Search For The Original Tree Of Knowledge

Last Updated: 15/09/18


Date Location Words
May 29-31 1992 Boulder, Colorado 85354




This was a crowd transcribed effort involving many people. Link to the Google Sheet here.


[0:00:00] [Introduction begin] Sounds True, presents; In Search of the Original Tree of Knowledge, a weekend workshop with Terence Mckenna. Researcher, author and philosopher. Terence McKenna has spent 25 years studying the foundation of shamanism and the ethnopharmacology of spiritual transformation. His books include Food of Gods and The Magic Mushroom Grower’s Guide and most recently, The Archaic Revival. He is also the founder
[0:00:30] of the Botanical Dimensions, a non profit botanical research project. In this weekend workshop, Terence Mckenna examines time and its mysteries, the nature of language and the techniques of ecstasy that have developed the non western societies to navigate to and from invisible worlds. And now, recorded live in Boulder, Colorado. In Search of the Original Tree of Knowledge. A weekend workshop, with Terence Mckenna. [Introduction ends]
[0:01:00]..ahh..how to slice into this pie, I try to never do it the same way because i don't want to get bored but that lays a sort of obligations on me that i am not always able to meet. 2 things i think are going on inside this wrap, as currently packaged. First of all, i am very interested in talking about the impact of uhmm.. psilocybin.. [0:01:30]..on human evolution an.. and values and institutions, and then so that you don't think we’ve just fallen into French anthropology 101.. [audience laughter] I am interested in taking ..the.. the inside from that discussion, and trying to apply it to the modern or postmodern as the case may be, dilemma. Trying to draw some.. [0:02:00..implications from (uhh..uhhh) looking at human prehistory and the 7 factors that were in place as the moment of human emergence; and since i feel pretty much among friends and fringy here.[audience laughter]..I.. it doesn’t trouble me to concept that my book, Food of the Gods.. I really conceived of as a kind of an intellectual.. [0:02:30]..trojan horse. It’s written as though it were a scientific study; footnote, bibliography, citations that’s impossible to attain book and so forth and so on. [audience laughter] but this is simply to assuage and calm the academic anthropologists. The idea is to leave this thing on their doorstep, rather like an abandoned baby or a trojan horse and they will open their doors.. [0:03:00]..to it and take it inside only to discover that out of this very vague rational discourse for the self- transforming-elf-machine from hyper space [audience laughter] with their own agenda. [audience laughter] (clears throat).. I..I feel like i should say this; it’s more for my ease than yours. That..i’ve reached the conclusion that i’m now..[0:03:30]..espouse..through skepticism, reason, rationalism and the tough argument. So it may sound bitsy, flaky and soft headed. Uhmm. But that’s just because you’re hearing it wrong. [audience laugh] the ..uhh.. The guiding input was .. experience. And in a way [0:04:00]..what we are gathered here to talk about..uh.. tonight is an experience which is not only rare, transformity, challenging.. But, also for reason that will probably get around to illegal. So, its.. uhh.. it's a very peculiar situation, very few experiences are illegal. And our models of the world..[0:04:30]..are built up based on our experience. So if u make an experience illegal, you’re essentially saying it is off limit for model building, You can’t include that in your model because it isn’t really there in some sense. And..and this is the situation in western society, these are the psychedelic experience. To my mind, the psychedelic experience..[0:05:00]..is as much a part of being human as sexuality, in..personal independence, uhhh.. child rearing.. These are the things which are scripted into us as opportunities for exercising our peculiar situation.. These..these phenomenal being. And a society which would deny that..[0:05:30-0:06:00]..is a society whose secret or maybe not so secret agenda is the infantilization of its citizens. I mean if we are not capable of dealing with these things, then who is? And are the people who make the rules; did they carefully, conscientiously and that depth.. Explore these dimensions and decide they were unfit for human consumption? [audience laugh]


Transcribed By Azlan





[6:00]
….or, uh, was it done more hastily, more mindlessly, and with more fear? I would submit to you that, uh, it’s the latter. Well, first of all I want to talk about the impact of psychedelics, especially in this case psilocybin, on human-ness. And then if there’s time maybe we can talk a little bit about what is so great about it? I had a philosophy professor once, Paul [inaudible], [6:30] some of you may know his book, and he opened his epistemology 101 course by saying, ‘i’m going to teach you what truth is, and then i’m going to teach you what’s so great about it.’


Well I won’t claim to teach what the psychedelic experience is, that you will have to find out on your own, but I think it is legitimate to discuss what’s so great about it. You know, are we, by any measurable [7:00] index, superior or inferior to people who do not have this experience? Because if not, then really, the psychedelic position is no more than a kind of cult, to be lined up along with Roman Catholicism and all the other cults out there. Speaking as a former member of course. [audience laughter] Well, my uh, my notion [7:30] of the way to legitimi- to legitimate the importance of psychedelics is by showing, and I think one can show, uhm, in fairly short order, that these things are not alien to the human experience, or ancillary, or the province of uneducated, uhh, little brown people down in the rainforest or anything like that.


I submit to you [8:00] that the psychedelic experience and the impact of psychedelic plants on human beings, is central to understanding who we are, and how we got this way. And if we can, uh, explore this issue and convince ourselves there’s some merit in this point of view, then it will simply- it will do more than rewrite the annals of a stayed science like anthropology [8:30], it will actually change how we relate to each other and to the planet that we’re in the process of grinding into, uh, pollution. So that’s the raison d'être for the politics behind it. Now here’s the spiel. Uhm, sometime in the last three million years, the, uh, proto- our remote ancestors [9:00], the proto-hominids, uh, were, uhh, disrupted in their evolutionary climax in the canopies in the great rainforests of Africa. You see most animal species evolve into a niche; tighter, and tighter, and tighter. We see this with termites and cockroaches and most lifeforms, this is what happens to them.


Only if the niche [9:30] is somehow disrupted or destroyed does the game veer away from its tendency toward closure. And this is what happened to us. Uh, our remote ancestors would have lived happily in the climaxed rainforests of Africa, in the same way the primates to this day live happily in the climaxed rainforests Indonesia and South America[10:00], but for the fact that the dynamics of the planet, and this ultimately is if we’re looking for a cause, or some people would say it’s the villain, then it’s the climatological dynamics of the planet, which began to, uh, limit these rainforest habitats. And a new kind of habitat began to form in Africa which was grassland. It’s very recent [10:30]. And under nutritional pressure, and under a pressure that was the result of this retreating environment, our remote ancestors descended from the trees and began to, uh, adapt themselves to the new world of the grassland. And they did this, uh, over a period of probably a couple of million years.
Now, I maintain, and if any of you are [11:00] evolutionary biologists or anthropologists this is the nub of my position: here’s what’s new scientifically: What they teach you about evolution is that it’s caused by mutation, which is a random process, which then meets another random process which is natural selection, and out of these two random processes, lo and behold you get Sea Urchins, Birds of Paradise, [11:30] Grey Whales, and Human Beings. Now, uh, when you inquire as to what is the source of this mutation, you will be told it’s cosmic rays, incident, incoming hard radiation which can disrupt chromosomes, and then- most of these mutations are lethal; some huge percentage of them. But a vanishingly small of them actually confer adaptive advantage. And they are then . . .


Transcribed By Nigel Milligan



[12:00]...and they are then preserved in the genome and passed on. Now, what I want to suggest, and I’ve never seen it thoroughly treated by evolutionary thinkers, is that food, is the unexamined source of evolutionary pressure, it can be. If you know anything about animal species, you know that most animals tend (12:30) to specialize their diet. Insects are famous for this. If you find a caterpillar and you want to raise it in a jar you must give it the food plants you found it on, because they just don’t eat leaves, it doesn’t work like that, they have species specific adaptations. Now why is this?


It’s because it’s a strategy to limit exposure to toxic and mutagenic chemicals (13:00) that other life forms are sequestering in their tissue to discourage predation, essentially. Well, so then what happens when an animal population such as our remote ancestors comes under pressure from a dwindling habitat or a limited availability of food? Well what happens, if you have any sense, is you start experimenting. (13:30) You start digging up roots you never thought about before, and chewing on them. You start eating leaves, you start eating insect protein, you experiment with the slaughter of small animals and so forth and so on. And this is precisely what our remote ancestors did. This is the much lamented transition from fruitarian holiness to predatory carnivorous messiness. (14:00) But had we not been able to lower our gourmet standards we would have entered the fossil record at that point.


So. So here we have these proto-hominids foraging into this new grassland environment beginning to beat on prairie dogs, and stuff like that, and, and, simultaneously as we all know, evolving in this African veldt environment (14:30) were great herds of undulet animals; proto-cattle, bison, wildebeest, antelopes, many many different kinds of animals. And one of the curiosities of nature is that many mushrooms prefer the dung of undulate animals to just going out and making a deal with the raw, natural environment. (15:00) They like the leavening that goes on with vegetable material when it passes through the double stomach of the undulate animal. As a headline what this means is mushrooms grow in manure. And so, our remote ancestors, testing for insects and eating small animals would certainly have encountered the so-called coprofitic or coprophilic; the dung loving mushroom. (15:30) And they would have tested them for food.


Years ago when I was in Kenya, I observed baboon troops in this very environment we’re discussing, and their habit was; they were very interested in cowpies. Because they had learned from experience that if you rush over to a relatively old cowpie and flip it over (16:00) there’s a high probability of beetles or beetle grubs under there and so these were vectors for food getting. Well in the end I did not observe mushrooms in Africa but I observed mushrooms in the Amazon and they can attain the size of a dinner plate. I’ve never seen them in cultivation quite that large. But, you know, you come out after a hard rain and these things are landed like little flying saucers or frisbees in the meadows. (16:30) They would certainly have been tested for their nutritional potential.


And psilocybin, different from all other chemicals in nature, including as far I can tell all other hallucinogenic chemicals in nature; (17:00) psilocybin has a unique set of characteristics which implicated to my mind very strongly in the catalyzing of the emergent of humanness out of proto-hominid and hominin organization. And it worked like this; (it’s very uh, relatively easy to understand as major scientific breakthroughs go, at least you’re not going to be asked to do any partial differential equations this evening.) Psilocybin in very low doses, (17:30) doses so low that if you were to take a dose this low you could conceivably forget you have done it, and just go out and shop and fiddle around. But at doses so low that they do not register as a psychedelic experience, psilocybin imparts measurable improvement in visual acuity. Roland Fischer did this work in the late 50’s and early 60s, and they had, they built an experimental device, where a person could not be seen by turning a crank….(18:00).....


Transcribed by Kevin Evans





[0:18:00] be seen, by turning a crank- There were two parallel bars, and by turning a crank this person could rotate one of the parallel bars so that, uhm, it was no longer parallel. And, uhm, lacking talking rats they went to the next prefered experimental animal which is graduate students. And they would sit a graduate student down in front of this device, give them a very low [0:18:30] dose of psilocybin, and then put a buzzer in their hand and say ‘When the two bars are no longer parallel, push the buzzer’. And, uhm, [Fisher?] collected large amounts of data which showed that the people who had taken psilocybin, and the other people were given a placebo of course, could detect this deformation long before the unstoned subjects were able to do so. And [Fisher?] who was a totally [0:19:00] straight European scientist, in fact a vianesser. When I talked to him about this stuff he was very cagey, and he- he was funny in fact, he said “Well you see it’s very interesting. Apparently here we have data which, uhm, argues significantly that we are perceiving reality better with the drug than without the drug!”. [Audience laughs] Yes, yes. For him that was a joke. [0:19:30] I mean, he never did anything with it; It was just a throw away line. But it stuck with me and I don’t think you have to be a rocket scientist to see that if you are a hunting animal in a situation of nutritional pressure, as our remote ancestors were, and there is a food in that environment that will give you better vision then, by God, the animals which accept that into the diet [0:20:00] are going to be more successful hunters than the ones that do not.


And, consequently, they will outbreed those members of the population that have some aversion to this exotic food. Either they don’t like the look of it, or they don’t like that it grows in manure, or they don’t like the taste of it. But those who accept it, as a dietary item, will be more successful at getting food and consequently more successful and raising their offspring to sexual maturity. [0:20:30] And that’s the name of the game in darwinian evolution. You must raise your offspring to sexual maturity. Then the genes flow forward. If you fail in that you get an F in the evolution game. Well, ok so visual acuity, that’s a very fine. Uhm, but psilocybin has other properties which build on that initial pharmacological peculiarity. [0:21:00] Uhm, if you take slightly larger doses of psilocybin, uhm, and this is typical with many indoles, you get- many of which are hallucinogens, you get what is called CNS arousal. Central nervous system arousal. You all know this feeling it’s the feeling of two double cappuccinos in short order. It’s that you do not sleep. You are very restless. [0:21:30] You are very alert. Your attention is scanning, scanning, scanning. And in highly sexed animals, like primates, arousal means exactly what it sounds like. It means erection in the male animal. And, uhm, now isn’t that interesting? Uhm, that is a second factor feeding back into this, uhm, increased success with offspring [0:22:00] business. Not only are you a better hunter, but you’re a more highly sexed creature.


And you’re having more of what straight anthropologists refer to as ‘Successful copulations’. An amazing phrase actually. [Audience laughs] Meaning, of course, that impregnation is a consequence of these- of this sexual activity. Now the other thing that psilcoybin does, [0:22:30] uhm, at or slightly above this arousal level, and this is very important for the argument, is it creates- it causes what I call boundary dissolution. And boundary dissolution in human beings, like you and me, means ego loss. And I believe that this would have promoted, uhm, a social and sexual style based, not on monogamous [0:23:00] pairing but, on orgy. The scenario is fairly easy to imagine. It’s that these remote ancestors of ours would take these mushrooms and they, probably at the new and full moon, the thinking is that ritual was originally lunar time. And then they would, we’re talking about nomadic groups of people. Probably no more than 80 to 100 people. [0:23:30] And then there would be, uhm, group sexual activity. Now, an interesting social consequence of orgiastic social styles, besides a whole lot of fun, [Audience laughs] is it’s impossible to trace lines of male paternity in that kind of a situation. You see, women know whose children are whose because they see the child come out of [0:24:00]


Transcribed by Paul Mullins



0:24:00...Out of their body and they nurse the child but man do not in that situation have their children. My children. What they have are our children. The tribal group, and at this boundary dissolving thing, let’s dwell on this for a moment because this is central to my argument and it has political consequences for our own lives. (..urmm..) all primates.. Clear backed.. 0:24:30...down into squirrel monkeys and howler, all primates have what are called male dominance hierarchies. Now what this means is the most.. The males with the longest claws.. The hardest muscles and the meanest disposition.. Take control of everybody else. Women.. Children.. Weaker males.. (..urmm..) everybody comes under the thumb of the alpha male of the pack. 0:25:00...This is true as i said a squirrel monkeys, howler monkeys.. So forth and so on.. It is also true of us.. Sitting here in this room. This is a male dominant society. I mean there’s a lot of complaining and hair pulling about nit and there’s a political alternative in the form of the women’s movement and feminist sensitivities. But for most people male dominance is the rule..Well, I...Would like to.. 0:25:30...suggest that our peculiarly discomforted relationship to reality is a consequence of the fact that for a long period of time perhaps as short as twenty-thousand (20,000) years.. Perhaps as long as a million (1,000,000) years.. As a species, and not consciously.. 0:26:00...We accepted into our diet a drug that has the consequences of suppressing male dominance. But this was the social consequence of accepting psilocybin into the diet.. The ego is a structure that forms in the psyche like a calcareous tumour or a growth if you do not.. 0:26:30...have regular recourse to the cure. And the cure is, psilocybin and the boundary dissolving, sexual and social style which you carried in its way. So the reason that we as a people are haunted by the idea of a lost paradise, a perfect world sometime in the misty past. Is not.. 0:27:00...(..uhmm..).. You know the (..inaudible..) art called the..the nostalgia for paradise and thought that it was a time of.. Of a longing that has no bases. But i think that it is entirely a memory of the period when male dominance was chemically suppressed, ego was chemically suppressed and by male dominance and ego i don’t mean to lay this entirely on men. I mean i would wager.. 0:27:30..Probably everyone in this room has more ego than they need, certainly starting from me.. And that part of the paradox that you’re supposed to enjoy in this… (..audience laughter..) you know the ambiguity of me preaching the loss of ego...(..audience laughter..) so essentially, you know.. What happened was chemical.. A chemically driven leak in evolution had the consequence of the suppression of these 0:28:00.. behaviors that favoured male dominance. Ahh.. as a species.. Ahh.. we would’ve continued with male dominance forever. Had it not been for psilocybin in the diet.. And it established a situation in which in less than two-million (2,000,000) years the human brain size doubled. This is without contest. The greatest mystery 0:28:30..in the whole of evolutionary theory..(..Uhm..ahh..)..Lampston.. Who is a brilliant evolutionary biologist called the doubling of the human brain size in two-million (2,000,000) years, (..ah..) the most spectacular transformation of a major organ of a higher animal in the entire fossil record. Well, now it would be spectacular enough if it were the liver of an otter, or.. (..audience laughter..) or the pancreas of an elephant.. but , notice that.. 0:29:00-0:30:00...it is the organ which created the very of evolution itself (..audience laughter..) and all other theories..so, th..we’re getting a little topological here folks, there’s something (..audience laughter..)..fishy going on.. (..ahh..) what was it that caused this explosive doubling in human brain size? Well, i maintain that it was the new behaviors that emerged with the suppression of ego and their reinforcement in this situation of nomadic pastoralism and that there was a period, let’s call it from the melting of the last glaciers until Çatalhöyük six-thousand five hundred (6500) BC, there was a period where men and women were in balance with each other, children and .. children and adults were at peace with each other and human beings and the planet were at peace with each other.


Transcribed by Azlan



….and then it was lost, and we fell into history, you know the long slug toward armageddon is what was initiated in its place. Well know,if it was so wonderful, why would anybody ever let go of it; why was it lost?. Well, we have to go back to the very forces which created this situation. Remember I said it was the climatological dynamics of the planet [that] created the grasslands in place of the rainforest. Continuation of those processes turned those grasslands into desert. And where there once were waterfalls, running rivers, grasslands and vast herds of animals and their human symbios; suddenly they were was encroaching desert, fewer waterfalls. The mushrooms began to be seasonal , began to be located only in the rain shadows of mountains, the great mushrooms festivals which had been at new and full moon, became solsticio and then equinoctial and then, you know, biannual, and something, anyway, you get the picture. It was fading, and I don't think people took this lying down [laughs], no pun intended.[audience laughs]. I think that, there was great anxiety about the fading of the mushroom and the loss of the sacrament, and so, these people searched for a strategy for preservation. Well, in a world without refrigeration, there’s only one, well no, there are two strategies for preservation of a delicate food like that. One is air drying, which is not terribly satisfying because as soon as the rain cloud comes along your dry stuff absorbs moisture out of the air and turns yuck. And so the real, the only real option is preservation in honey, and this was done, I am sure; it’s s still done in Mexico to this day in remote mushroom using villages, people preserve them in honey. Now the problem here, and this is a lot on my book, into this kind of thing a lot because, Food of the gods. Because what Food of the gods is really about are the hidden, ahh, actors, that drugs lay upon us; that we are not even aware of - and if you are tempting to preserve an hallucinogenic mushroom in honey what you have to be aware of is that honey itself is potentially a psychoactive drug. Honey will turn into mead, .it will ferment into a crude kind of honeyd alcohol. Well, if the mushroom brings suppression of ego, group sexual activity and the formation of group values, what this alcohol brings.. Alcohol has two effects primarily, it lowers sensitivity to social queuing; at the same time that it it consents and exaggerated sense of verbal facility [audience laughs]. In other words people turn into jerks behind it. I mean you only have to go to a busy singles bar somewhere here in Boulder and you will see the alcohol ambiance being acted out right in front of you.So and you know, it's not so true of our generation but I think probably for a thousand years nobody got laid in the western civilization unless they were juiced! Because christianity was laying such a heavy trip on everybody, people barely took their clothes off. In other words, you have to become blindly intoxicated to do what comes naturally..And I think up to very recently, how many women have their first sexual imprinting in an atmosphere of alcohol abuse- I mean, some huge percentage, I imagine. So that is the story basically of the fall into history. The loss of this mushroom cult happened right at the time we were inventing agriculture, and agriculture and the suppression of orgy have something in relationship to each other- on two unrelated levels. First of all- you suppress orgy because once you have agriculture - it's no more about psyching yourself up for the great hunt; It's all about getting up before dawn and hoewing the wheat out of the crops- so it doesn't promote a party mentality[audience laughs]. The other thing is, that as human mental capacity was evolving -remember that exploding brain size- as human mental capacity was evolving, women in this nomadic groups began to notice a curious fact. Which was, every year they would return roughly to the same places they've been the year before, and in the discards from last year’s camps they would discover food plants growing and some brilliant woman or group of women put it together and said AHA!. “we buried food here last year and now there's food here . There must be something about putting food down into the ground that gets you food”………..


Transcribed by Javier Alonso






[0:36:00] gets you food, in other words they were able to cognise a cause and effect relationship that were separated over many months of time. At the same time that women were putting this together men were noticing that the act of sex had certain consequences nine months later.
The same perception had different impact on both sexes, but it was an ability to [00:36:30] coordinate a temporally separate cause and effect.


Well once men got onto the notion of male paternity they realised that these aren't our children, some are mine and some are somebody else's and from that notion you go to "my child" to "my woman" to "my hunting area", to "my weapon" , to my sib group [00:37:02] you get it all you see, the ego is born, and it is born in an atmosphere of complete paranoia.


The first consequence of agriculture , well it has a number of consequences, but one consequence is Ah, it's a tremendously efficient way of producing food, that's obviously why people got into it. What does efficiency mean? Surplus! What does surplus mean? Haves and have nots. [00:37:30] The ole......the most spectacular architectural edifice of 10,000 BC on this planet was the grain tower of Jericho. It was had thick walls to hold the grain and it had high walls so you could climb up on top of it and drop rocks on the people who were trying to get into it. Surplus makes nomadism impossible cause you can't drag this huge amount of grain with you so you get sedentary populations and then [00:38:00] some of the people who want the grain are killing your people in fury when they can't get the grain , you decide to put a wall around the whole encampment.


Now you have a small town , now you have urbanism, now you have the division between nature and secular society, you have classes, you've got it all. And I maintain that this is the long march into hell and our particular uh obsession with drugs [00:38:30] as a species, I maintain can be traced back to this transition that you know, yes elephants love fermented papayas and so do butterflys and so forth and so on, but this kind of intoxication is not what we're about. We addict severely to several dozen substances, less severely to probably a hundred more and we addict [ 00:39:00] to everything! [inaudible] You know. What we call romantic love uhh shows a lot of similarities to hard drug addiction when you separate the lovers. No... sleeplessness, suicidal tendencies, bursting into tears, hysteria, eh .. loss of weight. Can't tell whether this person is getting off heroin or eh has separated from uh their partner.


Uh, well if you take an [00:39:30] individual who is alcoholic or or has some kind of serious drug problem, current thinking is this can be traced to traumatic abuse in childhood. This is what happened to us! Traumatic abuse in childhood, we were literally torn out of a symbiotic relation to the earth by the forces of male dominance, agriculture, sedentary living so forth and so on [00:40:00] and we've been trying to uh scratch an itch that we can't find ever since. And it has, you know, money doesn't do it, uh..power doesn't do it, nothing seems to do it. We cannot... we seem to be the unhappy monkey and we take this unhappiness out on each other .... with a vengeance. And uh you see what happened was that when the mushroom faded, the million years of [00:40:30] pharmacologically , interrupted patterns of male dominance reasserted themselves, but it was no more a foraging monkey with this style, it was a creature with language, tools, music , social organisation and suddenly it got very ugly, and people weren't, and people began fighting over the women. So we don't want to have orgies anymore, this woman is my woman, touch her you die, and [00:41:00] so forth and so on, and we are living out the legacy of this.


Well before I talk about the [takes drink] the social consequences of it for us. I want to go back to the question....What was so great about it? I mean we've talked about orgy, but you can have orgy without psilocybin. What was so wonderful about that proto-historical mode? Well this is
where it becomes slightly more woo woo [00:41:30] .. uh [laughs] Because what we have to talk about is .... What is the Psychedelic experience anyway? And I maintain that if we're talking about psilocybin, and were talking about taking it in nature as these people did, that you know, yes first come the dancing mice , the little candies, the coloured grids and so forth and so on, but what eventually happens quickly, like ten minutes later is uh…[0:42:00]


Transcribed by Rodney Aries





uhh there is an entity in the trance, in the vision. There is a mind there waiting that speaks good english, that invites you up into its room ... and once there uhh you realise that this is what all the hooflah about the Gaian mind and the rebirth of the goddess and all that is about. It's not a metaphor [42:30] folks, it's a headline in biology. We are not the only intelligent minded species occupying this planet. We may be the only bipedal hairless mammal with intelligence on this planet but there is something out there spread through the grasses, the forests, the rivers and the oceans. Uhh our own own emergence into intelligence took less than [43:00] two million years.


Life has been on this planet for a billion and a half years and we don't know how many strange pathways beckon but at some point a kind of mind came into existence and it is real. It's what lies behind the religious impulse in our species. Uhh there really is somebody else sharing the local mind space and I [43:30] don't believe we're talking theology here. In other words this is not eh y-you know in Milton's wonderful phrase, "...the God who hung the stars like lamps in Heaven". It's not about that. For me that's a big questionmark. But it is the god\goddess of this earth. It is the biological mind. It is that all boundaries are illusions and that life is a thinking [44:00] feeling entelechy of some sort and we are just like a little droplet that has somehow escaped from the river of cognition and now imagine that we are the only water in the cosmos. Not so it turns out.


What, the reason the reason the psychedelic experience is so baffling and transformative, even as we sit here with your heads full of Heidegger and Husserl and uh I don't know [44:30] Wilson Phillips and all the stuff is because uh in the face, in contact with that we have no more sophistication than our orthiastic mushroom munching ancestors. Civilization doesn't give you a leg up on this step. In fact it makes it harder to figure out what's going on eh because we have defined nature as dead. You know? Scr- Atoms screaming through empty space [45:00] ruled by tensor equations of the third degree. That's our picture of what nature is. That isn't what it is. It's uh a-a mind of some sort. Okay. W-what is the implication of all this? Is this just some kind of fringe oh uh anthropological revisionism? No, it isn't because the-the fall into history and its consequences is at this point a loaded [45:30] gun held to the head of the entire plant. We are about to uh pull over the soup cauldron and if we do this then two and a half billion years of evolutionary advance will be shot. Nobody else ever dropped the ball so you know we appear to be vying for uhh this peculiar honour. If we do not awaken to [46:00] the consequences of ego then we are going to run this system right over the edge.


The whole thing which characterises our dilemma as a global society is our inability to feel - feel the consequences of what we are doing. You know? We've got the data, the ozone hole is disappearing, the planktonic life in the sea will die if it does, that will disrupt the food chain. The world [46:30] food supply will drop by sixty percent. Everybody who isn't white as a sheep will have to starve in that case and uh so forth and so on. I mean we actually toy not only with our own extinction but with the extinction of all life on the planet and with the extinction with the idea of dignity and decency itself. Well, I'm not in this psychedelic game because I think it's easy, or because uh I think it's going to be a cinch. I'm in it because [47:00] I think it's the only game in town.


