Psychedelic Salon

Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 02:29 Terence McKenna: "The ego is essentially paranoia institutionalized." 03:53 Ralph Abraham: Considers the possibility that ego became strengthened when psychedelic usage became less frequent. 05:29 Terence: Talks about a "psychedelic rebirth." 08:15 Terence: "A calendrical reform would be a wonderful thing, and I have just the calendar all worked out." 09:48 Terence: "It’s an effort to deny man’s mortality, this solar calendar. It’s reinforcing a false notion of permanence, and what we actually want is a calendar that says ‘all is flow, all is flux, all relationships are in motion to everything else. It’s a truer picture of the world." 13:22 Rupert Sheldrake: Comments on the fact that the Islamic calendar fits the definition of Terence’s suggested calendar. 16:22 Rupert: "One of the things that’s clear is that chaos is feminine, and creation out of chaos is like the creation out of the womb, coming out of darkness." 20:56 Terence: "I think it’s the notion of as above so below." . . . "In talking about these things you can’t force closure." 22:14 Ralph: Explains how the painting in the shrine of the Virgin of Guadalupe (the black virgin) is actually a representation of the goddess chaos. 26:19 Terence: Explains how the Faustian pact with the physical world that humans have made by adopting the "deadly cultural forms" of written language, moveable type, etc. have had a negative impact on our self-image. . . . "In the absence of this boundary-dissolving ecstasies, and replacing that with the machinations and plottings of the ego leads very, very quickly into a cultural cul de sac. . . . This was the wrong-turning." 29:15 Terence: Explains the difference between dominator and partnership. 33:17 Terence: "You cannot trust the dominator style not to go psychotic here at the end." . . . "Who is it who has the power to pry the dead fingers of the dominator culture from the instrumentality of power?" . . . "Everyone should understand this, that chaos provides opportunity for commandos of the new persuasion to rush forward and jam vital machinery of the dominator metaphor." 39:14 Terence: Discusses the question of whether there can be consciousness without an object. 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) 02:29 Ralph Abraham: "So I should like now to speak about the chaos of ordinary life and the relationship of this chaos to the imagination." 05:41 Ralph: "Chaos, Gaia, and Eros are the gods, or concepts, of the primitive types." 13:56 Ralph: "People have a resistance to their own creative imagination, and I’m suggesting that this resistance has a mythological base." 20:55 Terence McKenna: "Chaos is feminine. Chaos is intuitional. Chaos has a very flirtatious relationship with language." 22:16 Terence: "The birthright that connects us to the divine is our poetic capacity, our ability to resonate with an idea of ideal beauty and to create that which transcends our own understanding in the form of art through the imagination." . . . "We have a secret history. Knowledge of which has been lost to us and only now is recoverable . . . " . . . "We are the victims of an instance of traumatic abuse in childhood as a species." 24:34 Terence: "Once we lived in dynamic balance with nature, not as animals do, but as human beings only could but in a way that we have now lost." . . . and then he explains what it is that we have lost and how it was lost. 27:46 Terence: "There are certain episodes in the life of a female which are guaranteed to be boundary dissolving." 29:00 Terence: "The beginning of wisdom, I believe, is the ability to accept an inherent messiness in your explanation of what’s going on." . . . "For me, the creative act is the letting down of the net of human imagination into the ocean of chaos on which we are suspended and the attempt to bring out of it ideas." 32:37 Terence: "For me the imagination is the goal of history. I see culture as an effort to literally realize our collective dreams." 37:30 Terence: "There will come a moment which will be an absolute leap into space, and we will simply have to have the faith that there is something waiting there, because the dominator style has left us no choice." 45:01 Terence: "Fear it is that guards the vineyard." . . . "So the fear of the psychedelic experience is quite literally the fear of losing control." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Sheldon Norberg PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 02:40 News of a Mexican informant for the DEA who committed murder while wearing a wire for the U.S. 05:30 Reminiscences of (and synchronicities at) Burning Man 2006 08:15 Discussion about Sheldon’s book, Confessions of a Dope Dealer 10:44 How Sheldon got into the dope dealing business 18:24 Using cannabis is a socializing ritual for young people 24:25 On being un-comfortably numb and doing work with psychedelics 31:08 Do most heavy users eventually reach a point where they move from using psychedelics primarily for pleasure to using them primarily for a studied expansion of their own consciousness? 34:36 Psychedelics are astronomically more powerful and completely different from alcohol 36:40 The "Third I" theory of tripping 43:38 Living in tripland isn’t always beneficial Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Links: Sheldon Norberg – Progressive Drug Educator "Confessions of a Dope Dealer"

Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 02:14 Ralph Abraham: Takes issue with McKenna’s and Sheldrake’s interpretation of chaotic attractors. . . . To a mathematician, the word ‘attractor’ does not necessarily imply attraction. 07:23 Rupert Sheldrake: "But Newtonian physics and the triumph of the mechanistic system, in my opinion, only works because what it was seeking to deny was introduced into it by a kind of subterfuge and pretended that this was a mechanical principle whereas it was something else." 09:37 Ralph: "The idea of two dimensional time could aid us here." . . . The problem with the teleological approach is that the cause is in the future. 10:54 Ralph: "The more interesting idea is to make a model for evolution itself." . . . "The determinant of evolution [in the case being discussed] is the free will in the moment as the collective action of the citizens in the present." 13:24 Rupert: … discuses the concept of morphic attractors as a way of dealing with the fact that somehow, in the present, the person, etc. is subject to the influence of a potential future state that hasn’t yet come into being. "But that future state is what directs and guides and attracts the development of the present system." 14:26 Terence McKenna: "Well, this is all very interesting." . . . "The modeling task, ne plus ultra, is history. This is where you’re no longer playing a little game to demonstrate something to a group of students or colleagues." . . . "I think the whole reason history has bogged down in the 20th century is because of the absence of belief in an attractor." 20:31 Terence: "Our cultural phase transition that we are going through, vis a vie machines, may signify that we are not, as I have always thought, very close to the maximized state of novelty, but that we’re out there somewhere in the middle of that wave . . . " 22:41 Rupert: "I think there’s a very big difference between spoken language and written language." 25:16 Ralph: "Well, I imagine, just to be contrary, that mathematics preceded not only writing, but mathematics probably preceded language as well." . . . "We could reach a point where we had models that were decent in some sense to aid us in the understanding of complex social relationships." 33:06 Terence: "[Ralph] do you still cling to the mathematical proof of the impossibility of monogamy?" 34:16 Terence: "And in a way that’s what I see the three of us and others mentionable as doing. We’re trying to create a self-fulfilling prophecy where it’s such a good idea that it will act as an attractor, and the world will move toward that form." 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) 01:23 Ralph Abraham: A short primer on chaos theory. . . . The emergence of form from a field of chaos. 08:57 Rupert Sheldrake: "The problem I have with chaos theory . . . " The issue of indeterminacy in the real world. . . . The illusion of total predictability. . . . Indeterminacy may exist not just at the quantum level but at all levels of natural organization. . . . How form arises from chaos. . . . In some sense, energy may be seen as an agent of change. 21:24 Rupert: The question of how do new fields, new forms, come into being in the first place? Where do they come from? . . . The nature of the mathematical realm, the formative realm. Is there a kind of mathematical realm before the universe, somehow beyond space and time. [lozo: he goes on a kind of Olaf Stapelton riff] . . . 26:04 Rupert: "The view that I want to consider is that the world soul, or the world imagination, makes up these forms as it goes along, that there isn’t, out there, a kind of mathematical mind already fixed or already full." 28:40 Ralph: "I think that with mathematics we can make a model for anything." . . . "Mathematics could be regarded simply an extension of language. . . . Words, I think, are frequently inadequate." 34:18 Ralph: "But the truth is this theory can be used to model everything. So it never settles any questions as to the origin of things or the true nature of ordinary reality." 37:40 Rupert: "Are the fields of reality more real than the models we use to model them with. Or is there a kind of mathematics yet more fundamental the fields?" 38:57 Ralph: What mathematics means to me . . . a description of the mathematical landscape. . . . "Mathematics is the supreme tool for the extension of our language for dealing with complex systems." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 01:34 Rupert Sheldrake: "It’s like the creative process is like the welling up of new forms." . . . "I think in our own case the one model for this is dreams." . . . "It seems almost impossible to have an expected dream." . . . "Our imagination is also released through psychedelics, in its extreme form." . . . "Is there a kind of Gaian dreaming taking place on the night side of the planet?" 