WEBVTT 00:34.480 --> 00:45.160 In May 1999, psychedelic explorer Terence McKenna was diagnosed with a brain tumour and given between three and nine months to live. 00:46.620 --> 00:56.400 I contacted Terence by email and mentioned that I was making a documentary about shamans at the Amazon and asked if I could meet him and record an interview. 00:59.040 --> 01:05.300 Flying back home from the Amazon on December the 9th, 1999, just four months before he died, 01:05.300 --> 01:10.940 Terence gave me one of his last interviews at his home on the big island of Hawaii. 01:18.080 --> 01:26.640 Terence had tried many natural therapy cures and had also recently undergone gamma knife surgery to try and remove the tumour. 01:26.640 --> 01:28.020 You've been here for a while? 01:28.780 --> 01:35.880 Oh, I finished the house about two and a half years ago and was here about two and a half years building it, so... 01:35.880 --> 01:40.720 Let me get Christy. 01:40.740 --> 01:49.580 Everyone was hoping for a miracle. 01:58.570 --> 02:06.510 Why do you think governments, most governments in fact around the world, have banned ayahuasca and made most psychotropics illegal? 02:07.810 --> 02:18.370 Well, I think a social system is the product of a process of, you could call it social natural selection, 02:19.170 --> 02:22.510 that a civilisation produces various... 02:22.710 --> 02:25.690 religious ideas, political ideas... 02:25.690 --> 02:28.490 some survive and some don't. 02:28.490 --> 02:39.630 And it's because the social system is applying selective pressure, saying universal medical care for all, we don't need that. 02:41.930 --> 02:47.270 Sexual flexibility among teenagers, well, we don't need that. 02:47.270 --> 02:52.570 So, over time, a social system is built out of what is said to be... 02:52.570 --> 02:59.570 saved and what is thrown away. And so when you start putting drugs into a social system 03:00.710 --> 03:07.710 that actually promote unusual ideas, you're pushing the most important buttons that a 03:09.630 --> 03:16.290 society has. The buttons that shape what it believes about life and death and value and 03:16.290 --> 03:22.550 marriage and childbearing and all these things. And so that's very sensitive stuff and inevitably 03:22.550 --> 03:29.550 becomes a point of contention. And societies will arm wrestle over that, up to and including 03:29.910 --> 03:35.550 putting you away for 20 or 30 years for a half a gram of grass or something. 03:35.550 --> 03:40.830 The war on drugs that America's sort of pushing around the world, what do you think 03:40.830 --> 03:45.230 the effect is of that and who's really behind it, do you think? 03:45.230 --> 03:52.230 Well, wasn't the struggle against communism a kind of struggle against ideas and who thinks 03:52.230 --> 03:52.490 what? 03:52.490 --> 03:59.490 And who is permitted to believe that people should be paid more than $3.80 an hour for 04:00.530 --> 04:06.330 whatever labor they're asked to do and some of this other stuff. So capitalism, if it 04:06.330 --> 04:13.330 doesn't have enemies, it will create enemies. It will point out these people or these people. 04:14.050 --> 04:19.870 And so I think it's a thing like that, that it's a struggle to control the political agenda. 