WEBVTT

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So in the 1960s, our speaker, Terrence, was a student, like many of you, at UC Berkeley,

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and he left in the middle of things to go on a tour around the world for seven years

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that ended in the deepest Amazon basin,

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where he had an experience that has determined his life in the 20 years following,

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and which is the subject of his latest book, True Hallucinations.

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So now in this historic moment, after all this time,

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Terrence will ascend the platform of the University of California for the first time.

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What I thought I would talk about when I was approached to do this,

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the pressure was to say something new, which is a heart-sinking pressure.

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To a warhorse of the lecture circuit, I started out thinking I would never repeat myself

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and sometimes wonder if I'll ever have a new idea again.

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But what I wanted to talk about this evening was illusions,

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and I called the lecture The Taxonomy of Illusion,

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because I think it's interesting to attempt to classify,

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and relate, the various kinds of illusions that stand between us

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and that presupposed, naked, radiant truth

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that has more or less driven the engines of Western philosophy since Plato.

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Of course, the great victory of modernity is to disabuse ourselves of such naive notions,

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but...

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they die hard, I think.

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Ralph mentioned my latest book,

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and I didn't... I don't intend to talk about the book particularly,

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but in the book I quote

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the only piece of poetry in the whole thing,

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not written by me.

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I now see that I seem to have lost it.

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Oh, no, here it comes up.

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But it relates to...

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It relates to this on many, many levels,

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this question of illusion,

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and the relationship of the self to the real,

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and where the world falls in that equation,

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and the limits of knowledge,

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and all that other good psychedelic stuff

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that needs to be considered.

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The quote is From Pale Fire by Vladimir Nabokov,

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and if you don't know this book,

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you should.

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It is without doubt one of the funniest books

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in the English language,

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and it takes the form of a very long poem,

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and then the commentary upon this poem.

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The poem is written by a character

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that Nabokov creates named John Shade,

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and the part that I wanted to call to your attention

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this evening runs like this.

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That rare phenomenon,

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That rare phenomenon,

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That rare phenomenon,

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the iridule,

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when beautiful and strange

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in a bright sky above a mountain range,

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one opal cloudlet in an oval form

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reflects the rainbow of a thunderstorm

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which in a distant valley has been staged,

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for we are most artistically caged.

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Now, this is a very strange piece of poetry,

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this is not like even Wallace Stevens at his most obscure.

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In the first place, this word, the iridule,

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you won't find this word in any dictionary,

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and yet I sensed that this is obviously the word

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for this phenomenon.

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I know what he's talking about.

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I have seen this,

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I have seen this,

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I have seen this,

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this opal cloudlet in an oval form,

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which reflects the rainbow of a thunderstorm

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in a distant place.

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We're here, we're in the realm of mirage,

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and nature as mirage,

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and nature as mirrored labyrinth.

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And then the final point,

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and I'll go through all this in the course of talking to you,

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but the final line about being, our time is now,

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being artistically caged.

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This is, I think,

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where the psychedelics come in,

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because psychedelics allow one to pierce

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beyond the veil of cultural illusion,

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beyond the linguistic momentum of what has been handed on,

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what has been handed on.

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And the faith of Tantra and magic and psychedelics

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is that the apparent intransigent appearance of the world

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can somehow be overcome by an act of magic.

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I used to collect Tibetan tankas,

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and the texts which go with some of these tankas,

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I remember one in particular, which, coming out of, you know,

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I remember one in particular, which, coming out of, you know,

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I remember one in particular, which, coming out of, you know,

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coming out of the Tibetan,

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the translation was, all things being reversed,

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the great Hla, the great God, appears instantly.

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You see, the precondition for magic

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is the reversal of causality somehow.

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And as moderns, we have grown

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to give great credence, I think, to the idea that the world is,

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to give great credence, I think, to the idea that the world is,

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to give great credence, I think, to the idea that the world is,

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largely a linguistic structure,

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largely created through the participation of the observer.

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But we have not been able to take that perception

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and turn it into a technology.

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Instead, we are still driven by the blind momentum

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of atomic structure.

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Who was it who said the atoms blindly run?

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Who was it who said the atoms blindly run?

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Who was it who said the atoms blindly run?

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Who was it who said the atoms blindly run?

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And then I think it was Whitehead who said,

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yes, but within the body,

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they blindly run according to the body's plan.

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You see, what I think we're dealing with are patterns,

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and then the indeterminate dimensions between patterns.

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And it's in those indeterminate places,

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within the interstices of reality,

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that the observer is able to establish him or herself,

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and then model back the world.

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The reason I wanted to talk about a taxonomy of illusion

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was because I thought it was important to relate

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the various styles of hyperseeing, non-seeing,

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and mis-seeing together.

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Because I think that the heuristic consequences

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of doing that are to realize just how shifting the sands are

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upon which the ontological edifice of Western thinking rests.

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I mean, that's always the point, you see,

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to deconstruct Western civilization,

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because Western civilization,

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the toxic consequences are now clear for everyone to see.

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So the first, the first category or grand family of illusions,

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which we would put into our taxonomic key,

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would be social illusions.

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And when I, and you know, later we can argue this,

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but at this point in the, in the discussion,

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illusion is slash delusion.

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So the great social illusions, delusions,

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and consumerism as my clinical framework,

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other than orderly expectations,

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and sense of должен of the spatial sense,

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that's why we're called Targeting despair.

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People resist this citation of trust,

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and when they're Probably timestassed aboutN

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they call them these Irakles' throughbecue delusions.

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Well understood.

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are sexism, racism, xenophobia, egoism, classism.

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The world is riddled and ruled by these social illusions,

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and no one is free of them.

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And so they constitute one broad category.

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I might just mention as an aside

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a book which was very influential on me,

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and I never heard anybody else ever mention it,

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was a book by Rockcliffe called

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Illusions and Delusions of the Supernatural and the Occult.

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This was a 19th century book which I, as a kid, got in a Dover reprint.

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And it was in a wonderful era where the study of anomalies was still young,

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and so this book had everything poured in together,

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from mesmerism, ectoplasm, to people who had tumors that they carried around in wheelbarrows,

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to birds that did advanced arithmetic, so forth and so on.

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And it was a very, very much from the point of view of Victorian rationalism.

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And it also mentioned psychedelics.

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It was what it really was, was a category of edges.

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And,

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or a catalogue of edges, I'm sorry.

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And it's only then in the subsequent 40, 35 years

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that that Wunderkammerer approach to illusion,

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and I assume you all know what I mean by that.

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I mean, I'm referring to the era before the rise of Linnaean natural science,

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when naturalists would simply fill cabinets,

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with anomalous, fascinating, and strange objects.

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So the tarantulas might be mixed in with the chambered nautiluses,

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which might be stirred into the Zuni fetishes,

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which might be next to the something else.

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Then later, these Wunderkammerers,

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these curiosity cabinets, as we would call them in English,

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gave way to Linnaean taxonomy.

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In the same way, over the past hundred years,

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I think the study of illusion and anomaly

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has attempted to rationalize itself.

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Spatial illusions are an entirely different family

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of illusory phenomena.

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And we all have encountered at some level, I imagine,

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the specially constructed environments that occur

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in behavioral,

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psychological psychology labs,

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that trick you into thinking that the person in the foreground

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is smaller than the person in the background,

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and so forth and so on.

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These kinds of illusions are probably fairly trivial,

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except that they address perception.

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And when we get to psychedelics as a source of illusion,

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this is more important.

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Another of the great family of illusions are,

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in thinking about them, I call them ontological illusions,

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illusions of states of being,

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which may or may not, in fact, be reflected in reality.

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UFOs, Bigfoot, crop circles,

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the entire panoply of poltergeist,

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and this sort of thing.

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Ontological illusions.

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And these are very interesting.

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I mean, one could give time to this alone,

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because there are persistent ontological illusions

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in the human sensorium,

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such as angels, elves, demons,

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jinns, aphrites, nixies, and sprites, that crowd.

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And there are ontological illusions,

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such as angels, elves, demons, jinns, aphrites, nixies, and sprites, that crowd.

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And there are ontological illusions

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that seem somehow tied to the evolving modalities

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of the group mind.

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UFOs are an obvious example.

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I mean, aside from the fact that people

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have occasionally seen strange things in the sky,

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the UFO archetype really emerges in the late 40s

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with the Rainier lights.

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And then a whole set,

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a whole set of taxonomic features

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of this particular brand of illusion coalesce.

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The silvery discs, the alien denizens with the cat eyes

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and the rubbery flesh,

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those same guys who give you

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unscheduled proctological examinations

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in the middle of the night.

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But notice that,

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But notice that,

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that particular taxonomic feature

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has been added recently

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through the assiduously careful scientific research

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of Streber and company.

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So these things are in a,

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well, a cattle mutilation is an interesting one,

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very confined in time and space.

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The crop circle thing similarly.

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It's not that,

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there aren't crop circles,

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but that what we have is essentially a pattern

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in an English wheat field,

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but then radiating out from that are the illusions

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of those who cast their gaze upon it.

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Those who proclaim it,

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telluric communication or particle beam research

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carried on by the air force,

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version it was supposed it was supposed that a particular crop circle had been

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decoded found to be a lost Sumerian language which when decoded said

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basically don't stop here it was essentially a no parking zone for time

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machines they were saying you know this entire century just to maintain speed

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and you know do not. Psychedelic illusions again this is a related

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category but different from these ontological illusions by illusion I mean

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that these are confrontations with phenomena and apparently subjective

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things that the world is manifesting.ings with phenomena and apparently subjective

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ground and an assumed rational observer, where then there is a more than ordinary amount of

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ambiguity. I mean, most of reality is illusory. It's just that we do each other the courtesy

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of not pointing this out. Actually, you trace a very thin data path through the world, and

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most of what we assume without question, we have very little evidence for. I mean, something as

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simple as, well, like that Mount Everest is the highest mountain in the world. Well, first of all,

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very few people have ever seen it. I saw it, and because I saw it from a distance of about 500

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miles, it looked quite small. And my own testimony as to whether it was the highest

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mountain in the world or not, I don't know. I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

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It would be fairly unreliable. And besides, what does that mean anyhow, and how the hell do you

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figure it out? I mean, here we have one mountain in the Himalayas and another in Bolivia,

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and you're telling me you know which is the higher mountain? It must rest on a whole bunch

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of weird and fishy assumptions resting on even shakier data. And that's just the question of

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the highest mountain in the world, give or leave.

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Leave alone the state of your lover's heart, or your banker's for that matter. What's important

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about the psychedelic family of illusions is that they propel the entire issue of illusion

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to center stage, because they demonstrate that the assumed bedrock of quote-unquote ordinary

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perception is in fact...

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No bedrock at all. It's simply a very soft dwell point somewhere in the mysteries of

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metabolism. And the consciousness, whatever its relationship to the brain, is spectacularly

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affected by the perturbation of the physical brain by endogenously introduced...

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pseudo-neurotransmitters of some sort. And to my mind, this is very interesting. Alexander Shulgin

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has secured in his work that you can take a molecule that is completely inactive, and by

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moving one atom to a different place on the ring, you can change this into an active compound. Now,

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it seems to me you could hardly...

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have a neater demonstration of the quantum mechanical foundation of consciousness, because you've

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moved one atom, and you've moved the mountains of mind 500 miles from where they were resting when

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last you looked. It's quite spectacular. And it argues then that mind...

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Which, strangely enough, the materialists always claimed this. They just put different

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emphasis on the words. Mind is a kind of iridescence upon metabolism. For the materialists,

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that was a dismissal, because to them, what iridescence meant was a tertiary phenomenon, not

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inimical to the structure of matter, but necessarily perceived only through the intercession of an

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observer. See, that's what iridescence is. It's somehow...

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A more fragile part of nature than the rocks, the trees, and the waters, because it's a play between

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light and mind. Again, a kind of illusion, a mirage. Now, in a very different category of illusion,

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and this is one worth considering, because it's the one we tend not to place in this category, and that is the

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illusion of materialism. This has broken down completely. The idea that the material world was real sustained

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the investigation of nature from Parmenides to the early years of the 20th century. Virtually the entire history of

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human engagement in the abstract intellectual modeling of matter, the idea that the material world was real,

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matter was assumed to be pretty much as presented in perception. Solid, enduring, having simple location,

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meaning it stays where you put it, and when you look there again, it's there, that sort of thing.

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Now, one of the best kept dirty secrets of western civilization is that the cause of the

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core science, which is physics, the science which was always the envy of all the other sciences

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for its mathematical formalism and its incredible predictive ability, because it's not unusual in

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physics to predict from theory an experimental result to the third or fourth decimal. This is

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spectacular congruence between theory and experiment. You don't get that in the social

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sciences, or even in physical, need I mention, even in physical chemistry. However, the investigation

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of matter has now been pushed to such extremes that matter has shed its easily recognized,

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and familiar face, and has become something much slipperier, much more dependent on the presence of

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the observer, much less easily located in space and time, something much more of the nature of

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thought than of the familiar conception of matter. This word has not reached even as far as biology,

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yet. The biologists are still laboring under the notion of the reality of physical material. If any of you

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read this book that was published last year with much to do called Consciousness Explained, actually it

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should have been called Consciousness Explained Away, here was an effort to drag out all the old material

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of science and explain away consciousness. The problem is, matter itself has taken on the qualities of mind,

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and as this realization relativizes the life sciences, I think there is going to be a new interest in the

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potential for psychedelics to elucidate the potential for psychedelics to elucidate the potential for psychedelics to elucidate

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mental functioning, because what will become respectable, you see, is talk of the observer. This is what has invaded

25:01.160 --> 25:11.560
physics, the most rarefied and formal of all the sciences, had in order to make sense of its enterprise, allow the

25:11.560 --> 25:20.420
observer a kind of primacy with the thing observed. As this seeps into the life sciences and psychology,

25:20.420 --> 25:21.140
hopefully, it will be possible to make sense of the thing observed. If any of you read this book, I think there is going to be a

25:21.140 --> 25:30.020
the phobia of actually involving yourself in your field of study that informs all these reductionist

25:30.020 --> 25:45.530
ratomorphic types in the schools of psychology will be overturned. Well, having flayed that dead horse

25:45.530 --> 25:55.190
sufficiently, another category of illusion that needs to be

25:55.190 --> 25:57.190
addressed, I think, is

26:01.870 --> 26:05.130
How would one call it? Well, basically a

26:06.310 --> 26:07.550
philosophical

26:07.550 --> 26:09.330
illusion or

26:09.330 --> 26:11.330
philosophical slash religious

26:12.130 --> 26:14.130
illusion. This is the idea

26:15.210 --> 26:21.210
that by a direct appeal to intuition, we can somehow gain a

26:21.210 --> 26:26.870
foothold on truth. I think this is as specious as

26:27.450 --> 26:31.190
the notion that we can gain a foothold on truth

26:32.610 --> 26:34.610
through reason or experiment.

26:35.890 --> 26:40.630
This foothold on truth idea may have to be given up.

26:41.730 --> 26:45.760
I'm sure some of you have heard me recall

26:47.560 --> 26:52.320
the situation where Wittgenstein was raving about something

26:53.040 --> 26:59.960
and one of his students said, but is it the truth? And he said, well, it's true enough.

27:00.960 --> 27:08.780
And this really means a great divide has been crossed when you can say that because it means you

27:08.940 --> 27:11.420
understand now that you are no longer a

27:12.180 --> 27:14.180
fairy in a platonic

27:14.600 --> 27:22.060
super world, but that you are actually a monkey with a brain full of mush trying to sort out

27:23.040 --> 27:26.380
you know, what's right in front of you. True enough

27:29.120 --> 27:31.660
is what we should probably rest with.

