Archive for Imagination

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.”
» Continue reading “Podcast 345 – “Transhuman Encounters””

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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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Podcast 329 – “Vision Mapping for the Golden Age”

Guest speakers: Amanda Sage and Bruce Damer
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Watch a video of this talk

Watch a video of Bruce Damer’s brief history of the Palenque Norte lecture series

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Amanda Sage.]

“Let’s turn the museums into temples. I think the new museums are going to be temples.”

“I’m interested in this collaboration, because I’m interested in what can we do to wake people up, to turn people on.”

“And dream. I mean if this is about dreaming, what can each of us do to evoke the dream, a deeper dream, in another?”

Amanda Sage (official site)

eARTh Voyage:::

The mission is the art of transformation


Amanda Sage “Vision Mapping for the Golden Age” – Burning Man 2012 from Palenque Norte on Vimeo.


A brief history of Palenque Norte, from which the podcasts sprang . . . by Dr. Bruce Damer

Dr. Bruce Damer “A Brief History of Palenque Norte” – Burning Man 2012 from Palenque Norte on Vimeo.


The Twilight of American Culture by Morris Berman

Dark Ages America by Morris Berman

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Podcast 323 – “Searching for a New Paradise Myth”

Guest speaker: Lorenzo and Friends
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PROGRAM NOTES:

This podcast features the final community discussions at the June 2012 Esalen workshop led by Lorenzo and Bruce Damer. Among the topics discussed were:
   -Creating a new myth for our community
   -The genesis of the Occupy Movement
   -Are psychedelic “mutants” among us?
   -Cultural Creatives
   -Freeing our food supply from money
   -Timebanks
   -What the mushroom has to say about the future
   -The Importance of myth
   -Developing a “Medicine Circle” app
   -Building new cultures through shared global experiences
   -The ‘superfood’ revolution and our connection to the Earth
   -Indra’s Net
   -The Temple at the Burning Man Festival

FindTheOthers.net

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Podcast 319 – “The Voynich Manuscript”

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna
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PROGRAM NOTES:

“Well, certainly the Voynich Manuscript is the ‘limit text’ of Western occultism. No one can read it. It is truly an occult book.” -Terence McKenna

According to Wikipedia, the Voynich Manuscript has been described as “the world’s most mysterious manuscript”, and so far it’s secret code has never been broken . . . including attempts by top U.S. Government cytologists. And this is the subject of today’s talk by Terence McKenna from an April 1983 lecture.

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Podcast 318 – “Psilocybin and the Sands of Time”

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna
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PROGRAM NOTES:

This is Tape Number 002 of the Paul Herbert Collection.

Some of the topics covered in this talk:

Repression of psychedelic drugs
Element of risk in taking psychedelics
The imagination
Interiorization of the body/exterization of the soul
Death
The importance of psychedelics
Bell’s Theorem

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“I regard [my] degree more or less as a joke because it was self-directed study. They don’t really; there is no degree in shamanism.”

“This [repression of psychedelic drugs] has, in my opinion, held back the Western development of understanding consciousness because quite simply, these states, I do not believe, are accessible by any means other than drugs.”

“There is an element of risk [in using psychedelics]. I never tell people that there isn’t, but I think that the risk is worth it.”

“Psilocybin, tryptamine, is in my opinion the means to eliminating the future by becoming cognizant of the architecture of eternity, which is modulating time and causing history, essentially.”

“The immediate future of man lies in the imagination and in seeking the dimension where the imagination can be expressed. The present cultural crisis on the surface of the planet is caused by the fact that this is not a fitting theater for the exercise of imagination. It wrecks the planet. The planet has its own Eco-systemic dynamics, which are not the dynamics of imagination.”
» Continue reading “Podcast 318 – “Psilocybin and the Sands of Time””

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Podcast 313 – “In a German Salon 1983″ Part 1”

Guest speaker: Timothy Leary
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PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.]

“The way we define intelligence is the amount of information energy you can receive, that you can store and retrieve, and that you can transmit.”

“It’s very intelligent to be able to live as long as you want to. It’s stupid to die.”

“It’s obvious that the blocks to evolution are anything that keeps you from changing, or discourages you from changing. And almost all the religions tell you, ‘Don’t change.’”

“There are no bad drugs. There’s simply stupid people who don’t know how to use them.”

