Psychedelic Salon

299-Various: “Terence McKenna: Beyond 2012” Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 9 Feb 2012 15:41:21 -0800

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” and follows with a wide-ranging question and answer session. 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. The voice you'll hear is that of Nate, who streams a live video feed on Ustream.tv that is called OccupyAir, and this is his recap of the day's events. 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. Following him is a bit about the Department of Homeland Security, which now includes a national secret police force, in case you missed that announcement, and we now learn that the DHS is now monitoring journalists and bloggers in a blatant attempt to keep the press away from the occupy actions. Next up is part of an interview with journalist Chris Hedges, who you've heard from on several occasions here in these podcasts already. In this clip Chris will be talking about some of the ideas he put forth in his book, “Empire of Illusion”. 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.

298-Various: “Terence McKenna: Beyond 2012” Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 3 Feb 2012 15:44:22 -0800

This is the first in a series of three podcasts that will feature the presentations by Bruce Damer and Lorenzo at the January 28, 2012 workshop, which was held in the Los Angeles area. Today's segment includes Lorenzo's opening talk and comments from the attendees as well as a few remarks by Bruce. Following that part of the podcast is the Occupy Movement update, which features a conversation between Lawrence Lessig and Chris Hedges. During the course of their conversation they debate the relative merits of pushing for a Constitutional Convention verses non-violent civil disobedience. Also included is a sound bite from one of OccupyFreedomLA's live video feeds in which a speaker addresses the actions now being taken by those who are suffering from the foreclosure epidemic that is facing so many people in the U.S.

297-Various: “Tribute to Robert Anton Wilson”

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 26 Jan 2012 21:00:54 -0800

The featured audio that I'm going to play in this podcast is part of a two-CD collection produced by Joe Matheny and given to the salon to podcast by the distributor, The Original Falcon Press, which you can find via originalfalcon.com. There isn't time to hear the entire collection, which is titled “Robert Anton Wilson Remembered”, but I've selected a representative sampling that I think gives a really well-rounded picture of this incredible mind as well as giving us a better idea of the wonderful person that his friends called Bob and the rest of us called RAW. The voices you will here are of: Douglas Rushkoff Antero Alli Tiffany Lee Brown – don't know where she stands on OWS, but her talk sounds right out of the movement to me Tiffany is followed by David Jay Brown author of the “Mavericks of the Mind” and “Mavericks of Medicine” books and the closing comments are by the producer and friend of the salon Joseph Matheny For the Occupy Segment, I first play a few minutes that I've taken from a three hour interview that Chris Hedges gave on CSPAN 2 on the first day of this year, and in it you will hear this Pulitzer Prize winning journalist explain how corporate personhood isn't just a threat to American Democracy, it is a threat to humanity itself. . . . Following that, I play a short speech for you that Senator Bernie Sanders gave on the Senate floor as he introduced an amendment to the U.S. Constitution that will strip personhood from corporations. After those two kind of heavy duty pieces. I lighten it up with a two minute clip of country music star Willie Nelson and his wife reading a poem that he wrote about the Occupy Movement. Finally, I close with a song that was written and is sung by a young man from Salt Lake City named Noel. And this is from a YouTube video I found where Noel was singing on Day 1 of the Occupy Salt Lake City street theater

296-McKenna: “The World and It's Double” Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 11 Jan 2012 12:47:57 -0800

Today's podcast is a continuation of the lecture that I played in the podcast just previous to this one. And at one point in this talk, Terence McKenna says, “Let those who talk to the elves find each other and band together.” While that would be a great segue into another Occupy Movement podcast, I'm instead going to do just the opposite. Originally, I planned on splitting the talk I'm about to play into two more segments, each followed by another Occupy update. But after previewing it, I decided that it would be best to just play the remainder of this talk that Terence McKenna gave sometime in 1993, and I think he gave it on several occasions which most likely each differ slightly in content, but he called this series of lectures “The World and Its Double”. Here are a few Terence McKenna quotes from this lecture: “There are old psychedelicists and bold psychedelicists, but there are no old, bold psychedelicists.” … “[DMT] is a secret of such magnitude that it's inconceivable how it has ever been kept.” … and “We all want our children to be well-adjusted, unfortunately there is nothing to be well-adjusted too. So that's a real problem.”

295-McKenna: “The World and It's Double” Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 5 Jan 2012 19:10:00 -0800

The first part of today's podcast features Part 1 of a Terence McKenna talk that may have been given sometime in 1993. Interestingly, he makes a few statements that almost sound as if he is speaking about the Occupy Movement where he says, “We're literally at the end of our rope. Reason and science and the practice of unbridled capitalism have not delivered us into an angelic realm,” and “Boundary dissolution is the most threatening activity that can go on in a society. People, meaning government institutions, become very nervous when people begin to talk to each other.” … In the second half of this podcast I play an audio collage of happenings from the Occupy Movement. They include, a message from my friend Queer Ninja who is with Occupy Scotland. Then I've included a bit by Noam Chomsky, remarks from various Occupiers talking about the youth involvement and leadership of this movement, and they are followed by some farmers who are also involved. Next is a clip dealing with the civil justice aspects of what is going on, followed by a clip from the Occupy Boston group. Then comes Tina Dupuy who is a columnist and commentator and who points out how the Occupy Movement is changing the shape of local news stories as well as some things about student debt that you maybe haven't thought about. And to close it out you'll be hearing about one of the successful OccupyOurHomes actions where the home of a disabled Iraq vet was saved by the Occupy Atlanta people, and that segment ends with some words by the Rev. Dr. Joseph Lawery, and he is followed by the poet Teresa B., who is the neighbor of another family whose home was also saved by members of the Occupy Movement in New York.

294-Graeber: “The Genesis of Occupy Wall Street”

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 16 Dec 2011 16:37:56 -0800

Today's podcast takes a look back at some of the roots of the current Occupy Movement on the eve of the first anniversary of the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation marked the beginning of the Arab Spring. Today is also the eve of the third anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, and so I have put together an audio collage that ranges from some early sounds of the movement to interviews with David Graeber and Tim Pool, as well as some comments by fellow saloner Jaret, and a couple of sound bites from Lawrence Lessig and Senator Bernie Sanders to round things out.

293-Bey: “The Power of Art and the TAZ”

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 9 Dec 2011 14:19:06 -0800

When I previewed this recording of a talk by Hakim Bey, author of “The Temporary Autonomous Zone (TAZ)” a couple of days ago, I was struck at how timely these ideas are right now. Although this talk was recorded in 1993, when Bey speaks about the power of art and that we as the audience must now become our own artists, well, he could have been speaking at a recent GA somewhere near you last night. It seems that the sentiments of the Occupy Movement have been bubbling just under the radar of the Establishment for a long time now. … and wait until you hear him shout, “Democratic Shamanism or Nothing!” … not to mention the part where he said that even if you are in a quilting bee you should be prepared to run guns and stage orgies. … and then he goes on to urge us to become “pirate utopians for peace” “guerillas of harmony”. Also, I have included a brief 1997 recording of Robert Anton Wilson who seems to be predicting the Occupy Movement.

292-Makana: “Interview of Makana with OWS”

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 30 Nov 2011 17:45:22 -0800

Although I missed the beginning of this online meeting, from watching and listening to it, what appears to have taken place is that someone set up a big screen television in a room somewhere near Zuccotti Park and invited some of the people who were the first Occupiers of the park to have a video Skype chat with Makana. And as you'll hear, most of them had not yet even had a chance to hear his powerful song, the one that I played a couple of podcasts ago. Basically, here were five or six people just in from the front lines, and they were meeting with Makana for the first time. Here are a couple of things that Makana had to say, “This whole war that we're fighting is a war of consciousness verses ignorance, of controlling human behavior by controlling people's thoughts, by directing their awareness.” … “The only way we can bring about a revolution of freedom is to bring about a revolution of perception.” … Also I have included the brief talk that Deepak Chopra gave at the Occupy Los Angeles site a few days before it was overrun by the mayor's storm troopers.

291-Wilson: “The 'I' In The Triangle” Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 21 Nov 2011 17:19:57 -0800

Today's talk is part two of the Robert Anton Wilson lecture given in a Santa Cruz, California book store sometime in 1990. He begins with the legend of the statues of the Black Virgin and then goes into more detail about the Priory of Sion, the Vatican Bank and several other fascinating topics including how the CIA and the Mafia first got into bed together. One of my favorite quotes from this talk seems as if it came right from an Occupy Wall Street discussion. He said, “The only prediction I'll make is that everything is going to happen faster than we expect it.” … And in my Occupy Wall Street segment I feature the work of a phenomenal journalist by the name of Tim Pool who has been bringing live video feeds and wonderful commentary since day one. Also, I've included sound bites from Captain Raw Lewis of the Philadelphia police department and who was arrested while demonstrating as part of Occupy Wall Street. One of the closing segments is a brief interview with 80 year old Daniel Ellsberg, who was planning on spending the night in a tent at the Occupy Berkeley demonstration.

290-Wilson: “The 'I' In The Triangle” Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 15 Nov 2011 22:08:55 -0800

For today's program I play the first half of a Robert Anton Wilson talk that was given without notes at a book store in Santa Cruz in 1990. The appearance was organized and recorded by our latest salon benefactor, Joe Matheny who along with The Original Falcon Press, who you can find at OriginalFalcon.com, have given me permission to play these Bob Wilson recordings even though they are currently selling them online as well. And while there is talk of the Illuminati, he brings things more current when he says, “And as a matter of fact, governments don't act, governments only react. The bankers make the decisions, and then governments decide how are we going to adjust to this. Government can't do anything unless the bank gives them the money to do it.” Following RAW's talk I continue with my regular commentary on the Occupy Movement, including sound bites from Occupy Oakland, Occupy Berkeley, and Occupy Portland. If you don't have time to listen to all of this podcast, be sure to at least not miss the last ten minutes of this podcast which features the amazing story of Makana the Mighty.

289-Wilson: "The Lost Studio Session"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 8 Nov 2011 13:40:24 -0800

I'm not really sure how to introduce this talk, which actually is a series of eight short vignettes about a wide range of topics. For example, who but Bob Wilson would be able to combine the idea of remaking the King Kong movie but staring Rush Limbaugh as King Kong and Hillary Clinton in Fay Ray's part, to combine that with a very novel idea of how popes are really elected is, to me, a wonderful stroke of genius. Some of RAWs other topics include his “Jumping Jesus Phenomenon”, and a very unique conjecture about the way Popes get elected. All-in-all it's a wonderful view of the genius of Robert Anton Wilson. In the second half of the podcast, I continue with my Occupy commentary as of Day 53 of OWS. And this segment includes interesting talks by Michael Ruppert and Bill Moyers.

288-McKenna: “What's So Great About Mushrooms?” Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 1 Nov 2011 16:05:54 -0700

Today's podcast comes in two parts. First comes the question and answer session with Terence McKenna in which he not only makes statements such as, “Acid heads are in charge of designing the cutting edge of culture,” but also makes a statement about our responsibility to the future that sounds almost as if he was talking about Occupy Wall Street, which is the focus of the second part of this podcast. In addition to some of my own thoughts about the Occupy Movement, I also play several sound bites that I've recorded during the past week from various live video streams. The last clip that I play is the rousing talk given by Michael Moore at a recent Occupy San Francisco demonstration.

287-McKenna: “What's So Great About Mushrooms?” Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 27 Oct 2011 13:21:40 -0700

Today I'm beginning a slightly different format, the change being that after the lecture or interview, instead of adding my own comments about the talk, I will be covering various aspects of the Occupy movements now taking place all around the planet. … So today the talk is once again by Terence McKenna and is from sometime in 1987 when he was still fine tuning some of his ideas about the monkey and the mushroom. And even though I feel as if I've heard the monkey and the mushroom story too many times already, once again this version adds even more scientific detail to the story than I remember hearing before. … After the lecture by McKenna I talk about what went down at Occupy Oakland recently, and I play an interview from the Occupy Wall Street location with Chris Hedges as well as an interview with a young homeless man at Occupy Atlanta. To end the program I play “Homeless Land 9” by one of our fellow saloners, John Tackett.

