Welcome to an evening with Terrence McKenna, Unfolding the Stone, Making and Unmaking History and Language,
being held Saturday, June 1, 1991, in Los Angeles.
This is tape TMK 91-1, tape one of a two-tape set.
Just a couple of announcements.
Lux Natura is being phased out slowly, so if there's anything that you people want that they have,
tonight's the night to get it, because it's all here in one place at one time.
It will still be available through your normal channels, but this is the time to get it.
Also, conference recorders are here, and they're doing duplications of this talk on site.
He's an old friend of all of ours, so I'd like you all to welcome Timothy Leary.
I, for one, am overjoyed to be here.
This is one of those special, special evenings that we will all treasure.
You know, as soon as I drove to that parking lot, and I saw people getting out of the car,
many of whom are still carrying uniforms and dazed expressions of grateful deadheads.
How many people are at the dead concert?
Yeah.
And they're coming over later.
They're just spending now, so believe me, we'll have an infusion of wildness there.
Terrence McKenna, he's a great deal to me.
I would say he's one of the five or six most important people on the planet.
I can't even think of any others.
Short-term memory loss.
I was talking, oh, by the way, I should tell you, Terrence and I keep meeting in the most wonderful, mythic, adventurous places.
I was doing a wild tour through Germany about a year ago, and we came to Heidelberg,
and we were being guested by some people that came right out of Hermann Hesse.
I mean, wizards and gnomes and, you know, that sort of thing.
Heidelberg.
And there in a restaurant while I was having a sandwich before performing with some cybernetic people,
there was Terrence McKenna.
And it was just so perfectly Hesse, a journey to the east.
And so we meet again here tonight.
You know, I was talking to Terrence backstage before we began,
and we both agree that what he will be saying tonight has been said over and over again
at all those high moments in human history when those who have gone within
and understood about the brain and the inner treasures,
we all come back and pretty much say the same thing.
The problem is, though, that once you say it, you know, you can't go on saying it and saying it and saying it.
And when Terrence came along a few years ago and was saying what I'd been trying to say,
but naturally, better, upgraded, up-to-date, I was so overwhelmed with gratitude,
and I publicly thank you for that, Terrence.
By the way, the role that Terrence is playing right now is one that takes not only vision,
but it also takes fucking courage.
We were saying backstage that Terrence and I are a small group of philosophers
who make our living, not in the ivory tower, if you call it a living,
but just speaking it, chanting it, raving it, ranting it,
and no one has ever done it with more poetry and elegance than the speaker tonight.
I'm going to say one more thing, and then we will have what we've all been waiting for.
Terrence reminds us that all human wisdom, all energy,
comes from our beloved synergetic partners, the vegetable queendom.
It all comes from the plants.
Now, a round of applause to the vegetables.
Now, we all know that the human body, we have to have food.
It comes from vegetables.
We have used vegetables over the years, the essence of vegetables in the form of wood
to develop fire, gas, oil, and so forth.
Oil, by the way, is the number one crack addiction of the modern industrial society.
But what we forget and what we look to Terrence for tonight
is to be reminded that plants have given us an even more important gift.
They give us the gift of vision.
They give us the illumination.
And throughout human history, there are the eaves and the pandoras.
Usually it's a woman who takes this wonderful vegetable
and gives it to humanity and says, be illuminated.
And now, for our illumination and our pleasure,
please join me in welcoming Terrence McKenna.
Well, I want to thank Tim.
That was a wonderful introduction.
I'm sure I wouldn't, I know I wouldn't be here tonight
if it weren't for Tim Leary.
He was the pathfinder.
He cut the way through the woods.
He gave us all permission to be very much the people that we are tonight.
And it's wonderful that one Irishman can hand it on to another
and that we can keep it in the Bardic tradition.
Before I get started, I want to thank a number of people
who put a lot of energy into this event to make it go.
Steve Marshank promoted and organized this.
He's been at it for months and months.
Roy, Roy Tuchman, Roy of Hollywood, and Diane.
They have supported me and given generously
of hundreds and hundreds of hours of their time
to put these psychedelic ideas across.
And believe me, you hang your ass out to dry
when you take this position.
Tim mentioned courage.
Nobody has had the kind of courage that Roy and Diane have had
to push that message into this town.
So we salute them.
And Eric Alley did the wonderful poster.
He's done them for these events for years.
He's a beautiful artist.
Christian Duffy and Jim Messick are here to see that you find your seat
and stay in it.
And we thank them for that.
And last and certainly most importantly,
Kat Harrison McKenna,
my partner in building the dream of botanical dimensions.
I sit up here and take the limelight and the glory.
It's Kat who fashioned botanical dimensions
into the functioning entity that it is.
She manages it from day to day.
We had a $51,000 balloon payment
that I talked to you about in Port Wainimi.
It's paid off.
It's finished.
The land in Hawaii will forever be dedicated
to the preservation of plants
with medical significance
and significance to the human family.
And that credit all goes to Kat.
So let's hear it for her.
And that brings me to,
for those of you who haven't followed this so closely,
to pointing out that this is a benefit for botanical dimensions.
That's why it was 17 plus bucks a pop.
And what is botanical dimension?
It's a small response on our part to a major problem.
You all know that the rainforests of the world
are disappearing at a tragic rate.
And maybe that process can be halted
through pressure on the World Bank
and the International Monetary Fund
and these enormous international agencies.
But whether or not the clearing of the rainforest is halted,
the loss of folk medicinal knowledge
on the part of these tribal societies
that have lived in balance and equilibrium
and respect with nature for millennia,
that is tragically going.
There's no question about it
because you can't put people into a museum diorama
and ask them to parade around in jockstraps
while the rest of us drive BMWs.
They move into the cities.
These people work in the sawmills.
They take jobs in the tourist industry.
And 25,000, 50,000 years of medical knowledge is lost.
And Tim did homage to the vegetables
even in today's high-tech world.
Fully 75% of all the drugs,
prescription drugs, other kinds of drugs
on the market, above ground, underground,
come from plants.
This is a priceless reservoir
of complex chemistry,
but it's meaningless
unless the human experiences,
the human lore is preserved.
And this is what Botanical Dimensions is about.
We have collectors in Peru
and other parts of the world
and we bring seeds,
rootstock, living plants to Hawaii
and there these things are grown.
as in a living library,
toward the day
when a more enlightened society
will have the wisdom
and the good sense
to team up with the vegetable world
and create a more humane medicine,
a more humane religion
that has some real life and light in it.
So, that's what we're doing out there.
Any help any of you can give us,
we're deeply appreciative.
Spread the word.
Since we began this project,
many imitators have sprung up
and this was our intent and our hope
and great good work is being done.
So, please support the conservation
of both Botanical and Medical Knowledge.
So then, before I dig into this,
let me just explain how it'll work.
