Psychedelic Salon

Guest speakers: Timothy Leary and G. Gordon Liddy This program is another selection from the Timothy Leary archive. It features an October 23, 1990 debate at Penn State University between Dr. Leary and his arch-enemy, the scandalous G. Gordon Liddy. One of my favorite segments in this debate, which wasn't all that polite at times, is when Leary pointed out the fact that he had spent more time in the U.S. Military service than Liddy had, but that Liddy had spent more time in prison than Leary had. PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.] “My advice to you is: 1) don't rely on politicians to solve you problems; 2) work to the fullest of your power to decentralize and to take power away from the central government in Washington, bring it back to the villages, to the cities, to the neighborhoods.” "It politics, scum rises to the top. Let me say it again, in politics mediocrity rises to the top.” “As far as this election is concerned, I urge you, don't vote for either a Democrat or a Republican. It just encourages the bastards.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST The Maze Game by Diana Reed Slattery

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna Please Support Dennis McKenna’s Kickstarter Project: The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss! PROGRAM NOTES: This lecture was recorded in November 1982. A more complete version of this talk may be found in Podcast 317.] [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “My assumption whenever I am confronted with opposites is to try to unify them, to create a coincidentia oppositorum as was done in alchemy, to not force the system to closure but to try and leave the system open enough so that the differences can resonate and become complimentary rather than antithetical.” “Shamanism, on the other hand [as compared with science], is this world wide, since Paleolithic times, tradition which says that you must make your own experience the centerpiece of any model of the world that you build. No amount of readings from meters, whether they're metering cyclotrons or any other kind of instrument, are going to satisfy you.” “What psilocybin focuses as a problem that these other hallucinogens do not is that it allows a dialogue with the other that is full of give and take. In other words there are entities in the hallucinogenic world that psilocybin, and DMT, and a few other not well-known or widely distributed plants, hallucinogens, induce.” “Our alienation from ourselves has caused us to set up a number of straw men that are keeping us from building actually a mature model of how the universe really works. The content of the dialogue with the Other is a content that indicates that man's horizons are infinitely bright.” “Alchemy is about the generation of a psychic construct, a wholeness, a thing which has many properties, which is paradoxical, which is both mind and matter, which can do anything.” “[UFOs are], in other words, something which in order not to alarm us has disguised itself as an extraterrestrial being but is in fact the collectivity of the human psyche signaling a profound historical crisis.” “A mature humanity could get into a place where we no longer required these metaphysical spankings from messiahs and flying saucers that come along every thousand years or so to mess up the mess that has been created and try and send people off on another tack.” “Eternity does not have a temporal existence, even the kind of temporal existence where you say it always existed. It does not have temporal duration of any sort. It is eternity.” “We are not primarily biology with mind emerging as a kind of iridescence, a kind of epiphenomenon at the higher levels of organization of biology. We are in fact hyperdimentional objects of some sort which cast a shadow into matter. And the shadow in matter is the body.” “The whole purpose of shamanism, and of life correctly lived, is to strengthen the soul and strengthen the relationship to the soul, so that this passage [death] can be cleanly made.” “Technology is the real skin of our species.” "There is not the Newtonian universe deployed throughout the parsecs and kiliacosoms of physical space and the interior mental universe. They are the same thing.” “An Aquarian science, or a science that places psychedelic experience at the center of its program of investigation, should move toward a practical realization of the goal of eliminating the barrier between the ego and the overself so that the ego can perceive itself as an expression of the overself.” “This [psilocybin] is a source of gnosis, and the voice of gnosis has been silenced in the Western mind for at least a thousand years.” “We can release this thing once again. The logos can be unleashed once again, and the voice that spoke to Plato and Parmenadies and Hericlitus, that voice can speak again in the minds of modern people. And when it does, the alienation will be ended because we will have become the alien.” “But the main thing about psilocybin, and I stress it over all these other hallucinogens, is information,