04:19.870 --> 04:22.170 And I'm not a Marxist. I don't have much paper. I'm not a Marxist. I don't have much 04:22.170 --> 04:29.170 patience with that. But I do think how Marxism has talked about the value of work and worth 04:32.070 --> 04:39.070 and productivity of the masses and all that. All that rhetoric carries right over into 04:40.850 --> 04:46.530 the so-called war on drugs, which is really a war against other people's values. It's 04:46.530 --> 04:51.530 a continuation of, you know, the holocaust and the war on drugs. It's a continuation 04:52.170 --> 04:59.670 cultural genocide and all the other efforts made by the phenomenal success of capitalism to shove 04:59.670 --> 05:04.890 its agenda down other people's throats what do you feel about the fact that people could be 05:04.890 --> 05:11.850 put in jail for 12 years for drinking this stuff well it's a disturbing tendency i mean it means 05:11.850 --> 05:19.450 that at least the u.s government has made the decision somewhere to push hard against this 05:19.450 --> 05:26.450 which is always the first strategy the first strategy is push hard against some trivial thing 05:26.450 --> 05:35.190 cannabis or lsd or something like that and then once defeated in that strategy then there is 05:35.190 --> 05:43.190 usually a period of negotiated an effort to create some kind of negotiated settlement 05:43.190 --> 05:49.430 and then once that fails there's usually a squaring off and the 05:49.430 --> 05:58.710 issue is minimized and translated into something trivial and we move on to the next great social 05:58.710 --> 06:10.630 issue it's crazy what do you feel about the um the synthetic dmt and and ayahuasca now being 06:10.630 --> 06:15.350 available you know do you think that the magic is lost when it's synthesized or and there's and 06:15.350 --> 06:21.990 there's no real ritual aspect to the taking of ayahuasca well it's not so much that the ritual 06:21.990 --> 06:31.110 is lost as that the the people who are doing the making and the taking and the shaking 06:31.750 --> 06:39.750 may not really understand what they're getting into a drug like synthetic ayahuasca 06:39.750 --> 06:46.550 farmawaska do people realize this is the same thing as has been taken for thousands of years 06:46.630 --> 06:54.870 down there do they realize its role in shamanic healing and all this it's just one more example 06:54.870 --> 07:05.030 of how everything is desacralized and corrupted because you know first ayahuasca has never been 07:05.030 --> 07:10.710 heard of and the next thing you know everybody wants it because it's all anybody's talking about 07:10.710 --> 07:16.390 so it goes from this mystery to being a kind of a fact 07:16.630 --> 07:25.750 or a rage and then it becomes an income source and once it becomes an income source it's a commodity 07:25.750 --> 07:34.950 like journalism sex aluminum whatever is being peddled on the open market i would prefer to 07:34.950 --> 07:44.790 see ayahuasca remain at the status let's say of peyote in the you know where the native peoples 07:44.790 --> 07:46.390 who are into it uh 07:47.590 --> 07:54.790 sort of keep the faith understand how to make it and talk about it and when there's a question as 07:54.790 --> 08:01.670 to what it all means then you go back to those native people and listen to their myth and all 08:01.670 --> 08:14.150 that there is data to show that ayahuasca is medically effective against uh malaria and 08:16.150 --> 08:16.550 industrial 08:16.950 --> 08:24.950 industrial intestinal parasites and things like that so really it's a basic part of this native 08:25.670 --> 08:32.150 medical system and if instead of trying to put everybody in prison we actually 08:34.390 --> 08:38.870 you know try to do research on this stuff and find out how it works and 08:38.870 --> 08:46.550 how it affects various conditions we would probably extract its benefit much more quickly 08:47.590 --> 08:55.990 okay so what about the the combination of ayahuasca and the psychotry varitis that seems to be a 08:55.990 --> 09:06.070 magic combination um how is it that the the dmt is able to be absorbed in the in the stomach 09:06.070 --> 09:12.390 whereas if yeah if you could just explain that relationship well it involves the inter-relationship 09:12.390 --> 09:17.990 between uh a brain mind system the pt8 andatin system which allows them to absorb the pt6 путum 09:17.990 --> 09:25.030 that has had all the monoamine oxidase taken out of it pharmacologically. 