Psychedelic Salon

Guest speakers: Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham PROGRAM NOTES: "The Gaia Hypothesis of James Lovelock [and Lynn Margulis] puts forward a scientific view of the living Earth, which in one respect is modern, empherical, scientific, in another respect re-awakens an ancient archetype, which in fact is so clearly suggested by the very name of the hypothesis, Gaia, the Greek name for Mother Earth." –Rupert Sheldrake [Speaking of the past:] "So there’s a kind of resurgence of the sense of freedom and spontaneity in nature. From nature being bound into a rigid, deterministic model, freedom, spontaneity and openness are emerging once again. It’s now recognized the future is open, not determined by the past. And this is true in many realms, the astronomical realm, the human realm, the meteorological realm in many ways." –Rupert Sheldrake "The basic idea I’m proposing is that the so-called ‘Laws of Nature’ may be more like habits. They may depend on what’s happened before and on how often it’s happened. So there may be a cumulative memory in nature, largely unconscious, which gives rise to habits and things, which accounts for the stability of nature as we know it. But this is not all governed by eternal laws that were there at the Big Bang." –Rupert Sheldrake "The English couldn’t bear this void for long, caused by the suppression of pilgrimage [by the Protestant Reformation], and within a few generations had invented tourism, which is best seen as a form of secularized pilgrimage." –Rupert Sheldrake "I think a great move forward would happen when astronomy and astrology link up once again." –Rupert Sheldrake "If the Sun has a kind of consciousness, then what about the entire galaxy, with this mysterious center?" –Rupert Sheldrake "What we call the imagination is actually the universal library of what is real, that you couldn’t imagine it if it weren’t real, somewhere, sometime. And that to me is very empowering because that’s the truth that you learn at the center of the psychedelic experience that’s so mind boggling that you can’t really return with it, that it’s real." –Terence McKenna "Now it’s time to realize that trying to reason upward from the laws of atomic physics to organism is not going to work. That there are … emergent properties at every level." –Terence McKenna Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Galaxy Map Hints at Fractal Universe

Guest speaker: Dr. Preet Chopra PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations below are by Dr. Preet Chopra.] "The ’set’ is talking about what the individual who ingests a psychedelic brings to the table in terms of their life experience, their mood, expectations, family history, their personality structure, significant relationships, and their systems of belief. ‘Setting’ accounts for all the other factors that are not internal to the person, the physical environment, location, all sorts of sensory stimuli that might be present during intoxication, and the other participants, particularly a therapist or facilitator." "A term that’s out there among recreational psychedelic users is ‘psychonaut’, which really means, from Greek, ’sailor of the mind’, and I think this is kind of the experience those folks are going for." "In terms of reducing risk, I certainly feel that anybody with certain medical contra indications, and taking prescription drugs, should really avoid taking a psychedelic." [In response to a question about the fact that there was very little dialogue between the study participant and the attending psychatrists:] "Minimal dialogue during the actual experience. And that is based on the work that Grof did, and Panke saying, hey, let this medicine do its own work." "There are some people who believe that by putting on eyeshades and listening to music there is less incidence of sensual kinds of phenomena, and that allows for more of a psychological benefit." Download      MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option The Scientists Who Revived Magic Mushroom Research Hallucinogen Gives Lasting Spiritual Boost "Spiritual" effects of mushrooms last a year Long Trip: Magic Mushrooms’ Transcendent Effect Lingers

