We always enjoyed having Terrence with us to talk about all kinds of things welcome to the program good morning
Pleasure to be with you. Well, let's actually let me begin with something just to came up the other night. I was at an event
Environmental fundraising event that down the peninsula and a few years ago
I had done something with Mark Plotkin [uh] the ethnobotanist who wrote all about
The rainforest and finding shamanistic roots and actually started a company to go pursue pharmaceuticals in the jungle and all that sort of thing
somebody said to me here Mark Plotkin's [uh]
shaman, [pha...] Pharmaceuticals has gone belly-up and I hadn't known that and suddenly I started reflecting on that that maybe it might have something to
do with all these inflated expectations about the medicinal power of plants that Americans have perhaps widened to too strong is that
Do you think operative here? Well, my brother worked for Shaman pharmaceuticals for a while
I'm not sure. It's accurate to call it mark Plotkin's company. We're probably sending several people through the roof
Mark was one of the -- One of the He was one of [indistinguishable]. Oh, yeah, right
I think the number of problems converged on their desire to make money one of which was the startling
evolution of
of
sampling technology
so that now it's possible to look at slurries of the
potentially drug like material produced synthetically in the laboratory and
Identify thousands and thousands of compounds in a matter of hours and this technology didn't exist
Ten years ago when shaman was getting going
Another company put out of business by technology
Exactly not keeping up with what the other guy was doing, but has there been a new judgment maybe a bit of over?
zeal with respect to the press and the inflated expectations
About what can be done for all I mean the notion that there are panaceas out there cures to AIDS, etc
We just haven't found them the right plans
well
I think you have to understand if you're talking to tribal people and they tell you that they have a plant that causes
visions
They're probably right if they tell you they have a plan which cures diabetes
diabetes is a
Set of syndromes defined by modern medical science. How can
Aboriginal people have those kinds of insights into
physiological functioning so the search for
Psychoactive drugs was very successful based on interviewing Aboriginal people
But the search for drugs applicable to other areas of modern medicine
I think target based drug design is much more effective
Well, I kept thinking about thinking that we have our language is very revealing
We have notions of magic mushrooms and we t..talk medicinally about magic bullets and think of it
You've been in quest of in some respects is this magic? I mean, that's what you've been looking for in a way hasn't it?
Well if you're looking for a magical
Psychoactive plants nature is full of them in every environment in every ecosystem
There are plants that either singly or in combination with nearby plants will deliver powerful mind-altering
experiences
Naturally, the jungles are most rich because the jungles are most species rich in plants, generally
But the chemistry of plants seems to have a place in it for the production of compounds which are very active in
mammalian nervous systems and of course that includes
ourselves still much to be discovered of that whole realm
Much to be discovered in terms of sites of activity
characterization of receptors
across
indexing the effects of various drugs
as an example of new discoveries of salvia divinorum
Is a Mexican mint plant that has been discovered to have a compound in it?
Micro gram for micro gram as powerful as LSD
Completely
disorientingly a psychedelic
this is not a plant that has been made illegal or
Scheduled and the compound when studied revealed itself to be from a chemical family. Never known
contains psychoactive
substances, so the analytical tools are getting more subtle the ability to detect nanogram amounts of
material is now standard and as it were we're going back through the tailings and
Getting the gold out that was overlooked by the crude their methods used in the past. You've never really
particularly recent history advocated illegal drug use, right
evening
somehow
protesting the current legal situation
We're suggesting they're conversing in some way that those who want these kinds of experience should avail themselves of them in defiance of the law
No, I've always had the political
attitude that
This was not something that you wanted to turn into a mass movement. I came up through the 60s and saw the
Fallacy of that. I think if people want to pursue these
Experiences they can go to countries where they're available or they can grow these plants
And for example this plant I just mentioned salvia divinorum
There is no more powerful psychedelic and there is no more legal
Object in all of nature. This is as legal as long cuttings. So
For the person who does their homework?
