Psychedelic Salon

Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 10:50 Terence McKenna: "I see the cosmos as a distillery for novelty, and the transcendental object is the novelty of novelty. . . . a tiny thing which has everything enfolded within it. And that means you’re in another dimension, where all points in this universe have been collapsed into co-tangency." 16:56 Terence McKenna: "Biology has a complete four dimensional, five dimensional map of the planet’s history."Ralph Abraham: "What the hell, the comet’s on its way. Let’s get it on." Terence McKenna: "The planet says, the comet’s on the way. Lets get these monkeys moving towards the production of sufficient complexity that when this impact event occurs it will have a transcendental rather than simply an …" Ralph Abraham: "Have an opportunity to escape into another dimension." Terence McKenna: "Yes." 21:02 Terence McKenna: "If you pursue these psychedelic, shamanic plants there is inevitably this conclusion scenario, or this apocalyptic intuition. And I think that shamans have always seen the end. That the human enterprise in three dimensional space has always been finite." 22:47 Terence McKenna: [discussing knowledge of life after death] "But in fact, I think this is probably the paradigm-shattering, world-condensing event that is bearing down on us." 25:04 Terence McKenna: "That’s what life is. It’s a chemical strategy for the conquest of dimensionality." 28:52 Terence McKenna: "So even within the toolbox of ordinary quantum astrophysics there are ways of tinker-toying the syntactical bits together to produce incredibly optimistic transcendental and psychedelic scenarios." 37:22 Terence describes his "simple way" of thinking about what may happen on December 21, 2012. 39:30 Terence McKenna: "But I’m telling you, Ralph, there’s something out there. There’s something out there, and I’ll know it when I see it." 40:06 Terence McKenna: "Believe it or not, I hate unanchored speculation. And yet I find myself in the position of leading the charge in the greatest unanchored speculation in the history of crackpot thinking." 43:33 Terence McKenna: "I think people should drive out and take a look at the Eschaton at the end of the road of history. And what that means is psychedelic self-experimentation. I don’t know of any other way to do it. But if you drive out to the end of the road and take a look at the Eschaton and kick the tires and so forth, then you will be able to come back here and take your place in this society and be a source of moral support and exemplary behavior for other people." 53:56 Terence McKenna: "No one is directing or controlling the creative energies of this species. It’s being driven by thousands of micro-units called companies, all pursuing agendas they won’t discuss with anybody who hasn’t signed a non-disclosure agreement. So god knows what they’re doing out there, and they’re fiddling with life, and minds, and intelligence, and micro-dimensions, and you name it." 54:57 Terence McKenna: "It’s the future we’re living in, Hollywood creates it, and we have to swallow it until something better comes along, or until we get sick enough about that system to do something about it." 55:43 Terence McKenna: "I think here in the final moments in human history we should push the art peddle to the floor and attempt to pour as much beauty into the human design process as we possibly can." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 04:32 Terence McKenna: "But the fact of the matter is, there is no reason to believe that time is invariant, and experience argues the contrary." 12:39 Rupert Sheldrake: "Maybe, you see, that the bonds between pigeons and their home are comparable to the bonds between people and other people, and indeed they may be related to that which holds society together. When we say "the bonds between people", we may mean something more than a mere metaphor. It may be that there is an actual connection between them. . . . This kind of social bond, this kind of linkage, may be utterly fundamental." 17:28 Ralph Abraham: "Especially for people like Americans, who watch television for seven hours a day, there is somehow not enough time away from language." 17:37 Terence McKenna: "But notice that most prophetic episodes are dream episodes. I think that supports my point that we have lost connection with a kind of fourth dimensional perception that for the rest of nature is absolutely a given." 25:59 Terence McKenna: "Somehow language is a strategy for holding at bay a much more complex world." 26:29 Terence McKenna: "The obsession with intellectual closure is inappropriate to talking monkeys, because nowhere is it writ large that talking monkeys should be able to achieve a complete understanding of reality. I think part of what we have to do is live with unsolved mysteries that are in principle insoluble. They’re not simply unsolved problems, they are in principle mysterious. All would agree that the highest understanding resides in silence, but it’s the death of conversation." 30:57 Terence McKenna: "I question whether we actually think in words, or to what degree we do. What you notice when you experiment with these shamanic tools, such as psychoactive plants, is that as the intoxications deepen thought becomes vision, and one thinks in images. And I imagine that this is the aboriginal thought-style, and we must have thought in images for a long time before we downloaded into words." 35:48 Terence McKenna: "If a prophecy comes true, does that mean then that in principle all of the future is determined? You see, we have to avoid determinism here because a true determinism means thinking is pointless, because in a rigid determinism you think what you think because you couldn’t think anything else. So the concept of truth is utterly without meaning in a rigid determinism." 37:21 Terence McKenna: "I don’t think the meaning of human existence lies in culture. It lies in the individual. And to access that meaning a certain amount of deconditioning, i.e., alienation, has to take place from a culture. If you’re just a cheerful representative of your culture you’re a kind of mindless boor." 40:10 Rupert Sheldrake: "There are astonishing powers in the animal and the other realms of nature, which we have just simply been blind to. We’re blind to them if we think in terms of institutional science." 