Psychedelic Salon

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Glenn Irving Photo by Sharon McCutcheon PROGRAM NOTES: Date this lecture was recorded: January 13, 2020. Today's podcast features an interview with Glenn Irving who is a volunteer with the project known as #ThankYouPlantMedicine. As the project's title tells you, this is a world-wide effort to spread the word about ways in which the plants have come to our aid. The first mission of this project is to encourage 100,000 people to tell their psychedelic plant stories in public. You may be amused at the social media platform where Lorenzo plans to post his psychedelic story on February 20th. Thank You Plant Medicine Envision Festival Feb 17-24, 2020 | Costa Rica Drug Control: National Policies Dr. A.C. Germann, Professor Emeritus Department of Criminal Justice California State University, Long Beach If the ears of all the people in the nation who had ingested illicit substances in the past six months were to turn bright green for one whole week, the nation would be amazed, confused, astounded, and quickly taught something very important as they identified friends, relatives, neighbors, doctors, lawyers, accountants, priests, nuns, ministers, rabbis, soldiers, policemen, firemen, military personnel, businessmen, teachers, students, politicians, respected policy makers, administrators, supervisors, and workers from a variety of private and government institutions everywhere. Psychedelic Storytelling Veterans for Entheogenic Therapy Salon2 011 – “Psychedelic Therapy for Veterans” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Paul Krassner PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features one of the true heroes of the counterculture, Paul Krassner. In addition to leading the creation of our underground press, Paul was friends with important free-speech advocates such as Lenny Bruce and Abbie Hoffman. If you were alive during the so-called Sixties, you most likely remember his magazine, The Realist, that featured items for sale like the "Fuck Communism" bumper sticker and the "Disneyland Memorial Orgy" poster.   Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Paul Krassner's Website The Realist Archive Project The day anti-Vietnam War protesters tried to levitate the Pentagon October 21, 1967: Antiwar activists' satirical attempt to levitate the Pentagon   Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Sophia Rokhlin PROGRAM NOTES: Date this lecture was recorded: December 16, 2019. Today's podcast features a conversation that took place in the Live Salon a few weeks ago with Sohpia Rokhlin. Sophia is an author, speaker and nonprofit organizer from New York City. Through engaged botany and ecology, she bridges the worlds of indigenous ecological knowledge and Western science. She holds a BA in anthropology and religious studies from The New School and a M.Sc. in Ecological Economics from the Institute of Environmental Science and Technology at the Autonomous University of Barcelona (ICTA-UAB). She is a Program Coordinator at the Chaikuni Institute and currently directs the sustainable ayahuasca cultivation program at the Temple of the Way of Light, a traditional plant medicine retreat center in the Peruvian Amazon. Sophia is also a co-author of When Plants Dream: Ayahuasca, Amazonian Shamanism and the Global Psychedelic Renaissance (Watkins, 2019) on the global spread of ayahuasca. She has worked with several psychedelic harm-reduction programs such as KosmiCare, and serves as an advisor on the Ayahuasca Community Committee for the Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines. She is currently based in Peru. Sophia Rokhlin Website Temple of the Way of Light Chacruna Institute for Psychedelic Plant Medicines Dates for upcoming Head Talks with Shane Mauss A Comedian + Psychedelics + A Scientist = Head Talks Shane Mauss Website Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Ram Dass Ram Dass & Lorenzocirca: 2001 PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Ram Dass.] "I was addicted to the experience of being high. I was not addicted to the chemicals, but just to the state. I had touched something so pure, and so fulfilling, that I had to keep going back. And I tried every method I knew to stay high." "What is required on this trip is renunciation of attachment." "Psychedelics show a possibility, but beyond that you still have a lot of stuff to do." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Robert Anton Wilson PROGRAM NOTES: Date this lecture was recorded: September 1987. [NOTE: All quotations are by Robert Anton Wilson.] "I used to be a Libertarian, but they had too many rules." "And by 1968 a Gallup Poll showed that 70% of the population were against war. There's never been a time in the history of this country where 70% of the people opposed the government on a thing like war. So I regard LBJ as a pacifist president because he made pacifism so popular." "Alan Watts said to me 20 years ago the chief error of academic historians is the belief that the Roman Empire fell. It never did. It still controls the Western World through the Vatican and the Mafia. Well, Alan was exaggerating. It doesn't control the Western World. It's just trying to." "The American people are the most policed and governed and watched and observed and snooped upon people in the whole world." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Cosmic Trigger I: Final Secret of the Illuminati by Robert Anton Wilson Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Date this lecture was recorded: October 2, 1992. [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]> "The horrible thing about UFO-people who claim contact is that the aliens they present to us are so incredible mundane. [They are] so much more mundane than what you would encounter on a DMT flash. They're just like the neighbors next door." "With alien intelligence the trick is not to find it but to to recognize it when it's in front of you." "Intelligence is a very slippery concept. Sometimes we can't even identify it in the person sitting next to us on the bus." "I think the world is a lot stranger than we can suppose without invoking benevolent aliens who prefer vegetarian diets and who come from the stars. Why do they so fit our preconception of what they would be?" "I think the best protection against unpleasant experiences on psychedelics is to do it with care and attention in environments that are safe and low on sensory input. In other words, you don't take it and go to a crowded singles bar, or even a rock 'n roll concert. If you have to combine psychedelics with rock 'n roll, do it with low doses." "I am terrified of psychedelics. I never take them without a sense of sickening dread." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Terence McKenna Psychedelic researcher Sasha Shulgin in his lab PROGRAM NOTES: Date this lecture was recorded: October 2, 1992. [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "Matter is becoming a fairly uncomfortable dimension for us to be in, and I daresay matter would probably be highly relieved to have us just move on so that the rainforest, chipmunks, glaciers, and schooling salmon can go back to doing what they do best." "There is no reason to expect rationality to be apprehensible." "A little courage on the part of these almighty scientists would go a long way toward overwhelming the fearful strictures placed on them by politicians who are trying to maintain a social equilibrium that is fairly odious anyway." "Mantras, with psychedelics, work like magic. Yoga, breath control, drumming, visualization, simple prayer, it all works amazingly well in the presence of psychedelics." "Unfortunately, these non-psychedelic spiritual techniques are very quickly co-opted by the beady-eyed priests among us who then peddle it back to us with a menu of moral do's and don't s." "I think the real spiritual frontier lies in the community. . . . We must, somehow, carry everyone with us." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Tom Roberts PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a conversation from last Monday's Live Salon with Thomas B. Roberts, Ph.D., who is a professor emeritus at Northern Illinois University. Tom not only began teaching the world's first university catalog-listed psychedelics course in 1981, he is also a founding member of MAPS, former visiting scientist at Johns Hopkins, editor of Spiritual Growth with Entheogens, and author of Psychedelic Horizons and The Psychedelic Future of the Mind. In this interview, Tom talks about his latest book, MindApps: Multistate Theory and Tools for Mind Design. However, you most likely know him as the man who created the first Bicycle Day celebration. Date this lecture was recorded: November 18, 2019 [NOTE: The following quotations are by Tom Roberts.] "I'm attempting to broaden the field [of psychedelics], and trying to get people who are interested in history and literature and philosophy interested in psychedelics." "We can install ideas in our brain/mind complex, just as we install apps on our devices." Thomas Roperts, Ph.D. Publications Mindapps: Multistate Theory and Tools for Mind Design Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option ALSO MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST Boohbah: Skipping Rope (Episode 1) A visual trip - no drugs needed :-) A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments Poisoner in Chief: Sidney Gottlieb and the CIA Search for Mind Control Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Jonathon Miller Weisberger PROGRAM NOTES: Date this lecture was recorded: October 28, 2019. Today's podcast features a conversation that a few of my friends and I had with Jonathon Miller Weisberger, who is the founder of the Ocean Forest Ecolodge Retreat in Costa Rica. Jonathan is also the author of Rainforest Medicine: Preserving Indigenous Science and Biodiversity in the Upper Amazon. For almost 19 years he has also been facilitating plant medicine council gatherings in Costa Rica and Ecuador. Jonathon was born in Berkeley, raised in Ecuador, and began his training in the Amazon with Maestro Don Cesareo in the early 90s. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Rainforest Medicine: Preserving Indigenous Science and Biodiversity in the Upper Amazon Ocean Forest Ecolodge Retreat, Costa Rica Rainforest Medicine Gatherings The Difference between Ayahuasca and Yagé Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Tim Scully Tim Scully & Nick Sandcirca 2015Photo: @headsnews PROGRAM NOTES: Date this lecture was recorded: October 12, 2019. [NOTE: All quotations are by Tim Scully.] "The LSD experience doesn't really carry a message with it. It's an amplifier. And it's much more dependent on set and setting than I believed at first. I should have paid more attention to what people like Tim Leary and Ralph Metzner had been saying." "It also slowly became clear, from observing my friends who'd taken a lot of acid, and some of whom were still behaving like assholes, that taking LSD was not a cure for being an asshole." "I think that maybe Huxley might have been right. Huxley wanted to turn the world on from the top down." "I still think it's much better, if you're going to take a substantial dose of a psychedelic, to do it in a quiet, calm, controlled environment, preferably with a very limited number of people present." Stuff Stoners Like Tim Scully Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speakers: Tania and Greg Manning PROGRAM NOTES: This lecture was recorded live in the salon on October 21, 2019. Today's podcast features what I hope will be the first of many more visits with Tania and Greg Manning. In addition to assisting Sasha Shulgin during the final years of his life, they continue working with Ann Shulgin to preserve the laboratory and other effects of her's and Sasha's life and work. In this initial conversation with "Sasha's Sidekicks", we reminisce about the Shulgins' first Burning Man experience and the Mind States conferences. Additionally, Tania reads some of Sasha's unpublished writing in which he talks about his relationship with Albert Hofmann, including an interesting anecdote about their favorite drugs, and Greg gives an emotional description of the peaceful final day of Sasha's life. Shulgin Research Institute Sasha Shulgin's Joke Book Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