There is no conflict between the wish to experience these things and their legal status
Can we do the homework to the extent that we really know?
such things as I mean because if there was a
you've written about the acid scare in the 60s and all that sense of flashbacks and you know
archaic letters daughter jumping out of a window and I mean a lot of people are very frightened by
Psychedelics and frightened by hallucinogens and with some might say good reason do we really know in other words the overall effects?
Well, Tim, Larry once said he said LSD is a psychoactive compound that occasionally causes
psychotic behavior in people who haven't taken it and
This occurs quite often drugs often have more effect on the people who don't take them and on the people who do take them
Drugs, however, again somewhere though, I'd rather you've said science pictured as a gateway drug, I believe science fiction is the gateway drug
Paleontology for seven-year-olds is also a serious Gateway control
I think that society
Rather than dealing with this as it should has dealt with it with the heavy hand of the courts and the prisons
When what we should be doing is educating
ourselves
and our children
Drugs are here to stay. They're a part of
Postmodern life there will be more and more of them wherever they are illegal. They will spawn criminal syndicalism
we need to sit down with our children and
Explain to them how you take drugs. How you evaluate their affect on you how you make decisions?
Absent social pressure and height and how you
Come to terms with this particular aspect of modern life in most perhaps
We just want to steer their children away from drugs altogether, though
I would think well that that sends a message that these things are bad and then of course
indiscriminately children will involve themselves in these things and
The results are not
happy
Knowledge is the only way to come to terms with this. It's a bit like sexuality
The battle for sex education is I suppose more or less one now
But that was a huge issue as I was growing up now drugs. The response is the hammer of
Imprisonment and yet as I said, the number of drugs the opportunities to take drugs endlessly
proliferate if we don't educate people we're going to produce a continuous supply of
victims for the courts and the prisons to make their grist some might argue that sex
education has only marginally affected and perhaps because of our culture the problem of sexual excess and
I
suppose we could come under categories of
Misuse of sexuality or abusive sexuality have been if anything exacerbated through the years
Well, I suppose it's absent statistics. It's everybody's
Opinion. I certainly think people are having more and better sex than they were having in the 50s
Terence Mckenna our guest and in fact to him as I said about a whole range of things here
you know when you um,
You've always struck me and you start many people and you describe yourself as a very rational man, and you certainly are
An oblivious thinker reader scholar and so forth and yet sometimes when you talk about some things that you have talked about
aliens UFOs
Intergalactic stuff and so forth. It makes rational skeptical people's skin begin to you know percolate in many ways. Um,
What do you say to that kind of response?
well, I think they're not listening carefully my
method if you want to call it that has been to explore the weird the bizarre the
marginal with a
rational mind not with a will to believe
The truth doesn't need your cooperation
To exist the truth. You can kick the tires
they'll let you take it first in all forms of cult all forms of height all forms of
Delusion do require your participation in order to exist. So I've looked into
marginal areas of human experience
historical and otherwise
with a rational mind and what I have found is
doorways into the miraculous are far fewer than the
Publicists of the New Age would have us believe on the other hand
They are not as rare as the proponents of radical reductionism and materialism would have us believe
There are doorways out of the mundane human
condition, I explored all candidates with an open mind and came to the conclusion that
psychedelic drugs are
the most accessible the most efficient
the least dangerous
Now there may be other ways to access the miraculous flagellation prayer
Wilderness abandonment what have you I'm not interested in cataloging the varieties of the doorways to the secret
I'm interested in finding one doorway. That worked and how does the Russian way determine?
What is miraculous as opposed to what may be induced or maybe some sort of?
Delirium or some kind of illusion Ettore experience that has no basis in rationality
well, I think
you know Heidegger said we measure our relationship to reality by the depth of the call and
To I think one of the chief justices said he couldn't define pornography, but he knew it when he saw it
the miraculous is
self-evidently the miraculous and it's certainly possible to take many drugs and have many kinds of
Experiences without coming near it on the other hand
These psychoactive substances seem to be the most direct path to the miraculous. Now, what do I mean by that?
