Greetings from Cyberdelic Space.
This is Lorenzo, and I'm your host here in the Psychedelic Salon.
And to begin with, I'd like to thank Guy, Benjamin, Steve, Timothy, and Reblin
for buying a copy of The Genesis Generation, my pay-what-you-can novel in audiobook format.
Your donations are very much appreciated.
And speaking of appreciation, I think that we should all spend a moment or two
sending our love and good vibes out to the legendary alchemist who we simply knew as Owsley.
As you already know, Owsley died in an automobile crash in Queensland, Australia a little over a week ago.
And if you aren't familiar with Owsley's work, it might be worth your time to Google him.
His full name was Augustus Owsley Stanley III, and I think it's safe to say that what we call the 60s
wouldn't have been nearly as interesting without him as it was, thanks to the millions of doses of LSD
that he and his assistants produced in order to help us crack the cosmic egg of the status quo thinking
that prevailed when that era began.
So, happy trails, Owsley, and I hope you come back soon.
Now, speaking of coming back, today at long last we are going to hear yet another talk by the one and only Terrence McKenna.
What I'm going to play for you right now is an interview of his that I found in the big box of tapes
that Diana Slattery sent to me.
And, hey, thank you ever so much, Diana. I really appreciate it.
Unfortunately, the ink on the label somehow became wet and got smeared on this tape,
and so I don't have any information to give you as to the date or place of this interview,
but I think that you'll find that, once again, even though he may touch on themes we've heard from him before,
that the material somehow seems very fresh.
There's talk of extraterrestrials and ways that they may be trying to communicate with us,
talk of shamanism and philosophy,
and all of which I think can be summed up in his statement when he says,
there is an angel within the monkey struggling to get free,
and this is what the historical crisis is all about.
So, in order to help us get today's historical crisis in a little better perspective,
let's now join the good bard, Terrence McKenna.
Well, do you think we're in a state of transition?
Are we moving from one culture to another?
Oh, I think we're definitely in a state of transition.
This is the chaos at the end of history.
However, it's probably nothing to be alarmed about.
I imagine it's simply the normal situation that prevails
when a species is preparing to depart for the stars.
Do you think we're preparing to depart for the stars?
Well, on the scale of a hundred or a thousand years,
I think it's an unavoidable conclusion,
and that span of time in geological terms is hardly the wink of an eye.
In fact, all of human history from that perspective
appears as a preparation for human transcendence of the planetary existence.
Do we want to get away from the planet?
Well, I think you have to take the view that certainly the planet is the cradle of mankind,
but inevitably one cannot remain in the cradle forever.
However, the human imagination in conjunction with technology
has become a force so potent
that it really can no longer be unleashed on the surface of the planet
with safety.
The human imagination has gained such an immense power
that the only environment that is friendly to it
is actually the vacuum of deep space.
It is there that we can erect the architectonic dreams
that drive us to produce a Los Angeles or a Tokyo
and do it on a scale and in such a way
that it will be fulfilling rather than degrading.
So, yes, I think we cannot move forward in understanding
without accepting as a consequence of that
that we have to leave the planet,
that we are no longer the bipedal monkeys we once were.
We have become almost a new force in nature,
a thing of language and cybernetics
and an amalgam of computers
and human brains
and societal structures
that has such an enormous forward momentum
that the only place where it can express itself
without destroying itself
is, as James Joyce says,
up in the end.
So long, long ago in the faraway galaxy,
Star Wars style may be in our future?
Well...
As opposed to our past?
It's in our present, I think.
Our future is probably almost unimaginable
because I think the transformation
that leaving the planet will bring
will also involve a transformation of our consciousness.
We are not going as 1950s-style human beings.
We are going to have to transform our minds
before we are going to be able to leave the planet
with any amount of grace.
This is where I think the psychedelics come in
because they are anticipations of the future.
They seem to channel information
that is not strictly governed
by the laws of normal causality
so that there really is a prophetic dimension,
a glimpse of the potential of the far centuries of the future
through these compounds.
