Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Dr. Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.] “From my earliest years I wanted to figure out what life was about. I wanted to find out why I was here so that my actions and my desires would have some meaning. I don't understand why everyone isn't mainly and centrally a philosopher, because if you aren't trying to figure that out for yourself you're borrowing, or begging, or passively taking on someone elses philosophy, and this may lead to situations that are unsatisfactory.” “A philosopher never gets in trouble if his ideas are not new.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speakers: Tom Barbalet and Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: Today we are taking a slightly different tack and heading into the cyber world of Artificial Life, which may sound like a contradiction or may sound like life in the hectic Western world these days. While this field may be controversial to old-line scientists, of late it has gained more traction and is proving to be the source of much new understanding about the way life has come to be. Our hosts for this conversation are Tom Barbalet and Bruce Damer, two leaders in the field of AL and who are the cornerstones of Biota.org, the Web's leading site for AL information. Surprisingly, their discussion quickly turns from things only true geeks can love to speculations about the work of Terence McKenna, psychedelics, and the possibility that all of us may be in the process of becoming machine elves. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Biota.org Noble Ape.com Damer.com Evogrid.org

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “There is no catalog of psychedelic effects, and so how does one know what the full spectrum is? It's a very tricky matter.” “At five dried grams (of magic mushrooms) it's very easy to invoke a voice, a kind of logos-like phenomenon, which operates as the typical hierophant. It's the teaching voice. It's Virgil to Dante. It's a very large and superior force which takes you by the hand and then narrates the various scenarios that you're conveyed through. … The trick is to get something out of it and get away clean.” “Human language is a psychic ability. I can make thoughts in your head by simply uttering small mouth noises.” “It is not that culture is evolving. The evolution of culture is an epiphenomenon attendant upon the evolution of language. Language is the part of man which is evolving. Culture carries along. At the present moment we are able to speak 21st centuries ideas to each other, but our culture is carrying along at about the 1950s level.” “We are not going to move into the future until we create that future through language.” “I believe that people have deeper and subtler senses of humor. I think that people have more refined aesthetic sensitivity. I think people have a greater sensitivity to the mysteries of human interaction simply because so much LSD was taken in the Sixties. And these are permanent changes that will not be wiped out.” “We're very fond of the notion of an ever-expanding sphere of understanding. But has anyone stopped to notice that if you have an ever-expanding sphere of understanding, necessarily the surface volume of the frontier of the unknown becomes larger and larger. It's like building a bonfire bigger and bigger to convince yourself that there's an awful lot of darkness.” “You can discover [using psychedelics] actually that the adventure of being is not a cultural adventure. It's not a societal adventure. It's a personal adventure, and that this is what you really need to be involved in.” “There is always a low level of mutants in a population, but they are of no consequence as long as the selective parameters remain the same. But when the selective parameters change suddenly these individuals, who were previously masked in the general population, the selective advantage that they have now comes immediately to the fore. And they act very quickly, and critically, to send the evolution of a given species off in a different direction. . . . It's that the new types were always there but not with any advantage. It's that the new situation has conferred a sudden advantage on them, and they are moving then into positions of dominance in the population, or the society if we're talking about human beings. I think that the psychedelic experience is like that at the present level. There is a population of different people in the general population, and as conditions change these people will be seen to have adaptive advantages.” “What the psychedelics really do, I think, is release us from cultural machinery and put you right up against the human essence.” “I think there is a potential for immortality, but it isn't assured. It is something that comes to the courageous. And somehow in the historical experience we've gotten the idea, through orthodox religions, that salvation comes to the subservient, and this is totally wrong. It is more like the Greek ideal of the hero, that if you're heroic enough once you're dead you'll be a god. And I think this is what these things summon us all to.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Weekend of June 15-17, 2012 "Terence McKenna: Beyond 2012" Esalen Workshop with Bruce Damer and Lorenzo

Guest speakers: Eileen Workman and Matt Pallamary PROGRAM NOTES: Matt Pallamary interviews Eileen Workman, co-founder of the Universe Project who spent sixteen years working in the financial services industry, most recently as a First Vice President of Investments with a major Wall Street investment firm. Her new book, Sacred Economics: The Currency of Life has been praised by many, including Barbara Marx Hubbard, co-founder and chairperson of the board of The Foundation for Conscious Evolution who says of it: Occasionally in human history a clear voice of good sense and compassion rises from the multitudes caught in the memetic mud of obsolete ideas about current reality. Thomas Jefferson was such a voice when he stated: "All men are created equal" at a time when there was no equality, at all. So now Eileen Workman sends a clear and intelligent message: We can live beyond the current monetary economy better, longer, kinder and more joyfully, and here is how to begin. Even though it might seem impossible, as the system continues to breakdown and the inequalities grow, her voice increasingly serves us as a guide to the next stage of evolutionary economics. We should all read it and place our faith and actions in the good sense it offers us, guiding us toward the next era of economics in the coming age. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Eileen's Blog

