Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Dr. Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.] “From my earliest years I wanted to figure out what life was about. I wanted to find out why I was here so that my actions and my desires would have some meaning. I don't understand why everyone isn't mainly and centrally a philosopher, because if you aren't trying to figure that out for yourself you're borrowing, or begging, or passively taking on someone elses philosophy, and this may lead to situations that are unsatisfactory.” “A philosopher never gets in trouble if his ideas are not new.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option  

Guest speakers: Tom Barbalet and Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: Today we are taking a slightly different tack and heading into the cyber world of Artificial Life, which may sound like a contradiction or may sound like life in the hectic Western world these days. While this field may be controversial to old-line scientists, of late it has gained more traction and is proving to be the source of much new understanding about the way life has come to be. Our hosts for this conversation are Tom Barbalet and Bruce Damer, two leaders in the field of AL and who are the cornerstones of Biota.org, the Web's leading site for AL information. Surprisingly, their discussion quickly turns from things only true geeks can love to speculations about the work of Terence McKenna, psychedelics, and the possibility that all of us may be in the process of becoming machine elves. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Biota.org Noble Ape.com Damer.com Evogrid.org

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “There is no catalog of psychedelic effects, and so how does one know what the full spectrum is? It's a very tricky matter.” “At five dried grams (of magic mushrooms) it's very easy to invoke a voice, a kind of logos-like phenomenon, which operates as the typical hierophant. It's the teaching voice. It's Virgil to Dante. It's a very large and superior force which takes you by the hand and then narrates the various scenarios that you're conveyed through. … The trick is to get something out of it and get away clean.” “Human language is a psychic ability. I can make thoughts in your head by simply uttering small mouth noises.” “It is not that culture is evolving. The evolution of culture is an epiphenomenon attendant upon the evolution of language. Language is the part of man which is evolving. Culture carries along. At the present moment we are able to speak 21st centuries ideas to each other, but our culture is carrying along at about the 1950s level.” “We are not going to move into the future until we create that future through language.” “I believe that people have deeper and subtler senses of humor. I think that people have more refined aesthetic sensitivity. I think people have a greater sensitivity to the mysteries of human interaction simply because so much LSD was taken in the Sixties. And these are permanent changes that will not be wiped out.” “We're very fond of the notion of an ever-expanding sphere of understanding. But has anyone stopped to notice that if you have an ever-expanding sphere of understanding, necessarily the surface volume of the frontier of the unknown becomes larger and larger. It's like building a bonfire bigger and bigger to convince yourself that there's an awful lot of darkness.” “You can discover [using psychedelics] actually that the adventure of being is not a cultural adventure. It's not a societal adventure. It's a personal adventure, and that this is what you really need to be involved in.” “There is always a low level of mutants in a population, but they are of no consequence as long as the selective parameters remain the same. But when the selective parameters change suddenly these individuals, who were previously masked in the general population, the selective advantage that they have now comes immediately to the fore. And they act very quickly, and critically, to send the evolution of a given species off in a different direction. . . . It's that the new types were always there but not with any advantage. It's that the new situation has conferred a sudden advantage on them, and they are moving then into positions of dominance in the population, or the society if we're talking about human beings. I think that the psychedelic experience is like that at the present level. There is a population of different people in the general population, and as conditions change these people will be seen to have adaptive advantages.” “What the psychedelics really do, I think, is release us from cultural machinery and put you right up against the human essence.” “I think there is a potential for immortality, but it isn't assured. It is something that comes to the courageous. And somehow in the historical experience we've gotten the idea, through orthodox religions, that salvation comes to the subservient, and this is totally wrong. It is more like the Greek ideal of the hero, that if you're heroic enough once you're dead you'll be a god. And I think this is what these things summon us all to.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Weekend of June 15-17, 2012 "Terence McKenna: Beyond 2012" Esalen Workshop with Bruce Damer and Lorenzo