I'll talk for a while,
then there'll be an intermission,
and then we'll come back
and given however much time is left over,
why there'll be a Q&A
and then we'll have a mic for you
to line up behind.
Okay.
All right.
First of all,
thank you all for being here.
I know we're up against the Grateful Dead,
my favorite band.
I'm going to quote them repeatedly.
It's a thousand to one chance
that this would happen
and it just shows
the world is stranger
than you can suppose.
So, the name of this talk
is Unfolding the Stone
and I wanted to talk about this.
It's a departure for me
because I think we've just been
through a real hammering
over the past ten months.
I mean, if you've still got
your optimism intact
and believe me, I do,
you've been through the fire.
This has not been an easy ten months
for the people of this planet
or the planet itself.
And so, I want to
sort of reach back tonight
and invoke
a vanished tradition,
get to the heart of it
and try to show
how we can bring this forward
in our lives
to empower hope
in the most dark of situations
and in fact,
even make these dark situations
the raw material
of a clearer, stronger hope
than might ordinarily be the case.
A few days ago,
I was talking to a friend of mine
and he wanted to tell me
the story
of sitting in the presence
of a 104-year-old Vietnamese monk
and the guy
had basically
kept his mouth shut,
the monk,
hadn't said much
around the monastery
where he just sort of
cleans up
but then he
announced he wanted
to talk about meditation
and he opened his remarks
by saying,
we are all
luminous beings.
Why then
do we not
appear
before each other
radiant
in our illumination?
And this is the conundrum of life.
This is the problem.
It was T.S. Eliot
who said,
between the idea
and the reality,
between the motion
and the act
falls the shadow.
And why is that?
As psychedelic people,
this is the problem
that we grapple with
in our own lives
and when we look out
at the world,
you've heard me say
many times,
we have
the vision,
we have the money,
we have the technology,
but why can we not
then appear
before each other
as radiantly
luminous beings?
And why cannot we
reclaim
our planet
from toxification,
disease,
overpopulation,
bonehead politics,
you know the list.
What's the hang-up here?
What is the problem?
Why is perfection
so distant?
well,
what I've learned
from life
and vegetables
and travel
and books
can be summed up
in two
Greek words.
it's the central message
of the philosopher
Heraclitus.
And he was always
my favorite philosopher,
but whenever I would
read about him,
he was called
the crying philosopher.
And I had to live
to be 44 years old
to understand
the poignancy
of Heraclitus' message.
He said in a nutshell,
Pantet Rhea,
all flows,
nothing lasts,
nothing is permanent.
And this is
the hardest
message
life has
to teach
because what it says is
your joy
is transient,
your anguish
is transient,
your fortune,
your home,
your dream,
your moments
of great ecstasy,
your moments
of great insight,
your moments
of great empowerment,
everything
is flowing
through your hands
at the moment
that you
are aware of it.
William Blake,
who in a way
set this engine
going
a couple of
centuries ago,
said,
what is
the price
of experience?
Is it bought
for a song
or wisdom
for a dance
in the street?
No.
It is bought
with all
that a man
hath.
His wife,
his home,
his children.
Now this is not
a pessimistic message
and William Blake
was not a pessimistic guy.
He was the same guy
who told us
that if we could
but cleanse
the doors of perception
we would perceive
the world
as it is,
infinite
in a grain
of sand.
How can we take
this poignancy,
this sense
of impermanence
and weld it
into something
which is paradoxically
indestructible
and has meaning
in our lives
and gives us
not only the strength
to carry on
but the power
to be exemplars,
the power
to stand up
before other people
and let them
then
feel
the power
of vision
in the paradox
of permanence
in the face
of the need
for indestructibility.
Well, to answer
that question
I felt
that we had
to leave
the narrow confines
of 20th century
thinking
and we had
to reach back
into
the byways
of human thought
that have been
by most of us
somewhat passed over
and forgotten
because after all
modern life
makes great demands
on us.
It's enough
to just keep
your checkbook
balanced
and your insurance
paid.
We can't all
spend our time
delving
in the libraries
of the
noetic
and gnostic
and hermetic
and magical
traditions
but I thought
it was worthwhile
to talk to you
about this
tonight
because we have
been through
such a difficult
ten months
and it was also
Heraclitus
the all flows
guy
who said
all is war
and what he meant
was
everything occurs
in the presence
of its opposite
and out of that
there is generated
the friction
the heat
and the light
that all
comes together
in an indissoluble
package
as part of life
so what I want
to talk to you
about tonight
and how it relates
to unfolding
the stone
is the notion
of alchemy
of all things
alchemy
as I'm sure
many of you know
is really
the secret
tradition
of the redemption
of spirit
from matter
but many of you
may imagine
that alchemy
is simply
a discredited
pre-scientific
obsession
of unbalanced
minds
interested in
changing
base metals
into gold
lead
into
the stuff
of commerce
this is
the benighted
reputation
that alchemy
has acquired
in a century
so
given over
to the literal
and the material
and the
non-spiritual
that it's lost
all touch
with the
adumbrations
of meaning
that vibrate
behind
the perceptions
of the alchemists
the central
conception of alchemy
is the conception
of the philosopher's stone
what is it
it's the universal
panacea
at the end
of time
it's
the chocolate cake
that your mother made
once a week
when you were a child
the panas
super substantiales
it's all things
to all men
and all women
if you are hungry
you eat it
if you're dirty
you shower under it
if you need to go somewhere
you sit on it
and you fly there
if you have a question
it answers it
it's something
that the human mind
senses in itself
and
related to
invoked
worshipped
over centuries
before the slow
rise of the patriarchy
and rationalism
and materialism
turned it into a myth
a fairy tale
it is not
a myth
or a fairy tale
it is
the burning
primary reality
that lies behind
the dross
of appearances
alchemy
is based on
a philosophy
called hermeticism
that was developed
in the first
and second
centuries
by Gnostic thinkers
Greeks
Jews
people inside
the Roman Empire
as it was beginning
to show the first
signs of degradation
and decay
who felt
a profound
disaffection
with their world
a disaffection
that on the scale
of those times
was as profound
as our own
existential disaffection
and the hermetic
philosophers
drew back
from the rise
of Christianity
with its doctrine
of the fall of man
and original sin
and the stain
of Adam and Eve
and that whole thing
and took a different tack
and made two points
which I think
we need
to recover
and live out
for ourselves
and the first point
was
that
man
which means
men and women
human beings
are divine
beings
not
lower than
the angels
higher
than the angels
the message
of the alchemical
and hermetic thinkers
and the corpus hermeticum
actually
uses the phrase
man is
God's brother
we have no idea
what it would mean
in our own lives
if we could
throw off
the notion
of ourselves
as fallen beings
we are not
fallen beings
when you take
into your life
the gnosis
of the light-filled
vegetables
the psychedelic plants
that have stabilized
the same societies
of this world
for millennia
the first message
that comes to you
is
you are
a divine being
you matter
you count
you come
from realms
of unimaginable
power and light
and you will return
to those realms
the second point
that these philosophers
wanted to make
was
that fate
can be overcome
fate
can be overcome
now for the greco-hellenic world
what that meant
was
the starry engines
of the machinery
of fate
that they saw
strewn across
the night sky
because they were
intensely aware
of the power
of the zodiac
the stellar shells
inhabited by demons
that extended
out to
the unimaginable
imperium
of the all-father
that was beyond fate
and into that world
of astrological
fatedness
which is such a strong
idea for the greek mind
the hermeticists
announced
fate can be
overcome
and they had a novel
answer
for how this could be done
it can be done
through magic
a word
not often enough
heard
in the present world
the overcoming
of fate
is achieved
through magic
and then
the stellar machinery
becomes
not an invasive
force
into one's life
but an empowering
force
now
some of us
may believe in astrology
and some of us
may not