Guest speaker: Robert Anton Wilson PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations below are by Robert Anton Wilson.] "Most people are living in a world they can’t understand. And when people can’t understand something they tend to go for sinister explanations of it." "I prefer to think that, at minimum, there are about 24 conspiracies afoot. . . . I cannot find any proof of any conspiracy that really existed, that was brought into court and convicted, that lasted more than ten years before everybody double-crossed everybody else, and the conspiracy fell apart." "He [John von Newman] realized that most of our perceptions are in the ‘maybe’ mode. They’re not yes or no, they’re not true or false, they’re just ‘maybes’. I think ‘maybe logic’ is probably the greatest invention of the 20th century." "I regard religion and patriotism as the two major mental illnesses afflicting this planet." "The CIA/Tsarist/Nazi Alliance began to me to seem more and more the key to everything that’s been crazy and bizarre and incomprehensible about American foreign policy in the last fifty years. I think the central thinking of the ruling class of the United States is basically within the Tsarist paradigm." "Patriotism is loyalty to a gene pool." "I would say faith is the chief fomenter of war in the whole history of the world. Even in comparatively secular societies it becomes an article of faith that the government is justified. The other side is all wrong. We’re all right. And nobody’s supposed to think about the question at all. That becomes despicable. I believe we should think about the despicable." "It absolutely stops thinking entirely if you’ve got enough faith." " ‘Faith is believing what you know aint so’. That’s why they put lightening rods on their churches." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option   

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations below are by Terence McKenna.] "What I’ve observed, and I think it’s fair to give credit to the psychedelic experience for this, what I’ve observed is that nature builds on previously established levels of complexity." "This is a general law of the universe, overlooked by science, that out of complexity emerges greater complexity. We could almost say that the universe, nature, is a novelty-conserving, or complexity-conserving engine." "If in fact the conservation and complexification of novelty is what the universe is striving for, then suddenly our own human enterprise, previously marginalized, takes on an immense new importance." "Each stage of advancement into complexity occurs more quickly than the stage which preceded it. . . . Time is, in fact, speeding up." "No one is in charge of this process, this is what makes history so interesting, it’s a runaway freight train on a dark and stormy night." "Science is the exploration of the experience of nature without psychedelics. And I propose, therefore, to expand that enterprise and say that we need a science beyond science. We need a science which plays with a full deck." "What is revealed through the psychedelic experience, I think, is a higher dimensional perspective on reality. And I use ‘higher dimensional’ in the mathematical sense." Definition of ‘eschaton’: "Eschaton comes from the Greek word ‘echatos’, which just means the end." "The ‘hard swallow’ built into science is this business about the Big Bang. … This is the notion that the universe, for no reason, sprang from nothing in a single instant. … Notice that this is the limit test for credulity. . . . It’s the limit case for likelihood." "We’re not mere spectators, or a cosmic accident, or some sideshow, or the Greek chorus to the main event. The human experience IS the main event." "Our culture takes us out of the body and sells our loyalty into political systems, into religions, into inanimate objects and machines, collections, so forth and so on. The felt experience of the body is what the psychedelics are handing back to us." "[The psychedelic experience] is not a journey into the human unconscious, or into the ghost bards of our human civilization. It’s a journey into the presence of the Gaian mind." "The world is not an unsolved problem for scientists or sociologists. The world is a living mystery." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Dr. Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Dr. Timothy Leary.] "For as long as I can remember I have been influenced by a role model who has guided me through my navigation of this amazing life. I am a great follower of Socrates." "Corrupting the minds of the young is a difficult job, god knows it’s ill-paid, somebody has to do it." "I do feel this is a wonderful time for change-agents to be alive." "I ended up growing up thinking that everybody was like me, and that is, obviously, a mistake." "As soon as you belong to a system where you’re not known individually, and where you don’t know, individually, the other people, you are by definition depersonalizing yourself, a robot cog of the Big Machine." "This [1946] was the peak of the industrial age, and the aim of psychology was to help people be ‘adjusted’. Remember? If you were well-adjusted that was it. And the worst thing you could say was someone was maladjusted, which means they were thinking for themselves. "I see Ram Das two or three times a year. He comes by my house and we split a bottle of wine or a six-pack and have a joint or two." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Aldous Huxley PROGRAM NOTES: (This program marks our third anniversary of podcasting from the Psychedelic Salon!) PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations below are by Aldous Huxley.] "Today we are faced, I think, with the approach of what may be called the ultimate revolution, the final revolution, where man can act directly on the mind-body of his fellows." "We are in process of developing a whole series of techniques which will enable the controlling oligarchy, who have always existed and presumably will always exist, to get people to love their servitude. This is the, it seems to me, the ultimate in malevolent revolutions." "Given the fact that there are these 20% of highly suggestible people, it becomes quite clear that this is a matter of enormous political importance, for example, any demagogue who is able to get hold of a large number of these 20% of suggestible people and to organize them is really in a position to overthrow any government in any country." "If there are 20% of the people who really can be suggested into believing almost anything, then we have to take extremely careful steps into prevent the rise of demagogues who will drive them on into extreme positions then organize them into very, very dangerous armies, private armies which may overthrow the government." "The really interesting thing about the new chemical substances, the new mind-changing drugs is this, if you looking back into history it’s clear that man has always had a hankering after mind changing chemicals, he has always desired to take holidays from himself, but this is the most extraordinary effect of all that every natural occurring narcotic stimulant, sedative, or hallucinogen, was discovered before the dawn of history, I don’t think there is one single one of these naturally occurring ones which modern science has discovered." "Man was apparently a dope-bag addict before he was a farmer, which is a very curious comment on human nature." "You can have an enormous revolution, for example, with LSD-25 or with the newly synthesized drug psilocybin, which is the active principal of the Mexican sacred mushroom. You can have this enormous mental revolution with no more physiological revolution than you would get from drinking two cocktails. And this is a really most extraordinary effect." "And then again, in the case of these very strange substances like psilocybin and lysergic acid, I think there is a great deal to be said for doing what William James talked about, which was getting people to realize that their ordinary, sort of common sense view of the world is not the only view. The universe they inhabit is not the only possible universe." NOTE FROM LORENZO: A few minutes after I posted this podcast on the Net, I checked my email and discovered that fellow saloner John H. sent me a link to the following video. After you listen to the talk by Aldous Huxley you may find it rewarding to view the following video and then do a little thinking about what is really going on in the U.S. today while you re-read "Brave New World". Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Link mentioned in this podcast: The Center for Cognitive Liberty

Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake PROGRAM NOTES: [Quoting a friend] " ‘The apocalypse is already happening.’ The slow apocalypse is unraveling all over the world." –Terence McKenna "If it’s all on automatic, if the world is either undergoing some kind of mass extinction and soul migration into the Elysium realm, then very little has to be done. If, on the other hand, it isn’t on automatic then what is the nature of the political and social world that we should construct for ourselves and our children?" –Terence McKenna "What we have is a future-phobic society that places a great deal of stress on the preservation of a pseudo-tradition called "Family Values" by some people, but it has many names. It’s not an archaic social model, or anything rooted in long-term human organization. It’s basically the 19th century industrial model of the couple with some children fitted into an industrial economy." –Terence McKenna "It seems to me that a whole re-thinking of the notion of freedom has to come, and that it isn’t strictly a matter of more freedom." –Terence McKenna "I think we’re going to have to go back to Plato. Plato did not trust the poets, and the heirs of the poets in our hell bard are Madison Avenue." –Terence McKenna "The interesting ideas have to do with touching the taboos."