286-Leary: “The Revolution Continues with Timothy Leary” Part 3

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 17 Oct 2011 22:45:53 -0700

This concludes the three part series of podcasts that include the entire Dr. Timothy Leary interview on KPFT in Houston, Texas on November 13, 1976, not long after Dr. Leary was released from prison. One of his many interesting comments in this part was, “There's perhaps less than ten percent of the population who should even consider, under the best circumstances of disciplined control, to take this drug, because LSD is not a hedonistic, laid-back, multi-orgasm drug. It really isn't. It's a neurological experience. It's a sixth circuit neuroelectric experience, and it's basically preparation for post-terrestrial life.” Also, Leary makes a very interesting point about President Kennedy attempting to turn the solution to a bad economy away from war and into space. Finally, I make my third comment about the Occupy demonstrations now taking place all over the world.

285-Leary: “The Revolution Continues with Timothy Leary” Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 10 Oct 2011 16:01:04 -0700

Today we continue with Part 2 of the interview that Dr. Timothy Leary gave on KPFT radio in Houston, Texas on November 13, 1976, just a few months after he was released from prison. We resume the interview at the point where Dr. Leary was defending his own sanity, but soon they move on to a preliminary discussion of Leary's 8-Circuit theories. Two of my favorite quotes from this interview are: “By and large I'm very proud of what happened in the Sixties, every aspect of our culture was reformed and revised and reviewed and improved.” And “We have to be gentle with each other because we are going through a period of mutations.” … At the end of the program I add some personal comments about how I see the OccupyTogether movement as a sign that hope for a better future yet remains.

284-Leary: "The Revolution Continues with Timothy Leary" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 6 Oct 2011 15:42:09 -0700

This is the first part of an interview that Dr. Timothy Leary gave a few months after his release from prison in 1976. The interview took place in Houston, Texas for the local Pacifica Station, KPFT. Unlike most radio interviews, instead of just one person asking the questions this one consisted of a panel of men who at times seemed more like a board of inquiry of some kind. However, it doesn't take long for Dr. Leary to be in full command of the situation. And for historians who are interested in whether or not Leary gave evidence against one of his attorneys, you'll be quite pleased when the questions trend in this direction. … Following the first part of the Timothy Leary interview I play a few sound bites from the LiveStream.com/globalrevolution Web feed of events from the #occupywallstreet demonstrations.

283-Various: "Elves in the Machine"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 28 Sep 2011 10:02:57 -0700

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.

282-McKenna: "How Evolution Occurs"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 19 Sep 2011 14:01:13 -0700

This is another early Terence McKenna lecture that was given sometime in 1984. Particularly considering the year it was delivered, there is more talk about psychedelics and the psychedelic experience than could be found elsewhere. But McKenna doesn't confine himself to only talking about psychedelics. Other topics include some of his early thoughts about language, culture, and the fact that the psychedelic community may be some sort of mutant population that is just waiting for certain selective parameters to change and enable the mutants to steer our species in a new direction (or something like that). And while some of us may be tired of hearing his theories about glossolalia, this early talk of his gives not only a deeper insight to what intrigues him about this phenomenon, but also he carefully explains how he went about invoking it in a mushroom session. … Also, we hear a very clear explanation of how he views the possibility of immortality, and what he has to say may surprise you.

281-Workman: "Sacred Economics"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 9 Sep 2011 13:20:19 -0700

In today's podcast Matt Pallamary interviews Eileen Workman, co-founder of the Universe Project and 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."

280-Various: "Peter Gorman Interviews Albert Hofmann"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 2 Sep 2011 15:29:14 -0700

Today's program features what I consider to be the finest interview of Dr. Albert Hofmann that there is. It was conducted in 1993 via telephone by Peter Gorman, then the editor of “High Times” magazine. Thanks to Peter's excellent handling of this interview, we get to hear a relaxed Albert Hofmann, unscripted, and at the top of his form when it came to retelling the events of his first LSD trips. From his amusement at how the bicycle ride became so famous to a description of his work with R. Gordon Wasson in discovering psilocybin as the active ingredient in magic mushrooms, this interview is packed with stories that Dr. Hofmann seems to relish telling yet one more time again. And what was a new story for me was to hear Uncle Albert tell about smoking Salvia divinorum in Mexico with Wasson. … Furthermore, he explains why he was able to identify the active principle of magic mushrooms, psilocybin, when all the other labs failed … instead of using animals to test his extracts, he and his colleagues tested it on themselves. … And thanks to Peter's expert questioning, we get to hear what Dr. Hofmann thought about Ken Kesey and Timothy Leary. And it may surprise you to learn what he thought about the Hippies and their use of LSD … AND that he had tried MDMA!

279-Various: "Peter Gorman Interviews the Elders"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 24 Aug 2011 16:53:41 -0700

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.

278-Various: "Peter Gorman Interviews Oscar Janiger"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 19:57:04 -0700

Today we get to hear a rare recording of Dr. Oscar Janiger, the Los Angeles psychiatrist who, from 1954 to 1962, gave LSD to almost 1,000 participants in his informal study. And is well known, some of the participants in this early psychedelic research included notable celebrities such as Cary Grant and Jack Nicholson. One of my favorite quotes from this podcast is when Dr. Janiger says, “[The Sixties was] a time when people began to see that what was laid down for them as obligatory reality was not obligatory.”

277-Various: "Peter Gorman Interviews Dennis McKenna" Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 16:30:53 -0700

This is the second part of a 1994 telephone interview that Peter Gorman (author and former editor of High Times Magazine) conducted with Dennis McKenna. In this part we learn of the curious coincidences that led Dennis to the successful conclusion of his own Ph.D. work and ends with an honest evaluation of his brother Terence's work. For example, at one point Dennis says, “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.” Later on in the podcast, Dennis follows up by saying, “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.”

276-Various: "Peter Gorman Interviews Dennis McKenna" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 4 Aug 2011 16:06:00 -0700

This is the first part of an interview that Peter Gorman did with Dennis McKenna in 1994. In addition to hearing some interesting boyhood stories about the brothers McKenna, we learn of some of the things that were major influences on their lives. Peter's interviewing expertise shines through in many of the stories he elicits from Dennis, along with comments such as, “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.” Later, Dennis goes on to say, “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.”

275-McKenna: "The Varieties of Psychedelic Experience"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sat, 23 Jul 2011 13:49:11 -0700

In this October 1983 talk given in Berkeley, California, Terence McKenna speaks about the unspeakable, the essence of various kinds of psychedelic experiences. In addition to hearing some of his early adaptations of his ideas about the importance of the evolution of language, we are treated to thoughts such as, "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.”

274-Shulgin: "Psychedelic Safety"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 15 Jul 2011 13:23:00 -0700

Today I'm going to play two talks that I've wanted to get out to you for a while but just never seemed to get around to them. The first talk is a somewhat informal question and answer session that Ann Shulgin led just after one of Sasha's talks at the 2001 Entheobotany Conference in Palenque, Mexico. As you'll hear, the Palenque sessions were generally small, informal, and full of interesting information, much of which came from the audience. The second talk was given by Dr. William Rowlandson, who is co-Director of the Centre for the Study of Myth at the University of Kent. And the talk he gave is titled: “Borges and McKenna – Iconoclasm, Boundary Dissolution, and Living Symbolically”.

273-Harrison: "Indigenous Plant Wisdom"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 28 Jun 2011 13:39:13 -0700

Today we return to another of the presentations by Kathleen “Kat” Harrison at the 2001 Entheobotany Conference that was held near the ruins at Palenque, Mexico. If you have ever wondered what people are talking about when they tell of the wisdom of indigenous people in regards to ways in which this Earth is covered with interconnected life, this is a talk that will give you a deep understanding of how wise these people are. While their lives may seem simple on the outside, these fellow humans are living lives of great complexity, and with significantly deeper connections to the planet than most city-folk have.

272-Leary: "On the Genetic Runway"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 21 Jun 2011 11:57:54 -0700

In this podcast we get to hear another recording from the Timothy Leary Archive. This talk was given sometime in the early 1980s in Minneapolis/St. Paul, Minnesota to an audience of about 200 people. Leary's main topic for the evening was evolution and ways in which he disagreed with the standard Darwinian approach to evolution. In his view, evolution is a hands-on project that we all are involved with. Along the way, Timothy delivers a few of the memorable gems that we've come to expect from him, such as, "I like the Pope. I think he's the finest mind of the 12th century,” and “I've always hated the Second Law of Thermodynamics.” But he also has his moments of seriousness like when he says, “One thing that drugs give you: Personal options to change your own mind, a way of rewarding yourself, of teaching yourself, of activating yourself, of changing yourself. And one thing that the power-holders do not want you to do as an individual is to change your own mind and learn how to reward yourself.”

271-Harrison: "Weaving Modern Ritual from Traditional Roots"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 16:22:45 -0700

Today's program features a talk that Kat Harrison gave during the January 2001 Entheobotany Conference at Palenque, Mexico. In it she teaches some of the many ways to create modern rituals, along with the reasons why this is so important. Along the way, Kat tells what it was like to come of age during the period we now call The Sixties. She has practical advice as well, such as: “Why one [psychedelic medicine] may be your best friend's ally and not your ally is a mystery. And maybe you can solve that mystery and maybe not. But you should honor the fact that some things work for you and some things are not your medicine, even though everyone around you appears to be having a good time.” Another wise thought of hers is, “You don't lead with your head. You let your heart and your body tell you what to do in these [introspective psychedelic] moments. Then if you think it's time to get up and bolt out into the street, you let your head come in and tell you, 'Don't! Sit down. You're not going anywhere.' ”

270-McKenna: "Tryptamine Consciousness"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 10 Jun 2011 12:21:48 -0700

This marks the sixth anniversary of podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon, and it features yet another old Terence McKenna lecture. This one was given in December of 1982, which was in the early days of his public speaking career. McKenna's focus for the talk is an exploration of what happens once a person ingests a psychedelic substance in the tryptamine family. And while he tells some stories about using these substances that sound quite inviting, he also adds the caution that: “I think one of the interesting things about judging a drug is to see how eager people are to do it the second time. If they're eager to do it the second time it's probably not worth bothering about, because what is necessary to have validity in these experiences is the terror. The terror is a stamp of validity on the experience, because it means this is real.” And on a more positive note he adds: “The future is bound to be psychedelic because the future belongs to the mind.” Also, in this podcast I announce the availability of my novel, “The Genesis Generation,” as an eBook that is available on Amazon and other online retailing Web sties.

269-Ott: "Inebriating Potions from Agave"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 6 Jun 2011 13:00:40 -0700

Today we re-join Jonathan Ott at the 2004 Mind States conference in Oaxaca, Mexico. Here is what the conference program had to say about this talk: Jonathan Ott will give a talk titled “From Octli/Pulque and Xochioctli to Mezcal and Vino de Mezcal Tequila”. The ethnopharmacognosy of inebriating pre-Columbian potions based on octli or pulque, wine of various species of Agave, with special reference to numerous inebriating additives; traditional foods and beverages made from mezcal Agaves; and colonial development of distilled mezcal from fermented, cooked mezcal Agaves. Finally, more recent development of Vino de Mezcal Tequila or Tequila, a regional type of mezcal brandy, from cooked hearts of Agave tequillense or blue agave.

268-Leary: "Leary vs. Liddy - 1990 Debate"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 3 Jun 2011 12:55:30 -0700

This program is another selection from the Timothy Leary archive. It features an October 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. Another Leary gem is when he said, “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.”

267-McKenna: "Exploring the Abyss"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 25 May 2011 19:37:32 -0700

In this early (November 1982) Terence McKenna lecture we hear him describe what took place during what he calls “The Experiment at La Chorrera” as “very loose science or very tight magic”. We also hear some of his earliest formulations of what ultimately became his most-remembered lines of thought. One of my favorite quotes from this talk is: “This situation called 'history' is totally unique. It will only last for a moment. It began a moment ago. It will only last for a moment. But in that moment there is like this tremendous burst of static as the monkey goes to godhood.” And along the way he again presents solid arguments as to why the psychedelic experience is of such great importance to the future of our species. In particular, he singles out the process of dying as one that can benefit from what is learned through the intelligent use of psychedelics.