And no cultural shift of this magnitude
can be unambiguous.
I mean, the very idea that as a species
we would leave the earth behind us
must be as rending an idea
as that a child would leave its childhood home.
Obviously, it's a turning away from something
that once left behind can never be recaptured.
However, this is the nature of going forward into being
a series of self-transforming, a sense of level
and we now simply happen to be
at that moment of ascent to a new level
that is linked to leaving the planetary surface physically
and to reconnecting with the contents
of the unconscious collectivity of our minds.
These two things will be done simultaneously.
This is what the last half of the 20th century,
it seems to me, is all about.
Well, by and large, psychedelics have really not been accepted
into the mainstream.
Do you see a change in that?
Well, not particularly.
They hold a certain fascination for a persistent majority
and in that way they do their catalytic work upon society,
which is to introduce new ideas
and to release a certain kind of creative energy
into society.
I certainly would not like to see a return
to the psychedelic hysterias of the 1960s.
I think it's fine that these things are now
the subject of interest of a much smaller group of people,
but perhaps a group of people with a greater commitment
and a better idea of exactly what these things are.
And it's really the same people.
It's just a smaller group of them
and they have accumulated experience over the past 20 years.
However, I certainly don't think all psychedelic frontiers are conquered.
One of the things that I write about and speak about
are the phenomena that many people confirm
with the psilocybin family of hallucinogens
that no one has included in the standard model of psychedelic drugs.
And by that I refer to the logos-like phenomenon
of an interiorized voice
that seems to be almost a superhuman agency,
a kind of genus loci.
And I've been writing recently about alien intelligence,
which is what I call this,
where you have contact with an entity
so beyond the normal structure of the ego
that if it is not an extraterrestrial,
it might as well be
because its bizarreness
and its ordinary expectations about what can go on
is so great that if flying saucers arrived here tomorrow
from the Pleiades,
it would make this mystery no less compelling.
It amuses me that the scientific community
has taken over the search for extraterrestrial intelligence
and defined it as they care to define it
and have erected radio telescopes
to search the galaxy for these signals.
And the world's largest radio telescope
is at Arecibo in Puerto Rico.
And within the shadow of that installation,
mushrooms grow in the fields
and the cows munch quietly in the sunshine.
And it's this marvelous inner penetration
of the near and the far away
because I believe that the place to search for extraterrestrials
is in the psychic dimension.
And there the problem is not the absence of contact
but the volume of contact
that must be sifted through
because the fact of the matter is
shaman and mystics and seers
have been hearing voices
and talking to gods and demons
since the Paleolithic
and probably before.
That doesn't mean that we can rule out
this approach to communication.
It seems to me far more likely
that an advanced civilization
would communicate interdimensionally
and telepathically.
The amounts of time available
for an intelligent species
to evolve these kinds of communication
are vast.
So I think that it's very interesting then
that the tryptamines,
psilocybin and DMT,
at the 15 milligram level
very reliably trigger
what could only be described
as contact-like phenomena.
And not only the interiorized voice
in the head
but also the classical
flying saucer motifs
of the whirling disc,
the lens-shaped object,
the alien approach.
This seems to be something
hardwired into the human psyche
and I would like to find out why.
I think it's a very odd
human psychology
and I don't buy
any of the current theories
ranging from
that nothing at all is happening
to that this is in fact
another species
with a world around another star
that is getting in touch with us.
I think it's something so bizarre
that it actually masquerades
as an extraterrestrial
so as not to alarm us
by the true implications
of what it is.
Well, your statement implies
that it's something external
to ourselves
and I wonder about that.
Well, this dualism
of the interior
and the exterior
may have to be overcome.
It is obviously
transcends the individual
but I suspect
it is something like
an overmind
of the species
that actually
the highest form
of human organization
is not realized
in the democratic individual.
It is realized
in a dimension
none of us
have ever penetrated
which is the mind
of the species
which is actually
the hand
at the tiller
of history.