You know if hortatory preaching could have done the trick then "the sermon on the mount" would have turned the corner. Uh if if uh uhh cautionary data flowing back to its ruling institutions could do the trick then sometime uh after Thomas Malthus people would have begun to hit the brakes. Nothing seems to work. We're sick. We need pharmacological [47:30] intervention. The ego is uh out permitting us to slowly, not so slowly commit suicide and you know the fact that we cannot act collectively. That we are suspicious of all forms of collectivism. That we uh really are eh-"all for one, and one for all" is not our style. Instead what we have going is a catfight [48:00]


Transcribed by Marc Van Niekerk



…(0:48:00)...and, you know, no less a straight person than Arthur Koestler, in a book called The Ghost In The Machine said humans are so wired for beating the brains out of woolly mastodons, that’s what evolution has equipped us to do; not negotiate weapons treaties and destroy bacteriological factories. We have to force our evolution. (0:48:30) We have to chemically restructure the primate brain so that we do not commit suicide. And the only way to do it in the time left is for the psychedelic community to stand up on it’s hind legs and roar. And you know, maybe they’ll build camps for us. But the point being I think there’s a moral imperative to try what works! I mean, you know in the 60’s psychedelics were called “consciousness expanding drugs”, (0:49:00) a good old phenomenological description. Well, if consciousness does not loom large in the future history of our species then what the hell kind of future is it going to be? No future at all I maintain. So, if there is even the slightest iota of possibility that these things do what I’m saying they do, then we need to get Johnny-Quick on it and check it out. (0:49:30) Because we may be beyond the point of no return right now. Nobody knows how bad this ozone hole thing is, or what’s locked up at Rocky Flats or behind the Iron Curtain or dumped in the Arctic Ocean. We may be past the failsafe point right now folks. There is no time to lose. It is time to engage the powers-that-be in a little more serious dialog than the “just say no” horseshit that’s been pedaled recently. (0:50:00) Because we’re talking about the survival of life on the only planet that we are at certain has life on it. This may be the site of a cosmic experiment with universal implications and it rests in our hands.



Everybody here tonight is here because a whole bunch of people didn’t drop the ball. (0:50:30) And you know, you think you got problems? Nine times in the last million years the ice has moved south from the poles miles thick. No antibiotics, no electronic communication, nothing, and I’m sure these people were miserable, and they dragged through it and they lived. And they passed it on, now we’re it. And we will be judged the lamest of the lame (0:51:00) if we cannot come to terms with this and begin to talk about what is going on. This is not obscure. As I said I view the psychedelic experience as central to humanness as our sexuality. We cannot allow dominator institutions to infantilize us and to tell you where your mind can and cannot go. ‘Even have a piece of paper locked up in a vault in Washington DC (0:51:30) that guarantees life, liberty and pursuit of happiness. Well now what can the pursuit of happiness possibly mean if it doesn’t mean the freedom to practice your own relationship to nature and it’s gifts?



So I think we have been entirely too casual about the importance of the psychedelic experience. This is, for one reason, because we cannot publically get together and discuss it in detail. (0:52:00) And one of the things I think is very important about get-togethers like this is if you would look around you’ll notice that we cannot really be distinguished from the rest of society. Some of us live under bridges, some of us clip coupons, you know there’s a wide spectrum of people here. But this is your affinity group. This is your community. (0:52:30) Someone in this room actually has what you need. And you know, I have acted as a filter so out of millions living along the front range, here we’ve gotten it down to two hundred. I can’t get go any further than that folks. the rest is up to you.



Well, I guess the last thing I want to say and then we’ll take a little intermission (0:53:00) and then come back and do questions afterwards, which is my favorite part. But I want to just for a minute invoke the psychedelic experience without regard to the evolutionary forces that created it, or the political institutions that suppress it, and so forth, and just say, in case there’s some soul in this room that’s never had this experience, that this is extraordinary news. (0:53:30) We are not talking about something like a dream. It is not like meditation. No you can’t get there by yourself. And Baba Gee is equally useless, because you and Baba Gee are starting from the same place in this game. It requires pharmacological perturbation of ordinary neuro chemistry in order to see this mystery.


Transcribed by Kevin Evans



[0:54:00] And it is a mystery. It is not gonna be reduced to the firing of synapses or repressed sexual desires or day residues or anything like that. It is uh the very thing we call this religions yammering about. It’s there. It’s real. I mean, if you think if the world is empty of adventure then you just haven’t been hanging out with the right crowd.[audience laughs] I mean, [0:54:30] on a saturday night, within the confines of your own apartment, on five grams of psilocybin mushrooms in silent darkness, I guarantee you, you will believe that [inaudible] should place second place to you. [audience laughs]. You will see things which no human being has ever seen before, and that no human being will ever see again. That is how big [0:55:00] that universe is. The -can be- incredibly constricting space time locus of here and now that evolutionists forced upon us for survival purposes, is simply one point in an apparently infinite hologram of explorable data that is the human world. I mean the [uh], you know, the entire world of every science fiction novel or story ever written is miniscule [0:55:30] compared to the universes of strangeness and peculiarity that are accessible to anyone of us, if you will, but apply the methods. And if you're not willing to apply the methods then you know, you're gonna sweep up around the [inaudible] till hell freezes over [audience laughs] and not understand what’s going on. [audience laughs] [laughs].


I mean I think, you know [0:56:00] I-I’m sorry to be so hard on religion. [audience laughs] I think it has it’s place, it places it’s inspirations of - of ethical behaviour, you know religion should teach ethical behaviour. But is has very, very little to say about the mystery of being of other than that it’s there. And that’s not practicing religion. Practicing religion is dancing with the mystery. [0:56:30] Losing and finding yourself in the mystery. And people often say to me you know, well this- how does this relate to other forms of spiritual work? The answer is: maybe not at all. I mean I’ve certainly taken a lot of psychedelics and I think I see no sign of spiritual attainment uh of ethical perceptions or anything so wa-de-da as that. I don’t know what this is [0:57:00] all about but I do know it’s ours. It belongs to us. We are the creatures of mind. And 95% of what mind is lies on the other side of the psychedelic, eh boundary. Ordinary consciousness is just like keeping the account of live. But there’s more to life than the account books. I mean everything else is out there. The colour, [0:57:30] the affection, the humour, the terror, the mystery, the incredible strangeness of it all. This is the domain that we want to claim and explore. And if we can find the collective institutional courage to do it. I think this current planetary crisis will be seen for what it really is. And what it is is, it is not a dime, these are not the last rights for intelligence, this is a birth process.


[0:58:00] I mean if you were to come around, if you’ve never seen someone give birth and you came around the corner and it was in progres, you would be thoroughly, profoundly alarmed. I mean it looks like an enormous tumour is making it’s way out of somebody and they are being split in two and blood is being shed and there's pleading and screaming and thrashing, It would be a real leap of understanding for you too say: “Oh how wonderful, new life [audience laughs] [0:58:30] is emerging, this is the way we do it!” Well this is the way we do, I mean we are in the birth canal, right now of a planetary civilization. Literally the amniotic oceans of 500 years ago, that’s all gone. There is no frontier, there is no going back. Th-the peace of the fetal environment is gone and now in transition literally the walls are closing in. [0:59:00] You can’t breathe, you can’t eat, you can’t find your way, it appears to be the end. But there’s light at the end of the tunnel. The problem is, that tunnel is in the back of your mind. And if you don’t go to the backside of your mind you will never see the light at the end of the tunnel. And once you see it then it the task becomes to empower it in yourself and other people. Spread it as a reality. God di-did not retire to the seventh heaven. God is some kind of lost continent in the human mind. And if we will but explore the human mind we can reclaim these relationships with our own authenticity and shed the childishness of historical existence and euh gender politics and all the rest of it and move on to the real business of establishing a real civilisation. Thank you very much! [audience claps] [1:00:00]


Transcribed by Matthijs Pals



1:00:00(..audience clap.) Does anyone want to ask a question? Or is it all just perfectly clear out of the convincing and urm..
Terence: Yea?
Audience: (inaudible question)


Terence: urm.. Psilocybin? Bad effect.. (drinks water)..Huh.. somebody once said, “what’s wrong with DMT?” and i said, “well nothing, unless you fear death by astonishment.” (audience laughter) (Terence Mckenna laughing) 1:00:30..(uhm).. But..but your question is a good one, first of all..uhm.. You know I talked a lot about how what we will have to do is destroy and ablate ego. However, there is a very small percentage of us who have a hard time creating any ego whatsoever. And this...for these people boundary dissolution is no problem, their boundaries are dissolving all the time on them. I would say that they are at the (umm)
1:01:00..(uhmm) contraindicated end of the spectrum. That if you’re fearful already and fighting to keep overwhelmed by confusion and what’s going on in your life at the paper box factory or something.. (inaudible audience laughter) Then probably tossing in megadoses of hallucinogens is not the way for you to do it, or if you do, if you’re just advance on doing that then i would say umm..
1:01:30..do it in the presence of some kind of professional and how you find a professional in this legal climate you’ll have to discuss with me privately. Uhm..uh., i don't want to make it sound though, i mean it’s a tricky thing. I don’t want to make it sound like it’s absolutely riskless. Physically; I think that’s pretty safe. Unless you are odd some way. But you need to know. You know you..you don't wanna find out your odd an hour and half into it. (..Audience laughter..)
1:02:00..But the problem comes with the mind, if you are delicately balanced, if your whole life has been about not looking at that, or that or that (audience laughter) then this is not your game. (Audience laughter).. You know you should go back to watching Jeopardy, and.. (Audience laughter).. The kind of person.. The kind of person who is called to this is..
1:02:30..the person who has an exploring soul. I mean, my , i am not a courageous person in the sense that you won't find me shooting white water, you won't see me you know repelling down the faces of cliffs, but from the time i was the tiniest little kid, i was into the weird. What’s weird? Weird is the compass heading..
1:03:00..and if you keep your compass always pointed towards the peculiar, the oppressed, the bizarre, the unspeakably alien then you know you will find these places. (Audience laughter.) The people who think life is all cut and dried and they’re perfectly happy to have Carl Sagan and George Bush explain all off reality. (Audience laughter). Have never left the broad swift stream of mundane thinking. But you know out
1:03:30..in the by way and in tributaries (ahh..) there is a wonderful alchemical saying which i generally mangle..but i think it goes something like this; the tallest mountain, the oldest book, the wisest desert.. there you will find the stone. And what it is? It is a prescription for exploring weirdness. That’s all. It's’ not gonna be on MTV. It's not going to be in god forbid; Esquire. (audience laughter)
1:04:00..It’s going to come, umm.. From you know ..It’s going to come from doing your homework, visiting strange people in strange lands and checking it out. The.. What i can’t give you to return to your question is, i can’t give you a guarantee that it will be fun. You know, The Rolling Stones have that wonderful line, “you don't get what you want, you get what you need”. This stuff is ruthless. And if there’s..something that you're trying not to look at 1:04:30..that’s gonna get you, for sure. But after the veteran, most people will tell you you learn more from the bad trip than you do from the good one, the good ones are ecstatic and can connect you up to nature and other people the bad one show you your ..your kinks. And your limitations, and your thought errors.. And that sort of thing. It's not a easy road to hold. That’s why i think uhm..
1:05:00..there’s a little bit of social confusion about it. One of the things i should make clear is i really advocate high doses, rarely. I think the worst thing you can do is get into a style of psychedelic didling. Where you know you take half a gram everyday. Wh.. All this is doing is giving you a tolerance to psilocybin. You’re not having the psilocybin experience. You’re having the tolerance to.. 1:05:30-1:06:00..psilocybin experience. The.. Really, the way to do these things, is to (urm..) do them rarely so that your whole system can reassert itself and come to equilibrium and then just slam it! (Audience laughter..) And this is amazing, i mean i think..i think that this works for all the psychedelics. I'm a.. I’m an inveterate cannabis user and i wish in a way that i could get a..


Transcribed by Azlan






1:06:00.. In a way that i could get a slightly better grip on my cannabis use because .. the rea..i think the real way to do cannabis is like.. Once a week.. By yourself.. In silent darkness.. With the strongest stuff you can get.. And then immense amounts of it.. (..audience laughter..) and.. You know.. People call it a recreational drug and a this..and a that...hey...Done that way.. It will
1:06:30.. Catapult you into places where its.. It.. i love it.. The great place to get to on cannabis and some people never in their whole life touch it, is the place where you say, “My god! I’ve done..too much!”. (..audience laughter..) (..Terence Mckenna laughing..).. It's not easy folks, but it.. It’s worth shooting for.. (..audience laughter..) Basically what..
1:07:00.. What you should do is.. You know.. Do some homework.. Read some book.. Talk to your friends. And then hang on Hannah.. (..audience laughter..) It..It’s like.. Ah.. you know.. It's very much like riding an enormous roller coaster. You know.. Once fat baby rolls out of the station.. Do not stand up.. Do not try to climb out of your car. (..audience laughter..) Shut up and hang on! With the faith that most people
1:07:30.. have lived through this. (..audience laughter..)
Terence: somebody else.. Yea? The purple.
Audience: (..inaudible question..)
Terence: Well.. having just heard that i am a pothead please ask them one at a time (..audience laughter..) What is your first literary question? (..audience laughter..)
Audience: (..inaudible question..)
1:08:00.. (..audience laughter..)
Audience: (..inaudible question..(..I mean my associate experience..)… inaudible question..)
1:08:30.. Terence: Well.. i don’t mean to imply that people first use it in low doses and then middle and then higher over time. What i mean..
1:09:00.. What i meant to imp.. I think they were using low, middle and high doses from the very get go. But they were using low doses to hunt.. Middle range doses for orgy and ceremony and truly high doses for this boundary dissolving tremendum.
Terence: Second literary question.
Audience: (..inaudible question....)
Terence: ..Ahuh.. Well....I’m...I’m not wedded to that. First of all, Çatalhöyük for those who haven’t read the book. Or know
1:09:30.. about Çatal .. Was this immensely sophisticated civilization that existed in the 7th millennium BC. We’re talking .,. Three tho.. We’re talking six thousand (6000) years before (..uhh..) zero (0). This civilization existed and was destroyed.. And the.. (.. urm..)Characteristic of it is, shrine dedicated to cattle. And in my book i argued that this was probably..
1:10:00..the last outpost of this partnership, society.. Ahh.. but it would still..I think the real golden age of mushroom use was probably from about thirty thousand (30,000) years ago to about fifteen thousand (15,000) years ago and by the time Çatalhöyük .. so long.. it’s a fading, or yearly, or seasonal saying..
Audience: (..inaudible question..)
1:10:30..Audience: (..inaudible question..)
1:11:00..Audience: (..inaudible question..)
Terence:Well.. I..urm..
Audience: (..inaudible..)
Terence: My argument would be that people don’t take enough and they don’t take it frequently enough. That.. there are a lot of people..
1:11:30 - 1:12:00.. Who..who.. Really would rather not.. Get loaded.. But still they must take some psychedelic drug in order to keep membership in their peer group. So what they did, you know.. You can always spot these people.. Because their first question..on..at the get go is, “will i be able to drive?”.. I love this question. (..audience laughter..) because.. You know it indicates you got a real tough nut on your hand..in every sense of the word...No..!..You will not..


Transcribed by Azlan





1:12:00.. No.. You will not be able to drive. (..audience laughter..) ahh.. So, you know, I.. One of the things that inspires me to do this, is.. I want to get to the people who’ve taken three (3) grams of mushrooms and the people that have taken 150 mics.. Of LSD .. and i want to convince those people that they never got close to what i’m talking about even though they have a life transforming experiences softly..
1:12:30.. totally, differently.. They never got close to what i’m talking about. And so what you have to do is to convince people to take high doses and then..that’s to break them through.. And then frequently enough that they don’t forget. What the deal is.. So i think if you take a psychedelic population and divide into those who have done 5 grams and above, then you will see an exceptional.. Uhm.. slice.. But not the dabblers..
1:13:00.. The dabblers don’t count. And we all can be or at times guilty of this. (..audience laughter..)
Terence: Is that your last question? (..Terence laughing..) That do it for you? (..audience laughing..)
Terence: Or do you wanna be thought psychotic? You choose. (..audience laughing..) (..Terence laughing..)
Audience: (..inaudible question..)
Terence: (..Terence laughing..) Well.. i love competition, i mean.. I .. (..audience laughing..) The..
1:13:30.. The.. competition is terrible, that’s the entire basis of my success. (..Terence laughing..) (..audience laughing..)
Terence: Yeah? No.. Because you were before.. If you still wish..
Audience: (..inaudible..)
1:14:00.. Audience: (..inaudible..)
Terence: Right..
Audience: (..inaudible..)
Terence: Why? Because.. I mean i don’t know if its preferable.. But here’s the thing.. People are going to think you’re a nut, if you come down and say.. That Johan Sebastian Bach or Jerry Garcia is God. And this is what you will have to say..
1:14:30.. If you listen to the dead.. Or the B Minor Map. So.. So.. What i am interested in.. is.. Iss. uhh.. I want to know the thing in itself. Not what it does to Bach.. Not what it does to river flowing through a forest at a valley. I wanna see what it can do with darkness. And silence.. And i think most people think it will be boring..
1:15:00.. Probably because they’ve been hanging out with BDI groups, meditating and god knows there’s nothing more boring on earth than most meditation. (..audience laughter..) however.. Psychedelic sitting in a dark in a room on five (5) dried grams of psilocybin mushroom is nothing like meditating and that’s where it can get at you. My relationship to it is always one of.. “I wanna know what it is..” and so i think this sensory..
1:15:30..deprivation method is the only way to get at that.. Other people might not like that.. People say.. Well you mean, put down the whole thing of going into nature? Isn’t nature the great affirmation in all this? And the answer is, yea.. But it works for me sort of without the drug.. Plus and this is just maybe my own weirdness, but i’ll share it with you. I know this that these things are incredibly disruptive of..of..the ordinary
1:16:00.. flow of casuistry.. You all know the concept synchronicity? Well.. if you don’t stay in your room with the lights out and the phone unplugged and the damndest things will happen to you. I mean you couldn’t pay me to go into an american city even mildly loaded because adventures beckon. Now some people like that.. (..audience laughter..) some people say you know.. Let’s take 500 mics, and go meet..
1:16:30.. weird people.. (..audience laughter..) (..ah..Uhh..)...not this cookie..
Terence: Yea?
Audience: (..inaudible..)
1:17:00.. Audience: (..inaudible..)
1:17:30 - 1:18:00.. Audience: (..inaudible..)
Terence: Are you asking me, “Do i think a homeopathic preparations of a psychedelic would be effective?”. (..umm..) It would be homeopathically effective.. I wouldn’t expect it to be experientially effective..
Audience: (..inaudible..)


Transcribed by Azlan



[1:18:00]
Audience: Question?(inaudible) regarding homeopathic preparations of psychedelics


Terence: But don’t you think that if it were true and since in a high dilution like that no molecular trace of the original compound remains, that you have just found the solution to the illegalization conundrum.


audience : …(inaudible) we’re getting a lot of political slack for having medicines out there but homeopathy is being passed over as weird.


Terence: Because in a materialist world it’s assumed to be bogus.


[audience laughs]


Terence: Right, Yeah


Audience: same woman continuing her question


Terence: Well this seems to me not an abstract proposition at all let the best homeopaths sucuss the strongest hallucinogens and set them out and let's give it a whirl


[audience laughs]


Terence: Over on this side, yeah.


Audience: This question may be too personal, or an embarrassment to answer, but..


Terence: Oh I can hardly wait !


Audience: Why are you not in jail?


Terence: Ahhhhh…. Why am I not in jail? hmmm. Well that’s an interesting question. And I , uh, number one I don’t know, here’s what I’ve come up with.Uh, notice that I use big words.


[audience applause]


Terence: I don’t boil, I don’t try to boil it down to a shoutable slogan like “turn on, tune in, drop out” uh uh that, that, then they come, they come, uh, so that’s one possibility. That simply if you are defined in their eyes as an intellectual then they automatically put you in the harmless category and send resources elsewhere. That’s one possibility. Now the other possibility is slightly more disturbing but in the interest of thoroughness let me raise it. Uh, perhaps I’m sanctioned. Perhaps they decided “we don’t really understand what this stuff is, and we can’t have a mass movement, but let one guy just kind of keep the pilot on in case we ever change our minds about this, he will have kept the pilot light on”. Uh, and the other possibility, which is probably too naive but in the interest, again, of exhaustive thoroughness. Maybe they just haven’t noticed yet? You know, Tim Leary, who is a friend of mine would address 25,000 people at a throw. My crowds are, you know, a couple of times a year they creep over a thousand. And I think the key is to keep it low-key. And we don’t want to you know, Dodger Stadium filled or anything like that.


It’s very good to atomize it and spread it through, now the other thing is, you know, I advocate plant hallucinogens. And people always say, “well why, what about LSD, I mean, didn’t LSD change your life? Didn’t LSD change your life? Didn’t LSD change all our lives? Why aren’t you into LSD?” and the answer is certainly yes, and yes. The reason I’m not into LSD is a, a uhhh… not having to do with the effects of LSD, which I think are marvelous. But with the fact that, uh, a, a couple of enterprising second year biochemistry students can produce six or seven million hits in a long weekend. Six or seven million hits of an illegal drug? Suddenly, this is the realm of governments and criminal syndicates and revolutionary disruption of populations. My brethren, I wrote “psilocybin: the magic mushroom growers guide” if you work like a dog for six months, maybe you can produce, uh… 2 or 3 thousand hits. So, that’s the thing. LSD had chemical qualities that made it terrifying to the government, I mean, anybody with 50,000 dollars worth of backing and uh, uh, uh an educat,... 2 years of biochemistry could turn themselves into a major threat to political stability in this country. So they slammed that. They’re not going to put up with that.


The thing I love about the mushrooms is that, if you’re a dedicated mushroom grower, you produce this piddling amount, and if they come and drag you away because it is illegal, all they get is you. No… no… syndicate collapses. No pyramid disappears. So, its invasive. And low-key, and slowly spreading. The other thing is, mushrooms are, this is a cultural thing, mushrooms are inherently non-threatening. They’re absurd , you know, they’re what we, they’re what we put decals of on serving trays and bath towels, bare [1:24:00] mushrooms on them. It's a kind of silly thing.


Transcribed by Joseph Sadaka





“And uh, bath towels [1:24:00] bear mushrooms on them - It’s a kind of silly thing. And uh, and so I think that they don’t really understand what a powerful hallucinogen this is. Well that’s enough on why I’m not in the can. [*points at audience member*] This woman, yeah?


Audience Member: “[inaudible] Uhm, you talk about the uh.. the evolutionary processes how it’s encourage by the ‘essence?’ of the the mushrooms [inaudible] to be, uh, more creative and beneficial process if we worked on evolving our minds without using an external drug, what happens if the government does come in and decide to [inaudible] and we can’t access that same consciousness anymore and then things, you know they could be set backwards again, wouldn’t it be so much more productive to teach people how to get there without the drug?”


Terence: “Absolutely if we could do it, I mean I’m not yet convinced, see. I mean you’ve got your guru’s, but, if you ever get close to any of these people in these guru scenes, close enough where you can just say to them: “Look, level with me, is this stuff as good as 5 grams in silent darkness?” And they say: “Huh, are you serious?” [audience laugh] Uh, the other possibility is technology, uh on two fronts. Mind Machines. The problem with mind machines is, you know, you have to smoke a bomber or two to put up with it more than ten minutes [audience laughs] eh, I mean you quickly satisfy yourself that, this can’t possibly be it. Because it.. it, it is life, and it, but it is contentless.


Well the psychedelic experience is all content. The other possibility - and I put in some time in this beat, is uh, virtual reality. And I have more hope for virtual reality because virtual reality is a technology for showing, for, that would allow us to show each other the insides of our head. Our dreams, our vision. And I think that sufficiently perfected, it might have the consequences of, of the psychedelics. The problem is, it carries a huge amount of negative freight. You know that it’s not gonna be a tool for us to show each other the inside of our minds. It’s gonna be a tool to sell us crap that we don’t want. It’s gonna be a tool for yet more realistic vicarious an gratuitous vile and.. It’s going to be a tool for more pornographic degradation of women. [audience chuckles] So, it seems to me while it holds out the possibility of a technically driven psychedelic, it has a lot of negative freight. I agree with your premise, I.. But I’m driven by a tremendous sense of urgency. I mean why try to create a technical alternative to psilocybin, when you gót psilocybin!


Audience member: “[inaudible] like, I think that people should use mushrooms as, a tech. And what if people there who try, and keep going without, without that tool. Cause, I mean cause what we, what we want, i mean, we wanna transcend.. this plane, we wanna be on a higher plane, a higher state of awareness and you’re not, you’re not gonna get to that plane ultimately if you have to keep coming back into the plane, to get the stuff, to get out of the plane again


[Terence interjects:] “Well how about uh, how about this: Maybe there’s something wrong with that metaphor. Because notice it had to do with planes and transitions, it’s an inherently dualist metaphor.”


[Official-sounding tape transition lady:] “This concludes tape one. Our program continues with tape 2”


[Terence:] “Well how about uh, how about this: Maybe there’s something wrong with that metaphor. Because notice it had to do with planes and transitions, it’s an inherently dualist metaphor. How ‘bout if we say, uh… There is no inside and outside. There is no with or without. Uh, you just use what you got, whatever works should be used. I, I… Spend time in India and visited all these people and [inaudible] And I just became convinced that, unless you were predisposed to believing this stuff, that it would never carry you where you wanted it to. And one thing about psychedelics, you don’t have to be predisposed. It doesn’t work for those who believe it works, uh, it works for those who think it doesn’t work.


One last point and then we’ll go on, uhm, there’s a story, maybe you some of you know this story of uh, a man who lived by the side of a river. And he wanted to uh, he wanted to cross the river. So he, uh, practiced a siddhi of levitation so that he could walk across the water. And it took him forty years to perfect this siddhi and finally he could cross the river, and uh, Buddha was preaching in the neighborhood and the guy came to him and he said uh, “Master, look what I’ve achieved, I can walk on the water to cross the river” And Buddha said “Yeah but the ferry costs a nickel” [Audience cracks up] Uh, and that’s the thing, uh, I think, eh, we’re not gonna replace this tool without wasting so much time in the act of replacing it, [1:30:00] that armageddon will catch up with us. “


Transcribed by Nils Van Der Hoeven



1:30:00.. Act of replacing it that armageddon will catch up with us. I think we have to humble ourselves, so thoroughly that you have to admit that you can’t get where you want to go unless you form a partnership with somebody whose idea of a good time is growing in a cow pie. And if you’re willing to partner up with this humble..humble.. member of the ecosystem, then you and it can fly to glory..
Audience : (..inaudible question..)


1:30:30.. Terence: Have had it..
Audience : (..inaudible question..)
Terence: ..Yea, i wouldn’t recommend it especially in the late stages of pregnancy doing anything that is gonna wildly perturb you, and you know LSD is discovered in the act of trying to produce better drugs to induce labour. So that’s excellent advice..


1:31:00.. honor the fetus. Urm.. Yea?
Audience : (..inaudible question..)
Terence: ..Yea?
Audience : (..inaudible question..)
Terence: ..Well, true and honest answer is, “how the hell can you find out when they won't let you do research?” It’s totally insidious! We don’t know..! We don’t know because they will not..


1:31:30.. allow (..um..) The.. the… research to be done. This is one of the reasons why I say that (..uh..) You should stick with (..urm..).. Shamanically sanctioned plants. Because we know for instance that people have been taking psilocybin in the Sierra Madre de Oaxaca Central Mexico for millennium. They don’t show blindness, tumors, miscarriage, madness, cataract, whatever. That’s your..