27:32.480 --> 27:33.640
And

27:33.640 --> 27:35.640
you know,

27:35.680 --> 27:37.680
illusions abound.

27:38.180 --> 27:41.640
One, for instance, I was speaking of these religious

27:42.200 --> 27:46.260
ontologies. I was talking to someone recently who

27:46.880 --> 27:54.420
amazed me because I've always thought of them as a person of great intelligence, but who would never be

27:54.860 --> 27:57.860
acclaimed from the arms of Mother Church.

27:58.700 --> 28:05.200
And we had dinner last week and he said, I realized it finally comes down to

28:05.780 --> 28:11.020
do you believe the universe is being run by the ghost of a Galilean

28:11.680 --> 28:17.400
politician? And he said, you know, put that way, I realized that it wasn't.

28:18.560 --> 28:20.560
Other

28:21.260 --> 28:24.820
religious myths are less easily undone, I think.

28:25.480 --> 28:30.010
Monotheism has an appealing

28:30.870 --> 28:33.610
philosophical neatness, but it leads

28:34.370 --> 28:35.750
apparently to

28:35.750 --> 28:38.770
coliterectomy. So, you know, you want to watch that.

28:41.250 --> 28:43.010
This

28:43.010 --> 28:49.030
search for philosophical neatness may make for strange bedfellows.

28:49.830 --> 28:55.630
And of course, Buddhism. I love the illusion of Buddhism.

28:56.170 --> 29:00.170
It's the illusion that illusion can be transcended.

29:02.350 --> 29:04.210
And

29:04.210 --> 29:07.060
again,

29:07.060 --> 29:09.060
not really doing

29:09.340 --> 29:11.340
genuflection to the animal nature.

29:12.200 --> 29:15.720
It's amazing to me. I mean, if you were to meet a termite

29:16.360 --> 29:19.100
who stated that his or her

29:20.040 --> 29:27.020
goal in life was the perfect modeling of the cosmos, you would think it was quite a comic,

29:27.020 --> 29:33.700
a comic undertaking, and yet how different are we that we should presume

29:35.700 --> 29:38.140
to more than a shadow of

29:39.580 --> 29:50.140
a shadow of the truth. Well then, finally, or I don't know finally, but completing my laundry list here,

29:53.180 --> 29:57.140
linguistic truth or the truth of

29:59.020 --> 30:04.460
language and the illusions that language weaves. Because

30:07.240 --> 30:10.360
someone quite intelligent said

30:11.720 --> 30:15.180
language was invented so that people could lie.

30:16.420 --> 30:21.680
In other words, it gives you that fudge factor of

30:23.300 --> 30:25.300
obfuscation, where someone says,

30:25.680 --> 30:27.680
you know, why did you do that?

30:28.680 --> 30:31.720
Well, the best approach is, I didn't do that.

30:32.560 --> 30:40.360
You know, you thought I did that. What you thought you saw, you didn't see. In other words, I suppose that

30:42.540 --> 30:49.220
lawyers are probably the people who have done the finest work with language, and

30:50.100 --> 30:51.640
behind them

30:51.640 --> 30:53.760
politicians, and the true

30:54.720 --> 30:58.160
potential for language to elevate and to unite

30:58.680 --> 31:05.120
the community was early on betrayed into the production of

31:07.220 --> 31:14.800
illusory ideological goods, which could then be marketed among the people and

31:15.580 --> 31:17.580
to spread confusion.

31:19.780 --> 31:27.460
Psychedelics reflect on this because psychedelics stretch and pull and melt and

31:27.460 --> 31:32.460
and recast the illusion-producing machinery of language.

31:33.400 --> 31:37.160
I mean, I think that if you had to say the one thing

31:37.160 --> 31:39.480
that psychedelics do for everyone,

31:39.480 --> 31:41.860
whether they have a good trip or a bad trip,

31:41.860 --> 31:45.020
because it's up to them to interpret what they make of this,

31:45.020 --> 31:50.020
is it shows you the relativity of your cultural viewpoint.

31:51.320 --> 31:55.140
You know, that it's just your point of view.

31:55.140 --> 32:00.000
You inherited it from a geographical area,

32:00.000 --> 32:02.780
a culture, a set of parents.

32:02.780 --> 32:07.780
It has no relationship whatsoever to anything anchored

32:09.520 --> 32:12.680
in some kind of metaphysical super space.

32:12.680 --> 32:16.160
It's just your cultural point of view.

32:16.160 --> 32:19.440
And travel actually does the same thing.

32:19.440 --> 32:22.620
And I've always felt there was a weird affinity

32:22.620 --> 32:24.640
between psychedelics and travel.

32:24.640 --> 32:25.120
And I suppose,

32:25.120 --> 32:26.240
many people have,

32:26.240 --> 32:28.640
or we wouldn't call it a trip,

32:28.640 --> 32:32.200
and we wouldn't call it a journey.

32:32.200 --> 32:35.120
But travel shows you the relativity of culture.

32:35.120 --> 32:38.780
And what's really happening when you travel, you see,

32:38.780 --> 32:43.780
is you're moving from one language domain to another.

32:44.220 --> 32:46.780
We don't think of it that way,

32:46.780 --> 32:49.200
but that is in fact what is happening.

32:49.200 --> 32:53.740
You can never see the Amazon jungle

32:53.740 --> 32:54.680
if you

32:56.590 --> 32:58.370
keep intact

32:58.370 --> 33:02.890
the bubble of linguistic assumptions

33:02.890 --> 33:05.930
of the place you started out from.

33:05.930 --> 33:08.890
Every place will withhold its secrets from you.

33:08.890 --> 33:10.590
I learned this in the Amazon

33:10.590 --> 33:12.310
because the first time I went,

33:12.310 --> 33:14.890
I had virtually no botany.

33:14.890 --> 33:18.070
And to me, the jungle was green.

33:18.070 --> 33:19.290
That's what it was.

33:19.290 --> 33:20.810
And it was many shades of green,

33:20.810 --> 33:21.710
and it was beautiful,

33:21.710 --> 33:22.630
and it was this and that,

33:22.630 --> 33:24.390
but it was basically green.

33:24.390 --> 33:25.710
The second time I went,

33:25.710 --> 33:30.690
I was with a lot of botanists,

33:30.690 --> 33:32.950
and within days, you know,

33:32.950 --> 33:34.810
you learn the families.

33:34.810 --> 33:36.030
That's how they do it.

33:36.030 --> 33:40.710
With the same taxonomy I'm here applying to illusion

33:40.710 --> 33:43.970
was really developed to describe plants and animals.

33:43.970 --> 33:45.870
So you learn the families,

33:45.870 --> 33:48.270
the plants with square stems,

33:48.270 --> 33:50.450
the plants with the opposed leaves,

33:50.450 --> 33:54.970
the plants with the particular flower structure.

33:54.970 --> 33:59.970
Once you know families, then you have a linguistic wedge in.

34:01.550 --> 34:06.550
But the corrupting or curious thing about language

34:07.550 --> 34:12.550
is that like all tools, it shapes its user

34:12.910 --> 34:17.770
in ways that are not suspected until it's too late.

34:17.770 --> 34:22.770
So for instance, the way in which Western civilization

34:22.770 --> 34:27.770
is totally obsessed with the subject-object relationship,

34:27.850 --> 34:30.390
you know, and it's the basis of our science,

34:30.390 --> 34:34.150
our polity, our relations to commerce,

34:34.150 --> 34:37.190
the concept of product, all of these things

34:37.190 --> 34:40.210
come out of the subject-object relationship,

34:40.210 --> 34:44.190
which is an aspect of language.

34:46.890 --> 34:50.450
So I point all this out because

34:50.450 --> 34:54.310
in talking about my new book,

34:54.310 --> 35:02.030
somebody said that I had gone too far.

35:02.210 --> 35:07.210
And I was amused because it implied from what, you know?

35:09.430 --> 35:14.270
It's not like there is a King's X

35:14.270 --> 35:19.270
where gray beards in white coats tend

35:20.490 --> 35:23.130
the sacred vestal fire.

35:23.290 --> 35:26.090
They're like the fires of reality.

35:26.090 --> 35:29.270
There is no reality.

35:29.270 --> 35:32.350
There are only people who know this

35:32.350 --> 35:34.470
and people who don't know this

35:34.470 --> 35:36.750
and are therefore being manipulated

35:36.750 --> 35:38.550
by the people who do know it.

35:40.310 --> 35:43.630
This is true, or true enough.

35:49.530 --> 35:52.830
And, you know, one of the things

35:52.830 --> 35:57.830
that has amazed me with my own personal career,

35:57.950 --> 36:01.510
because I started out basically shoveling snow

36:01.510 --> 36:03.970
in a cow town in Colorado,

36:03.970 --> 36:08.510
and by fate or who knows what,

36:11.010 --> 36:13.070
come to the present position,

36:13.070 --> 36:18.070
and what I notice as I traverse levels

36:18.910 --> 36:22.490
on a supposed ladder of success,

36:22.490 --> 36:27.150
where you would expect there to be more and more competition

36:27.150 --> 36:29.230
and people and activity,

36:29.230 --> 36:33.490
actually it gets emptier and emptier.

36:33.490 --> 36:38.490
There is nobody minding the store as far as I can tell.

36:38.490 --> 36:43.490
This is why I'm so unsympathetic to conspiracy theory.

36:43.890 --> 36:47.790
We could use a few conspiracies.

36:47.790 --> 36:50.550
Nobody is minding the store.

36:50.550 --> 36:52.450
Everybody is getting rich.

36:52.490 --> 36:55.590
Personally rich.

36:55.590 --> 37:00.590
And so they don't have time to advance the Aryan race

37:01.450 --> 37:06.450
or the Council of Zion or any of this fantasy

37:06.570 --> 37:11.570
and illusion that haunts the world of conspiracy theory.

37:11.810 --> 37:15.870
Rather it seems everything is being left

37:15.870 --> 37:18.310
pretty much to develop on its own,

37:18.310 --> 37:22.350
because people are afraid to grab or touch

37:22.350 --> 37:26.570
the levers and buttons in the control room

37:26.570 --> 37:29.430
of the historical vehicle.

37:30.930 --> 37:33.590
And what that means then,

37:33.590 --> 37:38.010
is that people who can cut through

37:38.010 --> 37:40.710
these many, many illusions,

37:40.710 --> 37:43.190
the illusion of materialism,

37:43.190 --> 37:46.650
the illusion of business as usual,

37:46.650 --> 37:51.650
the illusion of benevolent institutions carefully guiding us

37:52.350 --> 37:54.350
to reasonable destinies.

37:54.350 --> 37:56.350
If you cut through all that,

37:56.350 --> 38:00.350
if you disabuse yourself of all that,

38:00.350 --> 38:05.350
you will empower yourself to eventually be able to stand up

38:05.350 --> 38:08.350
in delicate social and political situations

38:08.350 --> 38:12.350
and just say, bullshit.

38:12.350 --> 38:19.760
That's bullshit.

38:19.760 --> 38:22.760
And this is worth considering doing,

38:22.760 --> 38:26.760
simply because we have an imperiled planet

38:26.760 --> 38:27.740
on our hands.

38:27.760 --> 38:31.760
We have been, for a long, long time,

38:31.760 --> 38:33.760
the victims of illusion.

38:33.760 --> 38:36.760
Western civilization, Stefan Daedalus was right.

38:36.760 --> 38:41.760
History is a nightmare from which one must awaken.

38:41.760 --> 38:43.760
Quite literally.

38:43.760 --> 38:47.760
I mean, we have been blind to what we have been doing.

38:47.760 --> 38:51.760
We are blind at this moment to what we are doing.

38:51.760 --> 38:56.760
If in a single moment the actual nature of our predictions

38:56.760 --> 39:02.760
were to fully make itself felt in the mind of any one of us,

39:02.760 --> 39:05.760
I think it would be paralyzing.

39:05.760 --> 39:07.760
It would be horrifying.

39:07.760 --> 39:12.760
We have waited until the last moment of the last hour.

39:12.760 --> 39:15.760
The house is burning down around us,

39:15.760 --> 39:21.760
and we rouse ourselves from the stupor of materialism,

39:21.760 --> 39:25.760
the stupor of Christianity and scientism,

39:25.760 --> 39:30.760
the stupor of male dominance, sexism and racism.

39:30.760 --> 39:34.760
If we don't rouse ourselves from this stupor,

39:34.760 --> 39:40.760
the momentum toward extinction is now practically irreversible.

39:40.760 --> 39:43.760
You know, the Grateful Dead like to sing that song,

39:43.760 --> 39:45.760
we need a miracle every day.

39:45.760 --> 39:48.760
We certainly do.

39:48.760 --> 39:56.620
And so then that brings me back to my original point.

39:56.620 --> 40:11.620
That outside the then of culture lies an unmapped terra incognito,

40:11.620 --> 40:17.620
as vast as the new world was to the old in the 15th century,

40:17.620 --> 40:22.620
as vast as outer space appears to us now.

40:22.620 --> 40:26.620
The new world outside of culture

40:26.620 --> 40:31.620
is a world that can be conquered through vision and language.

40:31.620 --> 40:35.620
And, you know, many of you have sat through my recitations

40:35.620 --> 40:38.620
of what it's like to smoke DMT.

40:38.620 --> 40:43.620
Many of you I'm sure are familiar with the medieval woodcut

40:43.620 --> 40:48.620
of the guy sticking his head through the cogs and wheels

40:48.620 --> 40:53.620
of the cosmic machinery to observe a new world outside.

40:53.620 --> 40:55.620
The message here is,

40:55.620 --> 40:58.620
and it's more than a message,

40:58.620 --> 41:01.620
it's a message if you just come to events like this

41:01.620 --> 41:04.620
and then go back to studying cost accounting,

41:04.620 --> 41:07.620
it's an experience, if you will,

41:07.620 --> 41:10.620
but avail yourselves of these tools,

41:10.620 --> 41:16.620
the experiences of the discovery of a new world.

41:16.620 --> 41:21.620
A new world as real as any world that we know.

41:21.620 --> 41:24.620
It's not going to come from Time magazine

41:24.620 --> 41:27.620
or the Secretary General of the United Nations

41:27.620 --> 41:29.620
or anybody like that.

41:29.620 --> 41:35.620
It isn't that the world is tired and played out

41:35.620 --> 41:39.620
and that all frontiers have been explored.

41:39.620 --> 41:44.620
Every culture could support that viewpoint

41:44.620 --> 41:49.620
within certain classes and in certain situations.

41:49.620 --> 41:52.620
But, in fact, it has never been true

41:52.620 --> 41:54.620
and it isn't true now.

41:54.620 --> 41:56.620
We are monkeys

41:56.620 --> 42:00.620
and monkeys love a hell of a good fight

42:00.620 --> 42:04.620
and we have a hell of a fight bearing down on us

42:04.620 --> 42:07.620
because we have to clean up the mess.

42:07.620 --> 42:12.620
We're not going to go silently

42:12.620 --> 42:16.620
into the gentle night of extinction.

42:16.620 --> 42:20.620
It's just not going to happen that way.

42:20.620 --> 42:21.620
Creativity,

42:21.620 --> 42:24.620
creativity is going to be unleashed.

42:24.620 --> 42:29.620
Struggle is going to be an unavoidable part

42:29.620 --> 42:32.620
of trying to steer this battleship away

42:32.620 --> 42:34.620
from the cataracts of history

42:34.620 --> 42:37.620
in which we are now caught.