A Video Podcast Today we feature our first video podcast from the Psychedelic Salon. Our normal audio podcast features the audio portion of this short documentary. However, the best way to experience this program is to watch the video version, which you may also download in various formats. Free Leonard Pickard PROGRAM NOTES: Guest speakers: David Luke, Ben Sessa, Mark McCloud, Julian Vayne, Michael Dupler, Gregory Sams, Carlo Rovelli, Nese Devenot, Shane Mauss, and Dr. David Nutt These interviews were recorded in 2019. In preparation of the audio edition of Leonard Pickard's The Rose of Paracelsus, Kat Lakey has traveled far and wide while gathering recordings from friends of Leonard's, all of whom have volunteered to read and record a chapter for this project. After meeting with some of these volunteers, Kat also recorded brief interviews with them. These interviews are presented in this video podcast. Some of these people, such as Nese Devenot, and Dr. David Nutt, have appeared before in the Psychedelic Salon. Also included in the interviews in today's podcast are Dr. Carlo Rovelli, David Luke, Ben Sessa, Mark McCloud, Julian Vayne, Gregory Sams, Shane Mauss, and attorney Michael Dupler. During the months ahead you will also hear each of them read one of the chapters from The Rose of Paracelsus. In case you missed it, here is an overview of this project. The Rose Garden (001) - Introduction Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speakers: Bruce Damer and Charlie Grob Terence McKenna's logo, Bruce Damer's flight suit, Lorenzo and Charlie Grob PROGRAM NOTES: These lectures were recorded on Orcas Island during March of 2019.] This podcast features two interviews that I conducted last March at the Orcas Island Convergence. The first is a conversation that I had with Dr. Bruce Damer, and that is followed by my interview with Dr. Charlie Grob. Between them, their scientific inquiries span a wide range of inquiries. Bruce, with his work for NASA and his research into the origins of life, works with mega issues. And Charlie, whose human research work includes studies using MDMA, psilocybin, and ayahuasca, works with human-sized issues. "I think a lot of people don't realize it, but in the fifties and into the early sixties psychedelic research was the cutting edge of psychiatry." -Dr. Charles Grob Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Bruce Damer's Website Bruce Damer's Patreon Page Charlie Grob - Publications Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Date this lecture was recorded: October 2, 1992. [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "The best way to do drugs is to take very challenging doses rarely. I used to say to my groups, if you haven't taken enough that you think you may have done too much, then you did too little." "Death by astonishment is a real danger in [psychedelic] places. I mean, these places are not simply strange, or amazing, or highly peculiar. They are absolutely confounding." "True spirituality is a very here and now matter. One should visit the sick and imprisoned, clothe the naked, bury the dead, care for orphans, feed the hungry. That's what the spiritual life is about. It's very down to Earth, straightforward." "In terms of suggesting you are a more spiritually advanced person if you take psychedelics. I don't really see any evidence for that." "It's too hard for the ego-maniac to take psychedelics. The egoist will turn away from it, will have such bad trips that they will put it down." "I think history is a state of chemical deprivation that allows ancient animal patterns of behavior that degrade and confuse us to re-emerge and stabilize themselves." "Ancestor is a tremendously sanitized term for dead people." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA's Secret Cold War Experiments by H.P. Albarelli Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Terence McKenna Photo by Kyle Nieber on Unsplash PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "Often in what I say there is, if not the fact of contradiction, then the appearance of contradiction. This is because, to my mind, life is complicated enough to admit of contradiction." "The great thing about the rational program of science is, pushed far enough, it reveals the irrational foundations of nature. And that's really what the crisis in science now is." "The human imagination, married to technology, has become a force too powerful to be unleashed within the fragile ecosystem of this planet. So we must either carry ourselves elsewhere, or the planet's homeostatic drive to preserve ordinary biology will eliminate us." "The notion of intoxication is an incredibly culture-bound idea." "What 'psychedelic' means to me is, in structural terms, a very small number of compounds all based on indoles. The indole hallucinogens are the true psychedelics." "I prefer to believe that [mind is] coming from the outside. That mind is a field into which we dip the dipstick of observation, but it's not being generated in the neurons of the brain." "We're living in a fool's paradise, trapped inside the assumptions of linear materialism and rationalism." "I think that the greatest disservice that science has done to humankind is the marginalizing of our own importance." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Terence McKenna Photo by Brandon Green on Unsplash PROGRAM NOTES: Date this lecture was recorded: July 17, 1998. [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "You really can't understand the future without the psychedelic experience. History seems to be becoming more and more psychedelic." "We have all made too many sacrifices in the name of fitting ourselves into the culture we find around us through the circumstances of our destiny." "[Culture is a] toxic environment that one needs to negotiate with great care." "Domestication and civilization are curiously intertwined concepts." "A society has to be incredibly confident of its first premises to allow its citizens to habitually and regularly explore altered states of consciousness." "The entire Internet- computer-revolution rides on the backs of people who were taking LSD in the Sixties. People have expressed horror at this idea and then taken opinion polls at various professional gatherings, such as Sigraph and Comdex, and gatherings like that, and have this insight confirmed overwhelmingly. The entire post-1950s edifice of information transfer and replication technology was created by psychedelic people, and it's serving them very well, as well as the corporate elite." "Only the expansive, the generous, the psychedelic are going to be left standing when all of this stuff is sorted out, if it is ever sorted out." "The shaman is the one who is allowed to know how the culture is wired under the board. Everyone else stands out bathed in the glow of the big screen of cultural values, but the shaman are the people who actually understand the reasons for these performances, myths, and rituals." "We are trying to build, not a class of shamans but a shamanic culture. In other words a culture, and I think there has never been a culture of this type on the planet, a culture that actually lived in the light of the fourth dimension." "No human being has greater insight into your circumstance than you do." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Susan Hess Logeais Lorenzo and Susan Hess Logeais in the Live Salon PROGRAM NOTES: Date this lecture was recorded: September 16, 2019. Today podcast is a recording from last Monday evening's Live Salon with Susan Hess Logeais, the producer/director of a feature length film about Dr. Stan Grof. The film is titled "The Way of the Psychonaut" and presents Dr. Grof's work with some stunning graphics and effects. Even if you are already quite familiar with the life and work of Stan Grof, I am sure that you will learn even more when you see this documentary. TRAILER: The Way of the Psychonaut WEBSITE: Documentary project featuring psychedelic psychotherapy pioneer Stanislav Grof Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View  by Richard Tarnas The Passion of the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that Have Shaped Our World View  by Richard Tarnas Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: Dates when these interviews were recorded: 1973 and 1992. [NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.] "The best philosophers often end up in prison. ... Most of the men that I model myself after have been lucky if they just got away with being in prison for their ideas." "I have no more to do with drugs that Einstein has to do with the atomic bomb." "I based my entire life on Socrates. He's the guy that caused all the troubles in history. His motto was, 'The aim of human life is to know thyself.' And this is very subversive." "As soon as I studied books about Socrates, I realized that [philosophy] is a dangerous profession because you're teaching people to question authority. I realized that this job which I was going to undertake, the corrupting of the minds of youth, pays poorly, it gets you in serious difficulty with authorities." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Skip E. Lowe Obituary Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Alan Watts Alan Watts PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Alan Watts.] "The Bodhisattva returns into the world, that means he has discovered that you don't have to go anywhere to find Nirvana. Nirvana is where you are, provided you don't object to it." "But the main thing [about death] is the attitude that death is as positive as birth and should be a matter for rejoicing because death is the symbol of the liberation." "The ordinary world and the Nirvana world they are the same worlds. But what makes the difference is the point of view." "Everything you know is remembered." "Always surround death with joyous rites because this is an opportunity for the greatest of all experiences when you can finally let go because you know there's nothing else to do." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option The Imperfectionists Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books

Support Lorenzo on Patreon.com Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "If you insist on, I don't want to use the word 'abusing' it, but if you insist on using psychedelics frequently, at high doses back-to-back, you will unlock your way into a set of assumptions, and perceptions, and feelings that not very many people can follow you into. And then the question is have you gone into a spiritual domain or have you just fallen off the track? And it's hard to tell, and maybe it can happen both ways." "What does it mean if it becomes harder and harder to take these things? Does it mean you're getting out of balance? Does it mean you're just getting older? Where should the blame be put, and what can you do about it." "Maybe [the psychedelic community is] a special slice. First of all, it is a monkey brain that we're operating with here. Nowhere is it writ large that it can actually encompass 'the truth'. Why should it? . . . So then, if you're into these consciousness-expanding techniques, whether it's just paying attention, or using psychedelic drugs, or something else, then you actually get to a place where there is an abyss of knowing." "Nowhere is it writ that the universe should be rationally apprehendable." "Abstract expressionism, all of these things, Freudianism, Jung, National Socialist, it's all anti-reasonable. From the point of view of the 19th Century we don't have to worry about madness, we are mad, every last one of us. We've so thoroughly imbibed the values of modernity that we are incomprehensible to our own past." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Download free copies of Lorenzo's latest books