.260
moving

41:38.260 --> 41:39.260
from one

41:39.260 --> 41:40.260
species

41:40.260 --> 41:41.260
among

41:41.260 --> 41:42.260
tens of

41:42.260 --> 41:43.260
thousands

41:43.260 --> 41:44.260
of species

41:44.260 --> 41:45.260
on this planet

41:45.260 --> 41:46.260
over the past

41:46.260 --> 41:47.260
10,000 years

41:47.260 --> 41:48.260
we have

41:48.260 --> 41:49.260
redefined

41:49.260 --> 41:50.260
ourselves

41:50.260 --> 41:51.260
and now

41:51.260 --> 41:52.260
like it or not

41:52.260 --> 41:53.260
we are

41:53.260 --> 41:54.260
the custodians

41:54.260 --> 41:55.260
of the

41:55.260 --> 41:56.260
destiny

41:56.260 --> 41:57.260
of this

41:57.260 --> 41:58.260
planet.

41:58.260 --> 41:59.260
Our decisions

41:59.260 --> 42:00.260
affect

42:00.260 --> 42:01.260
every life

42:01.260 --> 42:02.260
form

42:02.260 --> 42:03.260
on the planet

42:03.260 --> 42:04.260
and yet

42:04.260 --> 42:05.260
we are still

42:05.260 --> 42:06.260
communicating

42:06.260 --> 42:07.260
with each

42:07.260 --> 42:08.260
other

42:08.260 --> 42:09.260
with the

42:09.260 --> 42:10.260
extremely

42:10.260 --> 42:11.260
precise

42:11.260 --> 42:12.260
medium

42:12.260 --> 42:13.260
of small

42:13.260 --> 42:14.260
mouth noises

42:14.260 --> 42:16.860
mediated

42:16.860 --> 42:17.860
by ignorance

42:17.860 --> 42:18.860
and hate.

42:18.860 --> 42:19.860
This

42:19.860 --> 42:23.060
doesn't

42:23.060 --> 42:24.060
seem

42:24.060 --> 42:25.060
like the way

42:25.060 --> 42:26.060
to do

42:26.060 --> 42:27.060
business

42:27.060 --> 42:28.060
as we

42:28.060 --> 42:29.060
approach

42:29.060 --> 42:30.060
the third

42:30.060 --> 42:31.060
millennium.

42:31.060 --> 42:32.060
So

42:32.060 --> 42:33.060
what

42:33.060 --> 42:34.060
I

42:34.060 --> 42:35.060
what

42:35.060 --> 42:36.060
I'm

42:36.060 --> 42:37.060
hopeful

42:37.060 --> 42:38.060
about

42:38.060 --> 42:39.060
is that

42:39.060 --> 42:40.060
we

42:40.060 --> 42:41.060
will

42:41.060 --> 42:42.060
have

42:42.060 --> 42:43.060
a

42:43.060 --> 42:44.060
new

42:44.060 --> 42:45.060
kind

42:45.060 --> 42:46.060
of

42:46.060 --> 42:47.060
humanity

42:47.060 --> 42:48.060
that

42:48.060 --> 42:49.060
will

42:49.060 --> 42:50.060
take

42:50.060 --> 42:51.060
place

42:51.060 --> 42:52.060
but

42:52.060 --> 42:53.060
there

42:53.060 --> 42:54.060
are

42:54.060 --> 42:55.060
still

42:55.060 --> 42:56.060
a lot

42:56.060 --> 42:57.060
of

42:57.060 --> 42:58.060
decisions

42:58.060 --> 42:59.060
to be

42:59.060 --> 43:00.060
made.

43:00.060 --> 43:01.060
How

43:01.060 --> 43:02.060
violent

43:02.060 --> 43:03.060
shall

43:03.060 --> 43:04.060
this

43:04.060 --> 43:05.060
birth

43:05.060 --> 43:06.060
be?

43:06.060 --> 43:07.060
Most

43:07.060 --> 43:08.060
people

43:08.060 --> 43:09.060
are

43:09.060 --> 43:10.060
afraid

43:10.060 --> 43:11.060
of the

43:11.060 --> 43:12.060
unconscious.

43:12.060 --> 43:13.060
This is

43:13.060 --> 43:14.060
why

43:14.060 --> 43:15.060
you know

43:15.060 --> 43:16.060
you can

43:16.060 --> 43:17.060
have a

43:17.060 --> 43:18.060
psychedelic

43:18.060 --> 43:19.060
compound

43:19.060 --> 43:20.060
like DMT

43:20.060 --> 43:21.060
which is

43:21.060 --> 43:22.060
very much

43:22.060 --> 43:23.060
like ordinary

43:23.060 --> 43:24.060
brain chemistry

43:24.060 --> 43:25.060
appears

43:25.060 --> 43:26.060
completely

43:26.060 --> 43:27.060
physiologically

43:27.060 --> 43:28.060
harmless

43:28.060 --> 43:29.060
only

43:29.060 --> 43:30.060
lasts

43:30.060 --> 43:31.060
10 minutes

43:31.060 --> 43:32.060
extremely

43:32.060 --> 43:33.060
powerful

43:33.060 --> 43:34.060
and generally

43:34.060 --> 43:35.060
in this

43:35.060 --> 43:36.060
society you have no

43:36.060 --> 43:37.060
chance of

43:37.060 --> 43:38.060
dying.

43:38.060 --> 43:39.060
This is

43:39.060 --> 43:40.060
because there

43:40.060 --> 43:41.060
has been

43:41.060 --> 43:42.060
a failure

43:42.060 --> 43:43.060
of moral

43:43.060 --> 43:44.060
courage

43:44.060 --> 43:45.060
and the

43:45.060 --> 43:46.060
failure

43:46.060 --> 43:47.060
of moral

43:47.060 --> 43:48.060
courage

43:48.060 --> 43:49.060
is

43:49.060 --> 43:50.060
perhaps

43:50.060 --> 43:51.060
most

43:51.060 --> 43:52.060
evident

43:52.060 --> 43:53.060
in our

43:53.060 --> 43:54.060
own

43:54.060 --> 43:55.060
community

43:55.060 --> 43:56.060
the

43:56.060 --> 43:57.060
community

43:57.060 --> 43:58.060
of

43:58.060 --> 43:59.060
the

43:59.060 --> 44:00.060
artists.

44:00.060 --> 44:01.060
In a

44:01.060 --> 44:02.060
way

44:02.060 --> 44:03.060
it's

44:03.060 --> 44:04.060
the poets

44:04.060 --> 44:05.060
that

44:05.060 --> 44:06.060
have

44:06.060 --> 44:07.060
not

44:07.060 --> 44:08.060
articulated

44:08.060 --> 44:09.060
an

44:09.060 --> 44:10.060
a

44:10.060 --> 44:11.060
a

44:11.060 --> 44:12.060
a

44:12.060 --> 44:13.060
a

44:13.060 --> 44:14.060
a

44:14.060 --> 44:15.060
a

44:15.060 --> 44:16.060
a

44:16.060 --> 44:17.060
a

44:17.060 --> 44:18.060
a

44:18.060 --> 44:19.060
a

44:19.060 --> 44:20.060
a

44:20.060 --> 44:21.060
a

44:21.060 --> 44:22.060
a

44:22.060 --> 44:23.060
a

44:23.060 --> 44:24.060
a

44:24.060 --> 44:25.060
a

44:25.060 --> 44:26.060
a

44:26.060 --> 44:27.060
a

44:27.060 --> 44:28.060
a

44:28.060 --> 44:29.060
a

44:29.060 --> 44:30.060
a

44:30.060 --> 44:31.060
a

44:31.060 --> 44:32.060
a

44:32.060 --> 44:33.060
a

44:33.060 --> 44:34.060
a

44:34.060 --> 44:35.060
a

44:35.060 --> 44:36.060
a a

44:36.060 --> 44:37.060
a moral

44:37.060 --> 44:38.060
vision.

44:38.060 --> 44:39.060
The moral

44:39.060 --> 44:40.060
vision

44:40.060 --> 44:41.060
must

44:41.060 --> 44:42.060
come

44:42.060 --> 44:43.060
from the

44:43.060 --> 44:44.060
unconscious.