42:37.620 --> 42:43.620
I believe that there is a tremendous obligation

42:43.620 --> 42:46.620
upon the privileged classes

42:46.620 --> 42:50.620
of the high-tech industrial democracies,

42:50.620 --> 42:54.620
and I dare say that includes everyone in this room,

42:54.620 --> 42:56.620
a tremendous obligation

42:56.620 --> 43:01.620
to attempt to deconstruct the bomb

43:01.620 --> 43:03.620
that we have inherited.

43:03.620 --> 43:05.620
That is literally our situation.

43:05.620 --> 43:07.620
The gift from the past,

43:07.620 --> 43:09.620
from the 19th century,

43:09.620 --> 43:10.620
from the 1940s,

43:10.620 --> 43:15.620
from the psychology of Nixon and Johnson and that crowd

43:15.620 --> 43:19.620
is a ticking bomb.

43:19.620 --> 43:22.620
Except that it's a planet.

43:22.620 --> 43:26.620
And it's the greatest challenge to intelligence

43:26.620 --> 43:28.620
that intelligence has ever faced.

43:28.620 --> 43:32.620
And yet it's precisely the kind of challenge

43:32.620 --> 43:35.620
that intelligence should be able to meet.

43:35.620 --> 43:37.620
Because what it requires is

43:37.620 --> 43:42.620
large-scale strategic planning,

43:42.620 --> 43:47.620
implementation of visionary responses.

43:47.620 --> 43:48.620
It is not

43:48.620 --> 43:51.620
it is not incremental.

43:51.620 --> 43:52.620
It's sudden,

43:52.620 --> 43:53.620
complete,

43:53.620 --> 43:55.620
and dramatic.

43:55.620 --> 43:57.620
And I really believe

43:57.620 --> 44:01.620
that there will only be one chance.

44:01.620 --> 44:02.620
You know?

44:02.620 --> 44:08.620
It's, we are circling the runway of post-history.

44:08.620 --> 44:11.620
And the engines are running low.

44:11.620 --> 44:14.620
And there is one approach.

44:14.620 --> 44:16.620
And then, you know, if you miss that approach,

44:16.620 --> 44:18.620
you're into the drink.

44:18.620 --> 44:20.620
Now we can use,

44:20.620 --> 44:22.620
we have the great good fortune

44:22.620 --> 44:25.620
to be approaching the end of a millennium.

44:25.620 --> 44:27.620
Would it be redundant to say

44:27.620 --> 44:30.620
this only happens once in a thousand years?

44:30.620 --> 44:31.620
Yes.

44:33.620 --> 44:36.620
And it's extraordinarily fortunate.

44:36.620 --> 44:38.620
Once I was in England

44:38.620 --> 44:42.620
and I ran into somebody I hadn't seen for 20 years.

44:42.620 --> 44:44.620
And I was amazed.

44:44.620 --> 44:45.620
And I said to Rupert,

44:45.620 --> 44:47.620
how often does one get a chance

44:47.620 --> 44:50.620
to meet someone one hasn't seen for 20 years?

44:50.620 --> 44:51.620
And he said,

44:51.620 --> 44:52.620
well, I dare say,

44:52.620 --> 44:54.620
I suppose every 20 years.

44:58.950 --> 45:00.950
We can use the millennium,

45:00.950 --> 45:04.950
this apparent coincidence of our dilemma

45:04.950 --> 45:07.950
and a calendrical turning point

45:07.950 --> 45:12.950
to create awareness of opportunity.

45:12.950 --> 45:15.950
And we can use the psychedelics

45:15.950 --> 45:18.950
to dissolve boundaries between ourselves,

45:18.950 --> 45:20.950
and other people,

45:20.950 --> 45:23.950
between institutions that govern,

45:23.950 --> 45:25.950
and the governed.

45:25.950 --> 45:26.950
And basically,

45:26.950 --> 45:29.950
we have to insist

45:29.950 --> 45:33.950
on the seriousness of the situation

45:33.950 --> 45:36.950
and the potential for solutions.

45:36.950 --> 45:37.950
And what it means

45:37.950 --> 45:40.950
is a much more radical break

45:40.950 --> 45:42.950
with American society

45:42.950 --> 45:45.950
than we've been willing to contemplate

45:45.950 --> 45:47.950
in the last 20 years.

45:47.950 --> 45:51.950
We went through this thing

45:51.950 --> 45:56.950
with the two-term governor of Arkansas.

45:56.950 --> 45:58.950
And it took a year and a half

45:58.950 --> 46:00.950
to play that all out

46:00.950 --> 46:02.950
and to see what it comes to.

46:02.950 --> 46:04.950
And what it comes to

46:04.950 --> 46:07.950
is Washington is convulsed

46:07.950 --> 46:10.950
over the possibility of closing an air base

46:10.950 --> 46:11.950
near Sacramento.

46:11.950 --> 46:15.950
So how can we even conceive

46:15.950 --> 46:16.950
of this government

46:16.950 --> 46:18.950
making an impact

46:18.950 --> 46:20.950
on the real problems?

46:20.950 --> 46:23.950
It is still government by flim-flam.

46:23.950 --> 46:26.950
And that would be all very well

46:26.950 --> 46:27.950
if we had 500 years

46:27.950 --> 46:30.950
to dig ourselves out of this dilemma.

46:30.950 --> 46:35.950
But if a radical political alternative

46:35.950 --> 46:38.950
is not opened up in this country,

46:38.950 --> 46:40.950
then we are essentially,

46:40.950 --> 46:42.950
I think, going to amuse

46:42.950 --> 46:45.950
and entertain ourselves

46:45.950 --> 46:47.950
into extinction.

46:47.950 --> 46:50.950
The ordinary orthodox system

46:50.950 --> 46:51.950
has failed.

46:51.950 --> 46:54.950
What Bill Clinton exists to prove

46:54.950 --> 46:56.950
at best

46:56.950 --> 46:58.950
is that people of good will

46:58.950 --> 47:00.950
make no difference

47:00.950 --> 47:02.950
in those institutions

47:02.950 --> 47:04.950
because they are compromised

47:04.950 --> 47:06.950
and corrupted

47:06.950 --> 47:08.950
from the very beginning.

47:08.950 --> 47:10.950
It's just the way it is.

47:10.950 --> 47:12.950
Those institutions are set up

47:12.950 --> 47:14.950
for business as usual.

47:14.950 --> 47:17.950
Business as usual at this point

47:17.950 --> 47:18.950
is a death sentence

47:18.950 --> 47:20.950
on the human race.

47:20.950 --> 47:23.950
What has to be done

47:23.950 --> 47:29.950
is a tribalizing of culture,

47:29.950 --> 47:33.950
an ecstaticizing of culture,

47:33.950 --> 47:36.950
a dissolving of hierarchy.

47:36.950 --> 47:38.950
That means self-empowerment

47:38.950 --> 47:39.950
through claiming

47:39.950 --> 47:41.950
the new information technologies,

47:41.950 --> 47:43.950
through deconditioning

47:43.950 --> 47:45.950
from propaganda,

47:45.950 --> 47:47.950
through deconditioning

47:47.950 --> 47:50.950
from the pharma-phobia

47:50.950 --> 47:52.950
that holds everyone

47:52.950 --> 47:54.950
within the pre-programmed molds

47:54.950 --> 47:56.950
that are being handed down

47:56.950 --> 47:58.950
from Madison Avenue in Hollywood.

47:58.950 --> 48:01.950
It means actually realizing

48:01.950 --> 48:05.950
that your life is your own.

48:05.950 --> 48:08.950
Your destiny is your own.

48:08.950 --> 48:11.950
It isn't within the confines

48:11.950 --> 48:12.950
of the culture

48:12.950 --> 48:15.950
because the culture is dissolving.

48:15.950 --> 48:16.950
And to the degree

48:16.950 --> 48:19.950
that the word is put out,

48:19.950 --> 48:22.950
that phenomenon will accelerate.

48:22.950 --> 48:26.950
We are in an extraordinary transition.

48:26.950 --> 48:30.950
Everything that has worked

48:30.950 --> 48:32.950
now doesn't,

48:32.950 --> 48:35.950
meaning global economic systems,

48:35.950 --> 48:37.950
control of the spread

48:37.950 --> 48:39.950
of epidemic disease,

48:39.950 --> 48:40.950
so forth and so on.

48:40.950 --> 48:41.950
All these systems

48:41.950 --> 48:43.950
are breaking down.

48:43.950 --> 48:45.950
And yet the new systems

48:45.950 --> 48:48.950
are not yet in place.

48:48.950 --> 48:50.950
So this is a situation

48:50.950 --> 48:53.950
of extraordinary malleability

48:53.950 --> 48:56.950
and a situation in which

48:56.950 --> 48:59.950
people of great vision

48:59.950 --> 49:03.950
and great ego

49:03.950 --> 49:06.950
can make tremendous impact.

49:06.950 --> 49:09.950
So it's a very dangerous situation.

49:09.950 --> 49:10.950
We saw this

49:10.950 --> 49:13.950
in the 1930s in Germany

49:13.950 --> 49:14.950
and in Europe

49:14.950 --> 49:16.950
where there were all kinds

49:16.950 --> 49:18.950
of potentials,

49:18.950 --> 49:20.950
all kinds of possibilities.

49:20.950 --> 49:22.950
We forget how powerful

49:22.950 --> 49:25.950
a visionary Marxism was

49:25.950 --> 49:27.950
before the rise of fascism.

49:27.950 --> 49:29.950
Movements like Bauhaus

49:29.950 --> 49:31.950
and Dada and Surrealism

49:31.950 --> 49:34.950
all had agendas

49:34.950 --> 49:37.950
which disappeared then

49:37.950 --> 49:39.950
under the rise of fascism.

49:39.950 --> 49:42.950
This must not happen again.

49:42.950 --> 49:44.950
And what it has to do with

49:44.950 --> 49:47.950
is resisting images

49:47.950 --> 49:48.950
that are coming

49:48.950 --> 49:50.950
from the reality studio,

49:50.950 --> 49:52.950
resisting the images

49:52.950 --> 49:54.950
that are coming off the tube,

49:54.950 --> 49:56.950
coming through the newspapers,

49:56.950 --> 49:58.950
and creating a community

49:58.950 --> 50:01.950
based on psychedelics,

50:01.950 --> 50:03.950
sexuality,

50:03.950 --> 50:05.950
sensitivity,

50:05.950 --> 50:07.950
and good sense.

50:07.950 --> 50:08.950
Cultural value

50:08.950 --> 50:10.950
and what good sense will mean

50:10.950 --> 50:11.950
in this situation

50:11.950 --> 50:13.950
is the preservation

50:13.950 --> 50:15.950
of the earth,

50:15.950 --> 50:18.950
the preservation of diversity,

50:18.950 --> 50:22.950
deconditioning from product fetishism,

50:22.950 --> 50:25.950
deconditioning from

50:25.950 --> 50:28.950
energy overconsumption.

50:28.950 --> 50:31.950
All these things we understand,

50:31.950 --> 50:33.950
but we seem to lack

50:33.950 --> 50:36.950
the power to change our minds

50:36.950 --> 50:38.950
or if we have that power,

50:38.950 --> 50:40.950
then the power to change

50:40.950 --> 50:42.950
other people's minds.

50:42.950 --> 50:45.950
And I am into psychedelics

50:45.950 --> 50:47.950
not because I think it's a sure thing,

50:47.950 --> 50:49.950
but because I think it is

50:49.950 --> 50:51.950
the only game in town.

50:51.950 --> 50:52.950
In other words,

50:52.950 --> 50:54.950
it's the only thing I've ever seen

50:54.950 --> 50:57.950
change an individual

50:57.950 --> 50:59.950
on a time scale

50:59.950 --> 51:01.950
similar to the time scale

51:01.950 --> 51:02.950
that we have

51:02.950 --> 51:04.950
if we're going to make a difference.

51:04.950 --> 51:06.950
I've seen over and over again,

51:06.950 --> 51:07.950
I'm sure many of you have,

51:07.950 --> 51:10.950
people go into a psychedelic jerks

51:10.950 --> 51:14.950
and come out halfway decent human beings,

51:14.950 --> 51:15.950
you know,

51:15.950 --> 51:17.950
eight hours later.

51:17.950 --> 51:23.250
If we had 500 years

51:23.250 --> 51:26.250
to steer global society

51:26.250 --> 51:28.250
into safe harbor,

51:28.250 --> 51:30.250
it might be possible to do that,

51:30.250 --> 51:32.250
but we don't.

51:32.250 --> 51:34.250
I mean, I really believe

51:34.250 --> 51:37.250
that we are being asked

51:37.250 --> 51:40.250
to participate

51:40.250 --> 51:42.250
in the birthing

51:42.250 --> 51:44.250
of a new order of being

51:44.250 --> 51:46.250
and that there is reason

51:46.250 --> 51:48.250
for great optimism

51:48.250 --> 51:50.250
and hope

51:50.250 --> 51:52.250
because

51:52.250 --> 51:54.250
it looks like we're just boring in

51:54.250 --> 51:56.250
to solid rock,

51:56.250 --> 51:57.250
but in fact,

51:57.250 --> 51:59.250
there's somebody else boring

51:59.250 --> 52:01.250
through that solid rock

52:01.250 --> 52:03.250
and they have triangulated

52:03.250 --> 52:04.250
our approach

52:04.250 --> 52:06.250
and they are hurrying

52:06.250 --> 52:07.250
to meet us.

52:07.250 --> 52:09.250
I don't think we fell into this situation

52:09.250 --> 52:11.250
because of bad fate

52:11.250 --> 52:14.250
or bad destiny.

52:14.250 --> 52:18.250
This is part of the process.

52:18.250 --> 52:22.250
History is what happens

52:22.250 --> 52:25.250
when an animal species,

52:25.250 --> 52:27.250
an advanced animal,

52:27.250 --> 52:29.250
falls under the influence

52:29.250 --> 52:32.250
of a transformative attractor

52:32.250 --> 52:34.250
of some sort.

52:34.250 --> 52:37.250
History is only about 25,000 years

52:37.250 --> 52:38.250
in duration.

52:38.250 --> 52:41.250
The interesting part

52:41.250 --> 52:44.250
in the last 5,000 years,

52:44.250 --> 52:45.250
what has happened

52:45.250 --> 52:48.250
is that something confounding

52:48.250 --> 52:54.250
has entered the local situation

52:54.250 --> 52:56.250
or was always dormant there

52:56.250 --> 52:59.250
but has stirred to wakefulness

52:59.250 --> 53:01.250
and it is not God,

53:01.250 --> 53:02.250
not the God

53:02.250 --> 53:04.250
that in Milton's wonderful phrase

53:04.250 --> 53:07.250
hung the lamps like stars in heaven.

53:07.250 --> 53:09.250
It isn't that God.