we are all
strongly influenced
by the notion
of fate
of our powerlessness
in an existential world
Jean-Paul Sartre
said
nature is mute
and we
embedded
in the
media dense
message dense
programming dense
matrix
of these
hyper societies
that we have created
often feel
I think
like hapless
atoms
running
endlessly
according to the
blueprints
and programs
of unseen
masters
whether it's
the banking industry
Madison Avenue
whoever
we tend
to disempower
ourselves
we tend
to believe
that we
don't matter
and in the
act of taking
that idea
to ourselves
we give
everything
away
to somebody
else
to something
else
so
the rebirth
of a sense
of the stone
and its
possibility
within each
of us
entails
these two
ideas
our divinity
and our
power
to overcome
fate
there is no
inevitability
in our lives
unless we
submit
to the idea
of inevitability
and then
give ourselves
over to it
ok
I wish there
were more
jokes
but it's just
been such
a tough
goal
it's been a
tough goal
I have to
tell you
where
can we look
in the world
to see
some
confirmation
of what
I'm saying
how can
we draw
it down
from being
you know
an airy
fairy
wrath
of a
bardic
Irishman
well
I think
that the
place
to look
is history
now if
you go
to the
academies
to those
ivory towers
that Tim
was talking
about
and ask
what is
history
they will
tell you
that it's
a random
walk
an endlessly
pointless
fluctuation
empires
rise and
fall
migrations
of people
come and
go
that it
is
essentially
meaningless
I don't
believe this
I don't even
think there's
strong evidence
for it
because what
I perceive
when I look
at the world
not only the
world of history
but the world
of nature
which out of
which history
has emerged
I see
novelty
something
wonderful
maddening
paradoxical
and
ever increasing
ever more
conserved
every
iota
of novelty
that comes
into existence
is somehow
saved
and passed
on
that's why
when we
walk or drive
down
Melrose
we see
Egyptian
fashion motifs
we see
fashion statements
drawn from the
14th century
the 2nd century
Assyria
Egypt
Angkor Wat
all of the
novelty
of history
coalesces
in the living
moment
it's always been
that way
every society
in the moment
of its existence
has lived
as a
resonance
a completion
and
a distillation
good alchemical word
a distillation
of what has
preceded
before
and so
the alchemical
life
national
estate
also
the
photography
allows
to
live
their
consequences
and
closing
on
where
the
history
and
all of the
most
of the
eternity
as
faces
everywhere
as
we
do
That spirit can be redeemed from matter
Begins to get teeth when you connect the idea of spirit up to the idea of novelty
Which has not ordinarily been done, but you know novelty is the life of the party and the life of the party is to be
high-spirited and this is
What we need to?
Focus on as the thread in the dark labyrinth of the prison of the material world
That can lead us back to the light the universe is an engine for the production of novelty
It always has been since the first moment of the big bang 20 25 billion years ago
simpler states have been replaced by more complex states which have been set the stage for yet greater
complexity well the drift of this then is
that the emergence of language and tools and
Culture and higher ideals like courage and love and self-sacrifice
these are not
flukes
sports
mistakes
These are
Further steps along the way in the process of the great alchemical furnace of being
heating and casting and
dissolving and recasting and purifying and
recasting
alchemical gold and
so hard as the world may appear
Dark as the hour may appear in reality
We exist in a dimension of greater opportunity
greater freedom greater
Possibility than has ever been
the challenge then is to not drop the ball is to know this and to act on it and to
And to slough off all the leeches and backhandlers and weasels and crypto-fascist who want to deny that and
turn man into a machine for their own purposes
Alchemy
has always perceived this and has
Delineated stages in the transformational process and these stages are
Worth talking about not in the details, but in in the two
Bipolar states which define this
They used a bastard Latin and they called them the negredo and the albedo
the negredo is the precondition
For transformation and what is it?
It's shit
It's detritus
It's flotsam
It's debris
It's being HIV positive
It's being deep into your fourth marriage and sinking fast
It's bankruptcy
It's you know serum hepatitis
It's the
Inevitable dark night of the soul that comes upon us and these dark nights of the soul come upon all of us
Nobody gets through
This world
Without a little dung raining down on them
Believe me
I mean you may evade it for decades, but then there'll be a knock on the door
You know it's said that the millstones of fate grind slowly
But they grind exceedingly fine
So what do we do with that?
Well the answer is
We welcome it
This is what the alchemists awaited
The negredo the primal materia
The dark matter the chaos
The chaos
That is the precondition
Then for
Redemption
God knows we've got lots of chaos right now
I mean we have war famine revolution
Millions of homeless people on the move the nation-state is dissolving
The relief agencies of the world can't keep up the various
Secret societies mafias and cabals that have always tried to tie us into chains
They're all working overtime
We are in the negredo condition
Hallelujah
This means
That the kissing has to stop
But the fun can begin
The real fun
The other end of this bipolar condition in alchemy
Was called the albedo
Or albedo
Depending on whether or not you came from a coal mining town in Colorado like I did
The albedo
The whitening
And that means
That out of the chaos
Can come a new beginning a new reality a new hope and then the process is one of and the you see these alchemists existed in an
Philosophically more naive we quote more naive world than we do so they actually
Projected on to the processes of matter their own interior
Psychic condition so they did work with matter and fire and furnaces and retorts and what they would do is they would take
The primal material lead or excrement or something else and then they would heat it and
Turn it to ash and then calcinate the ash or pour solvents through the ash and get an extract and then heat that and sublimate it and
Out of this almost
Almost as a footnote came modern chemistry
But that was not the important side of it the important side of it was that they were projecting mental states on to the swirling retorts of their laboratory
It was like a magical mirror for them it was in fact dare we say the p word it was
Psychedelic what psychedelic means is getting your mind out in front of you by whatever means necessary
So that you can relate to it as a thing in the world and then work upon it
So from the nigredo to the albedo there were a series of
These stages now. I said a few minutes ago that
magic
was the key and by magic I mean the
reclaiming and the reconstruction of language
To a sufficient degree that it becomes at first
Possible then probable then inevitable to each one of us that
miracles can happen
Miracles can happen the Grateful Dead have a song we need a miracle every day
We do need a miracle every day. Well, is that too tall an order? I
I don't think so
Years ago one of these talking vegetables said to me
said mind conjures miracles out of time
out of time
time is
The primal material on which the alchemical process works the alchemists again in their naive way
believed that
precious metals
diamonds gold sapphires actually grew in the earth because for this alchemical point of view
Everything was a lie and my friend Rupert Sheldrake is
Leading the charge to create a new birth of that perception
Inside science the idea that nature all of nature is alive not simply
Organic cellular nature, but that the earth itself is a living being
So mind conjures miracles out of time and the proof
That this can be done and it's an incontrovertible proof and I defy any naysayer or bring down to overcome it is
ourselves
We are the proof that mind can conjure miracles out of time if it weren't for us
There would just be birds and foxes and coral reefs and glaciers
But nature was not content with that level of novelty
million years ago a hundred thousand years ago nature grew
discontented and said you know let's
Raise the ante let's go to higher stakes poker in this planetary game
Let's the monkey speak let them build fires
Let them elaborate tools
Let them March forward on to the stage of creation and remember I said the hermetic faith was that humankind was the brother
Could act as the brothers and sisters of God not?