Guest speakers: Dr. Albert Hofmann and Peter Gorman PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Albert Hofmann.] “I reported about this bicycle ride because I had the feeling that time would stand still. It was a very strange feeling that I had never had before, this change in the experience of time.” “It [my first LSD experience] became such a strange experience that I feared to have become insane.” “At the climax I had the feeling to be already out of my body.” “It [LSD] works on the very center of our psychic existence.” “Nobody has died from toxic doses of LSD, not one case. All of the fatal cases were by accidents due to the disturbances of the consciousness of the senses.” “They did not see any special effect on animals, because LSD works only on very high spiritual centers, on consciousness, which animals don't have.” “[Research with morning glory seeds] shows us that LSD is not just a laboratory product. It is closely related chemically, and pharmalogically, psychologically with [morning glory seeds], with this old Indian magic drug. That means that LSD belongs, pharmalogically chemically, with a group of the sacred magic plants of Mexico. That's a very important finding.” “I never believed it [LSD] would become a pleasure drug on the streets.” “I think, of course, the story of LSD is not yet finished at all. If we learn to use it with respect and under the right conditions I am sure the beneficial effects are enormous.” “In antiquity they had institutions where people who liked to have a [psychedelic initiation] could go and have a very well elaborated condition to have a beneficial effect. But we have not this. We have not. Doesn't exist.” “I think the next thing that can be reasonably asked is that LSD and the psychedelics should be legally available in psychiatry. As doctors have access to morphine, they have access to cocaine, they have no access to LSD. This must be changed. This should be changed.” “That is also important, that LSD produces no addiction.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Peter Gorman, Writer, Explorer, Naturalist LSD Testing on British Troops

Guest speakers: Allen Ginsberg, Ram Das, Laura Huxley, Peter Gorman PROGRAM NOTES: As us Monty Python fans love to hear, “Now for something completely different.” Well, not really. But today's program is a little different in that instead of featuring just one speaker we have an audio collage that includes Allen Ginsberg, Ram Das, and Laura Huxley. A finer collection of psychedelic elders you would be hard-pressed to find. First of all is a rare recording of a telephone interview of Allen Ginsberg by then “High Times” editor, Peter Gorman. When Gorman asked for a story about Timothy Leary, Ginsberg tells of the time that Leary came to his New York apartment to meet Jack Kerouac and they took psilocybin together Next is a brief conversation that Peter has with Ram Das during which we learn some more of the background of the early days at Millbrook and the interesting series of events that led up to going there. The last segment is another Peter Gorman interview, this time with Laura Huxley in which she tells of some of her own experiences with LSD. It's a short program but packed with interesting historical ancetdotes. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Personal Message from Eldridge Cleaver to Timothy Leary Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary A Kickstarter campaign for Joanna Harcourt-Smith

Guest speakers: Oscar Janiger and Peter Gorman PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Oscar Janiger.] [In regards to the dangers of taking LSD] “Not everybody is committed to go to Everest. Not everybody is going to go to the Serengeti and shoot lions or whatever you want. These are risk-taking adventures. There are people courageous and adventuresome enough who are willing to do it, and when you do it you study your risks.” “You can die of over taking aspirin and drinking too much water, but [not] LSD, and by the way, there is no evidence of physical death from marijuana either.” “It's just the same as we go back to Everest, you can fall of the fuckin' mountain. That's all there is to it. I'm not going to make any apologies for that. You've got to be prepared. You know that old adage that LSD favors the prepared mind.” “[The Sixties was] a time when people began to see that what was laid down for them as obligatory reality was not obligatory.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Wikipedia article about Dr. Oscar Janiger Peter Gorman's 1993 interview with Dr. Albert Hofmann Albert Hofmann.org (online Hofmann Foundation papers)