266-McKenna: "Interview with Dennis McKenna"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 17 May 2011 20:11:39 -0700

Dennis McKenna (in a wide-ranging interview with David Ellenbogen for WKCR 89.9 FM in New York City) gives us some of his views on the neurochemistry of the brain and where and how he sees consciousness fitting into the big picture of the cosmos. And his views on ayahuasca are worth hearing. For example, Dennis says, “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.' ” As to how one goes about finding the vine experience, he wisely concludes, “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.”

265-Hart:: "Lawyers Lie"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 11 May 2011 11:36:40 -0700

“Lawyers Lie” is the title of a book by attorney Eric Hart who is interviewed in this podcast by frequent contributor to the salon, Matt Pallamary. And Eric doesn't mince words when asked very direct questions, such as what do you do if stopped by the police when you have been smoking cannabis in your car. Eric's replay is: “[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.”

264-Leary: "The Search for AI"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 3 May 2011 15:31:26 -0700

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!

263-McKenna: "The Last Interview" Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 26 Apr 2011 19:55:35 -0700

In this final part of Erik Davis' interview with Terence McKenna, not long before his death, Terence talks about life and death and ways in which psychedelics have somewhat prepared him to face his own imminent death. Near the end of this interview he says, “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.”

262-McKenna: "The Last Interview" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 25 Apr 2011 12:35:32 -0700

This is Part 1 of the last interview given by Terence McKenna before his untimely death in April 2000. The interview was conducted by Erik Davis for later publication in Wired Magazine. This recording was made by Erik while at Terence's home in Hawaii at the end of October 1999. And as long ago as that, Terence was already making a plea to support Internet Neutrality, as can be heard in statements like this, “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.”

261-McKenna: "The Definitive UFO Tape"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 13 Apr 2011 10:58:28 -0700

This recording is from the box of cassette tapes that Dianna Slattery sent me a few months back. And I picked it for several reasons. The first one being that it is the oldest recording of Terence McKenna that I've come across so far. It's from December of 1982, and apparently was recorded in someone's living room. Interestingly, it was in a case labeled “Psilocybin & The Sands of Time”. But then the tape inside the box was itself labeled “The Definitive UFO Tape Terence McKenna Dec. 1982” As you will hear, right off the bat, the first question to Terence refers to the “two” books he had written at that point. And he answers by saying that he kept most of his UFO ideas out of The Invisible Landscape. Then he refers to what he calls “the second work, titled, Psilocybin and the UFOs”. No matter what your opinion is about this topic, I think you will find something in this talk to support your hypothesis. It may well be the “definitive” discourse about this subject.

260-Damer: "The Great Crescendo" Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 5 Apr 2011 11:16:18 -0700

In the second part of Bruce Damer's interview with film maker Matt Anderson he expands on his concept of a Great Crescendo and among other thought-provoking ideas he says, “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.” And even more provocatively he goes on to say, “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.”

259-Damer: "The Great Crescendo" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 30 Mar 2011 11:11:24 -0700

Today we once again join Bruce Damer who explains what he means by The Great Crescendo, which like it or not you are already involved in. This talk is actually part of an interview he did with Matt Anderson for his upcoming documentary film FallWinterMovie.com. As always, Bruce gets right to the heart of the matter when he says, “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.”

258-McKenna: "The Angel in the Monkey"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 22 Mar 2011 08:54:54 -0700

Today we once again go back in time and join Terence McKenna as he talks about extraterrestrials, psychedelics, and the angel in the monkey. Among other little gems, he says: “This is where I think the psychedelics come in because they are anticipations of the future. They seem to channel information that is not strictly governed by the laws of normal causality. So that there really is a prophetic dimension, a glimpse of the potential of the far centuries of the future through these compounds.”

257-Shulgin: "Sasha in Palenque 2001"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 17 Mar 2011 10:35:34 -0700

Today we get to listen to a talk given by Sasha Shulgin in 2001 at the legendary Entheobotany Conference in Palenque, Mexico. In his lecture Sasha covers the ever-increasing restrictions on chemical research that are imposed by the U.S. Government as well as how he first became interested in psychedelic research. He also provides a few examples of his methodology in developing new compounds.

256-Ott: "A Drug Enhancer Called Chocolate"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 10 Mar 2011 10:36:55 -0800

Today we get to hear a talk that Jonathan Ott gave in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2004. In it he not only provides a wealth of information about the many and varied uses of cacao throughout the centuries as well as an examination of many of the psychoactive ingredients that have been used with chocolate through the ages. There is a great deal of information here, particularly for the botanists, chemists, and shamans among us.

REMOVED - 255-Watts: "Why Is Christianity Afraid of Sex?"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 7 Jan 2011 21:18:28 GMT

A person claiming to be Alan Watts' son says he owns the copyright to this talk. Although he offered no proof of who he is or of ownership, his threat of a lawsuit has caused me to remove this program, as I can't afford a lawyer to fight what I believe is a bogus claim. .... PROGRAM NOTES . . . Today I'm featuring an old Alan Watts lecture that is floating around the Net under various names and in several recordings, possibly from different venues. After listening to it, I decided to add to the confusion by calling it "Why Is Christianity Afraid of Sex?" While other religions are also covered, Watts focuses primarily on Christianity and it's obsessively negative preoccupation with almost all sexual activities. Two of my favorite quotes from this talk are: "Most churches in America and in England and in other parts of the Western world are, frankly, sexual regulation societies." ... and ... "If you've got a prudish father and mother you should be very grateful to them for having made sex so interesting."

254-McKenna: "Psilocybin and the Sands of Time"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 21 Dec 2010 23:51:42 GMT

Today's talk is part of a Terence McKenna workshop held at Esalen Institute in California sometime in December of 1982. And while his talk is primarily a call to those interested in exploring psychedelic realms, he also has this to say: "I think [taking psychedelic drugs] is very dangerous. I do not tell people that it's safe because I don't have the faith that it's safe. I know what the pharmacological literature says, and it says that it's safe. That at the doses where these effects occur there can't possibly be a problem, but this seems to me to be the naivete of materialists, and we shouldn't be in a hurry to believe them even though it might make us more comfortable to do so. In other words, it's saying the drug may not be toxic, but you may be self-toxic, and you may discover this in the drug experience."

253-Leary: "Whatever Happened to Timothy Leary?"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 07 Dec 2010 17:44:31 GMT

Today's podcast is a collage of talks by Timothy Leary and Ram Das. We begin with a 1966 interview of Dr. Leary on KPFK radio in Berkeley. That is followed by a 1973 interview with Ram Das on the same station and in which Ram Das discusses the end of his involvement with Leary as well as his thoughts about why everything came apart at the seams. The last segment is part of a 1986 interview of Timothy Leary on the Larry King on his radio program. As expected, Leary ends with a call to think for yourself: "I love institutions. They're intelligence tests. Institutions are prisons that you have to escape from. . . . The only thing is don't get trapped in them. The most addictive, dangerous, mind-screwing thing in the world is conformity to an organization."

252-Adams: "How Do Psychedelics Heal?"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 1 Dec 2010 23:48:55 GMT

This podcast could be called the "All England" edition, for both of the speakers you will hear from come to us from the UK. The main program is a talk given by Dr. Cameron Adams to the Student Psychedelic Society at the University of Kent. In his talk Dr. Adams explains some of the biochemistry involved in mystical and psychedelic experiences in a way that is very easy to follow. At the end of today’s program I also play a short segment from a recent podcast from Dopefiend.co.uk in which the Dopefiend perfectly echos my sentiments about the recent defeat of California's Proposition 19.

251-McKenna: "The Magic of Plants (Rites of Spring)" Part 4

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 12 Nov 2010 22:17:12 GMT

This podcast brings us to the last part of the April 1986 workshop conducted by Kat Harrison and Terence McKenna under the Teaching Tree at the Ojai Foundation in California. I almost didn't play this part because I was afraid that it would just be a rehash of his "monkeys eating mushrooms" story. But then as I got further into it, I realized that this was one of his earliest public accounts of this hypothesis, which was first suggested to him by his brother Dennis. And since this was one of his earlier accounts he added a lot more detail than I've heard before, poetic details I guess you would say, but in any event, just like in the last podcast where he gave a more clear explanation of his Timewave idea, in this talk you will hear what I think is perhaps his best explanation of how he thought us humans first began to expand our consciousness beyond mere animal consciousness.

250-McKenna: "The Magic of Plants (Rites of Spring)" Part 3

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 08 Nov 2010 18:46:59 GMT

Today we pick up with Terence McKenna in the middle of his "good shit" story, but we are then rewarded with his telling of the origin of the fable of the good shit, that it first originated in Java. From there the topics were determined by questions from the participants. One such question resulted in this answer, "The interesting thing about outer space, we are not going to go 'through' space to other worlds, that will be very incidental to going into space. Going into space means going into space, that space itself is a medium with unique properties for a species such as ourselves." ... About midway through this talk Terence gives one of the most beautiful descriptions of the psychedelic experience that I can ever remember hearing. And he ends with this rousing thought, "The culmination of man's god-making effort in time will be the perfection and the release of the human soul. And it's not that we are 'doing' it, you see. It's that a natural law that we were previously unaware of is inexorably unfolding."

249-McKenna: "The Magic of Plants (Rites of Spring)" Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 02 Nov 2010 13:02:12 GMT

In this second installment of a 1986 workshop at the Ojai Foundation in California, Terence McKenna and Kat Harrison continue expanding on their views of the world from a psychedelic perspective. As usual, Terence waxes eloquent on thoughts such as, "This is the anguish of the ancestors. This is the sacred trust that must not be betrayed. The pogroms, and the invasions, and the atrocities conducted across history can only be, somehow, redeemed if we, who are the living wavefront of this genetic experience do not fumble the ball. All our ancestors are watching to see how we will do." And then he ends with his famous "good shit" story that took place during the La Chorrera experiments.

248-McKenna: "The Magic of Plants (Rites of Spring)" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 22 Oct 2010 21:40:48 GMT

This 1986 talk given by Terence McKenna at the Ojai Foundation in California features one of his greatest feats of poetic fancy as he describes his vision of a parallel Earth that bypassed Christianity and in which the ancient Greek alchemists joined with the Mayans to form a global psychedelic world that now is rejoining our through dreams, UFO experiences, and psychedelic voyages ... or something like that. But for sure it is classic Terence. Not to be missed if you love his flights of fancy.

REMOVED - 247-Watts: "On Being God and Death"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 14 Oct 2010 20:34:08 GMT

A person claiming to be Alan Watts' son says he owns the copyright to this talk. Although he offered no proof of who he is or of ownership, his threat of a lawsuit has caused me to remove this program, as I can't afford a lawyer to fight what I believe is a bogus claim. . . . PROGRAM NOTES . . . In this two part program we hear Alan Watts talking first about the divine spark that is within us all and how modern psychiatry, with its endless drug prescriptions, leads away from that ideal. For example, Watts says at one point: "Indeed one might say that psychoanalysis is based on Newtonian mechanics and in fact could be called psycho-hydrolics." ... The second short talk, also by Watts, concerns the usually avoided topic of death, and by the time he reaches the end of this little piece he has definitely convinced me to not worry about the inevitable.

246-Damer: "Elves, Egos, and Avatars"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 05 Oct 2010 05:17:56 GMT

In today's podcast we join Bruce Damer for his 2010 talk at the Buddhafield Festival. He titled this talk "Elves, Egos, and Avatars" and integrated a couple of Terence McKenna sound bites into the mix, along with an exploration of some of Eckhart Tolle's ideas about ego. He ends with a question we all should be asking ourselves, "It's the strength of the survivors that's always going to get you through. So how do we create a critical mass of people ready for the next phase, ready to build that new Earth?" ... I end the podcast with a brief remembrance of my brother, Dr. Miguel Jose Hagerty-Fox.

