Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] This is the first part of an evening lecture given by Terence McKenna in early February, 1994 on the Hawaiian island of Maui. “Our [Western] civilization touches everyone on this planet. We are involved in a species-wide crisis, and it's a crisis of adaptation and intelligence. If we can meet the crisis, if we can re-design the cultural machinery so that it can glide in to the new value systems that a limited Earth, and an electronically activated population demands, then we can use the crisis as a stepping stone to further exploration of the universe, further evolution, further unfolding.” “Nature is an engine for the production of extinct species.” “The contradiction that history confronts us with is a deeper exploration of the psychedelic experience. And the psychedelic experience is something incredibly alien to the Western mind. It is, in fact, taboo.” “The psychedelic experience is not built in to your biology the way orgasm, or sleep, or hunger, or something like that is. It's a physiological option that involves forming a symbiotic relationship with a plant.” “We seem to be the creature that can download the ideas, the Platonic perfect forms of a higher dimension, into the world of matter. And so where we are there is an interfacing between the world of ordinary nature and some kind of transcendent force.” “Speaking about the unspeakable means stretching the envelop of what can be said. When new things can be said new plans can be laid, new directions can be found out of a crisis.” “Science has steered us deeply into the notion that nature is soulless and spiritless. And the practice of this idea has led us to the brink of catastrophe, global and species and ecological catastrophe.” “Psychedelics are catalysts for the human imagination. That very simply is what they are.” “[Biological] nature is a seamless community of intentionality. Nature is a gene-swarm covering the surface of the planet.” “I believe that shamanism without psychedelics is shamanism on its way to becoming religion.” “So we are like dysfunctional children. Something terrible happened to us in the childhood of our intelligence. We lost our connection to the Gaian matrix, to the goddess mother of the Earth who gives coherency to life, and when the connection was lost we fell into history.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Matt Pallamary, Wild Bill, & Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: Today's program features, first of all, a conversation between Matt Pallamary and Wild Bill, who begin by reminiscing about the legendary Palenque Entheobotany Seminars, but who then go on to other wild tales, some of which may actually be true. After that is the first of our long-awaited Global Trialogues in which Bruce Damer answers a question from a young man in Australia. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option BRUCE'S BOOK RECOMMENDATIONS Books by Eckhart Tolle Terence McKenna: Beyond 2012 A workshop at Esalen Institute led by Bruce Damer and Lorenzo Hagerty Weekend of June 15-17, 2012 Global Trialogue No. 1 . . . On Facebook The “October Gallery” talk by Bruce Damer (MP3 files) Part 1 Part 2 A Basic Theory of Neuropsychoanalysis by W. M. Bernstein Thought Nachos

Guest speakers: Ram Das, Terence McKenna, and Angeles Arrien PROGRAM NOTES: “The thing that seemed to me so important about the psychedelic experience was that it happened to me. I wasn't reading John Chrysostom or Meister Eckhart. And so I assumed that I am a very ordinary person, therefore, if it happened to me it could happen to anyone.” --Terence McKenna “Psychedelics are a miracle, yes. They may not be the only miracle. I think they may have already done what they were to do. I think what is done is so much more powerful than anybody recognizes.” --Ram Das "I see all this destruction as just the process of transformation. The question is whether we'll keep it together in the process of transformation.” --Ram Das "So I really see the psychedelics as directly intervening in the core process, which is running us over the edge, which is our inability to connect with the consequences of what we're doing.” --Ram Das [Speaking of the Sixties: “The fact that they noticed us was because we were busy making statements, instead of just being it.” --Ram Das [McKenna] “So it isn't enough to just say, the system will take care of itself?” [Ram Das] “Well I am part of the system that is taking care of itself.” “I lead a continuous paradox that suffering stinks and suffering's great. And I live with both of those all the time.” --Ram Das “To me, the most amazing the most amazing transformation in my lifetime is not the revolution of the Sixties but the counter revolution of the Seventies, where they managed to put the cuckoo clock back together again” --Terence McKenna “I think that the crisis that came to Marxism is coming now to the RepubliCrat oligarchy in America.” --Terence McKenna “No more do we create cultural artifacts that are simply our furniture, but now it's our thoughts, our values, are embodied in this [digital] stuff.” --Terence McKenna Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Signs of Life: The Five Universal Shapes and How to Use Them By Angeles Arrien World Council of Indigenous Peoples

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Bruce Damer.] “I think it's clear to everyone on the left, the right, the center, every walk of life, that we have to undo a mess that's been created, a tangled mess. And we have to remake the System. There's no way to reform the System. We must re-do it.” “If you put out a powerful vision, the universe just lines up the stones and the pebbles and allows you to walk toward it. As long as you're pure in that vision and you really vision it, and you really share it, it's amazing how these things come to pass.” “Silicon Valley and its progeny have reinvented the world, and [the tools they have created] are now the tools by which we will reinvent politics and the economy.” “The Occupy Movement is like the tip of an iceberg, but underneath the water is 95% of the volume of the discontent and of the volume of the powerful organizing.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option The Radical Remake Wiki Bruce Damer's Web Site The DigiBarn Computer Museum Indian Man, Jadav "Molai" Payeng, Single-Handedly Plants A 1,360 Acre Forest In Assam The Joe Rogan Experience