I mean the dissolving of cultural constructs the reality that is ever-present
outside who you are who your culture is what language you speak your
Expectations, you know, we could disagree about the Worth and the efficacy of psychedelics
But I think if we had shared the experience, we could agree that it is characterized by boundary dissolution
You're talking about something Universal something that suggests spirituality or aesthetics or maybe even theology but not necessarily
Intergalactic communication. Let's say or exobiology. No, I don't think that the
culture at the end of the 20th century is penetrated by dozens or
hundreds of alien cultures seeking to trade the high
Technology for fetal body parts there all of that
in fact
I consider all that pop culture
To be indicative of of the hysteria that is engendered by science
Moving beyond the range of the understanding of ordinary people people will always generate
explanations for what they see around them and if they lack education
Their explanations will be bizarre
Quirky primitive and I take all this New Age
channeling and
all these
extraterrestrial revelations and so forth to signify a profound
Dichotomy between
officially sanctioned models of reality and then what people are saying to each other on the buses and in the
Dying stories there been some very telling studies
In fact about those who had UFO Close Encounters and were taken aboard ships and often, you know
Various parts of the anatomy are penetrated or these kinds of things happen and most cases the proliferation of these things occurred almost exclusively
especially the same kinds of descriptions of
Alien forms and so forth occurred after the spate of movies about Jesus pro-bono
proctologists from other star systems
Are not making unannounced free house calls in our homes
I mean this could almost be a litmus test for
Sanity, if you believe that then I want to sell you a bridge over the Hudson River
Quite cheaply then. What is out there? What how do we begin to even?
Assume a kind of cosmic consciousness or awareness of what might be alive beyond this planet
while Michel imagine if there were a force in the water or in the air or in the
Advertising that was causing a certain
significant percentage of people here at the end of the 20th century to simply lose the ability to
distinguish between memory and dream
Then people wouldn't know whether that image in their mind of a flying saucer came from Close Encounters
or from that
weekend at Uncle Tom's farm when they were
11 and I think something like this is happening
We as tribal people
With Aboriginal roots are set up to handle about 10 stories and one long epic poem
Intellectually the machinery of our brains and yet modern media has exposed each of us to
thousands of movies hundreds of thousands of spit columns
endless clips of film and audio data and I think people
Are losing the ability to distinguish their own past from a kind of media created collective past
That has more the character of the Union
Unconscious about it than it has the character of the warm and friendly world a collective a filmic unconscious
Yes, a kind of collective dream on which we draw on out of it comes the Bigfoot
the Flying Saucer is the
proctologists from nearby star systems and
people who have not been trained to
deconstruct data or think rationally are completely
victim of these media spread mean like viruses
that distort ordinary thinking
vulcanize
epistemology and make social and political
consensus on anything that much harder to reach
just reminded me of a dog write about us working we were talking about before when in the air in the
illusions of memes I
Wanted to allude to something else and that is the 1971 trip that you made to South America and Iraq
it's been written about a number of times with your brother and your
Brother experienced as a result of ingesting a plant
and
Hearing a conversations mother had the telephone your mother had in the telephone in 1953 and you can correct me in the 2000s
but Dizzy Dean was in the
Pitching a game that was being broadcast on the radio. He could hear all this
I believe he could hear all this and at the same time he
Was a three-year-old at the time
Not presumably your mother would have remembered this or maybe not if it actually happened
But this is the realm we're talking about you brother said it was all in ER he thought but this around between dream and memory
and the
Indecipherable 'ti of the top. Well, it is certainly true that in the presence of certain forms of schizophrenia
Ordinary reality seems to dissolve into a stew of
coincidences
Laden facts side glances
from reality if you will
I
I
Think that time and space is generally pretty firm
but that there are conditions and it always seems to have to do with perturbation of mental states whether achieved through some
Yogic or quasi religious technique or through the use of drugs
but when we perturb our mental machinery time and space
comes apart andrey weaves itself in
Unexpected ways to meet this is not surprising because it seems to me we obviously create time and space
These are mental constructs. They're not
given from mount sinai
They're conventions that the animal body brings together in order to organize data
About its place in the world, and we're going to borrow a little from Cartesian
Thought I think time-space therefore time spaces is something like fans. Absolutely the world is made of language Michael
that's the insight of
psychedelics
what we expect to see we see what we say is there is
there and
This is a this is really what the 20th century has contributed to philosophy. I think the understanding that
Language is primary concepts like space time matter energy. These are culture-bound
linguistically defined
Concepts what is primary is the word and it's very interesting to me that this psychedelic
insight is
Restated by the cyber
Revolution which says it a different slightly differently. It says the world is cold
Everything is cold your DNA creates you that as it's cold?