44:44.060 --> 44:45.060
It doesn't

44:45.060 --> 44:46.060
have to

44:46.060 --> 44:47.060
do I

44:47.060 --> 44:48.060
believe

44:48.060 --> 44:49.060
with

44:49.060 --> 44:50.060
you know

44:50.060 --> 44:51.060
these

44:51.060 --> 44:52.060
post

44:52.060 --> 44:53.060
meaning

44:53.060 --> 44:54.060
movements

44:54.060 --> 44:55.060
in art

44:55.060 --> 44:56.060
deconstruction

44:56.060 --> 44:57.060
ism

44:57.060 --> 44:58.060
and this

44:58.060 --> 44:59.060
sort of

44:59.060 --> 45:00.060
thing.

45:00.060 --> 45:01.060
I mean

45:01.060 --> 45:02.060
I'm

45:02.060 --> 45:03.060
basically

45:03.060 --> 45:04.060
putting

45:04.060 --> 45:05.060
it

45:05.060 --> 45:06.060
in

45:06.060 --> 45:07.060
a

45:07.060 --> 45:08.060
게

45:08.060 --> 45:09.060
a

45:09.060 --> 45:11.060
catalogue

45:11.060 --> 45:12.060
of

45:12.060 --> 45:13.060
Sarpe

45:13.060 --> 45:14.060
and

45:14.060 --> 45:33.060
al

45:33.060 --> 45:44.360
find the way then the way cannot be found ideology is extremely alien to art

45:45.400 --> 45:51.960
political ideology i mean and if you will but notice it is political ideology that has been

45:51.960 --> 46:01.080
calling the shots for the last seven or eight hundred years we can transcend politics if we

46:01.080 --> 46:10.760
can put some other program in place you cannot transcend politics into a void and i believe that

46:10.760 --> 46:20.760
a world without ideology could be created if what were put in place of ideology were the notion of

46:20.760 --> 46:30.360
the realization of the good the true and the beautiful you know the three-tiered canon of

46:30.360 --> 46:31.000
the platonic

46:31.800 --> 46:42.760
aesthetic the reconnect the notion of the good the true and the beautiful then use psychedelics

46:43.480 --> 46:52.520
to empower the artists to go into this vast dimension that surrounds human history

46:53.560 --> 47:00.120
on all sides to an infinite depth and return from that world

47:00.840 --> 47:01.080
with

47:01.080 --> 47:11.720
a transcendental images that can lift us to a new cultural level the muse is there the dull maps

47:11.720 --> 47:19.480
that rationalism has given us are nothing more than whistling past the graveyard by the bad

47:19.480 --> 47:28.760
little boys of science you only have to avail yourselves of these shamanic tools to rediscover

47:29.480 --> 47:30.440
a nature

47:31.080 --> 47:37.980
which is not mute, as Sartre said in a kind of culmination of the modern viewpoint.

47:38.400 --> 47:39.860
Nature is not mute.

47:39.860 --> 47:49.300
It is man who is deaf, and the way to open our ears, open our eyes,

47:49.560 --> 47:57.620
and reconnect with the intent of a living world is through the psychedelics.

47:57.620 --> 48:08.860
Now, as you know, biology runs on genes, and genes are the units of meaning of heredity.

48:09.960 --> 48:17.120
But we could make a model of the informational environment that is represented by culture,

48:17.360 --> 48:18.800
and in fact this is done.

48:19.240 --> 48:24.600
A word has been invented, meme, M-E-M-E, meme.

48:24.600 --> 48:27.600
A meme is not the smallest unit.

48:27.620 --> 48:28.940
A meme is not the smallest unit of heredity.

48:29.580 --> 48:35.300
A meme is the smallest unit of meaning of an idea.

48:36.220 --> 48:38.620
Ideas are made of memes.

48:40.000 --> 48:45.740
And I think the art community might function with more efficiency

48:45.740 --> 48:51.520
in the production of visionary aesthetic breakthroughs

48:51.520 --> 48:57.520
if we would think of ourselves as an environment modeled after,

48:57.980 --> 49:06.480
the natural environment, where we as artists are attempting to create memes

49:06.480 --> 49:09.940
which enter an environment of other memes,

49:09.940 --> 49:13.300
that are in competition with each other,

49:13.300 --> 49:16.620
and out of this competition of memes,

49:16.620 --> 49:27.080
ever more appropriate, adapted, and suitable ideas can gather.

49:27.760 --> 49:34.440
Link themselves together into higher and higher organisms now in order for this to happen

49:35.400 --> 49:41.060
There is an obligation upon each one of us to carry our ideas

49:41.460 --> 49:49.800
clearly because in the same way that a gene must be copied correctly to be replicated or it will cause some

49:50.600 --> 49:56.520
pathological mutation a meme must be correctly replicated or it will cause a

49:57.300 --> 50:03.020
Pathological mutation for instance. I would say what the Nazis did to Frederick Nietzsche's

50:03.580 --> 50:07.300
Philosophy was a bad cop a miscopied meme

50:08.120 --> 50:10.120
became a toxic

50:10.700 --> 50:15.120
mutation inside a culture so I

50:15.960 --> 50:24.520
Would suggest to the people in this room tonight that you take a good look around at who's here

50:25.480 --> 50:27.060
artistic people

50:27.060 --> 50:33.020
Psychedelic people look pretty much like everybody else out in

50:33.940 --> 50:36.580
Society, but we have come here tonight

50:38.680 --> 50:42.320
Self-selected for our interest in the empowering

50:43.020 --> 50:44.560
capacity of

50:44.560 --> 50:48.560
Psychedelic plants and the empowering capacity of art

50:49.220 --> 50:52.580
so we represent an affinity group a

50:53.600 --> 50:56.080
population with a potential for

50:57.060 --> 50:59.060
a

50:59.060 --> 51:04.040
mutagenic impact on the ideological structures of the rest of society

51:05.200 --> 51:07.200
So look around

51:07.540 --> 51:13.520
Someone here has what you need and if you can only figure out who it is

51:14.220 --> 51:16.220
You can make a novel connection

51:17.300 --> 51:21.860
To move them into a new level of creativity

51:22.860 --> 51:30.140
well, what is this new level of

51:31.220 --> 51:34.520
creativity

51:34.520 --> 51:41.220
Some of you may be familiar with a theme that was very big in medieval religious art, which was

51:42.340 --> 51:44.240
the apocalypse

51:44.240 --> 51:49.360
of Saint John or of somebody there are a number of these

51:50.160 --> 51:52.600
apocalypses and I think that

51:53.820 --> 52:00.780
many of us may come out of a kind of secular background or have not given this kind of a

52:00.780 --> 52:05.180
a religious idea too much consideration

52:05.180 --> 52:08.920
but my

52:08.920 --> 52:12.420
idiosyncratic conclusion

52:12.420 --> 52:17.580
based simply on trying to be honest about the content of the psychedelic

52:17.580 --> 52:18.780
experience

52:18.780 --> 52:22.900
is that human history

52:22.900 --> 52:26.480
really is on a collision course

52:26.480 --> 52:30.780
with a transcendental

52:30.780 --> 52:35.020
object of some sort

52:35.020 --> 52:38.660
it is not going to be business as usual

52:38.660 --> 52:42.340
into the endless unfolding confines

52:42.340 --> 52:46.880
of the future the very fact

52:46.880 --> 52:50.000
that human history is occurring

52:50.000 --> 52:53.780
on this planet the very fact that a primate

52:53.780 --> 52:58.340
has left the ordinary pattern of primate activity

52:58.340 --> 53:00.760
and gone into the business of running

53:00.760 --> 53:07.700
stock markets and uh... molecular biology labs and art museums

53:07.700 --> 53:09.760
indicates to me

53:09.760 --> 53:11.700
the nearby presence

53:11.700 --> 53:13.660
in another dimension

53:13.660 --> 53:14.820
of a kind of

53:14.820 --> 53:18.580
hyper organizing

53:18.580 --> 53:20.380
or what i call

53:20.380 --> 53:22.400
the transcendental object

53:22.400 --> 53:25.700
and i believe that this transcendental object

53:25.700 --> 53:29.640
is casting an enormous shadow

53:29.640 --> 53:30.760
over the human

53:30.760 --> 53:34.000
historical landscape

53:34.000 --> 53:36.040
so that if you're back

53:36.040 --> 53:39.320
in uh... ancient judea

53:39.320 --> 53:41.600
you have an anticipation

53:41.600 --> 53:43.660
of the messiah

53:43.660 --> 53:49.560
if you are at illusus at the height of the practice of the illusinian mysteries

53:49.560 --> 53:50.680
you have

53:50.680 --> 53:53.600
an anticipation

53:53.600 --> 53:55.820
the dark god

53:55.820 --> 53:58.200
these

53:58.200 --> 53:59.240
anticipations

53:59.240 --> 54:00.760
of an unspeakable

54:00.760 --> 54:03.120
transcendent reality

54:03.120 --> 54:05.440
that are always clothed

54:05.440 --> 54:07.920
in the uh...