245-McKenna: "UFOs: Angels, Aliens, and Archetypes"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 24 Sep 2010 21:20:57 GMT

Having witnessed a UFO “at close range” himself, it is no wonder that Terence McKenna takes the phenomenon of unidentified astral objects quite seriously. However, that doesn't mean that he has any better idea what they are than you and I do. One of my favorite ideas of his from this podcast is when he says: “Are we being visited? Or is there another tenant in the building that we are unaware of?" ... Another interesting concept he plays with is: "I believe that that is the purpose of the UFO, to inject uncertainty into the male-dominated, paternalistic, rational, solar myth under which we are suffering." After his 40 minute UFO talk I also included a nine minute sound bite from a 1991 impromptu appearance in Mannheim where he says: "This is why psychedelics are illegal. They don't care whether people jump out of windows or any of that. They're not interested in public health. They do not want people to take back their minds."

244-Leary: "From Mind to Supermind"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 20 Sep 2010 04:01:59 GMT

Once again we hear how wonderfully optimistic Dr. Timothy Leary was when we were just 15 years short of the millennium. Although we now can see how hopelessly naive he was at the time, I still find his still youth-filled, optimistic enthusiasm quite refreshing, especially for the times we are now it. And while there are a few messages and stories we have heard from the good doctor before, his re-telling of them is always fresh. By the end of his talk, which was given in Santa Barbara, California on the 28th of January in 1985, he gives us an insight as to how he was seeing the personal computer revolution right as it was just then beginning to take form.

243-Ram Das & Leary: "Albert Hofmann Fund Raiser in 1988"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sun, 29 Aug 2010 17:00:47 GMT

This recording is from the second half of an event that was held on July 24, 1988 to raise money for the Albert Hofmann Foundation. The first half (which I haven't found a recording of yet) included talks by Paul Krassner, Laura Huxley, and Timothy Leary. However a few minutes of the Leary talk are included here. The main part of this recording is a scintillating talk by Ram Das in which he says things such as: "And it feels to me that as long as I live I will still be growing into what happened to me on the first psychedelic experience," and "What has happened is that the Sixties unleashed something extraordinarily powerful that is still reverberating and echoing in this culture, and actually in the world. And what that released was a recognition in people that they were free to change, institutions and themselves."

242-McKenna: "Philosophical Gadfly" Part 3

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 19 Aug 2010 22:37:16 GMT

In this final installment of a 1984 workshop, Terence McKenna begins by answering a question about how he sees the role of the I Chang in human life. From there he progresses to Marshall McLuhan and on to a consideration that "We cannot afford the unconscious anymore."

241-McKenna: "Philosophical Gadfly" Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 06 Aug 2010 17:43:59 GMT

In this continuation of a 1984 workshop in which he gave himself the title of Philosophical Gadfly, Terence McKenna takes us on a journey through the place he calls the invisible landscape. One of his raps is that "history is the departure of a species for the stars", which may give us a clue as to why he departed for the stars so early, paving our way, no doubt. His consideration of how we now control the biological evolution of our own species leads him to say, "We are creatures of information and the imagination. The monkey we are already beginning to transform and shed. We don't look like the other monkeys, and we look less like them all the time." ... And an interesting little factoid comes out that already in 1984, before the Web, Terence was already using the Internet with his Apple II and a $350 modem.

240-McKenna: "Philosophical Gadfly" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 04 Aug 2010 22:53:51 GMT

In this recording of a small 1984 gathering in Northern California, Terence McKenna holds forth on ayahuasca, his research in the Amazon, and the amanita muscaria mushroom. As is often the case, this workshop was shaped mainly by questions from the participants, which brought about this interesting quotation: "You must be aware that I have other wrinkles, the extraterrestrial angle, the end of history angle, several different things, but all of these things were inspired by our belief that these Amazon peoples have a technology for exploring the modalities of the unconscious that is centuries ahead of us." And his 1984 take on death is also notable: "I imagine death to be a kind of release into the imagination."

239-McKenna: "Shamanism, Alchemy, and the 20th Century"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 28 Jul 2010 20:28:03 GMT

This may be one of Terence McKenna's finest and most important talks. It was recorded in 1996 in Mannheim, Germany and was recorded during the time he and Sheldon Rocklin were filming the documentary for Mystic Fire, which was originally titled 'Coincidencia Oppositorum: A Union of Opposites'. And while it has now been more than a decade since it was given, you will find that it remains as fresh as if it was delivered last night. The program notes for this podcast contain the most McKenna quotes of any talk we have yet heard here in the salon. Just one quote may give you the flavor of what you will hear: "In the 60's then, LSD was not sufficient, even coupled with rock and roll it only brought repression. It was like a failed alchemy. Instead of the dissolving and recrystallizing at a higher and more angelic level thousands of prisons were built, and the entire thing failed. But this spirit is THE spirit, the spirit of life itself, the spirit of novelty itself, and it will not be suppressed for long in any time or place. So now again it comes. ... It's a spirit of dissent that says we will not serve the values of materialism, the values of the ego, and the values that separate and break down the community. So here it is again."

238-Various: "A Tribute to Albert Hofmann" Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 16:56:14 GMT

Dr. Lilly begins with a description of his first LSD experience in an isolation chamber (300mg IM) in the Virgin Islands in 1964, saying about it, "I was scared stiff, absolutely terrified." He is followed by Dr. Oscar Janiger who gives a few brief remarks before Terence McKenna introduces Dr. Albert Hofmann by famously saying, "Psychology without psychedelics is pissing into the wind." The Dr. Hofmann takes the stage for a talk that you will most likely listen to more than once. One of my favorite quotes of his is, "Of greatest significance to me has been the insight that I obtained as a fundamental understanding from all my LSD experiences that what one commonly takes as the reality by no means it defines anything fixed but represents a thing that's ambiguous, that there is not only one but there are many realities, each compromising a different consciousness also of the ego."

237-Various: "A Tribute to Albert Hofmann" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 13 Jul 2010 22:44:04 GMT

This is the first part of an event that was held at The Scottish Rite Temple in Los Angeles on October 2, 1988 to honor Dr. Albert Hofmann on the 50th anniversary of his discovery of LSD. The MC that night was none other than Terence McKenna, and besides a few words from Terence, we also hear from Stanley Krippner and Andrew Weil, who not only have many kind words for Dr. Hofmann but also add some interesting insights about their own work with LSD, such as when Terence said: "We have the tools, the intellect, the will to create a caring global culture. It isn't going to come without a recognition of the power of the psychedelic experience. The psychedelic experience is the birth right of every human being on the planet. It is as much a basic part of each and every one of us as our sexuality, our national identity, our consciousness of self. And any society which attempts to hold back or impede this dimension of self-expression, when the history of that society is written, it will be called barbarous." ... And from Dr. Weil: "And here it seems to me is the fundamental absurdity of the way our science has developed: The most obvious fact of our existence is that we are conscious. That is the most obvious, most important aspect of our existence. How can you construct a world view, how can you construct a system that tries to explain the universe and leave that out? And yet that is what our science tries to do."

236-Aldous Huxley: "The Politics of Ecology"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 09 Jul 2010 20:09:32 GMT

In this lecture (delivered just one year before he died in 1963) Aldous Huxley explains that the most pressing problems that lie before us will be brought about by the ecological devastation that comes with a population explosion. With a world population of about three million at the time, Huxley accurately predicted that it would double by today, which it has. He begins this lecture saying, "When advancing science and acceleratingly progressive technology alter man's long-standing relationships with the planet on which he lives, revolutionize his societies, and at the same time equip his rulers with new and immensely more powerful instruments of domination what ought we to do? What can we do?" And among his other observations are: "My own view is that it is only by shifting our collective intention from the merely political to the basic biological aspects to the human situation that we can hope to mitigate and shorten the time of troubles into which it would seem we are now moving. We have to get it into our collective heads that the basic problem now confronting us is ecological."

235-Various: "Osmond, Stolaroff, & Hubbard - 1964"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 30 Jun 2010 19:45:42 GMT

On October 30, 1964, Dr. Humphry Osmond, Myron Stolaroff, Willis Harman, and Al Hubbard took LSD together. The next day they discussed what was learned. This is a recording of that gathering, and it is the first of the recovered recordings from The Stolaroff Collection. Their conversation took place on November 1, 1964 and most likely hasn't been heard since the day this recording was made on Myron's reel-to-reel Ampex tape recorder. Among other interesting parts of this conversation are their views of the newly raging controversies then being fueled by the work of Timothy Leary and Ram Das. Needless to say, scientific researchers like Osmond and Stolaroff were not exactly enamored with the emerging psychedelic culture that would soon lead us to the Hippies and beyond. They also found a connection between their work and Tielhard de Chardin's writings about the noosphere. My favorite part is an appearance by the legendary, Al Hubbard, the Johnny Appleseed of LSD. While I'm sure there are other recordings of Hubbard, this is the first time I have heard his voice, and it comes in the context of Humphry, Myron, and him discussing their previous day's acid trip together. If you are interested in the early history of the psychedelic movement, this recording is not to be missed!

234-Trialogue: "The World Soul"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 24 Jun 2010 20:28:29 GMT

Today's talk is the missing Tape 4 from the first McKenna, Abraham, and Sheldrake Trialogue sessions recorded in 1989. Terence begins by telling a rather amazing story about a walk he had on a beach that turned into a fractal psychedelic experience, and without the aid of any substances I should add. From there it takes a while to get to the World Soul, and then after talking for a while, they discover that they are actually talking about different concepts! A couple of my favorite McKenna quotes from this talk are: "For my money, monotheism is the single most reactionary force in all of human history. I don't even know what is running second," and "Democracy is a step away from anarchy."

233-Leary and Ram Das: "1983 Harvard Reunion"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 17 Jun 2010 19:15:40 GMT

The talk I've picked for today is from April 23, 1983, and it was given at Harvard University on the occasion of the 20th anniversary of Timothy Leary and Ram Das, then Richard Alpert, being kicked out of Harvard. There are a lot of little gems here, but one of my favorites from Timothy Leary was, "[So Emerson] came to Harvard Divinity School, gave that famous speech in which he said, 'Don't look for god in the temples, nor in the buildings, nor in the pulpits, look within, find divinity inside yourself, drop out, become self-reliant (translated as do your own thing) and for, I believe thirty-three years, he was not allowed back on this sacred territory. We're back after twenty!"

232-FifthAnniversaryPodcast: "Fisher, Stolaroff, and Al Hubbard"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 10 Jun 2010 19:11:43 GMT

Today's program marks the Fifth Anniversary of podcasts from the Psychedelic Salon, and I want to thank you for coming back each week. It just wouldn't be the same without you! ... And for this occasion I am very happy to play a recording that was made at Kathleen's legendary salon in Venice Beach on the evening of March 19, 2004. The guest speakers that evening were Myron Stolaroff and Gary Fisher who led those gathered in Kathleen's home that night in a give-and-take session that had everyone laughing before the evening was over. And, of course, they also provided some wonderful insights and stories about the early days of the current psychedelic resurgence.

231-Damer-McKenna: "Bruce, Terence, and Virtual Worlds"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 04 Jun 2010 21:59:11 GMT

Today we have a two-part program that begins with a reminiscence by Bruce Damer about how he came to know Terence McKenna. I then follow that with a recording of one of the last conversations Bruce and Terence had at Terence's house on the Big Island of Hawaii just a few weeks before Terence was laid low by a tumor in his brain. One of the reasons I think it might be interesting for you to hear this conversation is to get a feel for what it was like to hang around with the bard McKenna. While you might think that he did most of the talking, you will find that the opposite is true, and much like Aldous Huxley, Terence did a lot of questioning and listening. It wasn't only from books that they acquired their particular views of the world.

230-Trialogue: "The Evolutionary Mind" Part 3

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 27 May 2010 19:52:18 GMT

In this final session of the last trialogue between Rupert Sheldrake, Terence McKenna, and Ralph Abraham the discussion is begun by Ralph when he states, "The edge of the millennium, any edge of any of the millennia, is particularly important to those revolutionary souls who want to make a change in things. It is a special time." ... and I need not point out that we are still at the very leading edge of this new millennium. And to the provocative question raised by Ralph, Terence answered, "This is a moment of enormous opportunity, and those who find themselves in this moment with power, defined however you care to define it, have a moral obligation to act. ... What we must become is clear."