Unfolds the world around us is defined by legal codes the world inside
Our machines are defined by what we call computer languages more code code is the primary
Reality and in ordinary experience code is
language now this creates
Opportunities for relativism that it creates opportunities for all kinds of dangerous and sloppy thinking nevertheless
We have to go down that route because it is clear
This is a deeper understanding than what we inherited from the philosophies of the 19th century
talking to Terence Mckenna about a whole range of things including
Changing philosophy his newest book actually trial Logs with Rupert Sheldrake and Ralph. Abraham is called the evolutionary mind
It's a feast of all kinds of stuff on visual math and fact olds and psychic pets and the Millennium
Which brings up another interesting point number of years ago you talked about December 22nd?
2000 12 as the date of I guess what would be characterized as the secular apocalypse? Are you still with that day?
yes, it's nice now to have that all to myself since everyone's rushing the gun and timezone is why today I
Was accused of being too
Crazy and to suppose the world could transform in 2012 now no one will wait
I represent an extremely conservative
position, you know that goes why to cater I
Really am not. I live in Hawaii
Off-grid I it may be because I'm already prepared for it, but I suspect
Problems from y2k will be local
Confined in time and and fairly manageable. Of course, it's simply a projection for opinion. No one knows
We're talking with parents mckenna and I want to go to your phone calls and we'll do that momentarily
just a quick question though when you talk about the miraculous and and certainly
Getting the sense of the visionary power of plants and all of that
Psychedelics, etc. Is there a sense of
Your as a westerner and
There's a serious thinker and rationalist
Being able to feel the kind of sacred and divine power that is often attached to many of these plants by other cultures
Could you absorb that that you and fertilizer? Yes, absolutely
You can I mean it comes in the form of awe and astonishment
but all has always been spoken of as an appropriate emotion in the presence of the
supernatural and when you finally grab on to the hundred thousand volt
Psychedelic experience. It's absolutely
Confounding because it seems to be the thing which our culture has been most of pains to deny the existence
Of and so it's as though you come around the corner and there's santa claus Bugs Bunny and the Easter Bunny all playing poker together
and you realize you were given the wrong story all the way down the line and the appropriate response to that is
humility and awe and a kind of
Redirecting of one's energies to try and get in line with this very large reality suddenly to be revealed
Outside the confines of our cultural agenda or our cultural concerns as you know
It's interesting cuz you speak with this kind of derogation about New Age and yet at the same time when you talk about
The direct results and consequences of many of your experiences with these sacred plants
it suggests a sense of awe, but also a sense and mystery also a sense of the oneness of
and unity of life and and a feeling of spiritual transformation of feminism in ecology coming to the fore in terms of your
Political consciousness all things which are very much a part of the site guys. Then the New Age a little bit as well
well, I've always felt that in a way the New Age was a flight from the psychedelic experience, but the New Age was saying
It's invisible. Agenda was we'll try anything as long as we're sure it doesn't work and
That automatically exempts
Psychedelics all talk of spiritual advancement is always talk of pushing trying
practice concentration
Attention once you find psychedelics, you're not looking for the accelerator anymore
You're looking for the brakes on your spiritual vehicle?