–Terence McKenna "I’m basically an optimist, but not because I have faith in human institutions. But because I think there is a transcendental attractor that will eventually pull our chestnuts out of the fire." –Terence McKenna "I do believe that history is the proof of the presence of a hyperdimensional something or other, which is acting on ordinary biology." –Terence McKenna "The government follows. It doesn’t lead. We need leadership now, and leadership comes from people, that’s us." –Ralph Abraham "We’re not being led by evil people. We’re being led by jackasses at this point." –Terence McKenna "Pretending that this catastrophe [a coming global ice age] is not probable will almost certainly guarantee that it takes place real soon." -Ralph Abraham "Let’s avoid the disease of denial, because if we don’t admit a problem then there is no solution." –Ralph Abraham "What free trade means is the right to sell crap everywhere. The right to deal Coca Cola in Afghanistan, that’s what free trade is, the right to sell Volvos in Turkmenistan. It’s a bad idea, free trade. We don’t want to make trade easier. We want to make the manufacture of objects and excruciatingly expensive process and the moving of them from one market to another damn near impossible, because what we want is the de-materialization of culture." –Terence McKenna "The Great Leveling, which the Left always called for has in fact taken place in part, and that’s why you have less money. When the leveling took place did you think it was going to kick back into your pocketbook? You haven’t visited Bangladesh recently." –Terence McKenna "The Nation State has become a Fascist tool, all Nation States. What these companies stand for is unbridled gangsterism." –Terence McKenna "What we need to do is dematerialize our interphasing with nature. If we’re going to keep the body then we have to jettison material culture. We cannot have both the body and material culture." –Terence McKenna "Yes, I think that we’re going to a grand destiny, and that the planet will survive this, but consciousness is the flashlight to throw on the path." –Terence McKenna "History is an agitation in biology that proceeds the Eschaton, and it only takes it 25,000 years to rise out of the sea of chaos." –Terence McKenna "Love is what lies at the end of the historical descent into novelty. It has to be." –Terence McKenna Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Dr. Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations below are by Dr. Timothy Leary.] "The key thing about the human species is this: That we have not committed ourselves to an over-specialized adult form." "The more power you give to the young of your species, the sooner you give that power to them, the faster your species is going to grow, the farther your gene pool is going to move into the future, and of course it goes without saying, the key to everything, the more growth in the individual will result." "The future belongs to those who see the future." "The smarter you are, the higher you want to be, that’s obvious." "The key to the sixties, as we see it now, was a period of self-discovery, of self-indulgence, and the refusal to accept the adult-hive over-specialized models." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Could an Acid Trip Cure Your OCD? (Discover Magazine)

Guest speakers: Ralph Abraham, Terence McKenna, and Rupert Sheldrake PROGRAM NOTES: "I think that any models [of the psychedelic experience] that we can build, verbal, visual, or mathematical are really, really feeble compared to the experience itself." –Ralph Abraham "It’s the Logos-world that we’ve lost the connection with." –Terence McKenna "I think the difference between a representation of the [psychedelic] state and being in the state itself is the sense of meaning, engagement, and intensity." –Rupert Sheldrake "When language became something acoustically processed it became so bloodless that it became then the willing servant of abstraction, which before had been an exotic and little explored branch of linguistic activity, that suddenly burgeoned into the major concern of a lot of people." –Ralph Abraham "I regard language as some kind of project that is uncompleted as we sit here. . . . Clearly, the whole world is held together by small mouth noises, and it’s only BARELY held together by small mouth noises." –Terence McKenna "If you buy in to the idea that psychedelics somehow are showing you the evolutionary path yet to be followed, then it seems obvious that what it entails is a further completion of the project of language." –Terence McKenna "The intellectuals, unfortunately, at the top of the pyramid are the last to get the news. They’re still pouring over Locke, and Hegel when what’s really happening is Guns n Roses and Nirvana, and I don’t mean the Buddhist state of transcendence. . . . So culture tends to be ruled by the people who are the last to get the news in terms of new technologies which are reshaping the culture." –TerenceMcKenna "Literacy is finished. It was a phase. It’s not to be preserved by anyone other than curators. The rest of us are going to live, obviously, in a culture shaped by new forms of media." –Terence McKenna Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option  Spirit Matters by Matthew Pallamary