1:32:00.. human data, for that. But you go to..Let’s talk for a minute about something like ketamine. Nobody knows. Nobody has any data. MDMA.. seems to be tremendously effective in facilitating interpersonal stuff.. That’s a psychological issue.. Chemically, what kind of data do we have? You know.. Six years worth of data.. gathered under the rag. So, (..uhh..) to be safe.. Stick with the things that are sanctioned..


1:32:30.. by human use.. And then, (..uhm..) somehow in the lighten future..We will explore these synthetics and find out just what the parameters are..
Terence: Yea? Finish up..
Audience: (..inaudible question..)
Terence: No, i’m nothing man. I’m saying take things which have been sanctioned by human usage. I mean.. How about a plant like Strychnos nux-vomica..I mean you’re..


1:33:00.. dead in a minute and a half.. And it's a beautiful, wonderful plant.. Why did it kill you? Well, because it's jammed with strychnine, No.. it's nothing about it being a plant, it's about having a repeated history of human usage, that’s what sanctifies it..
Terence: Yea, the lady in magenta.
Audience: (..inaudible question begins..)
1:33:30.. Audience : (..inaudible question continues.. )
1:34:00.. Audience : (..inaudible question continues.. )
1:34:30.. Audience : (..inaudible question comes to an end.. )
Terence: That’s really an interesting point.. I mean....I..I...It never occurred to me, that somebody brought it up to me, they say, “have you noticed the trips are changing?”.. And once you do ask yourself this question, it does seems to be so. And.. I don’t know whether that.. What..i mean that.. (..uhm..) These deep assertion i’m not sure exactly what’s going on. For instance, this goddess thing, I don’t think people gave the goddess a thought in the early..1970..
1:35:00.. Late 1960.. Now.. people have, you know..some of the least likely people report intense encounters with the goddess.. So, is it amplifying the general mindset..of the society and so there’s more goddess up there? Or.. i don't really know.. It's a very interesting question. There are more questions than answers. I mean this is definitely wide open stuff..! Yea..! Yea..
1:35:30.. Audience : (..inaudible question..)
1:36:00.. Audience : (..inaudible question..)


Transcribed by Azlan






"We're trying to restore the relationship of ego to the other components of the psyche that existed as recently as 12.000 years ago. The ego has become a deadly growth in the historical societies, exacerbated by the phonetic alphabet, monasteism, modern science. This is like you're getting sicker, and sicker, and sicker as you lay these things on, and so, the idea is that if we could restore the original diminished role of the ego that it has for that period, however long it was, that we could begin to solve our problems, because the problems which face us, put very simply, are going to demand sacrifice, and sacrifice is what the ego doesn't want to hear about, and when you go to somebody and say -look to save this planet we're going to have to redistribute income radically- I mean that everybody in this room is gonna to have less, we're going to have to honor a whole bunch of cultural positions that we previously just we're going to bulldoze over, and so forth and son on. So it's ah-- it's the diminishing of ego, by any means necessary that lies to getting any grip on our problem, I mean if we continue as we are, I think we have probably less than 30 years before life is irreconcilable screwed up, you know, nobody believes that the future is ah.. rosy and wonderful, I mean if you go to the people of the world bank, and IMF and, these people who are straight you know suits all of them, they have a sort of curves which would stand your hair on it. When they propagate the curve of population, the curve of toxification of the environment, the curve related to the ozone hole this you see, you know, it's finished and sometime in the next 50 years. They don't talk about this because they don't want to panic the vast numbers of people who just go to work and raise their kids and pray somebody smarter is doing something about all this, but they don't believe there is any kind of normal future and I don't either, I think we're going to, that this business as usual is not on the menu folks, we're either going to go to an era of immense resource scarcity, regimentation, governmental interference in our life’s, tremendous propagandistic efforts to make us do one thing or another, or we're going to pull the plug on scientism and it's studious and the institutions which feed us, feed it.


If capitalism is an interesting problem more easily discussed now than the communism is, how does the picture, capitalism is as anti-human philosophy as you can possibly conceive because at this very moment we should be consuming less, manufacturing less, selling less, transporting less and what's the battle cry? Free trade everywhere! What does free trade mean? It means my right to come to your country and sell the most outlandish junk you've ever seen and you will have no right to turn it away because in the name of free trade crapola has to go everywhere ah.. it's really, see, they try to tell you that capitalism and democracy are not at variance actually the whole Marxist-Leninist socialist thing was assidish, the real life and dead struggle is between capitalism and democracy. Democracy says everybody has an innate worth that must be honored, capitalism says does who die with the most toys win. You can not reconcile these two things, and nobody wants to talk about this, we're still having the party over the fall of communism. But, you know, you go to the soviet union or the former areas or the soviet union and you see that what it was, it was a deep freeze for traditional culture. In Kurdisia and Turkmenistan people were basically camel husbandry, is whats going on, ah.. now with communism on the rocks ah mac donalds will be there in 5 years and k-mark will be following close behind. So, I think we're coming to a great crisis of fundamental ah.. our relation to our own fundamental institutions. I'm not anti-capitalist, I think capitalism needs to sever it's ah.. connection to materialism. This is again why virtual reality is interesting. You sell things made of light, not made of beryllium metal, brass, steel and wood but light. We got all the light we need but we have to stop making things out of stuff, or we're not gonna be around to tell the tale."


Transcribed by Nicole





[Inaudible* question from audience] [1:42:00]


No i think that, you know revolutions are made by percentages uh if 15 or 20% changed [1:42:30] then the example would spread. You see, I, uh, we are not, uh, psilocybin is the easy way to awaken. YOu know, take a, take a psychedelic plant and have an experience and get your act together, but the future is full of sledgehammers. It’s not going, we're not, we're not going to end with a whimper, it's going to end with a series of thuds and bangs. It could begin almost anytime. I mean we could get a hot muggy day in Mexico City this summer, and a million people would die. This thing in Los Angeles is a wake up call. It is going to get uglier and more chaotic and more crazy there is going to be more starvation, more facism, more dictatorship. THis is, unless we do something! Until we do something. And it can- how bad is it going to get?! before people say, you know, we are doing something wrong. People dance on the Russians, but you've got to admire people who have got the. The guts to say, “we did it entirely wrong!” 100% I mean could you imagine this country? Being able to tj.. You know it may be coming.. It may be coming. The character from AUstin.. Is a peculiar item in the mix. You know?



For years, i fantasy speech i always imagine that I was somehow end up giving but but it’s it’s theis speech where you say, “MY fellow Americans, you have been lied to.” Screwed and abused by these two criminal parties for a hundred years. And you're only hope is to overthrow the republicrats and create a decent world to live in. well no republican can make that speech no democratic can make that speech and be redible it was to be somebody that wasn’t in bed with either of those forces. So i’m not that all pleased by who apparently will bear the mantle, but on the other and it changes what we need, then if, if it’s probably nothing to be a candidate that you can and i can embrace its going to be some odd ball. Oso you know you have to recognize it when we see it coming. Yeah.


[Audience QUestion can;t hear it }First of all,


Terence: No we don’t know what it is.


inaudible


Yah the great thing about is it can talk!


Good for you. (terrence laughs)


Well probably half at least in the room hasn't the faintest idea what the question is about. I stay away from this because this is the personalistic stuff were i created a certain model of reality based on a new way of looking at time and i don’t want to go into it too much tonight. But i want to suggest something to you tonight which is that, cough, you know, uh,hm, at the very beginning at this talk we talked about mutation and natural selection and that , the darwin’s insight was vast and deep, and what h offered was an explanation for how rainbow trout come to be, monarch butterflies, redwood trees, herds of elephants, so forth and so on. What it doesn’t address is us. We are the weird bird on the block. I mean , yes we are some kind of monkey, but when you stand us next to our nearest relative it is very very clear that is is not a very near relative. It doesn't look like us much, certainly doesn't act like us.. What's the deal with human beings? And I think that uhm, it, you know how all these religions these western religions [1:48:00] have built in this idea of the end of the world


Transcribed by Marina Quirk





You know how all these religions, these western religions have built in this idea of the end of the world and they’re always running around expecting the messiah or something and this, to the scientific mind is just the final proof of the pudding that these people have water between the ears [audience laughs] because science just says you know ‘that’s just ridiculous’, i mean uh but i wonder, i wonder, i mentioned just a minute a go these curves that when you propagate them into the future [1:48:30] everything leads to the unimaginable and it’s within the next 50 years so uh I sorta think as human beings as uhh analogous to iron filings on a piece of paper and you shake these iron filings out of a salt shaker or something and there they lie randomly arranged in heaps.


Well then you come underneath the paper with a powerful magnet and lo and behold these little [1:49:00] iron filings coherently arrange themselves into this beautiful double mustache pattern, which i'm sure you’ve all seen well i think that there is a-an enormous punchline to the historical process that no- very very few people suspect and that what history is is what happens to an animal who falls under the influence of a kind of strange attractor and that we are being pulled into a well of transformative intentionality, history is not pushed by the casuistry of war, migration, imperial dynastic families and stuff like that, history is pulled toward an unimaginable something which is [1:50:00] continuously trying to mirror itself in us. This is why these egyptians said, you know, ‘i don’t know what it is, but i think we should really build a big simple building’, [audience laughs], ‘i don’t know why. But i’m gonna enslave 50,000 people and do it! And don’t ask me why’ [audience laughs].


And you know this is the same force that reared Chartres Cathedral, this is the same force that created the space shuttle, we are in [1:50:30] a relationship to an unseen something which we keep trying to image with our mythologies, our religions, our technologies, our epiphanies and i think that uhh, it’s not so far away. That it- it isn’t 10,000 years in the future it is sometime in the next 50 years and that this is something what history was for, you see history is an incredibly…[1:51:00] peculiar and brief phenomenon, i mean viewed from the point of view of biology it’s less time than it takes for a new species to emerge, i mean let’s call history 25,000 years.


You know, in frame 1 you’re chicken flint, in frame 2 you’re hurling an instrument toward Alpha Centauri, [*Terence Clicks*], like that! -This happens. Well what’s happening is that mind itself [1:51:30] is being pulled out of this creature and it’s being given hands and languages and pos-symbolic systems in order to image the unspeakable, the unspeakable, I call it the transcendental object at the end of time, it casts- it’s in another dimension, it’s in a kind of super-space and what it casts into history is the enormous shadow of its imminence. [1:52:00] This is what straight people call god. This is what all these visionaries are raving about.


It’s that when you sink below- beneath the surface of ordinary causality and mundane ho-hum-ism what you discover is this enormous transcendental object which you could call it, you know, the sacred heart of jesus or the, flying saucer or the, philosopher's stone, it’s all of those things and much much more, [1:52:30] it’s not only stranger than you suppose, it’s stranger than you can suppose and it has called us out of animal organisation over a 25,000 year period we hang in the balance and then we meet it. And we are going to meet it. That’s the light at the end of that birth canal of transcendence that i referred to... And now i see that our song is sung, our time is done. Thank you very very much for turning in. [1:53:00] [audience claps] Thank you!


[audience inaudible]


™: Yeah we will dig into this in the uhh interim, uhh [1:53:30] i think the, -it’s- it’s worth taking the time for everybody to just make a very brief, very very brief statement about, you don’t have to say who you are if you don’t want to, but you can say what you’re hoping for or why you’re here or what your agenda is.Just so that if it turns out that we are 80% shrinks or 80% ceramicists or something [1:54:00] then we turn it that way.


Transcribed by Jonathan Laliberte





[1:54:00]..or eighty percent ceramicists or something, then we turn it that way and uh, those of you who are undercover please stay undercover so you don’t alarm anybody [audience laughing]..euh..., especially me, right?...euh. So why don’t we just start euh..uhm, and go across in some reasonably logical fashion, it.
[TM: yeah?]
[man with inaudible question]
[TM: Well that, tells you what you’re worth , doesn’t it?]


[1:54:30]..[Terence giggles, audience laughing]
Oh, true...No. Let’s not record it so people, and uhm, also I had at one point [takes a small sip from something] thought I would be an art historian.That was one of my real obsessions. So I had..had enough art history to be trained in, you know, recognising the evolution of motif, how one artist passes on techniques and can see,.. to his students or his..


[1:55:00].. imitators, and all this art-historical stuff. And I also..uh..had been very interested in Jung. And...and none of this seem to explain the content of the psychedelic experience i would get in there and say, well.. How come, i’m not seeing a archetype?.. and be things which somebody else.. You know.. I don’t know.. Ali Ensor. Therabagio Baugh..


[1:55:30].. Somebody should have seen this stuff.. And gotten it out. And it didn’t seem to be..uhh..a trail through the history of western art of the present of this dimension. So then i thought why is it that nobody knew about all this? I mean, Baugh would have given his right arm for a sheet of blotter I would think.. Euh.. So it became for me like a mystery, whe..


[1:56:00].. where is this stuff coming from.. And what does it say about our humanness?
[TM: yea?]
[man with inaudible question]
Well, there.. There’s a lot of being completely still over Baughs because he is such a startlingly radical painter in the context of his time. Many of his conceive were digged up after his life.


[1:56:30].. Uh.. T.L. Breko the elder being the foremost exponent of it.., he may have been an alchemical guinea pig. Euh.. Who. euh.. Frazier.. I think.. Wrote the book called the “Millennium of (..inaudible..) Baughs” in which he wanted to suggest that maybe that Datura use, that there was a cult called the brotherhood of the free spirit. And which practice ritual nudity..


[1:57:00].. Which begins to sound something like the orgies we talked about last night. It was a cult of printers. And it may be that Garden of free spirit but this is all pretty murky stuff, it’s hard to get back to Baughs, euhh.. Euhh.. he didn’t leave any written records we have, his birth is recorded in the perished church where.. In the village..


[1:57:30].. where he was born.. We know he was born sometime around 1450 died in 1516.. But the details are pretty murky.. Well.. not to belabour Baughs, euhh.. So what i thought would be a reasonable way to do this this morning.. (takes a sip from something) is to take the most extreme psychedelic case and experience and describe it and talk about it a little..


[1:58:00].. and then see what issues that raises. Because my experience with this has euh.. Led me to the conclusion that..(..Breathes..) In a way.. (..Exhaless..) It..euh.. To be thought of as other dimension is to be thought of as a mandala, and different psychedelic compounds and generously different kinds of yoga and different kinds of techniques of all sort of land viewing in


[1:58:30].. different part of this mandala but that what you’re always trying to do is get to the center of the mandala and it’s simply my biased, my opinion; that i think the center of the mandala is probably the DMT experience for a number of reasons. And so i thought it’ll be interesting to talk about it this morning. First let me talk about it physically. Uhh.. DMT is..


[1:59:00].. ..uh.. An indole hallucinogen.. Abetted.. No..no.. a tryptamine.. Uhh.. and it’s produced indigenously in the human brain. This is very interesting. Very few psychedelic compounds are produced in the human brain. We don’t know what DMT is doing there. But it means essentially that we all are subject to arrest..


[1:59:30] - [2:00:00].. Of a technicality because we all are holding a schedule one (1) drug.. Euh.. It’s sort of the ultimate catch-22 where if all else fails, they’ll just say well you were holding anyway. Euhh.. the interesting thing about Dm.. Another interesting thing about it that is the incredibly rapid in its onset and in its disappearance the whole trip lasts about 15 minutes..


Transcribed by Azlan





[2:00:00]
[Terence]:“...the whole trip lasts about 15 minutes. This makes it a tremendous tool with which to challenge the critics of our position, because if somebody wants to rise up in righteous wrath and condemn psychedelics, then you say, ‘well, you have tried them, haven’t you?’ and of course they never have; it’s like scientific denunciations of astrology. Mean, scientists love to denounce astrology, but find one who can cast a natal horoscope[2:00:30] and I’ll give you a [inaudible].”


[laughter]


[Terence]: ”uh, ya know? So, uh, the, the uh...uh, uh, the...it...DMT overcomes this objection; the entire experience lasts 15 minutes, so you say to the critic, ‘ya know, you’re NOT going to experience it & yet you’re going to carry on a pogrom against it? You won’t invest 15 mins. To check what this is about; I mean, what kind of scientist are you?’”[2:01:00]


[Terence]: “uh...so, it has that social efficacy. Um, now the fact that, it is the strongest of all hallucinogens--at least if there are ones stronger, please keep them away from me--I mean I don’t think anybody needs to get higher than that. I certainly don’t. I mean, I’ve at times come out of those places and said, ‘this stuff is ILLEGAL! It breaks cosmic law!’[2:01:30] Of course, then, Tim Leary told me, ‘cosmic laws are only local ordinances anyway.’ [laughter] so it didn’t really matter.”


[inaudible audience question]


[Terence]: “uh, ok. Eh...well, good question. Yes, It’s the commonest of hallucinogens in nature. Uh, It occurs in many grasses: Phalaris Tuberosa, Phalaris arundinacea. Um, it occurs in a number of leguminous plants [2:02:00] uh, uh, probably the most spectacular being Anadenanthera peregrina, this huge, tropical, locust-like tree from which the snuff called niyopa or edena is made. That’s a tough way to get your DMT let me tell you; uh, because there is so much cellulose & other crap & corruption in the mix that you have to do like a tablespoon of each nostril and the technique [2:02:30], the technique is you get a bamboo tube or a hollow tube about this long [indistinct gesture of length] and you pour in this tablespoon of this stuff, and then you squat down on your haunches and you get a friend, and you put the tube up your nostril and the the friend BLOWS with the full-force of his breath; BLOWS this stuff into your head. Well...you fall, it’s like being hit in the face with a 2x4; i mean you it’s like you think he kicked [2:03:00] you, and you fall over backwards, you scream, you salivate, you get backed up on your haunches and by this time he has refilled the tube for the other nostril.” [audience laughter] So, and then, after uh, af…”
[indistinct audience question]


[Terence]: mmhmm, mmhmm...Hmm?


[Audience]: Yopo?


[Terence]: “Yopo, Etena, Nipa [?], it depends on the language group, uh, and the [indistinct] [2:03:30] um, it’s also called Vilka in the Kari language. And then, after uh, ten minutes or so, it slowly begins to form up in your head, but you know, God, your sinuses, are eh, STACKED for sure, and uh..it’s not, uh, not very pleasant; and the other thing is, it never reaches the blinding transformative intensity that [2:04:00] you can achieve with the chemically pure compound.”


[indistinct audience question]


[Terence]: “No no. The uh, good point. If you orally ingest it, it will be destroyed in your guts. It won’t work. The uh, Amazon Indians, have...encountered this problem and have created a very sophisticated pharmacological strategy for dealing with this, you’ve all heard of ayahuasca. Ayahuasca [2:04:30] is DMT from one plant combined with another plant which contains a chemical which is called a MAO inhibitor. MAO is Monoamine Oxidase, and your gut is full of uh, MAO, and it’s job is to take monoamines--small molecules--and oxidize them into uh, harmless by-product: usually endocytic acid, which can be shunted to the bladder. Well, [2:05:00], when you take DMT orally, these monamines just uh, I mean these monoamine oxidase compounds just grab onto it and destroy it, but if you take an MAO inhibitor with it, and harmine, which occurs in Banisteriopsis caapi is an MAO inhibitor, then, lo and behold, it isn’t destroyed in your gut. Instead, it passes into the bloodstream, it passes through the blood-brain barrier, which is a very tight chemical filter that keeps the [2:05:30] brain from being exposed to toxic materials, but these drugs can cross that barrier and then, what the aya experience really is, is a slow release DMT trip, that instead of taking five minutes, takes about two and a half hours; and if you really know your psyched and your breath control techniques, on ayahuasca, over an hour or so [2:06:00]


Transcribed by Joe O’Neal





Instead of taking 5 minutes, it takes about two and a half hours. And if you really know your psychedelics, and your breath control techniques, on ayahuasca, over an hour [02:06:00] or so, you can work yourself to a place where you say, “lordy me!It looks just like a dmt flash”. And it does, but you have to do some hard climbing to get there. With dmt itself, once you push the start button there is no stopping it. And… I think it's worth describing it. How many people have had this experience? Ahun.. well they can somewhat anchor it [02:06:30]. Ahh.. it’s very subjective, obviously. But I will describe what happened to me and then we can work out from there. One point that I wanna make about these things is that, th- the great strength of the psychedelic possibility is, it’s democratic, you know. It isn’t that the people of great spiritual advancement obtain these states, or- or people who have studied under some [02:07:00] lineage. It’s truly available to everyone and when I had my dmt experiences I realized, you know, either I am incredibly special, which doesn’t- there is no other evidence to support that *audience laughter*, or, this is something which can happen to anyone and that’s the more interesting possibility. After all if it can only happen to very very special people, then [02:07:30] that lefts- most people out. But if it’s generally available then it’s big big news about the human condition. Yeah-


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: How did they find DMT in the human brain? Ahh... hmm... interesting question.


Audience: [inaudible] how it crosses the blood brain barrier?


[02:08:00]
TM: No I think he means how did they find that it was endogenously produced. Well, I think they were studying- the group that did this was at the University of Louisiana, Christian and his group. And I- they were studying fast reactions in the brain. And for fast reactions you have to look at chemicals that can go through some kind of cycle of structural change and return to their zero point, very very quickly. [02:08:30] Their original thought was that DMT mediated attention. I mean I am talking to you right now, suppose there were a loud noise over here, we would all immediately project our mind on to the source of the sound. Th- They thought that was a.. neurological function mediated by DMT. Could be, I am not sure I suspect it has to do more with the chemistry of dreaming.[02:09:00] Once they discovered DMT and began to track it, they discovered that there was a circadian rhythm, means a daily rhythm in its production in the human organism and that it reaches its greatest concentration in the brain around 3:30 am in most people. Well this is when the deep dreaming and high rem states are really chugging, and I suspect, I mean lucid dreamers may wanna argue with this [02:09:30] but I suspect that every night we go deeper places than we can ever speak of. That ordinary dreams are right on the surface of consciousness. Big lucid dreams are an inch deeper. But I think we go a hundred feet down every night into places where you cannot say anything about it. Yeah-


Audience: [inaudible] [02:10:00]


[02:10:04]
TM: Ah.. let’s make that perspiration *laughter*. Well its- [audience inaudible]. It’s hard as hell to find DMT. And this is a puzzle because if you look it up in a standard work on organic chemistry, it presents it as a trivial synthesis. Ah.. much [02:10:30] more simple than LSD which it always presents as quite a difficult synthesis. But when you actually talk to workbench chemists- it’s tricky to make DMT. It’s especially tricky to carry out the final crystallization. So what you are usually offered in the underground is some kind of muck, which looks sort of like ah.. maple syrup, half gone to sugar. I wouldn’t get near that, actually. It means [02:11:00] they- they botched their synthesis. What you are hoping for, is a white powder. However, in thirty years of chasing this all over the world I have only seen it as a white powder a couple of times. Usually, the synthesis has fallen slightly below that standard and what you get is a pale yellow powder, sometimes a pale rose or pink powder and then the real rough trade [02:11:30] is orange. And this what you- if you have seen it, this is probably what you have seen it. It looks like orange moth balls and it has the smell of indole. This very sharp smell which if you are not a chemist and you have never smelled indole, when you reach in your mind for what is this like, you will say, “well it’s sort of like moth balls”. Not quite, but it has that same sharp chemical, you know and this is what you are gonna smoke, see. So a lot of people beef about [02:12:00] that and say, you know, “It’s like smoking burning plastic”.


Transcribed by Rohan Singh

A lot of people beef about that, and say; “it’s like smoking burning plastic.”. Mehhh, Más o menos, It is a little bit like that. The other objection to DMT that has been around since the 60’s is people say it ‘destroys brain cells’. There’s no evidence for or against this. But I would submit to you as[inaudible] as the people who are neurophysiologists can argue with this if they disagree, but, I think an excellent index for the low toxicity of a drug is how fast it clears your system, and DMT clears your system in about 15 minutes. If you take some compound drug, or whatever, and 48 hours later you’re still taking hot baths, and uh, wishing you could have a message, and sitting staring at the wall. Than, this drug is really sticking to your ribs. It means that your metabolic pathways have no way of dealing with it, they can’t grab it here, they can’t grab it there, and it takes a long time to leave your system. An example of this in the pseudo-psychedelic domain would be ketamine. Ya’ know, ketamine, the experience lasts about 45 minutes, but 48 hours later you can feel your knees suddenly go rubbery, or you can have, what are technically called ‘fuse states’, strange states of disconnectedness from what’s going on around you. This is not a very good advertisement for a drug. TM speaking to audience: Here, this woman and then-.


Audience: Uhm, [inaudible question about ayahuasca].


™: Uh, well, less because um, if you smoke DMT the dose is approximately 50 milligrams, which is like the size of a kitchen match head. If you combine it with an MAO inhibitor and take it orally, you can probably get away with about 35 milligrams, of DMT. Uh, and, uh, oh I don’t know, 100 milligrams of harmaline, now harmaline is itself is sometimes itself described as a psychedelic drug, I really think this is sort of misleading. You will have hallucinations if you take pure harmine, but only at doses approaching the toxic dose. Many compounds will give you hallucinations approaching the toxic dose; bee venom, rattlesnake venom, stuff like this. That doesn’t mean it’s a hallucinogenic drug, it means you’re dying, and you should take steps to correct the situation. [™ speaking to audience]: Um, now, yes.


Audience: You say that there is a short transit time, but how long does the memory of that experience last? Because that would indicate to me that there is still a presence, and perhaps a homeopathic dose at that point[laughing], in the mind, in the brain.



™: Well, DMT, uh one of the things that caused me to think that is must- that is might have a role in the chemistry of dreaming, is that one of the frustrating things about it is, you have this experience without doubt, the most bizarre, appalling, peculiar experience you could possibly have; that’s at minute 2. At minute 5, you’re raving about it. At minute 7, you can’t remember it. So, it’s literally like gold running through your fingers. You say ‘this is the most amazing thing, this is the most amazing thing.. What am I talking about?’, and you know how you can have a very engaging complex dream, and the alarm goes off, and by the time your feet hit the floor you’re grasping for it, it’s literally melting before your eyes. That’s a very DMT-like presentation. The way a dream melts away is the way a DMT trip melts away, at the same speed.


[inaudible audience question]


™: Well, uh, over time and using tricks you can drag a certain amount of data out of it. Um, what I’ll do- I’ll describe a DMT trip, and it’s um, it’s a composite of maybe 40 of these trips, and uh, then you can see what you make of it. So this is- I’ll just describe it, I’ll be the graduate student UB, the guy with the clipboard. You’re saying to me ‘so what happened?’. Okay, here’s what happened; [dramatic sigh] You- I took 1 takes. Eh, most people can get off in about 2 to 4 hits. Now there’s a trick to it, hash smokers are greatly favored in the endeavour because you really need leather lungs, for this. The great problem is that people will cough, or not be able to hold it in. You take 2 hits in a situation where you’re clothes have been loosened and you can just flop backward, uh, when you need to. You take 2 hits, now many people miss the point. Because after 2 hits you feel completely peculiar, you feel as though your body is undergoing some strange kind of anesthesia. All the air has been pumped out of the room, this is the visual acuity thing I talked about last night.


Transcribed by Justin Symbiosis Brosey

[2:17:57]
All the air has been pumped out of the room. This is the visual acuity thing I’ve talked about last night. The colors jump up. The edges sharpen. It’s and at that point people say ‘ooh wow, it’s really coming on strong.’ And then what you have to do you is you have to take one more enormous hit. This separates the in trepid from the casual. Believe me. Because most ppl, and, and, the facilitator doesn’t want to lean on the person you say ‘you know, take the third hit’ and they say i completely weird, and sai know you feel weird take the third hit well if you can coax somebody into that. what happens is you close your eyes and you see the ordinary warm, brown, back, you know, closed eyelid scenario, and then these colors begin racing together. And it forms this mandelic, floral, slowly rotating thing. Which I call the chrysanthemum.