Motes in God's creation, but co-partners in
In the invocation out of being of yet greater
novelty why?
for play for fun
Just the cosmic madness of it all the pure
cussedness of it all
To raise the stakes higher and higher and higher
now I keep going back to this thing of can it be done because I want to convince you because I'm so certain I
love
Herman Melville and his rhetoric and
Friends of the whale bear with me
For Herman Melville the whale was not the endangered creature it is today
It was the dark cosmic God of
Christianity that haunts us and tries to pull us down and there's a wonderful speech in Moby Dick where?
Starbuck the first mate you remember wimpy little starbuck
He stood for christian right reason and he says to captain a have to seek revenge on a dumb brute seems blasphemy and
They have said
blasphemy starbuck
Speak not to me of blasphemy
I would strike out the Sun if it insulted me
For could it do that then could I do the other for there is ever a sort of fair play and
that's the point of that rap there is a sort of fair play
You've been told from the cradle that the deck was stacked against you fall of man original sin so forth and so on
It's bullshit. It's absolute bullshit
there is a sort of fair play and
If you can get in touch with that in your life, you know
When Mohammed wouldn't come to the mountain the mountain came to Mohammed that's fair play
and
If you can have that perception the world will begin to work for you
It will begin to move toward you as the mountain move toward Mohammed
the mushroom said to me once
Nature loves courage
Nature loves courage and I said
What's the payoff on that and it said it shows you that it loves courage because it will remove obstacles?
You make the commitment and nature will respond to that commitment by
removing impossible obstacles
Dreaming the impossible dream and the world will not grind you under it will lift you up
This is the trick. This is what all these
Teachers and philosophers who really counted who really touched the alchemical gold
This is what they understood this is the shamanic dance in the waterfall
This is how magic is done
It's done by hurling yourself
into the abyss and
discovering that it's a feather bed and
There's no other way to do it
This is why I have always taken the position that as modern people you know
We can't go out and
Set armies marching or launch religions and who would want to anyhow, but
To the people who say adventure has fled
It's all humdrum. I just know you know that they have forgotten the five grams of psilocybin sitting in their refrigerator
I mean Magellan may have had excitement
Rounding the horn, but you in your living room later tonight
Can put him in the shade if you have the courage to do the things that are necessary to do and we know what they are
And of course the first thing to do is to tell society to fuck off because they don't know what's going on
This is a matter between the person and the plant the person and the planet and
all the detritus of history all the games that people have tried to lay on you
You know they just want to get you down in the ditch that they're in
We know this because aboriginal societies
Have never broken the faith the living gnosis is still there
Not for people who paint themselves blue and dance around buck naked, but for us as well
But it takes an act of courage not a weekend at Esalen
not a
A trip to the ashram way where they tell you that if you'll sweep up for a dozen years then they'll hand on a whammy no
the speed with which you can reach death is
under 45 seconds if you know where the elevator shaft is and
You do you do I don't have to tell you I've been telling you
Well, so
I
There's one more alchemical
Metaphor or stage that I want to mention here
Because I think it refers to this psychedelic possibility
Not all the alchemists included this stage in their in their
recensions of the work
But for me, I think it's central
Again in their church
church
bastardized church Latin they called it the cauda pavones
the peacock's tail
Now the physical basis of this is if you've ever
Played around with metal and fire
You know that there are certain metals that when they pass to a certain temperature range
Iridescent colors
Play across the surface and sometimes even freeze and in
the
the glazing of
Pottery at low temperatures in rock who what these pottery masters are aiming for are these wonderful
Iridescent surfaces that play across the glaze and then can be frozen into it well. This is the peacock's tail and
and
In alchemy this was thought to proceed the final whitening the passage into the pure
uh
the
The goal
really and rather than see the present world as
Exclusively a veil of tears and the black prison and none of these metaphors are mutually exclusive
You see the alchemists the great strength of our chemical thinking and the way in which it is
Is completely antithetical to science and in fact why science has so much contempt for it?
Is because the alchemists have the wisdom to see that?
Everything occurs in the presence of its opposite that it's not
either or
It's both and they call this the coincidencia
Appositorium the cult the coincidence of opposites the union of opposites this is a great truth
Because I think all of us live under the rubrics of am I good am I bad am I?
Lazy am I obsessed and the answer is that it is never one or the other it does a tremendous
injustice
Injustice to being
To ignore
The union of opposites now science in order to do its work which is essentially a technological work not a deep philosophical work
It's a minor art
Science that's all it is. It's a minor art. It's the art of the physically possible, but it has presumed
Presumed
To be the arbiter of all thought all feeling all worth my god that the
Hubris of Rene Descartes to divide the world into the primary and secondary qualities
And what are the primary qualities?
Motion
Mass
Spin
Momentum
And what are the secondary qualities?
Color
Feeling
Taste
Tactility
It tells you that you're nothing you never touch reality you live in that world of sense and therefore can only aspire to the real world to some kind of mathematical
Disembowelment
Disembowelment of your own
What your own body what your own feelings are telling you?