Guest speakers: Allyson & Alex Grey plus Ralph Abraham PROGRAM NOTES: "Our parents were completely unprepared for the sixties . . . and for our behavior." – Alex Grey "[In drug education as it is practiced today] there is this kind of overriding mis-characterization of drugs, and an exaggeration of the problems that, marijuana especially, gives us." –Alex Grey "And they contradict people’s own observations."–Allyson Grey "There are perils, and we have children and we want to protect them. So drugs can lead to terrible things as well." –Allyson Grey "Basically, you want to establish a bond with your children, and not to come in with total, preconceived notions about how they ought to behave. The idea is to listen and to establish a link of trust so that you can really be there for them, instead of alienating them. So you have to learn about these substances and the possible substances they’re using, so that you can be an informed assist for them." –Alex Grey "If you’ve already been lying to your kids about drugs, then why should they listen to you about anything, including the dangers of meth?" –Alex Grey "If any of you haven’t gone a year and a half without any substances, it’s really a great experience. The altered state of sobriety is something Alex and I recommend." –Allyson Grey "This is what my mother taught me when it came to sex, and I applied it to drugs. Whenever a child asks a question you answer it, and you don’t tell them things they don’t want to know, or they’re not ready to know. But if they ask you something, you tell them honestly." –Allyson Grey "We’re part of an underground society, and that’s a heavy burden to place on a young mind if they’re not ready." –Alex Grey "The Connection Between Mathematics and the Logos" Ralph Abraham tells the story of how he became involved with the psychedelic community and how psychedelic medicines informed his work and that of the generation who developed the personal computer among other achievements. In this trialogue, Ralph poses (and answers) the question,"Have psychedelics had an influence in the evolution of science, mathematics, the computer revolution, computer graphics, and so on?" "We have to admit that mathematics has been reborn, and this rebirth is some kind of outcome of, apparently, the computer revolution and the psychedelic revolution, which took place concurrently, concomitantly, cooperatively in the 1960s." –Ralph Abraham Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option  

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: The following quotes are by Bruce Damer.] "It seems as though the universe is a sort of self-contained thing, never looses any information." "A mechanism called ‘life’ was able to fight against all this crud, and entropy, and fires and brimstone and preserve this little piece of information [DNA] forward, and it’s called reproduction, it’s called life. And that process has outlived the life of most stars. It’s certainly older and tougher and more resilient than all the configuration of the continents." "What if the universe, like Chris Langston’s brain, is gradually booting up an awareness of itself?" "And are you part of that great project that the universe is trying to do, which is to know itself?" "It’s like exposing you to the most powerful drug ever given to primates, which wasn’t alcohol, it’s not nicotine, it’s not MDMA, it’s not LSD. It’s the computer/human interaction." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option (click to) Contact Bruce Damer "A Gigantic Unplanned Experiment … on You" an essay by Bruce Damer

Guest speakers: Ann and Sasha Shulgin PROGRAM NOTES: "It’s amazing what children don’t know their parents do." . . .Sasha "Let me tell you, MDMA is an extraordinary psychotherapeutic drug." . . . Ann "I really cannot conceive of a color test that would show positive with 2C-B or 2C-I in urine because the amounts there are so small." . . . Sasha "There are many, many things that are potentially active as psychedelics and have not been assayed, not been tasted. The whole art of taking an unknown compound and beginning to find out what it’s action is going to be sounds naively simple. You just start taking more and more of it until you turn on. But the truth is your turn-on may be a convulsion. It may be sedation. It may be all kinds of other types of action. So you have to sneak up on a new compound. So if you are at all considering looking at these kinds of things, I stress: Be extremely cautious if they have not been taken in humans before. Preliminary animal screening, to me, is worthless." . . . Sasha "The hypnotic trance state is, I believe, fully as good as any drug in opening those doors inside a person’s psyche, and I do believe that instead of risking legal problems, you should go to a good hypnotherapist and find out how to discover yourself that way." . . . Ann "Sasha usually tries to remind people that it isn’t the drug that is giving you an experience, whether it’s one of love or anything else. It is your own psyche, the drugs act as keys to the inner doors. I mean, DMT will definitely open a different door than mescaline, but it’s all still what’s inside you." . . . Ann Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Books by Ann and Sasha Shulgin:  Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story  Tihkal: The Continuation