This is a place in the trip that you want to see as you go by it. The chrysanthemum forms. And you watch it for like 15 seconds. If it doesn’t give way then you didn’t do enough. You have to do more, one more hit.,usually will do it. Well then what happens is it physically propels you through this chrysanthemum-like thing and you, there’s a sound like a saran wrap bread wrapper being crumpled up and being thrown away, You know that crackle. A friend of mine says there a radio intellectai leaving through the anti fonital at the top of your head


I don’t know what it is, uh, but it’s it’s something is being.[audience] Yea right that’s what it is. Uh, then there’s this very, uh, very defined sense of bursting through something. A membrane. And on the other side, and this is now remember my experience, on the other side, as you break through there’s a cheer. There’s uh uh uh a whole bunch of entities waiting on the other side. And they you know that Pink Floyd song, The Gnomes have learned a new way to say Hooooorray . Well, it’s that place. It’s those gnomes.


And you burst into this space and uhm and they’re saying. “How wonderful that you’re here. You come so rarely. We’re so delighted to see you.” And the, one of the things about DMT that’s really puzzling is in a sense it doesn’t affect your mind. In other words, you don’t change. For instance if you take ketamine the first thing you notice, the very first thing you notice before the trip hits, is you notice that you no longer are anxious that you’ve taken ketamine. You’ve just sort of anxiety leaves you. That means it’s affecting your mind. It’s doing something to the judgemental machinery. DMT doesn’t lay a hand on the judgemental machinery. You, you break through into that space exactly who you were before you breaking through. And the usual reaction of most people is something like, you know, you think, God. Heart beat’s normal. Pulse, normal. Everything’s normal, yea, everything’s normal, oh god, because these things are there and they’re hammering at you and they come forward they’re like jeweled self-dribbling basketballs.


And they’re there are many of them. And they come pounding toward you and they will stop in front of you and vibrate, but then they do a very disconcerting thing which is they jump into your body. They jump into your body and then they jump back out again. And, the whole thing is going on in this very high speed mode where you’re being presented with thousands of details per second and you can’t get a hold on you say my god what’s happening and these things are saying, ‘don’t abandon yourself to amazement.’ Which is exactly what you want to do it. You just want go nuts with how crazy this is. You they ‘don’t do that, don’t do that. Pay attention, pay attention to what we’re doing.’


Well, what are they doing? Well, what they’re doing is they’re making object with their voices. They’re singing structures into existence. These things are, and what they’ll do is they’ll come toward you, and then, you have to understand they don’t have arms so we’re kind of downloading this into another dimension to even describe it. But what they do is they offer things to do. They say, ‘look at this. Look at this.’ And as your attention goes towards these objects you realize that what you’re being shown is impossible. It’s impossible. It’s not simply intricate, beautiful and hard to manufacture. It’s impossible to make these things. The nearest analogy would be faberge eggs. [2:24:00]


Transcribed by James Clayton



The nearest analogy would be to faberge eggs, or something like that. But these things are like the toys that are scattered around the nursery of a U.F.O. or something. Celestial toys and they are, the toys themselves appear to be somehow alive. The toys themselves can, uh, sing other objects into existence. So, what’s happening is there’s just this proliferation of elf gifts. [2:24:30] And the elf gifts are moving around singing, and the whole thing is directed towards, they’re saying, ‘Do what we are doing’, and they are very insistent.


They say, “Do it. Do it. Do it!” And you feel like a bubble, or, and now this is subjective, i mean only you know 5% report this but it happens to me. You feel like a bubble inside your body that’s beginning to move up [2:25:00] towards your mouth and when it comes out it isn’t sound it’s vision. You begin, you see, discover, that you can pump stuff out of your mouth by singing and they’re urging you to do this they say ‘That’s it, that’s it, keeping doing it!’ And the whole thing is like, you know, we’re now at minute 4.5 with this stuff...and, uh, you speak in a kind of glossolalia. [2:25:30] There’s a spontaneous outpouring of syntax unaccompanied by what is normally called meaning. It’s sort of, uh, [speaking in tongues]. And this is accompanied by a, a modality something seen. [2:26:00] And they say, ‘Yes, do it do it do it’ and then after a minute or so of this the whole thing begins to collapse in on itself and they literally begin to physically move away from you. And usually their final shot is, they actually wave goodbye, and they say, ‘Deja vu. Deja vu.’ Which makes no sense at all if you analyze it.


So then you come down, and you’re now at minute 6 to 7, and [2:26:30] you come down and it’s like being more loaded than you ever been. It’s like a 700 mic acid trip, but you embrace it as you're totally down. You say I’m totally down. I mean you look, you look like a termite a from Arcturus and the room is decorated in Amish quilts but I’m completely back! [audience laughs] And then over a minute or a minute and a half or so, the room comes right back together [2:27:00] and and 4 minutes after that, some people can give no account of it whatsoever. They say, uh, i don’t, idk it’s the weirdest thing that ever happened to me and i can’t remember it now, and uh. Uh. So that’s the basic run-though, now a lot of stuff is going on in there.


First of all, you know, what are these things? [2:27:30] uh, And why do they want you to do this strange activity? and what’s so great about it? Well, hmm, uh, well, first of all, who are these things? Uh, we can like you know be good scientists and make a list of the possibilities and then see which seems more likely. They could be a disincarnate [2:28:00] race of hyper-dimensional dwellers who live in some kind of parallel continuum just over some kind of energy, uh, barrier and they’re there all the time. You do have the feeling that they're there all the time. That its on going. That you just cut in on their scene. So that’s one possibility. Another possibility is that behind all these psychedelics, and especially dmt [2:28:00] that this is not a drug at all , but it is uh essentially uh uh a pay telephone of some sort to aliens. Good old National Inquirer type aliens, uh, who have, are using this as uh, as uh, a communication domain. Say you know we can’t land on the White House lawn, that would create panic and hysteria, so let’s create a drug which inside the drug [2:29:00]we will be able to deal with people. And, um, I was hoping that John Mac who's an expert on uh UFO abductions would be here this weekend. I expected him because I think this whole abduction thing is not going to be illuminated until they start giving abductees DMT and saying, So is this is what happened to you? Was it like this? or was it completely, uh, different? Well so then there are those [2:29:30] are the two possibilities that I sort of dealt with over the first 10 or 15 years of thinking about this, and then recently.




[Question from audience]
TM: It could be, what puzzles me is that the, the, abduction thing is so non-psychedelic. It’s so cut and dried and all this anal examination stuff with strange machinery [2:30:00] there’s nothing comparable to that , I’m happy to report to you.


Transcribed by James Clayton



There’s nothing comparable to that , I’m happy to report to you… [Audience laughs] ...uh, going on in the DMT thing. But it may be, you see...it..bec-



Audience: maybe the...the (inaudible)explains what it does to you…



™: Well, I’d be interested in looking at the possibility that DMT, under normal or abnormal conditions, could be sequestered in the human brain and then some unusual stimulus or stress could cause it to suddenly be dumped[2:30:30]...and, (audience inaudible) yeah.. .



Audience: I want to share this: There have been some migraines that I’ve had where, you know, what you just described with the colours coming in (inaudible)...it’s been so fascinating that I’ve completely forgotten about the pain and I’ve just watched it for hours, well or I guess I just fell asleep but it sort of struck a note... and I was always under a lot of stress when I got the headache in the first place and there seemed to be a lot of strange things going on with the migraine in the first place. So I’m wondering if that’s [2:31:00](inaudible)...



™: Yeah, that’s an interesting possibility. I also have migraines or the kind called cluster headaches and yes, a lot of the sympto - or the nice thing about DMT is that it’s painless but the sense of being split open; and of the traveling skeptomita transcribers note: I don’t know what this is and I can’t seem to google up anything using a variety of spellings and whatnot - I think he meant “scotoma”…, as they call these hallucinations that the migraine people see: it’s related in some way. Yeah. yeah.



Audience: May I bring science into this a little bit? (™: Sure.) Um. It involves the principle that its characteristically called “phasing” [2:31:30]Ah - But its - ah- it’s basis is sort of what happens on a subatomic level between matter and energy. It turns out there’s no fundamental part(?) at that level. They have this dance between matter and energy. You know, energy coalesces into a bit of matter which then becomes energy...ah - and you can look at this matter/energy relationship as having a wavelength of frequency associated with it. [2:32:00]Now granted this is happens on a subatomic level but if there’s something comparable going on, on the level at which we seem to exist in this physical form then it seems to me that there has to be something akin to it. That, it may be that we as beings are sort of tuned to a frequency range, you know, in this particular form and that somehow it’s possible to shift that, or expand it to so that what we’re actually experiencing is a broader range of frequency, sort of shift in wavelength[2:32:30]...and I think some of this, of these experiences can be at least explored in that context. Ah……...you know…..there’s so much that we don’t know (inaudible)(™: Ain’t that the truth?) of this cosmos that, ah... but we can take...we can extrapolate (I’m pretty sure Terence sigh/groans here) to some degree We can use this to take journeys and explore this possibility. What we DO know, in science for example[2:33:00], what happens on a subatomic level...and... I mean, for god’s sake, the language of these people is sounding more like sorcerers, these days, than scientists.(™: Ah. Uh huh. Mmmhmm.) and we do seem to, at least, believe from the evidence that we see that there is this matter energy interchange on a very fundamental level; while something is going on on that fundamental level. There may be this, principle of “phasing” which will either shift our tuning [2:33:30]or expand to include a larger spectrum.



™: Yeah, I think...no I think that that’s a very interesting avenue to pursue, this thing about frequency. Somebody told me: one of the great things about this job iis you hear a lot of weird stories, and somebody told me a story recently about, it didn’t involve DMT; it involved LSD but this guy and a friend of his took a quite large dose of LSD, larger than they intended and they went to a party.[2:34:00] And they were so loaded by the time they got to the party that they realized they could not function as party goers so they just moved into a corner and sat with their backs to the wall and watched this party rage in front of them. And after about 20 minutes of sitting there they both simultaneously noticed it was a dance party; noticed that the music was sounding[2:34:30] really strange and everybody was moving very slowly. And as they watched the thing came to an absolute halt. And people were just frozen. And there was absolute silence. And at that point - ah - the door, at the other end of the room, swung open and, ah, an elf? Entered the room and moved among[2:35:00] all these frozen people and then left, by the door he came in and they both saw this and they said that they could tell that it was, that it - it - it - the people in the room didn’t know it happened because for them it occupied a micro-second. But this thing that was, you know, in Carlos Castaneda who, God knows is not the most reliable reporter on these things, nevertheless there is this thing about stopping the world. So. Maybe it’s something like that.[2:35:30] That there is, as you suggest, a frequency phase (Audience: inaudible) Yeah. This sort of leads into the third possibility, having to do with the origin of these things. And, in a sense, this is the hardest one to swallow but, in another sense, this is the most conservative (in some crazy notion of conservative); the most conservative explanation (clears throat) because (Audience: inaudible question) (™ drinks: Mm.mm.(no))[2:36:00]


Transcribed by Artemis Jones



[2:36:00] Because, uhm, we have no evidence other than the tabloids that this world is being visited by friendly visitors from zubenelgenubi or zeta reticuli or the pleiades or anywhere else. I mean, to my mind the evidence that this is happening is vanishingly small and totally underwhelming. Uh, the other possibility, uh, that, uh, [2:36:30] there is some kind of parallel dimension in which these things exist is also somewhat poorly supported. If we’re talking about something which thinks, something which can communicate, something which is intelligent, then we should look to ourselves as the source of it, because we are the only intelligent, communicating things we know within a certain narrow definition of these things.
So that, it’s occurred to me with greater and greater [2:37:00] force and largely prompted by giving DMT occasionally to Tibetans and Amazonian shamans, and when you say to them, you know, to the shamans in the Amazon, when you say to them “What is happening with this stuff? And what are those little things in there?” They say “Oh well those are ancestor spirits, didn’t you know? Haven’t you heard? Shamanism is about doing healing through the intercession of ancestor spirits.” You say hmm, [2:37:30] ancestor spirits, lets get this straight, dead people is what you’re talking about right? These are dead people. And, you know, maybe because I was raised catholic I resisted this like grim death. But I’m beginning to think that what you actually break into in that place, is something that we might call, uh, an ecology of souls. That, uh, is it possible to entertain [2:38:00] the notion that at death you actually don’t just become worm food, but that something, survives, in some other dimension, and that it has this bizarre character to it, and that this explains their peculiar affection for humanity, and their involvement, somehow in our, uh, fate. Well this is to me is fairly mind bending [2:38:30] as a possibility. If what is awaiting us at the end of the 20th century is the erasure of the boundary between the living and the dead, then we’ve all been too conservative in our projections of what is, uh, going on.
TM: [calls on audience member] Yeah?
Audience: [inaudible question]
TM: Yes, that there will be some kind of erasure of, uh, the boundary between the two. Well, once i had this idea, you know, [2:39:00] I mentioned my Jungian and art historical proclivities and so that means that you always looks back through tradition and folklore to try and find something analogous to this. Well, there ain’t much. But there is one area that seems suggestive to me, and that is, as you all know, the Irish are a-a, uh, very(fairy?) haunted race. They’re also an intoxication obsessed race, at least in stereotype. [2:39:30] Well it turns out, that, uh, you probably all are familiar with the notion of purgatory? Purgatory is the place where you have to spend a lot of time before you get to heaven, if you’re not bad enough to go to hell. So you put in a few [inaudible 2:39:50] of eternity in purgatory and then you get let into heaven. Well i had always assumed that this dogma, [2:40:00] I don’t know i hadn’t really thought about it, I just sort of assumed it arose with early Christianity. But when I began looking into this I discovered that the idea of purgatory, was invented by Saint Patrick, and it was invented specifically to convert the pagan Irish, because the pagan Irish believed, uh, in the, in the land of fey. They believe that there was this nearby dimension, full of the souls of the dead, surrounding [2:40:30] us all the time, and that certain people with the gift of second sight could see this. So, Patrick just said to them, “Oh no, that isn’t it. It’s purgatory.” And was able to push that on them so successfully that a later church council adopted it as general dogma for the church, to use in converting the pagan Slavs as well. So, uh, it-it’s an idea of, [2:41:00] uh, a nearby dimension, inhabited by disincarnate souls, that, uh, is apparently very old, but very alien to our tradition.
TM: Yes?
Audience: [inaudible] …It’s a gross oversimplification but it’s kind of related and it has to do with the quantum wave function, which is really kind of a dual wave, there’s two parts to it. Uh, one part, and they both have a temporal or time related aspect to it, one part which is called the ordinary [2:41:30] part of the wave, can be seen as a wave propagating forward in time. And the other half of the wave, which is called the complex conjugate, can be seen as propagating backwards in time, from some future state. Some past state, some future state, emitting waves which at some point interact and produce what is perceived by us as the present state, which is really a dynamic process in itself, there is no absolute present…[2:42:00]
Transcribed by Danny Hollman



[2:42:00]


Audience: But the interesting thing is that what that implies is that what we experience in the present whatever they may be is somehow related to some future state and some past state. But it also means that neither future or past are fixed and that we could sort of align ourselves with different tracks or vectors. You know, and a slightly different vector that’s slightly askew may produce something totally uh different [2:42:30] than what our ordinary perception would be. What do you think?


TM: Well, yeah, This could be. I mean, I’ve always felt that that what biology is, is some weird kind of chemical strategy for amplifying quantum mechanical indeterminacy. That you know, that macrophysical objects are not subject to quantum mechanical indeterminacy. But organisms apparently are, especially thinking organisms.
[2:43:00]


Audience: We don’t know. That’s our perception. Our perception is that, is that objects on the macro scale are to scale, are not subject to quantum fluctuations. But that’s only because uh of this probability wave in some sense, in that, that there’s a most probable state. And if we happen to exist in that, that our perception is that it, it’s more fixed . That there is no indeterminacy, that [2:43:30] it obeys certain laws that are rather linear in nature. Uh, but we really don’t know.


TM: What you’re sort of saying is that the natural laws only apply some of the time, which gives them a curious status as laws in that case.


Audience: Yeah, (inaudible) but to broaden the notion of relativity. Uh, I mean, what happens in a black hole for example, what is singularity? It simply means that the laws that normally apply in everyday experience no longer are relevant.


[2:44:00]


TM: Well, one of the problems cosmology is meeting [2:44:00] is that there are so many large black holes in the universe that you come up with you know, ten high six singularities.That’s a few more singularities than a good theory would tolerate, I would think. I mean, what kind of theory is it that hands you back ten to the ninth singularities? Which are exceptions to the theory?


Audience: That’s true, but a lot of that is based on assumptions that are stretches.


[2:44:30]


TM: Ain’t that the truth (laughs.)


Audience: Again if we get back to a psychedelic experience, you know, it’s this whole lower dimensional language slice thing that we seem to have to operate in in order to describe an experience that just does not fit with that slice. You know, we do our best to do it, you know and sometimes it comes across being very crude and niave. Sometimes it kind of gets close to the mark, but it’s difficult to know. Ah, I mean the whole notion of black hole singularities is just [2:45:00] the present attempt at explaining some of the theory that is beyond ordinary experience. None of us encounter a black hole (inaudible.)


TM: That’s true. It seems to me one of the embarrassments of science is that the Big Bang begins with a singularity, And, so then, you have this whole vast interlocking schema of rational explanation, except that it begins [2:45:30] with a hard swallow. You’re asked to believe that the entire cosmos of space and time sprang from a point no larger than a cross-section of a gnat’s eyelash. Whatever else one could say about that theory, I’d think you’d agree, it’s the limit case for credulity!


Audience: Oh, absolutely!


TM: I mean if you believe that, try to think of something that you would throw up your hands and say, “Well, I’m not buying that!” (laughs) [2:46:00] It absolutely, it’s sort of like when you join the Catholic Church you make a declaration of faith. Well when you join Science you sort of make this declaration of faith that, “I do believe that the universe sprang in a single instant from an incredibly tiny, hot, dense dot!” Unlikely, but, who knows?


Audience: Here’s something else. As you two were dialoguing a bit I was getting a visualization of, you have to look at the pond of reality [2:46:30] so to speak, as not only being the um visual of someone throwing a pebble from the top of the pond and creating the ripple effect of waves, but also from the bubbles coming from below. And to me the deep space that you were talking about is the air inside the bubbles coming from below. And so the dimensional reality of that picture is not a linear time perspective. It’s something coming from all directions. It is again the center of the mandala itself.


[2:47:00]


TM: Well, this is why I say the psychedelic experience is a boundary dissolving experience because it takes away past, present, cause, effect, all of these things uh disappear. Now remember I said ayahuasca is a kind of slow release DMT trip. And one of the really interesting things going on with ayahuasca to my mind, perhaps the most interesting thing, is that the style in the Amazon of taking [2:47:30] ayahuasca is uh people get together in a darkened hut at night, and they take it and the sing. But the songs, their selling them at the table back there, the songs, when there’s a break in the singing and you hear the people discussing the songs, they don’t discuss them like music, the discuss them. They discuss them like sculpture and painting. And they say to the Shaman “I like the part [2:48:00] with the gray bars and the blue speckling. But when you brought in the pink in combination with the beige and white I thought it was too much. Say what kind of a discussion is this about songs? You realize then when you take ayahuasca they see the songs. Now this is really interesting to me, you remember in the DMT flash they wanted you to use your voice to make objects.


Transcribed by Micki Garrison



… “I like the part with the great bars and the blue speckling, but when you brought in the pink in combination with the basen white I thought it was to much”. See, what kind of a discussion is this about a song? You realize then when you take Ayahuaska, they see the songs ah.. and now this is really interesting to me because, you remember in the DMT flash they wanted you to use your voice to make objects, well then in the Ayahuaska trance you use your voice to control these colored modalities and ah.. the whole thing is done that way, well so then what it must mean is that the neurophysiology of Ayahuaska somehow allows for the ordinary signal processing, which is being chanted into the audio pathway in the brain, is instead being chanted into the ossicle pathway, this is what's called a Synestesia. These things have been fascinating for hundreds of years to people but the synestesia means that, you know, color ah.. sounds are seen. Well, now what was this anything other than a neurophysiologic curiosity? Well I maintain it is, because I think that a language which could be seen, would be a kind of telepathic language. If you thought much about telepathy, you might have naively assumed that telepathy is you hearing me think. That isn't what it is, I think. Telepathy is you seeing what I mean. And it's not something which happens dramatically, it is a function of eloquence, you know, first you have the speaker who that is boring you to death, then you have the speaker who at least holds your attention, then you have the speaker of who may had said, she paints the picture. It means we're moving toward poetry. Well it's possible to imagine a transformation of the neural processing of language, it may be a behavioral possibility, it may not even require a gene shift. Where then we would see what we each mean. You know there's this persistent idea, promulgated by Robert Graves in the White Goddess, among other people, that there was once what he calls a Orshba(?) a primal language so emotionally intense that, to be in the presence of poetry declaimed in this language, is to see the poetry and that this is what the last poetics of the high paleolithic were about and probably it was pharmacological assisted that you can gather people in the presence of a great bard, or singer, and that person could then create telepathic modalities, and that telepathic modality, that richer more unifying language was the thing which was suppressing the formation of ego. The ego speaks and hears through sound, the super-ego projects images and is perceived as images. Now it's very interesting, at least to me, that in the pineal gland of ordinary human beings there is a compound called Adeneroglomerotropine which, when analyzed in inorganic or just in the normal nomenclature of organic chemistry, turns out to be ah..a betacarboline closely related to harmaline. Well is it possible that we are as close as a one gene mutation away from a shift that would switch our processing of audio input into the visual field and that then we would cross over into a realm of beheld understanding, and that this is the evolutionary leap that we're trying to make that is in the body, not in the technology, in the body. There's is actually going to be a minor, a one gene click to another channel and then we will be able to see what we mean and I maintain that if you can see what somebody means, you are that person, contrasted.. contrasted to ordinary communication. Ordinary communication is achieved through ah.. small mouth noises, as primates we have a throat and voice ar.. a voice box arrangement that allows us to produce small mouth noises at.. for hours if's necessary and I’m the living proof of it ah... but it's not a very efficient mode of communication because what happens is, I have a though by looking a culturally sanctioned dictionary which I have copied into my head. I translate the thoughts into an acoustical signal using my mouth which moves across space, which enters your ears. Your rush to your interior dictionary and you construct my meaning out of your dictionary. Now notes that this process rests on a very shaky assumption, it rests on he assumption that your dictionary and my dictionary were published by he same folks in he same year. If your dictionary is different from mine, you will not correctly reconstruct my meaning and we we'll have what we call misunderstanding. Notes how among us...
Transcribed by Nicole Pralaya



[2:54:00]
TM: most bring down things you can say to somebody is, would you explain to me what I`ve just said?
Because it means, oh boy here comes trouble, now you're gonna find out, that you know, people didn't understand you. They horribly misunderstood and and the uh communication is very provisional the amount of noise in the circuit is huge. Well then contrast this to, I utter something [2:54:30] and it condenses as a sculpture in the air and you and I then become its observers and we rotate this syntactical object and we look at it, we regard it from many points of view.
This is not ambiguous or its certainly considerably less ambiguous than this reconstruction from interiorized dictionaries. So perhaps what all this is about is evolutionary pressure on our languages to become visual and therefore to become more unitfied and less riddled with noise which creates misunderstanding, which creates horrible social realities yeah.


[question from the audience] I just remember reading a book called Holographic Universe


TM: oh Michael Talbots book uhuh


[question continues] he was talking about uh visual experiences being about fifty percent based on [inaudible from audience] and addition internally to to you know what coming to visual[2:55:30] it sounds like a transmission problem translation


TM: y yes although what you could do with a visible language would be very challenging we could do many things with it it is not an outlandish, it's not a completely outlandish idea. In nature it occurs, there's this fa there's a wonderful [2:56:00] hexonomenon in nature which is worth talking about to sort of legitimate such a far out notion which is as you all probably know um octopi uh can change color, this is one of those things you learn on those science specials on tv.


[transition from tape 2 to 3]


TM: Octopi can change color [2:56:30] well most people I think, assume that they do this for camouflage, that would be a reasonable assumption. They don't do it for camouflage uh let's talk about octopi for just a moment. First of all they're mollusk, they divided from our evolutionary line seven hundred million years ago, they are related to escargot uh they have no backbone for crying out loud they're not even vertebrates
uh [2:57:00] But what is always said by biology classes about octopi is that they're a wonderful example of parallel evolution because their optical system is very much like a mammalian optical system. well why is this? Well it's because they've evolved in a in an environment uh the reef environment that is a um all is dense with signals as a rainforest is and uhm [2:57:30] an octopus is soft bodied it cannot only change color but it can also change its surface from smooth and rubbery to bumpy, pimply, rugose, ribbed so forth and so on and also because it is soft bodied and in an aqueous environment it can fold and unfold and reveal and conceal parts of its body very very quickly. [2:58:00] Well all of these uh behaviors and physiological characteristics go together to make the octopus an excellent visual communicator and the color changes the blushes travelling dots and bars that these creatures manifest and the squid do it too uh are language and if you're interested in this there is a wonderful book by a guy named Moyniham called Communication and non communication among [2:58:30] the Cephalopodidia
and he goes as far as creating a a grammar for this stuff. Well so then in a way you know if you pull back from the mundane assumptions about this what's happening is the octopus wears its mind on its skin. It is dressed in its mental state e one octopus encountering another can tell [2:59:00] its mood, how recently its eaten, how recently it's had sex, whether it`s ovulating all by looking and so they the only way an octopus can have a private thought is by squirting ink into the water and then hiding inside it. This is essentially it is correction fluid for misspoken octopi you see [audience laughs] so in a sense this is what we are are being beckoned [2:59:30]
toward that we want to clothe ourselves in language, we do it to a degree in a funny way. I mean if you wanna think about virtual reality this is a virtual reality all this stuff these fixtures the architecture the infrastructure the road, these are ideas it was an idea and then it has been summoned into matter by the allotment of funds the spending of money the hiring [3:00:00]


Transcribed by Arsen Vidakovic



..the spending of money, the hiring [3:00:00] of craftsmen, so forth and so on. Our whole civilization is an excreted set of interlocking ideas, agreements. We’re like choral animals, and we somewhere, you know, there’s this naked, pulpy creature, but, you know, clothed in denim, clothed in, uhm, harder shell produced by Mercedes or Chevrolet, moving around inside the larger environment, produced by the state of Colorado, and so forth and so on. So I think octopi offer an excellent metaphoric example of what naked-mindedness would be. And some of these octopi, uhm, [3:00:45] as i said, they evolved in the, uhm, coastal reef domain. But that’s a very competitive domain. Everybody in the ocean wants to be there, because that’s where the sunlight and the food is.


So if you’re smart you’ll try and evolve into a more hostile niche. And some of these octopi have become what are called benthic, or abyssal. It means, they exist in the parts of the ocean where light never reaches.


[inaudible from audience].


