Podcast 180 – “What Science Forgot”

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations below are by Terence McKenna.] "Is there any permission to hope? More specifically, is there any permission for smart people to hope? I mean it’s easy to hope if you’re stupid, but is there any basis for intelligent people to hope? … I think so." "I live in an aura of hope because I live in a twilight world of my own self-generated, cannabinated fantasy, and I forget that not everyone is so fortunate." "What I’ve observed is that nature builds on previously established levels of complexity." "An added wrinkle [to the story of ever-increasing complexity] is that each advancement into complexity, into novelty, proceeds more quickly than the stage that preceded it. This is very profound." "I say, if in fact novelty is the name of the game. If in fact the conservation and complexification of novelty is what the universe is striving for, then suddenly our own human enterprise, previously marginalized, takes on an immense new importance. We are apparently players in the cosmic drama. And in this particular act of the cosmic drama we hold a very central role. We are at the pinnacle of the expression of the complexification in the animal world." "Since the rise of Western monotheism, the human experience has been marginalized. We have been told that we were unimportant in the cosmic drama. But we now know from the feedback that we’re getting from the impact of human culture on the Earth that we are a major factor shaping the temperatures of the oceans, the composition of the atmosphere …" "History is a state of incredible destabilization. It’s a chaostrophy in the process of happening." "It’s very important to science to eliminate from its thinking any suspicion that this eschaton might exist. Because if it were to exist it would impart to reality a purpose. … Science is incredibly hostile toward the idea of purpose." "Reality is accelerating toward an unimaginable Omega point." "So why hope? Isn’t it just a runaway train out of control? I don’t think so. I think the out-of-control-ness is the most hopeful thing about it. After all, whose control is it out of? You and I never controlled it in the first place. Why are we anxious about the fact that it’s out of control. I think that if it’s out of control then our side is winning." "We represent a kind of concrescence of universal intent. We’re not mere spectators, or a cosmic accident, or some sideshow, or the Greek chorus to the main event. The human experience IS the main event." "In our species complexity has turned inward upon itself. And in our species time has accelerated. Time has left the gentle ebb and flow of gene transfer and adaptation that characterizes biological evolution, and instead historical time is generated." "It is impossible to conceive of another thousand years of human history. History then is ending. History is a kind of gestation process. It’s a kind of metamorphosis. It’s an episode in the life of a species." "Culture is merely clothing on the human experience." "The body is the nexus of the mystery of life, and our culture takes us out of the body." "More and more, the message that people are getting as they avail themselves of the psychedelic experience is that it is not a journey into the human unconscious, or into the ghost bardos of our chaotic civilization. It’s a journey into the presence of the Gaian Mind." "We now hold, through the possession of these psychedelics, catalysts for the human imagination of sufficient power that if we use them we can deconstruct the lethal vehicle that is carrying us toward the brink of Apocalypse We can deconstruct that vehicle and redesign it into a kind of starship that would carry us and our children out into the broad starry galaxy we know to be awaiting us." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option