It is no government
no religious group
but actually
what we call
the human unconscious
but it is not
unconscious
and it is not
simply a cybernetic repository
of myth and memory.
It is an organized
intellect of some sort
and human history
is its signature
on the primates
and it is so different
from the primates.
It is like a creature
of pure information.
It is made of language.
It releases ideas
into the flowing stream
of history
to boost the primates
toward higher and higher
levels of self-reflection
of it
and we have now
reached the point
where the masks
are beginning to fall away
and we are discovering
that
you know
there is an angel
within the monkey
struggling to get free
and this is
what the historical crisis
is all about
and I'm
for no reasons
in particular
very optimistic.
I mean
I see it
as
a necessary
chaos
that will lead
to a new
and
more attractive
order.
Terence you were talking
about
extraordinary
realities
and
it occurs to me
that there is
an enormous amount
of prejudice
against
the
psychedelics
and the
use of
hallucinogenic
substances
and
it's almost
as if there is
an inordinate
fear
to open up
the
door
to the closet
that these
substances
reveal.
What about
that prejudice?
What do you think
is
how is that
going to be
resolved?
What is the
resolution of that?
Well I think
it's
more complicated
than a prejudice
it's a prejudice
born of respect
because
most people
sense
that these
compounds
probably
actually do
what their
adherents
claim they do.
It's possible
to see the whole
human growth
movement of the
1970s
as a wish
to continue
the inward quest
without having
to put yourself
on the line
the way you had
to when you
took 250
gamma
of LSD.
And I think
all these
other methods
are efficacious
but I think
it's the sheer
power
of the
hallucinogens
that puts
people off.
You either
love them
or you hate
them
and that's
because they
dissolve
world views
and if you
like the
experience
of having
your entire
ontological
structure
disappear
out from
under you
if you think
that's a thrill
you'll probably
love psychedelics.
on the other
hand
for some
people
that's the
most horrible
thing
they can
possibly
imagine
they navigate
reality
through
various forms
of faith
and I think
that the
psychedelics
the doors
of perception
are cleansed
and you see
very very deeply
I spent
time in India
and I would
always go
to the
local
sadhus
of great
reputation
and I met
many people
who possessed
what I call
wise old
man wisdom
but wise old
man wisdom
is a kind
of Tao
of how
to live
it has
nothing to
say about
these dimensions
that the
psychedelics
reveal
and for
that you
have to
go to
places
where
hallucinogenic
shamanism
is practiced
specifically
the Amazon
basin
and there
you discover
that beyond
simply
the wisdom
of how
to live
in ordinary
reality
there is a
gnosis
of how
to navigate
in
extraordinary
reality
and this
reality
is so
extraordinary
that we
cannot
approach
what these
people are
doing
with any
degree
of
smugness
because
the frank
fact of
the matter
is we
have no
viable
theory
of what
mind
is
either
the
beliefs
of a
Witoto
shaman
and the
beliefs
of a
Princeton
phenomenologist
have an
equal chance
of being
correct
and there
are no
arbiters
of who
is right
so
it's the
power
of these
things
the fact
that here
is something
we have
not
assimilated
we have
been to
the moon
we have
charted
the depths
of the
ocean
the heart
of the
atom
but we
have a
fear
of looking
inward
to ourselves
because we
sense that
here is where
all the
contradictions
flow
together
and
the same
prejudice
against
psychoanalysis
that characterized
the 20s
and 30s
when it
was thought
to be
superfluous
or
some kind
of fad
attends
the psychedelics
now
it's because
it touches
a very
sensitive nerve
it touches
the issue
of the
nature
of man
and
people are
uncomfortable
with this
or some
people are
uncomfortable
with this
what is the
value of
exploring
extraordinary
realities
well i guess
it's the same
value that
attends the
exploration
of ordinary
realities
there's an
alchemical
saying
