Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: During the 1980's, before the birth of the Web, Terence McKenna's workshops were just about the only source of information about psychedelics that reached the streets. While there was some information about psychoactive plants available in professional journals and university libraries, it took Terence to pull out this information and repackage it for the rest of us. In this June 1989 workshop, he does what he did best back then, give us a detailed inventory, continent by continent, of the psychoactive plants native to each area, along with a brief history of how humans interacted with them in the distant past. [The following quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “We can't sell short the spiritual power of cannabis, especially when eaten.” “In a way, this is a definition of shamanism. A shaman is a person who by some means has gotten out of their own culture.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Sasha Shulgin PROGRAM NOTES: On June 2, 2014 Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin passed on to his next adventure. Although this podcast is a tribute to his life and work, I have decided to let it be told mainly in his own words. First you will hear the audio portion of a video tribute to Ann and Sasha Shulgin. Following that is a short interview of Sasha that was conducted by Terence McKenna. In closing I play the famous talk that Sasha gave at the 1983 Psychedelics and Spirituality Conference. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option A Tribute to the Shulgins /*

Guest speaker: Rick Doblin PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Rick Doblin.] “Once you've produced the scientific data that's necessary to make a drug into a medicine, you've gone a long way towards mainstreaming the acceptance of these drugs as having beneficial properties. And then the step to legalization is not that far behind that.” “The government has a monopoly on the supply of marijuana that you can use in FDA-approved research. So even though there are 20 states and the District of Columbia [that have legalized medical marijuana], and there's marijuana everywhere, we've spent seven years trying to get 10 grams of marijuana for vaporizer research. We're the only people in America that can't get 10 grams of marijuana.” “We are all dying and we all have some anxiety about it. And so people are more scared of dying than they are of drugs. If we can show that people who are facing death can be assisted with psychedelics that's a powerful message.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option MAPS Sponsored: MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy Research “The New Drug They Call 'Ecstasy' ” (New York Magazine, May 20, 1985) "Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate" (video) "Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate" (podcast)

Guest speakers: Glenn Greenwald and Stefan Molyneux PROGRAM NOTES: “What the NSA has done is essentially converted the Internet from this unprecedented zone of freedom into the most powerful means of surveillance ever known in human history.” -Glenn Greenwald [NOTE: The following quotations are by Stefan Molyneux.] “If we have a bitcoin universe, you don't get to print money for war. You don't get to have money for a prison/industrial complex. You don't get money for a war on drugs. You have to ask the people.” “So bitcoin gives us an opportunity to reclaim the power of the people to say yes or no to what the government claims that it wants to do.” “Freedom for the government is enslavement for the people. When the government is free the people are enslaved. When the government is contained then the people are free.” “To limit money is to limit political power.” “If we have a bitcoin universe, you don't get to print money for war. You don't get to print money for a prison/industrial complex. You don't get to print money for a war on drugs. You have to ask the people.” “When you give government the power to control the money supply, it grows like a tumor until it extinguishes society itself.” “There is going to be enormous amounts of resistance to the adoption of bitcoin, but I really believe that it's about the most peaceful revolution that we can have in this world.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option /*

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “We can step out of the assumption of a universal history in which we're trapped, and realizing this is the beginning of a kind of liberation.” “Our assumptions are the edges of our worlds.” “When we really understand time travel we may find out it's as common as dirt and has been going on all around us is all kinds of physical processes.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The moment is where we spend most of our time.” “Reality is a term that if it's used at all it's used in philosophy, in ontology, in epistemology. It is not a concept that you hear very often on the lips of scientists.” “The 'fallacy of misplaced concreteness' is the belief that there is something, somewhere which is real, which can be depended upon, which everything else can be referenced back to. And as long as you are victim of this fallacy you are philosophically naive and probably not at ease psychologically.” “The ego is this strange transference of loyalty from the group to the self, the individual body.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Occam's Razor is fine in the formation of physical theory, but it doesn't take us far in understanding human motivation.” “What the psychedelics seem to me to argue for is that reality is not reality. There may be no reality, but certainly this is not it. This is some kind of highly provisional, culturally sanctioned, hallucination that we are all participating in.” “Reality, whatever it is, is temporary and yields to non-existence.” “Thought can't go where the roads of language have not been built.” “Culture is a kind of environment that we have learned how to interpose between ourselves and whatever is really out there.” “I just don't think that a monkey species had the wherewithal to evade the mechanisms of control and constraint that guide and direct everything on the planet. There is a purpose to history.” “What is to be done? You can't begin to answer that question until you have some notion of what reality is.” “But all it takes [when two people are sitting together in silence] is somebody breaking that silence and stating the contents of their mind for the assumption of our shared reality to completely collapse upon us.” “I think great relationships are built in silence, because then nobody ever finds out what's really going on.” “Reality is a naive concept and should probably be abandoned as quickly as possible.” “What we call reality is, in fact, nothing more than a culturally-sanctioned and linguistically reinforced hallucination of some sort.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Joh Isaac Mitchell & Michael Goldstein PROGRAM NOTES: Today we feature two interesting talks: Art as Technology and Crypto-anarchy. The first talk is from the 2013 Palenque Norte Lectures that were held at the Burning Man Festival. And that story is followed by a concise explanation of how bitcoin technology evolved and that cryptocurrency is only the tip of its iceberg. And should you harbor fears that bitcoin is a government operation, there is this quote by Michael Goldsetin: “Satoshi could have been an NSA backed totalitarian, but his protocol is strictly anarchist. He could have easily been paid by the government to create it, but he created something that the government itself cannot shut down. And the protocol itself is strictly anti-government in the sense that it does not allow for government.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Follow Michael Goldstein on Twitter Satoshi Nakamoto Institute Cypherpunk in Wikipedia A Cypherpunk's Manifesto Crypto Anarchy and Virtual Communities John Gilmore on the Psychedelic Salon Cryptonomicon by Neal Stephenson