54:07.920 --> 54:14.080
in the assumptions of the individual artist in the society in which he or she is working

54:14.080 --> 54:15.600
are in fact

54:15.600 --> 54:17.000
genuine

54:17.000 --> 54:20.520
and that you don't have to give your own yourself over

54:20.520 --> 54:22.260
to fundamentalist

54:22.260 --> 54:23.680
religion

54:23.680 --> 54:25.640
to connect

54:25.640 --> 54:26.880
with the fact

54:26.880 --> 54:29.380
that human history is

54:29.380 --> 54:30.000
an adventure

54:30.000 --> 54:31.520
an adventure

54:31.520 --> 54:33.080
and this adventure

54:33.080 --> 54:41.800
has a number of startling reverses and sudden plot shifts that are very difficult to anticipate

54:41.800 --> 54:43.800
and that we are coming up

54:43.800 --> 54:45.500
on one of those

54:45.500 --> 54:47.940
the civilization that was created

54:47.940 --> 54:50.780
out of the collapse of the medieval world

54:50.780 --> 54:52.500
has now

54:52.500 --> 54:53.440
shown

54:53.440 --> 54:55.760
its contradictions to be

54:55.760 --> 54:57.220
unbearable

54:57.220 --> 54:59.400
and though no one of us

54:59.400 --> 55:01.160
knows what the shape of the

55:01.160 --> 55:03.580
new civilization will be

55:03.580 --> 55:05.340
somehow

55:05.340 --> 55:09.480
in the singing of the ayahuasca songs in the rainforest

55:09.480 --> 55:10.780
in the

55:10.780 --> 55:12.260
tremendous

55:12.260 --> 55:17.800
hypermetallic transcendental off planetary flash of psilocybin

55:17.800 --> 55:19.460
in the

55:19.460 --> 55:25.100
teaching of the self transforming machine elves that seem to dwell in the DMT

55:25.100 --> 55:25.900
dimension

55:25.900 --> 55:26.980
we see

55:26.980 --> 55:29.000
that the ordinary linear system

55:29.000 --> 55:38.060
linear expectations of history are breaking down and that the truth of the

55:38.060 --> 55:46.060
eminence of the mystery is breaking through all the structures of denial of

55:46.060 --> 55:53.560
the male dominator paradigm that has been in place so long. The way to make

55:53.560 --> 55:59.920
this birth process smooth, the way to bring it to a conclusion that will not

55:59.920 --> 56:09.280
betray the thousands and thousands of generations of people who who suffered

56:09.280 --> 56:15.760
birth and disease and migration and starvation and lonely death so that we

56:15.760 --> 56:21.220
could sit here this evening, the redeeming of the human enterprise all

56:21.220 --> 56:23.540
lies then in denial.

56:23.560 --> 56:30.940
In helping this thing come to birth and each artist is an antenna to the

56:30.940 --> 56:39.040
transcendental other and as we go with our own history into that thing and then

56:39.040 --> 56:47.500
create a unique confluence of our uniqueness and its uniqueness we

56:47.500 --> 56:53.500
collectively create an arrow, an arrow out of history

56:53.560 --> 57:03.820
out of time perhaps even out of matter that will redeem then the idea that man

57:03.820 --> 57:13.120
is good, redeem the idea that man is good. This is the promise of art and its

57:13.120 --> 57:20.800
fulfillment is never more near than the present moment. Thank you very much.

57:39.810 --> 57:41.890
2006

57:41.890 --> 57:43.990
I think we'll take a ten or fifteen minute break and then we'll come

57:43.990 --> 57:48.810
back and you can ask questions and we'll do that for a little while.

57:50.410 --> 57:54.850
Thank you very very much

57:56.350 --> 58:05.910
so now I'm happy to take questions. Here.

58:05.910 --> 58:06.950
cereal

58:06.950 --> 58:07.570
delilty

58:07.770 --> 58:08.230
41

58:09.050 --> 58:09.530
b

58:09.970 --> 58:11.130
b

58:11.130 --> 58:12.090
b

58:14.530 --> 58:19.530
b

58:21.010 --> 58:50.990
realm, but I never felt not enough sense of personal power to be that antenna that you're saying that ours can be for bringing that to the other, until I became convinced of the existence not only of me within that other realm, but that other realm within me, and perhaps the psychedelic experience prepared me for that second awareness, but perhaps you could comment on how, if possible,

58:50.990 --> 58:58.090
if possible, that second awareness could be more easily accessible in the psychedelic experience.

58:58.430 --> 59:02.250
What do you mean by the second awareness? Say a little more about it.

59:02.550 --> 59:09.430
Of being aware that other realm is something that's also very personal and...

59:09.430 --> 59:19.850
Well, yes, I mean, it seems it's a landscape that begins within the self and seems to extend into the world.

59:20.550 --> 59:20.770
I mean,

59:20.930 --> 59:20.970
we...

59:20.970 --> 59:20.990
I mean,

59:20.990 --> 59:28.910
one of the very puzzling things about the psychedelic experience is that it argues that we are not

59:28.910 --> 59:38.310
atomic individuals running around in some kind of society, but that if you actually drain the

59:38.310 --> 59:50.330
psychic water away, you'll discover that we're all connected at the roots, that it isn't a journey to another world,

59:50.330 --> 59:57.130
it's a journey inward to a world that is already present and there.

59:57.930 --> 01:00:11.050
The astonishing thing is how alienated we are from our own interior, from the interior world, to the point where we can hardly recognize it.

01:00:11.050 --> 01:00:12.050
I mean, the...

01:00:12.910 --> 01:00:20.270
I've talked a lot about the alien nature of the psychedelic experience and how it seems

01:00:20.270 --> 01:00:26.770
to be mappable over something as radical as the UFO experience.

01:00:26.770 --> 01:00:31.990
This is because we truly do not know who we are.

01:00:31.990 --> 01:00:38.990
The past 10,000 years have been so disempowering to us.

01:00:38.990 --> 01:00:44.910
We are really like the children of a dysfunctional relationship.

01:00:44.910 --> 01:00:47.670
We don't...

01:00:47.670 --> 01:00:50.210
We don't know where we have come from.

01:00:50.210 --> 01:00:57.850
It's very hard for us to emotionally connect with the consequences of what we're doing.

01:00:57.850 --> 01:01:05.210
I mean, that really horrifies me that this is a society that loots the future.

01:01:05.210 --> 01:01:10.210
I mean, the symbol of that is devouring of children.

01:01:10.210 --> 01:01:20.190
We literally, for our own comfort in the present moment, are making it very difficult for future generation,

01:01:20.190 --> 01:01:28.590
to contemplate having anything approaching the level of resource availability that we have.

01:01:28.590 --> 01:01:37.290
And this kind of situation could not be tolerated if we had not gone through a tremendous series

01:01:37.290 --> 01:01:45.870
of traumatic, emotionally disemboweling experiences. You know, the Native Americans

01:01:45.870 --> 01:01:57.510
have a litmus test for all activity. Does it serve the children? And so much of what we do

01:01:57.510 --> 01:02:07.370
is so anti-future that it's almost as though the fundamentalist position exists to permit

01:02:07.370 --> 01:02:13.290
the destruction of the environment. I mean, this was perfectly encapsulated by this clown James

01:02:13.290 --> 01:02:15.850
Watt, who was secretary...