So in the cow de pavones the peacock's tail this is where the contradictions meet and
Generate heat and light and and
Excruciating sense of poignancy and meaning and identity and
Our world as we experience it tonight is
Quintessentially another good alchemical word is
Quintessentially that coincidencia
Appositorum now where do we meet this most dramatically in our own lives? I think we need it in
The phenomenon of birth of birth if you
Had just parked your flying saucer in the bushes
And came from a world where sexuality was unknown and people were grown in vats or something
And you came upon a woman in the act of giving birth
It would appear to be a catastrophe and progress
A tragedy
At the limit of tragedy
Blood is being shared
Anguish is on the surface
Real agony
Pervades the situation
And yet and yet
Nature in her wisdom
Has bound pain and ecstasy
Death and completion
Regeneration
Regeneration and dissolution
Into that experience
In such an indissoluble fashion
That no woman can miss the point
No woman can miss the point
Unfortunately men have traditionally averted their eyes
This has gone on in a hut at the edge of the village
Nobody wanted to be there
Maybe the shaman would be there
But he was loaded in order to be there
And the mystery of mysteries
Goes on outside the sight of men
Now in our world
We are caught in this kind of metaphor
A cosmic birth
A birth of planetary scale
Is underway
There is agony
There is no doubt about it
I remember an embryologist
Who once taught me
Pointed out
That the fetus in the womb
Is literally sculpted
By the hand of death
That the immature hand
Of the fetal organism
Is a webbed claw
And that it isn't that the flesh retracts
To form the human hand
It's that the cells in between die
And slough off into the amniotic fluid
And are carried away
The fetal child is literally
Sculpted into life
By the hand of death
And our world
Is in this kind
Of a circumstance
There are no rational solutions
At this point
We are now in the hands of the miracle makers
The shamans
The mind of the planet
The life of the ocean
And the atmosphere
And it's going to get tougher
And so we have to forge
The indestructible adamantine stone
Of alchemical hope
Because heavier challenges
Lie ahead
A hundred years from now
Two hundred years from now
I cannot but imagine
That this planet will be empty
Of human beings
Not because we have become extinct
But because we have gone
To our fate
And it's unimaginable at this moment
Because we are in
The planetary birth canal
We are at the peak
Of transition
Right now
And the walls
Are literally closing in
We are being suffocated
We are fighting
Like a strangled man
To try and save ourselves
And yet we have to believe
And I invite you to educate yourself
About the history of the planet
There is no reason not to believe
That we will come through
We will come through
There is light
At the end of the tunnel
There is a meaning to history
But it's an alchemical meaning
History is a vast alchemical engine
For the forging of an alchemical humanity
And I don't have the answers
Believe me
Whether we go
To another star
Whether we become
Eight angstroms high
And all live in a block of metal
Underneath Mount Everest
Whether we march off
To the heart of the sun
The scenarios are endless
Because the human imagination
Has such a power
To bootstrap itself
To higher and higher levels
What would Paleolithic man
Have made of the religion of pharaonic Egypt
What would the pharaohs have made
Of the engines of war and hydraulic machinery
Created by the Romans
What would the gothic scholastic enlightenment
Have made of the age of cybernetics
Psychedelics and virtual reality
The imagination
Is the alchemical deus ex machina
That can lift us
Out of time
Out of the negrado
Of history
And into higher and higher
And higher states of being
Now there is no reason
To simply then ride along
In this process
Because another perception
Of the alchemist
That is central to getting this all
Lined up so that it works
Is the idea of the macrocosm
And the microcosm
What does that mean?
It means that the world truly is fractal
In the most profound sense
Meaning that what is going on
On some very large scale
Is condensed
Intensified
And recapitulated
On smaller scales
So that the dynamics of a love affair
Are the dynamics of an empire
Both are the dynamics of the evolution
Expansion
And extinction of a species
There is only one way
That things can happen
And whether we're talking about
Microphysical events
Or the life of an entire solar system
The curve of binding energy
Is going to be the same
So that means that
This redemption of spirit
From matter
That is the historical process
That we are embedded in
We can do our part
By working on our small section of this
Which is our self
This is why alchemy was so fascinating
To the union
Psychologists
Because they saw
That this work of redeeming spirit
From matter
Is nothing more
Than the work of redeeming
The self
From the contaminated dross
Of the traumatized
And damaged psyche
That we each inherit
From our passage
Through the parental
Chick pile
We each have that
Gift
To deal with
That negrado
Is within ourselves
And this is why we're in therapy
And this is why we take psychedelics
And meditate
Or do whatever we do
Because we all have
This dross
Within us
And this is a great gift
It means that we can begin
Consciously
The process of distillation
And sublimation
And casting
Of ourselves
Into
That golden being
That luminous creature
That this hundred and four year old
Vietnamese monk
Sensed
And evoked
To my friend
But it's more than that
We do that
We do that alchemical work
To perfect
Our own sense of the union of opposites
Our own sense of the presence
Of the living alchemical stone within
In order that we may then
Participate
Act in
And be part of
The transformation of the planet
And it is an immense
Transformation
And there is no reason to doubt it
Because the emergence of organic life
From what preceded it
Is as dramatic a miracle
As anyone could imagine
The emergence of language
From mute bestiality
Which is only a hundred thousand years in the past
Is as dramatic a miracle
As anyone could imagine
The emergence
Of a planet
Instantaneously unified by electricity and media
Is
The emergence of a planet instantaneously unified by electricity and media
And this is only 50 60 years in our past. It's still going on is as dramatic a miracle as anyone could imagine
It's absolutely irrational to not be filled with the fire of consuming hope you just have to
overcome the leveling that we inherit from these empty
Existential scientific ideas, and when we do that and lift our eyes to the real living
spiritually
Empowered reality that exists in nature in society in our lover in
ourselves then you see that
the peacock's tail the cow de pavones is a
a
Transcendental object at the end of time an enormous
Unspeakable something that beckons
across the historical landscape
that casts an enormous shadow that reaches clear back to the earliest moments of the universe that we have always
Been in the grip of that iridescent
Strange attractor it has propelled our poetry our art our best moments have always been
When a tiny scintilla another good alchemical word a tiny spark of that?
alchemical completion
Burned for a moment in our mind in our life in our perception and we
Occupy a special position in regard to this
millions
Thousands of generations of human beings have come and gone and could only glimpse this in the ecstasy of
Eroticism and psychedelic empowerment and ritual magic
but we are
the last people
Beyond us lies the mystery if we have but the courage to move forward
Into that abyss to believe that nature will reward the dreamer
Then we can complete that wonderful irish toast which says may you be alive at the end of the world
Because it's that close it cannot wander much longer all of the preconditions
Have been been met and the peacocks tail grows daily
whiter and more radiant and more brilliant as we
Since now breaking into our dreams breaking into our waking lives the presence of this attractor
It has always given people meaning that we are the privileged inheritors of that meaning
And we have been the privilege of putting it all together in one piece and
And standing ready at the end of history to go into the mystery and be completed
So that's the end of my song
Take a break and we'll be back in 15 minutes and if you've got questions and God I hope you do we'll deal with them
Thank you very very much
Do you know what insomniac dyslexic philosophers do?