Guest speakers: Dennis McKenna and Peter Gorman ROBERT VENOSA January 21, 1936 - August 9, 2011 Dear Friends and Community, A great soul has completed his earthly journey and graduated to the next level. The great Venosa left his body on Tuesday August 9, 2011 at 6:56 PM. His transition was graceful and accomplished in the same composed and calm manner that he exuded throughout his life. I feel honored to have been able to accompany him to the gate, having walked 30 beautiful years together in this life. Robert had a long and brave healing journey with cancer and showed incredible strength on this path as well as tremendous courage in facing this great dragon. He believed in the natural healing ability of the human body and proved the doctors wrong time and again, who only gave him a few month’s to live upon his diagnosis over eight years ago. He was a powerful human being. Together he and I, held the piece of his physical struggle safely tucked away from the eyes of the world like a precious pearl. It is with great sadness that I’m sharing this news today but also with deep gratitude, for his magical and special life; fully lived. Even in death he gave those surrounding him a powerful initiation into the scared mysteries of the unknown. We will carry him in our hearts forever, remembering the light he shone on so many. He so appreciated the light that others shone upon him. In loving memory of my great love, compañero, best friend and artistic accomplice. Martina Hoffmann and family PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Dennis McKenna.] “I think that ayahuasca is actually much more controllable than mushrooms. . . . I think that it is quite an amazing tool for self-understanding and for exploration. I think that it's good for you, actually physically and psychologically good for you.” “It's no different than it ever was. When the Jesuits and the missionaries came to meso-America the first things to go, the first things to be stamped out was the knowledge of the sacred plants and the practice of using the sacred plants.” “I think that Christianity linked with Calvinism has a hard time dealing with what you might call facts of biology, which in another phrase is sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. In some ways, life is about sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. Biology is about those things.” “All experience is a drug experience. Whether it's mediated by our own [endogenous] drugs, or whether it's mediated by substances that we ingest that are found in plants, cognition, consciousness, the working of the brain, it's all a chemically mediated process. Life itself is a drug experience.” “He [Terence McKenna] will never let a fact get in the way of making a provocative statement. He's a good story teller, but I think it's important to remember that they are stories, and that he often makes mistakes in his lectures.” “In that position, a guy who can pack the houses every time, I feel has a larger responsibility to the psychedelic community to refrain from making these completely off-the-wall comments, and to actually tell it like it is, not how he imagines it to be.” “I'm sure that Terence views it as theater. I can't believe that he takes what he says seriously. I mean, I can tell you that he doesn't. Much of what he says he says it because it's going to get a rise out of somebody. He's always been that way.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Peter Gorman Writer, Explorer, Naturalist Web Site Blog Archive

Guest speakers: Peter Gorman and Dennis McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Dennis McKenna.] "The idea that you could use these to actually explore other dimensions, real worlds that were outside the cognizance of our ordinary world, is really what I think fascinated me about psychedelics." "More than anything else, it [DMT] seemed to be not an experience, not a drug, but a place, an actual other dimension that you were plunged into." "In order to understand its limitations, I almost had to become the 'enemy'. I had to become a scientist in order to understand the limitations of science." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Peter Gorman Writer, Explorer, Naturalist Web Site Blog Archive File Cleanup Test Thank you for all who worked on this project. ... A solution has been found and the files are being restored :-).

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "It seemed probable to me that this phenomenon encountered in deep psychedelic experiences with psilocybin actually has a potential historical impact. It is a kind of human ability, which is at present submerged in the psyche, contactable only by the shamanic means of journeying into historical hyperspace. In other words, of going into that place where the adumbrations of the future are intense enough that you can have an intimation, at least, of what is to come.” “I think the gradual evolution of language is actually the gradual lifting of the veil that is imposed between ourselves and meaning by the planetary ecology. In other words, the forward thrust of history is actually regulated by the ecology, and it is regulated through control of the evolution of language. Because what you cannot think you cannot do, and where you cannot imagine you cannot steer your culture and go. So I'm proposing on one level that hallucinogens be thought of as social pheromones that regulate the rate at which language develops and therefore regulates the evolution of human culture generally.” “Tribalism is a social form which can exist at any level of technology. It's a complete illusion to associate it with low levels of technology. It is probably, in fact, a form of social organization second only to the family in its ability to endure.” “This is what magic is. It's being able to speak in a voice which makes things happen, being able to speak in a voice which causes facts to be beheld by groups of people in a way that has been purged from profane language, for us relegated to poetry and that sort of thing.” “The history of man that you don't know is what your unconscious is made out of. Just as the history of yourself that you don't know is what your personal unconscious is made out of.” “Knowledge, or verbal facility, is no proof that you know what you're talking about.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Women's Visionary Congress Consciousness, Healing, and Social Justice The Women's Visionary Congress (WVC) is an annual gathering of visionary women healers, scholars, activists and artists who study consciousness and altered states. The WVC supports the transfer of knowledge among women who apply the insights of their research and spiritual path. We gather on beautiful land in Northern California to renew our community of adventurers and visionaries. The fifth annual WVC will take place from July 29 - 31, 2011 at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) Earthrise Retreat Center, near Petaluma, California. The WVC welcomes interested women and men to join us as we talk, dance, eat delicious food and participate in a series of conversations with wise women. Presenters include Copperwoman, Valerie Corral, Earth and Fire Erowid, Dorothy Fadiman, Amber Field, Carolyn (Mountain Girl) Garcia, Dorka Keehn, Jessica Lucas, Mariavittoria Mangini, Jean Millay, Eleonora Molnar, Annie Oak, Linnae Ponté, Miss S, Nick Sand, Stephanie Schmitz, Jane Straight, Justine Willis Toms, Keeper Trout, Clare Wilkins and Nina Wise.