Guest speakers: Dennis McKenna and David Ellenbogen Please Support Dennis McKenna’s Kickstarter Project: The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss! PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Dennis McKenna.]  "The brain is essentially a communications network … all this complex network of neurons that cross-talk to each other through these neurotransmitters.” “We think of ourselves as separate from the environment. We're kind of here, and our skin separates us from the environment, but we're not like that at all. We're semi-permeable membranes. Things are coming in all the time in the form of food, drugs, smoke, other things that we absorb, and we're putting out things all the time at the same time. So we're part of this chemical communication system.” “If it weren't for the linkage to symbols, or significance, which are abstractions, we wouldn't be conscious. That is the sine qua non of consciousness, is that we're immersed in this world of ideas and abstractions, and dreams. And this kind of experience is as real as the external world for us. And not really separated from us. That's what sets us apart from animals.” “Consciousness is something you detect, like tuning a television set to different channels, as much as it is something that the brain generates. I think the brain modulates signals that come from outside, but consciousness is probably more primal than matter.” “It's not only up to us. Life probably permeates the universe, and that means intelligence permeates the universe. And that's good. So if we blow it, and it looks like we're probably going to, others will carry on. And if we wake up in time maybe we can be part of that. Our challenge is to propagate these understandings through enough people that people do wake up and they realize that we've got to get cracking.” “Ayahuasca is now a global phenomenon, and this is part of the plants' reaching out, trying to reach out to larger groups of people and basically hit us upside the head with a two by four and say, “Hey you monkeys wake up! You're fucking it up! You have to wake up.” “I think humility is essential for doing this [working with psychedelic plants]. This is the other thing that to me personally, and I think to a lot of people I think this is the message of the plant teachers, not only 'You monkeys need to wake up,' but 'You monkeys need to get over yourselves. You monkeys only think you're running the show. You're not running the show.' If anything, the plants are running the show.” “Religions, established religions tend to want you to take a lot of things on faith for which there's not a shred of evidence. And so the doctrines and the dogmas become essentially political institutions, they become instruments for keeping people in line, don't ask too many questions, just accept it.” “One of the maybe adverse side effects of psychedelics is that they'll make you think you're the messiah, or you somehow have to play a role in this.” “I think ayahuasca is perfectly capable of finding the people it needs, and the people who need to find ayahuasca will find it. And there's no need for cults or movements or very much human intervention, although a lot of people will be convinced that we must do this.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

We are saddened to report that Eric Hart suffered a heart attack and died quite suddenly on December 9, 2011. He will be deeply missed. Guest speakers: Eric Hart and Matthew Pallamary PROGRAM NOTES: “[If you are in police custody] Never say a word. Don't ever talk to the cops under any circumstance. If you're a suspect, or you're being arrested, nothing can be gained from it. They will twist whatever you say. It can only be used against you, just like the famous Miranda advisement. You have a right to remain silent. So remain silent. Even if they're yelling and screaming at you to talk, refuse to talk. That's a basic right that you have. It's one of the only effective rights we have left from the Bill of Rights. So exercise that right, or else whatever you say will be twisted around, and it will end up leading to your conviction.” -Eric Hart, Attorney ... Email: LawyersLie (at) ymail (dot) com ... Web site: www.EricDHart.com Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Lawyers Lie (paperback) Lawyers Lie (Kindle edition)   Spirit Matters (paperback)      Land Without Evil (paperback) Spirit Matters ... Kindle Edition Land Without Evil ... Kindle Edition

Program moderator: Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a recording from the Timothy Leary archive. According to the label on the file, this is a recording of a television show that originated in Toronto, Canada. It was called Enterprise, or something like that, and this program took place sometime in 1983. The guest host that night was none other than Dr. Timothy Leary, and his topic for discussion that evening was Artificial Intelligence. … For me, one of the highlights was to hear a famous MIT professor predict that home computers would never catch on! Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option MENTIONED IN THIS PODCAST Fall & Winter (the movie)   The Coming Technological Singularity: How to Survive in the Post-Human Era Vernor Vinge Department of Mathematical Sciences San Diego State University (c) 1993 by Vernor Vinge BB's Bungalow Number 44 Remembering the "Bear" (Note: There is no direct link to the above podcast. You will have to search for in after clicking the link above.]

Guest speakers: Terence McKenna and Erik Davis Please Support Dennis McKenna’s Kickstarter Project: The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss! PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The trick to making the shamanic virtual world compelling is to fairly and truly convey it. You can't cut corners. You can't fake it. . . . So that this stuff really does blow people's minds, so that people see, well, human imagination is large enough to accommodate the human soul. It doesn't leave you feeling like you're wearing too tight a pair of shoes.” “We have no idea how strange the world we can create in the near term will be.” “Given the circumstances as we find them, what rational momentum is there to think that life is unique and arose on this planet only?” “I think that's the question that remains unanswered, you know, that's the grail of the thing. What is the nature of the Other, is basically what you're asking. Is it a construct, a projection or a discovery? It's not clear to me what it is.” “ You can't believe everything you hear. They are of many kind, some are made of ions, some of mind, the ones of DMT, you'll find, stutter often and are blind.” “I think [ketamine] is an inter-uterine memory drug. I think there are things about it that cause you to recapture some kind of inter-uterine state.” “The psychedelic vision is of some kind of relevant thing. It isn't just the equivalent of a dust bunny under your psychic bed or something like that.” “Mathematics is really what it's all about when you finally get it sliced thin, I think.” “All doubt means is that 'I'm shopping, thank you.'” [Before I had cancer] I had no idea that such peculiar states of mind were naturally available to people, and non-lethal. In other words that you could have fairly frequent brain seizures and experience very bizarre states of body/mind dislocation and have it not kill you. So now I see that the spectrum of human experience is a lot broader than I previously imagined.” “The mind can adjust to a great deal more than that which simply kills it.” “Given how weird life has been, why rush to prejudge death. It's bound to be mighty strange, life was mighty strange, and I'm curious. … It's an interesting situation to be told that you have a very limited amount of life left, because it composes your mind for you, wonderfully.” “What psychedelics show is that the world is full of surprises. I consider psychedelics a constant and verifiable miracle. The fact that that can happen to your mind. So it means that all kinds of things are possible.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Animations Mentioned in this Podcast Asparagus [1979] Quasi at the Quackadero