that one
should read
the oldest
books
climb the
highest
mountains
and visit
the broadest
deserts
i think
that
being
imposes
some kind
of obligation
to find
out what's
going on
and
since
all
primary
information
about what
is going
on
comes through
the senses
any drug
or any
compound
which alters
that sensory
input
has to be
looked at
very carefully
i've often
made the
point
that
chemically
speaking
you can
have a
molecule
which is
completely
inactive
as a
psychedelic
and you
move a
single atom
on one
of its
rings
and suddenly
it's a
powerful
psychedelic
well now
it seems
to me
this is
a perfect
proof
of the
inner
penetration
of matter
and mind
the movement
of a single
atom
from one
known
position
to
another
known
position
changes
an
experience
from
nothing
to
overwhelming
this means
that
mind
and
matter
at
the
quantum
mechanical
level
are
all
spun
together
this
means
that
in a
sense
the term
extraordinary
reality
is not
correct
if it
implies
a
division
of
category
from
ordinary
reality
it is
simply
there
is
and some
of it
is
inside
our
heads
and some
of it
is deployed
out through
three-dimensional
newtonian
space
most of us
I think
just simply
accept
the everyday
reality
as the
only one
and
you're
talking
about
journeys
into
the
nether
regions
of
which
far
beyond
most
people's
conception
or even
wanting
to
conceive
of
such
a
reality
well
I think
there's
a
shamanic
temperament
which
is
a
person
who
craves
knowledge
in the
Greek
sense
of
gnosis
in
other
words
knowledge
not
of the
sort
where
you
subscribe
to
Scientific
American
and it
validates
what you
believe
but
immediately
cosmology
is
constructed
out of
immediate
experience
that are
found
always
to be
applicable
you
see
I
don't
believe
that
the
world
is
made
out
of
quarks
or
electromagnetic
waves
or
stars
or
planets
or
any
of
these
things
I
believe
the
world
is
made
out
fact
that
has
been
overlooked
the
construction
of a
flying saucer
is not
so much
a
dilemma
of
hardware
as
it
is
a
poetic
challenge
and
people
find it
very hard
to imagine
exactly
what I'm
talking
about
what I'm
saying
is
that
the
leading
edge
of
reality
is
mind
and
mind
is
the
primary
substratum
of
being
we
in the
west
have
had it
the
wrong
way
around
for
over
a
millennia
but
once
this
is
clearly
understood
with
what
we
that
will
be
a
fusion
of
the
east
and
the
west
the
world
being
made
of
language
and
I
think
of
these
extraordinary
realities
which
are
totally
beyond
any
language
that
we
use
in
any
ordinary
sense
yes
well
they
are
beyond
ordinary
language
I
always
think
of
philo
judaeus
writing
on
the
logos
he
posed
to
himself
the
question
what
would
be
a
more
perfect
logos
and
then
he
answered
saying
it
would
be
a
logos
which
is
not
heard
but
beheld
and
he
imagined
a
form
of
communication
where
the
ears
would
not
be
the
primary
receptors
but
the
eyes
would
be
a
language
where
meaning
was
not
constructed
through
a
dictionary
of
but
actually
three
dimensional
objects
were
generated
with
a
kind
of
hyper
language
so
that
there
was
perfect
understanding
between
people
and
this
may
sound
bizarre
in
ordinary
reality
but
these
forms
of
synesthesia
and
synesthesia
glossolalia
are
commonplace
in
psychedelic
states
Terence
could
you
identify
philo
for us
and tell
us
who
he
was
he
was
an
Alexandrian
Jew
of
the
second
century
who
made
it
his
business
to
travel
around
the
hellenic
world
and
discussed
all the
major
cults
and
religious
and
cosmogonic
theories
of
his
day
so
he's
a
major
source
of
hellenistic
data
for us
how would
you relate
to
Socrates
view of
the
world
well
I
think
of
myself
as
sort
of
a
white
head
ian
Platonist
certainly
the
central
platonic
idea
which
is
the
idea
of
the
ideas
these
archetypal
forms
which
stand
outside
of
time
is
one
which
is
confirmed
by
the
psychedelic
experience
and
Plato's
formulation
of
time
as
the
moving
image
of
eternity
is
another
one
of
these
aphorisms
that
the
psychedelic
state
confirms
and
certainly
neoplatonism
Plotinus
and
Porphyry
and
that
school
are
psychedelic
philosophers
their
idea
of
an