Guest speakers: Eileen Workman and Matt Pallamary PROGRAM NOTES: Matt Pallamary interviews Eileen Workman, co-founder of the Universe Project who spent sixteen years working in the financial services industry, most recently as a First Vice President of Investments with a major Wall Street investment firm. Her new book, Sacred Economics: The Currency of Life has been praised by many, including Barbara Marx Hubbard, co-founder and chairperson of the board of The Foundation for Conscious Evolution who says of it: Occasionally in human history a clear voice of good sense and compassion rises from the multitudes caught in the memetic mud of obsolete ideas about current reality. Thomas Jefferson was such a voice when he stated: "All men are created equal" at a time when there was no equality, at all. So now Eileen Workman sends a clear and intelligent message: We can live beyond the current monetary economy better, longer, kinder and more joyfully, and here is how to begin. Even though it might seem impossible, as the system continues to breakdown and the inequalities grow, her voice increasingly serves us as a guide to the next stage of evolutionary economics. We should all read it and place our faith and actions in the good sense it offers us, guiding us toward the next era of economics in the coming age. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Eileen's Blog

Guest speakers: Dr. Albert Hofmann and Peter Gorman PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Albert Hofmann.] “I reported about this bicycle ride because I had the feeling that time would stand still. It was a very strange feeling that I had never had before, this change in the experience of time.” “It [my first LSD experience] became such a strange experience that I feared to have become insane.” “At the climax I had the feeling to be already out of my body.” “It [LSD] works on the very center of our psychic existence.” “Nobody has died from toxic doses of LSD, not one case. All of the fatal cases were by accidents due to the disturbances of the consciousness of the senses.” “They did not see any special effect on animals, because LSD works only on very high spiritual centers, on consciousness, which animals don't have.” “[Research with morning glory seeds] shows us that LSD is not just a laboratory product. It is closely related chemically, and pharmalogically, psychologically with [morning glory seeds], with this old Indian magic drug. That means that LSD belongs, pharmalogically chemically, with a group of the sacred magic plants of Mexico. That's a very important finding.” “I never believed it [LSD] would become a pleasure drug on the streets.” “I think, of course, the story of LSD is not yet finished at all. If we learn to use it with respect and under the right conditions I am sure the beneficial effects are enormous.” “In antiquity they had institutions where people who liked to have a [psychedelic initiation] could go and have a very well elaborated condition to have a beneficial effect. But we have not this. We have not. Doesn't exist.” “I think the next thing that can be reasonably asked is that LSD and the psychedelics should be legally available in psychiatry. As doctors have access to morphine, they have access to cocaine, they have no access to LSD. This must be changed. This should be changed.” “That is also important, that LSD produces no addiction.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Peter Gorman, Writer, Explorer, Naturalist LSD Testing on British Troops

Guest speakers: Allen Ginsberg, Ram Das, Laura Huxley, Peter Gorman PROGRAM NOTES: As us Monty Python fans love to hear, “Now for something completely different.” Well, not really. But today's program is a little different in that instead of featuring just one speaker we have an audio collage that includes Allen Ginsberg, Ram Das, and Laura Huxley. A finer collection of psychedelic elders you would be hard-pressed to find. First of all is a rare recording of a telephone interview of Allen Ginsberg by then “High Times” editor, Peter Gorman. When Gorman asked for a story about Timothy Leary, Ginsberg tells of the time that Leary came to his New York apartment to meet Jack Kerouac and they took psilocybin together Next is a brief conversation that Peter has with Ram Das during which we learn some more of the background of the early days at Millbrook and the interesting series of events that led up to going there. The last segment is another Peter Gorman interview, this time with Laura Huxley in which she tells of some of her own experiences with LSD. It's a short program but packed with interesting historical ancetdotes. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Personal Message from Eldridge Cleaver to Timothy Leary Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary A Kickstarter campaign for Joanna Harcourt-Smith

Guest speakers: Oscar Janiger and Peter Gorman PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Oscar Janiger.] [In regards to the dangers of taking LSD] “Not everybody is committed to go to Everest. Not everybody is going to go to the Serengeti and shoot lions or whatever you want. These are risk-taking adventures. There are people courageous and adventuresome enough who are willing to do it, and when you do it you study your risks.” “You can die of over taking aspirin and drinking too much water, but [not] LSD, and by the way, there is no evidence of physical death from marijuana either.” “It's just the same as we go back to Everest, you can fall of the fuckin' mountain. That's all there is to it. I'm not going to make any apologies for that. You've got to be prepared. You know that old adage that LSD favors the prepared mind.” “[The Sixties was] a time when people began to see that what was laid down for them as obligatory reality was not obligatory.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Wikipedia article about Dr. Oscar Janiger Peter Gorman's 1993 interview with Dr. Albert Hofmann Albert Hofmann.org (online Hofmann Foundation papers)