You have suddenly found the means to achieve the stated goal
Which is union with the divine or one that's or something like that. Now the game becomes a very grown-up game
How are you going to integrate this into your ordinary life? You're no longer a seeker
You're no longer an option and now you're an insider now
You can come and go from these transcendental
Places at will now how do you use that to make yourself a better person better parent better?
Citizen of your community maybe there's a result of the opening up of your consciousness through the sorts of experiences
You've had you can become transcendental at will
Well, you can have recourse to the effective method that will because the substance over is over those substances
Were here he is our first caller from Pine Grove. Good morning. Good morning, Michael
I'd like to ask mr. McKenna if he can direct me to references in the botanical literature
Regarding salvia divinorum. I grow of fifteen or sixteen different species of salvia and I
Have a fair library, and I'm unable to locate it. Well, you should simply search on the internet
Salvia divinorum. There are several pages with dozens of links and there
These lists on the internet if you run an exciton
Salvia divinorum you will have more than you know what to do. Alright, that's div div. I di
Di VI. Ml Arnie room. I've got it. All right leave much
Thank you for your call to Santa Cruz we go to BJ. Good morning. Oh, thanks for taking my call. Hello Terrance
Hi Barry, how are you this morning? Great
Yes, I just wanted to comment on a misunderstanding
of the New Age
I
Heard mr
Krasny say isn't this new age? The misunderstanding is as far as the New Age is concerned is that
We can't arrive at
Truth or whenever it's going by these days
By transcendence and I think what it has occurred
Is that when the psychedelic movement was crushed in the 60s?
The failure of the psychedelic revolution it brought on the new age
in other words we
Replace the vision and imagination
with visualization
visualization and
Its concomitant techniques crystals and all that. It is a New Age stance or really?
it's it's disguised as
a
Visionary movement, but it really is all about the lack of vision and keeping the same
structure but keep
Changing the content of traditional patriarchal religion. As a matter of fact there have been quite a number of feminists who have commented on the
deep patriarchal character of the New Age and I think that centers in the idea of transcendence where
You transcend the earth in your body and and all this and instead I think
psychedelics brings you
to the depth
ecology vision of the earth which I think Karen's calls gaya it brings you through the mind of the earth and not transcending so
I think that
We need a real alternative
To the New Age and I think Terrence is quite right metaphorically because parents rejected
going up
to the high Himalayas
and he instead went down south to the depths of the Amazon and I think that is a
signal of the way to go it
Thank you for
Tintin sting Shin he's making there at least as he sees the differences between New Age and what Terence Mckenna is all about
Let me get more he calls on the meantime Chris from Inverness is now yeah
yeah parent I was intrigued by your emphasis on language is long seems
to me and I'm sure it's not an original thought that but a lot of the of
this spiritual
realm
religions the change of Tarot
astrology
the UFO thing all of that are forms of metaphor for
For something that we have coming up or that we're engaging in evolutionarily
that our languages
Of to cope with and I'm and and and
expressed in other words and and III wonder if the the whole psychedelic thing and your
descriptions of the places that you've gone on DMT I
wondered to what degree those are metaphoric has a
Are metaphoric and what kind of metaphor is? Is that a?
Synecdoche, is it a is it of or what is a part for a whole is it next to something?
Did you see what I mean? Well, I think I understand. What do you mean?
As far as reality and its relationship to language is concerned
This is a fundamental split in the Western mind
Magic, which we haven't heard much about seriously since the 16th century
Magic is the idea that the world is made of language and that you can control the world through language through
Spells through the power of letters so forth and so on
that idea gave way to modern sciences idea that there were stubborn facts in the world that language couldn't either
eradicate or ameliorate now with the rise of
cyberspace and virtual reality
Language is becoming again
Reinterred. I mean in a sense computer code is magical language its language which when
executed causes something to
Actually happen now as far as to what degree
Descriptions of these psychedelic states are metaphors
they have to be metaphors because
What is not often mentioned but always?