229-Trialogue: "The Evolutionary Mind" Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 19 May 2010 21:02:36 GMT

This is a continuation of the last Trialogue that was held between Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham, and Terence McKenna. This session is kicked off by Terence McKenna who shifts the focus to The Evolutionary Mind AND the Machines. A couple of his comments include: "What is important about nature is that it is information. And the real tension is not between matter and spirit, or time and space, the real tension is between information and nonsense." And, "Vast amounts of the world that we call human is already under the control of artificial intelligences, including very vital parts of our political and social dynamo." Then Ralph and Rupert try to pin him down on a few inconsistencies. Following the trialogue I have added a short comment by Bruce Damer regarding the technical impossibility of uploading one's consciousness to a computer any time in the foreseeable future.

228-Trialogue: "The Evolutionary Mind" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sat, 15 May 2010 21:01:20 GMT

Today's podcast is the first part of the last Trialogue that was held between Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham, and Terence McKenna. The complete video of this Trialogue is also available through Google Video under the title "Trialogue at the End of the Millennium". By the end of their first hour, Ralph didn't think they had made any progress in their discussion, Terence thought great progress had been made, and Rupert was wondering whether our Sun was having relationship issues with its peers. All-in-all, this is a great mind-bender.

227-Shulgin-Watts: "Sasha at MIT plus Alan Watts"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sat, 08 May 2010 20:43:32 GMT

In today's podcast we hear from two psychedelic luminaries, Sasha Shulgin and Alan Watts. The Shulgin talk is one that he gave at MIT on December 1, 2005 and can also be found in video format on the MIT Web site. The date and location of the Alan Watts talk is unknown but it contains one of his best illustrations of what may be the true condition of us humans and concludes with the observation that, "You see, it doesn't matter in what form you begin. Whether you begin again as a human being, or as a fruit fly, butterfly, or a beetle, or a bird, it feels the same way that you feel now. So we're really all in the same place."

226-McKenna: "Hermeticism and Alchemy" Part 4

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 30 Apr 2010 21:34:20 GMT

In this final installment of Terence McKenna's 1992 workshop titled "Hermeticism and Alchemy" he points out that "History itself is a kind of alchemical process," and then goes into a political rant unlike any I've heard him give before. Two of my favorite gems are: "What we have to do is knock off this fantasy of being citizens inside a democratic state. I mean, what we are are the propagandized masses inside a Fascist dictatorship." and "I think that the Third Reich was a Sunday school picnic compared to the population policies of the Roman Catholic Church. ... In a civilized political environment those people would be placed under immediate arrest."

225-McKenna: "Hermeticism and Alchemy" Part 3

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 27 Apr 2010 00:37:04 GMT

In this next to last installment of Terence McKenna's 1992 workshop, "Hermeticism and Alchemy" we get to hear yet one more description of the elves that doesn't involve self-transformation or basketballs. He also gives his opinion of what the glue is that holdsl the world wide psychedelic community together. A couple of my favorite quotes from this session include: "So in a way, one way of thinking about psychedelics is that they empower language. It's a way to force the evolution of language. The way you stretch the envelope of culture is by creating language." And: "The mind is not a form of intelligence. The mind is the theater in which intelligence is manifested. You don't want to confuse the garage with the car. ... Everything goes on within the confines of mind."

224-McKenna: "Hermeticism and Alchemy" Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 23 Apr 2010 22:10:28 GMT

This begins Part 2 of Terence McKenna's 1992 workshop on "Hermeticism and Alchemy". He begins by taking 20 minutes and covering over a dozen topics, complete with detailed references, while explaining what may have caused the Eleusinian Mysteries to disappear. But my favorite part of today's talk is when Terence tells the story of what he describes as "one of the high-water wierdness events of my life".

223-McKenna: "Hermeticism and Alchemy" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 13 Apr 2010 19:17:39 GMT

Today's podcast begins a newly uncovered lecture by Terence McKenna. His topic is "Hermeticism and Alchemy" and he begins this 1991 workshop in fine form, making statements such as: "Human beings are co-partners with deity in the project of being. This is the basis of all magic." And, "Western civilization, in a way, can be thought of as an accumulated series of misunderstandings."

222-Ott: "Crimes Against Nature: The Civil War Against Drugs"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 06 Apr 2010 23:23:05 GMT

In this appeal to help Jonathan Ott recover from the arson that destroyed his house and laboratory, I am playing a recording of Jonathan reading from his book "Pharmacotheon: Entheogenic Drugs, Their Plant Sources and History". After his talk I give a Web address where donations may be made to help him over this big hurdle.

221-McKenna: "Evolving Times"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sat, 03 Apr 2010 04:35:27 GMT

In this two hour Terence Day (April 3rd) podcast, we hear Terence McKenna waxing his poetic best. For example: "Sometime in the last 50,000 years, before 12,000 years ago, a kind of paradise came into existence, a situation in which men and women, parents and children, people and animals, human institutions and the land, all were in dynamic balance. And not in any primitive sense at all. Language was fully developed. Poetry may have been at its climax. Dance, magic, poetics, altruism, philosophy, there's no reason to think that these things were not practiced as adroitly as we practice them today. And it was under the boundary-dissolving influence of psilocybin." "So what needs to be done is to spread the idea that anxiety is inappropriate. It's sort of like we who are psychedelic have to function as sitters for society, because society is going to thrash, and resist, and think it's dying, and be deluded, and regurgitate unconscious material, and so forth and so on. And the role then, I think, for psychedelic people is to try and spread calm."

220-Damer: "EvoGrid: The Ultimate Nerd Project"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sun, 28 Mar 2010 01:20:00 GMT

Today's podcast features salon favorite Bruce Damer's complete interview from a recent interview he gave for the film FallWinterMovie. He begins discussing his main project, the EvoGrid, and says, "Perhaps Gaia, the biosphere, has a devious plan which is to allow one of its species, one of its offspring, to create a mechanism to create new forms of life." Bruce then goes on to discuss several other fascinating topics that I think you will enjoy hearing.

219-Leary: "Live in San Francisco 1979" Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:15:25 GMT

In his usual outrageous way, Dr. Timothy Leary espouses lowering the voting age to seven in this second part of a talk that he gave in San Francisco in 1979. However, once you hear his logic for such a proposal you may see the method in his madness so to speak. And then there is his wonderful pronunciation that, "The legend goes like this, that in the high valleys around Basil, Switzerland there are alpine villages where the inhabitants have not drawn an un-hallucinated breath in 500 years." ... it is the good Doctor Leary at the top of his form.

218-Claudia Little: "The Truth About Cannabis"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 09 Mar 2010 21:45:19 GMT

In this information-packed program, registered nurse and medical cannabis activist Claudia Little tells the story of her investigations into the use of cannabis as a medicine. Claudia is also a member of the Medical Advisory Board of Americans for Safe Access and a former U.S. Navy Nurse.

217-McKenna: "Under the Teaching Tree" Part 3

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 05 Mar 2010 21:32:36 GMT

Among other stories, Terence tells of his UFO encounter in the Amazon in great detail ... one of his best tellings of this experience. He then goes on in an almost ambivalent way about his feelings about crop circles. Before long, though, he gets back to answering more questions about the smoked DMT experience, eventually comparing it to the archetype of the circus. He also explains his theory that crop circles may be the work of stem-bending Ninja Japanese tourists and that schizophrenics may actually be driven mad because they smell funny.

216-McKenna: "Under the Teaching Tree" Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:17:57 GMT

Today we pick up on the Terence McKenna workshop that he conducted in April of 1985 in Ojai, California. Among his other insightful observations was, "Cannabis holds many benefits, not necessarily related to its properties as an intoxicant, but as a source of food, lubricants, plastics, fuels, etc. The reason the establishment is so hysterical on the subject of cannabis is because it errodes loyalty to the industrial state."

215-McKenna: "Under the Teaching Tree" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sat, 20 Feb 2010 21:06:32 GMT

This is the first part of a talk that Terence McKenna gave at the Ojai Foundation in April of 1985. In it he speaks about death and DMT among other things, such as: "I came to feel, and I still sometimes offhandedly refer to it like this, that it [DMT] is secret. It is not a secret. It is THE secret. There is a secret, and this is it. It is the secret that the world is not only not the way you think it is. It's that the way the world is, is a way that you can't think it is, because you simply do not have the imaginative capacity to conceive of such overwhelming peculiarity."

214-Leary: "Live in San Francisco 1979" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 17:51:00 GMT

This is the first of a two part recording of a performance Dr. Timothy Leary gave in San Francisco early in 1979. After being introduced by Grace Slick, Timothy does his best to provoke the crowd with statements such as, "For the last four or five thousand years, freedom and intelligence and individualism have been moving in an unbroken chain from East to West. So that here on the banks of the Pacific Ocean we obviously have assembled the most advanced nervous systems on the planet."

REMOVED - 213-Watts: "The Alchemy of LSD"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 8 Feb 2010 21:47:33 GMT

A person claiming to be Alan Watts' son says he owns the copyright to this talk. Although he offered no proof of who he is or of ownership, his threat of a lawsuit has caused me to remove this program, as I can't afford a lawyer to fight what I believe is a bogus claim. . . . PROGRAM NOTES . . . Today we hear a long-lost lecture that the Sixties' philosopher, Alan Watts, gave in which he speaks in favor of the use of LSD. Among some of his comments are, "LSD is simply an exploratory instrument, like a microscope or a telescope, except this one's inside you instead of outside you. And according to your capacity and knowledge, you can use a microscope or a telescope to advantage. So in the same way, according to your capacity and your knowledge you can use an interior instrument to your advantage ... or just for kicks!" Also, I shamelessly promote the rock band The Soft Pack, which you can hear at www (dot) MySpace (dot) com (slash) thesoftpack

212-Lorenzo: "The Wizard's Council"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 04 Feb 2010 21:12:44 GMT

In this podcast I play a recording of Chapter 13 of "The Genesis Generation", a novel about a 29 year old corporate geek who gradually evolves into an underground hero in the psychedelic community. The complete novel is available at www (dot) GenesisGeneration (dot) us ... Chapter 1 may be heard in podcast #186 of this series.

211-McKenna: "Empowering Hope in Dark Times"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sat, 30 Jan 2010 03:40:17 GMT

This talk has appeared under several different titles, including "Empowering Hope in Dark Times", "Alchemy", and "Unfolding the Stone" among others. IMO it is the most positive and hopeful talk that we have yet heard from Terence here in the salon. For example, he says, "It's absolutely irrational to not be filled with the fire of consuming hope. You just have to overcome the leveling that we inheirit from these empty, existential, scientific ideas."

210-Various Speakers: "From the Shaman's Circle to the Ivory Tower"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 22:29:21 GMT

Today's program is from a workshop given at the 3rd International Conference for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture (ISSRNC) at the University of Amsterdam 23-26 July 2009. The conference was called "Religion, Nature and Progress," and this presentation by Anna Waldstein, Ivan Casselman, and Cameron Adams is titled, "From the Shaman's Circle to the Ivory Tower: Progress, Spirituality and Psychedelic Thinking."

209-Huxley: "An Audio Collage of Aldous Huxley"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 17:41:50 GMT

I've called this an audio collage for want of a better description. In this podcast you will hear not only what others thought of Aldous Huxley, you will hear him conversing in both interview format and in a more conversational setting. The range of topics covered in this collection of Huxley sound bites including a discussion of the arts in general, James Joyce, the best method for discussing philosophy including an example of how he went about creating his work, what he thinks about the supernatural, our lack of great symbols right now, and his involvement with psychedelic substances.

208-Nadelmann: "It's Time To End The War on Drugs"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 21:52:19 GMT

In this November 2009 presentation at a PATH event in San Diego, Ethan Nadelmann, founder and executive director of the Drug Policy Alliance, gives not just facts and figures, but also includes a stirring call to bring reason into the debate about ending the War on People who use non-prescription drugs. ... As he says, "That we are each sovereign over our own minds and bodies, that is the core principle that we have to keep putting out there."

207-Various Speakers: "A Tribute to Alan Watts"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 22:24:20 GMT

Today we begin with a short clip of Alan Watts speaking about human consciousness. Then we go to a little gathering at Dr. John Lilly's home, where he, Laura Huxley, and others give tribute to the life of Alan Watts a few months after his death.