Guest speakers: Dennis McKenna and Peter Gorman ROBERT VENOSA January 21, 1936 - August 9, 2011 Dear Friends and Community, A great soul has completed his earthly journey and graduated to the next level. The great Venosa left his body on Tuesday August 9, 2011 at 6:56 PM. His transition was graceful and accomplished in the same composed and calm manner that he exuded throughout his life. I feel honored to have been able to accompany him to the gate, having walked 30 beautiful years together in this life. Robert had a long and brave healing journey with cancer and showed incredible strength on this path as well as tremendous courage in facing this great dragon. He believed in the natural healing ability of the human body and proved the doctors wrong time and again, who only gave him a few month’s to live upon his diagnosis over eight years ago. He was a powerful human being. Together he and I, held the piece of his physical struggle safely tucked away from the eyes of the world like a precious pearl. It is with great sadness that I’m sharing this news today but also with deep gratitude, for his magical and special life; fully lived. Even in death he gave those surrounding him a powerful initiation into the scared mysteries of the unknown. We will carry him in our hearts forever, remembering the light he shone on so many. He so appreciated the light that others shone upon him. In loving memory of my great love, compañero, best friend and artistic accomplice. Martina Hoffmann and family PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Dennis McKenna.] “I think that ayahuasca is actually much more controllable than mushrooms. . . . I think that it is quite an amazing tool for self-understanding and for exploration. I think that it's good for you, actually physically and psychologically good for you.” “It's no different than it ever was. When the Jesuits and the missionaries came to meso-America the first things to go, the first things to be stamped out was the knowledge of the sacred plants and the practice of using the sacred plants.” “I think that Christianity linked with Calvinism has a hard time dealing with what you might call facts of biology, which in another phrase is sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. In some ways, life is about sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. Biology is about those things.” “All experience is a drug experience. Whether it's mediated by our own [endogenous] drugs, or whether it's mediated by substances that we ingest that are found in plants, cognition, consciousness, the working of the brain, it's all a chemically mediated process. Life itself is a drug experience.” “He [Terence McKenna] will never let a fact get in the way of making a provocative statement. He's a good story teller, but I think it's important to remember that they are stories, and that he often makes mistakes in his lectures.” “In that position, a guy who can pack the houses every time, I feel has a larger responsibility to the psychedelic community to refrain from making these completely off-the-wall comments, and to actually tell it like it is, not how he imagines it to be.” “I'm sure that Terence views it as theater. I can't believe that he takes what he says seriously. I mean, I can tell you that he doesn't. Much of what he says he says it because it's going to get a rise out of somebody. He's always been that way.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Peter Gorman Writer, Explorer, Naturalist Web Site Blog Archive

Guest speakers: Peter Gorman and Dennis McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Dennis McKenna.] "The idea that you could use these to actually explore other dimensions, real worlds that were outside the cognizance of our ordinary world, is really what I think fascinated me about psychedelics." "More than anything else, it [DMT] seemed to be not an experience, not a drug, but a place, an actual other dimension that you were plunged into." "In order to understand its limitations, I almost had to become the 'enemy'. I had to become a scientist in order to understand the limitations of science." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Peter Gorman Writer, Explorer, Naturalist Web Site Blog Archive File Cleanup Test Thank you for all who worked on this project. ... A solution has been found and the files are being restored :-).