Guest speaker: Dr. Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: The following quotes are by Dr. Timothy Leary.] "When the big quake comes, be on the California side!" "So the concept that developed at Harvard, then at Millbrook, and later it seemed to have moved out to other places, was the concept of serial imprinting. That for thousands of years the smartest women and men have known that through manipulating your nervous system by getting high in any way that you can you can suspend the old imprints and have a chance to start a new reality." "Your theory of evolution is the key to your own personal development, or your understanding of what’s happening around you. . . . Your theory of evolution determines, really, what kind of a life you’re going to lead." "Evolution is not accidental." "Every time you put your tongue in the mouth of a loved one, or vice versa, you are exchanging more information in one second than all the Libraries of Congress in history." "You either believe in nothing whatsoever than chance, or you’re going to believe in a biological intelligence which knows that she’s doing." "The point here is, if you’re going to feel ’synced’ you’ve got to be in a place where there are people who share your reality." "The way evolution works is this, evolution never tries to change grown ups. . . . Look in the dictionary for the word ‘adult’. You’ll find the word ‘adult’ is the past participle of the word ‘to grow’." "We didn’t grow from the apes. We refused to become apes." "What happened in the 1960s was this, the time had come to avoid terminal adulthood. . . . A generation of young people simply refused to buy the adult image, the adult model." "One of the messages that I have right now, the message is this: I don’t advocate anything, but I urge you to think it over. I urge you at all costs to avoid terminal adulthood." "When you look at a map that has got those hours, those meridians, those aren’t hours, those are centuries." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: The following quotes are by Terence McKenna.] "One has, you know, a window of opportunity somewhere between zip and a hundred to solve, or understand, or penetrate, or appreciate, or come to terms with the conundrum of being, this amazing circumstance in which we find ourselves, both individually and collectively." "The intellectual tension that seems to work its way through this society almost like fat through meat is the tension between scientific reductionism and the deeply felt intuition of most people that there is a spiritual dimension, or a hidden dimension, or a transcendental dimension." "So the conclusion that I reach, visa vie the individual and civilization, is this: Culture is not our friend. Culture is not your friend. It’s not my friend. It’s a very uncomfortable set of accommodations that have been hammered out over time for the convenience of institutions." "Culturally defined reality is some kind of intelligence test, and those who are joining are failing the test." "The imagination is a dimension of non-local information." "And so, these are the things, the exploration of which, the singing about of which, makes us human beings. The exploration of the universe of the unseen is the business of human beings." "And what is shamanism but philosophy with a hands-on attitude. Philosophy not made around the camp fire, but philosophy based on the acquisition of extreme experience. That’s how you figure out what the world is, not by bicycling around in the burbs, but by forcing extreme experience." "What they [psychedelics] cause is what I’m advocating, a fundamental revaluation of cultural values, because culture as we’re practicing it currently is causing a lot of pain to a lot of people, and animals, and ecosystems, none of whom were ever allowed to vote on whether they wanted this process to go in this direction." "What is happening, I think, it’s really bigger than psychedelics, it’s bigger than human evolution. We are not making the waves in this ocean. We are corks, riding the waves of the ocean. But we are privileged, by perhaps chance alone, to occupy a unique moment in the history of the universe. A moment when the universe goes through some kind of self-transforming, evolutionary, inflationary expansion. That’s what’s happening." "This is what I believe: That we are not pushed from behind by the casual unfolding of historical necessity, but that we are in the grip of an attractor of some sort, which lies ahead of us in time." "The shaman is a person who is able to transcend the dimensional confines of cultural existence. . . . Only the shaman