Archive for Culture

Podcast 351 – “What Is Truth?”

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna
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PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“Why does mathematics describe nature. That’s a deeper question than most.”

“The real justification for psychedelics is that they feed new data into your model.”

“If you go to Paris you know more about reality than people who don’t. If you smoke DMT you know more about reality than people who don’t.”

“So the idea is to triangulate a sufficiently large number of data points in your set of experience that you can make a model of the world that is not imprisoning. That’s why, second to psychedelics, I think travel is the most boundary-dissolving, educational enterprise that you can get mixed up in.”

“I think the experience over the past thousand years is that ideology is poisonous. . . . The world seen through the lens of ideology is a very limited world.”

“I think what electronic culture permits is incredible diversity, and what the print-created world demanded and created was tremendous suppression of diversity.”

“Television is, to my mind, the most insidious drug that the 20th Century has had to deal with.”
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May 14, 2013 · Filed under Ayahuasca, Books, Culture, Evolution, Psilocybin, Psychedelics, Terence McKenna

Podcast 349 – “A Higher Dimensional Sectioning of Reality”

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna
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PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“Just because you have a nut theory it doesn’t mean that you agree with other nut theories. In fact, it often makes you very hostile to them. After all, there’s a limited pool there that we’re all after.”

“Because I believe psychedelics are a kind of higher dimensional sectioning of reality, I think they give the kind of stereoscopic vision necessary to hold the entire hologram of what’s happening in your mind. The old paradigm is gone.”

“Shamanism is about shape shifting. Shamanism is about doing phenomenology with a tool kit that works.”

“I think psychedelics are sort of like doing calisthenics in preparation for the marathon at the end of time.”
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April 30, 2013 · Filed under Crop Circles, Culture, Extraterrestial, John Allen, Psychedelics, Terence McKenna

Podcast 347 – “This counts, somehow it matters”

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna
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PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“Our best efforts are nothing more than half-completed stories told around the campfire. We don’t actually know what our predicament is. We are up against a phenomenon which we can barely bring into focus in our cognitive sphere, and it’s the phenomenon of our own existence”

“These religions that are so freighted with their own pomposity are no better than inspired guesses.”

“Science works its miracles by turning its enterprise into a kind of parlor game confined to the category matter and energy.”

“In other words, all these things you might cling to, Catholicism, democratic ideals, Hasidism, Marxism, Freudianism, all of these things are exposed [through use of psychedelics] as simply quaint cultural artifacts, tainted masks and rattles assembled by people of good intent but clearly not great grasp of the situation.”

“To date, the enterprise of thinking has moved us radically away from understanding anything.”

“For me, what all these years of psychedelic taking came to was a new model of how reality works, a new model of what the world is.”
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April 9, 2013 · Filed under 2012, Culture, Eschaton, Evolution, Future, Language, Psychedelics, Religion, Shamanism, Terence McKenna

Podcast 345 – “Transhuman Encounters”

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna
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PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“We now know enough to fantasize realistically about what the alien would be like, and I think that this then sets up polarities in the collective psyche that previously we have only seen at the level of the individual.”

“By passing into the psychedelic phase, the space-faring phase, the entire species is passing into adolescence.”

“The question is being asked, ‘Are we alone?’ ” And though we now focus on that question we need to think beyond that to what if we’re not alone? Then what becomes the next imperative question?”

“People are, in the confines of their own apartments, becoming Magellans of the interior world and reaching out to this alien thing and beginning to map it and bring back stories that can only be compared to the kind of stories that the chroniclers of the New World brought back to Spain at the close of the 15th century.”

“Actually, this is what has led us into this extremely alienated state, it’s that we haven’t demanded that the stories we tell ourselves about how the world works confirm our direct experience of how it works.”
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March 20, 2013 · Filed under Books, Consciousness, Culture, DMT, Evolution, Extraterrestial, Imagination, LSD, Psilocybin, Psychedelics, Terence McKenna

Podcast 344 – “A Global Cultural Crisis”

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna
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PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“I’m proposing on one level that hallucinogens be thought of as almost as social pheromones that regulate the rate at which language develops, and therefore regulate human culture generally.”