53:09.250 --> 53:12.250
Maybe it's the God of biology,

53:12.250 --> 53:14.250
but whatever it is,

53:14.250 --> 53:15.250
it is to us

53:15.250 --> 53:18.250
as we are to the termite

53:18.250 --> 53:20.250
and what it is doing

53:20.250 --> 53:21.250
is it is casting

53:21.250 --> 53:24.250
an enormous transcendental shadow

53:24.250 --> 53:26.250
back through time

53:26.250 --> 53:29.250
over the epigenetic landscape

53:29.250 --> 53:32.250
of biological becoming

53:32.250 --> 53:35.250
and in our species

53:35.250 --> 53:36.250
for reasons

53:36.250 --> 53:39.250
mysterious to me,

53:39.250 --> 53:42.250
we mirror this thing

53:42.250 --> 53:45.250
and it has swung our compass

53:45.250 --> 53:48.250
away from the forward flow

53:48.250 --> 53:51.250
of genetic theme and variation

53:51.250 --> 53:54.250
and in a course orthogonal

53:54.250 --> 53:56.250
to biology,

53:56.250 --> 53:58.250
a course set

53:58.250 --> 54:00.250
on the transcendental

54:00.250 --> 54:02.250
and it is pulling us

54:02.250 --> 54:03.250
toward it

54:03.250 --> 54:05.250
through the medium

54:05.250 --> 54:08.250
of transforming our languages

54:08.250 --> 54:10.250
through the medium

54:10.250 --> 54:12.250
of the imagination

54:12.250 --> 54:13.250
which is after all

54:13.250 --> 54:16.250
this mysterious mental domain

54:16.250 --> 54:19.250
in which we are whispered to

54:19.250 --> 54:25.250
by angels, demons, gods, ancestors, aliens

54:25.250 --> 54:28.250
and out of that intercourse

54:28.250 --> 54:31.250
culture, self-transforming

54:31.250 --> 54:34.250
shedding its face every hundred years

54:34.250 --> 54:36.250
building on novelty

54:36.250 --> 54:39.250
is ascending toward

54:39.250 --> 54:41.250
a reaching out

54:41.250 --> 54:43.250
toward the unspeakable.

54:43.250 --> 54:45.250
This has been going on

54:45.250 --> 54:46.250
I think

54:46.250 --> 54:48.250
for billions of years.

54:48.250 --> 54:49.250
It has obviously

54:49.250 --> 54:51.250
and incontrovertibly

54:51.250 --> 54:52.250
been going on

54:52.250 --> 54:54.250
since the advent of consciousness

54:54.250 --> 54:56.250
in the human species

54:56.250 --> 54:59.250
and now we're there.

54:59.250 --> 55:01.250
We're in the final domain

55:01.250 --> 55:03.250
of the confrontation

55:03.250 --> 55:05.250
with the secret.

55:05.250 --> 55:07.250
It is impossible to conceive

55:07.250 --> 55:09.250
of history going on

55:09.250 --> 55:11.250
for hundreds of years.

55:11.250 --> 55:14.250
The planet cannot sustain it.

55:14.250 --> 55:18.250
All of these social structures

55:18.250 --> 55:19.250
and institutions

55:19.250 --> 55:21.250
that we have surrounded ourselves with

55:21.250 --> 55:24.250
are obviously lifeboats.

55:24.250 --> 55:27.250
They are not made to last.

55:27.250 --> 55:29.250
They are made to carry us

55:29.250 --> 55:31.250
to a certain point

55:31.250 --> 55:32.250
in the life of

55:32.250 --> 55:34.250
the earth

55:34.250 --> 55:36.250
and we are now there

55:36.250 --> 55:38.250
or we are within

55:38.250 --> 55:40.250
20, 30, 40, 50 years

55:40.250 --> 55:42.250
of confronting

55:42.250 --> 55:44.250
the transcendental object

55:44.250 --> 55:45.250
at the end of time

55:45.250 --> 55:47.250
that drew us out

55:47.250 --> 55:49.250
of the animal body.

55:49.250 --> 55:51.250
History is the proof

55:51.250 --> 55:53.250
and the shockwave

55:53.250 --> 55:55.250
of the eschaton.

55:55.250 --> 55:57.250
This is a hard thing

55:57.250 --> 55:59.250
for secular audiences

55:59.250 --> 56:00.250
to wrap their minds around

56:00.250 --> 56:01.250
because they're familiar

56:01.250 --> 56:03.250
with hearing this

56:03.250 --> 56:06.250
from rattlesnake-handling christers.

56:06.250 --> 56:09.750
But that's simply because

56:09.750 --> 56:13.750
religion has always been

56:13.750 --> 56:14.750
the repository

56:14.750 --> 56:18.750
of the irrational intuition.

56:18.750 --> 56:19.750
It never said

56:19.750 --> 56:21.750
that the irrational intuition

56:21.750 --> 56:24.750
is ipso facto false.

56:24.750 --> 56:26.750
It becomes a travesty

56:26.750 --> 56:30.750
when hung with the trappings

56:30.750 --> 56:31.750
of dogma

56:31.750 --> 56:33.750
derived through the scholarly

56:33.750 --> 56:36.750
revelation of weasels.

56:36.750 --> 56:38.750
But the intuition,

56:38.750 --> 56:41.750
the intuition is pristine

56:41.750 --> 56:43.750
and the intuition of

56:43.750 --> 56:46.750
Islam, Judaism, Christianity

56:46.750 --> 56:48.750
and cults innumerable

56:48.750 --> 56:52.750
is that there is a finiteness

56:52.750 --> 56:55.750
to the historical experience.

56:55.750 --> 56:57.750
And then the more staid

56:57.750 --> 56:58.750
the ontology,

56:58.750 --> 57:00.750
the further into the future

57:00.750 --> 57:01.750
they put it,

57:01.750 --> 57:02.750
so they can continue

57:02.750 --> 57:04.750
trading real estate

57:04.750 --> 57:06.750
for the next little while.

57:06.750 --> 57:09.750
I think that it is now possible

57:09.750 --> 57:12.750
to extrapolate the curves

57:12.750 --> 57:14.750
that describe our degradation

57:14.750 --> 57:16.750
of the planet,

57:16.750 --> 57:18.750
the spread of epidemic diseases,

57:18.750 --> 57:19.750
the ozone hole,

57:19.750 --> 57:20.750
the extraction of metals,

57:20.750 --> 57:22.750
the clearing of the rainforest,

57:22.750 --> 57:24.750
the rise of population,

57:24.750 --> 57:27.750
the spread of toxic compounds,

57:27.750 --> 57:28.750
so forth,

57:28.750 --> 57:29.750
to see,

57:29.750 --> 57:30.750
to convince yourself

57:30.750 --> 57:32.750
even from a rational point of view,

57:32.750 --> 57:35.750
that history is a self-limiting process.

57:35.750 --> 57:37.750
Well, if you're a rationalist,

57:37.750 --> 57:38.750
then you must conclude

57:38.750 --> 57:41.750
we're just headed for extinction.

57:41.750 --> 57:42.750
I would think then

57:42.750 --> 57:44.750
the rational response

57:44.750 --> 57:46.750
to that logical process

57:46.750 --> 57:48.750
would be to get your ass in gear

57:48.750 --> 57:52.750
and try and avert the extinction.

57:52.750 --> 57:56.750
And if you're not a rationalist,

57:56.750 --> 57:58.750
then the conclusion you draw

57:58.750 --> 57:59.750
from all that is

57:59.750 --> 58:03.750
that we are within striking distance

58:03.750 --> 58:05.750
of merging

58:05.750 --> 58:09.750
with the mysterious hyperspatial source

58:09.750 --> 58:11.750
of our intelligence,

58:11.750 --> 58:13.750
and that somehow this is

58:13.750 --> 58:15.750
a planetary birthing,

58:15.750 --> 58:17.750
something as scripted

58:17.750 --> 58:19.750
as the breakup of Pangea

58:19.750 --> 58:21.750
or the movement of glaciers

58:21.750 --> 58:23.750
south from the pole.

58:23.750 --> 58:26.750
It's just part of the process.

58:26.750 --> 58:28.750
Culture exists

58:28.750 --> 58:30.750
to transform mind

58:30.750 --> 58:37.750
out of the domain of matter.

58:37.750 --> 58:39.750
We are rising toward

58:39.750 --> 58:42.750
the rarefaction of ourselves

58:42.750 --> 58:47.750
into the transcendental plasmid body

58:47.750 --> 58:52.750
of alchemical and Buddhist preoccupation.

58:52.750 --> 58:54.750
This is what is calling us

58:54.750 --> 58:56.750
out of matter.

58:56.750 --> 58:57.750
It's what called

58:57.750 --> 59:01.750
the monkeys out of animal organization.

59:01.750 --> 59:03.750
It's what calls technology

59:03.750 --> 59:05.750
out of the restless hands

59:05.750 --> 59:07.750
of the hominids.

59:07.750 --> 59:10.750
And it is what is calling all of us

59:10.750 --> 59:12.750
toward a kind of fusion

59:12.750 --> 59:14.750
with the community,

59:14.750 --> 59:16.750
with the psychedelic totality

59:16.750 --> 59:19.750
of the species,

59:19.750 --> 59:22.750
and with the larger Gaian totality

59:22.750 --> 59:23.750
of the planet.

59:23.750 --> 59:25.750
This is what it all went for.

59:25.750 --> 59:27.750
This is the promise

59:27.750 --> 59:29.750
and the redemption of history.

59:29.750 --> 59:31.750
Without this redemption,

59:31.750 --> 59:33.750
then history becomes

59:33.750 --> 59:35.750
the abortion

59:35.750 --> 59:37.750
that materialists fear it is.

59:37.750 --> 59:39.750
This is why the legitimate path

59:39.750 --> 59:41.750
to the transcendental,

59:41.750 --> 59:43.750
the linking of the individual

59:43.750 --> 59:45.750
with the transcendental

59:45.750 --> 59:47.750
through psychedelics,

59:47.750 --> 59:49.750
now becomes

59:49.750 --> 59:51.750
the most important political work

59:51.750 --> 59:53.750
that can be done

59:53.750 --> 59:54.750
in the light

59:54.750 --> 59:57.750
of the rising awareness

59:57.750 --> 59:59.750
of the end of history.

59:59.750 --> 01:00:01.750
Thank you very much.

01:00:01.750 --> 01:00:32.260
All of you who stayed

01:00:32.260 --> 01:00:34.260
the intrepid core.

01:00:34.260 --> 01:00:36.260
I'll just go through these.

01:00:36.260 --> 01:00:38.260
I've not had any chance

01:00:38.260 --> 01:00:39.260
to look at them,

01:00:39.260 --> 01:00:43.260
and handwriting is also degraded

01:00:43.260 --> 01:00:45.260
here at the end of the world,

01:00:45.260 --> 01:00:46.260
so it's a little hard

01:00:46.260 --> 01:00:48.260
to sort out some of this.

01:00:50.260 --> 01:00:52.260
What role does an individual

01:00:52.260 --> 01:00:54.260
psychedelic experience play

01:00:54.260 --> 01:00:56.260
in the massive changes

01:00:56.260 --> 01:01:00.440
that you're anticipating?

01:01:00.440 --> 01:01:02.440
It would seem to me,

01:01:02.440 --> 01:01:04.440
well, my model

01:01:04.440 --> 01:01:06.440
for the psychedelic experience,

01:01:06.440 --> 01:01:09.440
there have been a number of them.

01:01:09.440 --> 01:01:14.440
The idea that it mimics madness,

01:01:14.440 --> 01:01:16.440
that was one idea.

01:01:16.440 --> 01:01:21.440
That it takes you into the Jungian unconscious,

01:01:21.440 --> 01:01:23.440
that was one notion.

01:01:23.440 --> 01:01:25.440
That it somehow illuminates

01:01:25.440 --> 01:01:28.440
the concepts of Indian yoga

01:01:28.440 --> 01:01:31.440
or after-death models,

01:01:31.440 --> 01:01:33.440
such as the Tibetan Book of the Dead.

01:01:33.440 --> 01:01:35.440
All of these have been tried.

01:01:35.440 --> 01:01:37.440
My assumption

01:01:37.440 --> 01:01:40.440
has been a mathematical one.

01:01:40.440 --> 01:01:44.440
That what psychedelics are about

01:01:44.440 --> 01:01:46.440
is that mind,

01:01:46.440 --> 01:01:48.440
under the pressure

01:01:48.440 --> 01:01:52.440
of evolutionary constraints,

01:01:52.440 --> 01:01:57.440
turns itself into a threat detection device.

01:01:57.440 --> 01:01:59.440
And that's how we use it

01:01:59.440 --> 01:02:01.440
in three-dimensional space,

01:02:01.440 --> 01:02:04.440
to anticipate threat

01:02:04.440 --> 01:02:05.440
and to meet it.

01:02:05.440 --> 01:02:08.440
But that is, as it were,

01:02:08.440 --> 01:02:12.440
a lower-order application of mind,

01:02:12.440 --> 01:02:16.440
and that in silent darkness,

01:02:16.440 --> 01:02:18.440
what happens on psychedelics

01:02:18.440 --> 01:02:21.440
is that the mind unfolds

01:02:21.440 --> 01:02:26.440
literally into a kind of super space

01:02:26.440 --> 01:02:28.440
or a higher dimension

01:02:28.440 --> 01:02:31.440
in the mathematical sense.

01:02:31.440 --> 01:02:33.440
Because I take seriously

01:02:33.440 --> 01:02:37.440
the claims made

01:02:37.440 --> 01:02:39.440
in all times and places

01:02:39.440 --> 01:02:40.440
for millennia

01:02:40.440 --> 01:02:44.440
that shamans can locate lost objects,

01:02:44.440 --> 01:02:46.440
predict weather,

01:02:46.440 --> 01:02:49.440
see where the game has gone,

01:02:49.440 --> 01:02:51.440
and predict the outcome

01:02:51.440 --> 01:02:54.440
of disease situations.

01:02:54.440 --> 01:02:55.440
In all cases,

01:02:55.440 --> 01:02:57.440
what is involved

01:02:57.440 --> 01:03:01.440
is a higher-dimensional relationship

01:03:01.440 --> 01:03:04.440
to the manifold of history.

01:03:04.440 --> 01:03:08.440
So I think that,

01:03:08.440 --> 01:03:10.440
you know, you all understand

01:03:10.440 --> 01:03:12.440
that a locked box,

01:03:12.440 --> 01:03:15.440
if we had a padlocked box here on stage,

01:03:15.440 --> 01:03:19.440
a locked box is not locked in hyperspace.

01:03:19.440 --> 01:03:20.440
It has a,

01:03:20.440 --> 01:03:23.440
a dimension in hyperspace

01:03:23.440 --> 01:03:25.440
from which the contents of the locked box

01:03:25.440 --> 01:03:27.440
are easily removed,

01:03:27.440 --> 01:03:28.440
taken out,

01:03:28.440 --> 01:03:29.440
and put back.

01:03:29.440 --> 01:03:30.440
In our world,

01:03:30.440 --> 01:03:32.440
this looks like magic.

01:03:32.440 --> 01:03:35.440
Shamanism is like this.

01:03:35.440 --> 01:03:36.440
And so,

01:03:36.440 --> 01:03:38.440
to answer the question,

01:03:38.440 --> 01:03:41.440
what role does an individual psychedelic experience play

01:03:41.440 --> 01:03:44.440
in the massive changes anticipated?

01:03:44.440 --> 01:03:46.440
The role is

01:03:46.440 --> 01:03:49.440
that the individual gets in on the joke.

01:03:50.440 --> 01:03:53.440
At this stage in history,

01:03:53.440 --> 01:03:54.440
to be a shaman

01:03:54.440 --> 01:03:57.440
is to have seen the end.

01:03:57.440 --> 01:03:59.440
And if you've seen the end,

01:03:59.440 --> 01:04:00.440
it's like, you know,

01:04:00.440 --> 01:04:02.440
taking Anna Karenina

01:04:02.440 --> 01:04:05.440
and reading the last five pages.

01:04:05.440 --> 01:04:06.440
And then as you make your way

01:04:06.440 --> 01:04:10.440
through this bewildering morass of material,

01:04:10.440 --> 01:04:11.440
you do have the faith

01:04:11.440 --> 01:04:13.440
that it's all going to end up

01:04:13.440 --> 01:04:15.440
as you discerned.