™: Yes and they, uhm, have retained this communication ability by switching over to interior, uhm, interiorly generated phosphorescence. So, [3:01:30] there are species of octopi, which actually are studded with organs that have the equivalent of eyelids over them. But they’re flasher lights. So when you descend into the benthic depths [3:01:45] of the ocean, you enter a domain where all one octopus ever sees of another octopus is its linguistic productivity. Because that’s interior generated light that can be seen. And I think, you know, if you want to set the compass of virtual reality towards something worth, uhm, riding home about, then producing an octopus environment, so that we could experience this kind of thing would be a kind of proto-telepathic, uhm, playpen of some sort. Yeah?


[inaudible from audience]


[3:02:30] ™: Aha, so you think that subterfuge, uhm, enters here too?


Audience: Yes, [inaudible] last night when you were discussing the role of psychedelics and you were going by the [inaudible]-theory.


TM: right.


Audience: I assumed you were [inaudible] Rupert Sheldrake’s theory.. [inaudible] psychedelics may, uhm, [inaudible] [3:03:15].


TM: Well, le-.., you want me to [inaudible from audience]. Yeah, well.


[inaudible from audience].
™: Well you raise a lot of issues. First of all, since the discovery of retroviruses, of which the HIV-virus is one, we now know it is not always information transcripted from DNA to RNA to protein. The retroviruses transcript from RNA to DNA [3:04:00], uhm, so the central dogma which is that the genome is not being altered by, uhm, a-, uhm, by the environment, is, uhm, is sort of shaky at this point. Uhm, you bring up a very interesting point which has never, to my mind been thrashed out in orthodox science. Which is, if you had a bunch of these psychedelic molecules and we could raise them up to the size of loaves of bread, or something like that. Y- what you would notice about them is they’re all what are called by chemists, planar. Meaning, they tend to be flat. They’re not lumpy, they’re flat. Well, if you look at DMT [3:04:45] or harmine, uhm, harmine is built off a, a, pentexyl-group, and with two, uhm, benzene rings off of it. It is the perfect size to slip in-between two nucleotides in DNA. It can actually bond into the DNA there. Now, many drugs to this. Uhm, this is called, these drugs are called dimers. The usual problem with a dimer, that will intercalate. This is the other term, intercalate, means slide between the rungs of the DNA, is usually deforms the DNA. It like passes, uhm, a bulge [3:05:30] along, and then, uhm, transcription is difficult, but these indole hallucinogens can dimer with DNA without disrupting its structural integrity. This is why I believe that this is the source of the vision. That, an, you know, orthodox biologist just roll their eyes at this idea and say, well now you made a very [inaudible] error here, you can fuse genetic information [3:06:00]
Transcribed by Andrea Casanova

™: with information. Don't you understand that genetic information’s just a sequence of codons coding for protein? And uh, you know, that has no relationship with your memory of Aunt Ninny’s face. However, by being so, uh unyielding on that point, they create a huge problem in um.. In uh… for their brothers and sisters across the hall who are trying to understand memory. Because the, the molecular theory of memory is a nightmare, here's the problem. Every molecule in your body is changed every 5 to 7 years depending on who you talk to. Uhhh.. except neurons. The nerves are generally the nerves you're born with are the nerves you die with. But it's an absolute uh it’s an absolute… uh... nono to suggest that memory is lodged in the neurons. Well, if Aunt Minnie died 45 years ago, and you can still remember the dear woman’s face when she used to walk you in the park, then every molecule of your body has been swapped out five times since she quit the plane. How can you have this memory of Aunt Minnie? If and then they say “well,” well they don't say actually, they just throw up their hands. Now, the- to the people who say DNA can’t store any kind of information other than codon sequences for proteins, they have to explain why 90% of the genome seems devoted to junk sequencing that does not produce proteins, that does in fact not do anything that anybody knows about. It seems to me that we might as well just take the path of least resistance and saying if the neurons are the only part of the body that persist throughout life, if the memories persist throughout life, then you’ve got two choices. Either the memories were in the neurons or the memories were never stored in the body in the first place. And if you believe that then well the obligation to explain just where they were stored is hard upon you and the mechanism for retrieving them. So I think molecular biology for being so reductionist has made certain problems in... in neurophysiology in higher cortical functioning almost insoluble. You know, for years and year it was held that [drinks] the, this was another one of those central dogmas of biology. It was held that uhh… information could move from the nucleus of the neuron to the synapse, but that there was no transport mechanism for moving any molecular species from the synapse back to the nucleus. So consequently they said learning cannot take place in the nucleus of the neuron because the the materials for learning which would be present in the synapse modifications through experience, there's no transport system. Well this was dogma until 10 years ago. Well then they discovered what’s called axoplasmic transport and then by putting labeled compounds in the synapse they were able to locate these compounds later, uh complexed with nuclear material in the neuron, proving to the most die-hard materialist that synaptic material was in fact moving backward to the neuron. So I think that uh, you know there's much that isn't understood about how all this uhh works. Euh something about this pointing out, you know, science seeks closure, and explanation, explanatory closure. My brother one time made a little aphorism which I think says it all on this subject. He said to me once, actually on a mushroom trip, he said “Have you ever notice how as the sphere of understanding grows ever larger, necessarily the surface area of ignorance gets ever bigger?” [audience laughs] seems perfectly clear, you know a simple minded way of saying that is the bigger you build the bonfire, the more darkness you will reveal. Yeah.


Audience Member: progress really comes from uh outside the context of the paradigm that hasnt, hasnt [experiences. I mean really, to my knowledge, almost everything that's really been advanced has been [cough]philosophy [inaudible].
™:Yes well some of you have probably read Thomas Kuhns The Structure of Scientific Revolutions where he shows you know, that it's never the way that they tell it afterwards. The after telling is always about the primary insight, the careful experiment, the gathering of data, the correlation. Actually, it doesn't work that way at all, it its entirely uhh…. physic, piecemeal, ruled by synchronicity. One of the most interesting things, i'll tell this story and then we’ll go to lunch because, you know science has great pretensions about itself. I mean, it basically regards itself as a metatheory. It regards itself as capable of passing judgement on all other theories. They are supposed to be submit


Transcribed by Shant

[3:12:00]
submit themselves to science to be told whether they’re real or not.


Audience Member:Like a religion.


Terence McKenna: Yeah like a religion.


Well how many people know uh eh eh the you know. Modern science was founded by René Descartes in uh in the uh early Seventeenth Century. What were the circumstances under which Descartes founded modern science.


René Descartes was a 19 year old uh [pause] [3:12:30] basically ne'er-do-well and he decided that he would go wenching and soldiering across Europe, which was a thing that young men of certain class did at that time. And so he joined a Habsburg army that was laying siege to Prague in the in the summer of 1619 and after they had taken care of the problem there in Prague, this Habsburg army began to [3:13:00] retreat across southern germany and in the on the ev-evening of uh, now there’s a lot of arm wrestling about this but let’s just say the 17th of August 1619, this army made camp near the little town of Ulm in southern Germany which, synchronicity freaks pay attention. Ulm will later be the birthplace of Albert Einstein, worth noting. But that night Descartes in the barracks [3:13:30] uh, had a dream and an Angel appeared to him and the angel said uh the conquest of nature is to be achieved through number and measurement, and he was, thunderstruck. He took that, angelic revelation and turned it into modern science. Modern science was founded by an [3:14:00] Angel, [Audience Laughter] you know, they don’t tell you this at MIT [Louder Audience Laughter] uh you know it’s it’s astonishing uh how how eh things which claim roots in rationalism are actually among some of the most irrational productions uh in the historical continuum. It’s it a-appears that our development our history our histories have always been uhh created [3:14:30] at the promptings of invisible voices. I mean Socrates who is at the very centre of what’s called thinking in..by Western Civilisation. Socrates had a deamon D.e.a.m.o.n it was a little voice, it told it was his crap detector, it told him the difference between profound philosophical thinking and bullpucky, and uh so you know the edifice of Western [3:15:00] Thinking built on Platonism owes its debt to an invisible agency speaking from hyperspace. So does modern science a la Descartes. How much more of this I mean we don’t care if artists talk to angels because we tre.. our definition of them is that they’re screwballs [Audience Laughter] uh but eh uh ehm uh to believe that a uh a a enterprise like modern science has to trace it’s way back to the same ecstatic roots is I think uh [3:15:30] uh very suggestive that the world is stranger than we can suppose, and that we need to open, these channels of communication to these invisible worlds, probably the next great paradigm shift will be annunciated by a Mushroom, an Angel, an Elve, an Alien, what have you.[Pause]


Yeah?


Audience Member: Um With the Dmt trip what was your technique for bringing back, for holding on to this info.


Terence Mckenna [3:16:00] Repetition. Yeah. The first few times I did it I couldn’t get any grip at all on it and by talking a lot and trying to describe it you slowly slowly build up a map.


So about the Logos, um the Logos is this phenomenon that was sort of the centerpiece of Greco uh Hellenic spirituality. What it is is it’s a voice in the [3:16:30] head that uh people strove to attain for a thousand years this was the Sine qua non of uh intellectual accomplishment in the Greco-Hellenic world and the Logos, told you the right way to live and this is sort of what you get with psilocybin. You get a voice that can, confound you with the depths and brilliance of its [3:17:00] answers and one of the great, you know one of the puzzles of uh, trying to understand Greco-Hellenic spirituality is what were they talking about a...an.. and if this ever was a general phenomenon then what happened to it, why do we not experience this Uh, This is not well understood I mean the rational scholars who have created our vision of Greece, basically just dont even [3:17:30] want to talk about this they would rather gloss over it, umm [pause] you know [pause] one of the, things that sort of relates to all this is I think human beings are a lot more malleable than we tend to imagine, in other words we imagine that people in the distant past or in Greece or somewhere were just like us except they were living in a different time and place. There’s no
[3:18:00]


Transcribed by Tim Collinson



[3:18:00]
way to find out of course if they’re all dead. But there are certain episodes in the evolution of Western culture that suggest that people may be much more plastic than we ordinarily suppose. First example, um, would be, how can it be that in the middle 1500s perspective was discovered. I mean how do you discover perspective. [3:18:30] This is very hard I think for modern people to understand. Because oohohoh..it’s a given for us. I mean we see in perspective. We accept it as a quality of the world rather than a..ae..a cultural artifact put in place at a certain moment. But in fact during the Renaissance, only the most inspired people could um, paint in perspective on the natch. Most [3:19:00] people they had, complex devices called perspectographs that would project over the scene a receding grid and then people would essentially fill in the lines.


Now another example of this kind of thing that’s not so well known but that is an example that uh Marshall McLuhan [pause] makes a lot of is St Augustine the great father of the Christian church. He had a reputation [3:19:30] for being a very holy man, and the accounts of his contemporaries say that, the way people would satisfy themselves that St Augustine had a pipeline to god, is they would bring him scripture, the bible essentially, and open it in front of him and let him look at it, and then they would close the book and question him about what was there, and he vould always tell them, [3:20:00] and they were amazed. As far as we can tell St Augustine was the only man in Europe who could read silently. Nobody else could do it, it was regarded as a miracle. [Audience Laughter] Now we all, read silently, and there may be a few unfortunate individuals amongst us who move their lips while they read, but that's’ the only vestigial trait we have of this previous cultural mode where, everyone, to read meant to read aloud [3:20:30] no one could conceive of another way of doing it.


The Logos seems to me uh a kind of similar thing. It was a mental behaviour, function, which for reasons which are probably complex and unknowable, slipped out of reach. That’s why [pause] it seems to me these psychedelics are very close to being able to modify our behaviours along these kind of lines. Because there [3:21:00] are a number of behavioural and experiential possibilities, that we suppress. I mean i think it's just uh ah as an example of how little we know about what’s going on uh look at the Gräfen wuh don’t look at it but conceive of the Gräfenberg spot, the G spot. Now we all know what this is. Clearly people were looking for it for a long long time, how come they only discovered it twelve years ago. [3:21:30] I mean if something that major can be overlooked then it’s hard to imagine what might have been overlooked I mean that’s pretty central into the project of being a human being and apparently it was unknown until very very recently. So um yes th the logos was probably uh what I call the Gaian mind, and that at a certain point in cultural development people just [3:22:00] became so chuckle headed that the Gaian mind just said heh The hell with this. And uh then the voice fell silent. It fell silent right at the around the time of the birth of Christ eh right at the time of the ge eh of the shift of the cydiacle aeon you know.


Audience Member:[Inaudible (Something about phenomenalised awareness, the Ayahuasca DMT visions related to Psilocybin)]
[3:22:30]


Terence McKenna: How it works with psilocybin?


Audience Member: [Inaudible]


Well uh i mean I take, when I take Psilocybin i take it on an empty stomach I don’t fast or anything like that I just don’t eat for 6 hours, I don’t call that fasting. Uh and then I take it in silent darkness. That’s number one very important. The next thing is weigh [3:23:00] the dose, you must weigh the dose. Because 5 grams is what you want. And I’ve had over and over the experience of showing somebody what five grams is and they’re appalled. They say my god you can’t be serious I mean I wou.. I take uh... a fifth that much a fourth that much. Yeah well that’s the problem that why you don’t have elves in the attic and bats in the belfry like I do [audience laughter] [3:23:30] um you know and so then you take it and I take it on an empty stomach and a lot of people don’t like the taste I don’t really understand that uh, I just chew em up, I sit with them, and I chew em up and then... huh..


Audience Member: Dried?


Terence McKenna: Dried.


And none of this mixing in apple sauce or any of that malarky I mean what’s that about. [audience laughter]


Audience Member: [Inaudible (something about fresh vs. dried dosage)]


Terence McKenna: Oh well fresh 60 grams. 60 grams. Uhh
[3:24:00]



Transcribed by Tim Collinson





Uh, (3:24:00) because there’s more than a, you know-- there’s a huge water loss there. And, uh, then it takes-- people sometimes say, “It came on within 5 minutes.” Or, “It came on within 10 minutes.” I don’t know what that could possibly be about. First of all, it defies pharmacoat dynamics to imagine that it could come on that fast. For me it comes on, almost always, at the 1 hour and 20 minute mark. I think it can come on sooner than that. (3:24:30) I think I’m fairly resistant to these things. In the hour-- After I take it, I sit, I roll bombers, and I-- I carry out what all good Catholics know as an examination of conscience. This means you think about all the bummers that you’re afraid are going to jump out at you as soon as you get loaded. If you will carry out the examination of conscience, you will be so bored with that (3:25:00) by the time the compound actually hits that, you usually won’t have to pay any dues. Because you have faced the fact that you are a jerk 50 times in the preceding hour, so-- And then, the way i do it is; at about the hour and 20 minute mark-- and I should say in the time preceding that, you may have to go to the bathroom once, you may-- It makes your nose run, which is a funny thing. It also makes you yawn. (3:25:30)


These are definitely qualities of psilocybin, not related to its psychoactivity. And, uhm, and I think that it’s very good to decide before it hits, that once it begins, you will not alter the plan. In other words, you decide ahead of time - I’m going to sit here and do this. Because at about the hour and 15 minute mark, it will begin hitting you with stuff (3:26:00) like, “You’d really be more comfortable down stairs.” Or, uh, you know, “It’s awfully hot in here, why don't you get up and adjust the thermostat?” All this stuff, you just say, “No.No. - No. No.” We are holding the space. And sit there. Then, it begins to come on. And it comes-- the image I have is like a jellyfish, or a silk scarf, or something like that. It just kind of drifts down, and surrounds you.


And at that point (3:26:30) I-- I-- I guess I pray. I say to it, you know, “I’m completely in your hands. Please don’t hurt me, you know. I’m yours. I’m completely committed. I’ve held nothing back, so don’t burn me, please.” And, uh-- and then there is a kind of-- it is hard to describe-- a kind of, uh, potential (3:27:00) begins to build up. And you say, “Hmm.” The rush hasn’t begin- begun, but it’s-- you can almost close your eyes and see millions of little psilocybin molecules elbowing serotonin molecules out of the way. And fitting themselves into the receptor site. And the electron spin resonance dynamics is beginning to shift, and the whole thing is about to take off.


At that point, I smoke furiously. (3:27:30) And that usually is all it takes. And-- and it-- it comes on, and it-- the first rush is really astonishing. I mean, sometimes it’s more mind boggling than others. But I can remember situations where I would just see it coming and say, “Oh my God!” You know? It’s 100 miles wide, and 10 miles high. Where are you going to run to, you know? It’s just coming-- (3:28:00) you say, “Good g-rief!” You know? “I guess I’m not going to meet this one sitting up. I think i better lay down.” And in about the time it takes to make and execute that decision, then it just hits. And it’s like a tidal wave. I mean, I have the feeling when I’m doing it in California, that everyone from Vancouver to Tijuana has just, uh, crawled under their desk. Because you can’t imagine. This is happening (3:28:30) between my ears? You know, it’s more like an asteroid must have fallen in the Pacific Ocean and raised some enormous incoming wave. It’s-- what it’s sort of like it’s like watching a thermonuclear explosion through 50 feet of crystal clear glass.


So, you know, you are perfectly calm. It’s not getting at you. But the energy that is being released in your presence is awesome. And then, (3:29:00) it, uh-- and sometimes in that first pass, you actually-- the linguistic machinery is burned out. You’ve probably seen these scenes where they will test a hydrogen bomb. And they set up cameras a quarter mile away from ground zero - a half mile, a mile, two miles. And then when they actually detonate the bomb, they get the view from the first camera. And then they switch to the second camera as the first camera (3:29:30) is blown to bits and vaporize. And they keep pulling back as each successive instrument is destroyed. Well, this is sort of the feeling you have as this thing spreads out toward you. And then, it, uhm-- it does what it wants to do. It tells you what it wants to tell you. And it’s highly unpredictable. I mean, you can not-- people always say you should ask it a question. This seems absurd to me. I mean, I don’t know. Once, when my (3:30:00) life was in turmoil...


Transcribed by Jason Bastin



TM: Once when my life was in turmoil, I- I.. I did ask a question. I said, uh.. I-I wrote it down ahead of time and the q- and the question was ‘Am I doing the right thing with my life?’ And then when I got in there and I posed the question and the answer came back instantly It was a uh.. a ripoff from Lyndon Johnson it said: What kind of a chickenshit question is that to ask mee!? [3:30:30] said oh, sorrry didn't mean to presume you know [laughs] Get your act together and then we’ll have a conversation, but if that's what you wanted to talk about you should’ve taken MDMA.


Audience: [sporadic laughter]


TM: And.. it uh, and then you know paralleling what we talked about this morning and again I’m just giving you my subjective take on it. It’s like, um... [3:31:00] [clicks]
I come into a place. It’s hard to describe, it’s a feeling … and- it’s- Ikn- ump-...andd- the content of the feeling is now the elves are near, ..but they won't appear unless I invoke them. And you know I wish I could tell you that I chant in ‘mandian or something like that but I don't, well I stole a line from [3:31:30] an old, old I Love Lucy program where Ethel is talking to Lucy about UFO’s and uh.. Lucy says she talks to the UFO’s and Ethel says well how can you talk to UFO’s? and Lucy said well it’s simple I just say: Come in little green men. Come in little green men. And that's what I do! I say come in little green men, and then there is ah.. [3:32:00] and women if there are any out there! [laughs] and then there is a.. It’s like ah.. it's like -ike -it's like a marching band. It’s like a make-believe marching band is what it's like and it comes from a distance like there's a place in my vision that's small. A little dancing light and a- and a little faint sound and the light comes closer, and the sound gets louder until [3:32:30] finally, you know, they pick me up on their shoulders and with tubas blaring and sackbuts and reed bac and all this stu- then they carry me around and talk to me and it’s… the whole thing is shot through with such a weird sense of zaniness, irishness, joyfishness, I mean it’s almost unbearable it's so...uhm i don't know not exactly [3:33:00] Disney-esque because their humor tends to be a little more savage than that. And then that is part of the first wave and then the rest of the trip unfolds pretty much as you..a-- there's a kind of a pushing and pulling that goes on. You can direct it it. Each one of these plants does have a character of its own an-


Audience Question: Inaudible


TM: Sure, um th-.. it--t one of the most puzzling things about these- these [3:33:30] plants is that they have characters that seem irreducible for instance psilocybin: it is the science fiction drug. In other words, it says uh.. you know: we have been denizens of this planet for 400 million years, our original home planet is in the M5-83C system. We are connected via hyperspace to all intelligent lifeforms [3:34:00] in the galax-. It shows you enormous machines in orbit around alien planets. It talks about the end of history and the collectivizing of humanity. And it's this enormous, hortatory, salvational, dramatic, science fiction type scenario. Well then you take ayahuasca, which in molecular terms is just a few nitrogens are moved around i mean it's basically [3:34:30] the same thing and you get a completely different message. You- you- you se- you feel the energy of the rainforest and the rivers, and you.. It’s very feminine. you think about childbirth, you think about the continuity of generations, you think about the- the- uh.. mystery of the meat. You think about tantric sexuality. It’s all [3:35:00] redirected back into the human and natural world in some way.
And then of course DMT which I described this morning. Which the DMT elves are not.. from outer space or they don't present themselves that way. In fact one of the odd things about the DMT thing is that you have the feeling that this space that you break into, even though it’s large- Some people even refer to the dome of DMT, that tells you they [3:35:30] really were there. But wherever this huge vaulted space is you have the feeling, although it's hard to explain how you know this, but you have this feeling that you’re way way way underground which fits with the elf motif you're in the hall of the mountain king. You’re under the hills with the, you know, the little people who retreated under the hill. Ah.. The character of these things is one of the most puzzling things [3:36:00] uhh about them.


Transcribed by Mark Carver



Uhm..
Audience (inaudible question)
Terence: Well, that’s a real question, the Logos seems more.. It personally isn’t.. It doesn’t crack jokes and do quadruple uncondro tons and stuff like that.. Its more like a wise, loving creature.. Urm.. This DMT thing is.. You know.. Its a troup of maddened elves, and they are just doing their own thing. And then with ayahuasca, though.. Some people claim they contact an entity it hasn’t been like that for me, it seems to me mon ayahuasca you become.. Like a, a camera.. You just, lye through a visual world.. I mean after a good ayahuasca trip you just feel like your eyes are bugging out of your head. I mean, it’s like buying prints on Madison Avenue you knoww.. And you’ve just been looking and looking and looking and you literally had to give your eyes a rest after an ayahuasca trip and the ayahuasca visions are more… (..exhales..) they seem to cover a broader spectrum.. The psilocybin hallucination tend towards this highly polished, machine like, insect like, outer-space bit and the ayahuasca hallucinations are wonderful pastels.. Laces.. Layering of colors and then one of the most interesting thing to me about ayahuasca and I just cannot understand how this works if i could i’d be (inaudible) or somebody, and that is that you in the middle of an ayahuasca trip you can suggest motives, you can leave it so that for instance you can say to it; euhh.. (inaudible) and suddenly there will be thousands of candiditious cigarette lighters, champagne buckets, automobiles, paint glass windows, door knobs, silverware, all rolling in black space in front of you or the perfect exemplification of this ecstatic, the art deco ecstatic.. And then you can say to it.. Okay.. italian borough. And it just like that.. Suddenly, alter (inaudible), Madonna’s, martry saints, euh.. And fantastic scroll work and fluid elite (inaudible) and you should say.. Well.. surprise me. (audience laughter) and then you will get a coherent style like our deco, like italian borough.. Except that is nobody is there to bother to realize it on this planet. But it’s as coherent ah.. Its like you know.. 20 years ago there was no such thing as south west. As a style. You know.. This weird thing coming out of santafade (inaudbile) that I notice its planted its roots deep here as well.. (audience laugh) the turquoise and beige endlessness of feathers and hammered titanium and all that.. Well that’s an esctatic that’s as cohered in the last 20 years and coming to being.. There seems to be an infinite number of these things.. As different as the (inaudbile) of the high dynastry are to a (inaudible) Dalli? Or Apollic? Or Abage? And then you can say to it, going beyond the surprise me challenges what i always say to it is uh, “i want to see more of what you are for yourself”. And then its like this.. This., low organ tone.. And it begins to lift the vales and the temperature in the room drops about 20 degrees. And after about 20 seconds of that, you just say.. “Enough of how you are for yourself”. Because you can tell what’s happening is its starting to reveal something so peculiar, and so untailored for the human mind or the eye that you become afraid, you say you know can we go back to dancing mice, our deco cigarette lighters and borough culture pieces please this is turning into deep water as far as im concerned. So, urm.. Yes?
Audience: (inaudible question)
TM: Well, that’s a good question..
Audience: (inaudbile question)
TM: Good question. It requires a small detouring to pharmacology, the concept which all pharmacologists are familiar which you should should be too if you’re going to deal in this realm, called LD-50. This is not a pretty notion but a necessary one. It stands for Lethal Dose 50. What does this mean? It means if we have 100 mice, how much psilocybin do we have to give each mouse to kill half of them. Do you see? LD50. Half the sample dies at the LD50 dose level whether it’s graduate students or rats. Uh, now, when you’re designing a drug or when you’re thinking about a drug, what you want is a drug with an extremely high ld50 opposed [3:42:00] to its effective dose.


Transcribed by Azlan



Thinking about a drug, what you want is a drug with an extremely high LD50 [3:42:00] opposed to its effective dose. So say the effective dose of psilocybin is probably about... .5 milligrams per kilogram and the LD 50 is probably, uh, 200 milligrams per kilogram. The LD50 of psilocybin is 400 times the effective dose. [3:42:30] This is the pharmacologist’s way of saying, “This is very very safe.”


Audience: So if you ate a pound, you probably wouldn’t die?


A pound wouldn’t kill you. Uh, I don’t think. It might be getting close, but you have to eat in that range to die. Now, some drugs have horrendous LD50 to effective dose profiles.


Unfortunately, and I hope I don’t rain on anybody’s parade here: MDMA [3:43:00] has a terrible LD50 profile. The effective dose is 125 milligrams. You can kill yourself with 1000 milligrams, so that’s not good at all. Because, sure as hell, some street person or some depressed person or some maniac is going to take 1000 milligrams, and then you’ve got a stiff on your hands. So yeah.


Audience: I recently read some info on MDMA, [3:43:30] it came up that, uh, serotonin, depressed serotonin levels on MDMA- uh, uh, well, the serotonin stays low in your body about a week after taking it whereas like a related substance called E, uh, the serotonin levels are depressed for only two hours into that. Researchers have indicated that there’s- with a lot of their MDMA has some physical [inaudible] plasticity that E does not have therefore it might be wise to avoid it. Is that true? [3:44:00]


Audience: [inaudible] In fact, I read an article that it’s destroying the serotonin receptor side [inaudible]


Audience: [inaudible] 300mg dose [inaudible]


There was a different- Well, I think MDMA is- I don’t want to trash MDMA, it’s changed a lot of people’s lives and saved relationships and so forth and so on, but to me, it’s a perfect example of why you’re better off taking plants. Because, here was this drug, somebody invented it. [3:44:30] They gave it to a few friends. It seemed to be wonderful for solving personal problems, so without any collection of human data, this thing becomes an item in the underground. Well, and so then thousands of people take it. The psychological effects seem completely benign. It’s a wonderful thing. The physiological effects, it’s a very disturbing profile. It isn’t exactly as you said. [3:45:00] It’s not that it destroys the serotonin receptor side. It’s that, uh, nerves, neurons are covered by these very delicate, uh, uh, structures called dendritic spines. Now, nobody knows what dendritic spines do, but every neuron in your body has them. And when you take MDMA, it- it mows them down. They just, they go away. Now, so then [3:45:30] you get two schools of thought.