“Where psychedelics comes together with that is that it’s going to require a transformation of human language and understanding to stop the momentum of the historical process, to halt nuclear proliferation, germ warfare, infantile 19th century politics, all these things. It cannot be accomplished through a frontal assault upon it by political means.”

“Transformation of language through psychedelic drugs is a central factor of the evolution of the social matrix of the rest of the century.” (quote from 1983)

“Tribalism is a social form which can exist at any level of technology. It’s a complete illusion to associate it with low levels of technology. It is probably, in fact, a form of social organization second only to the family in its ability to endure.”

“I think there is a global commonality of understanding coming into being. And it is not necessarily fostered by institutions.”

“If I had to pick an ontological vision that was compatible with what I think these drugs are about, and with what I think is trying to happen, I would pick Taoism.”

“So it’s [shamanism] a kind of a profession. It’s almost like clergy. It’s to be deputized by the society as an ecstatic for the purpose of introducing back into society the material that comes from the mystical voyage for purposes of cultural renewal.”

“The history of man that you don’t know is what your unconscious is made out of.”

Books mentioned in this podcast

A People’s History of the United States: 1492 to Present
By Howard Zinn

Burr: A Novel
By Gore Vidal

Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated
By Gore Vidal

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March 13, 2013 · Filed under Ayahuasca, Books, Consciousness, Culture, Language, Psychedelics, Shamanism, Terence McKenna

Podcast 343 – “Developing a Community Tea House Model”

Guest speaker: Annie Oak
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PROGRAM NOTES:

Today we hear from civil rights activist and the founder of the Women’s Visionary Congress in her 2012 Palenque Norte Lecture at the Burning Man Festival. Anyone who is feeling that they are “out there at the end of the line” may find great encouragement in what Annie has to say as she tells the story of her own unique journey through life. And for the psychedelic community she has these powerful words, “We’re not the counter-culture. We are the culture, and we need to make the culture visible.”

The Women’s Visionary Congress
Consciousness, Healing, and Social Justice

Links mentioned in this podcast

The Terence McKenna Legacy Library book list at LibraryThing

Dr. Bruce’s Levity Zone

The Evolver Network

BrynStoneBooks.com

UKCSC Podcast 006: Please Hire Me, I’m a Cannabis Campaigner!

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March 4, 2013 · Filed under Annie Oak, Burning Man, Consciousness, Creativity, Culture, Family, Future, Palenque Norte, Psychedelics, War on Drugs

Podcast 342 – “Psychedelic Family Business”

Guest speaker: Allyson & Alex Grey
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PROGRAM NOTES:

“If it’s a psychedelic family business, then you’ve got to consider the ‘top line’ [as contrasted with 'the bottom line']. What’s the top line? The top line is: You have one unique life, and what do you love to do? What do you want to spend your life doing? What is the highest impact you can have on the world in a positive way?” -Alex Grey

“We know that in the wake of our psychedelic experiences we’re awakened to a oneness with the environment and with a sense of the need to protect it. And at least the dream of Eco-sustainability and how could we possibly manage that at this point in our trip. And yet it’s up to us to take responsibility for it. All of these things kind of naturally evolve in the wake of the psychedelic experience for many people.” -Alex Grey

“If you really want something big to happen in your life you have to make promises that you don’t know how you’re going to keep, and you have to keep them. That’s all. That’s all it takes.” -Allyson Grey

COSM

Allyson & Alex Grey’s Chapel of Sacred Mirrors
A sanctuary for seeing ourselves and the world as reflections of the Divine