01:04:15.440 --> 01:04:18.440
So that's the political act.

01:04:18.440 --> 01:04:19.440
You see,

01:04:19.440 --> 01:04:22.440
terror of the future

01:04:22.440 --> 01:04:24.440
is one of the weapons

01:04:24.440 --> 01:04:26.440
by which the rationalists

01:04:26.440 --> 01:04:28.440
are holding everybody in line.

01:04:28.440 --> 01:04:30.440
Terror of the future

01:04:30.440 --> 01:04:32.440
can be put out to pasture

01:04:32.440 --> 01:04:37.440
through psychedelic shamanism.

01:04:37.440 --> 01:04:39.440
Okay.

01:04:39.440 --> 01:04:41.440
It seems mushrooms for the masses

01:04:41.440 --> 01:04:44.440
is not really what you advocate.

01:04:44.440 --> 01:04:51.300
Mushrooms for the masses

01:04:51.300 --> 01:04:53.300
doesn't sound like such a terrible idea.

01:04:53.300 --> 01:04:55.300
I mean,

01:04:55.300 --> 01:04:57.300
I always equivocate by saying,

01:04:57.300 --> 01:04:58.300
you know,

01:04:58.300 --> 01:05:00.300
if your problem

01:05:00.300 --> 01:05:03.300
is maintaining boundaries,

01:05:03.300 --> 01:05:06.300
then you probably shouldn't take any psychedelics.

01:05:06.300 --> 01:05:09.300
But in a mature civilization,

01:05:09.300 --> 01:05:10.300
you know,

01:05:10.300 --> 01:05:14.300
you don't define opportunities

01:05:14.300 --> 01:05:16.300
based on what will be detrimental

01:05:16.300 --> 01:05:20.300
to a small minority.

01:05:20.300 --> 01:05:21.300
Mushrooms for the masses

01:05:21.300 --> 01:05:22.300
seems to me

01:05:22.300 --> 01:05:24.300
a fine idea.

01:05:24.300 --> 01:05:25.300
I just don't see

01:05:25.300 --> 01:05:26.300
how it can ever come about

01:05:26.300 --> 01:05:28.300
because I believe

01:05:28.300 --> 01:05:32.300
that the society-shaping effects

01:05:32.300 --> 01:05:33.300
of these things

01:05:33.300 --> 01:05:35.300
are so powerful

01:05:35.300 --> 01:05:38.300
that they will never be tolerated.

01:05:38.300 --> 01:05:41.300
Just to go off on a tangent for a moment,

01:05:41.300 --> 01:05:45.300
this is why I am an incredibly pessimistic person

01:05:45.300 --> 01:05:48.300
about getting pot legalized.

01:05:48.300 --> 01:05:51.300
Because as far as I can tell,

01:05:51.300 --> 01:05:53.300
the argument now

01:05:53.300 --> 01:05:56.300
in favor of legalizing cannabis

01:05:56.300 --> 01:05:58.300
is that it ain't no big deal.

01:05:58.300 --> 01:06:00.300
So why not legalize it?

01:06:00.300 --> 01:06:03.300
The problem is it is a big deal.

01:06:03.300 --> 01:06:04.300
You know,

01:06:04.300 --> 01:06:06.300
you just have to bake it into some banana bread

01:06:06.300 --> 01:06:09.300
and you'll find out what a deal it is.

01:06:09.300 --> 01:06:12.300
So,

01:06:12.300 --> 01:06:13.300
you know,

01:06:13.300 --> 01:06:16.300
and if you read the 19th century accounts

01:06:16.300 --> 01:06:18.300
like Fitzhugh Ludlow,

01:06:18.300 --> 01:06:19.300
the hashish eater,

01:06:19.300 --> 01:06:20.300
people like that,

01:06:20.300 --> 01:06:21.300
it's perfectly clear

01:06:21.300 --> 01:06:22.300
that it can reach

01:06:22.300 --> 01:06:25.300
LSD levels of intensity

01:06:25.300 --> 01:06:27.300
if you eat it.

01:06:27.300 --> 01:06:28.300
And the question,

01:06:28.300 --> 01:06:29.300
you know,

01:06:29.300 --> 01:06:31.300
if pot were judged

01:06:31.300 --> 01:06:34.300
on its social impact

01:06:34.300 --> 01:06:35.300
or, you know,

01:06:35.300 --> 01:06:36.300
its lack of addiction,

01:06:36.300 --> 01:06:39.300
its lack of detriment to health,

01:06:39.300 --> 01:06:40.300
it would have been legal

01:06:40.300 --> 01:06:41.300
a long time ago.

01:06:41.300 --> 01:06:44.300
But it subtly erodes

01:06:44.300 --> 01:06:46.300
commitment to dominator values

01:06:46.300 --> 01:06:49.300
in ways that are absolutely intolerable

01:06:49.300 --> 01:06:52.300
to dominator institutions.

01:06:52.300 --> 01:06:55.300
I mean, they'll let gays in the military

01:06:55.300 --> 01:06:57.300
before they'll legalize pot.

01:06:57.300 --> 01:07:05.090
That's how threatened they are by pot.

01:07:05.090 --> 01:07:07.090
Well, let's see here.

01:07:07.090 --> 01:07:10.090
Recently you appeared on talk radio

01:07:10.090 --> 01:07:13.090
with L.A. police chief Daryl Gates.

01:07:13.090 --> 01:07:15.090
What was the inside story

01:07:15.090 --> 01:07:18.090
and do you feel you were heard by him?

01:07:18.090 --> 01:07:19.090
Well, yes,

01:07:19.090 --> 01:07:21.090
I won't give this too much time.

01:07:21.090 --> 01:07:23.090
He did appear with Daryl Gates

01:07:23.090 --> 01:07:24.090
on his radio show.

01:07:24.090 --> 01:07:25.090
Clearly, they're desperate

01:07:25.090 --> 01:07:27.090
to raise ratings.

01:07:27.090 --> 01:07:29.090
They'll do almost anything

01:07:29.090 --> 01:07:30.090
at this point.

01:07:30.090 --> 01:07:34.090
And Daryl Gates was a pussycat,

01:07:34.090 --> 01:07:39.090
very easily intimidated by,

01:07:39.090 --> 01:07:41.090
I mean, I make no great claims

01:07:41.090 --> 01:07:42.090
in this area,

01:07:42.090 --> 01:07:44.090
but intelligence.

01:07:46.090 --> 01:07:50.090
He completely folded

01:07:50.090 --> 01:07:53.090
in the presence of, you know,

01:07:53.090 --> 01:07:56.090
academic calm, big words,

01:07:56.090 --> 01:08:01.090
citation, that sort of thing.

01:08:01.090 --> 01:08:06.410
What is the difference

01:08:06.410 --> 01:08:07.410
between your vision

01:08:07.410 --> 01:08:08.410
of the end of history

01:08:08.410 --> 01:08:11.410
and the Christian belief in a savior?

01:08:11.410 --> 01:08:15.410
This is a great question.

01:08:15.410 --> 01:08:19.410
My, well, it's complicated.

01:08:19.410 --> 01:08:25.650
The way I think

01:08:25.650 --> 01:08:27.650
of this transcendental object

01:08:27.650 --> 01:08:29.650
at the end of time

01:08:29.650 --> 01:08:31.650
is on this level,

01:08:31.650 --> 01:08:33.650
for purposes of metaphor,

01:08:33.650 --> 01:08:37.650
it's like those mirrored ball bars

01:08:37.650 --> 01:08:39.650
that they hang in discos,

01:08:39.650 --> 01:08:40.650
you know,

01:08:40.650 --> 01:08:42.650
that spins and sends out scintillations

01:08:42.650 --> 01:08:44.650
of light all over the walls,

01:08:44.650 --> 01:08:46.650
ceiling, and floor of the room.

01:08:46.650 --> 01:08:48.650
The transcendental object

01:08:48.650 --> 01:08:49.650
at the end of time,

01:08:49.650 --> 01:08:52.650
and I like that image

01:08:52.650 --> 01:08:55.650
because alchemists used to tell me

01:08:55.650 --> 01:08:56.650
to talk about

01:08:56.650 --> 01:08:58.650
what they called the scintilla,

01:08:58.650 --> 01:09:01.650
which is simply Latin for spark.

01:09:01.650 --> 01:09:03.650
So the transcendental object

01:09:03.650 --> 01:09:04.650
at the end of time

01:09:04.650 --> 01:09:06.650
sends off scintillas,

01:09:06.650 --> 01:09:09.650
sparks which are like reflections

01:09:09.650 --> 01:09:11.650
of its essence,

01:09:11.650 --> 01:09:14.650
but necessarily distorted.

01:09:14.650 --> 01:09:16.650
Well, then ranged all around

01:09:16.650 --> 01:09:18.650
this transcendental object

01:09:18.650 --> 01:09:21.650
and at greater and lesser distances

01:09:21.650 --> 01:09:22.650
are all the people

01:09:22.650 --> 01:09:24.650
who have ever lived.

01:09:24.650 --> 01:09:26.650
And if you are a Buddha,

01:09:26.650 --> 01:09:28.650
a Christ, a Mohammed,

01:09:28.650 --> 01:09:31.650
a guru, somebody or other,

01:09:31.650 --> 01:09:33.650
and you are,

01:09:33.650 --> 01:09:34.650
what that means is

01:09:34.650 --> 01:09:35.650
that you have been struck

01:09:35.650 --> 01:09:38.650
by a scintilla of reflection

01:09:38.650 --> 01:09:41.650
from the transcendental object.

01:09:41.650 --> 01:09:46.650
And so you, as it were,

01:09:46.650 --> 01:09:49.650
have assimilated its essence

01:09:49.650 --> 01:09:50.650
into your being,

01:09:50.650 --> 01:09:53.650
and now you must act it out.

01:09:53.650 --> 01:09:55.650
And I would bet you

01:09:55.650 --> 01:09:57.650
that if you could step into the mind

01:09:57.650 --> 01:10:00.650
of a Christ on the road to Calvary

01:10:00.650 --> 01:10:02.650
or a Buddha preaching at Sarnath,

01:10:02.650 --> 01:10:04.650
what you would discover going on

01:10:04.650 --> 01:10:07.650
in the personal part of the mind

01:10:07.650 --> 01:10:09.650
is the question,

01:10:09.650 --> 01:10:11.650
why me?

01:10:11.650 --> 01:10:12.650
Why me?

01:10:12.650 --> 01:10:14.650
And the answer is,

01:10:14.650 --> 01:10:16.650
you just are dumb lucky,

01:10:16.650 --> 01:10:18.650
that's all.

01:10:18.650 --> 01:10:20.650
You know, you just happen to be standing

01:10:20.650 --> 01:10:22.650
in the right place at the right time,

01:10:22.650 --> 01:10:25.650
and there is nothing special about you.

01:10:25.650 --> 01:10:31.650
You just have a hit of the stuff.

01:10:31.650 --> 01:10:34.650
And then the other part of the question,

01:10:34.650 --> 01:10:37.650
the problem with all these religions,

01:10:37.650 --> 01:10:39.650
and it affects flying saucer cults,

01:10:39.650 --> 01:10:43.650
and it affects occult schools of magic,

01:10:43.650 --> 01:10:45.650
and everywhere,

01:10:45.650 --> 01:10:49.650
is people claim to know too much.

01:10:49.650 --> 01:10:51.650
They are not willing to live

01:10:51.650 --> 01:10:53.650
in the light of ignorance

01:10:53.650 --> 01:10:55.650
and in the absence of closure.

01:10:55.650 --> 01:10:57.650
So, you know, my God,

01:10:57.650 --> 01:11:00.650
you go to these UFO conferences,

01:11:00.650 --> 01:11:02.650
and, you know, you've got the people

01:11:02.650 --> 01:11:04.650
talking to the Polybians

01:11:04.650 --> 01:11:07.650
in booth one.

01:11:07.650 --> 01:11:09.650
Next to them, people are talking

01:11:09.650 --> 01:11:11.650
to Commander Zamo

01:11:11.650 --> 01:11:14.650
of the Antares system.

01:11:14.650 --> 01:11:15.650
And then number three,

01:11:15.650 --> 01:11:16.650
something else.

01:11:16.650 --> 01:11:18.650
No cognitive dissonance

01:11:18.650 --> 01:11:20.650
between these groups.

01:11:20.650 --> 01:11:22.650
They all have coffee together

01:11:22.650 --> 01:11:23.650
and are dating heavily,

01:11:23.650 --> 01:11:25.650
and it doesn't ever seem

01:11:25.650 --> 01:11:28.650
to enter anybody's mind

01:11:28.650 --> 01:11:31.650
that this is a little odd.

01:11:31.650 --> 01:11:33.650
In occult stuff, you know,

01:11:33.650 --> 01:11:35.650
you say, what's that?

01:11:35.650 --> 01:11:36.650
And they say, well,

01:11:36.650 --> 01:11:39.650
that's the 11th amethystine ray

01:11:39.650 --> 01:11:42.650
that was brought by the great white fathers

01:11:42.650 --> 01:11:44.650
of the 11th lodge

01:11:44.650 --> 01:11:46.650
who came from the galactic center

01:11:46.650 --> 01:11:47.650
at the fall of Atlantis

01:11:47.650 --> 01:11:49.650
and established the...

01:11:49.650 --> 01:11:51.650
You say, how the hell

01:11:51.650 --> 01:11:53.650
do you know all this stuff?

01:11:53.650 --> 01:11:55.650
You know?

01:11:55.650 --> 01:11:58.650
I mean, nobody knows anything.

01:11:58.650 --> 01:12:01.650
And Christianity,

01:12:01.650 --> 01:12:03.650
the anticipation of the end of the world

01:12:03.650 --> 01:12:06.650
and the exegesis of revelations

01:12:06.650 --> 01:12:07.650
that has been worked out

01:12:07.650 --> 01:12:11.650
based on the visions of John of Athos,

01:12:11.650 --> 01:12:14.650
you know, it's a good try,

01:12:14.650 --> 01:12:18.650
but it's not a paint-by-numbers script

01:12:18.650 --> 01:12:22.650
for the unfolding of the world by any means.

01:12:22.650 --> 01:12:24.650
When the transcendental object

01:12:24.650 --> 01:12:27.650
at the end of time finally reveals

01:12:27.650 --> 01:12:30.650
its quintessence among us,

01:12:30.650 --> 01:12:34.650
all prophecies will be fulfilled.

01:12:34.650 --> 01:12:36.650
All religious ontologies

01:12:36.650 --> 01:12:40.650
will find themselves somehow vindicated

01:12:40.650 --> 01:12:44.650
and somehow humbled in the same moment

01:12:44.650 --> 01:12:47.650
because they were, in fact,

01:12:47.650 --> 01:12:49.650
in Wordsworth's wonderful phrase,

01:12:49.650 --> 01:12:52.650
intimations of immortality.

01:12:52.650 --> 01:12:54.650
But you don't need to rely

01:12:54.650 --> 01:12:57.650
on these sanctioned intimations of immortality.

01:12:57.650 --> 01:12:59.650
You can have your own

01:12:59.650 --> 01:13:01.650
simply by taking five grams

01:13:01.650 --> 01:13:04.650
in silent darkness on an empty stomach

01:13:04.650 --> 01:13:06.650
after you've unplugged the phones

01:13:06.650 --> 01:13:09.650
on a Saturday night in your apartment.