One says, well my god, anything impacting the physical brain that dramatically should be stayed away from. And the other camp says, well do you see any behavioral changes in people who take MDMA a lot? Do you see any physical destruction? Seizures, blindness, anything? And the answer is no. So they say, well, here we have histological evidence that this thing is making [3:46:00] major physiological changes in the dendrites and no behavioral sequella to back up that this is of any consequence. Well my position, being basically a very conservative person, is, in that case: wait. You know, they’re doing work on this in a dozen labs around the country. They’ll figure it out. In the mean time, take psilocybin or mescalin or something else that has been sanctioned. Uh, because you just do not want [3:46:30] to insult the physical brain. You know, that’s the- the whole name of the game. You have to keep the brain in good shape. Yeah.


Student: Could we go back to his question? Once you’re past the proper dose, is it worthwhile to start to step up to-


Oh yeah, that’s where we were ta- That’s why we started talking about LD 50 ‘cause I wanted to explain to you that, uh, it- taking a compound like psilocybin, if the effective [3:47:00] dose is 20 milligrams, 20 milligrams for somebody who weighs 135 pounds, well, then, looking at the pharmacological data, they should be able to take, uh, 2000 milligrams without any trouble at all. That’s 1000 times- 100 times more, but in fact, what happens is as you raise the dose is that the psychological presentation becomes [3:47:30] unbearable. It becomes so strange that you fear for your sanity in a good ol’ Edgar Allen Poe-ish phrase, you know. It gets stranger and stranger and uh, you know, I talk to pretty naive people who have overdosed. Usually, the way these overdose situations occur is people are gathering mushrooms in the wild and they start eating them and then they just keep [3:48:00] eating them.


Transcribed by Tyler





™: ...eating them and then they realize they’ve eaten four times more than the effective dose. And uh, this is where you get into places where you don’t know what to say because if you tell people, they’ll throw a net over you but you want to say, because you’re so personally disturbed, this is where the flying saucers land and the rectal examinations begin [audience laughs] and you’re told that you’re the messiah and they-you know, it becomes [3:48:30] quirkier and quirkier. So I think you have to uh, you know, I’m very admiring of people who can take very high doses but I find it quite challenging enough in the five to seven gram uh, range. A friend of mine says of psilocybin, that every time he takes it he tries to stand more. Meaning more of the vision because it is filtering itself. It’s [3:49:00] definitely filtering itself. This is why beginners almost never have bad trips because somebody in there looks at your clipboard and says oh this guy has never done this before so lay off the rough stuff [audience laughs]. Just, you know, bring him through the standard number [audience laughs]. It’s-it’s the people who consider themselves experienced you know, who’ve done it 20, 30, 40 times-so’s you know we can take the gloves off with this guy [audience laughs] and [3:49:30] and invar-You know it always amazes me I sometimes meet people who say you know I’ve taken mushrooms 50 times and I’ve never had a bad trip and I think you know lucky soul because when it goes left it’s hard you know, it’s hard. You have to really then you know denounce(?) your mantra’s bungle is uh the best advice I can give you, because you need to steer [3:50:00] back towards the mainstream now maybe at this point this is a good point at which to talk about what do you do when the going gets rough. There are two things at least that you can do that are very effective uh the first is and uh it’s a very simple thing but people in our culture seem to be resistant to this is you sing you force air into your lungs and body and you [3:50:30] chant you sing anything you want and it will radically alter the parameters. There’s a certain place in psilocybin that is my uh bête noir which I call the meatlocker [audience laughs] and I don’t like this place you know and meatlocker is a mild term for it it’s more like uh you know the morgue for the homicide unit or something whenever I start drifting that way I sing [3:51:00] and then you can navigate through it. The other thing you can do, although this is sometimes trickier, is uh smoke cannabis this is what those bombers are for that you rolled in the first hour while you were waiting for it to come on is as soon as it get-begins to press in in some really invasive or alarming way just take a couple of hits of the good and chant and then you can bring it back on track and also talk to it [3:51:30] don’t be afraid to say you know I don’t like this, take it off me, it’s too peculiar, I’m not ready for this. It says oh sorry ehem you know back to dancing mice uh-Yeah? [question]
Audience: *different mushrooms why * wildly varying concentrations of psilocybin?
™: Well...
[more question*?]
™: There hasn’t been a lot of work on this. Uhm, Michael Bukley(sp?) at Evergreen College years ago [3:52:00] grew stropharia cubensis by the method that’s described in my book, the book I wrote with my brother, and what they discovered...see psilocybin is 4phosphoro…. triptamines* that phosphorous group is removed as soon as it crosses uh the blood brain barrier so really uh what’s active is uh uh uh a simpler compound called psilocin 52:30 and psilocin lacks the phosphorous attachment and what they discovered was that in the early flushes the psilocybin ratio is high and the psilocin ratio is low and in the you all know what a flush is right? And in the later flushes the psilocin level rises and the psilocybin level drops so really the two together stay remarkably stable throughout the the life of the organism something worth mentioning I suppose worth* mentioning is uhm* when I was into my extra terrestrial phase when I was assuming that the mushroom was an extra terrestrial either the extra terrestrial itself or something designed by some kind of an extraterrestrial uh it was very interesting to me that psilocybin is as I said is 4-phosphoropsyNNdimethyltryptamine is is the only 4 substituted indole in nature the only *the only one well if you were to search for evidence of extraterrestrial tampering with the biome of this planet what you would look for is a unique compound occurring in one life form and no other here it is folks this phosphorous group is unique and I’ve never read [3:54:00] any description...


Transcribed by Bev Smith



[3:54:00] any description or discussion of what the evolutionary history of that- why it would appear in any organism like that and not in any other. That’s just an aside because I’m always searching for the thumbprint of the alien. It-m, there may not be an alien thumbprint, but the phosphorous group attached to psilocybin is a good candidate for it. [audience member indicates that he has a question] Yeah.


Audience Member: Um, [coughs] I’m switching the subject only slightly- [3:54:30] the descriptions that you’ve given of all of these experiences, although you’ve uh, have said that it varies blankly, there’s a remarkable internal consistency of your description- that, that you’re entering a world that seems to have boundaries and entities that you consistently encounter again and again. I’ve um, spoken to many of people over the years, some of whom [3:55:00] have known you throughout that time, and nobody I’ve ever spoken to- people who have taken high doses of- or low doses- or low doses, have ever had similar experiences, you know, clearly you’ve spoken to people who have. So I’m wondering-


TM: Maybe they were just being polite [laughs]


Audience Member (cont.): Um, I’m wondering if you’ve ever experimented, with your own experiences, like what [John C.] Lilly describes in Programming and Metaprogramming, and [3:55:30] to see, um, you describe ways of evoking the entity, which certainly could be put into a context of introducing programs in your experience-


TM: True


Audience Member (cont.): Did you work with different presuppositions going into this to see what the limits are?


TM: Well my original presupposition was to try to have no presupposition at all and then out of that came [3:56:00] all of these assumptions. You’re right that nobody has trips exactly like mine, although if you question people carefully, you can begin to see what- how it works. Uh for example, umm, you know I describe this thing this morning- the elves, the presentational thing, the high speed motion, the gifts- [3:56:30] all that- well, sometimes people will take DMT and they’ll come back and you’ll realize that it’s as though there is an archetype there which has different levels in it, and if I had to say what the archetype of DMT is, it’s the archetype of the circus. And one time I saw a woman come out of DMT, she was an anthropologist, she had fairly high body weight, and I could tell that she had not [3:57:00] gotten a complete hit- came down, we said okay, what was it? She said it was the saddest carnival in the world. She said the carnival was closed, all the tents had their flaps rolled down and there were just paper cups and candy wrappers blowing in the aisles in between them and the ferris wheel was stopped. Well, she was just at the edge of this thing and [3:57:30] if- if you think about the archetype of the circus, it is an interesting one. First of all, you have the three center rings, where wild and zany activity is continually being presented, tiny cars keep arriving with 14 clowns in each one and they keep climbing out, falling all over each other ap- but it isn’t all fun and games, it has a strange uh [3:58:00] erotic content, and as a child I think my first awareness of what I would really call eros was watching this beautiful long-haired woman in a tiny spangled costume hang by her teeth 120 feet above the center ring um doing acrobatics so you’ve got- [something happens in audience, some laugh, a woman playfully says something inaudible, TM continues] [3:58:28] -so you’ve got the clown, and you’ve got the lady in the tiny spangled costume, and then off from the center ring, you have these dark alleyways where the sideshows are, the siamese twins, and the goat boy, and all the rest of it, you know- and it has a very weird vibe about it. So it can land you in any of these places, but if you, if you try and correlate [3:59:00] people’s experiences it seems to me that it’s pretty clear that through, through their own life history and their own programming nevertheless something is trying to poke through. Ah, now my DMT experience seems pretty radically different from other people’s, although other people don’t give any account at all. I mean it’s amazing how inarticulate people are. You- they come down, you say how was it, and they say it was FAR OUT, [3:59:30] you say you know you don’t get out of here with that rat, you know, HOW WAS IT? And they say, well [sighs] they can’t give a good account. On psilocybin, I think most people experience something very much like what I describe. Huge machines, a sense of danger to the earth, apocalyptic visions, uh the idea that someone will come and help. And I’m pretty


Transcribed by William Hargrave





TM: [4:00:00]...and i'm pretty resistant to all the flotsam and jetsam of the new age, i mean i don't spend a moment worrying about the exact physical location of Atlantis or stuff like that... and i think people it inflates their personal mythologies and intellectual misconceptions but there is something trying to get through that's why this exercise, show me what you are for yourself, is really [4:00:30] a good one and maybe my trips are so weird because i have always worshiped weirdness, so i can go further down that road without being alarmed while somebody else, (ahh) (ahh) you know, would pull back. One other problem is that we have, we don't have complete maps of this places. At this stage in exploring that new world, what we have essentially are the scribbled diaries of frightened explorers, [4:01:00] and we don´t know if explorer A is talking about the same river system of explorer B or whether they were on opposite sides of the planet or the universe. Building a coherent picture of the psychedelic dimension would be the 1st challenge to a, to a rational approach to understanding it.
Audience: Have you (ahh), have you ever read the Far Journeys by Robert Monroe?
TM: Is that the 1st book?
Audience: No.
TM: No, i read the 1st book.
Audience: [4:01:30] Well there actually is a map right there. Talk about weird, this is one of the weirdest things you’ll ever read but it has some amazing rain of truth [mic noise] and in it he presents a map of all the realms of being that exist, that he’s, visited in normal consciousness. It’s an almost inside psychedelic description, but it’s, it's (ahh) pretty consistent with some of the things you were discussing this morning because, it is where you go when you die and is also where you go in between. In fact he talks about classes who attend few years ago and he describes the levels upon levels of energy coexistent and describes as like [mic noise]...
TM: Well, i read the first book and i was puzzled by how much of it didn’t seem familiar to me, like, i remember in the first book he talks about a world that's just [4:02:30] like this world except the cars are nine feet wide. That would be a very puzzling psychedelic experience to go to that world. (ahh) I knew someone who was very close to him and i don't want to set off any lawsuits here, but i once cornered this person and said, so what about it? And he said, don't worry you don't have to worry this is not getting close to your .... at all. (ahh) [4:03:00] Buddhism of the Mahayanas, has, you know, a tremendously complex (ahh) system of levels and entities, wrathful buddhas and dharmapalas and peaceful entities and, i think that that's pretty interesting as a phenomenological description of mind, i reject the philosophical premise of buddhism [4:03:30] because i think it's (ahh) you know, a non believably uncompromising kind of nihilism but buddhism as it's pitched in America soft-pedals that a lot, you know, they don't, they don't, present it as a form of nihilism but i think that ultimately it is in the most positive sense but still (ahh) i'm of the school that follows Alfred North Whitehead who said: [4:04:00] say what you may there are certain stubborn facts, and you know, that's not a very buddhist point of view, yeah.
Audience: Do you have visions on cannabis, too?
TM: [drinks water] If i can control myself and not do it too often, the problem is cannabis does so many other wonderful things and i tend to use it for those other wonderful things but if i were totally dedicated to vision, then i would only smoke once a week [4:04:30] because then you completely come to equilibrium, and then, you know, i, again i think people do it, not wrong, but not the way you should do it if you want visions. You should do it the way you do all this other things, alone in silent darkness and in high doses. (ahh) Bursts of hallucination on cannabis are hard to control and predict but sometimes they're as intense as anything can be. [4:05:00] If you read (ahh) (uhm) 19th century descriptions of cannabis use by people like, Fitz Hugh Ludlow and the Club des Hashischins and that crowd, where they were eating the hashish, it's very clear that it was the Lsd of the 19th century, i mean nobody can read those descriptions without realising this people were loaded for sure, they were thoroughly and completely smashed [4:05:30] to be
able to write those kinds of accounts.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: Yeah, go ahead.
Audience: [inaudible]...started mushroom trip...[inaudible]...started tripping...[inaudible]...real confuse entry...[inaudible]...and most i kind of realise...[inaudible]...and it has effectance and i'm not sure that...[inaudible] in terms of getting, (ahh) new learning...[inaudible]...more powerful chemist.
TM: Well, you didn't exactly make clear to me what the effect was. It fuzzes you out going into? [4:06:00]



Transcribed by Tiago Ramos



™: Well, you didn’t exactly make clear to me what the effect was...it fuzzes you out? Going in?


Audience: (inaudible) ...something totally different…


™: What it does for me is it just slightly cuts my anxiety. You know? I’m able to, to let the thing unfold of its own. I’m no-, I don’t know. I mean I have a very; a lifelong, intense relationship to cannabis. And I basically make my living out of being able to do[4:06:30] feats of memory. And, you know, cannabis is supposed to trash your memory so I don’t, you know maybe I’m different but I resist any “maybe I’m different” argument because it’s malarkey. Nobody is different enough that they can, you know…


Audience: (inaudible) memory recall, when you’re at the peak of that kind of experience...speak as clearly...I get really tongue tied.


™: [4:07:00]]No, moreso. My great dream is that as my powers of locution fade with old age that cannabis will be legalized then I can sit in front of you and smoke and my career can be pushed 20 years into the future(audience laughs)...ah...the way I use cannabis is to think. And I do a lot of thinking. And I do a lot, And I...I...Ah...at night before I go to bed.[4:07:30] I smoke. And then I play the tapes of the day and then I understand what happened. If I didn’t have cannabis I don’t think...I would be... sort of...at sea, or kind of a space case because I never get what somebody really meant, really intended, really had in mind til I play the tape stoned and then I see: Uh huh - that’s what the agenda was; that’s what was going on.


Audience: Then you go to sleep afterwards?


™:[4:08:00] O yeah. Yeah. And if I don’t smoke then I’m an insomniac. Yeah.


Audience: (inaudible)?


™: Ok. Well, LSD *sighs*...again, I’m only speaking for myself because there is no other way to approach it. I l...I found LSD very interesting[4:08:30] but ultimately kind of frustrating because I wanted visions. And, to me, what LSD by itself does is it does a lot of slippery and hard to name stuff. It accelerates and changes the quality of thought. It...mmmmhhhhhh, well, basically that’s it. It does something to the quality of thought. But I had been reading Aldous Huxley and Havelock Ellis and those people and I kept saying, you know,[4:09:00] where are the ruins of ancient civilizations? Where are the jewelled tapestries? And, and then, fiddling around with LSD, I discovered that if I would, ah, take it with mescaline then it became the psychedelic experience that I was seeking. But, in and of itself, it’s kind of psycho-analytic? It’s sort of like cleaning up your act?(Audience: mmhmm) It often focuses you on your own personal stuff?[4:09:30] (Audience: mmhmm) And, you know, I have to confess to you: I’m not that into my own personal stuff probably because it’s so horrendous, ah, *deep breath* but I don’t like personalized trips. I like cosmic vision information trips. And, and then mescaline, ah..., mescaline is... you have to take a lot to get it to really do what you want it to do. And it being and amphetamine[4:10:00] it has a not a very good LD50 profile. It’s not like MDMA where 10 times the effective dose and you’re in real trouble but probably 40 times the effective dose and you’d be sweating bullets. So, ah, and then just the nature of my life I have not had as much to do with mescaline as these other things. I’m really a vision freak. And people say you know, well there’s feeling and there’s insight[4:10:30]...and there’s this and that but you know the reason I’m so fixated on vision - or the excuse I give - somebody said: O, it’s because you’re a double Scorpio but (audience laughs) for me it’s the, for me it’s the proof that it’s not coming from me. I can come up with insights. I can come up with funny ideas but I can’t come up with objects never before seen by the human eye or mind and so when the visions start[4:11:00] then I feel: this is the transpersonal part of the trip; this isn’t my unconscious, my memories, my fears, my hopes; this is something else yeah.


Audience: Um.(inaudible)?


™: How do boundary dissolution andi-?


Audience: (inaudible)?


™: Well I think, in very practical terms[4:11:30], they show you that everything you know is wrong. (audience giggles) You know, I mean how can the ego survive that piece of information? It just puts in your lap incontrovertible evidence that everything you’ve ever thought or believed is hokum and that’s extraordinarily humbling. And that word: humbling means the feeling you have when your ego is reduced. You know? Humble yourself enough and you’ll begin to feel humiliated.


Transcribed by Artemis Jones





TM: [4:12:00] And, you know, that’s a deeper ego reduction. I think they, aside from any magical chemical effect they may have on ego, they’re just showing you the true size of the universe and your place in it. And you know, In our ‘down’ personal lives, every man, every woman, a king, or a queen. I mean, we build castles in the air. Our career, our children, our whatever. Well, then you get into those places, you say, [4:12:30] you know, what, how preposterous.


Audience: [inaudible] Is there any gender difference in [inaudible]?


TM: For men and women?


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Well, that’s an interesting question.


Audience: I’m interested in it also, in the history [inaudible]


TM: Yeah, you mean what we talked about last night?


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Well, I think women, by virtue of the fact that they [4:13:00] menstruate and give birth, are just inherently more chemically driven creatures than men. Men are Apollonian in intent. The idea is always some kind of abstract purity, clarity, kind of thing. And women know from the get go that that‘s an illusion. That the reality is the floor of the rainforest, [4:13:30] the interconnected tissue, the levels, the trade-offs, and so forth and so on. Ah, this is why I think men generally men tend to be more generally interested in these things than women, and to also be more impacted by them. For women it’s seems to sort of fit in, and affirm what they knew. For men it seems to come as a tremendous surprise that this is the way uh, things are put together. [4:14:00] I think that if we, if everybody gave birth and experienced menstruation probably we never would have launched ourselves into history. In a way, you know, without going too far with it, men are the ancillary sex. I mean the original uh, uh, blastula in the embryonic development is female. And I was listening to someone talk about this the other night [4:14:30] saying no wonder men have the problems they have. What a man is, is a woman who has been under incredible chemical assault for nine months in the womb. And you just have been hammered, sculpted, shaped, and recast again, and again. And then you’re born male. A female fetus doesn’t experience anything like that. It starts out with a smooth shot, it’s, it’s and um, a phylogenetic expression, [4:15:00] and, and then achieves it. I don’t think of the ego as particularly male because I think that we all have it to accepted degrees. But men are able to express it. A woman with an ego is frustrated. A man with an ego is a menace to all concerned, you know? [laughs] Yeah?


Audience: [inaudible] ... trip with another people. Do you think the knowledge of energy changes your trip…[inaudible]


TM: [4:15:30] I think it’s very, it’s a very major decision to do that. That if you’re going to take a high dose of psychedelics with somebody else then you better be prepared to get all entangled with them. Uh, which can be great. It can also be fairly confusing. I don’t like taking psychedelics, uh, this is not an issue of entanglement. That’s sort of what goes on between lovers or close friends. But I get a lot of requests to [4:16:00] sit for people. And I don’t do it because I, I don’t know whether it’s my personality or what it is? But I am unable to contain my anxiety in the presence of another stoned person. Especially if I’m stoned. If I’m stoned, and they’re stoned and we’re in a dark room, I cannot get off. I listen to them breath. I worry. I wonder if I should ask them if they’re alright. [4:16:30] Then I go off on long trips about not interrupting them. And then that loops back into, ’but I haven’t heard them breath for twenty minutes!’ [laughter] And, and, and I’m always afraid. I don’t know. So really people say, “Doesn’t it take courage e to do it alone?” For me it takes more courage to do it with people because inevitably you get tangled up in some kind of craziness. And you know, you can think you’re having a telepathic experience. And they’ve decided that they want to have sex or something, [4:17:00] and meanwhile I’ve just had a revelation about that entry Morlier made in his diary when he was talking to his niece Anges about the nature of the French Comic Theater. And, so, you say, boy, you know, we’ve got too much on the menu here. Um. But I’m weird! Remember that. [laughter] Yeah?


Audience: [inaudible] Um, okay now, and we uh have heard about the uh [4:17:30]
ayahuasca so, um, can you comment on this kind [inaudible] and contrast to what you’re talking about [inaudible]



TM: You mean the group mind on ayahuasca?


Audience: Yes, [inaudible] Is that possible.


TM: Oh yeah. No, it’s very possible. Uh, it’s very possible. I mean, you can sit with someone and play a little game where you will describe the hallucination for 30 seconds, then they get to describe the hallucination for 30 seconds. [4:18:00] And you can absolutely convince yourself that people are seeing the same you know, that you’re seeing, the same thing. And when you toss sex into the mix, it just goes over the top.




Transcribed by Micki Garrison





TM:-then they get to describe [4:18:00] the hallucinations for 30 seconds then you can absolutely convince yourself that people are seeing the same, you know, that you're seeing the same thing. And you know when you toss sex into the mix it just goes over the top. I mean I've had the impression- I don't want to trot it out as a condition of mine or something that I assert true but I have had the impression stoned on mushrooms making love that um, i- it's like a perspiration forms on the surface of the skin and there's some kind of electrolytic thing that goes on and the boundaries dissolve between the people. I don't mean metaphorically. I mean that you become one organism. And that's uh, that's pretty uh, pretty amazing.


Q: ???


Yeah yeah yeah. Now as I just said I don't like taking psychedelics with people, I guess what I should have said is that I hate being responsible because I don't mind taking Ayahuasca with 30 people none of whom speak English in a hut up some river but that's because I know that the old shamans are in charge, that I'm just a face in the crowd. Nobody's going to me for explanation or help. I'll tell you an ayahuasca story just to give you an idea.


Years ago in 76 Kat and I, it before we were married, in Peru and we had found this Shaman who was very good and he had a following and we were, you know, apprenticing ourselves to him and he - the style of the Peruvian Mestizo people I mean cultures handle this differently but they are never straight with each other. It's an incredibly masked culture almost like the Japanese but without the formality. In other words if you think that's somebody's a jerk you would never say that that's the last thing you would say because that's your true opinion. So we got into a situation with these people where this elder Shaman who was very respected, beloved even by these people he had a nephew, a sobrino, who was an absolute jerk and this guy was into pimping a little on the side and he was very ambitious to perfect his ayahuasca so he could go to Lima and charge yuppies for it. And he had this really awful habit, and no what really had gone on before we got there, play what all get together to take Ayahuasca and these old old guys, you know, 80 85 years old but totally authentic dudes would sing these beautiful Ayahuasca songs and he would sing against them. I mean can you imagine a scene like this where everyone's singing Row Row Row Your Boat except one guy wants to sing Five Foot Two Eyes Of Blue.


And the level of social tension ease meetings would just rise and rise but nobody would ever say anything to this guy and tell him to bug out and can that crap so one night this is happened to meetings in a row this is the third meeting like this everybody had hoped this guy wouldn't come. So then he showed up, then we all dosed and then we get loaded and the singing begins and he begins his singing and in the wave of hallucinations and Kat was sitting next to me I feel him sitting up on his haunches kind of rocking back and forth on his heels, and I would look at him and I could see he was going through these weird animal transformations. First he would become like a jackal then he would become like a monkey and it was really intense. And I mentioned it to Kat and she could see it too. All, and he capped - and we were also trying to tape these Ayahuasca songs so it was a double irritation to us that this guy was so out of control. Laughter a particularly long song by the old guys with him just hammering against them I could feel Kat who has a real Irish temper getting more and more pissed off at this guy and finally at the end of this song when the silence fell, she had been just staring at the floor and she looked across the room at Don Jose and uh, gave him a look of pure loathing and I saw these red things, these red triangular-shaped things come out of her eyes and go across the room like woop woop woop woop! and when it got to him it knocked him off his feet. He turn on backwards from the impact of these things literally and everything going on in the room stopped dead and the Elder Shaman said to the guy sitting next to him, he said oh the gringa sends 'badadadada'! And you know then you realize wow we're in over our heads here you can't chill shi from Shinola in this thing. This concludes tape three. Our program continues [4:24:00] with tape four.


Transcribed by Eva Petakovic





TM: ...so that’s an example of, you know, magical power condensed onto the material plane. Yes?


Audience: [inaudible] ...purple triangles coming from your head… [inaudible]


TM: Clearly, the same- the same phenomenon, uh, yeah!


Audience: Um, first of all, I have to ask [4:23:30] [inaudible] question, [inaudible] after that?


TM: Ah, he actually didn’t come back after that evening, uh…


Audience: Then the other question, or- or actually [inaudible], um, I have done extensive work with Iridology, to the point that, I could understand where the limitations [inaudible] blatantly obvious, because it’s not so much [inaudible] the characteristics of the iris, the eye, it’s what’s transmitted from the mind, through the pupil, or the sensor of that [4:25:00] [inaudible] that is really being accessed by someone who is [inaudible], and that’s what would give you [inaudible] that you’re looking for, and so, I feel that, that power, that transmission of mind, so many times, is carried from that energy that- that goes back and forth through the eyes, and I’m wondering if you had any more thoughts on that.


TM: Well, it seems to imply that we are all potentially linked together in many ways that civilization has suppressed. We are no longer [4:25:30] telepathic, we are no longer able to reach out and cap somebody at a glance, like that, and uh-


Audience: But I think we do, and I think we do all the time.


TM: But somehow our perception of what’s been going on is- is skewed. We don’t- you know Rupert and I talked a lot about this. He had the idea that- he said- you know- the search for a psychic- the search for proof of psychic power has not been a very happy story, with card-flipping and this sort of thing. And Rupert [4:26:00] had the genius to realize that: what is the commonest psychic power, that we all believe exists, and have experienced and so forth, but which science is utterly able to explain, that could be statistically studied? Well, what it is is, the sense that someone is looking at you, you know? And you could test this, and in fact, we did tests, where you would choose one [4:26:30] person and put them at the front of a room full of people. And you would tell people, either look at your lap, or look at the back of this person’s head. And they would be asked, are people looking at you? Or are people looking at the back of- of- uh- looking at their lap? And certain people -you can quickly satisfy yourself- were able to detect this a phenomenal amount of the time, well beyond statistical, uh, you know, [4:27:00] the rules of probability. So, I think we’re surrounded by subliminal abilities that we can’t, uh, really understand. I mean I- from years of travelling in Asia, I- I- have an amazing psychic power, which is, I ca- I can tell when food shouldn’t be eaten, you know? And it will happen to me, you know, in very good restaurants, and- and if I go against it, you know [4:27:30], I’ll spend the evening over the toilet, because I couldn’t believe that Che So-And-So would serve poison food because it was costing me so much money. But then when I get back to the hotel room, sure enough, by overriding my own instincts, I- I- get into trouble.


