Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: “If I didn't have cannabis I wouldn't take a psychedelic drug. It is indispensable.” Terence McKenna In this talk, Terence McKenna tells some stories about how Gordon Wasson was first led to investigating the mushrooms of Mexico, and of possible use of magic mushrooms by the Sufi's. We also get to hear one of the rare instances where the bard McKenna gives us his opinion about 5MEO-DMT, as contrasted with his primary psychedelic substance of interest, NN-DMT. Going on, he speaks about drugs grown out of cultured amphibian skin, and about ways to enhance certain psychedelics. At one point Terence takes off on what can only be called an anti-Myan rant, something I haven't heard him say before. This talk also contains the most detailed and specific accounting of what he thinks would happen on December 21, 2012 that I have ever heard Terence McKenna give. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Meriana Dinkova & Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: In today's podcast we get to listen in on a conversation between Shonagh Home and Meriana Dinkova. Meriana received her initial training in psychology studies at Vienna University and at the Free University in Berlin. And in 2003 she completed her MA in Counseling Psychology at the California Association of Integral Studies in San Francisco. In 2010 Meriana started two different monthly Meetups, which have been successfully running since: “Get Out Of Your Own Way- Conquering Self Sabotage” and “Sex Magic”- . She has also been a featured speaker at the Visionary Voices Salon in SF where she talked about Sex Magic and different uses of sexual energy to enhance awareness. Meriana has developed a unique system of psychological and neo-shamanistic inner-space navigation tools for navigating non-ordinary states of consciousness and the Ayahuasca experience. Those tools are designed to maximize the experience and provide the opportunity for learning and healing, while safely navigating the inner landscapes, and avoiding common pitfalls. Learning how to use your consciousness in those ways can enrich your psychonaut toolkit and empower your inner shaman. Meriana also organizes retreats to Peru, in which she combines her work with experienced shamans. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Meriana Dinkova's Web Site “Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate” with Lorenzo

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Today's talk by Terence McKenna takes us on an in-depth description of what he experiences on a DMT trip. While it is a story that we have heard before in various guises, Terence once again manages to tell his DMT stories in a way that makes it seem like you are hearing it for the first time, and with new detail if that can be imagined. Who else, for example, would describe a DMT trip as feeling like you are a baby in a maternity ward's playpen. And this was new for me, at one point Terence says that when it comes to DMT, “I like to do it outside on a sunny hillside.” His description of a new delivery method that he was developing for smoked DMT sounds almost medieval. Followers of Terence will find his answer about his health quite revealing. And in regards to machine elves, et al, he says it's all a lie, but a lie which points toward a truth that cannot be told. If you only intend to listen to Terence McKenna talk about DMT one time, then this is the talk for you. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Live Streaming of the Psymposia Conference

Guest speaker: Kathleen Wirt PROGRAM NOTES: Today we feature a talk given by Kathleen Wirt, the hostess of the legendary salon that took place in Venice, California. While the stories Kathleen tells are of interest from an historical point of view, they are also very informative for anyone who is also interested in starting a salon in their area. Kathleen's talk was given at the inaugural session of the Aware Project Salon, which has picked up the torch and is carrying this work to a new generation. You may know about Leary and McKenna, but if you don't know about Kathleen's Venice Salon you only have part of the historical story. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Psychedelic Awareness Salon with Kathleen (Video Jan 2015) Ashley Booth's Web Site Aware Project: Rethinking Psychedelics Aware Project on Facebook Aware Project on Twitter

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “One of the reasons I'm so fond of psychedelics is because they transcend rhetoric.” “Meditation and all these other things I take to be co-options organized by beastly hoards of priests.” “One of the most uncool things you can say to another human being is, 'Could you explain to me what it is I just said?'” “We are held together by our expressed assumptions.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The absolute victory of habit is death itself.” “Life is apparently a phenomenon in this universe considerably more tenacious than stars.” “When the democratic crunch hits, democratic values will go down the drain long before they turn off the lights and stop delivering the food.” “The Net is a tremendous permission for eccentricity.” “Freakery is the wave of the future.” “If you've never read Moby Dick you certainly should. It's a crash course in psychedelic metaphysics.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Hopkins Psychedelic Survey Please Participate