01:13:09.650 --> 01:13:13.650
The real research into the nature of the eschaton

01:13:13.650 --> 01:13:16.650
is done one-on-one

01:13:16.650 --> 01:13:18.650
above five grams.

01:13:18.650 --> 01:13:28.740
See here.

01:13:28.740 --> 01:13:31.740
I once heard you talk about an experiment

01:13:31.740 --> 01:13:33.740
your brother undertook

01:13:33.740 --> 01:13:35.740
where he was raving for three weeks,

01:13:35.740 --> 01:13:38.740
but you never explained what the experiment involved.

01:13:38.740 --> 01:13:40.740
What was it?

01:13:40.740 --> 01:13:42.740
Well, what a wonderful opportunity.

01:13:44.740 --> 01:13:46.740
True hallucinations.

01:13:46.740 --> 01:13:48.740
I never talked about this,

01:13:48.740 --> 01:13:51.740
even often to very dear friends of mine.

01:13:51.740 --> 01:13:53.740
I mean, there are people who've known me for 20 years

01:13:53.740 --> 01:13:56.740
who I never told this story to

01:13:56.740 --> 01:13:59.740
because I think it takes as long to tell

01:13:59.740 --> 01:14:02.740
as it takes to read this book.

01:14:02.740 --> 01:14:04.740
You know, that wonderful scene

01:14:04.740 --> 01:14:06.740
in Wells' Time Machine

01:14:06.740 --> 01:14:10.740
when he comes back to his gentleman's club

01:14:10.740 --> 01:14:11.740
and he says,

01:14:11.740 --> 01:14:13.740
gentlemen, this is no tale to be told

01:14:13.740 --> 01:14:15.740
over greasy plates.

01:14:15.740 --> 01:14:18.740
Well, similarly with this.

01:14:18.740 --> 01:14:22.740
So I didn't also want to make it the basis

01:14:22.740 --> 01:14:25.740
for my public career

01:14:25.740 --> 01:14:29.740
because this is real...

01:14:29.740 --> 01:14:34.660
I almost said nutty stuff.

01:14:34.660 --> 01:14:36.660
It's...

01:14:36.660 --> 01:14:39.660
I generally disbelieve

01:14:39.660 --> 01:14:42.660
in violations of physical law

01:14:42.660 --> 01:14:44.660
and miracles.

01:14:44.660 --> 01:14:45.660
But I did actually,

01:14:45.660 --> 01:14:47.660
in the course, I'm 46,

01:14:47.660 --> 01:14:50.660
I have seen three or four

01:14:50.660 --> 01:14:52.660
in my lifetime.

01:14:52.660 --> 01:14:54.660
And each time it's absolutely

01:14:54.660 --> 01:14:55.660
astonishing.

01:14:55.660 --> 01:14:58.660
Whole worlds of possible questions

01:14:58.660 --> 01:15:00.660
are instantly answered.

01:15:00.660 --> 01:15:02.660
And I wrote this book

01:15:02.660 --> 01:15:04.660
to inspire people

01:15:04.660 --> 01:15:06.660
to follow our method.

01:15:06.660 --> 01:15:08.660
Which is, our method is

01:15:08.660 --> 01:15:13.660
the rational but stoned mind

01:15:13.660 --> 01:15:18.660
in confrontation with the obscure.

01:15:18.660 --> 01:15:22.660
Seek ye the obscure.

01:15:22.660 --> 01:15:23.660
You know?

01:15:23.660 --> 01:15:28.660
If a book is not at least 100 years old,

01:15:28.660 --> 01:15:30.660
don't read it.

01:15:30.660 --> 01:15:36.660
If a country has more than one international airport,

01:15:36.660 --> 01:15:38.660
don't visit it.

01:15:38.660 --> 01:15:43.660
If a village has more than one outboard motor,

01:15:43.660 --> 01:15:45.660
don't stay.

01:15:45.660 --> 01:15:48.660
And just keep pushing and pushing and pushing

01:15:48.660 --> 01:15:50.660
because out there at the edges

01:15:50.660 --> 01:15:52.660
are the edges.

01:15:52.660 --> 01:15:54.660
There are edges because nobody goes there.

01:15:54.660 --> 01:15:57.660
Because the unsanctioned is hidden there.

01:15:57.660 --> 01:15:58.660
You know?

01:15:58.660 --> 01:16:00.660
That's where the shamans are.

01:16:00.660 --> 01:16:02.660
And the mad people.

01:16:02.660 --> 01:16:05.660
And the sexual experimentalists.

01:16:05.660 --> 01:16:08.660
And the aesthetic experimentalists.

01:16:08.660 --> 01:16:11.660
That really is the method.

01:16:11.660 --> 01:16:13.660
Not belief.

01:16:13.660 --> 01:16:16.660
Belief is a toxic and dangerous attitude

01:16:16.660 --> 01:16:18.660
toward reality, I think.

01:16:18.660 --> 01:16:20.660
After all, if it's there,

01:16:20.660 --> 01:16:22.660
it doesn't require your belief.

01:16:22.660 --> 01:16:23.660
And if it's not there,

01:16:23.660 --> 01:16:25.660
why should you believe in it?

01:16:25.660 --> 01:16:27.660
It doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

01:16:27.660 --> 01:16:35.100
By eliminating money

01:16:35.100 --> 01:16:37.100
and the separateness that it causes,

01:16:37.100 --> 01:16:39.100
could the world be saved

01:16:39.100 --> 01:16:42.100
by sharing the resources and the work

01:16:42.100 --> 01:16:45.100
and eliminating all the unnecessary waste of energy

01:16:45.100 --> 01:16:48.100
and needless competition and consumption?

01:16:48.100 --> 01:16:52.100
Well, I'm not sure how money could be eliminated.

01:16:52.100 --> 01:16:54.100
See, I'm a funny person.

01:16:54.100 --> 01:16:56.100
I vacillate between...

01:16:56.100 --> 01:16:59.100
I have a very strong impulse

01:16:59.100 --> 01:17:01.100
toward political action

01:17:01.100 --> 01:17:03.100
and save the world

01:17:03.100 --> 01:17:05.100
and round up the miscreants

01:17:05.100 --> 01:17:07.100
and set things right.

01:17:07.100 --> 01:17:09.100
That's part of my thing.

01:17:09.100 --> 01:17:14.100
But I also have this incredibly evolved sense

01:17:14.100 --> 01:17:17.100
that it's a done deal.

01:17:17.100 --> 01:17:19.100
That it's okay.

01:17:19.100 --> 01:17:23.100
That the main task is a certain alertness

01:17:23.100 --> 01:17:26.100
and attention to one's comrades

01:17:26.100 --> 01:17:29.100
and that it will all unfold

01:17:29.100 --> 01:17:31.100
through the intercession

01:17:31.100 --> 01:17:34.100
of the transcendental object at the end of time.

01:17:34.100 --> 01:17:37.100
People say this is a contradiction.

01:17:37.100 --> 01:17:39.100
Fine, it's a contradiction.

01:17:39.100 --> 01:17:41.100
I mean, what are we doing here anyway?

01:17:41.100 --> 01:17:44.100
Is life supposed to be simple?

01:17:44.100 --> 01:17:47.100
But I preface that by saying

01:17:47.100 --> 01:17:50.100
one time somebody in a group like this

01:17:50.100 --> 01:17:52.100
challenged me and said,

01:17:52.100 --> 01:17:55.100
you're always talking about the peril of the planet

01:17:55.100 --> 01:17:57.100
and one thing and another.

01:17:57.100 --> 01:18:00.100
Why don't you ask the mushroom

01:18:00.100 --> 01:18:03.100
how to save the planet?

01:18:03.100 --> 01:18:06.100
And so then I thought that was kind of a facetious

01:18:06.100 --> 01:18:08.100
and challenging thing to propose.

01:18:08.100 --> 01:18:10.100
But the next time I found myself

01:18:10.100 --> 01:18:13.100
capable of asking the question,

01:18:13.100 --> 01:18:15.100
I did.

01:18:15.100 --> 01:18:17.100
And the mushroom hesitated

01:18:17.100 --> 01:18:19.100
and now I pass this on to you

01:18:19.100 --> 01:18:21.100
as pure fungal hearsay

01:18:21.100 --> 01:18:24.100
on the networks.

01:18:24.100 --> 01:18:26.450
I said to the mushroom,

01:18:26.450 --> 01:18:28.450
so how can we save the world?

01:18:28.450 --> 01:18:31.450
And it hesitated roughly a third of a second

01:18:31.450 --> 01:18:33.450
and said every woman should bear

01:18:33.450 --> 01:18:37.450
only one natural child.

01:18:37.450 --> 01:18:39.450
I thought about this for a long time

01:18:39.450 --> 01:18:42.450
before I ever publicly mentioned it to anyone.

01:18:42.450 --> 01:18:44.450
And I realized, you see,

01:18:44.450 --> 01:18:46.450
I think that what is destroying us

01:18:46.450 --> 01:18:49.450
are two things.

01:18:49.450 --> 01:18:51.450
Number one,

01:18:51.450 --> 01:18:54.450
an uncontrolled rise in population

01:18:54.450 --> 01:18:57.450
that wipes out every good intention,

01:18:57.450 --> 01:18:59.450
every social program,

01:18:59.450 --> 01:19:02.450
every expansion of agriculture

01:19:02.450 --> 01:19:04.450
succumbs to expanded population.

01:19:04.450 --> 01:19:06.450
This is destroying us.

01:19:06.450 --> 01:19:08.450
The other thing that is destroying us

01:19:08.450 --> 01:19:12.450
is that we are not properly utilizing

01:19:12.450 --> 01:19:15.450
the intelligence, talent,

01:19:15.450 --> 01:19:18.450
and so forth of half of our population.

01:19:18.450 --> 01:19:20.450
The female half

01:19:20.450 --> 01:19:22.450
of the population.

01:19:22.450 --> 01:19:24.450
Now, people say

01:19:26.450 --> 01:19:28.450
that we must, you know,

01:19:28.450 --> 01:19:30.450
women must be promoted

01:19:30.450 --> 01:19:32.450
to professional positions

01:19:32.450 --> 01:19:34.450
and power positions

01:19:34.450 --> 01:19:36.450
and of course this is true

01:19:36.450 --> 01:19:37.450
and I agree,

01:19:37.450 --> 01:19:39.450
but what is really holding women back

01:19:39.450 --> 01:19:42.450
is that they spend a staggering amount

01:19:42.450 --> 01:19:45.450
of their creative life span

01:19:45.450 --> 01:19:47.450
raising children.

01:19:47.450 --> 01:19:49.450
And

01:19:49.450 --> 01:19:51.450
if every woman were to bear

01:19:51.450 --> 01:19:53.450
only one natural child,

01:19:53.450 --> 01:19:55.450
the population of the planet

01:19:55.450 --> 01:19:57.450
would fall by 50%

01:19:57.450 --> 01:19:59.450
in 40 years

01:19:59.450 --> 01:20:02.450
without wars,

01:20:02.450 --> 01:20:04.450
epidemic diseases,

01:20:04.450 --> 01:20:07.450
it would just naturally fall in half.

01:20:07.450 --> 01:20:08.450
Now, I don't think very many people

01:20:08.450 --> 01:20:10.450
have ever considered

01:20:10.450 --> 01:20:11.450
this possibility.

01:20:11.450 --> 01:20:13.450
We tend to think that our problems

01:20:13.450 --> 01:20:15.450
are insoluble.

01:20:15.450 --> 01:20:16.450
They are not insoluble.

01:20:16.450 --> 01:20:17.450
Furthermore,

01:20:17.450 --> 01:20:18.450
it turns out,

01:20:18.450 --> 01:20:21.450
and here's news nobody likes to hear,

01:20:21.450 --> 01:20:23.450
a woman who,

01:20:23.450 --> 01:20:25.450
a child born to a woman

01:20:25.450 --> 01:20:27.450
in Santa Cruz

01:20:27.450 --> 01:20:30.450
compared to a child born to a woman

01:20:30.450 --> 01:20:32.450
in Bangladesh,

01:20:32.450 --> 01:20:34.450
that child will use between

01:20:34.450 --> 01:20:36.450
800 and a thousand times

01:20:36.450 --> 01:20:38.450
more resources

01:20:38.450 --> 01:20:40.450
than the Bangladeshi child

01:20:40.450 --> 01:20:42.450
in its lifetime.

01:20:42.450 --> 01:20:45.450
So, where do we preach population control?

01:20:45.450 --> 01:20:47.450
The third world.

01:20:47.450 --> 01:20:50.450
Because that's where all the people are.

01:20:50.450 --> 01:20:52.450
But that's not the problem.

01:20:52.450 --> 01:20:54.450
People are not the problem.

01:20:54.450 --> 01:20:56.450
Incredible consumption

01:20:56.450 --> 01:20:58.450
by some people

01:20:58.450 --> 01:21:00.450
is the problem.

01:21:00.450 --> 01:21:01.450
It would be possible

01:21:01.450 --> 01:21:03.450
to imagine a world

01:21:03.450 --> 01:21:05.450
where governmental institutions

01:21:05.450 --> 01:21:07.450
or whoever's running things

01:21:07.450 --> 01:21:09.450
could go to women

01:21:09.450 --> 01:21:10.450
and say,

01:21:10.450 --> 01:21:11.450
how would you like to have

01:21:11.450 --> 01:21:14.450
vastly increased leisure time?

01:21:14.450 --> 01:21:15.450
How would you like to have

01:21:15.450 --> 01:21:17.450
an increased expendable

01:21:17.450 --> 01:21:19.450
income?

01:21:19.450 --> 01:21:21.450
And how would you like to have

01:21:21.450 --> 01:21:23.450
genuine status

01:21:23.450 --> 01:21:25.450
as a hero

01:21:25.450 --> 01:21:26.450
in the struggle

01:21:26.450 --> 01:21:28.450
to save the planet?

01:21:28.450 --> 01:21:30.450
If women were to have

01:21:30.450 --> 01:21:32.450
only one natural child,

01:21:32.450 --> 01:21:34.450
women would very naturally

01:21:34.450 --> 01:21:36.450
come into an enormous

01:21:36.450 --> 01:21:37.450
empowerment.

01:21:37.450 --> 01:21:38.450
No one,

01:21:38.450 --> 01:21:39.450
no institution

01:21:39.450 --> 01:21:41.450
could deny it to them.

01:21:41.450 --> 01:21:44.450
And interestingly enough,

01:21:44.450 --> 01:21:46.450
this is not a plan

01:21:46.450 --> 01:21:47.450
where men,

01:21:47.450 --> 01:21:48.450
who have always been

01:21:48.450 --> 01:21:49.450
the planners

01:21:49.450 --> 01:21:51.450
and the managers of plans,

01:21:51.450 --> 01:21:54.450
play much of a role at all.

01:21:54.450 --> 01:21:56.450
Well, I just pass that off

01:21:56.450 --> 01:21:57.450
in case you don't want

01:21:57.450 --> 01:21:58.450
to put your trust

01:21:58.450 --> 01:22:00.450
in the transcendental object

01:22:00.450 --> 01:22:01.450
at the end of the world,

01:22:01.450 --> 01:22:03.450
then the most politically

01:22:03.450 --> 01:22:04.450
conscious thing

01:22:04.450 --> 01:22:06.450
apparently from the mushroom's

01:22:06.450 --> 01:22:07.450
point of view

01:22:07.450 --> 01:22:08.450
that you could do

01:22:08.450 --> 01:22:10.450
is encourage

01:22:10.450 --> 01:22:12.450
those kinds of policies

01:22:12.450 --> 01:22:15.450
and that kind of attitude.