TM:I think... psychic ability, well this is worth talking about, that we cannot be- or how can I put it? We cannot- uh- evolve [4:28:00] beyond the confines of our language. And if you have a language that makes telepathy impossible, then telepathy will be impossible inside that culture. You see we all pay lip service to the idea that, uh, that lang- that language and culture, ah, create each other, but we actually act as though culture is real, and it isn’t. [4:28:30] I- I- learned this, you know, in Peru, very dramatically, because in the Peruvian Amazon, there is a- a- disease which people are very, very concerned about, called “susto”. Have all of you heard of this? Susto only affects Peruvians. This is the first clue that something weird is going on. And its major manifestation is bad luck. And- but if you get it, [4:29:00] and you’re a Peruvian, you prepare to cash in your chips. You know, it’s as- it’s as horrible as melanoma. You know, you’re doomed if you have this stuff. And you have to go to a shaman and get it taken care of or you’re dead within six months. But I can’t get susto, it’s not- it’s a linguistic disease of some sort. It travels around inside the confines of Mestizo Spanish, and nowhere else.


Audience: But it’s the evil [4:29:30] eye [inaudible] it is the equation in the, uh, south of our country-


TM: Well, yeah people have this ideas, yeah. And you know, like people say, well magic is accomplished because the person the magic is being done to, knows that it’s happening, and therefore they unconsciously participate in their own demise. But I’ve observed these shamans in the Amazon, and they will go- if a shaman has decided to actually get somebody, then he will go to incredible lengths… [4:30:00]


Transcribed by Tuan Nguyen





[4:30:00] lengths to conceal what he is doing so that the person never knows and never knows how to blame, so it isn’t some kind of psychological co-option that’s happening. It’s something a good deal more complex than that. Yeah.


Audience: Uh, you know, a while back you were talking about uhm, uhm, a period of time where humanity was inside out uhm… that made me think about [inaudible] for example,[4:30:30] uhm, we have all these myths about fairies and elves and uhm, magic and perhaps at one time the world was like that but it is not like that now [inaudible] talking about social context that does not include telepathy uhm, generates a culture without uhm.. people experiencing telepathy, uhm… and yet we have all these ideas… we have all these fairy tales… you know and now that we’re talking about self-transforming machine elves, uhm, when you, uhm,[4:31:00] have a *sneeze*


TM:Well, I’m not sure that you got it into a question that I can respond to. Try again.


Audience: Ok, so, uhm… our culture then is uhm... [inaudible] and uhm the whole idea of magic, and things like uhm, the existence of elves, uhm… [inaudible] people would laugh at that unless uhm they are on the supposed fringes. Uhm… do you think, that this kind of thing could come back? Do you think that we will [4:31:30] have uhm… you know uhm… [inaudible] … these kind of things.


TM: Yes, sure, because what you have to do is you have to shift the locus. I mean, it’s kind of hard to explain but, every civilization has a locus and, and we have disempowered ourselves by shifting the locus to an imagined class of experts. We have an incredibly peculiar version of how the universe is put together. [4:32:00] First of all, we rely, a lot of the time, on the notion of the eensy beensy. Genes, viruses, atoms, elementary particles. These are the things which shape our world, we tell each other. And yet, who has ever seen any of these things? I mean a virus maybe a few people have seen. A hydrogen atom? It’s a pretty airy fairy concept and when you start talking about the anti nu meson and stuff like that, where you can [4:32:30] only approach it through an arcane mathematical language the reality, whatever that means, of these things becomes pretty , uhn, questionable. See, one of the things I think that psychedelics could do is r- give back to us what I call uhm, the immediacy of felt experience. Since the rise of cartesian analysis in the 17th century [4:33:00] everything that we experience has been defined as, what are called, secondary characteristics. Color, a secondary characteristic. Uhm, feeling. Uhm, and what’s real is mo- mass, momentum, charge, spin, stuff like this, which, you know... These are the primary qualities of the universe?Wwho ever encounters or deals with them? We need to model reality so that it is [4:33:30] understandable to us. I mean, that that statement even had to be made shows how far off track we are. Our current model of reality is excellent for describing the behavior of hydrogen at the center of stars or something like that. Terrible for explaining to you how you’re supposed to stay tuned to your girlfriend. So somehow we have sold out to abstraction. And this is something about science, you know? And the demonic [4:34:00] power of numerical analysis and stuff like this. I think that w- part of what the psychedelic revolution is and why it is so politically threatening is because a psychedelic person does not believe anything they cannot confirm for themselves through thought, intuition, or feeling. And a non-psychedelic person joins up with the quantum [4:34:30] physicists, or the hasidic Jews, or some group of people who already got it packaged and figured out. I mean, the UFO thing is a good example. Everybody’s interested in UFOs, and you know, are there space people, are there not. And I think most people think that the news will come, that the way you encounter a UFO, the way most of us will encounter a UFO, is that the president will call a press conference [4:35:00] and say, you know, that the time has come to speak frankly about certain declassified material and that, yes, in fact it has been going on. I mean, that’s not how it’s going to happen. The way it’s going to happen is on five grams in silent darkness in your living room, and that’s real. You know, if flying saucers were to land on the south lawn of the White House tomorrow it would be minor news compared to what can happen to you [4:35:30] a minute and a half after smoking DMT. We don’t realize that we are not real unless we are the center of our own private mandala, and so we look to media, to experts. You know, maybe the Dalai Lama can clarify it or Mother Theresa or Stephen Hawking. Well, forget all that. Those are just linguistic concepts are far as you’re concerned. The only thing that’s real to you is yourself and your immediate surroundings. And if we could [4:36:00]


(There is a loop in part of the audio somewhere between here and 4:42:00)



Transcribed by Paul Mullins



[4:36:00]TM:empower that,you know,our political problems would disappear overnight.We are infantile and we do love it.We don’t really try to claim our existential validity,and those who do are called mad, because they depart from the sanctioned paradigm.Over here,somebody...yeah.
Audience: First,it just struck me that,one of the things you seem no good at is bringing that [inaudible word] experience into language[4:36:30][inaudible],which creates things/thinks and realities that you...could be decrying of the shared linguistic reality where we can discuss the experience that we’ve had..[inaudible]


TM: Yes,well,it becomes real when we talk about it.I mean, one of the most satisfying experiences that i have as a public speaker is, sometimes, after speaking to[4:37:00]groups, like last night, somebody will come up afterwards and say:”I thought i was crazy, until i heard you speak.Now i know there are at least two of us”, and the truth is, you know, there are more than two of us, there are thousands.If you...you know, it’s a delusion if it happens to one person, it’s a cult if it happens to twenty people, and it’s true if it happens to ten[4:37:30] thousand people.Well this is a strange way to have epistemological authenticity conferred upon something.We vote on it?!...you know.So, i would like competition.I mean,i feel pretty lonely out here, i’m surprised nobody has followed me into this. There must be other people who can articulate this things as well or better than i can but, boy, they don’t seem to come forth[4:38:00], and i really don’t know why that is, because what i say is not all that exceptional, it’s just the sum total of it is kind of eerie.But if we don’t...that’s what i was saying...you know, we cannot evolve faster than we evolve our language, our language is like the collective skin of our culture.So, you know, until you say the words “self-transforming elf machines from hyperspace”, then[4:38:30] there aren’t such things. Once you say it, it has gained a certain kind of ontological currency….


Audience: …weren’t you arguing the opposite point, you know,[inaudible] stuff that[inaudible] quantum physicists[inaudible] and that..[inaudible] language systems..


TM: ...well, see, people are buying other people’s experience. I mean, if you’re not a quantum physicist, why in the world should you take those people seriously?[4:39:00]They’re talking gibberish. What power does it have over you?, except that it comes presented on the platter of science.Say: “You must believe this! If you don’t believe this you’re not a well educated Tranby with-it person.We can just say: “Well, malarkey, didn’t you people believe something completely different 15 years ago?” they say: “Yes,but know we’ve got it!”, say: “Well, I’m supposed to take that assertion seriously?You change your mind every 6 months.”


Audience: [inaudible] during[4:39:30] psychedelic{inaudible] is,you know,ungraspable, very frustrating[inaudible] and,you know,we can’t settle down until we[inaudible] stabilizing language [inaudible] settle down and play with it.So, we[inaudible] for having a true experience [inaudible][4:40:00] is, you know, beyond context.Once we[inaudible] it, it becomes… not quite an[inaudible], but the experience really changes,and… it becomes something to which then[inaudible] to each other,and have a good [inaudible], but...you know,we’re missing it[inaudible]


TM:Well,every entity has a value dark[4:40:30] dimension.I mean,surely only the most naive of quantum physicists believe that,you know,the quantum electrodynamics description of the electron is all there is to say about the electron,because biology is made out of electrons and you can’t reason from quantum electrodynamics to the rain forest, you know, obviously other factors are present, which[4:41:00] are escaping this particular linguistic model, so, being able to talk about something doesn’t rob it of it’s mystery, it’s merely is a sectioning through it that gives you a kind of a lower dimensional map of it, but the mystery remains intact.[editorial cut in the video]Well i’m not sure that you got it into a question that i can respond to.Try again.


Audience: Ok.So, our culture[4:41:30] is in a phase that’s very,like, science oriented,and the whole idea of magic and, things like,the existence of elves[inaudible], people laugh at that[inaudible] Do you think that this kind of thing could come back?Do you think that we will have,you know,like,[inaudible] experiences with this kind of things?


TM: Yes,sure,because you have to do it,you have to shift the locus[4:42:00]


Transcribed by Adrian Stan





[4:42:00] the locus, I mean it’s kind of hard to explain because every civilization has a locus. And we have disempowered ourselves by shifting the locus to an imagined class of experts. We have an incredibly peculiar version of how the universe is put together. First of all, we rely, a lot of the time, on the notion of the itsy-bitsy. Genes, viruses, atoms, [4:42:30] elementary particles. These are the things which shape our world, we tell each other. And yet, who has ever seen any of these things? I mean a virus, maybe a few people have seen. A hydrogen atom? It’s a pretty airy-fairy concept. And when you start talking about the [anti-numason?] and stuff like that, where you can only approach it through an arcane mathematical language, the reality of these things, whatever that means, becomes pretty,uhm, [4:43:00] questionable. See, one of the things I think that psychedelics could do is give back to us what I call the immediacy of felt experience. Since the rise of cartesian analysis in the 17th century, everything that we experience has been defined as, what are called, secondary characteristics. Color, a secondary characteristic. [4:43:30] Uhm feeling. Uhm, and what’s real is mo- mass, momentum, charge, spin. Stuff like this which, you know... These are the primary qualities of the universe? Who ever encounters or deals with them? We need to model reality so that it is understandable to us. I mean, that that statement should even have to be made shows how far off track we are. Our current model of reality is excellent for describing, [4:44:00] uhm, the behavior of hydrogen at the center of stars or something like that. Terrible for explaining to you how you’re supposed to stay tuned to your girlfriend. So somehow we have sold out to abstraction. And this is something about science you know? And the demonic power of numerical analysis and stuff like this. I think that part of what the psychedelic revolution [4:44:30] is, and why it is so politically threatening, is because a psychedelic person does not believe anything they cannot confirm for themselves through thought, intuition, or feeling. And a non-psychedelic person joins up with the quantum physicists, or the hasidic jews or some group of people who already got it packaged and figured out. Uhm, I mean, [4:45:00] the UFO thing is a good example. Everybody is interested in UFOs and, you know, are there space people, are there not. And I think most people think that the news will come that the way you, uhm, encounter a UFO, the way most of us encounter a UFO, is that the president will call a press conference and say, you know, that the time has come to speak frankly about certain declassified material and that yes in fact,uhm, it has been going on. [4:45:30] I mean, that’s now how it’s going to happen. The way it’s going to happen is on 5 grams in silent darkness in your living room. And that’s real! You know, if flying saucers were to land on the south lawn of the White House tomorrow it would be minor news compared to what can happen to you a minute and a half after smoking DMT. We don’t realize that we are not real unless we are the center of our own private mandala. And so we look to media,[4:46:00] to experts. You know, maybe the Dalai Lama can clarify it, or Mother Theresa, or Stephen Hawking. Well forget all that. Those are just linguistic concepts as far as you’re concerned. The only thing that’s real to you is yourself and your immediate surroundings. And if we could empower that, you know, our political problems would disappear overnight. We are infantile and we do love it. We don’t really try to claim [4:46:30] our existential validity. And those who do are called mad because they depart from the sanctioned paradigm. Over here somebody. Yea.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Yes so it becomes real when we talk about it. I mean, one of the most satisfying experiences that I have as a public speaker is sometimes, after speaking to groups like last night, somebody will come up afterwards and say, “I thought I was crazy until I heard you speak. [4:47:30] Now I know that there are at least two of us.” And the truth is, you know, there are more than two of us. There are thousands. If you, uhm, you know, it’s a delusion if it happens to one person, it’s a cult if it happens to 20 people, and it’s true if it happens to ten thousand people. Well this is a strange way to have, uhm, epistemological authenticity conferred upon something. We vote on it? You know? [4:48:00]


Transcribed by Paul Mullins



TM: You know, ah, so I… I - I would like competition. I mean I feel pretty lonely out here; I’m surprised nobody has followed me into this. There must be other people who can articulate these things ah, as well or better than I can, but boy they don’t seem to come forth.. And I really don’t know why that is because what I say is not all that exceptional it’s just the sum total of it is kind of eerie (4:40:30) Uh, but if we don’t…. That’s why I was saying uh you know “We can not evolve faster than we evolve our language” our language is like the collective skin of our culture.



So you know until you say the words "Self-transforming Elf machines from Hyperspace" - then there aren't such things. Once you say it, it has gained a certain kind of ontological currency. (4:49:00)


Audience: So weren't you arguing the opposite point you know when you spoke of ... (inaudible?)


Well see people are buying other people's experience. I mean if you're not a quantum physicist, why in the world should you take those people seriously? They're talking gibberish. What power does it have over you except that it comes presented to you on the platter of 'science'? See you must believe this, if you don't believe this, you're not a ah, well educated, trendy 'with it' person. You can just say, well, malarkey - didn't you people say something completely different 15 years ago? They say yes, but now we've got it! So say well am I supposed to take that assertion seriously? You change your mind every six months.


Audience: So our experience during the psychedelic experience…


TM: Uh huh


Audience: before we bring it to language, is... is… you know, ungraspable, very frustrating (inaudible) and... and you know we can't settle down until we bring this to language, that is based on, with their experience, they brought it to language and they can kind of settle down and play with it, so... we need to be… (inaudible) beyond concepts, once we conceptualize it, it becomes not quite an experiment but the experience really changes and… it becomes something that we can then (inaudible) to each other and have good social time… but uh, uhh ya know we’re missing the point.


TM: Well, every entity has a ‘value dark dimension’. I mean I… Surely only the most naive of quantum physicist believe that the... Uhh, you uh, you know the quantum electrodynamic description of the electron is all there is to say about the electron because biology is made out of electrons and you can't reason from, from quantum electrodynamics to... the rain forest. You know, obviously other factors are present which are escaping this particular uh, linguistic model. So, being able to talk about something doesn’t rob it of it’s mystery, it merely is a sectioning through it, that uh gives you a kind of a lower dimensional map of it, but that the, the mystery remains intact... Y- you know um… (long silence filled with audible movements) Vichtenstein talked about what he called “the unspeakable”... and I a, you know; the unspeakable is the true domain of being, and then within that there is a very small subset of those things which can actually be captured in language, but they’re a vanishingly small uh set of the whole thing, mostly it’s all mystery. I don’t know why this is so surprising to people I mean where is it writ large that bipedal primates with binocular vision are supposed to be carrying around in their heads; true models of the cosmos? I mean, would you expect eh, an apple tree or a monarch butterfly to have a true map of the cosmos, ahhh, inside them? No more than that we should have… so I think though all… all knowledge is provisional and I think the new science will honor this. This is why the rise in the use of the word model, they no longer believe they’re giving a complete explanation of the phenomena they just say well here's a model [swallows] and next year we'll get a better model and will keep modelling and our models will get better and better but they will never be more than crude approximations to an unspeakable mystery.



Audience: do you find this tragic?



TM: No! I find this exhilarating, I think part of the p... male... or part of the ego dominator... pathology is to demand closure out of everything, there is no closure, you have to learn to sit with the messiness of the mystery you know it’s this thing we said this morning the bigger you build the bonfire of understanding the more darkness is revealed to your startled eye, so no I think its open ended and exhilarating and tremendously, uh, exciting that that’s the kind of universe we’re living in.



Audience: Terence, I think this thing about mystery is that find it sad I think up until a few months ago my main thing was try and understand try and understand and now I read something somewhere....



Transcribed by Luke, Danny



Audience: [4:54:00][inaudible]


TM: That’s right. Well, you know, this is not nearly the-the stoned ravings of the psilocybin brigade. Do you all know, or have you ever heard of, Godel’s incommensurability theorem? This sounds daunting and disturbing. Uhm, have you ever [4:54:30] heard of this? Does anybody have a clue what I’m talking about? Okay, well that in itself is a measure of the kind of society we’re living in because to my mind, more important than Einstein, or Schrodinger, or any of those people was Kurt Godel, German mathematician. He began by studying the calculus and he had a very...funny method. What he did was he would number every operation [4:55:00] in - in a partial differential equation and these numbers are called godel numbers.


Audience: How do you spell Godel?


TM: G-o-d-e-l. And what he showed, I think this is the most important intellectual step taken in the 21st century. He showed that any formal system will produce true statements [4:55:30] which are not provable within the confines of the formal system itself. Now what this actually means is that mathematics can fail. It mean that there is no closure. You ca- he proved this logically. Showed that closure is impossible. That everything- He showed it for arithmetic, the most secure of all intellectual edifices. Essentially what he showed [4:56:00] was that 2+2=4 is a very strong tendency, not a law. And, uhm, this incommensurability theory means that no program of- of formal analysis will ever completely exhaust its subject. There will always be a residuum of mystery. And, uhm, we need to come to terms with this. I mean, it’s taken us 80 years to get Einstein [4:56:30] under our belts and that’s a simple notion compared to what Godel is saying. Because what he’s saying is not about, you know, the distortion of space-time near massive objects but something which actually affects our own lives on a day-to-day basis. And, you know, if you live for closure you’re beating your head against a stone wall and your head will wear out long before the stone wall will. There’s a kind of a- an appreciation for the mystery [4:57:00] needs to place that attitude that the mystery is an unsolved problem. Mysteries have no relationship whatsoever to unsolved problems. Yeah.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: You don’t need a complete map. I mean, I’m not such a van of Wittgenstein but he seems to have raised his ugly head here. Uhm, Wittgenstein used to say “We do not seek statements which are true. [4:58:00] We seek statements which are true enough.” That’s this genuflection to the incommensurability theorem. That’s as good as it gets folks. True enough. Beyond that there’s just, you know, the airy realm of metaphysics which will never be plumed. So what we’re trying to do is refine our model, make it more responsive to what we want the model to tell us. But you don’t want to confuse the model [4:58:30] with the phenomenon being modeled because it will always have dimensions which exceed the grasp of the theory.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Yes, although, I have real problems with probability theory which we’ll probably get into tomorrow. I think that, in a sense, probability theory has made it almost impossible for us to [4:59:00] think clearly about anything. Because it- it contains certain built in insidious assumptions that are, uhm, purely assumptions. For instance, Probability theory tell you that when you flip a coin, the odds of it being heads or tails are 50/50. If, in fact, that were true. The coin would land on it’s edge every single time. [4:59:30] So, what we need, you see, is not a theory of uhm, of uhm, what is possible. That’s science. If you want to know if something is possible you find a scientist and they’re always perfectly happy to fulfill this function and tell you whether this is possible or not. What we completely lack, as a civilization, is a theory that explains to us [5:00:00]


Transcribed by Paul Mullins



[5:00:00]TM: ...us how it is, out of the vast class of possible things, certain things undergo what Alfred North Whitehead called "the formality of actually occurring" ; We have no theory. I mean, science can say, "Well, it's probable that it'll be this, but it's also 40% probable that it'll be that". You say, "Well, which will it be?" They said, "Well, we, I just told you the probability." [5:00:30] Say, I'm not, that's not good enough! I want to know..." Say, "We have no theory of selecting among the probabilities."


The other problem that haunts probabilities theory is that it assumes that time is an absolute flat plane. It assumes that....No physicist tells you in his lab notes, "Please perform my experiment on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Saturdays, because it won't work any other time." In other words,[5:01:00] the assumption is made that the experiment will produce the data predicted by theory, no matter when the experiment is performed. In other words, it's assumed that the phenomena is time-independent. But that's just an assumption that Newton got into, proving that phenomena are time-independent is absolutely beyond our intellectual reach, it can't be done.
Uh, a curious thing about probability theory is, [5:01:30] say you want to know how much current is flowing through a wire, here's how probability theory finds out: It measures the current flowing through the wire with a meter. It measures it 1,000 times. It takes those values and adds them together. Then it divides by 1,000. Then it tells you, "This is how much current is flowing through the wire." You look at the value they've given you, and you say, [5:02:00] "But you took 1,000 measurements and we never got this number." [They] say, "Well, that's because, you know, you didn't average the probability and..." Whew. If we took 1,000 measurements and not one is the value you're offering, then why should we believe that this is the amount of current flowing through the wire?" Well, then there's a bunch of hand-waving and epistemic foot-stamping and so-forth...Science is an incredibly fragile edifice....Which if it weren't for it's [5:02:30] ability to hand it's findings on to technologists to make pretty things, it would have to take it's place somewhere to the left of, I don't know, homeopathy, acupressure, something like that. [audience laughs] In other words, it's not a metatheory, it has not got truth by the jugular. It has a bunch of fishy mathematical formula, which it's flailing you with, but I don't think....uh...I think, I, I think that serious revision [5:03:00] of Probability Theory is going to have to take place, uh…


Audience1: I think you've given Probability Theory much more than what's really there. Inherently, what it [inaudible] all about is simply acknowledging that there are variables in anything that we can't know. [inaudible] It's really nothing more than that.


Audience2: Which brings you back to just the [inaudible]


TM: Well, but for instance, if the odds that the, if the odds that the coin comes at heads or tails or 50/50, why doesn't it land on it's edge every single [5:03:30] time?


Audience: I don't see how it's relative to standing on it's edge, it's simply, what what happens with a coin, where, where, and what line, [inaudible] stays up or down? [inaudible]


TM: Well, you know, another thing Probability Theory says is that, "Chance has no memory". And so, you, they always, here, first here's statistics, they say, "If you flip a coin, and it comes up heads 49 times, what are the odds that it will come up heads [5:04:00] the 50th time?"
The answer is: 50/50. But any gambler would tell you, you know, that, "If it comes up heads 5 times in a row, bet on heads, for cryin' out loud!" So, there's, there's something…


Audience: [inaudible] but I think a lot of [inaudible] that just doesn't exist. I agree...uh...[inaudible] it takes is the notion that there are things going on here that [5:04:30] we can't know, even though that's not acknowledged by most people who are [inaudible]. That's the reality [inaudible]


TM: But don't you think the other assumption is that time is an, is a non-inputting...it's not variable. You know, that you don't say, "You know, the odds of a coin coming up at heads or tails are 50/50 in Canada but 48/52 in Bolivia."


Audience: That's one of the variables that's sort of smeared out, simply because it [5:05:00] can't be characterized the way people, the people who are doing that like to tend to characterize things but…


TM: Well…


Audience: But underlying the whole thing is still the notion that you're dealing with unknowables. And I'm not saying that those who are deeply immersed, and practicing, uh, probability statistics hold this view, but the reality is, underlying this sort of underpinning the whole thing is the notion that there are things going on here that we can't know.


TM: Oh, well I don't have [5:05:30] any trouble with that. Uh, I understand why science latched on to Probability with such a vengeance: It's because, you know, thanks to William of Ockham, there is this notion of "Occam's Razor". Which is this idea that is most simply stated as, "Hypotheses should not be multiplied without necessity." So, since the idea that time is a flat invariant [5:06:00]



Transcribed Sheree Geo



[5:06:00] is the simplest assumption, try it first and see if it works. But I maintain that you know science has in certain areas been very slow to make progress in the social domain in econometrics in ahh.. the you know.. multiple body problems and stuff like that. Well I think this is because this simple assumption, that time is an invariant [5:06:30] has to be reexamined. I would also re- .. I would offer a new definition of science; science is that field of human endeavour which studies phenomenon so crude that they are time invariant. You know, the .. the hydrogen atom cleaves from the oxygen atom the same way every time, but love affairs don’t come apart the same way every time, [5:07:00] bankruptcy’s don’t occur the same way every time. These are complex, compound phenomena that are then influenced by the temporal variables and the variables embedded in the environment around them. Now the problem is these are the things that we are interested in, love affairs, bankruptcy and the establishment of empire. Very few people have a passionate interest in the dynamics of the water molecule.


[Audience Member Inaudible] [5:07:30]


Oh, now i know I have you on the run because this is a uhh .. but it makes pretty things argument


[Audience Member Inaudible]


Well see I think science is a great enterprise and noble but not the arbitrator of truth


[Audience Member Agrees?]


There are no arbitrary of truth, the truth of the turow, the truth of quantum physics, these are [5:08:00] truths, in the supermarket of truth but y- there's no .. there's no uhhh top end to that process. There may not even be one truth.


[Audience Inaudible]


In a given situation. If you’re flipping coins probability theory is probably a good guide, you wouldn’t want to run your love affair on probability theory uhh so you have to choose the domain [5:08:30] you have to recognise the applicable models, the applicable tools for whatever domain you’re looking at.


[audience member inaudible]


Well you .. you're allowed to be a heretic you just don’t get paid well, that's the price you pay for that, still .. yeah.


[audience member inaudible]


No no.. No I don’t think it's bad, I thi- I’m entirely in support of whatever the universe is in the process of trying to do here ummm.. I think that.. uh.. I think that history is ending [5:10:00] and that it was a temporary perturbation of the system and that we can anchor ourselves through this chaos-trophy or whatever it is by going back to archaic models but I.. I think that and-.. you know.. this is what we'll talk about tomorrow when we get the computer because I don’t merely talk about it even though I have been flailing the mathematicians ultimately I too [5:10:30] come to rest with a fishy formula. I think that the universe is some kind… i think that there is something that there is overlooked by science called .. and i'll name it. Its called Novelty. The universe is a novelty conserving engine of some sort, from the very first nanoseconds after the big bang, novelty has been conserving itself and building newer and [5:11:00] deeper levels of novelty on novelty already achieved. So that uh .. you know in the first few m-.. i mean, you have the big bang then you have this era called the pre-physical era, its brief, it lasts the amount of time it takes light to cross a distance equivalent to the diameter of the proton, electron, something d- dinky for sure. That's called the era before physics, then [5:11:30] physics begins one jiffy after that and.. and the original universe was so hot that there were .. that it was a plasma of free electrons, so since it was a plasma, there was nothing you could called atomic physics because the ambient temperature was so high that electrons could not settle down into stable orbitals around nuclei. As the temperature [5:12:00] of the universe fell….


Transcribed by Luke Danton



[5:12:00] As the temperature of the universe fell, atomic systems crystallized out of that plasmic environment, well then ahh.. further cooling of the universe leads to more complex kinds of bonds and the cooking out of complex elements from stars, the original universe was made entirely of hydrogen, this hydrogen aggregated into masses so ahh.. dense, so large that at their center was actually -and if you think I’m not nervous in doing this in front of you, you're crazy- ([laughs], [audience laughs]) these aggregates of hydrogen, at the center it was so massive in temperature and pressure that fusion could actually begin, and fusion cooked out heavier elements: iron, sulfur and eventually carbon. When you get for violent carbon this throws open the doorway to tremendous new novelty, you get now for the first time, not atomic systems but molecular systems, these molecular systems lead into protobiological systems, protobiological systems lead into prokarya, then eukarya, then true higher multicellular animals, then mammals, then human beings, then electronic culture, then the big surprise.