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February 20, 2013 · Filed under Alex & Allyson Grey, Art, Burning Man, Consciousness, Creativity, Culture, Family, Future, Imagination, Palenque Norte, Psychedelics

Podcast 341 – “Ayahuasca Research Report – 1984″

Guest speaker: Dennis McKenna
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PROGRAM NOTES:

Today’s talk features Dennis McKenna in a June 1984 presentation of his research concerning ayahuasca. This is one of the first, if not the first, public presentation of Dennis’ early work involving this sacred medicine. For most of the last 33 years, ayahuasca has been one of the major preoccupations of his professional life, and he is considered one of the world’s leading scientific experts in this field. As Dennis says in a recent article in The Journal of Psychoactive Drugs: “In that time, I have written extensively on the botany, chemistry, and pharmacology of ayahuasca, on its potential therapeutic uses, and on the need for more, and more rigorous, scientific and clinical investigations of this remarkable plant decoction. Working with colleagues such as Dr. Grob, my good friends Jace Callaway and Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna in Finland, my mentor Dr. Neil Towers, my late and beloved brother Terence, Dr. Glaucus de Souza Brito, and others, to investigate the myriad mysteries of ayahuasca, has been as rich and rewarding an experience as any scientist could ever hope for.”

Index of Dennis McKenna Articles (from Erowid.org)

The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss (2012)

Dennis J. McKenna (Erowid Character Vaults)

“Ayahuasca and Human Destiny” by Dennis McKenna

Dennis McKenna on the Joe Rogan Experience

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February 12, 2013 · Filed under Ayahuasca, Culture, Dennis McKenna, DMT, Evolution, Psychedelic Research, Psychedelics, Science & Technology, Shamanism

Podcast 340 – “Visions and Biospheres”

Guest speaker: John Allen and Tango Parrish Snyder
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PROGRAM NOTES:

This podcast features another of the 2012 Palenque Norte Lectures that were held at the Burning Man Festival. The speakers are John Allen and Tango Parrish Snyder, both of whom have been involved in many large-scale Earth Science projects, including Biosphere 2. In his presentation, John makes a strong plea for all of us to gain a better understanding of not just our own local ecosystems, but of the Earth’s entire biosphere as well. It is a fascinating talk and is followed by an interesting Q&A session.

Me and the Biospheres: A Memoir by the Inventor of Biosphere 2
By John Allen


The publishing home of John Allen and Tango Parrish Snyder

Upcoming Events

Books from the Synergetic Press

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February 6, 2013 · Filed under Books, Burning Man, Culture, Environment, Future, John Allen, Palenque Norte

Podcast 339 – “A Necessary Chaos”

Have you had a “bad trip”
on psilocybin mushrooms?
If so, please take this anonymous
Johns Hopkins survey,
and please tell others about it.

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna
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PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“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.”

“Actually, the highest form of human organization is not realized in the democratic individual. It is realized in a dimension none of us have ever penetrated, which is the mind of the species, which is actually the hand at the tiller of history. . . . It is an organized entelechy of some sort, and human history is its signature on the primates.”

“I think it’s the sheer power of the hallucinogens that puts people off. You either love them or you hate them, and that’s because they dissolve world views. And if you like the experience of having your entire ontological structure disappear out from under you, if you think that’s a thrill, you’ll probably love psychedelics.”

“The leading edge of reality is mind, and mind is the primary substratum of being.”

“We can no longer have forbidden areas of the human mind, or cultural machinery. We have taken upon ourselves the acquisition of so much power that we now must understand what we are. We cannot travel much further with the definitions of man that we inherit from the Judeo-Christian tradition. We need to truly explore the problem of consciousness.”

“Capitalism is a gun pointed at the head of global civilization.”

“The way I think of the psychedelics is, they are catalysts to the imagination.”

Comments (5)

January 29, 2013 · Filed under Chaos, Consciousness, Culture, Evolution, Future, Language, Psilocybin, Psychedelics, Terence McKenna

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