ascending
hierarchy
of
more
and
more
rarefied
states
is
a
sophisticated
presentation
of the
shamanic
cosmology
which
is
the
cosmology
that
one
experientially
discovers
when
they
involve
themselves
with
psychedelics
what
I
think
most
of
us
don't
understand
or
don't
really
know
is
the
fact
that
Greek
culture
and
the
Ellisonian
mysteries
incorporated
the use
of
something
that
very
akin
to
psychedelics
and
essentially
Western
Civilization
is
based
on
the
culture
that
had
at
its
core
root
an
experience
and a
ritual
that
used
to say
something
akin to
psychedelics
yes
well
for over
2,000 years
everyone
who was
anyone
in the
ancient
world
made the
pilgrimage
to
Eleusis
and had
this
experience
which
Gordon
Wasson
and
Carl
Ruck
have
argued
very
convincingly
was
a
hallucinogenic
intoxication
on
ergot
but
of course
as soon
as
the
church
solidified
its
power
it
closed
these
platonic
academies
and
moved
against
pagan
so-called
pagan
knowledge
and
heretical
knowledge
and
not
only
all of
these
viewpoints
were
repressed
I like
to think
that
the end
of that
repression
came in
a very
odd
way
when
in
I guess
it was
Gordon
Wasson
and his
wife
Valentina
in the
village
of
Huatla
de Jimenez
in the
Sierra
Mazateca
of Oaxaca
discovered
the
psilocybin
mushroom
cult
it was
as if
Eros
who had
been
martyred
in the
old
world
was
then
found
sleeping
in the
mountains
of
Mexico
and
resurrected
and
the
experience
of the
mushroom
is
very
much
the
experience
of
a
genus
loci
a
god
on
the
grecian
model
not
the
god
who
hung
the
stars
in
heaven
but
a
local
god
a
pre-christian
bacchanalian
nature
power
is
very
alien
and yet
resonates
with our
expectations
of what that
experience would be like
interesting if the mushroom also is a symbol in our culture of
death and destruction being the symbol of the nuclear
explosion
yes well
mushroom cloud
my brother has made the point asking you know what mushroom is it that grows at the end
of history is it the mushroom of fermet and oppenheimer and teller or is it the mushroom
of wasson and hoffman and humphrey osmond
somehow i think the latter is safer
well it may not only be safer it may open the way to escape from the former
it's like a pun in physics that the force of liberation and the force of destruction could take the same
form it's a what alchemists call a coincidencia positorum
it is an amazing synchronicity it seems
that
also i was interested in talking with andy weill
some
time ago about
the fact that there are new genus of mushrooms appearing that
have psilocybin in them
they've never been seen before
never been
tracked before
and it's almost as if they're appearing now
well it's amazing how many have been discovered since people have bent their attention to it
there have been still simon mushrooms reported from england france
localities where so far as we know there is no cultural history of usage at all
or however it's interesting that cultural usage seems to disappear very early in human history
hallucinogens are hardly even welcome in agricultural societies
i think it was weston labar made the point that once you learn how to grow plants
your god shifts from the ecstatic god of the hallucinogens to the corn god or the food god
and it no longer is about divining the hunt and weather through the ecstatic use of hallucinogens
it's about being able to get up every morning and go to work and hoe the crop
so
you mentioned earlier the prejudice against hallucinogens i think
it reaches back to the beginning of agriculture, this competition among plant gods which
exemplified lifestyles that must have seemed very, very alien to each other.
Is psilocybin illegal?
Oh, yes. It's a Schedule I drug. Without any public debate,
it was placed on the list at the same time that LSD was, and yet the issue was always couched in
terms of LSD being made illegal, but actually at that point in time, a whole bunch of things were made illegal,
and there was never any public debate. All psychedelics were viewed as the same drug, and LSD was used as the model.