05:03 Terence McKenna: "I think a Gaian dream would be human history." . . . "It [the psychedelic experience] seems rather to be an ontological reality of its own that the human being has simply been privileged to briefly observe." . . . "To my mind, the imagination is the source of all creativity." 07:53 Rupert: "So do you think that the psychedelic experience is then the tapping into the Gain imagination?" 08:02 Terence: "Absolutely, and I think psychedelic experiences and dreams are different only in degree." . . . "Imagine in hindsight the wisdom we would impute to Gaia if we were to suddenly realize that what is happening on this planet is that nature knows that the sun is going to explode.". . . Perhaps our species has been called forth to organize an escape. . . . "The Gaian mind is a real mind, and its messages are real messages, and our task . . . is to try and extract this message…" 14:54 Rupert: "The question for me is this . . . how is the Gaian imagination related to the solar system, and how is the solar system’s imagination related to the imagination of the galaxy . . . ?" 15:21 Terence: "Well, I’m not sure I want to follow you into the cosmic Christ." . . . "I think there should always be some physical stuff to hang these things on." . . . "There are enough places in the solar system where there is enough complex chemistry that I can imagine these very large, self-reflecting entelechies to get going over billions of years." 17:41 Rupert: "I think a factor that changes everything is the discovery of dark matter. . . . This recent discovery effectively tells us the whole cosmos and every material thing in it has a kind of unconscious." 18:34 Terence: "I assume that psychedelics change your channel [of the imagination] . . . to a channel which is playing the classical music of an alien civilization . . . " . . . "Appearances are merely the local slice of the divine imagination." 29:26 Terence: "A new phenomenon has been discovered in the universe, which is its drawing togetherness, its tendency towards cohesion, its tendency to move toward greater and greater states of wholeness, and not incrementally but in sudden highly punctuated stages that allow phenomenon like history or the 20th century to come into being. These are great leaps forward that nature pushes toward." . . . "We each have our own apocalypse, and so I think we should live life in anticipation of it." 32:02 Terence: "I think probably self-reflection arose fairly early in the history of the Earth, and that the Earth is a minded, integrated kind of entity. . . . The planet thinks. It perceives." 35:05 Rupert: "The Earth is alive, and it involves some kind of organizing principle." . . . What kind of consciousness, then, does it have? . . . "Does Gaia have dreams and imaginings?" 42:24 Terence: "Language seems to be seeking to decouple itself from matter." . . . "This now is apparently the only way we can keep from destroying the planet, is by literally going off into the imagination, which is not a dimension of the physics of space and time, it’s actually a syntactical dimension." . . . "For my money, language is on a journey to the eternal imagination through the process of creativity, having begun in chaos and having a kind of inevitable end in chaos more properly re-visioned, re-met, re-understood. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Myron Stolaroff PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 03:13 "My talk is about the future of human consciousness." 08:18 " The discovery of who we are and what our potential can be was given an enormous boost when Dr. Albert Hofmann came forward with LSD." 11:11"What is it like to enter the dimensions of higher consciousness? . . . I have been unusually blessed to have the privilege of entering dimensions never previously imagined.. . . just having experienced glimpses is enough to muster determination to press forward, for it is now clear that our Real Self, the true I that resides in the heart of each of us, is present and available, and is worth far more than anything one could possibly imagine." 14:45"There is no question that the appropriate use of LSD can open many important doors." 16:51 "The greatest sources of pain come from mistreatment, particularly at a young age where comprehension has not yet developed. Fear, pain, neglect, accidents, forced restrictions, are all sources of such discomfort that our psyche buries these feelings deep into the unconscious. A good psychedelic experience can open us to these restricted levels, and permit discharging these uncomfortable feelings." 20:36"It is essential to put into action what one has learned. Otherwise our inner self can get discouraged, and depression can follow." 23:13"The more we progress, the more we learn to open up and resolve inappropriate material. In general, most of us don’t care for pain. but I have learned that pain is an excellent teacher." 28:51"Since 1965 I learned that psychedelic substances were the most powerful learning tools available to mankind. Complex, powerful, they are easily misused and abused. Yet for the sincere seeker, armed with honesty, courage, and an unquenchable thirst for Self discovery, I know of no other means that can so readily provide self-understanding, and the ultimate nature of Reality. Nor that can so readily reveal the source of most of the difficulties of the human race, and the most appropriate path to their resolution." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Photos by Higinio Gonzalez

Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 02:36 Rupert Sheldrake: Bringing together the idea of creation and imagination, or evolutionary creativity. . . . There is a profound crisis in science that will change science as we know it because the two fundamental models concerning the basic nature of reality that we have are coming to a head-on collision. "If the universe is evolving, then the laws of nature are evolving as well." . . . [Perhaps] "things are as they are because they were as they were." . . . "There must be an interplay between habit and creativity." . . "Could there be a kind of imagination working in nature?" . . . 16:32 Terence McKenna: "If the laws of nature are eternal, where were they before the big bang?" . . . . "The immense improbability that modern science rests on, but cares not to discuss, is this: The belief that the universe sprang from nothing in a single moment." . . . "History is the tracks in the snow left by creativities wandering in the divine imagination." . . . "Chaos is the birthplace of order. Chaos is not the problem. Chaos is the answer." 33:55 Rupert: "Matter is in a sense dense because it is so deeply habitual." . . . "I’m interested in the posibility that the imagination isn’t all there, all worked out in potential in advance, but rather that the world truly is made up as it goes along." . . . "And instead of [imagination] emerging, as it were, from the light in the future, or from a kind of Platonic mind, it may emerge from something much more like the unconscious mind. It may come into light from darkness, and the formative processes of the imagination may not be sparks leaping from the mind of god but rather new forms welling up from the womb of chaos." 41:24 Terence: "It seems to me that the problem revolves around this notion of purpose." . . . "Time is a topological manifold over which events must flow subject to the constraints of the manifold, and I call the surface of the manifold "novelty". 46:50 Rupert: "The question is, ‘Are the new forms arising in the attractor, or is the attractor simply attracting what is already a diversity of forms through a process that lies between them, as it were, the imagination?’ " 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) 04:36 – Terence McKenna introduces the Trialogue concept and history 08:46 – Rupert Sheldrake introduces himself, talks about his theory of morphogenic resonance, and tells of his first meeting with Terence and Ralph 20:16 – Terence talks about his fascination with natural history, gives a little more background on his life, and explains how he came to develop his theory of novelty 32:50 – Ralph Abraham tells how he and Terence met, how Rupert joined the group, and he gives an overview of chaos theory and how it opened up previously unavailable areas of investigation to mathematical analysis. Then he explains how the three of them will attempt to conduct this, their first public trialogue. 46:55 – Terence "The flutter of the moth’s wings can trigger a hurricane. This is not a poetic statement. This is a fact of the matter within this kind of description of nature." "The world is not an engine running down toward a heat death, but a tremendous kaleidoscope of unpredictable, creative, open-ended activity on every level." "How the world fits together, it fits together through the infusion of its invisible soul." 52:33 – Rupert tells "the story of the bunny." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Daniel Pinchbeck PROGRAM NOTES: Here is Daniel Pinchbeck speaking at the Oracle Gathering in Seattle at the end of October 2006 where he discussed "meeting the other". In this presentation he asks, are the entities met in aliens abductions, fairy stories, and psychedelic visions actual "others" or projected aspects of our own psyche? How can we understand and articulate these encounters in a meaningful way? Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Lorenzo PROGRAM NOTES: This is a talk that Lorenzo gave at an Oracle Gathering in Seattle at the end of October 2006. In it he discusses three possible approaches to the 2012 meme: Muddling along, waiting for a mystical/magical transformation, or taking charge of your own life and planning for a personal change even though no major external events occur. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Dale Pendell PROGRAM NOTES: In his 2006 Palenque Norte lecture at Burning Man, Dale Pendell introduced the concept of Horizon Anarchism, and we are fortunate to be able to present this talk in its entirity in this edition of the Psychedelic Salon. If you think you know everyting there is to know about anarchism, you owe it to yourself to hear Dale’s talk about this interesting new approach. One of my favorite soundbites is "Isolation is one of the keys of state power. So it is very important for us to get together and have fun." Photo (at right) taken at Burning Man 2006 by Lorenzo Dale Pendell’s new book, Inspired Madness: The Gifts of Burning Man is now available in your local bookstore and in Lorenzo's Amazon store. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Nick Sand PROGRAM NOTES: In his 2006 Palenque Norte lecture at Burning Man, Nick Sand explains how best to use some of the more interesting combinations of sacred medicines. Additionally he answered a wide range of questions that included such diverse topics as the relationship of the atomic bomb to LSD and the reasons he left the quiet life of academia to create Orange Sunshine, which was considered to be some of the best acid available in the 1960s. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Ann & Sasha Shulgin PROGRAM NOTES: This program features Ann and Sasha Shulgin in their 2006 appearance at Burning Man where they participated in the Palenque Norte lecture series with their ever-popular "Ask the Shulgins" question and answer session. Questions that the Shulgins answered that day included such diverse issues as: What is your favorite drug? What do you think about using drugs with psychotherapy How do you feel about chronic drug use How do you know that the psychedelic path is one you should go down What advice do you have for couples who are on a psychedelic path What do you think about polydrug use Also, Sasha describes how his first mescaline experience led to his future experiments with various compounds . . . and he warns about the unpredictability of these substances. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option More Burning Man 2006 photos

Guest speakers: Alex Grey, Allyson Grey, Martina Hoffmann, and Roberto Venosa This program is part two of the Art Panel presentation for the Palenque Norte lectures at the 2006 Burning Man festival. In this program Alex Grey talks about the purpose of visionary art, Allyson Grey explains her vision of personal sacred spaces,Martina Hoffmann advises us to not underestimate our own creativity, and Roberto Venosa describes the process of channeling energy from higher dimensions into visionary art. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Alex & Allyson Grey, Martina Hoffmann, Roberto Venosa PROGRAM NOTES: This program is part one of the Art Panel presentation for the Palenque Norte lectures at the 2006 Burning Man festival. In this program Alex Grey talks about the purpose of visionary art, Allyson Grey explains her vision of personal sacred spaces, Martina Hoffmann advises us to not underestimate our own creativity, and Roberto Venosa describes the process of channeling energy from higher dimensions into visionary art. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Daniel Pinchbeck PROGRAM NOTES: Daniel Pinchbeck brings us up to date with his current thinking about mythical cycles, the Mayan calendar, time as aquality, psychic evolution, and a wide range of other topics that he investigated while researching his new book, 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl. Among other things Daniel discusses in this, his 2006 Palenque Norte lecture at Burning Man, is "a massive upsurge in synchronicities" and "reality becoming more psychically malleable". Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Erik Davis PROGRAM NOTES: In his inspiring 2006 Palenque Norte lecture at Burning Man, Erik Davis takes a peek at what the future may have in store for us. And contrary to so much of the doom and gloom we hear all around us these days, Erik’s message is that there is much hope for humanity in the future. This talk is certainly thought-provoking and is not to be missed. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option You might also want to take a look at Erik’s new book, The Visionary State: A Journey Through California’s Spiritual Landscape

Guest speakers: Mark Pesce, Erik Davis, Daniel Pinchbeck, Alex Grey, Allyson Grey, and Nick Sand PROGRAM NOTES: This was the most ambitious schedule yet for the Palenque Norte lectures, 39 speakers in four days. Thanks to the good folks at Entheon Village who provided the facility, which was one of the largest tents on the playa this year, they took place without too many problems sneaking up on us. In this podcast you will hear sound bites from the talks given by Mark Pesce, Erik Davis, Daniel Pinchbeck, Alex Grey, Allyson Grey, and Nick Sand. In the weeks ahead, their complete presentations will be podcast for those of you who weren’t able to make it to the burn this year. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Photo (at right) taken at Burning Man 2006 by Lorenzo More of Lorenzo’s photos from the 2006 Burning Man Festival

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer and Galen Brandt PROGRAM NOTES: Terence McKenna once called Bruce Damer “a visionary’s visionary,” and Bruce certainly lived up to that reputation in his 2003 Burning Man presentation. Combining subjects as diverse as evolution, psychedelic experiences, and physics, he builds a mental construct to rival Olaf Stapleton’s classic workStarmaker. In addition to Bruce’s ideas about a conscious universe, we were also treated to an inspiring rap by his wife, Galen Brandt, as she explains the lure of the Burning Man experience. Download      MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option