knows that culture is a game. Everyone else takes it seriously. That’s how he can do his magic." "There is no contradiction between technology and spirit. There is no contradiction between the search for intellectual integration and understanding and the psychedelic experience. There is no contradiction between ultra-advanced hyperspacial cyber culture and Paleolithic archaic culture. We have come to the end of our sojourn in matter. We have come to the end of our separateness." "There is a morphological enfoldment occurring on this planet. It is bringing forth some entirely new order of being. We are a privileged part of this." "The plants are the pipeline into the Gaian intention. It’s just not a coincidence that these plants carry this immense spiritual message. They are the pipeline of Gaian intentionality." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Carolyn “Mountain Girl” Garcia PROGRAM NOTES: In this podcast we hear a talk given at the World Psychedelic Forum in Basel, Switzerland in March of 2008. The speaker is the one and only Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia, who has been a legendary figure in the psychedelic world since the early 1960s. Here is part of what Wikipedia has to say about Mountain Girl: Carolyn Adams, (born May 6, 1946),[1] later known as Mountain Girl and Carolyn Garcia, was a Merry Prankster and the wife of Jerry Garcia. After growing up near Poughkeepsie, New York, Adams met Neal Cassady in 1964; who introduced her to Kesey and his friends, one of whom gave her the name "Mountain Girl". Cassady took her to La Honda, Ken Kesey’s base of operations, where she quickly joined the inner circle of Pranksters and was romantically involved with Kesey, having a daughter by him named Sunshine.[2] The Grateful Dead song "Here Comes Sunshine" may or may not be an allusion to Adams’ and Kesey’s daughter (the Dead were fond of lyrics having double, often personal meanings). Before actually marrying in 1981, Jerry Garcia and Adams had two daughters.[1] Garcia and Mountain Girl ultimately divorced in 1994,[1] however, they remained personal friends right up until Garcia’s death a few months later. In her talk, Mountain Girl told many stories linking her time with Ken Kesey and the Merry Pranksters to the evolution of the Grateful Dead and her life with Gerry Garcia and the rest of the band. This is perhaps one of the best encapsulations of The Sixties you will hear. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Daniel Pinchbeck PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: The following quotes are by Daniel Pinchbeck at the Playalogue he led on August 29, 2007 at the Burning Man Festival. This Playalogue was held in the big yurt at the PodCluster in Black Rock City.] "I think there is a lot of evidence that suggests we’re in this kind of very critical sort of evolutionary window for the human species." "I really do feel that one of the critical things that is happening at Burning Man is a kind of conscious and subconscious interrogation of gender and sexuality." "What we have to consider is that if sexuality is this infinite spectrum, and everybody is highly unique in their sexuality, then to just have a social construct of monogamy is going to lead to a lot of anger, and frustration, and hostility." "In a lot of non-Western tribal cultures there is a kind of like a basic happiness that people have. Our culture is all about the pursuit of happiness, but at the core there’s a basic, kind of, general sense of insatiability and unhappiness." "I don’t think that the nuclear family is the natural model, or good model, for raising a child. I think, actually, the tribal community is the proper model." "And I think one question is really like is there a fixed human nature. And if there isn’t a fixed human nature, which I think is quite possible, then we can kind of reconfigure relationship patterns, relationship models, in almost any way." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Dr. Timothy Leary and Eldridge Cleaver PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: The following quotes are by Dr. Timothy Leary.] "We know that typically the real changes in human nature, the changes in human politics and economics and society, are brought about by two things: By people who have a map or a vision or a model of where we’re going to go, these are the philosophers. And then the technicians, the people who get together the printing presses, or the compasses, or the high technology that can take us where we want to go." "Viewed in the 1930s, when Einstein came to America, he was considered as far out as a crack dealer." "Heisenberg taught us to take the universe very personally … in both senses of the word." "So who? Who’s gonna prepare a civilization of factory workers and farmers and people who haven’t even got the Model T Ford yet? Who’s gonna prepare them for an