experienced with high-dose
Psychedelics is an actual alteration of the language producing machinery itself
You know, some people have the idea you take a psychedelic drug or substance and the world
Transforms itself and you watch this happen. That's true to some degree
But the person the the watcher is themselves
Transform that this is not a team process and when you actually see the machinery of language melt in volute
fractal eyes
Crystallize and to transform itself before you you get a tremendous sense of the malleability
Of reality and how it rests on a platform of stable
physiological functioning I also suggest thank you Chris that
If if reality is shifting a perception is shifting all the time in this type of evolution with all this information technology
Then we're evolving in different ways. We don't even understand yet. We're presenting we're perceiving time in ways that we don't even understand yet
well, yes, I spent last week with Bruce Damer who's one of the great mavens of interactive virtual worlds and
We were dressing in avatars meeting people in cyberspace
But occasionally we would open a thing of avatars
This means an avatar is how you appear to other people in cyberspace?
So you choose to be a mini spirited girl as a Hindu word, I sure. Oh, no, it's very
Appropriated and trademarked and the Hindus in now
But anyway in being in your avatar in a virtual world talking to other people in a virtual world and then opening
Several virtual worlds at once on your screen so you actually have the experience of being in more than one place at one time
After a couple of hours of that you leave the keyboard and you you can practically feel the McLuhan mask
reprogramming of your communication based categories based on this bizarre
Informational environment that you can spending time in. So yes, I think we're evolving
The shift in media is changing in beings at least as much as the introduction of print did in the 14
40s and the good news about all of this is that no one is in control and no one understands enough about it to direct
Or sculpt it to some secular and your red-letter slaves book I did read
this program you put much credence to that that the whole nature of our brain is changing and that's the result of the goddess and
Feminism becoming more preeminent in our lives and so forth welcome
He worked off an earlier book by Ivan Illich called the APCD zation of culture who was also then
criminal McLuhan who talked about how sensory ratios change
the
derivation of
The premise no
I do believe that I think print created not only the modern notion of the citizen it created the modern
assembly line
It created all kinds
Of things which we assume are basic to humaneness that are in fact
artifacts that the technology is accepted by Europe some four hundred years ago and then spread throughout the world and misogyny to
Misogyny probably has an older history
Though is from Menlo Park. Join us say, good morning Wow. My mind is spinning the heights are inside
I was at the conference at Evelyn were you and
Mr. Abraham, and pardon me Rupert Sheldrake. I think first develop some of these ideas. Is that the book that
The book that's come out of that
Well, there were two of those books of dialogues or trial Logs with Rupert and Ralf
the first one was called trial logs at the edge of the West and the new one is called the evolutionary mind and
We just simply take up where we left off with that firstly
It's fabulous ideas in the mind since you explain a little more the twelve the year 2012
What it is you
Envision as happening that not only the Year Phyllis. We got the date December 22nd. Oh
Yeah. Yeah. Well, that's the nice thing about mathematics. If you do it, right? There's not much of a fudge factor
The idea about 2012 was simply from studying the structure of the eating
specifically the
structure of the sequence of the hexagrams way back in the middle 70s
I discovered a curve there
Which is a fractal curve with the property of damping its own oscillation
now what that means is that it eventually runs down and
Disappears and it looks somewhat like a stock market and I discovered that
If you went out history with the concept that it was an ebb and flow between two polar
forces, which I named habit and novelty that you could actually get a
conformational fit between this abstract mathematical algorithm this curve and
the vicissitudes of invention
migration warfare
Political advance and so forth the factors were level up and down exactly and this was very satisfying to see history
So well described by a mathematical algorithm
There was just one minor problem
Which was the algorithm predicted that the quality I called novelty would reach infinity
In our lifetimes and when the calculation is finally done
December 22nd 2012 ad but what do you think?
I'll happen are we all connected all thank you economic article. Well, there are two ways to answer that question
The honest answer is it's too early to tell it's like asking a man facing east at 2:00 a.m
To describe the coming sunrise you can't do it because the Sun rises over the curvature of the event horizon
of the earth
That's the honest answer then the more fun answer is to pretend we do know what's going on
Based on looking at what novelty has been in the past?
novelty seems to be
definable as density of connectivity
So what is going to happen in 2012 is that all points in this universe will be what mathematicians call?