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “It is not that culture is evolving. The evolution of culture is an epiphenomena attendant upon the evolution of language. Language is the part of man that is evolving. Culture carries along.” "I think people have a greater sensitivity to the mysteries of human interaction simply because so much LSD was taken in the Sixties." “The world is not nearly as chaotic and random as we suppose. We are actually trapped inside a giant organism. And it is not Gaia. That's a much larger organism. We are trapped inside a large organism which is the human collectivity, and that's why we are such different monkeys.” “But really the psychedelic experience is like an intimation of immortality. And at varying distances in time from the point you occupy it shows you ever more vague intimations of the future, but they are there nevertheless.” “What the psychedelics really do, I think, is release us from cultural machinery.” “There is a potential for immortality, but it isn't assured. It is something which comes to the courageous.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Various PROGRAM NOTES: The Worldwide #WaveOfAction begins April 4, 2014 and runs through July 4, 2014. During this three-month cycle, people throughout the world will be protesting corruption, rallying around solutions and taking part in alternative systems. The new paradigm will be on full display. As our part in this WAVE, the salon will feature periodic reports from this global ripple in our species-consciousness. This is the first of those podcasts. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Actify ~ Wave of Action ~ 4.4.14 Video sources of audio segments Dwayne Hoover's Podcast Song Download "Mushroom Man" (download)

Guest speaker: Paul Daley PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features the 2013 Palenque Norte Lecture by Dr. Paul Daley in which he talks about Sasha Shulgin, his life and his work. Paul is one of the key people who has stepped in to consolidate and continue the experimental research begun by Dr. Shulgin. In addition to telling about Sasha's chemical research, Dr. Daley also talks about some of the reasons Sasha has given for why he does what he does. And we also hear about some of the ongoing research taking place in Sasha's laboratory, including research into a possible remedy for cluster headaches. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Daniel Pinchbeck PROGRAM NOTES: “If you step back from it and really think about what the mass media does on a global scale, the most significant thing it does is coordinate behaviour.” -Daniel Pinchbeck Today we feature Daniel Pinchbeck's 2013 Palenque Norte Lecture. This talk/conversation took place late one night during the Burning Man Festival in the big tent at Camp Soft Landing, which hosted the annual lecture series. Prompted by questions from the audience, Daniel touches on a wide range of topics that included Rudolph Stiener, reincarnation, ecology, shamanism, mysticism, planetary crisis, morphagenic fields, and he even touches on Bitcoin. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Alicia Danforth & Charlie Grob PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a 2013 Palenque Norte lecture given by Alicia Danforth in which she tells about her work with the autistic community and their use of MDMA. Following that is a recording of a conversation with Alicia and Dr. Charlie Grob, who have just begun a new study to investigate the potential of using MDMA to help ease the social anxiety that is sometimes experienced by our friends and fellow saloners in the autistic community. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option LINKS mentioned in this podcast: Study Information: MDMA-assisted Therapy for Social Anxiety in Autistic Adults “What Is Autism?” by Nick Walker Exploring therapeutic effects of MDMA on post-traumatic stress Podcast 380 – “Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate” Podcast Archive for Gary Fisher MDMA-Assisted Psychotherapy