50:55 Terence introduces the topic of time into the discussion. 52:02 Terence McKenna: "Examine, or recall to yourself for a moment, what it is that orthodoxy teaches about time. It teaches that, for reasons impossible to conceive, the universe sprang from utter nothingness in a single moment. Now whatever you might think about that idea, notice that it is the limit test for credulity. In other words, if you could believe that you could believe anything. It’s impossible to conceive of something more unlikely. Yet this is where science begins its supposedly rational tale of the unfolding of the phenomenal universe. It’s almost as if science is saying, ‘Give us one free miracle and from there the entire thing will proceed with a seamless casual explanation." 1:02:38 Terence McKenna: "When these curves [about population, climate, pollution, etc.] are extrapolated,

Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 04:18 Ralph begins by describing "Terence to himself". 05:46 Ralph Abraham: "So in our process of trialoging we find it very much enriched by Terence’s phenomenal knowledge of history, and not only that, but his special way of saying it is sort of a, you’re familiar with this here, a bardic skill. So that whatever he says will have [long pause]more effect than it actually deserves" [added with humor that was followed by laughter]. 08:36 Terence "shares his view" of Rupert. 09:12 Terence McKenna: "And my intellectual method has always been to seek out the heretical. And so when I heard that Nature had called for the burning of a book [insert title], I burned up my tires on the way to the store to see if I couldn’t obtain a copy." 16:38 Rupert introduces Ralph. 19:41 Rupert Sheldrake: "His [Ralph Abraham's] ability to visualize mathematics, I’m sure, is innate. But I think it was enhanced in the late 60s and early 70s by certain inner experiences, which would fall into the category of what Terence calls hands-on pharmacology." 22:54 Ralph begins his introduction of Rupert. 27:21 Rupert tells the story of his first meeting with Terence McKenna and Ralph Abraham. 32:00 Rupert Sheldrake: "Part of him [Terence McKenna] is a millenarian prophet. Part of him is a Dominican. He professes to be a pagan, but his Catholic upbringing, his Dominican reasoning, and his experience as an altar boy have never left him." 34:16 Terence tells about when he first heard of Ralph. 36:43 Terence McKenna: [Speaking about Ralph Abraham]"It’s impossible not to fall in love with the man. He’s the teddy bear of advanced mathematics." 45:07 Rupert Sheldrake: "[In science,] if you can do things cheaply, you’re completely free, because the only control that they have is through money and giving out funds. And if you don’t need the funds you can do what you like." 1:13:39 Terence McKenna: "What do I think? Well, not that." 1:14:20 Terence McKenna: "I’ve always felt that what biology is is a strategy, a chemical strategy, for amplifying quantum mechanical indeterminacy into macro-physical systems called living organisms, and that living organisms somehow work their magic by opening a doorway to the quantum realm through which indeterminacy can come. And I imagine that all nature works like this, with the single exception of human beings, who have been poisoned by language." 1:19:36 Terence McKenna: "The real question I’m raising is, to what degree does language create the assumption of an unknown future." 1:24:03 Terence McKenna: "We alone, I think, are tormented by the anxiety of the unknowable future. And it’s an artifact, I maintain, of culture and language." 1:28:28 Terence McKenna: "And I don’t believe that time is invariant. I didn’t intend to open this up as a general frontal attack on the epistemic methods of modern science, but, in fact, the idea that time is invariant is entirely contradicted by our own experience, and it’s merely an assumption science makes in order to do its business." 1:29:36 Terence McKenna: "As a practical matter, I don’t think we should confuse our ideologies with our sinuses." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) [NOTE: All quotations below are by Bruce Damer] 08:17 Bruce tells about the three-day white out that followed the 2002 Burning Man festival. 15:59 Bruce talks about the problem of dust on the moon. 18:46"We all grew up seeing buried lunar bases and happy astronauts running around mining and other things, it ain’t going to happen. I concluded, after a lifetime of believing this and two years of actually working on this problem, that we’re not going to do this. We don’t have the technology." 21.52 "How rare are we in the universe? How rare a thing are we?" 24:02 "These solar systems are out there. They’ve been bathed by our radio waves. Are there any receivers? Is there anyone out there to pick up ‘I Love Lucy’? Probably not. Why? Because those solar systems have all the wrong properties for probably our kind of life or any kind of life." 29:39 "In this chunk of the galaxy we’re the only noisy solar system. . . . We may be extremely rare. We may be the only ones in our little quadrant. We may be the only ones in our galaxy, or the only one in our local group of galaxies. Life like ours is unbelievably difficult to create. And here we are, our concerns are can we get to the office on time. We don’t even think about the miracle each one of us is." 31:42 "What I’m trying to build up is a picture of why you don’t need religion. All you need, if you want to be awestruck, is to consider the improbability of you, the improbable miracle that is you." 35:05 [Commenting on a computer-generated depiction of an astrophysical zoom-out from Earth] "If the universe was at all attempting to find consciousness, for a split-second, a primate brain on Earth had in its little synaptic gaps a picture of the universe. The universe saw itself momentarily." 38:48 "What if the ultimate goal of life, of the universe, was to become fully conscious? And what I mean by that is the entire universe becomes, instead of this jumble of matter and quantum whatever, it becomes a single conscious being?" 