01:02:15.850 --> 01:02:22.610
...of the Interior and said, we don't need to expand the national parks because Jesus is coming.

01:02:22.610 --> 01:02:32.410
I mean, this is a mentality so against the grain of the obvious that it has to be looked upon

01:02:32.410 --> 01:02:41.000
as pathological. Another question here in the corner.

01:02:41.000 --> 01:02:41.840
Hello, Karen.

01:02:41.840 --> 01:02:43.160
How are you?

01:02:43.160 --> 01:02:47.700
I've known you for a long time, but you've never met me. I'm one of Roy's night people.

01:02:47.700 --> 01:02:48.740
And...

01:02:48.740 --> 01:02:54.420
I guess, I don't know, I guess I got to preface this remark in saying that I got about a $50,000

01:02:54.420 --> 01:02:59.540
education and three degrees, college degrees, in psychology, but I've never learned anything

01:02:59.540 --> 01:03:02.220
like I've learned from listening to Roy's show.

01:03:13.420 --> 01:03:17.900
In pursuing those degrees, I decided to learn a little bit about it hands-on, so I went

01:03:17.900 --> 01:03:22.700
to work in a middle institution. So it's my misfortune, actually, to be earning my survival

01:03:22.700 --> 01:03:29.100
at this time by working in that capacity. I would like to see psychology take a different direction,

01:03:29.100 --> 01:03:35.300
and I know that what you're talking about provides a focus and a direction for psychology

01:03:35.300 --> 01:03:43.320
to take, which I think would really get close to, I mean, I totally agree with Freud and

01:03:43.320 --> 01:03:48.460
Jung, discovering the psychon just about 100 years ago, but they discovered it at night

01:03:48.460 --> 01:03:56.790
in Santa Fe. How do we get closer to this in this kind of society? That's the first

01:03:56.790 --> 01:04:00.630
part of this question. And the second part of this question, I'm a little bit nervous

01:04:00.630 --> 01:04:02.870
speaking in front of all these people, but...

01:04:02.870 --> 01:04:10.870
The second part of this question has to do with a study that you spoke of in 72, where

01:04:10.870 --> 01:04:19.870
with single-dose administration of LSD alcoholics, we're achieving a 72% success rate, and I

01:04:19.870 --> 01:04:26.580
would like to speak a little bit on the pro-psych and anti-psych.

01:04:26.580 --> 01:04:36.920
Yes, well, thank you for giving me the opportunity to make the point, because in the present

01:04:36.920 --> 01:04:37.920
atmosphere...

01:04:38.020 --> 01:04:39.020
Yes.

01:04:39.020 --> 01:04:49.360
...of hysteria and misinformation, this is too easily run over. It is important to make

01:04:49.360 --> 01:04:57.460
the distinction that what has happened really is that the well of language on this issue

01:04:57.460 --> 01:05:05.500
of consciousness alteration, the well of language has been poisoned, where you cannot make any

01:05:05.500 --> 01:05:09.300
sense if you use the words that have...

01:05:09.300 --> 01:05:10.300
Okay.

01:05:10.300 --> 01:05:17.140
...been granted us to use. I mean, let's take the word drug. You know, we have a drug war,

01:05:17.140 --> 01:05:20.020
but as I drove into town, I noticed a drug store.

01:05:20.020 --> 01:05:30.380
So it's...elt's that we, you know, with that...with that compressed vocabulary, you can't make any

01:05:30.380 --> 01:05:37.280
sense at all of what's going on. So I think what we have to do is make an operational

01:05:37.280 --> 01:05:39.100
argument about drugs.

01:05:39.100 --> 01:05:49.100
drugs and say you know what is it that society finds offensive about drug abuse and then what

01:05:49.100 --> 01:05:57.820
does that have to do with psychedelics well my own analysis of this is that what is uh offensive

01:05:57.820 --> 01:06:11.340
about drug abuse is a unconscious repetitious and demonstrably destructive pattern of behavior

01:06:11.340 --> 01:06:19.020
and whenever you see someone behaving that way everyone feels repulsed and brought down

01:06:19.820 --> 01:06:27.580
and in fact severe drug addictions are like this but as a matter of record

01:06:27.820 --> 01:06:34.860
this is what psychedelics make absolutely impossible number one the notion of unexamined

01:06:34.860 --> 01:06:42.140
behavior how can you have unexamined behavior if you take psychedelics it holds you up into a blast

01:06:42.140 --> 01:06:55.500
furnace of self-reflection uh it is certainly it does not promote repetitious drug use i mean uh i

01:06:55.500 --> 01:06:57.740
i consider myself a great fan

01:06:58.140 --> 01:07:04.780
of psilocybin and if i can screw my courage to the sticking point a couple of times a year i'm doing

01:07:04.780 --> 01:07:13.180
all right i i know someone who says dmt is their favorite uh substance and when i asked them when

01:07:13.180 --> 01:07:23.340
was the last time you did it they said 1968 and it lasted three minutes this is not a pattern of

01:07:23.340 --> 01:07:25.820
drug abuse you see

01:07:27.820 --> 01:07:36.860
so um it's a matter of educating the public and i this is probably a good place for me to get a

01:07:36.860 --> 01:07:45.180
pitch in i i wrote a book on contract for bantam and hopefully it'll be out next fall and i'm

01:07:45.180 --> 01:07:53.740
hoping i want to call it and i'm hoping they'll go along with me why eve was right plants drugs

01:07:53.740 --> 01:07:54.540
and history

01:07:55.900 --> 01:07:56.400
because

01:07:57.280 --> 01:08:06.240
right there in the beginning of the western story in genesis what you get is it's the story of

01:08:06.240 --> 01:08:17.680
history's first drug bust it's the story of a woman who follows her own mind and makes a decision

01:08:17.680 --> 01:08:28.240
about consciousness alteration and then uh it works i mean she says and and they were naked

01:08:28.240 --> 01:08:33.360
and she perceived them as naked in other words she got true information about the situation

01:08:33.360 --> 01:08:42.320
but you have yawa there mumbling to himself as he wanders around the garden in an old bathrobe and

01:08:42.320 --> 01:08:47.520
he's saying uh if they eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge

01:08:47.520 --> 01:08:47.600
they will not be able to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge

01:08:47.600 --> 01:08:47.680
they will not be able to eat of the fruit of the tree of knowledge

01:08:47.680 --> 01:08:54.720
will become as we are that was always the issue you see it wasn't a health issue

01:08:54.720 --> 01:09:02.880
it wasn't an abuse issue it's about who finds out what's really going on and who doesn't

01:09:02.880 --> 01:09:09.280
and this book i wrote for bantam makes very clear that the culture the style of a culture

01:09:10.080 --> 01:09:17.600
is almost always and invariably a style of seeing the world through a certain set of drugs

01:09:17.600 --> 01:09:20.640
is almost always and invariably a style of seeing the world through a certain set of drugs or a drug for example

01:09:20.640 --> 01:09:28.080
uh you know here we're in the middle of a drug uh abuse problem but uh caffeine

01:09:29.120 --> 01:09:35.680
has been entirely institutionalized since the industrial revolution it's the only drug that

01:09:35.680 --> 01:09:44.240
has been honored in every labor contract that is signed anywhere you have the coffee break

01:09:45.120 --> 01:09:47.280
the coffee break is

01:09:47.600 --> 01:09:52.800
the workers uh guarantees the workers right to stimulate themselves

01:09:53.360 --> 01:10:00.560
and in fact ultimately obligates the workers to stimulate themselves because

01:10:01.280 --> 01:10:08.320
the machines and the tasks that they have been given totally reinforce the need for coffee

01:10:08.320 --> 01:10:17.440
and the typing pool couldn't exist without coffee similarly alcohol alcohol is tremendous

01:10:17.600 --> 01:10:21.840
and in fact ultimately obligates the workers to stimulate themselves because

01:10:21.840 --> 01:10:22.800
the machines and the tasks that they have been given totally reinforce the need for information

01:10:22.800 --> 01:10:46.460
so while we're all in this world where we're all about alcohol

01:10:46.460 --> 01:10:47.360
issues are themselves forms and people are all about violence and social depends suddenly i felt that that was so interviewing 얘기 because

01:10:47.360 --> 01:10:55.780
Because, first of all, people didn't bathe enough to make it an appetizing thing to contemplate

01:10:55.780 --> 01:11:04.060
unless you were pretty lit.