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "It seemed probable to me that this phenomenon encountered in deep psychedelic experiences with psilocybin actually has a potential historical impact. It is a kind of human ability, which is at present submerged in the psyche, contactable only by the shamanic means of journeying into historical hyperspace. In other words, of going into that place where the adumbrations of the future are intense enough that you can have an intimation, at least, of what is to come.” “I think the gradual evolution of language is actually the gradual lifting of the veil that is imposed between ourselves and meaning by the planetary ecology. In other words, the forward thrust of history is actually regulated by the ecology, and it is regulated through control of the evolution of language. Because what you cannot think you cannot do, and where you cannot imagine you cannot steer your culture and go. So I'm proposing on one level that hallucinogens be thought of as social pheromones that regulate the rate at which language develops and therefore regulates the evolution of human culture generally.” “Tribalism is a social form which can exist at any level of technology. It's a complete illusion to associate it with low levels of technology. It is probably, in fact, a form of social organization second only to the family in its ability to endure.” “This is what magic is. It's being able to speak in a voice which makes things happen, being able to speak in a voice which causes facts to be beheld by groups of people in a way that has been purged from profane language, for us relegated to poetry and that sort of thing.” “The history of man that you don't know is what your unconscious is made out of. Just as the history of yourself that you don't know is what your personal unconscious is made out of.” “Knowledge, or verbal facility, is no proof that you know what you're talking about.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Women's Visionary Congress Consciousness, Healing, and Social Justice The Women's Visionary Congress (WVC) is an annual gathering of visionary women healers, scholars, activists and artists who study consciousness and altered states. The WVC supports the transfer of knowledge among women who apply the insights of their research and spiritual path. We gather on beautiful land in Northern California to renew our community of adventurers and visionaries. The fifth annual WVC will take place from July 29 - 31, 2011 at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) Earthrise Retreat Center, near Petaluma, California. The WVC welcomes interested women and men to join us as we talk, dance, eat delicious food and participate in a series of conversations with wise women. Presenters include Copperwoman, Valerie Corral, Earth and Fire Erowid, Dorothy Fadiman, Amber Field, Carolyn (Mountain Girl) Garcia, Dorka Keehn, Jessica Lucas, Mariavittoria Mangini, Jean Millay, Eleonora Molnar, Annie Oak, Linnae Ponté, Miss S, Nick Sand, Stephanie Schmitz, Jane Straight, Justine Willis Toms, Keeper Trout, Clare Wilkins and Nina Wise.

Guest speakers: Ann Shulgin and Dr. William Rowlandson PROGRAM NOTES: "If you are going to experiment with a psychedelic of any kind, make sure you are depranil-free for at least five days, probably seven would be safer.” -Ann Shulgin “You don't really need MDMA or a psychedelic to do [deep personal therapy]. … I think that until at least some of these materials become legal, don't dismiss the possibilities of hypnotherapy doing exactly what you need and want.” -Ann Shulgin “As far as I'm concerned, there is no substitute for MDMA, because it is the insight drug. And it does this magical combination of allowing you to see inside without fear and hostility toward yourself. It has a beautiful, beautiful effect, and no other drug that we know of so far manages to do that.” -Ann Shulgin “[Our] paradox is the ceaseless, constant drive to understand something that is inherently un-understandable. Now, of course, the paradox lies in the fact that we understand it is not to be understood, and yet we understand that we continue to try to understand. It's a beautiful paradox.” - Dr. William Rowlandson Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option 2CT-7 Survey by Casey Hardison

Guest speaker: Kathleen "Kat" Harrison PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Kat Harrison.] "If a bird you're not used to seeing comes and sits on a tree outside your window and calls, and calls, and calls. It's not just a bird of a trip. It's a bird that has a message that it is sending you that may be positive, that may be a warning. It's something you pay attention to.” “You really need to, at least part of the time, speak [out loud] to the entity that you are invoking the presence of. That the whole idea with these medicines is to go into an active, right now, relationship between beings. It's inter-species communication.” “In order to do this kind of magical work, energy transforming work, you have to create a vulnerable oasis. You have to be willing to be open and be vulnerable, and in order to do that you have to set up protection around you, around the people you're working with, or even the place you're working. And one of the ways to set up protection is to plant plants that carry that kind of protective power around you.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option [From their Web site: "Thank you for considering Gaian Botanicals as your source for high quality ethnobotanicals, herbs and teas. We are a small privately owned and operated specialty shop who imports direct from growers & harvesters in small quantities to ensure everything is fresh. We use our own contracted laboratory to manufacture high quality, safe and effective botanical extracts. We maintain the highest level of respect and great relationships with the plants, those who cultivate and manufacture our extracts, our customers and Gaia. We take great care with every aspect of our business and keep overhead low to save you money!"]