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The present is this hairline division between the past and the future, and the past exists in memory largely for the coordination of some agenda in the future. And that's history!” “We have thought of history as something that we do. History is something that is done to us, and therefore we are not responsible. This is the first thing to understand. History is a process. It's like waves in the ocean, and you are a cork.” “That's what the psychedelic experience is. It opens the inner eye, and what the inner eye sees is time.” “A human being is a kind of a plant/animal combination when they are at perfection. That's why shamanism is such a high ideal, because what shamanism really is is a symbiosis with the plant world.” “Western civilization is the bundled group of civilizations that have been most distant from plant hallucinogens for the longest time.” “Without doubt, in my mind, the most unique feature of psilocybin is that it speaks. It speaks in your native tongue.” “All other spiritual disciplines drive with the accelerator to the floor. That's how you do it. When you come to psychedelics suddenly there arises a great interest in locating the brakes.” “Technology is biology pursued by other means.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Recent Reddit AMAs with Lorenzo The Psychonaut sub Reddit The MDMA Therapy subReddit

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Now all that stands between us and some kind of angelic completion of some sort is the dark side of ourselves and the unpaid bills of the historical process.” “I am a resolute optimist of a very complicated sort.” “If you have the psychedelic experience in your inventory of experiences, you are able to make a different model of reality than if you lack it.” “I don't think that what the shaman is doing is something metaphorical, or analogical, or allegorical. What the shaman is doing is something real that is couched in a language that we find difficult to understand.” “Consciousness seeks the shape of its vessel. It's like water.” “At the center of the archaic impulse is the shaman. At the center of the shaman's understanding of the world is the boundary-dissolving experience of psychedelics.” “I don't believe me. I hated theology. And I think the way to keep it light is to not believe. I will attempt to convert you in the course of these meetings to all kinds of things that I don't believe.” “Ideology is poisonous. We're not trying to figure out the best thing to believe. What we're trying to do is not believe anything and somehow have a return to the direct empowering of common sense and common senses.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option The Genesis Generation: A psychedelic novel by Lorenzo

Guest speaker: Lorenzo   THE FUND DRIVE HAS COME TO AN END AND THANKS TO EVERYONE FOR MAKING IT SUCCESSFUL   PROGRAM NOTES: It has been one year since our last fund raising effort, which means that the time has come once again to see if there is enough support for these podcasts to keep them going for another year. As I did last year, I will update the graphic that you see here to display the progress of our campaign. This year, in the way of saying thank you for your donation, everyone will receive the same gift, no matter the size of your donation. And that gift coincides with the announcement of a new edition of my psychedelic novel, The Genesis Generation. Not only is this edition being published in paperback, the final chapter has been rewritten to close up the loose ends that were originally planned on being revealed in the opening chapters of the next planned (but as yet unpublished) volume in the series. This new edition will be available on Amazon, and in bookstores, of course. However, everyone who makes a donation to this year's Psychedelic Salon pledge drive will receive, via email, a printable PDF file of the complete book.

Guest speakers: Yalila Espinoza & Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: Today we feature a conversation about psychedelics, sexuality, and the dark side of ayahuasca tourism. The conversation is between two highly experienced medicine women, Shonagh Home and Yalila Espinoza, Ph.D. Yalila's Ph.D. studies and diverse training in Integrating Sexuality & Spirituality have inspired her to create the Spiritual Erotic Awakening model ~ body centered practices that supports your connection with joy and sensual pleasure. She offers private coaching sessions, on-line IRIS training and a 7 wk ‘MIND YOUR HEART’ program that taps into your brilliant mind and activates heart centered creativity. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option More info can be found at at yalila.com. Shonagh Home is a teacher, shamanic practitioner, and the author of ‘Ix Chel Wisdom: 7 Teachings from the Mayan Sacred Feminine,’ ‘Love and Spirit Medicine,’ and the upcoming, ‘Honeybee Wisdom: A Modern Melissae Speaks.’ Website: www.shonaghhome.com Contact: shonagh.home (at) comcast (dot) net Health & Wellness Encinitas Podcast The History And Future of Cannabis And Psychedelics In Medicine with Lorenzo Hagerty Tink Tink Club Podcast Episode 29 - Lorenzo Hagerty - The Psychedelic Salon