206-McKenna: "Appreciating Imagination" Part 6

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 21:27:59 GMT

In this final installment of a 1997 Terence McKenna workshop about Appreciating Imagination, he comes up with quite a few interesting thoughts, such as: "I think that in service to the principle of parsimony, preferring the simplest explanation, these things [beings encountered in DMT space] must be human souls." ... and ... "If you're living right, your life should get just more and more baroque, beautiful, complicated, mysterious ... and then you die."

205-McKenna: "Appreciating Imagination" Part 5 (Timewave)

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 02 Dec 2009 19:49:27 GMT

In this next to last part of a 1997 Terence McKenna workshop dealing with the imagination, Terence takes us for a ride on his Timewave hypothesis. ... At one point he says, "I do entertain the idea that we may each have our own Timewave, sort of following the model of astrology." ... Then near the end of this session we hear him say, "The whole thing [Timewave hypothesis] smacks of the impossible. It's even pushed me toward the idea that maybe this is not actually a reality. We're trapped, or I'm trapped. I don't know if you're trapped. But we're in some kind of piece of fiction. It's like a Phillip K. Dick deal, you know. We're in some kind of simulacrum, and the clue to the fact that it's a simulacrum is this impossible idea [the Timewave]. And so the point of the idea is not to believe it, but to use it as a wedge to fight our way out of this labyrinth and back to whatever reality we were in before we fell into this situation. Something like that."

204-McKenna: "Appreciating Imagination" Part 4

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 18 Nov 2009 22:18:58 GMT

In part four of the Terence McKenna workshop about imagination he discusses the ego, Novelty Theory, and the possibility that time is not uniform. As he says, "The Timewave is not occult, but it is not science as we have done it these past 500 years, because it assumes that one of our primary intuitions is actually true; the intuition that every moment is unique [time is not uniform]. It treats that as the central starting point for an entirely new metaphysics of being." ... "The way you investigate time is by moving inward, by investigating metabolism. The human body is a knot in time." ... Also included is part of a conversation with Allan Lundell, Nick Herbert and few friends.

203-McKenna: "Appreciating Imagination" Part 3

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 20:47:48 GMT

In this third podcast of Terence McKenna's workshop on imagination, he picks up the pace and speaks to a dozen or more new topics. Not only does he explain what he calls 'McKenna's Five Percent Rule', he also gives us McKenna's Law: "As you advance in social hierarchy the percentage of smart people does not increase. ... Every human situation is bedeviled by morons. No matter how high you rise you're surrounded by fools, and you're lucky if you're not one of them. That's the basic thing to guard against." Plus he returns briefly to his critique of culture and says among other things, "Culture is a simplification and a lie. It's the currency by which fools navigate the world. Smart people get beyond it."

202-McKenna: "Appreciating Imagination" Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 26 Oct 2009 22:38:20 GMT

Among many other provocative ideas found in this talk is: "The major adventure is to claim your authentic, true being, which is not culturally given to you. The culture will not explain to you how to be a real human being. It will tell you how to be banker, politician, Indian chief, masseuses, actress, whatever, but it will not give you true being." ... Near the end of this podcast we also hear Terence explain his personal ideas about death.

201-McKenna: "Appreciating Imagination" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 20:34:41 GMT

Today's podcast is the first in a series from a workshop that Terence McKenna conducted at Esalen Institute in 1994, the focus of which was the human imagination. While he has some interesting thoughts about imagination such as, "Art is like the footprint of where the imagination has been." It was his thought about computers that most people may take away from this first part of the workshop where he also says, "The only difference between computers and drugs is that one is too large to swallow ... and our best people are working on that very problem."

200-Various: "A Few Words From Our Elders"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 20:54:31 GMT

Since this is my 200th podcast, I thought that it might be nice to hear a selection of sound bites from some of our esteemed elders. So in this program you will hear from Gary Fisher, Sasha Shulgin, Ann Shulgin, Myron Stolaroff, Terence McKenna, Baba Ram Das, and Timothy Leary in a medley of ideas that hopefully will inspire you to strive to become an elder yourself.

199-Leary: "Timothy Leary at MIT - 1967"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 03:03:08 GMT

In 1967 Dr. Timothy Leary gave a lecture to a group of MIT students in which he said, among other scandalous things: "The educational system, at the present time in the United States does neurological damage to the nervous system and functions as a narcotic, addictive drug." And then he went on to say: "You, the younger generation in particular, have got to drop out, and by drop out I mean all the way. You can't vote, I urge you not to do politics, don't picket, don't get involved in any of these menopausal mind games because it doesn't make any difference."

198-McKenna: "NPR Interview - 1999"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 01:07:33 GMT

This may be the last radio interview given by the bard Terence McKenna. The date was sometime in March of 1999, just a few weeks before the discovery of his brain tumor. Over a dozen new McKenna quotes from this podcast are posted on our blog at PsychedelicSalon (dot) org, and among the other little gems he at last clearly defines what he means by "the end of history".

197-McKenna: "McNature"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:49:59 GMT

Terence McKenna gave this talk the title of "Nature is the Center of the Mandala", but the cassette it was on had the title of McNature written on it. In any event, here is the Bard McKenna holding forth on the importance of keeping Nature as a focus in our lives. And as always, he has many provocative ideas such as, "Psychedelics are illegal not because a loving government is concerned that you may jump out of a third story window. Psychedelics are illegal because they dissolve opinion structures and culturally laid down models of behavior and information processing. They open you up to the possibility that everything you know is wrong."

196-Leary: "Timothy Leary vs. Notre Dame"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 17:53:56 GMT

In this 1968 lecture at the University of Notre Dame, Dr. Timothy Leary gives the then all-male student body a lesson in alternative thought. Basically, he told them that almost everything they are being taught is tainted with illogic. However, he also said that on the whole he didn't think that most of them were ready to use psychedelics yet, that the experience might be too powerful for them. Among other provocative things that the good doctor had to tell the young Catholic lads was, "Dope is going to be the religion of the future." One can only imagine (with a big smile) how discussions in the religious classrooms on campus went down the next day.

195-Leary: "The Future of Higher Intelligence" Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 21:13:05 GMT

Today we continue listening to a panel discussion from a Psychedelic Conference held at UCSB in 1981. We hear from Robert Anton Wilson and Dr. John Lilly and then we'll hear a clip from a talk that Timothy Leary gave about Dr. Lilly sometime later. Finally, we'll be hearing a song that a German band recorded in 1972 with Dr. Timothy Leary on vocals ... you won't want to miss that one!

194-Leary: "The Future of Higher Intelligence" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 24 Aug 2009 17:44:57 GMT

Today's podcast has a full cast of characters. Recorded early in the 1980s at a Psychedelic Conference held at UCSB, we hear a panel consisting of Frank Baron, Andrew Weil, Walter Clark, Robert Anton Wilson, and Paul Krasner that is moderated by Dr. Timothy Leary. Their topic is the future of higher intelligence, and as you can no doubt imagine, a Niagara of interesting ideas flows forth.

193-Watts: "The Houseboat Summit - 1967"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sun, 16 Aug 2009 19:19:56 GMT

In today's podcast we join Alan Watts, Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, and Gary Snyder for an hour-and-a-half of a conversation held on Watts' houseboat in February of 1967, just a few weeks after the first Human Be-In. While there are any number of interesting tidbits and some fascinating similarities to what is taking place in the world again today, one of the most interesting parts (at least to me) of their conversation is what must have been their first discussion of Dr. Leary's famous, but spontaneous proclamation of, "Turn on, tune in, drop out". If you are a student of Dr. Leary, this is a conversation you won't want to miss. . . . And did I mention that the real star of this show is Alan Watts, who said among other things: "In other words, when there is a game going on that's on a collision course, and that this game obviously is going to lead to total destruction, the only way of getting people out of a bad game is to indicate that the game is no longer interesting. See, we've left this game and it bores us."

192-Leary: "Live at the Stone - 1987"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 21:36:00 GMT

Think back to the Summer of 1987. Did you own a personal computer then? If so, you were in rare company. And in today's podcast we get to hear Dr. Timothy Leary explain why this new technology was going to revolutionize the world. But he doesn't confine himself to only talking about computers in this presentation that was given at The Stone in San Francisco. ... He also has some amazing stories to tell about the Summer of Love, Abbie Hoffmann, Hunter S. Thompson, and other fun people and events.

191-McKenna: "The Ethnobotany of Shamanism" Part 5

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 16 Jul 2009 23:35:22 GMT

This brings to a conclusion the series of recordings from a Terence McKenna workshop that he led over the weekend of November 5-7, 1988 at the California Institute of Integral Studies (CIIS). One of the more fascinating questions that he answers is, "How do you remember to bring back what you've learned?" And his answer, dealing with state-bounded memory, is something I hadn't thought of before. And like the preivous four programs in this series, Terence again peppers this one with provocative thoughts such as, "This is in fact what shamanism is all about, what the end of history is all about, what psychedelic drugs are all about, we are edge-walking on an ontological transformation of what it means to be human."

190-McKenna: "The Ethnobotany of Shamanism" Part 4

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 18:17:33 GMT

This week we pick up with Terence fielding questions about the visions he sees on various substances and where he thinks they come from. One of his more controversial comments this week may be: "The psychedelic experience is the beginning of the spiritual path. That's why it's not important that yogas claim that they can deliver you the psychedelic experience, because it begins with the psychedelic experience, and then you go from there."

189-McKenna: "The Ethnobotany of Shamanism" Part 3

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 20:01:49 GMT

We continue with a Terence McKenna workshop recorded on the first weekend of November in 1988. The workshop was conducted at the California Institute of Integral Studies in San Francisco. One of the more interesting segments of this talk is that it is one of his clearest public statements regarding the relative merits of natural psychedelics vs. synthetic ones. And his opinion on November 6, 1988 was, "I really think there is a very large distinction between synthetic and naturally occurring drugs." ... He also goes on to say, "I have never felt that the primary use of these things [psychedelic medicines] was to cure what is called in modern parlance neurosis, what I call unhappiness. It isn't for that."

188-McKenna: "The Ethnobotany of Shamanism" Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 20:38:30 GMT

In today's podcast we pick up where we left off last week with Terence McKenna conducting a workshop in November of 1988. Among other topics, Terence begins his "World Tour of Psychedelic Plants". One of my favorite McKenna quotes from this talk is, "We now have no choice in the matter of business as usual. There will not, apparently, be business as usual." ... and then there is, "Every step into freedom contains within it the potential for greater bondage."

187-McKenna: "The Ethnobotany of Shamanism" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 17 Jun 2009 17:07:57 GMT

In today's podcast, which was recorded at a small workshop held at CIIS in San Francisco on November 5, 1988, we hear Terence McKenna talk about some of his boyhood experiences that he feels led him into the world of psychedelic exploration. And then he goes on to briefly describe his years of travel while posing as a butterfly collector, eventually leading him to the Amazon. He then goes on to give his 1988 version of what he thought the psychedelic experience actually was, and he reads the titles of some of his favorite books. Among other McKennisims in this podcast: "What it [investigating psychedelics] really requires is a love of the peculiar, of the weird, the bizarre, the étrange, the freaky and unimaginable."

186-Lorenzo: "The Genesis Generation" Chapter 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 10 Jun 2009 20:03:45 GMT

In today's podcast Lorenzo reads the first chapter of his new novel, "The Genesis Generation", which you may purchase at GenesisGeneration.us. This is a story about the transformation of a 29 year old "yuppie-geek" into an underground hero in the psychedelic community.

185-McKenna: "Shamanism and the Archaic Revival"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 03 Jun 2009 20:13:02 GMT

Today's program features a talk by Terence McKenna that you can find elsewhere on the Net under the title "Vision Plants", but I thought that "Shamanism and the Archaic Revival" is more fitting. ... Among other provocative things McKenna has to say is, "Life lived in the absence of the psychedelic experience that primordial shamanism is based on is life trivialized, life denied, life enslaved to the ego."

184-Damer: "The Boundaries of the Human Mind"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 20 May 2009 18:08:11 GMT

Today's podcast features Bruce Damer, first at a Mind States conference in Oaxaca, Mexico and then in a late night conversation with Lorenzo. Among other things, Bruce talks about the team he led that developed some of the Virtual Reality simulations NASA used in training the astronaughts who recently repaired the Hubble telescope. ... However, the primary focus of Bruce's remarks may be summed up when he said, "If you want a future, you have to take charge of your own thoughts."