Guest speaker: Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.] "I like the Pope. I think he's the finest mind of the 12th century.” “It really is an awesome epidemic of deliberate stupidity that is laid upon us by the media, by the press, by the magazines and so forth. They simply do not raise any of the issues that will challenge our interest or intelligence.” “There's simply no question that anyone who knows anything about how to use brain-activating drugs and is operating with a clear mind, with no desire to screw other people's minds up, whose willing to put in time and patience, and sensitivity, can help anyone wash their brain. There's no longer any excuse for having a mind that you don't like, or having a brain program that you're dissatisfied with.” “I've always hated the Second Law of Thermodynamics.” “It always comes down to individual choices of what chemicals you're going to use to stimulate your evolution.” “You use a drug intelligently when you know what effect it's going to have on you, and you use it at the time and the place that it's going to add to your growth, or your fun, or your overall program of life management and directorship. And you're not going to use a drug that in any way will fuck up, or slow down, or throw obstacles in your overall path.” “Computers are to the Eighties what acid was to the Sixties.” “One thing that drugs give you: Personal options to change your own mind, a way of rewarding yourself, of teaching yourself, of activating yourself, of changing yourself. And one thing that the power-holders do not want you to do as an individual is to change your own mind and learn how to reward yourself.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Kathleen "Kat" Harrison Big Island, Little Planet March 17–28, 2012 A Travel Intensive in Polynesia on the Big Island of Hawaii Ethnobotanist Kathleen Harrison and Hawaiian cultural teacher Momi Subiono will lead this travel intensive, open to all who have a desire to immerse themselves in the story of plants, nature, and a deep cultural awareness of place. PODCAST PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Kat Harrison.] "The role of conscious, intentional behavior that is described by culture or subcultural rules of behavior with reflected meaning is sort of a way of describing ritual generally, and we draw these forms out of a number of traditions.” “I think when we go into thinking about how to do psychoactive medicines it's very valuable to look deeply, to look seriously, at the traditions that have attended these medicines through time.” “Repeated behavior in the same mode over a long time generates a kind of an etheric possibility of it recurring and being potentized by its ongoing, indefinite repetition.” “I feel that it's really valuable to look into the ritual history of the place where you live or the place where you're working.” “Pay homage to the history of ritual that is coming through the place.” “Why one [psychedelic medicine] may be your best friend's ally and not your ally is a mystery. And maybe you can solve that mystery and maybe not. But you should honor the fact that some things work for you and some things are not your medicine, even though everyone around you appears to be having a good time.” “You don't lead with your head. You let your heart and your body tell you what to do in these [introspective psychedelic] moments. Then if you think it's time to get up and bolt out into the street, you let your head come in and tell you, 'Don't! Sit down. You're not going anywhere.' ” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Thank you to The Turtles for "Eve of Destruction"

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: This is Tape Number 003 of the Paul Herbert Collection. This talk was given in December 1982 [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "The search for a radio signal from an extraterrestrial source is probably as culture-bound an assumption as to search the galaxy for a good Italian restaurant.” “It is no great accomplishment to hear a voice in the head. The accomplishment is to make sure it is telling you the truth.” “The demons are of many kinds. Some are made of ions, some of mind. The ones of ketamine, you'll find, stutter often and are blind.” “There is no dignity in the universe unless you meet these things [psychedelics] on your feet. And that means that you have an I/thou relationship, and you say … 'you're long on talk, but what can you show me?” “These things [psychedelic medicines] invoke the Logos, which means they work directly on the language centers. So that the important aspect of the experience is the dialogue.” “I think if someone tells you they've every drug you know they're confessing they're a dilettante. It's much better to lean hard on a few.” “I think one of the interesting things about judging a drug is to see how eager people are to do it the second time. If they're eager to do it the second time it's probably not worth bothering about, because what is necessary to have validity in these experiences is the terror. The terror is a stamp of validity on the experience, because it means this is real.” “Friends, right here and now, one quanta away, there is raging a universe of active intelligence that is trans human, hyper dimensional, and extremely alien.” “The most alien thing in the cosmos is the human soul.” “As nervous systems evolve to higher and higher levels, they become more and more to understand the true situation in which they are embedded.” “As nervous systems evolve to higher and higher levels they become more and more to understand the true situation in which they are embedded. And the true situation in which we are embedded is an organism, an organization of active intelligence that is on a galactic scale.” “In other words, shamanic experience, drug experience, this is ruled out of bounds. And it is because it is the source of novelty. The cutting edge of the ingression of the novel into the plenum of being is happening there. I mean, think about it for a moment. If the human mind does not loom large in the coming history of the human race, then what is to become of us?” “So I am saying we are at the beginning of human thought. This is the birth crisis of intelligence. And intelligence is something which is moving through the higher primates now at greater and greater speed.” “The fact is that the densest organizational material in the universe is the human cortex. And the richest experience in the universe is the experience you're having right now.” “The testimony that I want to give today is that magic is alive in hyperspace, and you don't have to believe me or follow me or do anything to validate that except form a relationship with these plant drugs.” “There is some surety that you are dealing with a creature of integrity if you deal with a plant, but the creatures born in the demonic artifice of laboratories have to be dealt with very, very carefully.” “DMT is like an intellectual black hole in that once you know about it, it's very hard for anyone to understand you when you're talking about it.” “The future is bound to be psychedelic because the future belongs to the mind.” “The tragedy of our cultural situation is that we have no shamanic tradition. Shamanism is primarily technique, not ritual.” “The only intellectual, or noetic, or spiritual path worth following seems to me to be the one that builds on your own experience.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option TRANSCRIPT OF THIS TALK FROM EROWID.ORG