09:25.030 --> 09:30.910 And all these psychoactive drugs seem to have a bigger, more dramatic impact 09:30.910 --> 09:35.350 in the presence of a lowered MAO threshold. 09:35.970 --> 09:41.570 And how this was discovered by Amazonian Indians millennia ago 09:41.570 --> 09:47.170 and not discovered by Western science until 1956 or something 09:47.170 --> 09:53.410 is just one of those peculiar facts about ethnobotany and ethnomedicine. 09:53.410 --> 10:00.210 But it's certainly true that you have a much more dramatic effect with the two in combination. 10:02.130 --> 10:12.000 And how many of these kinds of facts of folk science are out there to be discovered, 10:12.220 --> 10:17.640 we don't really know yet, but slowly it's all being unraveled. 10:18.340 --> 10:18.560 It's... 10:18.560 --> 10:24.540 It's never been explained, you know, why there are so many plant psychedelics in the New World. 10:26.100 --> 10:35.760 The cohoba snuffs, the ayahuasca, the mushrooms in the New World, salvia divinorum, 10:36.040 --> 10:42.380 all of these things are New World, and this has been a social phenomenon, 10:42.380 --> 10:48.320 the exploration of which has been pretty much pushed by New World anthropologists and philosophers. 10:48.320 --> 10:55.140 If we'd had to depend on European philosophy for the content of the century, 10:55.320 --> 11:02.100 we'd all be reading Jacques Derrida and, you know, those kind of people. 11:02.340 --> 11:05.580 So it's a local phenomenon that's become global. 11:07.040 --> 11:11.740 The way we value the Earth, the way we value commodities, 11:12.020 --> 11:16.220 the way we extract them and manufacture them into saleable goods, 11:16.220 --> 11:18.220 this will all... 11:19.600 --> 11:29.040 be seen in a different way, I think, and, again, it's an issue of capital and labor 11:29.040 --> 11:34.040 and how you value what you put your life into, and that sort of thing. 11:35.500 --> 11:40.500 Well, what the shamans know that we don't is which plants how and where, 11:41.260 --> 11:48.800 and it took a long time to figure this out, you know, they didn't invent the calculus, they didn't, you know, 11:48.800 --> 11:48.940 they didn't, you know, they didn't invent the calculus, they didn't, you know, 11:48.940 --> 11:52.440 sailing vessels of great speed and power. 11:52.600 --> 11:54.700 None of that was pursued. 11:54.840 --> 12:03.300 What was pursued was these vegetable entities that can be coaxed out of the plant world. 12:04.320 --> 12:13.840 And the irony is that Europe, who set out, you know, in the 17th century to explore the world, 12:13.840 --> 12:17.840 to bring in Christian civilization, may have encountered... 12:18.940 --> 12:24.660 phenomenon variance on civilization that will ultimately prove more powerful... 12:24.660 --> 12:28.100 more powerful than what we were peddling. 12:29.200 --> 12:33.200 This discussion is by no means closed. 12:47.860 --> 12:53.840 A lot about psychedelics before I encountered DMT... 12:53.840 --> 12:58.040 and it showed me that I knew virtually nothing 12:58.140 --> 13:00.080 Oh! 13:00.200 --> 13:01.940 This is salvage of norama. 13:01.940 --> 13:02.200 Oh yeah, this isolated energy has been added, and it's no good to let it go. 13:02.200 --> 13:03.200 This is a great shot. 13:03.200 --> 13:04.200 Full flower. 13:04.200 --> 13:05.200 Uh-huh. 13:05.200 --> 13:06.200 Oh, wow. 13:06.200 --> 13:07.200 Yeah. 13:07.200 --> 13:08.200 You rarely see it so dramatically flowering. 