Guest speakers: Terence McKenna and Erik Davis PROGRAM NOTES: Please Support Dennis McKenna's Kickstarter Project: The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss! [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "But I did [as a child] spend a lot of time grappling with shit like the nature of the soul, and the nature of sin, and all of these imponderables. And, of course, what you end up doing is you end up reading scholars of mysticism.” “To me it's the most psychedelic part of the psychedelic experience, it's when you get the logos coming out of the trees, the rocks, the berries, the water, everything.” “[Speaking about how to pursue a psychedelic culture.] Well, I'd say the wrongly-packaged version would be something like 'Castenadaism', a formulaic cult. Do these things, take these drugs, follow these instructions and moral obligation will flee from your kin. Nobody can be that foolish. If, on the other hand, you sincerely pursue this stuff, grow the plants, try to understand it, try to revivify the rituals and figuring out what it's all about, well, that's an authentic push towards spirituality, a very authentic push towards spirituality, and probably fruitful.” “It seems to me that 'the shamanic drug of the month' is not a very appealing idea.” “The basic concept [of alchemy] is that somehow intuition and nature are reflective of each other. Until that hypothesis fails we should probably hang on to it, because look how far we've gotten. I mean it is really bizarre how much of nature the human mind seems to be able to understand.” “[I'm hoping] that some lack of resource or vision doesn't reveal that we can't give enough people a bearable life. So we [would then] have to live forward into an age of revolution, social turmoil, and struggle for resources. It doesn't have to be this way.” “Now let's see if information can liberate. That's why I don't want to do something stupid like die and miss the whole unfoldment of this proposition that knowledge is power, information will liberate. And it will be settled in the next ten or fifteen years. Either they'll get a handle on it, whoever 'they' are, whatever a 'handle means. Or it will slip from their control, and it will be clear that some kind of dialogue is now going on between individual human beings and the sum total of human knowledge, and that nothing can stop it, that some kind of Renaissance, some kind of total new relationship to knowledge and possibility is put in place.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Terence McKenna Vs. the Black Hole by Erik Davis This is Erik Davis' account of the interview heard in this podcast. Excerpt: The following are excerpts from interviews that I conducted with Terence McKenna in late October and early November of 1999, in preparation for a profile that appeared in the May 2000 issue of Wired. These interviews have also been edited and released on a CD, Terence McKenna: The Last Interview. Given McKenna's subsequent demise, I chose selections concerning his feelings about death and dying. The October interview was conducted in San Francisco just a few days before Terence underwent a craniotomy, and he therefore spoke a bit more frankly about his condition than during November, when I spent a week with him and his wonderful girlfriend Christie Silness during his sort-of recovery in Hawaii. Mescal: A New Artificial Paradise by Dr. Havelock Ellis