42:02 "For life itself to have a chance to expand out into the universe, and populate and infuse the universe, we may be one of its only shots [at this], at least in our area. We’re one of the only chances to do this, and we have a very limited window." 46:52 Bruce talks about the possibilities ALife might explore should it ever be set free in a quantum computer. 51:18 Bruce tells the story about his vision (during the AlChemical Arts Conference in September 1999) of Terence McKenna’s ‘getaway car’. 1:03:57 Bruce begins a stream of consciousness riff about quantum reality that is packed with mind-blowing concepts and ends . . . "In the universe you are all participants. So if you think about it you change it. If you try to study it you change it." 1:08:39 "The next time you have a powerful dream consider that it may have come from the field." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Lorenzo’s Photos from the 2007 Burning Man festival Bruce Damer’s Photos from the 2007 Burning Man festival Matt Pallamary’s Photos from the 2007 Burning Man festival

Guest speaker: Pablo Amaringo [NOTE: All quotations below are by Pablo Amaringo, as interpreted by Lorenzo from Zoe7's translation.] Pablo Amaringo was elected to the Global 500 Roll of Honor of the United Nations Environmental Program in recognition of outstanding practical achievements in the protection and improvement of the environment through the USKO-AYAR school. PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 03:23 Susan Blackmore introduces Pablo Amaringo 07:16 "I was born and raised Catholic, but I did not really subscribe to the way in which that religion interpreted existence and life, particularly life after death." 13:02 "From experience, I came to learn that ayahuasca bestows upon the user knowledge about a variety of topics, not only consciousness and perception, but also leads one to realize that what we perceive is an illusion." 17:57 "In 1968 I had a revelation that we live in a sort of organism, an organism somewhat like a ship in that it keeps us, and not just us humans, but every living thing in something like a cocoon. And I was told that this home of ours, this ship, is becoming endangered simply because people are not taking care of the environment." 22:30 "We should not think only about the immediate future for ourselves living on this planet, but also about the futures of our children and grandchildren. What are we going to leave for them? What are they going to find? Those are questions we should ask and resolve before it’s too late." 23:46 "One of the chief problems here is the lack of love, love for the environment and love for each other." 28:02 Pablo begins talking about the ayahuasca visions in his paintings. 47:36 "By going into the psychedelic experience, by going into the world of plants, one is able to first and foremost know about himself. This opens up a whole new realm of possibilities in his eyes." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option;  Ayahuasca Visions by   Pablo Amaringo, Luis Luna, and Luis Eduardo Luna

Guest speaker: Susan Blackmore PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 03:30 Jon Hanna introduces Susan Blackmore 08:04 "A lot of people kind of think that scientists like myself are kind of pushing the problem [of what is consciousness] away, some are, but there’s a huge excitement about what we do with this mystery, and it’s a very strange mystery indeed." 09:22 "That’s what we mean by consciousness, in contemporary science, what it’s like for you." 09:38 Susan talks about ‘the great chasm’ between mind and brain, sometimes called the ‘fathomless abyss’ . . . "It’s the chasm between subjective, how it is to me, and objective, how we believe it must be in the real physical world. Don’t underestimate this problem." 11:48 "So that’s the sense in which I mean consciousness might be an illusion: not what it seems to be." 18:48 Susan begins her discussion about free will. 24:34 "You can see the readiness potential building up in someone’s brain a long time, a long time in brain terms, before they know they are spontaneously and freely act." 26:56 "We can believe that free will is an illusion. That’s my preferred solution. I don’t want to press it on you, but it seems this way: When you look at these results, and many other results too, consciousness just doesn’t seem to be the thing that starts things off." 51:07 "I suggest, that when you’re walking around in your ordinary life, just realize how much you are not seeing, but you are not seeing it all." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Books discussed in this podcast            The Meme Machine by Susan Blackmore Consciousness: An Introduction by Susan Blackmore Conversations on Consciousness: What the Best Minds Think about the Brain, Free Will, and What It Means to Be Human by Susan Blackmore Consciousness Explained by Daniel C. Dennett Susan Blackmore’s books on Amazon.com

Guest speaker: Andrew Weil PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) NOTE: All quotes below are by Dr. Andrew Weil 04:41 "There are no good or bad drugs. Drugs are what we make of them. They have good and bad uses." 05:04 "I know of no culture in the world at present or any time in the past that has not been heavily involved with one or more psychoactive substances." 06:33 "Alcohol, any way you look at it, is the most toxic and most dangerous of all psychoactive drugs. In any sense, in terms of medical toxicity, behavioral toxicity, there is no other drug for which the association between crime and violence is so clear cut . . . and tobacco, in the form of cigarettes is THE most addictive of all drugs." 08:47 "What could be a more flagrant example of drug pushing than public support of that industry [tobacco and cigarettes]." 12:38 "I see a great failure in the world in general to distinguish between drug use and drug abuse." 16:25 "Another very common use, in all cultures, of psychoactive substances is to give people transcendent experiences. To allow them to transcend their human and ego boundaries to feel greater contact with the supernatural, or with the spiritual, or with the divine, however they phrase it in their terms." 