13:08.200 --> 13:09.200 This one? 13:09.200 --> 13:10.200 Yeah. 13:10.200 --> 13:11.200 Salvia divinorum. 13:11.200 --> 13:14.120 Yeah. 13:14.120 --> 13:15.120 And what... 13:15.120 --> 13:16.120 Purple flowers. 13:16.120 --> 13:21.120 What are the effects of these? 13:21.120 --> 13:22.120 What part do you use? 13:22.120 --> 13:23.120 You use the leaf. 13:23.120 --> 13:24.120 The leaf. 13:24.120 --> 13:32.120 And it has a compound called alpha-salvinorin in it and it's very easily grown in the right 13:32.120 --> 13:33.120 soil. 13:33.120 --> 13:35.120 You just take 80 leaves and chew them. 13:35.120 --> 13:36.120 Yeah. 13:36.120 --> 13:37.120 You just chew it. 13:37.120 --> 13:38.120 Chew it. 13:38.120 --> 13:39.120 Yeah. 13:39.120 --> 13:40.120 And what's the effect? 13:40.120 --> 13:41.120 And eat it as you're... 13:41.120 --> 13:42.120 That's how the Mazatecs do it. 13:42.120 --> 13:43.120 Oh, Mazatecs. 13:43.120 --> 13:46.120 And what's the effect of it? 13:46.120 --> 13:47.120 Very strange. 13:47.120 --> 13:48.120 Holy shit, Jen. 13:48.120 --> 13:49.120 Psychedelic. 13:49.120 --> 13:50.120 Very hard to describe. 13:50.120 --> 13:51.120 But... 13:51.120 --> 13:52.120 Psychedelic. 13:52.120 --> 13:57.120 Not really understood or known until 10 years ago or so, you know. 13:57.120 --> 14:07.700 See the salvia all through here. 14:07.700 --> 14:08.700 Uh-huh. 14:08.700 --> 14:09.700 Yeah. 14:09.700 --> 14:10.700 Yeah. 14:10.700 --> 14:11.700 Yeah. 14:11.700 --> 14:12.700 And what's the legal status of that? 14:12.700 --> 14:13.700 It's legal. 14:13.700 --> 14:14.700 It's completely legal. 14:14.700 --> 14:15.700 Amazingly enough. 14:15.700 --> 14:16.700 Let's see. 14:16.700 --> 14:17.700 This is Iowa. 14:17.700 --> 14:33.130 That's why it was called Banisteriopsis because the leaves are opposed to each other like 14:33.130 --> 14:34.130 the rungs of a ladder. 14:34.130 --> 14:35.130 And it winds up into this. 14:35.130 --> 14:36.130 I've got some pieces back at the house. 14:36.130 --> 14:37.130 Oh, yeah. 14:37.130 --> 14:38.130 You can show them. 14:38.130 --> 14:39.130 Yeah. 14:39.130 --> 14:40.130 Yeah. 14:40.130 --> 14:41.130 Yeah. 14:41.130 --> 14:42.130 Yeah. 14:42.130 --> 14:43.130 Yeah. 14:43.130 --> 14:44.130 Yeah. 14:44.130 --> 14:45.130 Yeah. 14:45.130 --> 14:46.130 Yeah. 14:46.130 --> 14:47.130 Yeah. 14:47.130 --> 14:48.130 Yeah. 14:48.130 --> 14:49.130 Yeah. 14:49.130 --> 14:54.130 Now here, this vine going up so high. 14:54.130 --> 14:55.130 Higher. 14:55.130 --> 15:08.000 That's ayahuasca. 15:08.000 --> 15:12.960 I think the shaman offers an immense example of courage. 15:12.960 --> 15:20.120 The shaman is not afraid of things which modern, postmodern people are afraid of. 15:20.120 --> 15:26.300 of, specifically madness, a kind of madness. 15:26.300 --> 15:34.160 People are afraid of drugs because they associate it with some kind of ultimate unhingement. 15:34.160 --> 15:41.140 As we gain shamans who can speak to us in our own vocabulary, this will fade away. 15:41.140 --> 15:49.440 This is, to some degree, the motivation for my career, is basically to give people permission 15:49.440 --> 15:56.500 to say, it's safe, it's scary, it's weird, but you're not going to end up in a straight 15:56.500 --> 15:59.120 jacket in some back ward. 15:59.120 --> 16:01.180 You will live through this. 16:01.180 --> 16:10.140 It's no more terrifying than the world's largest roller coaster or one of those places. 16:10.140 --> 16:14.240 So permission is what I find people want from me. 16:14.240 --> 16:18.020 They want me to say, yes, I did it. 16:18.020 --> 16:19.020 It was very scary. 16:19.020 --> 16:19.420 It was scary. 16:19.440 --> 16:22.260 I lived to tell the tale. 16:22.260 --> 16:46.320 I showed you there were more rabbits in the field than you thought, right? 