“Drop out means to drop out of any line of conformity to any system.”

“Now I’m telling people to Turn on, Tune in, and Take Over.” » Continue reading “Podcast 313 – “In a German Salon 1983″ Part 1””

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Podcast 308 – “In Praise of Psychedelics” Part 1

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna
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PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

This is the first part of an evening lecture given by Terence McKenna in early February, 1994 on the Hawaiian island of Maui.

“Our [Western] civilization touches everyone on this planet. We are involved in a species-wide crisis, and it’s a crisis of adaptation and intelligence. If we can meet the crisis, if we can re-design the cultural machinery so that it can glide in to the new value systems that a limited Earth, and an electronically activated population demands, then we can use the crisis as a stepping stone to further exploration of the universe, further evolution, further unfolding.”

“Nature is an engine for the production of extinct species.”

“The contradiction that history confronts us with is a deeper exploration of the psychedelic experience. And the psychedelic experience is something incredibly alien to the Western mind. It is, in fact, taboo.”

“The psychedelic experience is not built in to your biology the way orgasm, or sleep, or hunger, or something like that is. It’s a physiological option that involves forming a symbiotic relationship with a plant.”

“We seem to be the creature that can download the ideas, the Platonic perfect forms of a higher dimension, into the world of matter. And so where we are there is an interfacing between the world of ordinary nature and some kind of transcendent force.”

“Speaking about the unspeakable means stretching the envelop of what can be said. When new things can be said new plans can be laid, new directions can be found out of a crisis.”

“Science has steered us deeply into the notion that nature is soulless and spiritless. And the practice of this idea has led us to the brink of catastrophe, global and species and ecological catastrophe.”

“Psychedelics are catalysts for the human imagination. That very simply is what they are.”

“[Biological] nature is a seamless community of intentionality. Nature is a gene-swarm covering the surface of the planet.”

“I believe that shamanism without psychedelics is shamanism on its way to becoming religion.”

“So we are like dysfunctional children. Something terrible happened to us in the childhood of our intelligence. We lost our connection to the Gaian matrix, to the goddess mother of the Earth who gives coherency to life, and when the connection was lost we fell into history.”

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Podcast 305 – “Conservatives Confront the Ideas of Occupy: A Radical Remake of America”

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer
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PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Bruce Damer.]

“I think it’s clear to everyone on the left, the right, the center, every walk of life, that we have to undo a mess that’s been created, a tangled mess. And we have to remake the System. There’s no way to reform the System. We must re-do it.”

“If you put out a powerful vision, the universe just lines up the stones and the pebbles and allows you to walk toward it. As long as you’re pure in that vision and you really vision it, and you really share it, it’s amazing how these things come to pass.”

“Silicon Valley and its progeny have reinvented the world, and [the tools they have created] are now the tools by which we will reinvent politics and the economy.”

“The Occupy Movement is like the tip of an iceberg, but underneath the water is 95% of the volume of the discontent and of the volume of the powerful organizing.”


The Radical Remake Wiki

Bruce Damer’s Web Site

The DigiBarn Computer Museum


Indian Man, Jadav “Molai” Payeng, Single-Handedly Plants A 1,360 Acre Forest In Assam


The Joe Rogan Experience

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Podcast 302 – “The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide”

Guest speaker: James Fadiman
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We are saddened to report that long time friend of the salon and psychedelic research pioneer extraordinaire, Gary Fisher has gone on to his next adventure.

Archive of podcasts featuring Gary Fisher

The Gary Fisher Page

PROGRAM NOTES:

“There is so much more psychedelic use in this country than any of us, even those of us who think we know a lot, are aware of. . . . According to [the government], 23 million Americans have used LSD since it became illegal. And that figure, because I’ve been tracking it, goes up 600,000 a year, pretty much rain or shine. So there’s 600,000 people this year who are going to be taking, and that just deals with LSD, that doesn’t deal with ecstasy or ayahuasca or anything else. But there’s this growing, continual large number of people, and they tend to be better educated and brighter, and we do have research on that. So what I’m doing a lot with this book is say, ‘Hey, it’s OK to admit what is true, which is the person next to you at your work probably had some acid in their background just as you did.” -James Fadiman

JamesFadiman.com

» Continue reading “Podcast 302 – “The Psychedelic Explorer’s Guide””

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