They sit up all night wondering if dog really exists. It's also an intelligence test
Also, I'd like to point out to you just to keep you current that
Nina Graboi who is an old friend of mine and of Tim's
Has a new book out called one foot in the future and this is a lady who lived a life that went from the center of nazi Europe to
Millbrook and beyond and it's a wonderful book. It's out in the bookstores, and I just call your attention to it
Okay, let's have some questions here
Okay, can you hear me I can hear you this is not a joke
I'm afraid I'm more serious again
I believe that among the fundamental rights that people have to fight for for self-empowerment
One of them is the right to commit suicide
Just like the right to take psychedelics and all that
And I'm wondering if in your world travels
You might have come across some wisdom
about plants that people have taken
For say relatively easy suicide
Like hemlock and what you know about them
well
With your point, I mean I think people should be free to do whatever they want to do with themselves
The classic answer is obviously the poppy
Opium and its products
Even I mean this is the modern instrument of
Dying is morphine injection unto death in the minoan civilization
the fascination with poppy's
Reached such a proportion that when they translated the linear be text at first
They took the symbol for poppy's as the symbol for wheat because the tonnage of
That was being recorded as being produced and used was so huge
So yes the waters of left they the waters of forgetfulness
So the poppy will carry you to the gates of death and beyond if that's your intent
Now
I just back to the issue of empowerment
Usually any derivatives of poppy you have to go through doctors or authorities
In fact just decide here people who are dying in the hospitals. I understand
They don't even give morphine anymore
Well, why bother with the derivatives the poppy grows it's still a relic ornamental in many
Suburban gardens
I noticed in someone's garden recently poppies that had been as
Expertly etched as if we were on the highlands of laos
So the gnosis of it hasn't died
You're right that the
Heroin and morphine are extremely controlled drugs, but again the poppy is there
If I were making drug policy, I would
Promulgate what I think of as the vegetable drug act and simply say
Plants are legal all plants should be legal you know people hold up
Opium as the scourge of mankind and yet it was used medically for three thousand years
And it was only in the I think in
1603 that the British physician John play fair was the first person to notice that it was addictive
So it took 3,000 years of using it before anyone actually came to grips with the fact that it was addictive
Can I ask you quickly about hemlock? What do you know about that about what hemlock? I?
Know about it. I think it's a rather painful way to go
Actually, I go back to the opiates because some herbalist told me it wasn't well
It will deliver you into charm boat for sure
But your impression is that it's my impression is that the poppy would be the way to go. Okay. Thank you
Thanks for keeping it light
Yeah
Hi Terence, my name is Joao and I was born in South America in the Amazon
And after that I went to Germany to study chemistry thanks to Sandos Basel
And in there in Germany, I think people think of you know in a way that that
You want to educate the society, you know, this is an alchemy
Society and in a way, I guess we learn
For example, just Christ was one of the first
alchemists and the Romans
Tried to make a mock of him because he was saying, you know, he was the put of sign on the cross saying
I n r I and people say said oh, this is Jesus Nazareth, you know, and it was not
I was was the Latin word that we learn in chemistry was Igna
Learning chemistry was Igna
That's what a
Renovator integral means that nature is
Renovated by fire. So what Jesus Christ was telling to everybody was that we have an aura
You know like gold and gold in Latin and stuff is aureus
And what we have to do is do alchemy with our fire with our core
to trust mutate
the very elements we have in our body and
Trustment our solar becomes something more purified
I was a really interesting
Well, yes, I mean you make an interesting point
Christ
Can be seen in this alchemical context because what he was saying was what I claimed here tonight is the alchemical
Faith he was saying that man is divine this doctrine got
raked over the coals by the patristic fathers
But the career of Christ is very interesting because there does seem to be this confluence of
elements that hint at a
Transformation that was not simply spiritual but that was spiritual and
physical at the same time
You know one of the most puzzling instance
Incidents in the Gospels. I can't remember which one it is, but
after the resurrection when the
When the Marys go to the tomb
There's this amazing encounter between the risen Christ and the Marys and he actually says
Touch me not woman for I am not yet completely of the nature of the father
But yet he is resurrected
He is speaking he stands before them alive
But he says touch me not I am not yet completely of the nature of the father so you're right there is this
alchemical
Suggestion in the life of Christ the story about Christ that I always like to tell because it seems to vindicate some of what we've indicated here tonight is
It's a wonderful story. You know Christ is said to have appeared to the Apostles in the upper room
40 days after the crucifixion I believe and
and but the Apostle Thomas was not present and
So then Thomas comes after this incident and and the Apostles gather around him and they say the master
Was with us he came in the flesh and Thomas says the equivalent of you guys have been smoking too much of this red
Lebanese that you've been getting
and then
Christ comes again. Oh, oh and he says in that incident Thomas says
Unless I put my hand into the wound
I will not believe it and so then Christ comes again to the upper room and he
Looks over the assembly and he gestures Thomas forward and he says Thomas
Put your hand into the wound and so he does
Now different people have different interpretations of what's going on here and
Thomas is always called them in Christian exegesis Thomas the Doubter
My interpretation of what's going on here is that because Thomas doubted
He alone of all the Apostles
Touched the resurrection body
He alone was vouchsafed this immense privilege and it was because he doubted so it's a tremendous
Inspiration to doubt
Which is what I urge you all to do about this kind of thing
On the other hand, I I went back to the Amazon to meet my roots there with young young manos and my cubitaries
Indian for two years. I was teaching Portuguese and Spanish and
What I learned from there is that when they take drugs when they take the herbs, you know
They they take it to be good warriors, and that's what my concern in society is right now
That in here we we take any kind of like, you know
excite
Substances to the service to the nervous system. We don't understand why we're trying to become a warrior in that way
Well, no, you're right that this Yanomami Folkway is
Definitely about the male aggression and this sort of thing
But I also wonder if in that situation
They actually encounter the reality of the literating
Psychedelic ecstasy that comes with the
When that those substances which are DMT specifically are purified out no, I'm not I my method is skeptical
There's it goes back to the Thomas the doubter story. It's not a cult of the primitive
It's not a cult of the that ancient is best
It's a cult of experience
Direct experience is what needs to be empowered and you have to trust your own
intuition there are horrifying
Experiences that can come as a result of plant use in Madagascar
Madagascar the modern Malagasy Republic
There's not a highly developed
Psychedelic usage, but they have concentrated on and developed what are called ordeal poison
And they have about a dozen of these things and what these are are
Plants that you take the preparation
You believe that you're going to die you want to die you beg to die and you don't die
Instead you come through it, and then you're so damn glad that you came through it that it's an ecstasy
Just the mere fact of having lived through it you see
So
Isn't it what we have right now with all the ventilator systems. That's right
Sure
Thank you once one has acquired the bundle weed
How does he consume it?