Einsteinian, relativistic, quantum physical, ever-changing, probabilistic universe? Who? Well you know who you can count on at every time in human history when we had to make a big philosophic lurch forward. Who always came to the front and saved the day and made us feel happy and comfortable with a new future? I’m talking about those friends of ours who have always been around when we needed them, the musicians, and the artists, and the poets, and the writers, and the bards, and the performers, and the storytellers, and, OK, the minstrels, the rock n’ rollers. Right! The actors, the script writers." "The whole 20th Century, to me, is the story of how artists and writers prepared us to be comfortable in a quantum-physical world." "We’re talking about a generation of people who, since the time they were born, have been inundate by data, electronic data. To the Baby Boomers and subsequent generations electronic data is the ocean they swim in." "Of course, everybody got down on the poor doctor [Benjamin Spock]. He was blamed for the excesses of the sixties, ha ha. I was glad to have him get blamed otherwise I would have gotten blamed." "The psychedelic pudding hit the fan in the sixties when the Spock kids hit high school and college, and they wanted a gourmet education, and they wanted connoisseur sex. … Gee, we said you’re the best, but we didn’t realize that you guys would take us seriously." "The Cyber Society is a society made up of individuals who think for themselves, linked up with other individuals who think for themselves." "The Sixties were the adolescence of the Baby Boom." Following the talk by Dr. Leary I play a short personal message from Eldrige Cleaver to Timothy Leary that was recorded on January 7, 1995. The message Cleaver was so intensely trying to convey to his friend, Tim Leary, was that he believed it was imperative that the U.S. elect a woman president in the year 2000. Unfortunately, neither of these two important historical figures are alive today, and thus we can only speculate as to what they would think about the state of affairs in 2008. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option KMO’S C-Realm Podcasts KMO’S Personal Blog The 4th International Amazonian Shamanism Conference "Flashbacks: An Autobiography"by Timothy Leary "The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time" by Hunter S. Thompson And by William Gibson: Neuromancer Mona Lisa Overdrive Count Zero

Guest speakers: Terence McKenna and Matt Pallamary NEW! ... Two of Matt Pallamary's books are now available on Kindle: Spirit Matters ... Kindle Edition Land Without Evil ...

Guest speaker: Alicia Danforth PROGRAM NOTES: Alicia Danforth, who is Dr. Charles Grob’s research assistant, leads a Playalogue at the 2007 Burning Man Festival. In this wide-ranging group conversation, Alicia skillfully guided our eclectic audience through the intricacies of FDA-approved psychedelic research. "I’m hoping to spark ideas in other people’s minds about what can be done to get a foothold in advancing psychedelic research." –Alicia Danforth "I tend to think of music [in a therapeutic psychedelic session] as a little boat you can hop on when you’re journeying and ride to wherever you need to go." –Alicia Danforth. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option ALSO SEE: Ecstasy : The Complete Guide : A Comprehensive Look at the Risks and Benefits of MDMA by Julie Holland, M.D.

Guest speaker: Dr. Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotes below are by Dr. Timothy Leary.] "Psychedelic drugs are to the human mind today what the discovery of the microscope was to medicine and biological science three or four hundred years ago. Psychedelic drugs expand and speed up consciousness. They are going to bring about a tremendous change in our society, in our view of man and our way of life in the future." "When you take LSD you do go on a trip. It’s a voyage. It’s the most ancient voyage that man has ever known, the one beyond your mind and your current tribal situation into the incredible possibilities which lie inside. So it’s a fair statement to say an LSD voyage is a trip." "A chemical age is going to have a chemical sacrament." "Every great breakthrough in religion and science has always involved a new method of bringing into consciousness what you couldn’t see before, the telescope, the microscope. And you remember, the fellow that developed the telescope back in Florence a few hundred years ago got into the same sort of trouble with society that we’re in today. Any new instrument which opens up consciousness threatens the establishment." "It takes a long time to learn to use LSD. It’s no shortcut. It’s no instant mysticism. It’s no instant psychoanalysis. It’s tough, hard work." "Stay away from it unless you’re willing to take LSD in a state of grace for serious and important purposes." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option