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna Please Support Dennis McKenna's Kickstarter Project: The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss!   Books by Terence McKenna The Missing Chapters of The Invisible Landscape Chapter 20: The Oversoul as Saucer Chapter 21: Open Ending PROGRAM NOTES: This is Tape Number 004 of the Paul Herbert Collection. [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] "In psilocybin and the tryptamine hallucinogens generally we actually have a state of mind that is very similar to the state of mind reported to accompany the UFO contact, and that these things could somehow be co-mapped, one onto the other” “Involvement with these tryptamines as they accumulated in your system, you seem to acquire the ability to inhabit more than one world at once, as though superimposed over reality there was a super-reality, a hyper dimensional world where information was accessible in magical ways.” “History is just this froth of artifact production that has appeared in the last ten to fifteen thousand years. It spread across the planet very quickly. But that mind in man just goes back and back into the darkness.” “The extraterrestrial is the human over soul in its general and particulate expression on the planet. . . . The over soul is some kind of field that is generated by human beings, but that is not under the control of any institution, any government, and religion. It is actually the most intelligent thing on the planet, and it regulates human culture through the release of ideas out of eternity and into the continuum of history.” “The myths that are building are like the Messianic myths that preceded the appearance of Christ.” “I think that science has betrayed human destiny to some degree. And that we are led to the brink of star-flight, but we're also led to the brink of thermonuclear holocaust.” “The political conclusion to be drawn is to preserve your freedom of thought by deconditioning yourself to the flying saucer religion before it happens.” “I think that the flying saucer experience is tremendously powerful. And that it really is somehow linked to the psychedelic experience in a way that perhaps will not be understood for some time.” “Well, see what I'm saying is if we would intelligently examine these dimensions that the psychedelic drugs make available, we could as it were get in touch with the over soul and leave the era when man is disciplined by flying saucers and messiahs and progress is halted for millennia at a stretch just because people can't evolve their ethics and their technology at the same rate of speed.” “The modern epistemological methods are just not up to dealing with an elf, with chattering, elf-infested spaces. I mean, we have a word for those spaces, we call it schizophrenia and slam the door. But, you know, these dimensions have been with us since ten thousand times longer than Freud. And people just have to come to terms with them.” “The discs which haunt the skys of Earth indicate that the unconscious cannot be kept waiting forever. These things are going to have to be dealt with.” “The imagination is the golden pathway to everywhere.” “But I think what's being missed is that a whole dimension of communication is being ruled inadmissible as evidence simply because it doesn't conform to the epistemological biases of the people who are asking the question. And that is all these voices in the head that guide shamans, that obsess lunatics, that make poetry, and in other words the muse. The muse is real. . . . Well one could talk endlessly about this subject, I suppose, but until it's resolved all of man's epistemological dealings with reality will be haunted by this faint spookiness, which can't be gotten rid of.” “You see what is happening and why the psychedelic experience is so important is because information is loose on Planet Three. Some kind of very strange thing is going on.”

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Bruce Damer.] “I would say it's no more than 500 people in the United States who cause a vast amount of the grief.” “A crescendo involves everyone. The singularity seems to be this nerd idea of reaching some kind of Omega Point. It's very much the Christian idea of the second coming. It's apocalyptic, etc., a bit of a downer because everything comes to an end, but it's incredibly unlikely.” “The crescendo will throw off all the old religions. It will throw off the conspiracy theories. It will throw off crusty old corporate jobs. And replace them with self-sufficiency, direct communication with nature, with other human beings, with media, and the creation of opinions directly. “So if you think of the computing, it's not really computing, but the computing nature is doing all the time, it outstrips all our largest supercomputing grids.” “So if we can't do even one neuron [computer simulation] how are we going to upload consciousness exactly?” “You're here not because something put you here and fabricated you and guided the evolution and created the whole planet. It's an emergent phenomenon and so are you. And you are an ongoing story, and the story is written in your genes, but it is also written in your mind. And you have responsibility for this amazing emergent phenomenon.” “You don't need religion for miracles. The fact that you exist in all this existence is stacked upon miracles, turtles all the way down. So if we grok that, we don't need religious stories any more.” “The virtual worlds and avatar spaces and multi-player games of now are the Keystone Cops of what virtual worlds will be in twenty or thirty years through AR [Augmented Reality], and big home holodecks, and stuff like that.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Bruce Damer.] "What's interesting is the difference, or the counter-ballast, between the dialogue of doom and the voices of hope, and the innovators of hope for the future. And it's something that you could refer to almost as like a great crescendo.” “I think that in this year of 2011 and heading into the auspicious year of 2012 and 2013 and beyond we are in the great crescendo of humanity.”  “I think in a sense it's the dialogue, it is the control of the dialogue that is the problem here. It's the battle of the airwaves. It's the people we didn't nominate to talk back to us and tell us what our culture is and what our future is and what our politics are. That is the problem. That's the primary problem.” “There can't just be protests, it can't be like the Sixties. You can't be just against. You have to find out what you are for, not just what you are against. That's the key to getting through the Crescendo. “To some extent, the future is being made around us.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Bruce Damer's Web site Submit a question for the Global Trialogue ‘Fall & Winter’ is a documentary that explores the origins of our global crisis in order to better understand the catastrophic transition we have now entered. Breaking Convention: A Multidisciplinary Conference on Psychedelic Consciousness Planet Radio London: The voice of the Dopetribe