16:46.320 --> 16:54.860 I go to a place where language finds it very hard to pull over and look around. 16:54.860 --> 17:02.720 It's almost as though it takes you to a world that is not Englishable, and I suppose Germanable. 17:02.720 --> 17:09.980 But as a native speaker of English, that's what it looks to me like is happening, that 17:09.980 --> 17:12.480 the vehicle of language can only ... 17:12.480 --> 17:13.480 Breaks down? 17:13.480 --> 17:20.040 Yeah, it breaks down, and no matter how you try and claw the air, it doesn't quite come 17:20.040 --> 17:23.320 over and give itself to you. 17:23.320 --> 17:30.080 So that's fascinating to me as a writer, and a storyteller, and someone with an interest 17:30.080 --> 17:31.540 in narrative and all that. 17:31.540 --> 17:32.540 The idea ... 17:32.540 --> 17:40.420 The idea that there would be realities that you couldn't wrap a description around is 17:40.420 --> 17:46.520 fascinating, and it grows more fascinating as life moves along. 17:46.520 --> 17:57.300 It seems like a miracle, an absolute miracle of some strange sort in the area of cognitive 17:57.300 --> 17:59.300 construction is taking place. 17:59.300 --> 18:00.300 How can someone ... 18:00.300 --> 18:01.300 I don't know. 18:01.300 --> 18:02.300 I don't know. 18:02.300 --> 18:06.620 How can someone benefit from ... 18:06.620 --> 18:09.940 Well, some philosophers would say such a thing is impossible. 18:09.940 --> 18:13.820 There aren't unspeakable realities. 18:13.820 --> 18:17.220 Somebody else would say, well, it's this or it's that. 18:17.220 --> 18:28.580 So it sheds light on certain questions of philosophy and heuristics and all that, that 18:28.580 --> 18:30.980 seems to me that it gives real answers. 18:30.980 --> 18:32.860 I mean, maybe you don't believe these answers. 18:32.860 --> 18:33.860 But I know a connection. 18:33.860 --> 18:39.280 I know a convincing argument when I see it, and if anybody with argument could do 18:39.280 --> 18:45.860 to you what DMT does to you, you'd embrace it in a hurry. 18:45.860 --> 19:04.810 Well, we're long away from ritual, and I think rituals are what we need, that that's 19:04.810 --> 19:11.610 why we create sports leagues and beauty pageants and all these things. 19:11.610 --> 19:12.610 Simply to ... 19:12.610 --> 19:13.610 You know? 19:13.610 --> 19:26.120 Reassure ourselves that in these ritual-confined spaces, these energies can be held, and it's 19:26.120 --> 19:28.720 the part we are most distant from. 19:28.720 --> 19:41.010 No, the plant is more impressive. 19:41.010 --> 19:44.790 If it were a shaman, people would say, well, it's show business. 19:44.790 --> 19:51.790 I mean, I saw a guy cut a woman in half on stage once, or I saw this, or I saw that. 19:51.790 --> 19:59.790 But I think the fact that in the case of DMT, a match head-sized piece of orange wax 19:59.790 --> 20:06.730 can pull your entire philosophical world out from under you in about 15 seconds is 20:06.730 --> 20:08.730 very, very interesting. 20:08.730 --> 20:13.270 I mean, how long did it take you to learn to talk? 20:13.270 --> 20:15.430 Two years or a year and a half? 20:15.430 --> 20:17.030 How long does it take you to DMT? 20:17.030 --> 20:18.550 Oh, about 30 seconds. 20:18.550 --> 20:19.550 You know? 20:19.550 --> 20:20.550 So, yeah. 20:20.550 --> 20:21.550 Yeah. 20:21.550 --> 20:25.430 It's very interesting. 20:25.430 --> 20:33.290 We've created enough alienation that it seems as though we are going to explore the uses 20:33.290 --> 20:36.550 of these shamanic technologies. 20:36.550 --> 20:42.590 So the high-tech culture, the scientific and materialist culture, seems to have made 20:42.590 --> 20:51.150 a choice to explore these things, and the shamanic aboriginal culture seems to have 20:51.150 --> 20:52.150 made its choice. 