17:54 "Drugs don’t have spiritual potential, human beings have spiritual potential. And it may be that we need techniques to move us in that direction, and the use of psychoactive drugs clearly is one path that has helped many people." 19:59 "Why is it that the human brain and plants should have the same chemicals in them?" 22:39 "The effects of drugs are as much dependent on expectation and setting, on set and setting, as they are on pharmacology. We shape the effects of drugs. All drugs do is make you feel temporarily different, physically and psychologically." 25:26 "The effects of drugs can be completely shaped by cultural expectations, by individual expectations, by setting as well." 28:22 "The manner of introducing a drug into the body is crucially determinant of the effects the people experience. And especially of its adverse effects, both short term and long term." 31:51 "I think it’s unfortunate that in this culture we have fallen so much into the habit of relying on refined, purified durative of plants, in highly concentrated form, both for recreational drugs and for medicine. And have formed the habit of thinking that this is somehow more scientific and effective, that botanical drugs are old-fashioned, unscientific, messy. In fact, they’re much safer, and sometimes the quality and effects are better." 32:55 "It’s we who determine whether drugs are destructive or whether they’re beneficial. It’s not any inherent property of drugs." 41:36 "The use of yage, or ayahuasca, in Amazonian Indian cultures is often credited with giving people visions that have valid content." 50:25 "But I think healing, like religious experience, is an innate potential of the body. It’s not something that comes in a drug. All a drug can do is give you a push in a certain direction, and I think that even there expectation plays a great role in that." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option   Chocolate to Morphine: Understanding Mind-Active Drugs (Published 1983) From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs (Published 2004)

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 05:33 Terence begins with a discussion of "the felt presence of immediate experience." 08:10 Terence McKenna: "The thing I like about the Zippy culture and the house, trance-dance, techno culture is that it’s about feeling. The combination of young people, drugs, a fairly sexually charged social environment, and syncopated music is just all designed to draw you into you and your friends and your scene, and your hood, and your place in the cosmos and not sell you out as a consumer to Hollywood, or Manhattan-manufactured forms of entertainment." 10:01 Terence McKenna: "The culture is so capable of assimilating and disarming its critics through hype and fashion. I mean, I was horrified to see that ad, ‘Alan Ginsberg work kakis’. Did you see that!" 12:28 Terence McKenna: "What Rupert’s [Sheldrake] theory carries as an implication is what Prigogine now proclaims, which is, what we thought were eternal natural laws are simply something more like habits. Habits of Nature." 26:49 Terence begins his discussion of paradigm shift. 28:57 Terence McKenna: "So, human freedom is the precondition for the assumption of man’s flaw, man’s fall. You know, what Thomas Aquinas called the felix culpa, the happy flaw." 30:12 Terence McKenna: "A paradigm is a lens through which you see the world, and everything is transformed when you look through this lens." 32:42 Terence McKenna: "If habit is to replace law, then the universe is more like an organism. It’s more like a creature. It learns, It gains experience. As it matures it changes its strategy. As it expands its experience it gains new domains of emergent subtlety." 36:36 Terence McKenna: "The dimension of human freedom is a precondition for guilt. Only the free can be guilty because only the free can be responsible for what they do." 48:37 Terence McKenna: "What we call nature is a novelty-conserving engine, that what nature glories in is novelty." 49:48 Terence McKenna: "Sometimes for ‘novelty’ I’ve used the phrase ‘density of connection.’ " 1:01:13 Terence McKenna:"And when you think about it, if you really believe in eternal laws of nature then you have a philosophical mess on your hands." 1:05:35 Terence McKenna: "Mind is a phenomenon of metabolic activity. So far as we know, where there is not metabolism there is not consciousness." 1:12:35 Terence begins a discussion about memes. 1:27:49 Terence McKenna: "We are very fortunate to live through an age of enormous reappraisal." 1:30:17 Terence McKenna: "Humor is an admission of ignorance. Ignorance is the precondition for knowledge. And in a sense, to take it to a deeper level, magic is a deeper perception than science. Because science believes that the world is truly there it is naive in its emphericism. Magic knows that the world is made of language. That the world is the construct of forceful imagination. And the people who don’t know this are walking around in the world of the people who do." 1:31:27 Terence McKenna: "Do not lease other people’s linguistic structures and live in them. Build your own virtual worlds. Build your own values and your own house of mirrors." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Lorenzo & James PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 07:17 James and Lorenzo begin a discussion about the fortuitous ways in which people come into contact with ayahuasca. 17:30 James describes the preparation of the ayahuasca brew the day of their ceremony. 24:05 Lorenzo and James begin a discussion of purging during the ayahuasca experience. 30:31 James explains the difference between a shaman and a yachak among the indigenous Qechua people of Ecuador. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Sasha Shulgin and Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 10:09 Sasha Shulgin: "First, I am a very firm believer in the reality of balance in all aspects of the human theater." 11:00 Sasha Shulgin: "One definition of the tools I seek is that they may allow words of a vocabulary, a vocabulary that might allow each human being to more consciously — and more clearly — communicate with the interior of his own mind and psyche. This may be called a vocabulary of awareness." 