01:11:04.060 --> 01:11:12.760
And terrible, terrible distortions of Western politics and religiosity have taken place

01:11:12.760 --> 01:11:14.880
because of drugs.

01:11:14.880 --> 01:11:22.460
For example, and this is, to me, one of the most shocking examples imaginable, slavery

01:11:22.460 --> 01:11:27.940
died with the fall of the Roman Empire.

01:11:27.940 --> 01:11:35.600
Rome had a system of labor called the Latifundia, which was essentially a slave work crew.

01:11:35.600 --> 01:11:38.980
And that institution died with the fall of Rome.

01:11:38.980 --> 01:11:44.660
During the medieval period, if you were into slavery,

01:11:44.660 --> 01:11:44.760
it meant that you were going to die.

01:11:44.760 --> 01:11:44.840
It meant that you were going to die.

01:11:44.840 --> 01:11:44.860
It meant that you were going to die.

01:11:44.860 --> 01:11:44.880
It meant that you were going to die.

01:11:44.880 --> 01:11:54.460
It meant you had one slave, and this slave was extremely well looked after and cared for

01:11:54.460 --> 01:12:00.660
because they were a symbol of munificent opulence on your part

01:12:00.660 --> 01:12:03.620
that you could afford such a luxury.

01:12:03.780 --> 01:12:06.840
It was like having a Maserati to have a slave.

01:12:06.840 --> 01:12:14.840
Well, then, around 1400, before the discovery of America, in the eastern area,

01:12:14.840 --> 01:12:20.620
in the northern Atlantic islands of Madera, they began experimenting with the growing

01:12:20.620 --> 01:12:22.800
of cane sugar.

01:12:22.800 --> 01:12:30.940
And it was fine, except that the sugar has to be boiled at 130 degrees, and no one would

01:12:30.940 --> 01:12:33.060
work around that.

01:12:33.060 --> 01:12:39.440
They discovered that they had to chain people to the cooking apparatus for the extraction

01:12:39.440 --> 01:12:40.840
of sugar.

01:12:40.840 --> 01:12:44.800
And they began bringing Africans to do this.

01:12:44.800 --> 01:12:53.460
And they not only reinvented slavery for the deliberate production of sugar, which

01:12:53.460 --> 01:12:56.580
was utterly unnecessary to the diet of Europe.

01:12:56.580 --> 01:13:02.300
I mean, there hadn't been a ton of sugar imported into Europe in the previous thousand

01:13:02.300 --> 01:13:03.600
years.

01:13:03.600 --> 01:13:10.140
And suddenly, they felt this tremendous need for sugar, and they reinstitutionalized slavery

01:13:10.140 --> 01:13:14.580
with the added insult that for the first time...

01:13:14.580 --> 01:13:25.820
A particular race was singled out as being somehow made for slavery.

01:13:25.820 --> 01:13:33.380
And this is the beginning of black xenophobia on the part of Europeans, the association

01:13:33.380 --> 01:13:36.240
with the sugar trade.

01:13:36.240 --> 01:13:43.340
By 1800, every pound of sugar being imported into England was being produced by sugar.

01:13:43.340 --> 01:13:44.540
And this was the beginning of the black xenophobia on the part of Europeans. The association with the sugar trade. By 1800, every pound of sugar being imported into England was being produced by sugar.

01:13:44.540 --> 01:13:44.780
And this was the beginning of the black xenophobia on the part of Europeans, the association with the sugar trade.

01:13:44.780 --> 01:13:45.860
This was the beginning of the black xenophobia on the part of Europeans, the association with the sugar trade.

01:13:45.860 --> 01:13:53.260
And slavery was going at a rate that had not been seen since the Rome of Caligula.

01:13:53.260 --> 01:14:02.040
All in the name of commerce, all in the name of having this essentially trivial kick

01:14:02.040 --> 01:14:03.400
from sugar.

01:14:03.400 --> 01:14:10.860
So it's really important to educate ourselves as to what constitutes a drug and how drugs

01:14:10.860 --> 01:14:14.500
are legislated against and...

01:14:14.500 --> 01:14:23.140
suppressed or promoted and advertised entirely according to whether they fit into the agenda

01:14:23.140 --> 01:14:31.380
of the reigning model of culture, whatever that may be. Yeah, here. Yes.

01:14:35.120 --> 01:14:41.440
Who are the shamans that you would share with us as a model?

01:14:42.440 --> 01:14:44.040
Of our times, you mean?

01:14:44.420 --> 01:14:47.120
Well, times that we associate with, we're familiar with.

01:14:47.220 --> 01:14:47.780
Oh, good.

01:14:48.920 --> 01:14:54.780
So within the 20th century, the great art, the great shamanic artists.

01:14:54.780 --> 01:15:05.800
Well, you know, it's just an opportunity to list a bunch of prejudices, obviously.

01:15:06.780 --> 01:15:17.660
Certainly, the Grateful Dead seem to me to be, you know, nobody's done it longer, better

01:15:17.660 --> 01:15:18.660
than they have.

01:15:18.920 --> 01:15:27.360
And rock and roll, generally, is an extremely powerful form of shamanic performance.

01:15:28.360 --> 01:15:37.440
When I look over the 20th century, James Joyce, for what he did for language, the permission

01:15:37.440 --> 01:15:48.560
he gave to make language a living object, Jackson Pollock is a great personal hero of mine.

01:15:48.920 --> 01:15:55.820
Here was a boy from Cody, Wyoming, who managed to cut his way to the heart of the New York

01:15:55.820 --> 01:15:56.820
art world.

01:15:56.820 --> 01:16:07.380
To my mind, he was the abstract expressionist par excellence, and the high waters of American

01:16:07.380 --> 01:16:14.850
art have never reached higher than that.

01:16:14.850 --> 01:16:20.330
Bob Dylan, the Rolling Stones, maybe these aren't the answers you expected because these

01:16:20.330 --> 01:16:21.170
are such masterpieces.

01:16:21.170 --> 01:16:21.210
Yeah.

01:16:21.210 --> 01:16:21.270
Yeah.

01:16:21.270 --> 01:16:21.670
Yeah.

01:16:21.670 --> 01:16:21.730
Yeah.

01:16:21.730 --> 01:16:21.790
Yeah.

01:16:22.410 --> 01:16:26.330
Such movers of masses of people.

01:16:27.170 --> 01:16:32.030
Art doesn't have to operate on that huge scale.

01:16:32.710 --> 01:16:36.090
I mean, art can be extremely intimate.

01:16:38.370 --> 01:16:46.210
But shamanic art, art that moves us to a sense of the transcendental, there's been

01:16:46.210 --> 01:16:49.650
too little of that in this century.

01:16:50.390 --> 01:16:51.150
No.

01:16:51.150 --> 01:16:59.050
Not since the Surrealists has there been a movement with the stated goal of carrying

01:16:59.050 --> 01:17:02.510
people into an unimaginable world.

01:17:02.510 --> 01:17:08.610
And I have a lot of respect for the Surrealists, especially Max Ernst.

01:17:08.610 --> 01:17:15.970
I think Ernst's career was broad and deep over a long period of time.

01:17:15.970 --> 01:17:20.870
The art that excites me now is the art of the moving image.

01:17:20.870 --> 01:17:28.170
I'm a little impatient with gallery art because so much of it has become the handmaiden to

01:17:28.170 --> 01:17:31.270
the interior decorating business.

01:17:31.270 --> 01:17:37.280
And that was never the intent.

01:17:37.280 --> 01:17:47.220
The moving image, to my mind, is the connecting theme in the 20th century between art and

01:17:47.220 --> 01:17:50.600
dream and psychedelics.

01:17:50.600 --> 01:17:51.600
So film...

01:17:51.600 --> 01:17:52.100
Yeah.

01:17:52.100 --> 01:17:59.460
...is the extremely powerful art form that emerges into its own in the 20th century.

01:17:59.460 --> 01:18:09.200
And film seems to me an anticipation of what is possible with psychedelics.