Cotangent in other words all points will be connected to all other points
Now I dream this up in the early 70s through the early 80s
We're talking about all points being connected seemed pie-in-the-sky
All over the age people did it with our mana convergence them to some degree
But now the internet appears on the scene and lo and behold what is the Internet but a global?
connection machine knitting
Everything together and everything we want from the Internet higher speed greater flexibility more intelligence searches
So forth and so on tend to push the internet
Toward ever greater states of complexification and connectivity. So I would say on this
2012 thing we can now see the light at the end of the tunnel
human history ends in human machine prosthesis and
Machine history begins in human machine prosthesis. So mark it on your calendar fellas
An evolutionary intention in this I mean we want to get back to whatever state we're going to be in in 2012
so we have somehow managed to invent things like cyber space well evolution and intent are words which
Evolutionary thinkers don't like see on the same page because they believe that evolution is essentially
purposeless driven by random mutation and very capricious facts
Yeah, right, but I believe well no
It isn't what most people believe there does seem to be a discernible Morpha genetic unfolding toward a higher
state of
Unity and connectivity and that's what we're riffing off Phyllis. Thank you. And let's rip a little with Lawrence in Berkley
Hi Lawrence. Good morning
What are the speak up for traditional meditation and tradition and traditional methods?
You know a meditative discipline and mysticism as opposed to drugs now
I know that everything I'm going to say is going to be an animated guest but I think it's important with the audience spirit
I wanted to you know, what happens with drugs is what?
What happens when Saint John of the Cross writing in the 16th century talks about as the dark night of the soul
And this is something that happens with any kind of?
meditative or mystical high it goes away and you get into and and when it goes away the contrast between
The incredible light enjoy that you were feeling and the absence of it produces great depression, which John calls the dark night
In traditional mysticism what happens when this when the dark night of the soul occurs when the mystical?
light goes away is that you have to do some work you have to
Do some work that is required by faith to say, okay
I remember this state even though I'm not feeling it now and to get back to it. I have to
Exhibit love. I have to exhibit humility. I have to exhibit
Harmony between myself and others not in my imagination
But in reality, you know by working to create this harmony with others
The problem with taking any form of drugs or you know, whether it's a pill or a natural plant
Is that when that dark night comes and then the light goes away?
You don't have to do the required work
All you have to do is pop a pill again or pump another drug again, so that instead of getting a condition of love
Which is produced by actually serving people and by trying to produce a condition in which their needs are in reality
as great or as important as your own personal needs
You simply assume that what feels you'd you go for kind of a unity through the backdoor you say what feels good to me
must therefore be good to you and you get a unity of fantasy rather than a unity of
Love and work and I you're listening to forum. Michael Krasny
Terence Mckenna, let's go to you on that
Well, this is a standard argument
Meditation versus drugs. I think there's a misconception about how people who use drugs for self expression
Do it. It's not a matter of
Combating coming down by taking the drug again
I think the Dark Knight is the soul is a
Natural and unavoidable part of any psychological growth process Jung called at the Negredo
Taking a term from alchemy
My idea is the way to use psychedelics is very similar to how the caller described using ordinary
spiritual techniques it takes about
Seven or eight hours to have a psilocybin trip
I would think it would take 30 or 40 days to
Assimilate the messages of that trip and integrate them into your life
Certainly the visions which you obtain are an inspiration to
Community to love to striving to return to these places
Now the perils of drugs are the perils of overdose or under dose
the perils of the traditional spiritual methods are
the malevolence of the Guru the potential for being
manipulated on somebody else's schedule and the agenda no path of
Spiritual advance can be said to be without risk. I looked into yoga. I've study exam
I've studied a number of these so-called
spiritual discipline and I find
more backbiting more
human frailty on display
Than I find in the solitaire practice of taking drugs with an exploring
Attitude tell me thank Lawrence for the call. Do you find that there are sometimes a kind of?