17:47 Sasha Shulgin: [After a discussion of nuclear weapons.] "And to have such power leads to the threat to use such power, which – in time – will actually lead to its use. But, as I have said earlier, when one thing develops, there seems to spring forth a balancing, a compensatory counterpart. This balance can be realized with the psychedelic drugs. What had been simply tools for the study of psychosis (at best), or for escapist self-gratification (at worst), suddenly assumed the character of tools of enlightenment, and of some form of transcendental communication." 19:24 Sasha Shulgin: "But I feel — along with many others — that the efforts being invested in the technology of destruction does not allow sufficient time. It is possibly only with the psychedelic drugs that words of vocabulary can be established, which might tunnel through the subconscious between the conflicting aspects of the mind and psyche. It is here that I feel my skill lies, and this is exactly why I do what I do." 31:42 Sasha Shulgin: "My personal philosophy might well be lifted directly from Blake: ‘I must create a system, or be enslaved by another man’s.’ I may be wrong, but I must do what I can. And I will do what I can as fast as I can." 38:44 Terence McKenna: "The shaman is a very peculiar figure. He is critical to the functioning of the psychological and social life of his community, but in a way he is always peripheral to it. He lives at the edge of the village. He is only called upon in matters of great social crisis. He is feared and respected. And this might be a description of these hallucinogenic substances." 40:15 Terence McKenna: "Marcel Eliade took the position that hallucinogenic shamanism was decadent, and Gordon Wasson, very rightly I believe, contravened this view and held that actually it was very probably the presence of the hallucinogenic drug experience in the life of early man that lay the very basis for the idea of the spirit." [NOTE: Graham Hancock's book, Supernatural, provides a detailed investigation of this subject.] 41:46 Terence McKenna: "The traditional manner of taking psilocybin is to take a very healthy dose, in the vicinity of 15 mg. on an empty stomach in total darkness." 44:45 Terence McKenna: "The Logos is a voice heard, in the head. And the Logos was the hand on the rudder of human civilization for centuries, up until, in fact, the collapse of the ancient mystery religions and the ascendancy of Christianity to the status of a world religion." 47:36 Terence McKenna: "It’s my belief that one of the unconscious reasons which underlies the odd attitude of the establishment toward hallucinogens is the fact that they bring the mystery to the surface as an individual experience. In other words, you do not understand the psychedelic experience by getting a report from Time magazine or even the Economist. You only understand the psychedelic experience by having it." 49:47 Terence McKenna: "And yet, WE are the culture that is in crisis. When you go to the rain forest you don’t find cultures in crisis except to the degree that they are being impacted by us." 50:24 Terence McKenna: "What he [R. Gordon Wasson] discovered, in the mountains of Mexico, was nothing less than Eros, sleeping but alive. The body of Osiris preserved over an entire astrological age, metaphorically speaking. In other words, that to take the mushroom was to transcend the cultural momentum of the past c...

Guest speakers: Richard Glen Boire, Erik Davis, and John Gilmore PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 05:08 Richard Glen Boire: "What if the government could inoculate you so you couldn’t get high, so if you took a drug it didn’t work in you?" 07:53 Richard begins a discussion about the U.S. Government’s research into anti-drug drugs, which he calls "Neurocops". "So the question is, is it actually possible to treat illegal drug use with other drugs?" 08:25 Richard Glen Boire: "What I think the drug war is about to become is like truly a "drug" war. The war of your favorite drug against the government’s anti-drugs." 09:09 Richard Glen Boire: "One of those ["anti-high"] vaccines that is now under production (they have these for all the major classes of illegal drugs right now, including marijuana), and this is the one that’s been tested now in humans, is only known as SR141716." 10:10 Richard Glen Boire: "The most recent Drug Control Strategy Report, this year’s, has this term, ‘compassionate coercion’. This is a real government publication. [quoting] ‘Compassionate coercion requires the use of innovative techniques for fighting addiction, such as specialized pharmeceuticals." 15:40 Richard Glen Boire: "What makes this kind of thinking by the government possible: That we’re going to create a vaccine, and you druggies are going to get it so you don’t continue to transmit your disease, is what’s made the drug war itself possible, which is the government’s total disrespect for what we call Cognitive Liberty. And that is the right to control your own neurochemistry, to think the thoughts you want to think triggered by whatever inputs those may be as long as you’re not causing harm to others." 16:43 Richard Glen Boire: "I think we need in this country a Roe v. Wade of the mind." 17:11 Introduction of Erik Davis who talks about "Waking Up In The Matrix" 20:16 Erik Davis: "What I talk about in Techgnosis is the way this sort of Gnostic hunch, this sense that there is some kind of false construct that I’m in is really part and parcel of technological society." 21:02 Erik Davis: "By ’spirituality’ I really mean something very simple, which is the process of inquiry. And I mean inquiry on multiple levels. . . . Constant inquiry, such as ‘what is going on here?’ " 30:14 Erik Davis: "As Dale Pendell said in a line that has just stuck with me, ‘When one learns to face the gods directly one no longer fears facing a king." 30:37 Introduction of John Gilmore who talks about our Constitutional rights of anonymous travel and speech. 32:48 John Gilmore: "When the government says, ‘Terror . . . danger . . . evil . . . trouble,’ people sort of zoom in and look at that stuff. Instead, I kind of back away and say, ‘What are they doing around the edges while they’re trying to get your attention over here?’ " 34:10 John Gilmore: "If you focus on the ability of individuals to do evil you forget about the ability of individuals to do good." 36:40 John Gilmore: "The Bill of Rights, the Constitution, these are memes. They’re not alive. They’re not self-executing. They require human hosts to carry them and spread them around, and I’ve been infected by that meme, and I’m carrying it around." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Gary Fisher PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 04:20 Gary tells about his encounter with an extraterrestrial. 07:11 Stories of another encounter with otherworldly entities, this time in the desert. 09:40 The story about a man who always longed for a UFO experience. 11:36 Gary tells why he thinks extraterrestrials are visiting the Earth. 14:33 Gary tells the story of when Timothy Leary was driving him to their compound in Mexico, and Gary suddenly had an intuition that reflected back to both a psilocybin experience and a past life experience. 17:07 Gary Fisher: "In the esoteric world those are called ’sleeping karmas’, and you’ll run into a person who’s happy all the time, everything goes well for them. They don’t have any hysterics in their life, and they’re having sleeping karma. They just come in to relax." 18:15 Gary tells the story of his Caribbean adventure with Tim Leary and company. 26:55 Beginning of a discussion about Alan Watts and the time he went to Mexico for a psychedelic mushroom session with Maria Sabina and ended up getting married to Mary Jane on the spur of the moment. 29:46 Gary Fisher: "At one dinner this very proper lady said, ‘Well Doctor Watts, what do you hope to gain from your next experience with LSD?’, and Alan said, ‘Another book!’ " 35:29 We begin a brief discussion of Tim Leary. . . . Gary Fisher: "Well, he was a drunken Irishman with a silver tongue. . . . He wanted to be rich, and he wanted to be famous. Those were his two goals in life." 44:26 Gary discusses several issues relating to the age at which it may be appropriate to begin using psychedelics. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Gary Fisher PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) Our conversation began by looking at photos of some of Gary’s former students, patients, and famous friends. 13:12 We begin a discussion of Gary’s work in the 1960s with severely emotionally disturbed children suffering from variants of childhood schizophrenia and infantile autism who he treated with LSD and psilocybin. 16:36 Al Hubbard is discussed 18:23 Gary Fisher: "All our model was from Hubbard, because Hubbard was the guy who taught my brother-in-law and Duncan Blewett. . . . He was the father of all this stuff. . . . He was the one who introduced Osmond and Hoffer to this whole approach." 25:45 Gary provides more details about his work with the severely disturbed children, beginning with the story of Nancy’s nearly miraculous improvement after being treated with LSD. 35:59 Gary describes the deplorable conditions in the public hospital wards where severely disturbed children were being held. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option THE LINKS BELOW will take you to several articles by Dr. Fisher that have been posted on the Web stie of the Albert Hofmann Foundationin The Gary Fisher Collection: Treatment of Childhood Schizophrenia Utilizing LSD and Psilocybin by Gary Fisher, Ph.D. A Note of the Successful Outcome of a Single Dose LSD Experience in a Patient Suffering from Grand Mal Epilepsy Gary Fisher, Ph.D. Some Comments Concerning Dosage Levels Of Psychedelic Compounds For Psychotherapeutic Experiences [Print-friendly copy] by Gary Fisher, Ph.D. Death, Identity, and Creativity by Gary Fisher, Ph.D. Successful Outcome of a Single LSD Treatment in a Chronically Dysfunctional Man by Gary Fisher, Ph.D. The Psychotherapeutic Use Of Psychodysleptic Drugs by Gary Fisher, Ph.D. and Joyce Martin M.D. Psychotherapy for the Dying: Principles and Illustrative Cases with Special Reference to the use of LSD by Gary Fisher, Ph.D.; Assistant Professor, Division of Behavioral Sciences and Health Education, School of Public Health. University of California, Los Angeles Counter-Transference Issues in Psychedelic Psychotherapy by Gary Fisher, PH.D

Guest speaker: Charles S. Grob, M.D. PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 03:20 Charlie talks about how he got into psychedelic research. 07:47 Charlie: "My interest has always been in studying the potential therapeutic effects of MDMA. I’ve always had concerns about use and abuse of the recreationally drug ecstasy. Now early on in the history of this drug, ecstasy was almost always MDMA, but over the years there has been more and more drug substitutions, to the point where now with ecstasy I think there’s less reliability in regards to it being the drug you think it is than for any other drug I’m aware of." 09:25 Charlie describes the process of obtaining approval to conduct clinical research using psychedelic drugs. 16:29 Charlie:"If you have some ambition to work in this area you have to develop certain character qualities, like having a lot of patience and persistence." 18:13 Charlie discusses the relative merits of MDMA vs. psilocybin in the treatment of end stage cancer patients who are also suffering from anxiety. 22:33 Charlie: "So MDMA might turn out to be a very valuable compound to use with a chronic PTSD patient group, but in a medically ill group, over the years I began to question that and decided that psilocybin would be significantly safer." 20:43 Charlie begins his discussion of the human safety study of MDMA that he conducted. 23:03 Charlie: "A relative risk in regards to recreational use of MDMA is that a lot of people are oblivious to the fact that different drugs can interact with one another, and people who may have medical conditions, on medication, who then take ecstasy, which is often, though not always, MDMA, that there may be a drug-drug interaction which can cause injurious effects." 28:50 Lorenzo changes the subject by asking, "What do you tell your kids other than ‘just say no’?" . . . Charlie: "Often the most helpful thing you can do is simply be honest, and to provide the young people with the information we know today." 