Actually, these drugs, there's a spectrum of psychedelic effects, and certain drugs trigger
some of them and certain ones others, but yes, psilocybin is illegal.
Are the mushrooms illegal?
The mushrooms also are illegal, as they contain psilocybin.
I recall Andy Weil saying that he walked along a downtown Seattle residential street,
picking up psilocybin mushrooms from the front yards of residential homes.
Oh, yes.
And English law took the view that it was preposterous to try and outlaw a naturally occurring plant,
and they took the position that only the chemical was illegal, which I think is a very,
very wise position. But I noticed that Canada recently chose the American interpretation over
the British one.
Interesting. It turns out, going back to the Andy Weil story, that the reason that these mushrooms
were in such plenitude in various locales in the Northwest was that their spores were contained in a
male odor company's mushroom growing product that they sent out, male odor, and so...
Yes, so this is an interesting phenomenon. You see, the spores of the mushroom are not illegal,
because they do not contain psilocybin. They only contain the message in the DNA of the mushroom for the
production of psilocybin. So it's a kind of bizarre catch-22. The mushroom spores can move anywhere
legally, can be bought and sold, but they are the sine qua non for the production of mushrooms, of course.
Parents, the kind of knowledge and kind of information you're putting forward is not generally available.
It's not the kind of information or knowledge that one would find in the typical academic anthropology curriculum.
And yet it seems to be a knowledge that is ever expanding, but somehow it's outside of the cultural,
institutional entities in some way. One, why do you think that's the case? Of course, there's a logical
answer to that one, but what do you see as the future of this kind of information, this kind of knowledge?
Well, I think in a sense it signals the rebirth of the institution of shamanism in the context of modern society.
And anthropologists have always made the point about shaman that they were very important social catalysts in their group,
but they were always peripheral to it, peripheral to the political power and actually usually physically
peripheral living at some distance from the village. And I think the electronic shaman, the people who pursue
these, the exploration of these spaces, uh, exist to return to tell the rest of us about it, that we are now coming into a period of racial maturity as a species,
where we can no longer have, uh, forbidden areas of the human mind or cultural, uh, uh, machinery.
We have taken upon ourselves the acquisition of so much power that we now must understand what we
are. Uh, we cannot, uh, travel much further with the definitions of man that we inherit from the judeo-christian tradition.
We need to truly explore the problem of consciousness because as man gains power,
he is becoming the defining fact on the planet in the near space area.
So, uh, the question that looms is, is man good? And then if he is, what is it he's good for?
And, uh, the shaman will point the way because what they are, are, uh, visionaries, poets, cultural architects,
forecasters, all these roles, which we understand in more conventional terms, rolled into one and raised to the nth
power. They are cultural models for the rest of us. This has always been true. The shaman has access to a
superhuman dimension and a superhuman condition. And by being able to do that, he affirms the trans,
the potential for transcendence in all people. He is an exemplar, if you will. And I see the attention
that's being given to these things signaling a sense on the part of the society that we need to return
to these models. This is why, for instance, in the Star Wars phenomenon, Skywalker, Luke Skywalker,
Skywalker is a direct translation of the word shaman out of the Tungusik, which is where Siberian
shamanism comes from. So these heroes that are being instilled in the heart of the culture are shamanic
heroes. They control a force which is bigger than everybody and holds the galaxy together. And this
is true, as a matter of fact. And as we explore how true it is, the limitations of our previous world
view will be exposed for all to see. I think it was JBS Haldane who said, uh, the world may not only be
stranger than we suppose. It may be stranger than we can suppose. I think of, uh, the character, excuse me,
the character Yoda, uh, certainly is a shamanic type character. Very much so. Yeah. The, um, as we talk about
shamans and shamanism, again, that brings up, uh, cross-cultural currents. And, um, do you see the,
the shaman taking on a new, uh, certainly you don't see Indian shamans walking, uh, into the metropolitan,
uh, areas? Do you see the shaman taking on a new form? Well, I, I believe, uh, along with Gordon
Wasson and others, but in distinction to Marsiliad, who is a major writer on shamanism, that, uh,
uh, it is hallucinogenic shamanism that is primary and that where shamanic techniques are used to the exclusion
of, uh, hallucinogenic drug ingestion, the shamanism tends to be vitiated. It is more like, uh, a ritual
enactment of what real shamanism is, so that, uh, uh, uh, the shamanism that is coming to be,
is coming to be within people in our culture, uh, the people who feel comfortable with psychedelic
drugs and who, by going into those spaces and then returning with works of art or poetic accounts or
scientific ideas are actually changing the face of the culture. I connect the psychedelic dimension
to the dimension of inspiration and dream. I think history has always, uh, progressed
by the bubbling up of ideas from these nether dimensions into the minds of receptive men and women.