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “I have been underwhelmed by the accomplishments of Indian spirituality, personally; overwhelmed by the accomplishments of Amazonian spirituality.” “I'm also very suspicious of secrets. I mean, if you tell me one it's finished. I took a pledge long ago to tell all secrets as quickly as possible. . . . Secrets are a way of controlling other people.” “Post-historical existence would be non-linear. People would live in time the way now live in space.” “That's how I think of psychedelics. When I say boundary dissolution, the real boundaries I'm talking about are the boundaries of dimensionality. The way a shaman is able to do what shamans do is by transcending Newtonian space and time.” “Here's my model: The mind is like a crystal growing under pressure, and the pressure is the pressure of Newtonian space/time. And so the crystal grows and takes the shape of its confinement. But when you liquefy the crystal matrix with a psychedelic, it has another preferred geometry. And it unfolds into this second geometry. And the second and alternative geometry is more hyper-spacial. Culturally, our minds are confined by cultural pressure and cultural phase-space to reflect cultural concerns. . . . When you take a psychedelic and you dissolve the confinement . . . then it's like taking [the mind] out of its box, and it can configure itself in a more comfortable geometry, and it's free.” “In a sense, chess is like good practice for shamanism, because good chess players see deeply into the future. That's how you win chess games.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Interview with Shonagh Home on Shamanic Freedom Radio Podcast 360 with Shonagh Home – “Medicine Oracle & Spellbreaker”

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “This nuclear family thing is, I think, part of the root of our problem, that it is an engine for the production of neurotic, dysfunctional people.” “If guys really got as much sex as they think they want they would probably hand over the machinery of civilization without a fight.” “I'm interested in the moral consequences of taking psychedelics.” “Everything that is, is an anticipation of what will be.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Podcast 380 – “Confessions of an Ecstasy Advocate”

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The 20th century is a great gathering for a leap, and the 19th century was the century of the gentleman.” “Whether we can actually make a new world is not clear because the momentum of the past is very great.” “The bigger you build the bonfire of understanding the more darkness you reveal.” “Belief is a curious reaction to the present at hand. It isn't to be believed. It's to be dealt with.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Dr. George Greer PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by George Greer.] “Meaning: the final addiction!” “Meaning is suffering.” “How do you feel your experience would be different if you 'understood' the universe? How would your experience be different from right now?” “My thought about MDMA is that it blocks the fear response to a perceived emotional threat.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option GEORGE R. GREER, MD Co-Founder, Medical Director, Secretary of the Heffter Research Institute Spheres & Constellations by Farthest South

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Psychedelics, by metling assumptions, by destroying the expectations of rigid educations creates a fluidity of possibility that may allow answers to emerge. And it's the only thing that I've seen that operates on a time scale sufficiently short to have an impact.” “Language is a strategy for binding time.” “The other thing is that biology works. It's very successful. It's been around more than a billion years. Civilization doesn't work. It's been around 10,000 years, and it's on the brink of meltdown.” “We fabricate ideas out of matter. No other creature does that.” “One of the unique things that is happening on the planet is that the fate of all life is becoming hinged to the decisions made by a single species.” “If there's not free will, then thinking is meaningless.” “But all we have to do is hit one speed bump, and democratic values are down the drain.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “That's the key thing that the archaic world knew that we don't know: How do you live in equilibrium so that your children may live in equilibrium, because otherwise you get a cycle started that's going to shove somebody over the cliff. And that somebody in the present case is either ourselves, our children, or their children. It's no further away in time than that.” “We love to congratulate ourselves on the forward-leaning liberal society that we live in, and the truth is it's a bunch of rattle snake-handling fundamentalists that are much closer to Stalin than they are to FDR or anybody else like that.” “If you look at the fossil record, 95% of all the species that have ever lived on the Earth are extinct. From that point of view it looks as though biology is a process for producing extinction.” “You talk about a well-kept secret that's only two tokes away? How do they keep the lid on this? That's the miracle to me. How do they keep the lid on this?” [smoked NN-DMT] “These chemicals, these plant hallucinogens, are pheromones laden with messages for humanity, but you have to pick up the telephone.” “I think the world is growing more psychedelic every day. I'm completely hopeful. . . . This is how it should be. This is what it's like when a species prepares to depart for hyperspace.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Hallucinogens and Shamanism by Michael J. Harner The Terence McKenna Experience by Ken Adams Quasar shines a bright light on cosmic web

Guest speaker: Roland Griffiths PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a talk given by Roland Griffiths, who is a professor in the departments of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, and Neuroscience at Johns Hopkins Medicine. In addition to describing the current psychedelic studies being undertaken there, he also goes into detail about exactly what characteristics researchers consider when evaluating whether a person has actually had a spiritual experience. Among the research participant's comments that he read, one of the most common themes was the interconnectedness of all things and beings. Also, he spoke about their research into the character of one's personality in regards to how a psychedelic experience affected their openness to the experiences of life. Another interesting thing that his research group is investigating is the intersection of psilocybin and meditation, a discussion of which takes up a significant part of this talk. “Psilocybin is a pharmacological tool that helps people recognize how it feels to embody the present moment. And that's exactly the same of meditation. It's about bringing yourself into the present moment.” -Roland Griffiths Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Johns Hopkins University Psilocybin & Spirituality Current Psilocybin Research Projects Q&A with Roland Griffiths