183-Leary: "What Are Humans For"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 08 May 2009 00:22:52 GMT

This program features a 1983 interview with Dr. Timothy Leary which begins with him talking about the Sixties and some of the characters he was involved with back then. Among his more provocative comments are: "Harvard is there to train Ivy Leaguers to go to Washington and Wall Street and keep the wasp establishment going. They're not supposed to be turning out new Buddhas and a new brand of science fiction neuronaughts."

182-Various: "The Spark of Divine Creativity"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 28 Apr 2009 21:20:24 GMT

Today we hear from two young traveling entertainers in a conversation with Mateo Pallamary and Lorenzo. Missy and Andre Nobels have been traveling around North America and entertaining with Missy's dancing and Andre's music. In this ad hoc conversation, the topic centers around creativity.

181-McKenna: "What Science Forgot" Q&A

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sat, 25 Apr 2009 21:01:39 GMT

In today's podcast, we hear the Question and Answer session from the talk by Terence McKenna that we heard in my previous podcast. It begins with the question, "Can you talk about the relationship of advanced mathmatics to modeling of consciousness in layman's terms?". From there, Terence moves into thoughts about magic and his old favorite, language.

180-McKenna: "Psychedelics: What Science Forgot"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 23:15:50 GMT

In this wide-ranging talk, Terence McKenna ends on a high note saying: "We represent a kind of concrescence of universal intent. We're not mere spectators, or a cosmic accident, or some sideshow, or the Greek chorus to the main event. The human experience IS the main event."

179-Leary: "Timothy Leary at Cornell - 1989"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 20:57:08 GMT

This talk was given on April 23, 1989 by Dr. Timothy Leary at Cornell University. Among the other provocative things Dr. Leary has to say about religion (along many other topics) is: "No matter how crazy, fucked-up an individual can be, he can't be as fucked up as the Catholic Church."

178-Leary+RAW "A random walk through two great minds"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:29:55 GMT

In today's podcast I play three clips from the audio collection of the Timothy Leary archive. The first is a radio interview of Dr. Leary, and it is followed by an interview with Robert Anton Wilson for the same program a couple of days later. The last piece is the beginning of a talk that Timothy Leary gave at Cornell in 1984. In it, among the many other things Leary has to say is, "I have one cause, and that's the goal of the performing philosopher, is to encourage you, and inspire you, and empower you, to the extent I can, to Think for Yourself and Question Authority."

177-McKenna: "Surfing Finnegan's Wake" Part 2

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 20:03:51 GMT

This is the second half of McKenna's thoughts about James Joyce's novel, "Finnegan's Wake". But in a departure from where we left off in my previous podcast, Terence spins off on a tangent about Marshall McLuhan and ends with a rant about war and the evils of television. It's an interesting talk that could have been given yesterday for its relevance to our current state of affairs.

176-McKenna: "Surfing Finnegan's Wake" Part 1

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 19 Mar 2009 02:06:19 GMT

This is part 1 of a talk given by Terence McKenna in which he deconstructs James Joyce's monumental novel, "Finnegan's Wake". Among other interesting observations McKenna makes is, "The reason I'm interested in it is because it's two things, clearly. 'Finnegan's Wake' is psychedelic, and it is apolyptic/eschatlogical."

175-Leary: "The Intelligent Use of Psychedelic Drugs"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 10 Mar 2009 21:28:19 GMT

Today we hear once again from Dr. Timothy Leary. This lecture was given in 1982 and covers a wide range of material, including an interesting overview of the use of psychedelics throughout history. Along with other provocative thoughts, he says, "We represent the aristocratic, exploring elite of our species, and we always have."

174-McKenna: "Pushing the Envelope"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 06 Mar 2009 02:45:24 GMT

Today's program includes two Terence McKenna pieces. The first is of a Question and Answer session that one of our listeners discovered at the end of a video tape. As far as we know, these 25 minutes are new to the Net. The second talk is one that he gave at the Wetlands in New York on July 28, 1998. A wide range of topics are covered in these two talks, and the program notes with links to a transcript of the last talk may be found at: PsychedelicSalon (dot) org.

173-Shulgin: "How I Go About Inventing New Drugs"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 21:32:01 GMT

This week's program features a lecture by the master chemist, Sasha Shulgin. This talk was given at the Psychoactivity Conference in Amsterdam on 4 October 1998. In it, Sasha explains in detail how he goes about conceiving of and then creating completely new psychoactive compounds.

172-Mind States: "The State of LSD in 2003"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 16 Feb 2009 21:45:50 GMT

In today's program we hear from Earth & Fire Erowid, Ralph Metzner, Stan Grof, Nick Sand, and David Nichols who were on a panel at the Mind States Conference in 2003 where they discussed the psychoactive compound, LSD. This is a follow up of podcast #154 in which the presentations by Nick Sand and Myron Stolaroff on this panel were previously presented.

171-Leary: "The Technology of Freedom"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 05 Feb 2009 00:55:56 GMT

In this 1981 talk by Dr. Timothy Leary, he speaks about freedom, and about the technology we can use to achieve it. Among some of his other more provocative statements, he says: "Prison is a luxury. Unfortunately it is wasted on people who don't know how to use it."

170-Trialogue: "How the Web Looked Back in 1994"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:53:41 GMT

Today we hear what Ralph Abraham, Terence McKenna, and Rupert Sheldrake were thinking about the World Wide Web at a time before it was yet two years old. Recorded in Hawaii sometime in 1994, this was a private trialogue (conversation) between the three of them in the garden at Terence's house on the Big Island of Hawaii. Fortunately for us they had the foresight to turn on a tape recorder that day.

169-Krishnamurti: "Truth is a Dangerous Thing"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 23 Jan 2009 20:03:18 GMT

This podcast is a collection of Krishnamurti sound bites taken from several of his videos currently available on YouTube. Among the many interesting ideas he presents, two could be of particular use to us at this moment in history, namely, his views about hope and faith.

168-Trialogue: "What Hawaii Says About Evolution"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 16 Jan 2009 00:12:30 GMT

Today's podcast is from a cassette tape recording made by Ralph Abraham during a private trialogue between Terence McKenna, Rupert Sheldrake, and himself. It was recorded sometime in 1994 on the Big Island in Hawaii, most likely at Terence McKenna's home there. Their conversation about evolution includes an interesting comparision between the island of Hawaii and the island in space called planet Earth.

167-Leary: "Evolution of Intelligence"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 00:36:22 GMT

Today's talk is from a 1983 lecture given in Boulder, Colorado by Dr. Timothy Leary. Among the many other provocative things he has to say in this lecture is, "If you want to increase your intelligence, if you want to evolve, and grow, and go through the changes, the many changes that are possible, at all costs avoid terminal adulthood."

166-McKenna: "Psychedelic Dreams"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 19:17:39 GMT

This is a continuation of the talk by Terence McKenna in my previous podcast. It is from a lecture he (or someone?) once called "Dream Awake". Among Terence's many other words of wisdom in this talk is his famous statement: "The biggest danger with psychedelics is that while you are in that open state some moron will mess with you."

165-Various Speakers: "Beats, Hippies, and McKenna"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 20:48:15 GMT

Today's program is a mash-up of a conference Q&A session of a panel that included Timothy Leary, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Gregory Corso, and Abbie Hoffman. This short panel discussion is then followed by a talk by Terence McKenna where among other interesting things he says, "The global destiny of the [human] species is somehow unfolding with the logic of a dream."

164-McKenna: "Some Thoughts About Ayahuasca"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 08 Dec 2008 19:31:41 GMT

In this talk, the bard Terence McKenna discusses some of his experiences in making and using the Vine. Among other things, he says, "[The ayahuasca experience] is is a self-generated, self-controlled immersion in a non-causal, parallel construct of some sort."

163-Sententia: "Reality Syndromes & Cyberpunk Symptoms"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 27 Nov 2008 19:24:35 GMT

Today's talk comes from the 2003 Mind States Conference in Berkeley, California where Dr. Wrye Sententia speaks about some interesting aspects of consciousness and the reality it creates. Here is an example of one of Wrye's thought-provoking ideas" "And the reason I mention the decade of the drug wars [in connection with cyberpunk fiction] is because there are a lot of overlays between altering your mind through drugs and altering your mind through technologies, hard technologies."

162-Forte: "Cultural Healing"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 18 Nov 2008 23:00:06 GMT

In this talk, given at the 4th annual Amazonian Shamanism Conference in Iquitos, Peru, Robert Forte challenges the psychedelic community to wake up and believe their own eyes about the events of 9-11. Only then, he believes, can we begin to move in the direction of healing our world cultures that are now in such deep conflict.

161-Trialogue: "Reality Check"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 6 Nov 2008 21:26:44 GMT

Today's podcast is from a trialogue between Ralph Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake, and Terence McKenna sometime in 1992. In this extended conversation, they discuss the concept of utopias and where their work might fit in the history of utopian works. Among other items they discuss is the failed utopias of The Sixties.

160-Leary: "The League for Spiritual Discovery"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 28 Oct 2008 21:48:21 GMT

In this January 1966 radio interview, Dr. Timothy Leary talks about his new religion, one whose sacrament is LSD. Among other provocative things he has to say is, "When the time comes, let your kids turn you on. That's my message to the middle-age, middle-class, whisky-drinking American suburban family."

159-Forte-Shulgin: "Horizon's 2008-Perspectives on Psychedelics"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 23:37:18 GMT

In this podcast, Lorenzo plays two selections from the talks given at the 2008 Horizon's Conference. The first is a talk given by Editor & Publisher Robert Forte, and the second is a question and answer session with Ann & Sasha Shulgin. More talks from this conference are available from The Internet Archive at www.archive.org/details/Horizons2008

REMOVED 158-Wilson: "Increasing Human Life Span"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 01 Oct 2008 17:46:45 GMT

In this 1986 talk, author Robert Anton Wilson explores some of the issues surrounding human life expansion before moving on to discuss the future and how some conspiracy theories seem to have some substance to them.

REMOVED 157-Wilson: "The Acceleration of Knowledge"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:56:50 GMT

In this fascinating talk given sometime during the 1980s, Robert Anton Wilson paints a picture of an ever-increasing amount of information growing, and reverberating around the globe. And he draws some interesting conclusions about the importance of LSD and other psychedelic medicines.

156-Fisher-Grob: "Treating Childhood Schizophrenia with Psychedelics"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 10 Sep 2008 22:37:43 GMT

In this program, Dr. Charles Grob (Professor of Psychiatry and Pediatrics at the UCLA School of Medicine and Director of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry at Harbor-UCLA Medical Center) interviews Gary Fisher, Ph. D., about some experiments he conducted in the early 1960s. ... In addition to talking about the state of psychedelic research before prohibition closed down almost every study involving these non-patentable medicines, they discuss a previously unpublished paper Dr. Fisher wrote in which he detailed the results of his work giving LSD and psilocybin to severely emotionally disturbed children raging in age from 4 years 10 months to 12 years 11 months. ... The full report is available at www.MatrixMasters.com/GaryFisher

155-Leary: "Some Thoughts About Change (1945-1985)"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 01 Sep 2008 23:05:01 GMT

Today's podcast once again features Dr. Timothy Leary. The label on the cassette tape on which this talk was recorded gives the title of this lecture as "American Culture (1945-1985)", but in the talk Dr. Leary provides us with another title, "Some thoughts about change". No matter what you call this talk, the range of topics it covers means it is bound to touch on at least one of your interests. Program notes may be found at: www.PsychedelicSalon.org

154-Sand-Stolaroff: "Mind States 2003 LSD Panel"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 22:01:58 GMT

The legendary alchemist who created Orange Sunshine in the 60's, Nick Sand, and psychedelic pioneer, Myron Stolaroff, are featured in today's program. Nick talks about alchemy and LSD, and Myron speakes to the spiritual heights that may be reached through a careful balance of meditation and LSD.

153-Wilson: "Consciousness Change and the 8-Circuit Model"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 18 Aug 2008 21:10:48 GMT

Today's podcast features an interview with the brilliant Robert Anton Wilson who offers a suggestion for an elightenment exercise that you can do at home among other interesting ideas. He also speaks openly about his use of psydhecelics and his view of their importance.