It is simply that now, with the hallucinogens, we actually have a tool to push the button. We are no
longer dependent upon, uh, whatever factors it is that previously controlled the, uh, ingression of novelty
into human history. We have taken that function to ourselves and this will accelerate and, uh, and, uh,
intensify the cultural crisis, but I think in the end it will lead that much sooner to its resolution.
So, continue to, uh, move towards the further exploration of these spaces. Um, we, uh, can expect that, um,
social change as a result, personal change? Tremendous social change. I see, in fact, uh, what is
happening is a tendency to, uh, what I call turn the body inside out. We are, through our media and our
cybernetics, we are actually approaching the point where consciousness can be experienced, uh, dis, uh,
in a state of disconnection from the body. We have changed. We are no longer, as I said, bipedal monkeys.
We are instead a kind of cybernetic coral reef of organic components and inorganic technological
components. We have become a force which takes unorganized raw material and excretes, uh, technical
objects. We have, uh, transcended the normal definitions of man. We are like an enormous collective organism,
with our data banks and our forecasting, uh, agencies and our computer networks and the many
levels at which we are connected into the universe. Our self-image is changing. The monkey is, uh, all but
being left behind and shortly will be left behind. The flying saucer, again, I take to be an image of the
future state of humanity. It is a kind of millenarian transformation of man where the soul is exteriorized
as the apotheosis of technology. And it is that, uh, eschatological event which is casting enormous
shadows backward through time over the historical landscape. That is the siren at the end of time,
calling all mankind across the last ten millennia toward it, calling us out of the trees and into
history and through this series of multi-level cultural, uh, transitions to the point where, uh, the thing
within the monkeys, the creature of pure language and pure imagination whose aspirations are entirely, uh, uh,
titanic in terms of self-transformation, that thing is emerging. And it will emerge as man leaves the planet. And it's not
something quantized and clearly defined. It is, in fact, what the next 50 or so years will be about. But at the end of it, the species will be off-planet and transformed and fully wired from the depths to the heights.
Are we just talking about another version of the Christian death, resurrection, ascension into heaven?
Except that it is coming into history. What is happening is that, uh, the, uh, the paradise promised the soul
is actually going to enter into history because technological man took the apocalyptic aspirations of
Christianity so seriously that we are going to make it happen. It has become the guiding image of what we
want to be. And I'm reminded of the poem by Yeats. It's sailing to Byzantium where he speaks of how after
death he would like to be an enameled golden object, uh, singing to the lords and ladies of Byzantium. And it's
the image of man transformed into eternal circuitry and released into a hyperspace of information where, uh,
you are a thing of circuitry, but you appear to be walking along an unspoiled beach in paradise.
It is that we are going to, uh, find the power to realize our deepest cultural aspirations. This is why we must
find out what our deepest cultural aspirations are. Again, another way of phrasing the question,
is man good? What about the idea that these spaces that we've been talking about, that you've been
illuminating, are spaces that can be achieved without the use of psychedelics?
Well, again, I scoured India, and my humble personal opinion is, uh, that, uh, it is highly unlikely.