Guest speaker: Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.] “I don't even use the word 'United States'. If there is such a thing I'm not a part of it. I'm not an American, I'm a Californian, and maybe I'm a Southern Californian.” “I think any sensible person would do this, but since my 70s I have been planning, thinking about, my dying, because that's going to be the climax, the final going away party. And you can't believe the taboo when you start talking about how you're going to die and the ways of dying. You'll easily clear the cocktail party. No one wants to talk to you.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Archive of Timothy Leary in the Psychedelic Salon The Timothy Leary Archives Timothy Leary in Wikipedia

Guest speaker: Joanna Harcourt-Smith PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Joanna Harcourt-Smith.] “In my childhood, and in those [wealthy] circles, I never encountered compassion. If I ever encountered compassion it was from someone who was serving these people. And I wondered why that is. And this man said to me, 'Well, you see, the very, very rich have to kill compassion in their children. Every child is born innately compassionate, but they have to kill compassion in their children so that they don't give it [great wealth] away.' I mean, how could we own most of what is if we had compassion?” “Human beings have a right to change their consciousness, and it is unconscionable and absolutely wrong for any government or any person to stand in the way of someone choosing to change their consciousness.” “Once the System has you in their clutches there are no laws.” “A lot of times myth is stronger than reality. The mythological story endures. The personal story doesn't really make it, and some people are myths in their own lifetimes. Timothy Leary is one of these people.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: James Fadiman We are saddened to report that long time friend of the salon and psychedelic research pioneer extraordinaire, Gary Fisher has gone on to his next adventure. Archive of podcasts featuring Gary Fisher The Gary Fisher Page PROGRAM NOTES: “There is so much more psychedelic use in this country than any of us, even those of us who think we know a lot, are aware of. . . . According to [the government], 23 million Americans have used LSD since it became illegal. And that figure, because I've been tracking it, goes up 600,000 a year, pretty much rain or shine. So there's 600,000 people this year who are going to be taking, and that just deals with LSD, that doesn't deal with ecstasy or ayahuasca or anything else. But there's this growing, continual large number of people, and they tend to be better educated and brighter, and we do have research on that. So what I'm doing a lot with this book is say, 'Hey, it's OK to admit what is true, which is the person next to you at your work probably had some acid in their background just as you did.” -James Fadiman Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option JamesFadiman.com The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys By James Fadiman The Other Side of Haight: A Novel ENTHEOGUIDE.NET Meeting the Divine Within A Manual for Voyagers and Guides and Supplemental Information EROWID.ORG Documenting the Complex Relationship Between Humans and Psychoactives BOOKS By Matt Pallamary Myron Stolaroff and Gary Fisher talk about the legendary Al Hubbard

Guest speaker Bruce Damer takes us on a mental voyage around the solar system and shares a fascinating story of his encounter with a dodgy character. He discusses the complexities of the financial system and highlights nature's superior technology. The podcast also explores the significance of visions, reflections on the time wave theory, preserving psychedelic history, increased surveillance, Facebook's role, and the controversy of black bloc tactics.

Guest speaker: Lorenzo PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast picks up with the third section of the workshop that Bruce Damer and I led on January 28th. This section features my second presentation of the day in which I try to live up to the advanced billing for the workshop which read: “Lorenzo will take us from 2013 into the emerging era of cyber-enhanced humans, immersed in a meme-space stranger than we can suppose.” In the Occupy segment of the podcast I feature an interview with and a talk by Chris Hedges, including his criticism of the Black Bloc hooligans who are doing their best to destroy the Occupy Movement. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option LINKS MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST Art by Randal Roberts (who provided the art for this podcast) Description of the elements in “Fawkes” by Randal Roberts Video of today's podcast What You Should Know About 2012: Answers to 13 Questions by John Hoopes, Ph.D.

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: In today’s podcast we pick up with the next part of a workshop that was held on January 28, 2012 titled “Terence McKenna: Beyond 2012”. This section features Bruce Damer, who begins with his “Ode to Terence” [ In the Occupy segment I begin with a recap of what went down in Washington, D.C. the day of the eviction from McPherson Square. Also, I play a series of short audio clips. The first one is of a young man from San Diego who was speaking at the General Assembly that was held in the middle of K Street in Washington the evening after the McPhearson eviction. And while this segment also ends with a call to the barricades from Chris Hedges in different interview, between those two Hedges segments I play a three minute pep talk that Tony Benn gave to some of the occupiers in London the other day. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Links Mentioned In This Podcast The Adult Autism and MDMA/Ecstasy Study