Technical questions here detail freaks cooks and recipe mongers
For the benefit of those not initiated into this it's interesting
You know Aboriginal human beings have searched the world for psychedelic sources and have been such as in the Amazon very successful
but not
Exhaustively successful so that it's recently become known
in the phytochemical literature that a plant
Desmanthus Illinoisensis which this gentleman is referring to the Illinois bundle weed
appears to have the
one of the highest concentrations of dimethyltryptamine of any plant that's been looked at and it has no history of
Aboriginal usage and
And the question is how to activate this into a usable psychedelic
Probably
The way to do it would be to attempt to create an
Analog to the South American drug plant drug
Ayahuasca by combining the bundle weed with a North American source of a beta-carbolene
Carbolene such as harmony which is what's in ayahuasca and that would activate it and the obvious
candidate for that would be a
Succulent plant that grows in the deserts of New Mexico and
Nevada
Pagamon harmola and
Pagamon harmola combined with
Desmanthus Illinoisensis in the correct proportions
Would probably deliver a stunning
psychedelic experience
Would you eat it or smoke it?
Drinking you would boil them together no smoking you can't it's too diffuse in these things
No, you would you would perform an alchemy you would boil the two for many hours in a large volume of water
Pour off the wash add new water boil more hours pour off the wash combine the two
Fractions get rid of the physical material and drive it down until it looks like thick coffee
But you know don't be consumed by your
Alchemical investigations, I mean proceed carefully with this stuff because it's going to work if you get it, right
In the absence of a scale how might one measure?
Five grams of psilocybin dry psilocybin spring for the scale
Terence I was here the last time you were in LA. I think she's about a year and a half two years ago
And I mentioned at that time I felt there was a need for
Something set up where the in-between times that you aren't here
There could be some interaction between we who are here
And I don't know what the reaction was but it finally ended up with your town with somebody please take this lonely guy out for dinner
But I may come out that I wasn't but the truth is you know when you live out in Balfour California, which is really like you know the boondocks
You're not in the midst of daily
Interacting with people you know of your nature or like and mine now. I know Roy Tuchman
Did I have a meeting of listeners for KPFK?
I think about two weeks ago, which is great this first time I think he's done that and I didn't make it
But I really is and what I did last time was simply volunteer myself as anybody wanting to further get together or
Explore something some type of organization
Or some type of group are you familiar with the Oetney reader?
Uh-huh now they're eight would you see their March April issue where they were
championing salons
Where they have a lot of heat for that too because people said what are you talking about salons when the world is the flame?
But I thought it was a good point to push it
Yeah, but my understanding I resuscribe to them that they're going to match up their readers in areas in the country to see if they can ferment some of these salons
I think it's a great idea for empowering the individuals
For that message of hope, you know, it's hard to hang on to hope out in the boondocks
And it's like we need something besides every two years a shot in the arm type of thing or just listening
You know to Roy which he was great. I mean, I thank God for him, but some interaction
I think with the people well, yeah, no you make a very good point
I mean what I often say at these kinds of events is it's a
unique
Moment when you all self-select to be here
I mean this is a city of what 14 million people something like that and you have self-selected
Even over being at the dead concert to be here, and so this is some kind of a core
community and it is true that we look like everybody else there's no real way to tell so
Whatever you need
somebody in this room has it and
and
It's we've reduced the problem from finding them in a city of 12 million to finding them in a crowd of 800
That's about the best I can do for you, but I
Urge you I urge you to look around you and see who's here and
Remember it's tricky of course because you know motivations are complex and loyalties are complex
And not everybody knows who they work for but nevertheless we have considerably
Simplified the problem of community by gathering ourselves into this room this evening
And I I don't like these big events because I don't like sitting up here in the light and looking out over the sea of faces
I against guruism leader trips and and anyway the whole
The whole point of this message has to be that
It's for everybody nobody is special if it can only happen to some kind of elect
Then it's got no impact no ability to save the planet. It's a human mystery. It doesn't belong to the
Intelligentsia it doesn't belong to the wealthy. It doesn't belong to the Irish
regardless of how we kid around about that it's it got to be for everybody so
Take this man seriously here. He is second year in a row pleading for community somebody taking the dinner and
Community is the backbone of the thing when I first started doing this one of the most empowering
Experiences that I could have after talking to a crowd like this if someone would come up afterwards and say to me I thought I was crazy till I talked to you
till I heard you talk
And what they meant was that they had done psychedelics in the 60s and they had seen the elves and the machinery of joy
But then it had all other people had turned to market analysis and international banking and what-have-you and it all seemed to flow away and so
people need to find
like-minded people and
As I say this is about as far as I can go for you
And then you have to do the rest but this is your affinity group
This is your family
Yeah, you you have narrowed it down
There still seems to be a little hit-and-miss what I did last time I didn't want it before I sat down
I said anybody was interested. I was you know
I was going to stick be somewhere stand here and about 14 people to my surprise came up, you know
We switched the names and addresses. I mailed out just the names and addresses. I really didn't follow up it and
Those people are tonight. I need you need someone better to do a newsletter than me, but I'm willing to support
You know the people getting together and and just be a focus point of them getting together. So I'll stand
Yes, it's right this man. He'll be outside
And and just explore you know how we can get together as more often than once every year and a half or two years and whatever that may take
sounds good
I was interested in your concept of fate. It reminded me of the quote by you and what he says that fate is doing willingly that which I must do and
I was wondering about this concept of fate you were talking about the Greek thought of fate as
as as the one thing that you couldn't go beyond you know even even Zeus himself was terrified of the fates and what the moira and
the idea of not being able to pass beyond the physical body not being a path beyond boundaries
that we are bounded by faith even the gods themselves and yet you were talking about the concept of the alchemist believing
About going beyond one's fate. I find this idea very delicious
You know I thought maybe you could elaborate on the idea of going beyond one's fate or this kind of freedom in me
Yes those the way they did it as I
Briefly indicated that didn't get into was through magic and the kind of magic was
Um the following it was the styles of Renaissance magic that developed in the wake of the translation of this hermetic corpus it
Previously magic had been
Sort of as the cartoon
Image we have of it the lonely wizard off in the woods grinding up his
potions and toads or
that sort of thing
But in the Renaissance in the courts of the Demi of of
the Demi the Medici court
people like Marcello Faccino and
Campanello and these people
took the idea of
Astrological associations in other words that
Plants and minerals and odors and this sort of thing could all be associated
to
Given zodiacal signs and they created a theatrical style of magic a
ceremonial magic where by
Say you wanted to counteract
Saturn aspect of some sort well then by choosing
the opposite
The herbs and gems and perfumes associated with the opposite sort of situation and
Gathering them to you you could make a model of the universe a new model of the universe and they did this in round rooms and built or
oreries and
Practiced a kind of ceremonial magic
That made them then the companions of princes and the the dark figure of the lonely
Magician in the woods was replaced by the renaissance
Magus who was manipulating political realities counseling
popes and
Taking
Magical power into his hands specifically for the purpose of counteracting the machinery of fate
fate it had to do with this idea of if if fate is decreed by God's cosmos
But man is the co-creator with God then by setting up a magical
microcosm the ordinary asterisms the ordinary
Influences of astrology can be
Deflected and if you're interested in this sort of thing
Dame Francis Yates wrote a wonderful book called
Giordano Bruno and the hermetic tradition and there's another book by D.P. Walker called
Demet demonic and spiritual magic from Faccino to Campanella
These are not easy books to find try the Bodhi tree and William and Victoria daily down on melrose can help you out if they were easy to find
What fun would it be and part of the quest is getting this stuff together?
