Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “What's happening is that the computer is allowing us to go beyond the mathematical objects of Greek philosophy.” “The unconscious of the species is actually being hard wired as an artifact. We're pouring glass, and gold, and silicon down the microtubials of the racial imagination. And as it were, making a kind of casting of the state of the human imagination at the close of the millennium.” “Technology is facilitating the drive toward community, at this incredibly accelerated rate..” “The Earth is on the brink of the greatest change since the end of the mesozoic, but people don't like to think about that because all they can think about is the possibility of personal extinction.” “No one can run or program these vast networks except guys with ponytails.” “My intuition was always that the psychedelic experience was a fractal anticipation of human history.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: At the end of this talk Terence takes off on an interesting riff wherein he speculates that our life here on Earth may have something to do with us learning how to interact with matter as a preparation for some future existence in dimensions yet unknown. If, he postulates, we are the only intelligent species in the universe, then, he asks, don't we have an obligation to announce ourselves to destinations that exist beyond the limits of our solar system. [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Being itself is some kind of opportunity.” “Outlandish things are going on inside the psychedelic experience. It seems to imply the thing we had hardly dared hope, which is that the world is whatever you say it is, if you know how to say it right.” “We have never taken the self-management of culture seriously.” “I'm amazed at what thin soup is dished out as spiritual food.” “It's hard to take psychedelics. It's not hard to sweep up around the ashram, but it's hard to take psychedelics.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Shonagh Home & Nese Devnot PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a perspective of the psychedelic community that sometimes gets ignored, a woman's point of view. Shonagh Home is joined by Nese Devenot in a wide-ranging conversation about not only womens' roles in the community, but also how they are often perceived as second-class members of our community in many ways. While I am convinced that it is only the rare male psychonaught who is always a jerk, some of us have inadvertently slipped into jerkiness from time to time. This conversation may be just what us men need to hear. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Shonagh Home is an author, teacher, shamanic practitioner and doting beekeeper. Her offerings focus on the cultivation of our intuition, creativity and the essential awareness of our personal shadow. Her shamanic work with the sacred mushroom informs both her teaching and her private practice. She is author of the books, ‘Ix Chel Wisdom: 7 Teachings from the Mayan Sacred Feminine,’ ‘Love and Spirit Medicine,’ and the upcoming, ‘Honeybee Wisdom: A Modern Melissae Speaks.' Website: www.shonaghhome.com Contact: shonagh.home (at) comcast (dot) net Neşe Devenot is a founder the Psychedemia psychedelics conference and a PhD Candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studies and teaches psychedelic philosophy and the literature of chemical self-experimentation. Website: https://upenn.academia.edu/ndevenot Contact: ndevenot (at) sas (dot) upenn (dot) edu

Guest speaker: Friends of Ann & Sasha Shulgin PROGRAM NOTES: On August 2, 2014, a memorial was held for Sasha Shulgin. In addition to several of the talks that were presented that afternoon, Bruce Damer captured a few sound bites from those in attendance. At the end of the podcast you will also hear a short segment from one of the famous “Ask the Shulgins” conversations. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story By Alexander Shulgin, Ann Shulgin Tihkal: The Continuation By Alexander Shulgin, Ann Shulgin The Shulgin Memorial (video) Shulgin on Alchemy, Basel, 2006

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Even a billion people is too much. There's no way back to the simplicity we once knew, but there may be a way forward to the simplicity that we once knew.” “The human imagination, which is our great glory, has grown so powerful that we can barely unleash it on the surface of the planet.” “Ideologies are cultural memes. They are the most confining of the cultural memes. That's where culture gets real ugly. It is when you rub up against its ideologies.” “What we now have is the freedom which attends decadence, or the decadence which attends freedom.” “For me it's an issue of are we afraid of ourselves? And we inherit a huge bunch of idealogical baggage, not only Christianity, but Freudianism, and Marxism . . . We inherit all kinds of idealogical baggage designed to make us fear ourselves.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Book mentioned in this podcast The Movement of the Free Spirit By Raoul Vaneigem

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Information is just simply bootstrapping itself to higher and higher levels of self-reflection and self-coordination using whatever means are necessary.” “It's our machines and our technologies that are now the major evolutionary forces acting upon us. It's not our political systems.” “Everything will come true in cyberspace. That's the whole idea. What cyberspace is, on one level, it's simply the human imagination vivified, hardwired.” “In a sense, what's happening is that the unconscious mind is a luxury the human species cannot afford at this point in our dilemma, and so the unconscious mind is simply rising into consciousness by being hardwired into this global infrastructure.” “The thing that excites me about these informational technologies is I think we are going to be able to use virtual reality to show each other the insides of our own heads.” “The most beautiful things in the universe are inside the human mind.” “The human brain is the god of technological innovation.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Dr. Roland Griffiths, Dr. Alicia Danforth, and Gabrielle Agin-Liebes PROGRAM NOTES: This program features a recording of a panel discussion and Q&A session that took place at the 2013 Burning Man Festival with three people who are currently on the front lines of psychedelic research: Dr. Roland Griffiths, Dr. Alicia Danforth, and Gabrielle Agin-Liebes. This is an overview session covering a wide range of psychedelic research currently underway. Their detailed talks about their work is available in earlier podcasts. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Dr. Roland Griffiths Johns Hopkins University Psilocybin & Spirituality Current Psilocybin Research Projects Q&A with Roland Griffiths Dr. Alicia Danforth MDMA-assisted Therapy for Social Anxiety in Autistic Adults Gabrielle Agin-Liebes NYU Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study

Guest speaker: Sarah Lovering PROGRAM NOTES: Today we travel back in time once again to the 2013 Burning Man Festival where Sarah Lovering gave a Palenque Norte Lecture detailing her work with the Marijuana Policy Project. It was MPP that led a coalition of cannabis activists over a several year period leading up to the legalization referendum in Colorado. Sarah not only explains how that campaign unfolded, but she goes on to describe the community's long term plans for the ultimate legalization of cannabis in the U.S. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

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 /*