Uh, I have always approached to people of spiritual accomplishment with the question, what can you
show me? Because, as I said earlier, this wise old man wisdom is one thing, but only the, the
hallucinogen using shaman of the Amazon seem to be able to go beyond that. Uh, there may be techniques for
doing this, but, uh, the efficacy and the dependability of the hallucinogens seems to me to make them the obvious
choice. It would only be a series of cultural conventions that would cause one to want to
engineer around that. It is the obvious, uh, path to transcendence. People must face the fact that at one
level we are chemical machines. That doesn't mean we are that at every level, but it does mean that that
is a level where we can intervene to change the pictures that are coming in and going out at higher
levels. You're not suggesting that people should do this by themselves?
They take hallucinogens? Well, I don't know about take it by themselves. Probably not, although, uh,
I always do, and, uh, I seem to prefer it. What I am suggesting is they take it in a situation of minimum
sensory input. Lying down in darkness with eyes closed cannot be surpassed, and people want music,
they want to walk around in nature, they want all these things, but nature and music are beautiful
in their own right. They are the adumbrations of the psychedelic experience that we deal with in
ordinary reality. In confrontation with the psychedelic experience, these things are hardly more than
impediments. The very interesting things are happening in the utter blackness behind your eyelids,
lying still in darkness, and, uh, that is where the mystery, uh, comes from and goes to.
My question had to do with with or without a guide. Oh, I don't think people should do it without a guide
unless they feel very confident from experience that they don't need a guide. I like to have these ideas
get out. I think it's important that we discuss all this in a way that is only now becoming possible
because of how it was in the 1960s. Now we need to shed all that and look back and look forward and try
to make a mature judgment for our culture based on the facts of the matter. You're listening to the
psychedelic salon where people are changing their lives one thought at a time. As Terrence said just
now in closing, it's up to you and me to make a mature judgment based upon the facts of the matter.
And as we all know, the so-called facts that the governments around the world are putting out about
cannabis and our psychedelic medicines, well, they're almost all completely wrong. And, uh, anyone who has
ever had a few tokes of grass knows full well that this is not a dangerous drug without any medicinal
value. Yet that's what the screwheads in Washington and other world capitals are saying. However, as Aldous
Huxley once said, facts don't cease to exist just because they are ignored. Also, I'd like to be sure to
point out that early on in this talk when Terrence said the human imagination in conjunction with
technology has become a force so potent that it really can no longer be unleashed on the surface of
the planet with safety. Now, I suspect he was talking about things such as nuclear power. And at the
present moment, of course, we can see how dangerous this technology can be when it's combined with a
profit motive where cost-cutting measures are more important to corporations than is the safety of
our people. But my guess is that by the time of Terrence's death in 2000, he probably would have
revised that statement to reflect his then newly growing fascination with virtual reality and
cyberspace thanks to what he was learning from Bruce Dahmer and other cybernetic pioneers.
And so in my next podcast, I'll be playing part of an interview that Matt Anderson did with Bruce
Dahmer for his fall-winter documentary series. In it, Bruce expands on his thoughts about what he
sees as the coming of a great crescendo. So in the weeks ahead, we'll be spending some time with Bruce
and then I'll probably dip into the Timothy Leary archive for a bit more from the good doctor and then
we'll get back to some of these other Terrence tapes that Diane so kindly sent for me to play for
you here in the salon. And so that'll do it for now and I'll again close by reminding you that this
and most of the podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon are freely available for you to use in your own
audio projects under the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial Sharealike 3.0 license. And if you have
any questions about that, just click the Creative Commons link at the bottom of the Psychedelic Salon
webpage, which you can find via psychedelicsalon.us. And if you're interested in the philosophy behind
the salon, well, you can hear a little bit about it in my novel, The Genesis Generation, which is
available as a pay-what-you-can audiobook that you can download at genesisgeneration.us. And for now,
this is Lorenzo signing off from Cyberdelic Space. Be well, my friends.