29:28 Charlie explains ways that the street drug ecstasy can cause significant medical problems when not properly used. 34:11 Charlie talks about the work done my Humphry Osmand, Abram Hoffer, Duncan Blewett, and others in Canada when they successfully treated and cured alcoholics using LSD as a catalyst that changing their lives. 36:17 Charlie: "It seems to me there are some very interesting implications here for Osmand’s old work with alcoholics as well as some of our more recent observations with the ayahuasca church as well as others who have observed a similar process in the Native American Peyote Church." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Jon Hanna PROGRAM NOTES: Jon Hanna enjoying an energy dring while visiting the Shulgins.Photo credit: Marc Franklin (Lordnose) (c) 2007 (Minutes : Seconds into program) 06:19 Jon tells about starting the publication of The Psychedelic Resource List. 08:32 Lorenzo and Jon discuss articles in the current issue of Entheogen Review, including "DMT for the Masses" and "Security Issues in the Underground". 13:14 Jon talks about the problem of mis-labeling of botanicals that are sold on the Internet. 18:29 The discussion turns to security issues in the psychedelic community. 23:33 Halperngate and John Halpern as a DEA snitch discussed at Burning Man. 28:08 Jon Hanna: "Kind of the Golden Rule in our community is ‘Thou shallt not snitch.’ That’s the glue, the trust, that holds us all together as a community." 31:54 Jon talks about his current research into energy drinks. 46:11 The horrors of a $6.57 a day energy drink habit?!? 50:06 Jon reads the warning label on an energy drink can 1:04:46 Jon raves about the apocalyptic visionary painter,Joe Coleman. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Mind States Conferences (click) Psychedelic Resource List by Jon Hanna Essays Discussed in this Podcast "Halperngate" "Halperngate II" "The Bad Shaman Meets the Wayward Doc"   "Bogus Kratom Market Exposed" Psychedelic Shamanism by Jim DeKorne

Guest speakers: Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham, and Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 04:38 Rupert Sheldrake: quot;The primary metaphor is the magnetic field, that’s what gives you the sense of a field. But if you look at the type of physics that would be appropriate for describing these fields it would not be magnitism, it’s quantum field theory. 07:23 Ralph Abraham:"I’m extremely suspicious of the application of quantum mechanical concepts in the arena of psychology, consciousness, sociology, and so on. To me that’s much fuzzier than the face on Mars." 12:28 Terence McKenna: "Part of the problem is that physical models break down when prosecuted to quantum mechanical levels." 21:15 Ralph begins his explanation of the physics of the nimbus, otherwise known as a halo. 30:47 Terence: "The more successful psychoanalytic theories, it seems to me, are the least mathmatically driven, and depend really on this mysterious business that we call the gifted therapist." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham, and Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 05:25 Rupert Sheldrake: "And so in human family groups we’d expect the same kind of morphic fields [as in other animal family groups]. . . . It would mean that family fields, with their morphic fields, would have a kind of memory from the families that contributed to them. The father’s and mother’s families of origin would come together in a family." 12:12 Rupert: "Whatever the merits or demerits of [Bert] Hellinger’s system, which I think is very interesting and apparently very effective, the idea of making models of the family field seems to me something that one could address in a more general sense." 20:29 Terence McKenna: "The family thing works because people really are complex chemical systems with genetic affinity." 22:16 Rupert: "There are amazing cases where young people commit suicide in a way that mimics the unacknowledged death of an ancestor, like suicide by drowning when an ancestor one or two generations before have committed suicide by drowning, but they’ve never been told about it because it was never acknowledged. And you get these extraordinary patterns that repeat." 26:58 Rupert: "We don’t have adequate models for these family systems, nor the influence of ancestors within them, which my interest in morphic resonance makes me very keen on." 49:27 Rupert (describing an indigenous belief): "But you have to be on good terms with the ancestors. And what being on good terms, above all, means acknowledging them. . . . that you name and acknowledge the key ancestors, you acknowledge all the dead in your lineage. And if you miss anyone out they’re going to be angry, and if they’re angry that means trouble." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Myron Stolaroff PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program)   02:29 Myron Stolarofftalks about writing "The Secret Chief", a biography of Leo Zeff. 06:06Lorenzodescribes Dr. Michael Mitthoefer’s research where he is using MDMA to treat victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). 12:52 Myron tells how he strikes up conversations about psychedelics with strangers he meets while traveling. 18:00 Myron: "The DEA, they’ve been the toughest ones. To a man they’re really refuting these things with all the power that they have, and they’re not interested in learning anything about them. They’re not interested in learning if anything [positive] is possible." 25:31 Myron: "Even though it’s painful, you’re much better off, if you’re willing to experience the pain, be with it and let it go, because once it breaks through and is gone you’re at a whole new level." 30:51 Myron: "And so you try to pretend that it’s [pain] not there, but it is there. And as long as it’s there it’s going to control you." 35:32 Myron: "I used the phrase ‘worked on that’, and the working is not really struggling and trying to make things happen. It isn’t that at all. What it is is learning to just be still, to just let everything go, just absolutely be still and let our hearts open." 54:43 Myron tells about instigating, along with Al Hubbard, the meeting between Alan Watts and Timothy Leary. 58:31 Myron (in a conversation with Timothy Leary)"I don’t have it in my heart to tell you not to do what you’re doing, but, really, what you’re doing isn’t going in the right direction." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option  "The Secret Chief Revealed" by Myron Stolaroff  "Thantos To Eros" by Myron Stolaroff

Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 05:25 Rupert Sheldrake describes how one could go about creating a "consumer’s report" for odd-ball theories. 06:23Terence McKenna:"Ninety-five percent of the scientists who have rejected astrology cannot cast a natal horoscope, and that the ability to actually cast a horoscope never seemed to be required of these high-toned scientific critics of astrology. It was something they felt perfectly free to dismiss without understanding." 07:26 Ralph Abraham: "Well, the hypothesis of causative formation, of course, favors deeper fluff. . . . The thing about astrology is that people say it works. An argument could be made that even though the Zodiacal reference frame that it is based on no longer has any basis in the sky that it works because people believe in it, and because it is in the N-field, and that because it’s deeper fluff, basically." 08:27 Ralph: "I think it could be that scientific research, done according to the best principles, has a greater weight in impressing itself upon the morphogenic field." 12:53 Rupert: "This internalization of the use of blind techniques has, in fact, gone farthest in parapsychology, where 85% of experiments are double blind in recent journals. In medicine and psychology where everyone pays lip service to blind techniques, in practice the number of blind papers, or double blind, is in the region of six to seven percent of all published papers in the top journals." 17:09 Terence: "Well, speculation and skepticism begin to sound like novelty and habit. So maybe these things are just counter-flows in the intellectual life of the culture that redress each other. And though we do have certain long-running forms of fuzz, it does tend to correct itself over time." 19:47 Rupert: "The fact is that in the mainstream of our culture skepticism reigns supreme." 22:27 Terence:"New kinds of people are making their voices heard, people from outside the male patriarchal, usual membership in the club." 25:34 Rupert: "In most walks of life skepticism is normal. We expect it in politics, courts of law, etc." 27:30 Rupert: "[Science] is the only universal system which is not open to the normal processes of challenge from competing points of view, having to justify itself in terms of evidence." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Also mentioned in this podcast Cross-cultural Medical Ethnobotany by Nat Bletter The Ayahuasca Monologues with Jonathan Philips, Jamye Waxman, Bill Kennedy, Daniel Pinchbeck, and Nat Bletter

Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 02:09 Terence McKenna: "Somehow as a part of the agenda of political correctness it has become not entirely acceptable to criticize, or demand substantial evidence, or expect people, when advancing their speculations, to make, what used to be called, old fashioned sense." 04:10 Terence: "These phenomenon, which we know exist, and which we find rich in implication, would simply not be allowed as objects of discourse, they would be ruled out of order. So there’s something wrong on one level with what’s called empiricism, skepticism, positivism, it has different names." 08:09 Terence:"[Empherical science] is a coarse-grained view of nature, and what it mitigates against seeing are the very things that feed the progress of science, which is the unassimilated phenomenon, the unusual data, the peculiar result of an experiment." 11:04 Terence: "What I have a problem with is unanchored, eccentric revelations." 13:39 Terence: "Nonlocality, accepted, permits some of the things we’re interested in." 15:26 Rupert Sheldrake: "Weirdness and cults and most of the phenomenon you’ve named are phenomenon of Hawaii and California. When you live in England, things take on a rather different perspective. There’s a general level of popular skepticism, such that the general tone of an English pub is one of sort of skepticism." Terence: "Well, but aren’t crop circles, and Graham Hancock all homegrown British phenomenon?" 20:33 Rupert: "There is the possibility to return to a more common sense approach, common sense of the British pub type, and probably of standard American kind too, will often deal quite satisfactorily with the probono proctologists from outer space." 21:59 Terence: "You speak from your knowledge of the calculus and world history, and this person speaks from their latest transmission from fallen Atlantis. And this is all placed on an equal footing, and it’s crazy-making, and it also guarantees the trivialness of the entire enterprise. I just don’t think any revolution in human history can be made by fluff-heads." 23:49 Ralph Abraham: "In other words, there is no simple measuring stick of simplicity." 23:49 Ralph says he wishes we could create a measuring stick to measure the truth of something and then goes on to describe how one could be designed. 31:31 Terence: "The history of alchemy is far older than the history of science. It has always been in existence. It’s thinkers have always evolved and adumbrated their field of concern. So that’s one kind of fluff. Fluff with punch, because it has historical continuity." 34:51 Ralph: "The problem with this ’strict parent’ approach to fluff, is that some important discoveries may be shuttled aside." 39:13 Terence: "What we have to legitimize is critical discussion. So that when someone stands up and starts talking about the face on Mars people behave as they apparently behave in British pubs and just stand up and say, ‘Malarkey mate.’And force people to experience a critical deconstruction of their ideas." 48:13 Rupert: "If [scientific research] priorities were set by popular opinion, pet research would be at the top of the biological agenda, not the sequencing of more proteins, the cloning of more sheep to help the biotechnology industry. But instead, pet research isn’t even on the agenda. So it’s set by a small elite who bear no relation in their interests to the voters in a democracy who actually provide the money." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option