Guest speaker: Jonathan Ott PROGRAM NOTES: This is a talk that Jonathan Ott gave in September 2004 at the Mind States Conference in Oaxaca, Mexico. From the program for Mind States 2004: Jonathan Ott will give a talk titled “From Octli/Pulque and Xochioctli to Mezcal and Vino de Mezcal Tequila”. The ethnopharmacognosy of inebriating pre-Columbian potions based on octli or pulque, wine of various species of Agave, with special reference to numerous inebriating additives; traditional foods and beverages made from mezcal Agaves; and colonial development of distilled mezcal from fermented, cooked mezcal Agaves. Finally, more recent development of Vino de Mezcal Tequila or Tequila, a regional type of mezcal brandy, from cooked hearts of Agave tequillense or blue agave. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option More about: Agave and Mescal Mescal: A New Artificial Paradise by Dr. Havelock Ellis

Guest speakers: Timothy Leary and G. Gordon Liddy This program is another selection from the Timothy Leary archive. It features an October 23, 1990 debate at Penn State University between Dr. Leary and his arch-enemy, the scandalous G. Gordon Liddy. One of my favorite segments in this debate, which wasn't all that polite at times, is when Leary pointed out the fact that he had spent more time in the U.S. Military service than Liddy had, but that Liddy had spent more time in prison than Leary had. PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.] “My advice to you is: 1) don't rely on politicians to solve you problems; 2) work to the fullest of your power to decentralize and to take power away from the central government in Washington, bring it back to the villages, to the cities, to the neighborhoods.” "It politics, scum rises to the top. Let me say it again, in politics mediocrity rises to the top.” “As far as this election is concerned, I urge you, don't vote for either a Democrat or a Republican. It just encourages the bastards.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST The Maze Game by Diana Reed Slattery

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna Please Support Dennis McKenna’s Kickstarter Project: The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss! PROGRAM NOTES: This lecture was recorded in November 1982. A more complete version of this talk may be found in Podcast 317.] [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “My assumption whenever I am confronted with opposites is to try to unify them, to create a coincidentia oppositorum as was done in alchemy, to not force the system to closure but to try and leave the system open enough so that the differences can resonate and become complimentary rather than antithetical.” “Shamanism, on the other hand [as compared with science], is this world wide, since Paleolithic times, tradition which says that you must make your own experience the centerpiece of any model of the world that you build. No amount of readings from meters, whether they're metering cyclotrons or any other kind of instrument, are going to satisfy you.” “What psilocybin focuses as a problem that these other hallucinogens do not is that it allows a dialogue with the other that is full of give and take. In other words there are entities in the hallucinogenic world that psilocybin, and DMT, and a few other not well-known or widely distributed plants, hallucinogens, induce.” “Our alienation from ourselves has caused us to set up a number of straw men that are keeping us from building actually a mature model of how the universe really works. The content of the dialogue with the Other is a content that indicates that man's horizons are infinitely bright.” “Alchemy is about the generation of a psychic construct, a wholeness, a thing which has many properties, which is paradoxical, which is both mind and matter, which can do anything.” “[UFOs are], in other words, something which in order not to alarm us has disguised itself as an extraterrestrial being but is in fact the collectivity of the human psyche signaling a profound historical crisis.” “A mature humanity could get into a place where we no longer required these metaphysical spankings from messiahs and flying saucers that come along every thousand years or so to mess up the mess that has been created and try and send people off on another tack.” “Eternity does not have a temporal existence, even the kind of temporal existence where you say it always existed. It does not have temporal duration of any sort. It is eternity.” “We are not primarily biology with mind emerging as a kind of iridescence, a kind of epiphenomenon at the higher levels of organization of biology. We are in fact hyperdimentional objects of some sort which cast a shadow into matter. And the shadow in matter is the body.” “The whole purpose of shamanism, and of life correctly lived, is to strengthen the soul and strengthen the relationship to the soul, so that this passage [death] can be cleanly made.” “Technology is the real skin of our species.” "There is not the Newtonian universe deployed throughout the parsecs and kiliacosoms of physical space and the interior mental universe. They are the same thing.” “An Aquarian science, or a science that places psychedelic experience at the center of its program of investigation, should move toward a practical realization of the goal of eliminating the barrier between the ego and the overself so that the ego can perceive itself as an expression of the overself.” “This [psilocybin] is a source of gnosis, and the voice of gnosis has been silenced in the Western mind for at least a thousand years.” “We can release this thing once again. The logos can be unleashed once again, and the voice that spoke to Plato and Parmenadies and Hericlitus, that voice can speak again in the minds of modern people. And when it does, the alienation will be ended because we will have become the alien.” “But the main thing about psilocybin, and I stress it over all these other hallucinogens, is information,