01:22:15.450 --> 01:22:21.940
Are there unnatural children?

01:22:21.940 --> 01:22:26.660
Oh dear,

01:22:26.660 --> 01:22:28.660
still carrying a grudge?

01:22:28.660 --> 01:22:29.660
Leave it.

01:22:33.660 --> 01:22:36.660
Leave it to Saddam.

01:22:36.660 --> 01:22:42.560
No,

01:22:42.560 --> 01:22:44.560
that is not true.

01:22:44.560 --> 01:22:46.560
That's what I've always put out.

01:22:46.560 --> 01:22:48.560
The fact of the matter is

01:22:48.560 --> 01:22:50.560
in 1800,

01:22:50.560 --> 01:22:52.560
the average American woman

01:22:52.560 --> 01:22:53.560
gave birth

01:22:53.560 --> 01:22:55.560
13

01:22:55.560 --> 01:22:56.560
times

01:22:56.560 --> 01:22:58.560
in the course of her lifetime.

01:22:58.560 --> 01:23:02.560
The two-child family

01:23:02.560 --> 01:23:04.560
is a genuflection

01:23:04.560 --> 01:23:06.560
to the industrial revolution.

01:23:06.560 --> 01:23:08.560
No traditional culture

01:23:08.560 --> 01:23:09.560
on this planet

01:23:09.560 --> 01:23:12.560
ever advocated

01:23:12.560 --> 01:23:14.560
the two-child family.

01:23:14.560 --> 01:23:15.560
It's a convenience

01:23:15.560 --> 01:23:19.560
that allows factories to run

01:23:19.560 --> 01:23:21.560
and jobs to be filled

01:23:21.560 --> 01:23:23.560
and in fact,

01:23:23.560 --> 01:23:24.560
as the father

01:23:24.560 --> 01:23:25.560
of two children,

01:23:25.560 --> 01:23:26.560
I would argue

01:23:26.560 --> 01:23:28.560
that the two-child family,

01:23:28.560 --> 01:23:29.560
what happens

01:23:29.560 --> 01:23:31.560
is the children mirror

01:23:31.560 --> 01:23:32.560
the tension

01:23:32.560 --> 01:23:34.560
between the parents

01:23:34.560 --> 01:23:36.560
in a way that happens

01:23:36.560 --> 01:23:38.560
in no other configuration

01:23:38.560 --> 01:23:42.560
of parent-child relationship.

01:23:42.560 --> 01:23:44.560
So I would actually argue

01:23:44.560 --> 01:23:48.560
that the so-called family values

01:23:48.560 --> 01:23:49.560
that these right-wingers

01:23:49.560 --> 01:23:50.560
are constantly

01:23:50.560 --> 01:23:52.560
dinging us to preserve

01:23:52.560 --> 01:23:53.560
are in fact

01:23:53.560 --> 01:23:55.560
values created

01:23:55.560 --> 01:23:57.560
to support the agenda

01:23:57.560 --> 01:23:59.560
of the industrial revolution,

01:23:59.560 --> 01:24:01.560
which means global capitalism.

01:24:01.560 --> 01:24:03.560
And they have nothing to do

01:24:03.560 --> 01:24:05.560
with archaic values,

01:24:05.560 --> 01:24:08.560
which are enormous families,

01:24:08.560 --> 01:24:09.560
not nuclear families,

01:24:09.560 --> 01:24:11.560
but extended families

01:24:11.560 --> 01:24:12.560
living communally.

01:24:12.560 --> 01:24:14.560
That's the traditional model

01:24:14.560 --> 01:24:16.560
and if you're not ready

01:24:16.560 --> 01:24:17.560
to go back to that,

01:24:17.560 --> 01:24:19.560
then one woman, one child

01:24:19.560 --> 01:24:24.770
is as good as anything else

01:24:24.770 --> 01:24:29.690
in my humble opinion.

01:24:29.690 --> 01:24:33.220
Let's see here.

01:24:33.220 --> 01:24:34.220
You mentioned earlier this evening

01:24:34.220 --> 01:24:36.220
that psychedelics played a role

01:24:36.220 --> 01:24:38.220
in human evolution.

01:24:38.220 --> 01:24:39.220
How so?

01:24:39.220 --> 01:24:41.220
Thank you for not groaning,

01:24:41.220 --> 01:24:43.220
those of you who have heard me

01:24:43.220 --> 01:24:46.220
explain this 18 times.

01:24:46.220 --> 01:24:49.220
Because it may be my only crack

01:24:49.220 --> 01:24:53.220
at getting into the history books,

01:24:53.220 --> 01:24:56.220
it seems to me clear,

01:24:56.220 --> 01:24:57.220
well, it seems to everybody

01:24:57.220 --> 01:24:59.220
who looks at the question clear,

01:24:59.220 --> 01:25:01.220
that the theory of evolution

01:25:01.220 --> 01:25:04.220
is handed a tremendous dilemma

01:25:04.220 --> 01:25:08.220
when it comes to human evolution.

01:25:08.220 --> 01:25:10.220
A planet of groundhogs,

01:25:10.220 --> 01:25:12.220
hummingbirds, and slime molds

01:25:12.220 --> 01:25:13.220
poses no problem

01:25:13.220 --> 01:25:15.220
to Darwinian evolution

01:25:15.220 --> 01:25:18.220
as modified by molecular genetics.

01:25:18.220 --> 01:25:21.220
We pose a problem,

01:25:21.220 --> 01:25:23.220
specifically our brain,

01:25:23.220 --> 01:25:25.220
and it's doubling in size

01:25:25.220 --> 01:25:26.220
in less than two days.

01:25:27.220 --> 01:25:29.220
It's very difficult

01:25:29.220 --> 01:25:30.220
for the theory of evolution

01:25:30.220 --> 01:25:31.220
to explain,

01:25:31.220 --> 01:25:34.220
and it's a particular embarrassment

01:25:34.220 --> 01:25:35.220
because that's the organ

01:25:35.220 --> 01:25:36.220
which generated

01:25:36.220 --> 01:25:39.220
the theory of evolution.

01:25:39.220 --> 01:25:42.220
So it's like a real rip

01:25:42.220 --> 01:25:44.220
in the sail

01:25:44.220 --> 01:25:47.220
of the galleon of evolution.

01:25:47.220 --> 01:25:50.920
I believe, and everyone believes,

01:25:50.920 --> 01:25:51.920
that there must have been

01:25:51.920 --> 01:25:54.920
extraordinary selective pressures

01:25:54.920 --> 01:25:56.920
of a unique sort

01:25:56.920 --> 01:25:58.920
upon our own

01:25:58.920 --> 01:25:59.920
early ancestors

01:25:59.920 --> 01:26:01.920
to have produced the human brain

01:26:01.920 --> 01:26:04.920
in such a short amount of time.

01:26:04.920 --> 01:26:06.920
And I think that the answer,

01:26:06.920 --> 01:26:08.920
and I don't want to go into it

01:26:08.920 --> 01:26:09.920
in detail tonight,

01:26:09.920 --> 01:26:11.920
but briefly here's what it is,

01:26:11.920 --> 01:26:13.920
and it explains a lot about

01:26:13.920 --> 01:26:15.920
our sexuality and our politics

01:26:15.920 --> 01:26:17.920
and so forth.

01:26:17.920 --> 01:26:20.920
All primates,

01:26:20.920 --> 01:26:22.920
clear back to squirrel monkeys

01:26:22.920 --> 01:26:23.920
and like that,

01:26:23.920 --> 01:26:24.920
have what are called

01:26:24.920 --> 01:26:26.920
dominance hierarchies.

01:26:26.920 --> 01:26:27.920
We all know what this means.

01:26:27.920 --> 01:26:29.920
It means that the hard-muscled,

01:26:29.920 --> 01:26:32.920
long-fanged young males

01:26:32.920 --> 01:26:35.920
run roughshod over everybody else.

01:26:35.920 --> 01:26:36.920
The women, the children,

01:26:36.920 --> 01:26:38.920
homosexuals, the old,

01:26:38.920 --> 01:26:40.920
everybody gets their marching orders

01:26:40.920 --> 01:26:42.920
from the dominant males.

01:26:42.920 --> 01:26:45.920
This is true throughout the primates,

01:26:45.920 --> 01:26:46.920
and it is true of us

01:26:46.920 --> 01:26:48.920
as we sit here this evening.

01:26:48.920 --> 01:26:50.920
That's what's screwing up

01:26:50.920 --> 01:26:52.920
our politics and making us,

01:26:52.920 --> 01:26:54.920
you know, the situation

01:26:54.920 --> 01:26:56.920
with women and so forth and so on,

01:26:56.920 --> 01:26:57.920
and it can be argued

01:26:57.920 --> 01:27:00.920
to other social problems as well.

01:27:00.920 --> 01:27:05.920
I believe that psilocybin,

01:27:05.920 --> 01:27:09.920
because it dissolves boundaries,

01:27:09.920 --> 01:27:12.920
is uniquely positioned

01:27:12.920 --> 01:27:16.920
to mitigate against this tendency

01:27:16.920 --> 01:27:18.920
toward male dominance

01:27:18.920 --> 01:27:21.920
for a number of reasons.

01:27:21.920 --> 01:27:23.920
And when our remote ancestors

01:27:23.920 --> 01:27:25.920
moved out of the trees

01:27:25.920 --> 01:27:27.920
and into the grasslands,

01:27:27.920 --> 01:27:29.920
they encountered these mushrooms.

01:27:29.920 --> 01:27:33.920
And I think the great undiscussed frontier

01:27:33.920 --> 01:27:35.920
of evolutionary theory

01:27:35.920 --> 01:27:38.920
is the effect of mutagens

01:27:38.920 --> 01:27:42.920
in foods on human evolution.

01:27:42.920 --> 01:27:45.920
We, most animals maintain

01:27:45.920 --> 01:27:48.920
a very narrow food menu

01:27:48.920 --> 01:27:51.920
to avoid contact with mutagens.

01:27:51.920 --> 01:27:53.920
We, when we were forced out

01:27:53.920 --> 01:27:55.920
of the arboreal camps,

01:27:55.920 --> 01:27:57.920
we became omnivores.

01:27:57.920 --> 01:27:59.920
We came under nutritional pressure

01:27:59.920 --> 01:28:01.920
and for a long time

01:28:01.920 --> 01:28:03.920
we were testing all kinds of foods,

01:28:03.920 --> 01:28:05.920
and that would have meant

01:28:05.920 --> 01:28:07.920
a very high rate of mutation

01:28:07.920 --> 01:28:09.920
through that period

01:28:09.920 --> 01:28:10.920
and an acceleration

01:28:10.920 --> 01:28:12.920
in natural selection.

01:28:12.920 --> 01:28:15.920
And I think that psilocybin,

01:28:15.920 --> 01:28:19.920
because it improves visual acuity,

01:28:19.920 --> 01:28:21.920
would have given a leg up

01:28:21.920 --> 01:28:24.920
to predators and hunter-gathering,

01:28:24.920 --> 01:28:27.920
proto-hominids.

01:28:27.920 --> 01:28:30.920
And so, in a sense,

01:28:30.920 --> 01:28:32.920
there was a period of time,

01:28:32.920 --> 01:28:35.920
perhaps as short as 100,000 years,

01:28:35.920 --> 01:28:37.920
perhaps as long as a million

01:28:37.920 --> 01:28:38.920
or more years,

01:28:38.920 --> 01:28:41.920
when male dominance

01:28:41.920 --> 01:28:43.920
in our species

01:28:43.920 --> 01:28:46.920
was suppressed chemically

01:28:46.920 --> 01:28:49.920
by psilocybin in the diet.

01:28:49.920 --> 01:28:51.920
It was still there,

01:28:51.920 --> 01:28:53.920
hard-wired in the genes,

01:28:53.920 --> 01:28:55.920
but chemically suppressed

01:28:55.920 --> 01:28:59.920
by an orgiastic religious style

01:28:59.920 --> 01:29:01.920
that had everybody taking mushrooms

01:29:01.920 --> 01:29:03.920
at the new and full moon

01:29:03.920 --> 01:29:07.920
and then having sex in a heap, basically.

01:29:07.920 --> 01:29:09.920
This made it impossible for men

01:29:09.920 --> 01:29:12.920
to trace lines of male paternity.

01:29:12.920 --> 01:29:13.920
That's a consequence

01:29:13.920 --> 01:29:17.920
of an orgiastic society.

01:29:17.920 --> 01:29:22.920
And a kind of paradise evolved,

01:29:22.920 --> 01:29:25.920
and it was during that paradisical interlude

01:29:25.920 --> 01:29:28.920
that language, theatre,

01:29:28.920 --> 01:29:31.920
altruism, metaphysics,

01:29:31.920 --> 01:29:35.920
poetry, dance, religion,

01:29:35.920 --> 01:29:37.920
all of the functions

01:29:37.920 --> 01:29:40.920
that we equate with unique humanness

01:29:40.920 --> 01:29:43.920
evolved under the aegis

01:29:43.920 --> 01:29:45.920
of a near symbiosis

01:29:45.920 --> 01:29:48.920
with psilocybin, mushrooms.

01:29:48.920 --> 01:29:50.920
And then,

01:29:50.920 --> 01:29:52.920
and this all was happening in Africa,

01:29:52.920 --> 01:29:55.920
then through climatic upheaval,

01:29:55.920 --> 01:29:57.920
drying of the African continent,

01:29:57.920 --> 01:29:59.920
the mushrooms disappeared

01:29:59.920 --> 01:30:02.920
and, God forbid,

01:30:02.920 --> 01:30:05.920
the old wiring

01:30:05.920 --> 01:30:07.920
reasserted itself.

01:30:07.920 --> 01:30:09.920
It must have been hell on earth.

01:30:09.920 --> 01:30:10.920
It must have been similar

01:30:10.920 --> 01:30:11.920
to what we're living through.

01:30:11.920 --> 01:30:12.920
It must have been an era

01:30:12.920 --> 01:30:15.920
of incredible brutalization

01:30:15.920 --> 01:30:17.920
when people stopped caring

01:30:17.920 --> 01:30:19.920
for each other,

01:30:19.920 --> 01:30:21.920
people stopped having group sex,

01:30:21.920 --> 01:30:23.920
they started fighting over women,

01:30:23.920 --> 01:30:25.920
fighting over territory,

01:30:25.920 --> 01:30:28.920
bashing each other's brains out,

01:30:28.920 --> 01:30:31.920
appointing leaders,

01:30:31.920 --> 01:30:33.920
developing weapons.

01:30:33.920 --> 01:30:35.920
The entire sick set

01:30:35.920 --> 01:30:37.920
of pathological institutions

01:30:37.920 --> 01:30:39.920
that leads to our dilemma

01:30:39.920 --> 01:30:41.920
was evolved

01:30:41.920 --> 01:30:42.920
in the wake of the invention

01:30:42.920 --> 01:30:43.920
of agriculture

01:30:43.920 --> 01:30:45.920
and the abandonment of nomadism

01:30:45.920 --> 01:30:47.920
and so forth and so on.

01:30:47.920 --> 01:30:49.920
And this is why I think

01:30:49.920 --> 01:30:50.920
we're so funny

01:30:50.920 --> 01:30:52.920
on the subject of drugs

01:30:52.920 --> 01:30:54.920
because we are literally

01:30:54.920 --> 01:30:57.920
the children of a drug.