01:18:09.200 --> 01:18:18.900
I have great hope now for art produced by the interaction of human beings and computers.

01:18:18.900 --> 01:18:21.580
And crude as it is and controversial as it is...

01:18:21.580 --> 01:18:28.420
I think virtual reality will eventually have a contribution to make.

01:18:28.420 --> 01:18:30.840
But it's long in the future.

01:18:30.840 --> 01:18:38.700
The technologists have to perfect the medium, and then the artists have to work with it.

01:18:38.700 --> 01:18:47.140
My own favorite artists, which I don't offer as fulfilling that shamanic intent, but they're

01:18:47.140 --> 01:18:50.580
simply my favorites, are Vladimir Nabokov.

01:18:50.580 --> 01:18:51.580
Yeah.

01:18:51.580 --> 01:18:54.400
As a novelist.

01:18:54.400 --> 01:19:05.340
This is flawless stuff, emotionally, intellectually complete, and hilariously funny.

01:19:05.340 --> 01:19:13.960
William Gibson's accomplishment in creating cyberpunk and envisioning a future so real

01:19:13.960 --> 01:19:18.860
that you can taste, this is a tremendous accomplishment.

01:19:18.860 --> 01:19:20.500
But I feel about art...

01:19:20.500 --> 01:19:21.500
The way I feel about art...

01:19:21.500 --> 01:19:26.740
The way I feel about rock and roll, and the way I think most psychedelic people must feel,

01:19:26.740 --> 01:19:33.780
which is it's such pale stuff compared to what's out there.

01:19:33.780 --> 01:19:35.800
I feel like we are...

01:19:35.800 --> 01:19:43.280
If we could open the sluice gates to the dimensions that we explore psychedelically, we would

01:19:43.280 --> 01:19:46.420
just be inundated by art.

01:19:46.420 --> 01:19:51.200
And as it is, we receive it in thimblefuls.

01:19:51.200 --> 01:19:55.060
How can we open ourselves up to this?

01:19:55.060 --> 01:20:01.260
Because I really believe that the art unites us, it dissolves the boundaries between us,

01:20:01.260 --> 01:20:05.120
it empowers us, it makes us a collectivity.

01:20:05.120 --> 01:20:14.200
You notice that the great overweening control structures, the government, for example, never

01:20:14.200 --> 01:20:20.200
communicates to us with images that are aesthetically pleasing.

01:20:20.200 --> 01:20:27.820
It always communicates with images that convey obligation, which is a downer in anybody's

01:20:27.820 --> 01:20:29.820
book.

01:20:29.820 --> 01:20:38.280
So somehow we have been the consumers of imagery when we should become the producers

01:20:38.280 --> 01:20:39.580
of it.

01:20:39.580 --> 01:20:47.140
And all the people in the 20th century who have made that work serve to inspire in that

01:20:47.140 --> 01:20:48.140
direction.

01:20:48.140 --> 01:20:50.860
I don't know.

01:20:50.860 --> 01:20:52.680
There are so many of you.

01:20:52.680 --> 01:20:54.480
Is somebody in the back who's...

01:20:54.480 --> 01:20:55.480
Oh, way up there.

01:20:55.480 --> 01:20:56.480
A statement and then a question.

01:20:56.480 --> 01:21:00.480
If it is assumed that the b-carboids are mean THH or nervous, then this is why the

01:21:00.480 --> 01:21:01.480
BMT is orally active in the ayahuasca group.

01:21:01.480 --> 01:21:05.750
My question is, some forms of ayahuasca BMT .

01:21:05.750 --> 01:21:06.750
So is this to say that the plus THH are hallucinogenic?

01:21:06.750 --> 01:21:07.750
Yes.

01:21:07.750 --> 01:21:08.750
Yes.

01:21:08.750 --> 01:21:13.240
Yes.

01:21:13.240 --> 01:21:14.240
Yes.

01:21:14.240 --> 01:21:15.240
Yes.

01:21:15.240 --> 01:21:16.240
Yes.

01:21:16.240 --> 01:21:18.520
Yes.

01:21:18.520 --> 01:21:19.520
Yes.

01:21:19.520 --> 01:21:20.520
Yes.

01:21:20.520 --> 01:21:21.520
Yes.

01:21:21.520 --> 01:21:23.830
Yes.

01:21:23.830 --> 01:21:24.830
Yes.

01:21:24.830 --> 01:21:25.830
Yes.

01:21:25.830 --> 01:21:28.520
Yes.

01:21:28.520 --> 01:21:29.520
Yes.

01:21:29.520 --> 01:21:30.520
Yes.

01:21:30.520 --> 01:21:33.380
Yes.

01:21:33.760 --> 01:21:41.000
Yes.

01:21:41.000 --> 01:21:42.000
Yes.

01:21:42.000 --> 01:21:43.000
Yes.

01:21:43.000 --> 01:21:44.000
Yes.

01:21:44.000 --> 01:21:45.000
Yes.

01:21:45.000 --> 01:21:49.070
Yes.

01:21:50.070 --> 01:21:51.070
No.

01:21:51.070 --> 01:21:52.070
I follow it.

01:21:52.070 --> 01:21:53.070
Okay.

01:21:53.070 --> 01:21:55.350
The question is, Do I remember it?

01:21:56.630 --> 01:22:06.330
The question is, Is it so that the beta carboylene alkaloids inhibit MAO and thus

01:22:06.330 --> 01:22:09.890
make DMT active in ayahuasca?

01:22:09.890 --> 01:22:11.690
And yes, this is not debatable.

01:22:11.690 --> 01:22:18.390
It's now secured by my brother several years ago.

01:22:18.510 --> 01:22:19.690
He published on this.

01:22:19.970 --> 01:22:28.590
It was always hypothesized that beta-carbolines were MAO inhibitors, but then ultimately they proved it.

01:22:28.590 --> 01:22:41.170
Well, so then the questioner went on to ask, if this is so, then what about these cases where beta-carboline alkaloids are reportedly taken without DMT?

01:22:41.690 --> 01:22:43.410
And then what does this mean?

01:22:43.630 --> 01:22:45.810
Is it hallucinogenic on its own?

01:22:46.210 --> 01:22:57.170
And the answer is, harmaline is hallucinogenic by itself, but fairly close to the threshold of toxicity.

01:22:57.170 --> 01:23:07.590
So the ordinary strategy in the Amazon is to combine the DMT with the beta-carbolines,

01:23:08.330 --> 01:23:11.470
and that makes the DMT highly reactive.

01:23:11.690 --> 01:23:22.610
It is not then destroyed in the gut, as would ordinarily be the case, but crosses into the bloodstream and through the blood-brain barrier and reaches the brain.

01:23:23.090 --> 01:23:39.710
I think achieving hallucinogenic levels with beta-carbolines without DMT is probably a pretty unpleasant experience, although some of these deep jungle tribes do do it.

01:23:39.710 --> 01:23:41.630
You don't want to get the idea.

01:23:41.690 --> 01:23:47.390
That just because somebody lives way up a river, that they know what they're doing.

01:23:49.150 --> 01:24:08.930
Manuel Cordova Rios, in his second book, The Rio Tigre and Beyond, talks about going on curare collecting and rosewood collecting expeditions to people of the Aguaruna-Jivaro group,

01:24:08.930 --> 01:24:10.930
and discovering that they're ayahuasca.

01:24:11.690 --> 01:24:21.730
He even says that the ayahuasca were garbage, that they just didn't know how to make it, even though they were bear-ass indian residents, and he showed them how to make it,

01:24:21.730 --> 01:24:26.130
and they practically made him a cultural hero.

01:24:26.130 --> 01:24:31.010
They said, you know, my god we've been drinking swill for untold millenia.

01:24:31.010 --> 01:24:36.590
And you came and fixed us up.

01:24:36.590 --> 01:24:41.150
And this is a puzzling thing to us, as outsiders.