Guest speakers: Marian Goodell & John Gilmore PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Marian Goodell.] “I don't think Burning Man is the solution. I think that we are a really powerful gravitational force, and mixed with other cultures and other groups, that's what's powerful.” “The biggest problem I think Burning Man has is translating what people think is Burning Man into what really is Burning Man.” “I want people to see Burning Man as really a state of mind in their heart.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Burning Man Website

Guest speaker: Marina Korsakova PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features the 2014 Palenque Norte Lecture given by Dr. Marina Korsakova. Marina is a professional pianist and scholar in music cognition. Her research is focused on emotional responses to music and on the perception of melodic transformation. Currently, Marina teaches Music Cognition at Touro College. She performs regularly as a member of Union City Chamber Players, and she is an author of books and scientific papers. Her latest book, “Music as Magical Journey: A Story of Tonal Gravity, Melodic Objects, and Motion in Tonal Space,” makes a friendly introduction into the science of music. COMMENTS by Marina Korsakova When giving my talk, I was not always clear about important points. Below are some elucidations and corrections. 7:05 When saying a “low level of music perception” I meant the low level of consciousness, which is required for processing the melodic elements that make music. 10:35 Vibration of a string (and an air column) generates a very long tail of soft sounds - overtones. But the consonant quality of different sounds is defined by the relationships among their strongest overtones – those overtones that are in the beginning of the overtone series. 11:58 The pleasant quality of consonant melodic elements (as compared to the dissonant) can be explained by the lesser cost of neuronal energy for their auditory processing. The economy happens thanks to the redundancy of important spectral information for the consonant sounds. Here we are dealing with the law of laziness: the less efforts for processing, the more pleasant an element of perception. 12:50 Music can have different layers of perception. Enjoyment with some of the layers may require an expert understanding, though the essence of emotional communication in music is available for everybody. It is the perception of music’s building material—the melodic elements—that does not require any intellectual efforts. We perceive melodic matter intuitively. 19:40 Everything around us and we ourselves are made of interactions of different force fields. Today we know four fundamental forces of nature: the gravitational force, strong interaction, electromagnetic force, and weak force. 22:40 “Sharing on the top” meant that music and psychotropic drugs might share the same neural substrate. 25:24 Our study found that people we no musical training can have fine understanding of the exquisite details of tonal field and even of musical styles. That data was illustrated with graphs (pictures). 27:05 Music can be explained as artful arrangement of levels of tonal energy along the arrow of time Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Marina Korsakova's Website The Universe of Music By Marina Korsakova-Kreyn The Spirit of the Internet: Speculations on the Evolution of Global Consciousness by Lorenzo Hagerty (HTML format) The Psychedelic Society of Ireland (first announcement) The Women's Visionary Congress

Guest speaker: Bernardo Kastrup PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Bernardo Kastrup.] “It is not the mind that is in the body. It is the other way around. It's the body that is in the mind.” “In the same way that there is nothing to a whirlpool but water, I claim there is nothing to a brain-body system but consciousness.” “The psychedelic trance allows us to 'see the stars at noon' because it simply eclipses the sun of egoic-awareness. It reduces the obfuscation and allows us to see more.” “I believe that the key insight from the psychedelic experience, the key metaphysical insight about it, is not what the nature of the psychedelic realm is. In fact, I think the key insight is about the nature of our everyday reality.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Bernardo Kastrup's Web Site Why Materialism Is Baloney: How true skeptics know there is no death and fathom answers to life, the universe, and everything by Bernardo Kastrup Bernardo Kastrup's Youtube Channel

Guest speaker: Rak Razam PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features Rak Razam's 2014 Palenque Norte Lecture, which was originally titled “Cosmic Consciousness To Convergence: Activating the Species.” As you can see, I have shortened it to a phrase that Rak used in his talk, “Consciousness Browsers,” which is an excellent way to describe the psychedelic experience. During his talk, Rak ranges from a discussion of his research into the shamanic use of ayahuasca, to black holes, consciousness as a bit torrent, and the concept of a species swarm. One of my favorite quotes from this talk is: “The heroic thing really is doing what needs to be done, or discovering something of value, and bringing it back and sharing it with the tribe.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option RakRazam.com Ayahuasca Awakenings healing retreats If you've read the book or seen the film, you'll know that 'Aya: Awakenings' takes you on a journey of shamanic discovery into the heart of the Amazon and the powerful plant medicine ayahuasca. Now you can be part of the awakening with these special 10-day healing retreats with Writer-Producer Rak Razam and legendary curandero Percy Garcia Lozano..." Aya: Awakenings DVD by Rak Razam