But that's the basic theory of renaissance magic is to create a microcosm
to counter the fatalistic machinery of the macrocosm yeah
Hi, hi, I've heard you talk a lot about themes repeating themselves a lot and one of the things I thought about what time?
themes in history repeating themselves oh yeah and one things i thought about is um popular western
music how it changes and recreates itself and i'm just curious about your insight on that
and it's in its role in using music as a language to communicate things in the future and so forth
well it seems there are a couple of questions here i mean there's an impulse which comes and
goes in music which is to be evocative of the spirit i mean you feel it in van morrison and
you feel it in locatelli and then you flash back another 200 years and you get it in johannes
okagum these people where it's liturgical but it's liturgical because there was no other space
in society for that music this question really reflects on the previous question music is the
divine medium of exchange between man and these higher levels and what i've always felt about
rock and roll and i feel about i feel it about what i do as well is that it's such a pale reflection of
what it wants to be and could be i mean at a dead concert you know when they get to noodling you actually
begin to feel the dimensions shift and you actually feel the possibility of a doorway opening into another
dimension this is sacral music in the highest sense of the word it goes back to the pythagorean
it goes back to the pythagorean theory of octaves and the mysterious relationship of the
shortening of a string to the diminution of the tone and also resonance resonance is a very strange
phenomenon thinking of it in terms of we pluck the string of a cello here and a piano sitting across the
stage emits a sound i mean this is action at a distance incontrovertibly which was always the goal of
magic and always what was denied by science as a possibility you see we forget that it wasn't until the
middle of the last century with helmholtz and faraday and those people that feels gained any kind of
respectability at all and and the science of the mid 19th century resisted the idea of fields very
furiously because it looked to them like magic the newtonian model of the cosmos is all little hard
balls moving through empty space and reacting in absolutely calculable ways we now live in a world
where you know if i had an fm radio beside me i could demonstrate to you that hundreds of messages are moving
through every cubic centimeter of space and time and we think nothing of this it seems trivial but in a way
it's a realization of the magical intent one of the things i didn't say in the main body of my talk is
how in spite of sciences resistance to magical ideas how thoroughly it has unconsciously realized the major
points on the agenda of magic for thousands and thousands of years electricity was something that you would see
if you took an amber rod and a piece of cat fur and locked yourself in a darkened room and let your eyes adjust to the darkness and then
furiously stroke the cat fur and then you would see a little static electrical discharge and this was a parlor trick of
magicians from the hellenistic period on well who would have imagined
imagined that you could light cities with that that you could move pictures and sound of of uh political activities and theatrical
performances and propaganda from one side of the planet to the other in the wink of an eye with that
science did that but it has in a way created an entirely magical world which we have grown blasé to
because uh along with it has come some fancy mathematics that i would wager to say that not a person in this room
could fully explicate and yet because that mathematics exists we think that this is all very humdrum
you know it took marshall mcleughan to say that the age of electricity was nothing less than the descent of the holy ghost
onto this planet i mean that electricity is the third person of the trinity
nothing like dabbling in a little heresy here but that's the fact of the matter folks
let's do one more here and then we yield to uh convention
hi jaren how are you fine uh once i went some new years eve i went to a concert i'm sorry to a church service
where we had communion and then i'll hold like wolves and from there moved to a grateful bed show tonight
i went to a grateful bed show now i'm here would you like to howl like a wolf
okay there oh i just read some rupert sheldrick recently he's like the art i try to do it's
resonant systems he's talking about all the way a friend came to me and said if you're going to this
ask parents if demand this and when the bundle weed is really six percent dmt no point six probably
closer point eight i think i said once it was six percent and my mailbox filled with letters from
people better informed than i so i'll pull back on that any rep any references that i can on that
quantity i can't give it to you off the top of my head but if you talk to me it's print it's known i
think it's in the journal of phytochemistry but maybe if you talk to the guy who asked the other
question he's well informed this obscure plant is certainly getting a high profile here this evening
and since uh and since robert brought up the notion of interacting so elegantly i would be willing to
have a salon if someone is interested and uh on the net on internet or use net i'm um
usc bang coriolis bang d-van very good so here's another person interested in building community and
they offer the possibility of another dimension of community which is a computer networking
possibility that preserves uh the anonymity and that is very important to this kind of uh work
i just want to leave you with one story because it sort of fills out the theme
uh and shows how peculiarly the spirit moves and how the coincidencia positorum is present in so many
unexpected situations i think somewhere in the body of my talk i got to dig in at cartesian logic or
cartesian rationalism as you know modern scientific materialism was founded by renee descartes uh french
philosopher of uh the 17th century but what the historians of science have been at great pains
to keep from view is the following story which is attested to in descartes own journal when he was a young
man of about 22 years old he decided to go soldiering and wenching around europe which was something young
men of that era did and he joined a hapsburg army which was on a mission to lay siege to the city of
prague in bohemia to suppress uh and what was essentially an alchemical revival i won't go into
the details but a young prince of the northern leagues and his queen who was the daughter of james of
england and was named elizabeth after her grandmother had managed to gain control of the empire had been
elected in fact he was called frederick the elector palatine and this hapsburg army was sent to destroy
this protestant alchemical reformation and it did so laid siege to the city and killed this young man and
his queen fled to the hague and then they retreated across germany and on uh i believe it was the 17th of
august of of that year which was 1619 the beginning year of the thirty years war they made camp at ulm in
southern germany and just as an aside ulm later was the birthplace of albert einstein but that night
descartes had a dream and the dream in the dream a radiant angel appeared to him and said
the conquest of nature is to be achieved through number and measure and in that moment renee descartes went from being
a nobody to being the founder of modern science modern science was founded at the direction of an angel and the angel
showed how it was and to this day modern science has made all of its strides through the application
of number mathematical analysis and measure that is the secret of the scientific conquest of nature and
it's a secret that was imparted to renee descartes by an angelic entity so i'd like you to leave this
evening wondering who do we work for and how does it work thank you very very much good night
this marks the end of the talk thanks for listening