20:52.150 --> 20:58.830 But it's going to integrate while we're going to, you know, have another one of these socially 20:58.830 --> 21:06.270 destructive debates about law and order and obligation and all the rest of it. 21:06.270 --> 21:11.750 That seems to me to be a waste of time. 21:11.750 --> 21:22.860 What do you think Ayahuasca has to offer? 21:22.860 --> 21:26.100 Well, all boundaries are dissolving. 21:26.100 --> 21:28.460 That's what the end of the millennium means. 21:28.460 --> 21:35.120 It means that, you know, the tribes of the Amazon basin, the tribes of the New Guinea 21:35.120 --> 21:43.580 highlands, the tribes of Oxford and Cambridge, everything is dissolving and humanity is reaching 21:43.580 --> 21:50.580 a kind of plural consensus. 21:50.580 --> 21:57.940 I mean, even the most sophisticated capitalist, let us say, is aware now that it won't do 21:57.940 --> 22:00.500 to cut down all the trees. 22:00.500 --> 22:02.260 But that's a mistake. 22:02.260 --> 22:10.320 So what's happening is a single human viewpoint is sort of coming into existence, a viewpoint 22:10.320 --> 22:19.920 that values nature, values natural resources, and tries to, however clumsily, to make some 22:19.920 --> 22:26.260 kind of peace out of the whole human mess that we're now mixed up in. 22:26.260 --> 22:27.160 I think what it brings is an empathy to the... 22:27.160 --> 22:28.160 I think what it brings is an empathy to the... 22:28.160 --> 22:29.160 I think what it brings is an empathy to the... 22:29.160 --> 22:30.160 I think what it brings is an empathy to the... 22:30.160 --> 22:32.660 I think what it brings is an empathy to the destruction of the planet. 22:32.660 --> 22:39.660 You know, the cutting of a rainforest is suddenly no longer completely abstract. 22:39.660 --> 22:44.280 It's actually something you can feel and relate to. 22:44.280 --> 22:50.660 And all political change begins with a change of feeling and value. 22:50.660 --> 22:59.920 So if we begin to see the aboriginal people of every continent as the holders of this 22:59.920 --> 23:07.320 knowledge, they will begin to look not so naive, not so foolish or something like that, 23:07.320 --> 23:14.360 but actually as sophisticated people who have developed a working relationship with these 23:14.360 --> 23:16.460 powers and things. 23:16.460 --> 23:23.420 And that's the only way you're going to get real political change on some of these issues. 23:23.420 --> 23:29.420 If we were having this discussion 30 years ago, we would not be talking about the aboriginal 23:29.420 --> 23:30.420 people. 23:30.420 --> 23:31.420 We'd be talking about ayahuasca. 23:31.420 --> 23:36.780 We'd be talking about mushrooms and their potential and, you know. 23:36.780 --> 23:44.800 So I think the plants change, the drugs change, but the challenge stays the same and the challenge 23:44.800 --> 23:53.060 is to build a humane and human world without doing damage to the humanity that's already 23:53.060 --> 23:57.640 in it. 23:57.640 --> 24:07.810 What's your view for the future, Ian? 24:07.810 --> 24:10.590 It requires dedication and intelligence. 24:10.590 --> 24:20.070 Not so much among our shaman and our inner voyagers, but among the legislators and the 24:20.070 --> 24:25.830 people who actually are going to have to make the social change. 24:25.830 --> 24:30.210 That's why what goes on in the Netherlands is so important. 24:30.210 --> 24:33.110 These are the most liberal people in the world. 24:33.110 --> 24:38.590 Well, are they liberal enough to actually change the basic structure of their society? 24:38.590 --> 24:39.590 I mean, talk is easy. 24:39.590 --> 24:40.590 I mean, I'm not saying that they're not. 24:40.590 --> 24:45.190 But can they actually make the change? 