Guest speakers: Katie Tomlinson & Rachel Hope PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features two of the Palenque Norte Lectures that were given at Burning Man in 2014. The first talk is by Katie Tomlinson, founder of GAPS, the psychedelic student organization at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. For anyone interested in establishing student groups on other campuses this talk has some great pointers for you . Following Katie's talk we hear Rick Doblin, the founder of MAPS, introduce Rachel Hope, a participant in one of the MDMA studies sponsored by his organization. Rachel tells her amazing story of a very long struggle with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder and how the treatment being perfected by Dr. Michael Mithoefer and his wife Annie has cured her of PTSD. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option The Evergreen State College The Secret Chief Revealed By Myron J. Stolaroff MIT scientist links autism to Monsanto’s Roundup and predicts HALF of U.S. children will be autistic by 2025 “Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate”

Guest speaker: Tom Barbalet PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a conversation between fellow podcaster Tom Barbalet and his guest. Their discussion centers on what we have all come to think of as that voice in our head. As you will hear, it may not be anything like what you think it is. As Tom's guest says, “The idea for me is really very simple, break the identification with the voice in your head. It's not who you are. It's just your language machine. And you'll be in a much better position to evaluate your experience and formulate new actions if you language machine isn't filling your head with a bunch of stupid, really bad ideas.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Stone Ape podcast Stone Ape Facebook group

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “I sort of see [cannabis] as the pilot light of Gian consciousness.] “The danger is [in using psychedelic drugs], just to put it out there, is madness.” “LSD is different. LSD is like psychoanalytical Drano. It's not a personality.” “Matter is simply a concept. The world is made of language.” “If you're truly psychedelic the difference between living and dying is quite immaterial. No pun intended.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option The Union: The Business Behind Getting High Directed by Brett Harvey The Hasheesh Eater & The Poem of Hashish By Fitz Hugh Ludlow, Charles Baudelaire

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “History is anomalous, and there is no way to get used to it.” “The miracle of our predicament is not how long everything has been in place but how brief it all has been.” “Each stage of cosmic development proceeded more quickly than the stage which preceded it.” “A singularity is a place where the rules are broken. A miracle is a singularity.” “That's part of the nature of a fractal cosmos, nothing is utterly unannounced.” “History is a series of approximations of the final singularity.” “I believe in extraterrestrials, but I believe that real extraterrestrials are so peculiar that the job is to recognize them.” “So when you look at the eschaton what you see, strangely enough, is your own face.” “The things I encounter that I call elves or gnomes, it's just a gloss. I mean, they're small, and they have the archetype. They're more like leprechauns, and this maybe raises a racial issue.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option The Best Psychedelic Videos of 2014

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “After you fiddle with psilocybin for a while the question of whether or not there is an alien intelligence becomes moot.” “We are embedding ourselves in a matrix of silicone and glass.” “ We are beginning to embed ourselves into a cultural membrane of some sort.” “What is happening is a globalizing of intelligence.” “The reductionists who want to say these drugs just perturb the brain I don't think have taken enough of these things.” “Our problem is that we are in denial of our circumstance.” “I think psilocybin three or four times a year definitely means that you are a psychedelic person. For sure it means that your every waking moment is informed and transformed by your relationship to this stuff. It doesn't take very much because it's a way of thinking.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn /* Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate (video)

Guest speakers: Lorenzo Hagerty & Chris Hedges PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Chris Hedges.] “I think when we speak today about American values what we're really speaking about are corporate-instilled values.” “When you spend over a decade brutalizing people, people become brutal.” “You can't use the word 'liberty' when your government watches you 24 hours a day. That's the relationship of a master and a slave.” “There is no difference between a night raid in Oakland and a night raid in Falluja . . . none!” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Hedges v. Obama U.S. Drones kill more people than ISIS: Chris Hedges A People's History of the United States by Howard Zinn Industrial Workers of the World A Union For All Workers COINTELPRO