152-Leary: "Question Authority and Think for Yourself"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 11 Aug 2008 22:09:34 GMT

In this 1987 talk, Dr. Timothy Leary, once called the High Priest of The Sixties, gives a Fort Worth, Texas audience a few ideas about how to challenge the status quo. Even though this talk was given over 20 years ago, it still holds up today.

151-McKenna: "Posthumus Glory"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 17:24:02 GMT

In today's podcast we hear selections from Terence McKenna's last two presentations at the AlChemical Arts Conference held on the big island of Hawaii in September 1999, just seven months before his untimely death. Among other little gems you will hear in these talks are how Terence was dealing with his final illness and a farewell thank you to the psychedelic community. Also included is part of a panel discussion that Terence and Tom Robbins held in which they discussed psychedelic literature.

150-McKenna: "UFOs"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 28 Jul 2008 19:31:57 GMT

In a talk given at a convention of UFO enthusiasts, Terence McKenna tells the audience to save their time looking to the skys, because the aliens are already among us.

149-Trilogue: "The Heavens"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 18 Jul 2008 19:59:11 GMT

In today's program, Rupert Sheldrake begins the conversation by examining the history of the sterilization of the cosmos into a mechanistic machine. Then he goes on to invite speculation by Terence McKenna and Ralph Abraham as to the possibility of stars having consciousness. All-in-all, this trialogue provides an interesting history of how humans have viewed the cosmos over the ages.

148-Chopra: "Grand Rounds-Psychedelic Psychotherapy"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 18:03:09 GMT

In today's podcast Dr. Preet Chopra talks about psychedelic psychotherapy in his grand rounds at a California hospital. Besides bringing us up to date on the psilocybin research project he is involved in, Dr. Chopra gives us some idea of the direction psychotherapy is taking in regards to psychedelic medicines.

147-Wilson: "TSOG and Conspiracies"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sun, 06 Jul 2008 18:11:33 GMT

Today's program features two interviews with Robert Anton Wilson. The first one features his book "Everything Is Under Control" and the second covers conspiracy theories and his book "TSOG: The Thing That Ate the Constitution".

146-McKenna: "The Importance of Human Beings"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sun, 29 Jun 2008 20:59:52 GMT

In this lecture (originally titled "Eros to Eschaton") Terence McKenna says, "If in fact the conservation and complexification of novelty is what the universe is striving for, then suddenly our own human enterprise, previously marginalized, takes on an immense new importance." And from that foundation he goes on to claim that we humans "are the main event".

145-Leary: "Live at the Inside Edge"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 19:27:46 GMT

This is a talk given by Dr. Timothy Leary sometime late in 1991 or in 1992 at The Inside Edge in Orange County, California. Among the challenging ideas Dr. Leary presented was his thought that: "As soon as you belong to a system where you're not known individually, and where you don't know, individually, the other people, you are by definition depersonalizing yourself, a robot cog of the Big Machine."

144-Huxley: "The Ultimate Revolution"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wue, 10 Jun 2008 17:29:51 GMT

In this 1962 talk, Aldous Huxley examines the possibility that events he wrote about in his novel, "Brave New World", are actually coming to pass. In this lecture, titled "The Ultimate Revolution" he also talks about terrorism, state terrorism.

143-Trialogue: "Rethinking Society"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 04:24:25 GMT

In this 1992 trialogue, Terence McKenna sets the stage with Ralph Abraham and Rupert Sheldrake by talking about the power of images and the need for society to begin a serious discussion about how to make it more liveable. This talk has a lot of unexpected twists and turns along with a few laughs as well.

142-Leary: "The Creation of the Future"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 30 May 2008 03:08:07 GMT

In this 1980 talk by Dr. Timothy Leary he recommends turning the reins of power to the young, and he makes a surprising suggestion about the proper age at which voting rights should be bestowed on our citizens.

141-Trialogue: "Contemplating a Visual Psychedelic Language"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 23 May 2008 23:17:48 GMT

In this 1992 Trialogue, Ralph Abraham, Terence McKenna, and Rupert Sheldrake discuss the necessity of evolving language beyond words and text into a more condensed art form in order to better discuss psychedelic experiences.

140-Grey: "Psychedelic Families" and Abraham "Psychedelics and Mathematical Vision"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 15 May 2008 18:37:56 GMT

In this podcast you will hear two presentations. The first is a talk given by Allyson and Alex Grey at the World Psychedelic Froum held in Basel, Switzerland in March of 2008 in which they discuss the difficult issue of educating our children about psychedelics. Next we hear the introduction to a 1992 trialogue in which Ralph Abraham describes the history of psychedelic involvement with the math and computer revolutions of the 1960s.

139-Damer: "Is the Universe Waking Up"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 09 May 2008 03:36:57 GMT

In this podcast we hear Bruce Damer first at the Mind States conference in Oaxaca, Mexico in 2006 and then again in a more intimate setting in April 2008. His topics include views of the big picture of the universe possibly becoming aware of itself down to the world of today in which we may be frying our brains with too much time in front of our computers.

138-Shulgin: "The Shulgins at Mind States 2005"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 30 Apr 2008 23:19:18 GMT

In this "Ask the Shulgins" session, in addition to some interesting chemistry questions, we learn more detail about the process Sasha uses to develop a new psychoactive substance. And Ann adds many soothing answers to some pressing questions.

137-Leary: "Creation of the Future”

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 21 Apr 2008 18:41:16 GMT

In this 1979 talk, Dr. Timothy Leary sets out a rather unique view of what today might be called "intelligent design", but with a Tim Leary twist, of course.

136-McKenna: "A Few Conclusions About Life"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:00:46 GMT

In today's podcast we hear once again from the bard Terence McKenna, who at the ripe old age of 50 has come to a few conclusions about life.

135-Mountain Girl: "The Pranksters, the Dead, and the Sixties"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sat, 05 Apr 2008 00:55:35 GMT

In today's podcast we hear Carolyn "Mountain Girl" Garcia's talk at the World Psydhecelid Formu in Basel, Switzerland during March of 2008. In it she recaps some of the highlights of her life as a Merry Prankster and as one of the cornerstones of The Greatful Dead.

134-Pinchbeck: "A Playalogue about Sex and Social Control, Tantra and Liberation"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 02:18:04 GMT

In today's podcast we join Daniel Pinchbeck for the playalogue he conducted at the 2007 Burning Man Festival. As part of the Palenque Norte lecture series, Daniel led a conversation about human sexual relations during a period of transformation between two ages. And later we hear Matt Pallamary's definition of shamanism.

133-Leary: "The CyberSociety"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 03:46:32 GMT

In this 1987 talk, Dr. Timothy Leary talks about the progression of technology that has brought humans to a new plateau of consciousness. And we also hear a personal, 1995 message from Eldridge Cleaver to Timothy Leary on a rather surprising subject.

132-McKenna: "Shamanism" and Pallamary: "Spirit Matters"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 16:10:00 GMT

In the first part of this podcast Terence McKenna gives us a few of his thoughts about shamanism. Also we hear from author Matt Pallamary, whose new memoir, "Spirit Matters" has just been published.

131-Danforth: "Building a Model for Sustainable Psychedelic Therapy"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 11 Mar 2008 23:27:01 GMT

In today's program we hear the Playalogue led by Alicia Danforth at the 2007 Burning Man Festival. Along with input from the audience, Alicia covers many of the possibilities for continuing this important work.

130-Leary: 1966 Radio Interview

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 19:40:35 GMT

In this podcast we feature a radio interview of Dr. Timothy Leary conducted by the infamous conservative talk show host, Alan Burke, who did his best to abuse and discredit Dr. Leary. It is truly a sign of the 1960s panic about the interest young people were showing in LSD.

129-Davis: "The Imagination and the Environment"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 29 Feb 2008 20:19:23 GMT

In this podcast we hear Erik Davis' 2007 Burning Man Playalogue in which a wide range of topics are discussed, including the environmental impact of festivals like Burning Man.

128-McKenna: "The State of the Stone"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 00:35:52 GMT

In this 1995 talk, Terence McKenna gives one of his more hopeful talks about love and the state of humanity at the end of the millenium.

127-Leary: "How To Use Your Head"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 13 Feb 2008 00:31:18 GMT

This podcasat features Dr. Timothy Leary in his famous Cooper Union address when he told the American public about a chemical called LSD. Delivered in November 1964, this talk was one of the opening salvos of the cultural revolution of the Sixties.

126-Trialogue: "Psychedelics and the Computer Revolution"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 18:49:21 GMT

In this 1991 conversation, Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake discuss the impact of psychedelics and computers on culture.

125-Trialogue: "Crop Circles"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 25 Jan 2008 17:03:46 GMT

In this private trialogue Rupert Sheldrake, Ralph Abraham, and Terence McKenna discuss various theories about the phenomenon of crop circles. This conversation took place in September 1991.

124-Trialogue: "Cannabis"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 00:32:45 GMT

In this trialogue, recorded in September 1991 at a private session with Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake, they discuss the amazing properties and benefits of one of the planet's most universal medicines.

123-McKenna: "Opening the Doors of Creativity"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sun, 13 Jan 2008 02:26:21 GMT

Terence McKenna talks about the shaman/artist, language and creativity.

122-Trialogue: "Saving the World"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 23:13:49 GMT

Recorded on September 2, 1991, this is the second tape of a conversation between biologist Rupert Sheldrake, mathematician Ralph Abraham, and psychedelic explorer Terence McKenna.

121-Trialogue: "Grass Roots Science"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 14 Dec 2007 01:11:01 GMT

Recorded on September 2, 1991, this conversation between biologist Rupert Sheldrake, mathematician Ralph Abraham, and psychedelic explorer Terence McKenna seems to have been recorded in private (without an audience).

120-Lorenzo: "Notes to Myself"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sun, 09 Dec 2007 05:45:21 GMT

Lorenzo muses on what it means to live a psychedelic life, and he is joined by several of his musician friends along with a brief sound bite from Terence McKenna.

119-McKenna: "A Crisis of Consciousness"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Fri, 07 Dec 2007 13:15:06 GMT

In this talk by Terence McKenna, among other things, he says, "It is a crisis in consciousness which confronts us globally. Consciousness is the commodity that if we do not have enough of it, do not produce it fast enough, then the momentum of the processes we set in motion in our ignorance is going to sterilize the planet and do us all in."

118-Ramachandran: "What Neurology Can Tell Us About Human Nature, Synesthesia and Art"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 18:39:50 GMT

In this program neurologist Dr. V.S. Ramachandran talks about various ways in which brain structure can influence various forms of human behaviour, including the artistic impulse.

117-McKenna: "The Importance of Psychedelics"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Thu, 29 Nov 2007 04:07:32 GMT

In this lecture, Terence McKenna talks about the tragic situation we humans have placed ourselves in, and ways in which the boundry dissolution effects of psychedelic medicines can possibly save our species from what appears to be a certain extinction. . . . "What the psychedelic experience does, really, is it stretches the envelope of the imaginable."

116-McKenna-Pesce: "TechnoPagans at the End of History"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 23:50:19 GMT

This is the introduction to a workshop given by Terence McKenna and Mark Pesce at Easlen in August 1998. In it, they discuss virtual reality and psychedelic medicines among other things.

115-Pesce: "Bios and Logos"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 02:22:42 GMT

In this talk that was delivered at the 2002 Mind States Conference held in Jamaica, Mark Pesce discusses, among other things, the technological singularity, DNA, and nanotechnology and how they relate to the ongoing evolution of our species.

114-McKenna: "Psychedelic Society"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Sat, 03 Nov 2007 20:17:32 GMT

In this talk given in 1984, Terence McKenna describes his vision of a society based on psychedelic thinking. This is the talk that eventually evolved into his famous essay with the same title.

113-McKanna: "Syntax of Psychedelic Time"

hagerty@matrixmasters.com (Lorenzo) — Wed, 31 Oct 2007 13:06:58 GMT

This is a continuation of a lecture by Terence McKenna that was given in July 1983. Also, Lorenzo talks about the firestorm that recently ravaged San Diego.