24:45.190 --> 24:50.750 What they're trying to do is establish the notion of a thought crime, you know, that 24:50.750 --> 24:57.530 it's a crime to consider restructuring the state this way or this way. 24:57.530 --> 25:04.450 And that will, you know, if we have not learned anything from the 20th century, we should 25:04.450 --> 25:09.270 have learned that wars of ideology are hopeless. 25:09.270 --> 25:10.270 And just bring incredulity. 25:10.270 --> 25:10.310 Yeah. 25:10.590 --> 25:14.490 And just bring incredible grief and loss of life. 25:14.490 --> 25:22.590 So I'm hoping that what the 21st century can mean is movement beyond ideology and an actual 25:22.590 --> 25:31.730 rational, and I think it is, rational approach to integrating the irrational into how we 25:31.730 --> 25:45.180 think about society, city planning, social management, and all the rest of it. 25:45.180 --> 25:47.180 Well, some years ago, a dozen years ago. 25:47.180 --> 25:52.860 A dozen years ago or more, a fellow patented ayahuasca. 25:52.860 --> 25:54.000 Somehow this happened. 25:54.000 --> 25:57.580 It's not supposed to be possible with plants. 25:57.580 --> 26:08.840 And then a group of several South American tribes put a lawsuit on him. 26:08.840 --> 26:14.600 And it took a lot of money and years and years to work this to the Supreme Court. 26:14.600 --> 26:19.080 And about two weeks ago, the Supreme Court ruled that you can't patent ayahuasca. 26:19.080 --> 26:20.500 You can't patent a plant. 26:20.500 --> 26:23.700 That a plant is not an invention. 26:23.700 --> 26:27.940 It's not made by human genius. 26:27.940 --> 26:30.120 It is a product of nature. 26:30.120 --> 26:33.180 So no plants can be patented. 26:33.180 --> 26:37.120 And that patent was declared void. 26:37.120 --> 26:39.580 So that's a good thing. 26:39.580 --> 26:45.980 There is a thing called the UN Convention on Narcotics, which was something that when 26:45.980 --> 26:48.760 the US and NATO and all that. 26:48.760 --> 26:51.040 Completely controlled the UN. 26:51.040 --> 26:56.000 They produced this document, which if you signed it, you were basically joining this 26:56.000 --> 27:06.640 club, which said you would commit resources, time, manpower to eradicating all these drugs. 27:06.640 --> 27:15.760 And that was pretty much done through the late 50s and then on into the 60s. 27:15.760 --> 27:17.140 And then, of course, LSD was done. 27:17.140 --> 27:18.140 And then, of course, LSD was done. 27:18.140 --> 27:18.640 And then, of course, LSD was done. 27:18.640 --> 27:18.740 And then, of course, LSD was done. 27:18.740 --> 27:19.340 And then, of course, LSD was done. 27:19.340 --> 27:28.660 It was very threatening, because you can get 100,000 hits under one postage stamp. 27:28.660 --> 27:33.500 Well, for somebody who's trying to control something that they look upon like nerve gas 27:33.500 --> 27:40.640 or something, a weapon, quote, weapon, with that kind of a description makes people very 27:40.640 --> 27:42.680 nervous indeed. 27:42.680 --> 27:54.600 And so it came out of that. 27:54.600 --> 28:03.840 they produce unexpected ideas and conclusions. That's what strange politics does. You know, 28:03.840 --> 28:14.040 you go in a Freemason and a Republican and you come out, God knows what, a polyamorist and an 28:14.040 --> 28:37.520 anarchist or something like that. Yeah, because they nibble away at the 28:37.520 --> 28:44.860 edges of orthodoxy. I mean, once you get the idea that a mushroom can talk to you in your 28:44.860 --> 28:52.340 native language and propose various things, life never looks quite the same again, you know. I mean, 28:52.340 --> 28:59.740 in a sense, you could say civilization was the journey from fairy land to scientific materialism. 