Podcast 189 – “The Ethnobotany of Shamanism” Part 3

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.> "Think about this for a moment, we grow so inured to these religious forms, think about the notion of instituting at the center of your religion a rite where you eat your god. ... [This] is probably a memory of a relationship to some kind of a psychedelic experience of some sort." "I think institutions will inevitably substitute a rite or a ritual for the authentic, for the real McCoy, because then priests can control the pipeline to god, and the parishioner can approach with offerings. But if everybody can have a pipeline to deity, why then the whole priest scam is put out of business." "Buddhism is a heresy on Hinduism." "The whole of the Amazonian narcotic complex, as it’s called in the old literature, is based on activation of DMT by one strategy or another." "I really think there is a very large distinction between synthetic and naturally occurring drugs. … I think that these plants ‘take people’ as much as people take the plants. … When you take one of these ancient, ancient hallucinogens you are locking in to the morphogenic fields of all the people who ever took it." "All psychedelic explorers should be aware of the concept of what is called a cognitive hallucination. The is a much more insidious phenomenon. This is, quite simply, an out-and-out delusion." "People are concrescences of ambiguity." "I think the sitter should be there only if there’s a three dimensional emergency." "I have never felt that the primary use of these things [psychedelic medicines] was to cure what is called in modern parlance neurosis, what I call unhappiness. It isn’t for that." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Links mentioned in this podcast Burning Man Poster Contest Oracle Gathering in 2009 Symbiosis Gathering in 2009 Burning Man Guidelines for First Timers What to and not-to bring to Burning Man