Guest speakers: Dennis McKenna and David Ellenbogen Please Support Dennis McKenna’s Kickstarter Project: The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss! PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Dennis McKenna.]  "The brain is essentially a communications network … all this complex network of neurons that cross-talk to each other through these neurotransmitters.” “We think of ourselves as separate from the environment. We're kind of here, and our skin separates us from the environment, but we're not like that at all. We're semi-permeable membranes. Things are coming in all the time in the form of food, drugs, smoke, other things that we absorb, and we're putting out things all the time at the same time. So we're part of this chemical communication system.” “If it weren't for the linkage to symbols, or significance, which are abstractions, we wouldn't be conscious. That is the sine qua non of consciousness, is that we're immersed in this world of ideas and abstractions, and dreams. And this kind of experience is as real as the external world for us. And not really separated from us. That's what sets us apart from animals.” “Consciousness is something you detect, like tuning a television set to different channels, as much as it is something that the brain generates. I think the brain modulates signals that come from outside, but consciousness is probably more primal than matter.” “It's not only up to us. Life probably permeates the universe, and that means intelligence permeates the universe. And that's good. So if we blow it, and it looks like we're probably going to, others will carry on. And if we wake up in time maybe we can be part of that. Our challenge is to propagate these understandings through enough people that people do wake up and they realize that we've got to get cracking.” “Ayahuasca is now a global phenomenon, and this is part of the plants' reaching out, trying to reach out to larger groups of people and basically hit us upside the head with a two by four and say, “Hey you monkeys wake up! You're fucking it up! You have to wake up.” “I think humility is essential for doing this [working with psychedelic plants]. This is the other thing that to me personally, and I think to a lot of people I think this is the message of the plant teachers, not only 'You monkeys need to wake up,' but 'You monkeys need to get over yourselves. You monkeys only think you're running the show. You're not running the show.' If anything, the plants are running the show.” “Religions, established religions tend to want you to take a lot of things on faith for which there's not a shred of evidence. And so the doctrines and the dogmas become essentially political institutions, they become instruments for keeping people in line, don't ask too many questions, just accept it.” “One of the maybe adverse side effects of psychedelics is that they'll make you think you're the messiah, or you somehow have to play a role in this.” “I think ayahuasca is perfectly capable of finding the people it needs, and the people who need to find ayahuasca will find it. And there's no need for cults or movements or very much human intervention, although a lot of people will be convinced that we must do this.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

We are saddened to report that Eric Hart suffered a heart attack and died quite suddenly on December 9, 2011. He will be deeply missed. Guest speakers: Eric Hart and Matthew Pallamary PROGRAM NOTES: “[If you are in police custody] Never say a word. Don't ever talk to the cops under any circumstance. If you're a suspect, or you're being arrested, nothing can be gained from it. They will twist whatever you say. It can only be used against you, just like the famous Miranda advisement. You have a right to remain silent. So remain silent. Even if they're yelling and screaming at you to talk, refuse to talk. That's a basic right that you have. It's one of the only effective rights we have left from the Bill of Rights. So exercise that right, or else whatever you say will be twisted around, and it will end up leading to your conviction.” -Eric Hart, Attorney ... Email: LawyersLie (at) ymail (dot) com ... Web site: www.EricDHart.com Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Lawyers Lie (paperback) Lawyers Lie (Kindle edition)   Spirit Matters (paperback)      Land Without Evil (paperback) Spirit Matters ... Kindle Edition Land Without Evil ... Kindle Edition