28:59.740 --> 29:03.980 Well, then there you are. You think you've conquered scientific materialism, 29:03.980 --> 29:06.840 but here's a mushroom, here's a vine, here's aretticum, here's 29:06.840 --> 29:07.280 a mushroom but thezte in this scenario have an all in point comparative produces 29:07.280 --> 29:07.440 the purpose here, increase Edmonds' 들어�aldutch view of jadi . 29:07.440 --> 29:07.520 … assure collectivism by awhile trace until February 1876 which I read at C. Ronald also found that the 29:07.520 --> 29:14.520 and they all give you a message back that is just so peculiar you don't know what to do with it. 29:14.520 --> 29:22.760 Well, there's a lot of evidence and discussion about whether or not it gives you telepathic powers 29:22.760 --> 29:25.760 or science fiction-like powers. 29:25.760 --> 29:32.760 This could be. I mean, two brains six feet apart are both biochemical oscillators. 29:32.760 --> 29:43.760 I wouldn't consider it a miracle if it were found that brains floating in ayahuasca 29:43.760 --> 29:47.760 have a kind of supernatural connection. 29:47.760 --> 29:53.760 And if the tendencies of past history are to continue, that's what it would have to be, 29:53.760 --> 29:59.760 that we're on the brink of designing drugs, of moving our technological design process 29:59.760 --> 30:02.760 to a point where we can actually design drugs. 30:02.760 --> 30:09.760 That extract power from them that we never had or dreamed of before. 30:09.760 --> 30:13.760 And that would carry us well beyond the industrial revolution. 30:13.760 --> 30:16.760 I mean, that would be the new world. 30:16.760 --> 30:28.280 And just briefly, your recent journey, facing whatever it is that you've faced, 30:28.280 --> 30:37.360 you know, death, what your journey about death, about... 30:37.360 --> 30:41.850 You mean you're referring to the fact that I'm... 30:41.850 --> 30:48.850 I have glioblastoma multiforme, which is a form of brain cancer. 30:48.850 --> 30:55.850 Well, I wish I could say I'd had more insight into death. 30:55.850 --> 31:03.850 I've had a fair amount of insight into dying, which I find a very alarming prospect. 31:03.850 --> 31:09.850 It doesn't... Death itself is so far beyond ordinary experience. 31:09.850 --> 31:21.400 The threat of dying doesn't really move you toward understanding it. 31:21.400 --> 31:26.400 Death is the great mystery around which religions are built. 31:26.400 --> 31:31.400 And being able to say, I know what it is, I know how it works, 31:31.400 --> 31:39.400 is the way you start a congregation and get a little community going. 31:39.400 --> 31:43.400 I would say the big surprise for me was I'm not afraid of death. 31:43.400 --> 31:46.400 The way I thought I would be. 31:46.400 --> 31:49.400 It's just such an intellectual question mark 31:49.400 --> 31:52.400 that you just move to the next page 31:52.400 --> 31:56.400 because there's nothing to be said about death 31:56.400 --> 32:03.400 except that it seems to last rather a long time. 32:03.400 --> 32:07.710 If you had one thing that you wanted to say to people 32:07.710 --> 32:12.710 from all your learnings that you've had, you know, through your life, 32:12.710 --> 32:16.710 what would that one message be to someone? 32:16.710 --> 32:23.710 That following your own curiosity is a better method 32:23.710 --> 32:28.710 for exploring the world than any of the methods offered. 32:28.710 --> 32:35.710 Sheer curiosity is the thing that I've always let carry me along. 32:35.710 --> 32:40.710 And I have no regrets about any of this. 32:40.710 --> 32:42.710 I think it's... 32:42.710 --> 32:44.710 worth the life 32:44.710 --> 32:48.710 to put these issues in front of people.