01:30:57.920 --> 01:31:00.920
There wouldn't be human beings

01:31:00.920 --> 01:31:01.920
on this planet

01:31:01.920 --> 01:31:02.920
had there not been

01:31:02.920 --> 01:31:05.920
this hominid mushroom interaction

01:31:05.920 --> 01:31:07.920
over a very, very long period of time.

01:31:07.920 --> 01:31:10.920
The reason we addict so easily

01:31:10.920 --> 01:31:12.920
to so many substances

01:31:12.920 --> 01:31:15.920
and the reason people destroy their lives

01:31:15.920 --> 01:31:16.920
with various addictions

01:31:16.920 --> 01:31:19.920
is we have an itch

01:31:19.920 --> 01:31:22.920
that we just can't scratch

01:31:22.920 --> 01:31:24.920
and we try everything.

01:31:24.920 --> 01:31:25.920
And I maintain

01:31:25.920 --> 01:31:26.920
that you'll keep itching

01:31:26.920 --> 01:31:28.920
and you'll keep scratching

01:31:28.920 --> 01:31:30.920
till you come to this very narrow family

01:31:30.920 --> 01:31:32.920
of hallucinogens,

01:31:32.920 --> 01:31:35.920
the tryptamine hallucinogens.

01:31:35.920 --> 01:31:38.920
Then the itch stops

01:31:38.920 --> 01:31:41.920
because you are restored

01:31:41.920 --> 01:31:44.920
to the archaic dynamic

01:31:44.920 --> 01:31:46.920
in which we created

01:31:46.920 --> 01:31:49.920
the most noble social system

01:31:49.920 --> 01:31:51.920
that we have ever lived under,

01:31:51.920 --> 01:31:53.920
the archaic, nomadic, shamanic,

01:31:53.920 --> 01:31:55.920
goddess-worshiping world

01:31:55.920 --> 01:31:57.920
of the dawn time.

01:31:57.920 --> 01:32:00.920
And history is a fall away from that

01:32:00.920 --> 01:32:05.920
exactly as these monotheistic religions insist,

01:32:05.920 --> 01:32:07.920
the fall into history.

01:32:07.920 --> 01:32:08.920
And I see then

01:32:08.920 --> 01:32:11.920
this emergent end of the world

01:32:11.920 --> 01:32:13.920
post-history millenarian culture

01:32:13.920 --> 01:32:16.920
as an attempt to reconnect

01:32:16.920 --> 01:32:18.920
with that archaic,

01:32:18.920 --> 01:32:20.920
archaic authenticity

01:32:20.920 --> 01:32:23.920
that was the birthplace

01:32:23.920 --> 01:32:25.920
of intellect, of poetry,

01:32:25.920 --> 01:32:27.920
of beauty, of love,

01:32:27.920 --> 01:32:29.920
and of altruism.

01:32:29.920 --> 01:32:38.320
Okay.

01:32:38.320 --> 01:32:40.320
These are great questions.

01:32:40.320 --> 01:32:43.320
I wish I had more time.

01:32:43.320 --> 01:32:45.320
Here's one.

01:32:45.320 --> 01:32:48.320
Please define intelligence.

01:32:48.320 --> 01:32:49.320
Strangely enough,

01:32:49.320 --> 01:32:51.320
I was thinking about this today

01:32:51.320 --> 01:32:53.320
as I can't even remember why,

01:32:53.320 --> 01:32:55.320
but I produced a definition

01:32:55.320 --> 01:32:58.320
and it's a kind of a cribbing

01:32:58.320 --> 01:32:59.320
from Whitehead.

01:32:59.320 --> 01:33:03.320
Whitehead defined understanding

01:33:03.320 --> 01:33:05.320
in the following way.

01:33:05.320 --> 01:33:07.320
He said understanding

01:33:07.320 --> 01:33:10.320
is the apperception of pattern

01:33:10.320 --> 01:33:12.320
as such.

01:33:12.320 --> 01:33:14.320
That's all.

01:33:14.320 --> 01:33:15.320
For instance, in this room

01:33:15.320 --> 01:33:17.320
there are many patterns.

01:33:17.320 --> 01:33:18.320
Where the men are,

01:33:18.320 --> 01:33:20.320
where the women are.

01:33:20.320 --> 01:33:22.320
Where the over 40s are,

01:33:22.320 --> 01:33:24.320
where the under 40s are.

01:33:24.320 --> 01:33:28.320
Where the wealthy and the poor are.

01:33:28.320 --> 01:33:30.320
Each of these patterns,

01:33:30.320 --> 01:33:31.320
if you can see it,

01:33:31.320 --> 01:33:34.320
tells you more about the situation.

01:33:34.320 --> 01:33:36.320
And presumably there are

01:33:36.320 --> 01:33:37.320
an infinite number

01:33:37.320 --> 01:33:41.320
of these informative patterns.

01:33:41.320 --> 01:33:44.320
So I would define intelligence

01:33:44.320 --> 01:33:47.320
as Whitehead defined understanding.

01:33:47.320 --> 01:33:50.320
Intelligence is the apperception

01:33:50.320 --> 01:33:53.320
of pattern as such.

01:33:53.320 --> 01:33:55.320
And the more of pattern,

01:33:55.320 --> 01:33:56.320
of the pattern,

01:33:56.320 --> 01:33:58.320
and the more patterns

01:33:58.320 --> 01:34:00.320
that you perceive,

01:34:00.320 --> 01:34:02.320
the more intelligent you are.

01:34:02.320 --> 01:34:03.320
Of course, these patterns

01:34:03.320 --> 01:34:05.320
must actually be there.

01:34:05.320 --> 01:34:07.320
Otherwise you're delusory

01:34:07.320 --> 01:34:11.820
and that's a different issue.

01:34:11.820 --> 01:34:12.820
And then I'll do,

01:34:12.820 --> 01:34:15.820
I'll do one more here.

01:34:15.820 --> 01:34:17.820
Aww.

01:34:17.820 --> 01:34:18.820
You don't want,

01:34:18.820 --> 01:34:29.000
go fast through them.

01:34:29.000 --> 01:34:31.000
What do you think about meditation

01:34:31.000 --> 01:34:32.000
as a path to other levels

01:34:32.000 --> 01:34:33.000
of consciousness

01:34:33.000 --> 01:34:35.000
and understanding so-called reality

01:34:35.000 --> 01:34:37.000
as illusion?

01:34:37.000 --> 01:34:39.000
I think meditation is a fine thing.

01:34:39.000 --> 01:34:41.000
I do it.

01:34:41.000 --> 01:34:43.000
I'm not sure what its relation

01:34:43.000 --> 01:34:46.000
to the psychedelic experience is.

01:34:46.000 --> 01:34:49.000
The best,

01:34:49.000 --> 01:34:51.000
this is essentially part

01:34:51.000 --> 01:34:53.000
of a larger question,

01:34:53.000 --> 01:34:54.000
which is can you get there

01:34:54.000 --> 01:34:58.000
on the natch?

01:34:58.000 --> 01:35:00.000
And, you know,

01:35:00.000 --> 01:35:02.000
the short answer is no.

01:35:02.000 --> 01:35:05.000
The fair answer is maybe

01:35:05.000 --> 01:35:07.000
in exceptional cases.

01:35:07.000 --> 01:35:10.000
Cases so exceptional

01:35:10.000 --> 01:35:12.000
that the answer is no.

01:35:15.000 --> 01:35:18.000
And the perils I submit to you

01:35:18.000 --> 01:35:19.000
are much greater

01:35:19.000 --> 01:35:23.000
because what is so wonderful

01:35:23.000 --> 01:35:25.000
about the psychedelics

01:35:25.000 --> 01:35:28.000
is how democratic they are.

01:35:28.000 --> 01:35:29.000
You know,

01:35:29.000 --> 01:35:31.000
you don't have to

01:35:31.000 --> 01:35:33.000
have enslaved yourself

01:35:33.000 --> 01:35:36.000
into some beady-eyed weasel

01:35:36.000 --> 01:35:38.000
and his set of precepts,

01:35:38.000 --> 01:35:39.000
dietary strictures,

01:35:39.000 --> 01:35:42.000
and mantric formulas.

01:35:42.000 --> 01:35:44.000
It doesn't work like that.

01:35:44.000 --> 01:35:45.000
It isn't handed down

01:35:45.000 --> 01:35:47.000
through a human lineage.

01:35:47.000 --> 01:35:50.000
I asked the mushroom about this.

01:35:50.000 --> 01:35:51.000
I said,

01:35:51.000 --> 01:35:52.000
can, you know,

01:35:52.000 --> 01:35:53.000
what's the deal

01:35:53.000 --> 01:35:55.000
with these other paths

01:35:55.000 --> 01:35:57.000
to enlightenment?

01:35:57.000 --> 01:35:58.000
And you've got to understand,

01:35:58.000 --> 01:36:00.000
this is the mushroom speaking.

01:36:00.000 --> 01:36:02.000
But it said,

01:36:02.000 --> 01:36:04.000
for one human being

01:36:04.000 --> 01:36:05.000
to seek enlightenment

01:36:05.000 --> 01:36:06.000
from another

01:36:06.000 --> 01:36:09.000
is like one grain of sand

01:36:09.000 --> 01:36:10.000
to seek enlightenment

01:36:10.000 --> 01:36:11.000
from another.

01:36:11.000 --> 01:36:14.000
It is preposterous.

01:36:14.000 --> 01:36:15.000
And I like that

01:36:15.000 --> 01:36:17.000
because I've never met

01:36:17.000 --> 01:36:20.000
anybody whose intelligence

01:36:20.000 --> 01:36:22.000
seemed so intimidating

01:36:22.000 --> 01:36:23.000
that they deserved

01:36:23.000 --> 01:36:25.000
to be followed.

01:36:25.000 --> 01:36:26.000
And I dare say

01:36:26.000 --> 01:36:28.000
you probably haven't either.

01:36:28.000 --> 01:36:30.000
If you've been paying attention.

01:36:30.000 --> 01:36:31.000
I mean,

01:36:31.000 --> 01:36:32.000
how many,

01:36:32.000 --> 01:36:35.000
how many philandering zenies

01:36:35.000 --> 01:36:37.000
have to parade before us?

01:36:37.000 --> 01:36:39.000
How many cog-youps

01:36:39.000 --> 01:36:41.000
with a Budweiser welded

01:36:41.000 --> 01:36:43.000
to their good right hand

01:36:43.000 --> 01:36:45.000
do we have to encounter

01:36:45.000 --> 01:36:47.000
before you get the message?

01:36:47.000 --> 01:36:48.000
You know,

01:36:48.000 --> 01:36:50.000
these guys are just slime balls

01:36:50.000 --> 01:36:51.000
at worst

01:36:51.000 --> 01:36:53.000
and lost souls at best.

01:36:53.000 --> 01:36:55.000
And you're smarter than they are

01:36:55.000 --> 01:36:57.000
by an order of magnitude anyway.

01:36:57.000 --> 01:36:59.000
So why waste your time?

01:36:59.000 --> 01:37:00.000
Now,

01:37:00.000 --> 01:37:02.000
if you want to follow,

01:37:02.000 --> 01:37:03.000
if you just can't

01:37:03.000 --> 01:37:05.000
tear yourself away

01:37:05.000 --> 01:37:07.000
from the concept of following,

01:37:07.000 --> 01:37:08.000
then,

01:37:08.000 --> 01:37:09.000
you know,

01:37:09.000 --> 01:37:10.000
how about Plato,

01:37:10.000 --> 01:37:12.000
Heraclitus,

01:37:12.000 --> 01:37:13.000
Parmenides,

01:37:13.000 --> 01:37:14.000
Plotinus,

01:37:14.000 --> 01:37:15.000
Proclus,

01:37:15.000 --> 01:37:16.000
you know,

01:37:16.000 --> 01:37:17.000
dead guys.

01:37:17.000 --> 01:37:19.000
They're much safer.

01:37:19.000 --> 01:37:20.000
You know,

01:37:20.000 --> 01:37:22.000
they're not going to try

01:37:22.000 --> 01:37:24.000
and climb into your wallet

01:37:24.000 --> 01:37:26.000
or some delicate porcelain.

01:37:26.000 --> 01:37:28.000
of your anatomy.

01:37:28.000 --> 01:37:29.000
Plus,

01:37:29.000 --> 01:37:32.000
they've been use-tested

01:37:32.000 --> 01:37:35.000
in the historical arena

01:37:35.000 --> 01:37:37.000
and have been found

01:37:37.000 --> 01:37:38.000
to be generally

01:37:38.000 --> 01:37:40.000
at least harmless

01:37:40.000 --> 01:37:41.000
at worst

01:37:41.000 --> 01:37:42.000
and in some cases

01:37:42.000 --> 01:37:44.000
actually to be recommended.

01:37:44.000 --> 01:37:46.000
So I would say,

01:37:46.000 --> 01:37:47.000
you know,

01:37:47.000 --> 01:37:48.000
the whole message

01:37:48.000 --> 01:37:49.000
of psychedelics

01:37:49.000 --> 01:37:51.000
is self-empowerment.

01:37:51.000 --> 01:37:53.000
Trust yourself.

01:37:53.000 --> 01:37:55.000
Seize the tiller

01:37:55.000 --> 01:37:56.000
of your destiny.

01:37:56.000 --> 01:37:58.000
It is your life.

01:37:58.000 --> 01:38:00.000
It is your body.

01:38:00.000 --> 01:38:01.000
It is your mind.

01:38:01.000 --> 01:38:03.000
And it's your world

01:38:03.000 --> 01:38:04.000
to remake

01:38:04.000 --> 01:38:05.000
as you choose

01:38:05.000 --> 01:38:07.000
to reshape it.

01:38:07.000 --> 01:38:09.000
History has failed.

01:38:09.000 --> 01:38:12.000
The past is no guide.

01:38:12.000 --> 01:38:15.000
The immediate generations

01:38:15.000 --> 01:38:17.000
preceding us

01:38:17.000 --> 01:38:19.000
have dealt themselves

01:38:19.000 --> 01:38:20.000
into bankruptcy.

01:38:20.000 --> 01:38:24.000
Their object fetishism,

01:38:24.000 --> 01:38:25.000
their immorality

01:38:25.000 --> 01:38:27.000
their ideological excesses,

01:38:27.000 --> 01:38:29.000
their tendency

01:38:29.000 --> 01:38:31.000
to resort to brutality

01:38:31.000 --> 01:38:32.000
and the solution

01:38:32.000 --> 01:38:33.000
of every problem

01:38:33.000 --> 01:38:36.000
has essentially ruled them

01:38:36.000 --> 01:38:39.000
out of play.

01:38:39.000 --> 01:38:42.000
They are no longer operable.

01:38:42.000 --> 01:38:45.000
And psychedelics,

01:38:45.000 --> 01:38:47.000
because they do,

01:38:47.000 --> 01:38:48.000
in fact,

01:38:48.000 --> 01:38:49.000
enhance, accelerate,

01:38:49.000 --> 01:38:52.000
and promote consciousness,

01:38:52.000 --> 01:38:53.000
must,

01:38:53.000 --> 01:38:54.000
must,

01:38:54.000 --> 01:38:56.000
it's not a debate,

01:38:56.000 --> 01:38:58.000
must loom large

01:38:58.000 --> 01:39:00.000
in the future history

01:39:00.000 --> 01:39:01.000
of our species.

01:39:01.000 --> 01:39:03.000
Because if consciousness

01:39:03.000 --> 01:39:05.000
is not a major part

01:39:05.000 --> 01:39:07.000
of the human future,

01:39:07.000 --> 01:39:10.000
it is not a human future.

01:39:10.000 --> 01:39:12.000
Thank you very, very much.