01:24:41.150 --> 01:24:47.710
we assume they're always going for the gusto but sometimes not you know i mean cultures have

01:24:47.710 --> 01:24:58.690
peculiar peculiar adaptations this lady yes you said that we're fouling the nest could we be

01:24:58.690 --> 01:25:06.390
evolving you mentioned that we went from matter to object could we actually be going should we

01:25:06.390 --> 01:25:13.910
actually be going from object to energy and when you say that art should save us all i would say

01:25:22.630 --> 01:25:29.350
well you touch on a very interesting point one that i in my own mind am not clear about

01:25:30.150 --> 01:25:34.870
uh is it that we are to transcend

01:25:35.910 --> 01:25:36.230
this

01:25:36.390 --> 01:25:46.230
world and go into some titanic dimension of energy or spirit that we can scarcely imagine is that what

01:25:46.230 --> 01:25:57.350
this birth is is the only way we can grant peace to this planet is to turn ourselves into uh you

01:25:57.350 --> 01:26:04.150
know electrons moving in an interbium cube that we bury on the dark side of the moon is it something

01:26:04.150 --> 01:26:05.910
like that i'm

01:26:06.470 --> 01:26:10.710
opened up to that self-realization and turned to an inner human being as a human being

01:26:11.590 --> 01:26:17.750
and i think i'm troubled by that because i would like to keep it all together i would like to see

01:26:17.750 --> 01:26:29.430
us as a part of nature but i'm not so uninformed concerning the historical adventure that i don't

01:26:29.430 --> 01:26:34.310
know that what is called gnosticism is a very strong strain

01:26:34.310 --> 01:26:43.310
its most severe form can be boiled down to the proposition that we are strangers here,

01:26:43.310 --> 01:26:50.910
we don't belong here, this is not our world, we come from a place made of light and we

01:26:50.910 --> 01:26:55.050
will never rest until we return to it.

01:26:55.050 --> 01:27:03.670
Now the problem with that formulation is it sets us up for tremendous discontinuity and

01:27:03.670 --> 01:27:09.170
unhappiness until we achieve that return to the realm of light.

01:27:09.170 --> 01:27:13.550
It's a kind of Faustian thing, you know?

01:27:13.550 --> 01:27:21.770
And yet the other possibility which I as the co-founder of a botanical garden and a lover

01:27:21.770 --> 01:27:30.410
of nature inclined to is, isn't there some way that we can make our peace with the earth?

01:27:30.410 --> 01:27:33.650
Isn't there some way that we can have our care?

01:27:33.650 --> 01:27:38.070
Can we live a life that is bathtub, or a וָնַוּה and eat it?

01:27:38.070 --> 01:27:49.090
I'm more and more to my own discomforture conclude that there isn't that the human adventure

01:27:49.090 --> 01:27:55.470
is a forward-going adventure, that we do clothes off options.

01:27:55.470 --> 01:28:03.650
We never again are going to be a small tribe of hunter gatherers with our flocks on a on

01:28:03.650 --> 01:28:09.230
the plains of Africa enjoying our mushrooms and our orgies at every full

01:28:09.230 --> 01:28:23.630
moon somehow long long ago that option was cut off shucks but but I think that

01:28:23.630 --> 01:28:30.630
it's good to cultivate this poignancy that if we're going to go storm our

01:28:30.630 --> 01:28:36.170
tourists at least we should do so with some sense of what has been left behind

01:28:36.170 --> 01:28:45.950
and not just turn ourselves into mechanical technocrats somehow the

01:28:45.950 --> 01:28:51.830
living spirit has to be brought with us and this is really the high task for

01:28:51.830 --> 01:28:59.090
shamanism how can we who have always as Shamans had a relationship to the

01:28:59.090 --> 01:29:05.590
spirits of the earth of the waters of the sky if we are setting out for

01:29:05.590 --> 01:29:12.310
alpha in Sagittarius or something like that how can we do that and not leave

01:29:12.310 --> 01:29:21.970
our soul behind you know that the Arabs have the belief that a man's soul can

01:29:21.970 --> 01:29:31.310
move no faster than a camel gallops so if you if you drive in your Mercedes

01:29:31.310 --> 01:29:37.510
from Jeddah to Riyadh you have to rest for a while so your soul can catch up

01:29:37.510 --> 01:29:46.390
well I don't think we should leave our human soul behind somehow we have to

01:29:46.390 --> 01:29:53.410
internalize the entirety of the biological world if we are going to

01:29:53.410 --> 01:29:57.990
become a spacefaring species otherwise we are going to get out there and

01:29:57.990 --> 01:30:01.310
discover that something vital was left behind

01:30:01.310 --> 01:30:07.870
and this is a great tension between ourselves and the earth between our

01:30:07.870 --> 01:30:17.550
destiny as an energy using dream compressing space-faring stormtrooper

01:30:17.550 --> 01:30:24.070
kind of species I mean that's all male dominance and male mentality talking and

01:30:24.070 --> 01:30:30.530
the need to somehow fold that into a nurturing stance a

01:30:30.530 --> 01:30:31.290
preserved

01:30:31.290 --> 01:30:39.570
stance a stance that recognizes that the conservation of our archaic values is

01:30:39.570 --> 01:30:45.570
really our only hope and those two things exist in a dynamic tension this

01:30:45.570 --> 01:30:52.730
is maybe the issue that the artistic community can clarify and that must be

01:30:52.730 --> 01:30:59.310
clarified before we can make a definitive step into the future right

01:30:59.310 --> 01:31:09.550
now we're uncertain stewardship or angel hood which shall it be maybe I'll

01:31:09.550 --> 01:31:17.550
take one more question some poor soul over here yes in the back

01:31:24.210 --> 01:31:38.840
I would like to say well I don't really think of it as the Nietzsche and

01:31:38.840 --> 01:31:39.880
Superman I

01:31:39.880 --> 01:31:39.960
don't really think of it as the Nietzsche and Superman I

01:31:39.960 --> 01:31:39.980
don't really think of it as the Nietzsche and Superman I

01:31:39.980 --> 01:31:40.080
I don't really think of it as the Nietzsche and Superman I

01:31:40.080 --> 01:31:47.340
But something you said, you know that poem by Yeats called Sailing to Byzantium?

01:31:47.800 --> 01:31:50.280
And there's this wonderful phrase in there.

01:31:50.780 --> 01:31:54.460
I'm not sure I can quote it perfectly, but it goes something like this.

01:31:54.760 --> 01:32:02.940
Once out of nature, I would be a thing of gold and gold enameling.

01:32:04.140 --> 01:32:07.160
Once out of nature, he means once he's dead.

01:32:07.160 --> 01:32:12.240
Once out of nature, I would be a thing of gold and gold enameling.

01:32:13.560 --> 01:32:22.020
And then he says something about a nightingale set to sing for the lords and ladies of Byzantium

01:32:22.020 --> 01:32:25.020
of what has been and what will be.

01:32:25.380 --> 01:32:33.960
But what it is, you see, is the image of the condensation of a quasi-mechanical object.

01:32:33.960 --> 01:32:36.960
The soul as object.

01:32:37.600 --> 01:32:39.660
As objectification.

01:32:40.280 --> 01:32:46.620
And to my mind, this is where the image of the UFO has something to teach us.

01:32:47.080 --> 01:32:55.260
The UFO is not an extraterrestrial machine that haunts the skies of the earth.

01:32:55.620 --> 01:33:06.100
The UFO is a totality symbol thrown off by our tangential approach to the end of history.

01:33:06.600 --> 01:33:07.060
I think...

01:33:07.160 --> 01:33:14.060
I think that, yes, the Nietzschean Superman, that whole thing was tried by the Nazis,

01:33:14.460 --> 01:33:20.700
and they realized it in its full expression, and it was nightmarish.

01:33:21.200 --> 01:33:25.260
What I'm proposing is more...

01:33:25.260 --> 01:33:27.080
There's no man in it.

01:33:27.080 --> 01:33:36.100
It's the concrescence of the collective soul of humanity that somehow I see history

01:33:36.100 --> 01:33:37.080
as an...

01:33:37.080 --> 01:33:40.760
As an alchemical task and process.

01:33:41.480 --> 01:33:50.380
And the artist, as artificer, it is the task of the artist to complete this alchemical

01:33:50.380 --> 01:33:52.120
concrescence.

01:33:52.480 --> 01:33:54.780
And it's a kind of irrational thing.

01:33:54.840 --> 01:33:56.000
It is irrational.