Expectation is someone who has
experimented with drugs as much as you have should be much more Wiggy and
Out of it than less rational than you are or oh yes
I ravaged by these drugs. And yes
Well, my public image I think is this is a kind of wild man halfway between William Burroughs and Tim Leary
That's that who you are. No, it's not who I am at all. I'm it was somewhat
stodgy
Lord feller of Irish scholar
Yes drug
Drug taking and drug using people have been hideously
Stereotyped if if a racial or religious minority had had to put up with the crap that we've had to put up with
we would have gotten some kind of remediation from the Justice Department and the idea that pot heads are stupid the idea that
Acid makes it impossible for you to think straight, you know, the dirty little secret of Northern California's vast economic
Success down at Silicon Valley is the creativity that was injected into this area in the 1960s through the LSD
revolution in many many significant cases that you do sustain people who are wigged out as a result of I mean like you say
It's individual cases perhaps but you see them and you see people who use marijuana chronically who seem to slow down
But I think I've seen it
It's an evolution that I found a trajectory that I've seen all too frequently with people who are very heavy pot users
Well, you see you see it with the alcohol. You say like a backhoe
Life is not a users safe. You know Whitehead said it's the business of the future
To be dangerous on the other hand. It's good to get an education. It's good to know the classics
It's good to be able to do a quadratic equation. And it's very good to understand what LSD is all about
I mean these are aspects of life
You don't want to go to be on engrave without having been exposed to troy is our next caller from Pacific Grove. Good morning
Good morning, Michael. Thank you very much for this. This has been one of the best in a long time and
I'd like to get my fingers on this big huge door of perception that we're trying to easel thing
The thing with drugs and an analogy that I use with many people, you know
It's like when you use drugs you get to that place that's like a mansion inside your online
there's something that
two things one
You know them that you are the son of the Kings and that this is romantic and it's in your mind and you were right
all along
The only thing is is that there is a policeman that comes around. It's the rules
You break in through the window is any much get tossed out?
Probab we call that super-ego
It is your house
The only thing is is you've just got to find the key to get in the front door
The way you're supposed to enter it and then it becomes your own home. Well, don't you think the
Disenfranchising of people from their own bodies has been a major cultural agenda for the past three or four hundred years
It's incredibly showed. You know, I'd like them except I must confess when you start talking using your castle metaphor
I thought right away of Kafka
That's my own proclivities
I'm innocent
it is just a metaphor again because we're really struggling with this to get back to the beginning premise of the show of how
Language constructs our world and how the visual experience now is somehow seemingly a bit disconnected from our lexical logical order
And we're able to vision things that don't necessarily always fall into
An ability to communicate well vision is the key word here. And so I thank you
I mean for much of what terence mckenna's whole thinking career and search has been about I mean
Where do we get vision from from from?
What part of nature does where do the ideas come from?
You know people who don't take psychedelics think it's all moving lights and little concentric circles. They don't understand that these are
tremendously
emotionally moving dramatic scenarios
that one could not possibly generate out of one zone mind or if one could then every single one of us is a
Beethoven is a Gilbert and Sullivan as a Shakespeare and maybe that's true
But if that's true that is empowering and worth knowing remember once many years ago interviewing Ron Dawson
He said I honor with psychedelics have done for me and there was a storm of part
That's because he's need to be countenancing the use of psychedelics and that was during part of the whole scary era
I think many people still are particularly where children are concerned scared about psychedelics and scared about drugs in general
Even in terms of frontiers of consciousness. You honor what psychedelics have done for you? Obviously, don't you? Oh, absolutely
to me
they opened my mind to realms of beauty and
Understanding that would never have been accessible. Otherwise, I read the mystical literature. I knew what I was shooting for
That's what I mean by doing your homework
But for me, it fell upon me with the force of the transforming miracle, and it's always been my motivation
Publicly to speak about that for that reason
Well, we've been speaking with that walking miracle himself Terence Mckenna always delighted to have you and can engage with you
Thank you so much for being with