01:33:56.000 --> 01:34:04.100
It's that mind and matter are approaching each other on a trajectory that will bring

01:34:04.100 --> 01:34:06.000
them together with no...

01:34:06.000 --> 01:34:07.000
With no...

01:34:07.080 --> 01:34:17.480
Damage to the quintessential nature of each, and we can't imagine that, because for us,

01:34:17.560 --> 01:34:19.980
things are mind or matter.

01:34:19.980 --> 01:34:28.900
We can't conceive of a coincidencia appositorum, and yet it's that which we must hold in our

01:34:28.900 --> 01:34:31.460
mind if we want to see truth.

01:34:32.080 --> 01:34:37.000
I mean, even in quantum physics, they teach you that the universe is composed of what

01:34:37.000 --> 01:34:43.180
they call islands of Boolean algebra embedded in an ocean of ordinary algebra.

01:34:43.660 --> 01:34:47.400
What they mean is they're having their archaic and eating it too.

01:34:47.400 --> 01:34:50.340
They're trying to say that it's both and.

01:34:51.180 --> 01:34:53.400
And this...

01:34:53.960 --> 01:34:56.120
It is an irrational process.

01:34:56.460 --> 01:34:59.720
It isn't a Nietzschean program of realization.

01:35:00.360 --> 01:35:01.880
It's a kind of an opening.

01:35:02.560 --> 01:35:04.540
Something wants to be born.

01:35:05.140 --> 01:35:06.800
The promptings of our...

01:35:07.000 --> 01:35:14.640
Religions, with all the irrational and hysterical trappings that attend them, nevertheless,

01:35:14.640 --> 01:35:23.040
have a core perception that there is, between man and nature, a kind of compact.

01:35:23.040 --> 01:35:30.150
And this compact, it will be redeemed.

01:35:30.150 --> 01:35:34.770
I mean, I really think that this is the psychedelic faith.

01:35:34.770 --> 01:35:37.350
That we are the prodigal species.

01:35:37.350 --> 01:35:38.350
We are the...

01:35:38.830 --> 01:35:48.590
We have descended into the inferno of matter to try and recover the pearl of immortality.

01:35:48.950 --> 01:35:54.290
The pearl of immortality is the perfected and reconstructed earth.

01:35:54.910 --> 01:36:03.270
And somehow, we are to be the critical factor in this equation, or the point species.

01:36:03.630 --> 01:36:06.910
We are not acting for ourselves.

01:36:07.230 --> 01:36:08.190
We are the energy.

01:36:08.190 --> 01:36:18.670
We are the energy-manipulating species that, I believe, carries the hopes of all life.

01:36:18.670 --> 01:36:24.070
All nature is watching this drama.

01:36:24.070 --> 01:36:27.570
The life of our star is finite.

01:36:27.570 --> 01:36:30.770
The life of the planet is finite.

01:36:30.770 --> 01:36:37.670
But potentially, self-reflecting understanding may be, in fact, immortal.

01:36:38.190 --> 01:36:43.790
And yet, it is breaking out of the trappings of matter.

01:36:43.790 --> 01:36:52.110
And this is a process so large, so strange, that I don't think a single mind can encompass

01:36:52.110 --> 01:36:54.910
it within a single moment.

01:36:54.910 --> 01:37:01.290
It's something that we triangulate over and over again.

01:37:01.290 --> 01:37:06.670
And for me, the psychedelic experience is how you do that.

01:37:06.670 --> 01:37:07.670
The psychedelic experience is...

01:37:07.670 --> 01:37:16.070
The psychedelic experience is literally arising into a higher dimension in the geometric sense.

01:37:16.070 --> 01:37:23.990
And from that higher dimension, the psychedelic voyager carries out a transecting of the

01:37:23.990 --> 01:37:27.890
lower dimensional object, which is the world.

01:37:27.890 --> 01:37:34.670
And in the same way that we can build up an image of a cone out of an infinite number

01:37:34.670 --> 01:37:36.550
of ellipsoidal...

01:37:36.550 --> 01:37:46.770
Transsections, we can build up a true model of the world by carrying out a number of these

01:37:46.770 --> 01:37:50.090
transections from a higher dimension.

01:37:50.090 --> 01:37:55.850
And then it shows us how the world really works.

01:37:55.850 --> 01:38:02.550
And when you understand how the world really works, I'm beginning to get just a hint of

01:38:02.550 --> 01:38:03.550
it.

01:38:03.550 --> 01:38:04.550
It works through...

01:38:04.550 --> 01:38:05.550
Living.

01:38:05.550 --> 01:38:06.550
Living.

01:38:06.550 --> 01:38:07.550
Living.

01:38:07.550 --> 01:38:08.550
Living.

01:38:08.550 --> 01:38:09.550
Live.

01:38:09.550 --> 01:38:10.550
And we can do it all through love.

01:38:10.550 --> 01:38:11.550
And dream.

01:38:11.550 --> 01:38:16.470
And intention to connect.

01:38:16.470 --> 01:38:21.550
Through love and dream and intention toward connection.

01:38:21.550 --> 01:38:26.010
And these are ultimately irrational values.

01:38:26.010 --> 01:38:34.850
And they ultimately must be irrationally embraced because the momentum toward a rational conclusion

01:38:34.850 --> 01:38:35.850
is tremendous.

01:38:35.850 --> 01:38:36.350
And I'm gonna say it again.

01:38:36.550 --> 01:38:39.970
but unfortunately, completely fatal.

01:38:41.090 --> 01:38:44.830
And this is the invitation that the artist has always extended

01:38:44.830 --> 01:38:49.870
toward a radical break with the momentum of rationalism.

01:38:50.310 --> 01:38:54.910
It's simply that now, in this moment of tremendous crisis,

01:38:54.910 --> 01:39:00.370
when the artist is at last called upon to perform

01:39:00.370 --> 01:39:04.410
and there must be no stitches dropped

01:39:04.410 --> 01:39:10.330
because this dance is the dance of transformation of the planet itself.

01:39:10.650 --> 01:39:13.130
This is the moment of empowering.

01:39:13.830 --> 01:39:18.270
This is what all the shamanism of the past built toward,

01:39:18.550 --> 01:39:22.190
this final magical invocation.

01:39:22.450 --> 01:39:25.390
James Joyce said, man will be dirigible.

01:39:26.330 --> 01:39:33.250
That's simply a way of saying that we will find a way to make our dreams

01:39:33.250 --> 01:39:34.190
and the dreams...

01:39:34.410 --> 01:39:40.410
of the planet, and the life it carries, one dream.

01:39:41.050 --> 01:39:46.650
And the way to do it is to reconnect up to the Gaian mind

01:39:47.210 --> 01:39:52.010
through the channels of communication that were always there,

01:39:52.450 --> 01:39:58.030
but that have not been really taken up since the late Neolithic.

01:39:58.970 --> 01:40:04.250
It's time for us to call home, and you know

01:40:04.250 --> 01:40:05.250
how to do it.

01:40:05.870 --> 01:40:11.450
It's just a matter of having the courage to do it, to act,

01:40:11.850 --> 01:40:17.690
and then to have that empowering act spread back through the psychology of the planet.

01:40:18.050 --> 01:40:20.730
I am very optimistic.

01:40:20.750 --> 01:40:29.630
I think we are awakening to a new day from a long, long night of the soul,

01:40:29.890 --> 01:40:33.490
but it must be done collectively,

01:40:33.490 --> 01:40:45.990
gently, lovingly, and with a complete faith that we are an infant held in the arms of nature,

01:40:46.190 --> 01:40:51.690
that nature wants this to happen, that we are not an aberration.

01:40:52.090 --> 01:40:57.230
We are granted peculiar, but we are not an aberration.

01:40:57.490 --> 01:41:03.950
We are a necessary oddness to the completion of the whole, and this is our glory,

01:41:04.270 --> 01:41:04.990
and this is what we are.

01:41:04.990 --> 01:41:07.890
This is why we've been graced with self-reflection,

01:41:08.090 --> 01:41:15.790
and we can redeem that tremendous empowerment by going forward in love and faith

01:41:16.190 --> 01:41:20.690
to save the world through art and the pursuit of meaning.

01:41:21.390 --> 01:41:22.790
Thank you very, very much.