Now the thing to notes about all this, is that novelty keeps building on novelty already achieved, it crosses biological lines, atomic lines, molecular lines, it is along the universe, i'm proposing, that novelty is conserved, and so then what we represent is a kind of ultimate nexus of novelty, and i believe that we are being wound tighter and tighter and tighter into a confrontation with the equivalent of the singularity at the center of a black hole, but it isn't a gravitational singularity that I’m talking about, it's a novelty singularity and so you know the universe is growing toward some kind of ultimate state of boundaryless hyper-connectivity and when that is achieved the process will cease to be describable in the logos of ordinary space-time and energy.


Now science has no notion of this concept of novelty. In the East there is such a concept it’s called Dao, and Dao builds things up and pulls them down according to its own mysterious laws. Tomorrow I will argue when we get the computer that its laws are not in fact entirely mysterious and that we can discover ah.. the nature of the novelty constant, and instead of treating space-time as an absolutely featureless plain, we can take that zero value which is how that shows up in the Newtonian mechanics, and substitute instead a fractal dimension number which will be some kind of decimal fraction between one and two, and then this will allow us to do things previously inconceivable like predict the future and stuff like that. See of one thing I guess i should say since we started drifting into this fairly radi place is the idea that the universe is ahh… growing toward itself, it's not moving outward from its origin, its moving toward its completion and this is called teleology, its very unwelcome in most scientific modeling, but that's a legacy from the nineteenth century where they were so concerned to get god out of the picture that they wanted everything to happen through one random process colliding with another random process and flipping out newer deal elephants and redwood trees, but in principle we don't have to believe in god to believe in an attractor at the end of the process, we see many kinds of attractors in the natural world.


One way that I think of the psychedelic experiences is – you know you heard me talk about hyperspace, super-space, this kind of thing- it really does seem to me that reality is some kind of a very complex geometric object of some sort and you know how they teach you in trigonometry that all possible ellipses can be obtained by sectioning a cone, and that if you take the infinite set of ellipses and reconstruct them you can reconstruct the cone. Well the way I think of psychedelics and psychedelic tripping is you are sectioning a hyperdimensional object and what you're coming back with is a lower dimensional map of this higher dimensional object. Well everybody has a different map in the same way that there are infinite number of elliptical sections of a cone, but they're all generated by the same object and if it's a mystery to you how a simple fine-eyed object like a cone can generate an infinite number of elliptical sections then it's going to be hard [5:18:00] for you to understand how everybody can have a different psychedelic trip and yet be actually dealing with the same ahh.. reality in hyperspace.


Transcribed by Nicole



™:[3:18:00]
There is no way to find out of course, cause they are all dead, but there are certain episodes in the evolution of western culture that suggest that people may be much more plastic than we ordinarily suppose.First example uhh would be : How can it be that in the middle 1500s perspective was discovered.I mean, how do you discover perspective?[3:18:30] This is very hard, I think, for modern people to understand because uuh it’s a given for us.I mean we see in perspective.We accept it as a quality of the world rather than uh a cultural artifact put in place at a certain moment.But in fact, during the renaissance only the most inspired people could uhh.. paint in perspective on the natch.[3:19:00] Most people, they had complex devices called perspectographs that would project over the scene a receding grid and then people would essentially fill in the lines.
Now another example of this kind of thing that’s not so well known but that is an example that aii Marshall McLuhan makes a lot of is saint Augustine- the great father of the Christian church.He had a reputation for being[3:19:30] a very holy man and the accounts of his contemporaries say that a way that people would satisfy themselves that saint Augustine had a pipeline to god, is that they would bring him scripture, the Bible essentially, and open it in front of him and let him look at it and then they would close the book and question him about what was there and he could always tell them.[3:20:00] And they were amazed!As far as we can tell st.Augustine was the only man in Europe who could read silently.Nobody else could do it, it was regarded as a miracle.[audience laughs].Now we all read silently and there may be few unfortunate individuals among us who move their lips while they read, but that’s the only [inaudible] trace we have of this previous cultural mode where everyone “to read” meant to read aloud.[3:20:30].No one could conceive any other way of doing it.



The logos seems to me a kind of similar thing.It was a mental behaviour, function, which, for reasons which are probably complex and unknowable, slipped out of reach.That’s why, it seems to me, the psychedelics are very close to being able to modify our behaviours along this kind of lines because ,[3:21:00] there are number of behavioral and experiential possibilities that we suppress.I mean I think it’s just uhh as an example of how little we know about what’s going on ahmm.Look at the Grafen…, I mean don’t look at it but conceive of the Gräfenberg spot : the G-spot.Now, we all know what this is, clearly people were looking for it for a long long time, how could they only discover it twelve years ago [3:21:30].I mean, if something that major can be overlooked than it is hard to IMAGINE what might have been overlooked, I mean that’s pretty central into the project of being a human being and apparently it was unknown until very very recently.So, uhhh yes- the Logos was probably uhh what I call Gaian mind.And that at a certain point in cultural development people [3:22:00] became so chuckleheaded that the Gaian mind had said:To hell with this! and then uh the voice fell silent.It fell silent right at the around the time of the birth of Christ eh .Right at the time of the [gia?] of the shift of this uh [inaudible] aeon, you know.



Audience: [inaudible question][3:22:30]
™:How it works with psilocybin?


Audience:[inaudible]


™: Well ahh, I mean I take when I take psilocybin I take it on an empty stomach, I don’t fast or anything like that, I just don’t eat for six hours- I don’t call that fasting.. Uhh, and then I take it in silent darkness.That’s number one - very important.The next thing is : weigh the dose.[3:23:00]
You must weigh the dose because 5 grams is what you want and I had over and over the experience of showing somebody what 5 grams is and they are appalled. They say : “MY GOD! YOU CAN’T BE SERIOUS. I mean, I would uhh.. I take a fifth that much.A fourth that much.”
Yeah well, that’s the problem, that’s why you don’t have elves in the attic and bats in the belfry like I do uhh [audience laughter] [3:23:30] umm yo- you know.And so then you take it, and I take it on an empty stomach and a lot of people don’t like the taste.I don’t really understand that uhh.I just chew them up.I sit with them and I chew them up and then huh?


Audience :Dry?


™: Dry.And none of this mixing in applesauce or any of that malarkin.I mean what’s that about?[audience laughter]


Audience: [inaudible]
™:Oh well fresh- sixty grams.Sixty grams uhh [3:24:00] because there is more than a, you know, there is a huge water loss there.


Transcribed by Marko



T.M: ”eventually society will get around to exploiting this particular one just like it does everything else.
[audience question]
T.M: The drug is ibogaine the plant it comes from is tabernanthe iboga. Yeah?
[audience question “you mentioned combing the DMT with iboga, what what's the experience like, what is the change?]
T.M:: Mhm? well that's what ayahuasca is [5:24:31] you see the DMT is then not destroyed in your intestine and so you have a slow release DMT trip by doing that.
[audience q “Is that done with smoking DMT and ingesting ….]
T.M: Ahh, in in theory and probably in fact that would be a tremendously successful way to get very loaded the problem is it might be a too successful way you wanna be careful with these mao inhibitors - ther - there are mao inhibitors [5:25:01] that drug companies have produced where ah a single dose inhibits all the mao in your body for up to a month, this would be murder if you got around some DMT on that, uh the nice thing about harmine is that it’s fully reversible in four to six hours so it's ah it’s a gentle mao inhibitor, but yeah this is the strategy this is why you could conceivably take the [5:25:31] seeds of a plant like inaudiable [5:24:33] which grows around here more or less and ah and contains harmine and combine it with a plant like inaudiable [5:25:43] which contains DMT and come up with a north american pseudo ayascha of some sort, people are doing this but you know if you think, think it takes courage to just do these drug- these compounds na naturally imagine the kind of courage [5:26:02] it takes to diddle with recipes and to do your own Bio Assay [5:26:06] which you must do because the cook must taste the soup.


[Audience Q]
T.M: pa ga, Peganum harmala P-E-G-A-N-U-M Peganum Harmala in the psycho falacity {5:26:21].
[Audience Q]
T.M: Well we never tried the experiment again [5:26:33] because ahh Dennis felt that he really made the maximum contribution [audience laughter] to the effort, ahh, there are many experiments though which could be tried, which would put no human being in danger, ahh for you know, for instance, you could use square wave generators which are acoustical generators to try and drive these drug molecules into dna [5:27:01] in vetro in a test tube you know you would what would you would do is simply put the denatured DNA into solution, put some dmt into the solution, shake it furiously, ultracentrifuge the mix to get the loose DMT out and then weigh the DNA and see if its weight has increased by a number which was magically divisible by the molecular [5:27:31] weight of the DMT molecule, these kinds of studies have been done and shows that DNA ah, DMT does intercalate and locate itself into DNA so yeah there are a lot of different things like that that could be done that wouldn’t put anyone at risk.
[Audience Q]
T.M: well, ahhl he doesn't remember it very clearly, he, his impression was [5:28:01] that it lasted about 5 days it actually lasted 3 weeks so the real staff that would have alarmed him he fortunately was to out of it to see or remember, but I was there throughout the whole thing and saw it, and uhm, I think it would be nice to understand the parameters of the effect a little more clearly before we charge off and try that particular trick again, yeah. {5:28:30]
[Audience Q]
T.M: Well this is what's being referred to is the in True Hallucinations which is a tape set which will be published as a book next year, it describes an expedition to the amazon in 1971 in which was really where we got the whammy, i mean its still, i'm still running on what happened from you know the 28th of february 1971to the 21st march the rest of my life is pretty much throw [5:29:01] away. [Audience Laughter] but ugh, wh - what he, I dunno it was weirder than flying saucer abduction because that now there's a whole form for it, it was hard to say something was waiting for us down in the amazon and as soon as we started taking these mushrooms, it began making suggestions about how you could use the mushroom and your voice and certain other materials present at hand in {5:29:32] tha that environment to essentially uhm well there aren’t even words to say what it was, condense the soul into three dimensional space, or ahh, create the philosopher's stone inside your body and then give birth to it or in other words some radical transformation of the ontology of being human was held out as a possibility and it all [5:30:01]


Transcribed by Jess Harse



TM: and it [5:30:00] all came down to an experiment that he wanted to perform that seemed to me so unlikely to have any effect whatsoever that I felt was perfectly alright to let this experiment go forward because I would have bet dollars to donuts that nothing would happen, instead all hell broke loose at the conclusion of this experiment and ahh you know he claimed that the time [5:30:31] that what he had done was bonded into my DNA ahh enough psilocybin in a superconducting kind of bond which if you know how superconductivity works, a superconductive bond is very hard to disrupt, it’s not like an ordinary chemical bond and he sell that you could do what he called bell the cat - that you could actually hang [inaudible] a transceiver around [5:31:00] the neck of the Logos itself and from then on it would talk to you constantly in the confines of your own mind, and it just seemed so wildly improbable to me that it went forward but in fact at the conclusion of the experiment something changed in me, and I essentially became who I now appear to be, but before that I wasn’t, I was sort of a [inaudible] [5:31:30] and ahh undirected person of some sort and then the... tomorrow you will see when we get the computer what the bottom line of this is because what was eventually revealed was a kind of mathematical mandala of space and time that rested on its… for its veracity on the fact that it allowed, that it made prediction of the future possible and tomorrow afternoon I will display [5:32:00] this thing for you and you can judge for yourself whether this is the product of ahh pathological incident or in fact an intellectual leap comparable to Newton’s laws of motion or, or something like that. I think in principle all this is possible, I think transforming, you know, part of what Human History’s conclusion will be is what I call ‘turning the human body inside out’ [5:32:30]; we want the soul to become visible, we want the body to become an idea, freely commanded in the imagination; and then at that point as James Joyce said ‘Man will be durgible (?)’, that was as close as he could get in 1939 to saying you’ll turn into a flying saucer, you know, he knew it was an airship, he knew it was [inaudible] but he thought it was a durgible (?) ahh anyway enough about La Chorrera maybe we’ll get into that tomorrow [5:33:01]. Yes?


Audience: [inaudible question]


TM: No. Good point. The vine contains the [inaudible] another plant contains the DMT, this makes Ayahuasca unique among this shamanic tools because, you see, all the rest of them - peyote, mushrooms, San Pedro, ibogaine, morning glories [5:33:30], and whatever else, cannabis - are simply plants which you ingest; Ayahuasca is a drug, a product, something made by pharmacologists, I mean pharmacologists who wear penis [inaudible] but pharmacologists nevertheless you see, so suddenly the Human dimension enters into it not all Ayahuasca is alike, Ayahuasca depends on the personality of the person who made it [5:34:00], so it’s not about the relationship between you and the plant when you take Ayahuasca; between you and the plants there stands a Human being and, you know, if you’re headed down there to seriously get into this, don’t, don’t give up in a hurry, you will drink a lot of swill before you find someone who is conscientious enough, honest enough and cares about you enough to not short change you… in some way [5:34:30].


Audience: [inaudible]
TM: Telepathine yes. Ahh Ayahuasca was discovered by Richard Spruce… in 1853 and then in the early years of the 20th century the germanest [inaudible] brought a lot of it back to Berlin and Louis Lewin characterized an alkaloid which they named telepathine but it was not realised then until [5:35:00], I think, 1957 by the chemist [inaudible] that ahh well [inaudible] oo-or that telepathine was exactly the same compound as an early compound isolated [inaudible] named [inaudible] and since the rules of chemical nomenclature are that the first compound, the first name takes precedent, telepathine had to be dropped and [inaudible] substituted but it tells you how convinced these early [5:35:30] ethnographers were that this stuff was ahh, you know, exciting, paranormal, mental abilities.


Audience: [inaudible question]


TM: The [inaudible]?


Audience: Yes.


TM: Oh, well. No, no. See what happened was the what what [inaudible] took back to Berlin was the liana, the vine - Banisteriopsis caapi - ahh the the other active [5:36:00] ingredient in Ayahuasca was not



Transcribed by Francisco Arez





[5:36:00]


TM: The other active ingredient in ayahuasca was not isolated chemically until 1956.


Audience: But the guys who took the vine back [inaudible] the vine?


TM: The vine doesn’t contain DMT.


Audience: But the harmaline itself?


TM: Well yes, has an effect, at high doses it can cause hallucination by itself.. The uh, the plant which contains the DMT, normally , there are a couple of possible substitute, [5:36:30] but normally what’s used in the Amazon is Cicotria Veridis. Uh, this is a little coffee-like plant that contains DMT in the roots. One of the great mysteries of ayahuasca is how, out of 475,000 species of plant in the Amazon these people figured out that you pound the vine and combine it with the leaves and then go through this elaborate boiling and concentrating [5:37:00] and then you get this fantastic visionary beverage. If you ask them how they figured it out, they say the plants told us. Which is so far, the best answer anybody has come up with. In 1962, Melvin Bristoll, who was a graduate student of Richard Evan Shultsies at Harvard was studying ayahuasca among the Sibundoi Indians [5:37:30] and uh, he took ayahuasca. And during the trip a plant was revealed to him. And he was told that it would be alkaloid positive. And it was alkaloid positive. Well, this is now anecdotally embedded in the literature. Was it dumb luck? Was it synchronicity? Or was it that plants tell you about other plants? The way ayahuasca is used by research pharmacologists [5:38:00] in these Amazon tribes is they brew a standard brew. And then if they have a plant, that they, for some reason suspect might have some medical usage, they will put a little bit of that plant into the ayahuasca, And then the ayahuasca will give them a readout on it and explain what it is. I had one of the longest evenings I have ever put in where I took half a dose of ayahuasca [5:38:30] and half a dose of mushrooms. And it was absolutely god awful. It was different from any bad trip I’d ever had. It didn’t seem to be about my personality it seemed to be about core processes. There was a little pacman thing and I could see it moving through my memory. Just chew, chew, chew, chew, chew. And I didn’t know, you know that horrifying scene in 2001 where the guy is outside [5:39:00] the spaceship and he say “Open the pod doors Hal. Open the pod doors Hal.” Well that’s how I felt. I felt, I could almost see the molecular machinery had jammed. And I said, “Oh my God, It’s not going to deanimate. Or de-alkalate. It’s somehow caught in some kind of a loop. And I sweated bullets for an hour and a half with it. It was really horrible. [5:39:30] And then it finally released. And let me go. But as I sat in that chair I said, you know if I can’t pull out of this place, there’s a room in a back ward somewhere and they will just sit me there and look in on me every 12 or 14 hours, and that’ll be my story.


Audience: You said earlier that you were surprised that you had no kind [garbled audio] We have a clinical climate that’s not congenial to exploring.
[5:40:00]
TM: Because I don’t feel particularly courageous. I don’t feel that this is unusual what we’re doing here. Am I crazy? Could be. Uh, it seems to me, would seem to me, knowing what I know, which is no more than a thousand other people know, I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t talk about these things. Because [5:40:30] our problem is we’re disempowered, unhappy, and disconnected from ourselves and each other. Here’s the solution. How can you, it’s a political obligation, or it’s a moral obligation to try and at least inform people. They don’t have to take it. But they should at least have the facts of the matter in front of them as they live their lives. So , I, I just do it because I couldn’t do it any other way. And I’m puzzled that nobody else feels [5:41:00] ah, this imperative. Because the people I talk too, you know a thousand people have told me psychedelics were the most important thing that ever happened to them. But not one of those thousand people ever said, “And I scheduled a speaking tour to do the same thing your doing.” So I don’t know..


Audience; [garbled audio] fear and paranoia I hear there were even people were afraid to come to this and revealing their interest?
[5:41:30]
TM: Wow! Well either I’m crazy or they are. I don’t know. See, I think that , ah that, ah you know how, um, if you confront certain, um, well butterflies, or deer. There are certain kinds of animals that if you move slowly enough, they can’t tell you’re there. Because they’re set up for edge detection. And if you move slowly enough, they don’t register the edge transiting.
[5:42:00]


Transcribed by Micki Garrison



TM: [5:42:00]... so you can actually walk right up to them and grab them, if you know how to do it. Lizards are like this, cats, so, so i think that by moving with stealth, rather than going to Harvard or Berkeley and inviting the freshmen class to pour into the street and smash bank windows, that we can actually flip this thing along. I think that eventually such desperation it's going to strike straight institutions [5:42:30] that they will come to us and ask. They're gonna try everything when the going gets rough and when they finally decide to drop all their pretensions we'll be perfectly willing to have a dialogue. I'm sorry to hear that people felt that paranoid about it. I don't think the political climate is that repressive. I think people are doing the work of the man for the man by being that paranoid.
Audience: [inaudible] [5:43:00]...counter-pressures.
TM: Well counter-pressures, this book was banned in Florida but for crying out loud look at the Russians, they were able to toss out the Communist Party, well now that's a pretty scary thing to go up against. We don't have anything comparable to that (ahh) in terms of it's depth of penetration into our lives and yet they were able to do that. I think, you know, there's more to life
than hiding out. [5:43:30] (Ahh) you gotta make the grand gesture at a certain point and then let the chips fall where they may.
Audience: You're right.
TM: Brave words, ohh boy... [audience laughs] (ahh).
Audience: [inaudible]...something for your audiences (ahh) an organization or something that taken... [inaudible] ...raising consciousness and changing our society?
TM: Basically i think people should see this kind of meetings as a tremendous opportunity to form local [5:44:00] alliances. The last thing on earth we want here is a Terence Mckenna cult, that would just be the stupidest resolution of the whole thing. The whole message is, you don't need me or Tim or anybody else, just, you know, take a little metaphysical responsibility upon yourself, realise you are the microcosm of the microcosm and then (ahh) get with like minded people and proceed. [5:44:30] I mean, this is how political revolutions are made, is by people just ignoring as the irrelevant outmoded social forms and structures and insisting on their own authenticity.
Audience: [inaudible]...Hofmann foundation...[inaudible]...help?
TM: Oh, it might help... people... i mean, how would it help?
Audience: [inaudible]...strength in numbers.
TM: Strength in numbers, well i think people [5:45:00] should support psychedelic communities, archival projects (ahh), legalization moves (ahh), yes but mainly i think what we all need to do is get more loaded. [audience laughs] You know, deeper trips, higher doses, see, it's not that we want to convert the entire planet to taking mushrooms. It's that we just want to be left alone to do
what we want to do. The mushroom [5:45:30] if it's as great as i say it is then it doesn't need a mob clearing the way for it, it's perfectly able to advance its own agenda. The thing is just not to yield to fear. Cause if, as i said, if you yield to fear you do the man's work for the man and that makes you the man! So, you have to do is just say, oh, you know, this is what we do and (ahh), eventually it will change. I mean, gay people [5:46:00] is a good example, i mean, in our own life times we've seen this go from, you know, unspeakable crime against nature which decent people took care to not even being formed of [audience laughs] to, you know, a political sub-culture with it's own agenda and it's own cress and it's own political clouds. Well, we are not as under the thumb as gay people were, say, in the early 50s [5:46:30] or something. If they can do it, we can do it. If black people can go from slavery to a legitimate claim on full social integration into the body politic than we can do it too. But not if we, no, in America nobody gets nothing unless they demand it. So as long as we bow our heads and hide our stash and they're looking over our shoulder, well then they got us on the run. But we just have to say, look, [5:47:00] this is it, this is who i am! If this doesn't gibe with your political agenda, adjust your political agenda [audience laughs] because this is who we are. Well now let's knock off and regroup for tomorrow on that point, but thank's very much. [silence] Well, (ahh), before we get into (ahh) this morning's (ahh) rigid agenda, (ahh) (ahh) where were we [5:47:30] yesterday? And our, [audience laughs] (ahh), is there, i recall there were hands up. To the people who belong to those hands still have the concerns but went with them?
Audience: [inaudible]...local alliances and (ahh), psychedelic communities...[inaudible]
TM: Talk about forming local alliances and psychedelic communities... Well i think, you know, as i said this is your affinity group. You can't recognize psychedelic people walking around on the street [5:48:00]


Transcribed by Tiago Ramos

[5:48:00] On the street because our victory in the area of fashion has been so total that now even priests look like freaks. [*laughs*] So uhh, yeah i’ve been in a number of places where people organized uhh i don’t know what you would discuss them, discussion groups, affinity groups, in the wake of it, it’s something you have to self-organize, uhh, maybe in the period after the [5:48:30] close this afternoon, the people who are into that should exchange names and get something going, i mean obviously it’s a delicate thing but on the other hand uhh..Mmmhmm?


[inaudible question from audience]


™: For me?


[inaudible audience]



™: Well a lot of [5:49:00] people feel more secure uhh doing journeys if they have uhh some kind of ground control and in the most casual form that can just be your best friend who doesn’t do it but you do. Or if you suspect that fairly deep and uhm charged issues are going to rise-arise out of it, why you want it to be someone with some psychotherapeutic experience. But on the other hand you know, you’re in a such a vulnerable state in that dimension that you really want to choose the facilitator carefully, I mean, and have some kind of set of agreements worked out before. I mean, the psychedelic trip doesn’t always take the direction you want it to. I mean, you want- you write down before you take it that you want to deal with some episode of childhood trauma [5:50:00] or abandonment then you get loaded and it seems so preposterous that you, you know, you can hardly contemplate the notion without laughing out loud and the facilitator has this - keeps trying to bring you back, say, ‘well you’re doing the work! We’re here to do the work!’, well, then you say, well, you know, having a knock-down drag-out fight while is somebody is loaded isn’t exactly the way to go either. You sorta have to feel [5:50:30] into that issue as i said yesterday, i, i can’t get where i want to go in the presence of somebody else because they hold me to the surface. If i were to have my idea of the perfect facilitator, situation is that they are two rooms away and you have something equivalent of a beeper and then you know you can beep them and they’ll come in and pat you on the head and tell you it’s alright if you need that.[5:51:00] But otherwise, they stay completely out of it, it’s really nice to follow your own thoughts you know? And i think we change in the presence of another person, you know? We create a persona, and uh it takes a lot of energy to maintain the persona. And in that situation there’s no reason, so why do it? Yeah?


[Question from audience] [5:51:30]


™: Well, not exactly, i mean people always say can you do it on the natch? And i sorta feel like if i could do [5:52:00] it on the natch i’d be alarmed enough to check myself in for some serious mental health care.Uhh, It's too radical, you don’t want to be able to do that [5:52:00] on the natch.


Audience: Oh come on [laughs]



™: It’s a wonderful control on it! To know that it won’t happen unless you take the stuff. You know? Because it’s not a mood shift or a subtle refocusing from foreground to background, it’s an absolutely ontology peeling breakthrough.


Audience: [inaudible question]


™: In principle, i, [5:52:30] i agree with that and i’m fascinated to try anything anybody has in mind but uhh you have to be very demanding. And I think too many people are not demanding at all, I mean, you sit people down in a room and tell them we’re gonna repeat ooma humm 500 times and at the end of it they come to you with tears of joy in their eye and tell you it was the most profound that’s ever happened to them. I don’t understand where those people [5:53:00] could be coming from you know? I mean it’s uhm, i can sit down and like think about being stoned on DMT and uh and i can and i can give myself the butterflies with that exercise but-but not much else, that’s as far as i can get, you know? Uhh persistently these various traditions claim that they can deliver the goods, but when you look at the [5:53:30] art which is the paper trail that they leave, it doesn’t look like what i’m talking about. You know I mean i went through I, once, for a while i was a professional art buyer for tibetan art, tankas and that kind of thing and i interiorized all of that iconography and uh, but it isn't’ very much like uh what we are seeing. And uh, you know there are a number of highly idiosyncratic [5:54:00] artists..


Transcribed by Jonathan Laliberte



TM: [5:54:00] Idiosyncratic artists gathered through the history of art … g- Gustave Moreau, James Ensor, we mentioned Hieronymus Bosch. Uhm mmhm know- you know hmm … uhm Matty Carline? … but I’m trying to think of older ones. But- but not- these seem to be unique visions, but not exactly the vision that ahh seems to come out of this stuff. Part of what’s [5:54:30] so interesting to me is how alien it is. How if art is the- if the artist is supposed to be the antenna of society anticipating the visions which will later become the paradigm, then they’re not doing the job very well in the psychedelic uhm domain. Yeah .. are- you wanna- did you have a follow-up?


Audience: [inaudible question] [5:55:00]


TM: Well, but this is where the action is. You know, it has to- it has to make sense in the world. Now, I don’t want to suggest, I mean, I- I think … like in the case of psilocybin I have no doubt whatsoever that if you take five grams of psilocybin [5:55:30] every four days for let’s say forty days then you will have nothing whatsoever to say to the rest of us. You know, if what you see - the thing is in the spiritual quest all these methods: yoga and mantra and then … you know, all the mmm uhm, new versions of this. The whole s- the whole stance of the spiritual questor is ahh accelerator to the floor [5:56:00] all the time. When you switch over to this method it’s the breakpads that are going to get the workout. Ahh, we don’t- we psychedelic people do not strenuously exert ourselves to attain peculiar states of mind, we strenuously exert ourselves to keep the states of mind from becoming too peculiar.


Audience: Why?


TM: Why? Because it can become mmm so [5:56:30] peculiar, that- that- that- I don’t know why!!! [laughs hysterically]


Audience: [laughs] [inaudible]


TM: Yes, that’s it. It can become so peculiar, that it is unspeakable. And if it’s unspeakable, it’s j- just dropped out of the social contract, you know.


Audience: So really, the reason to maintain it is so you can get back in the psychological state and communicate, but … what I’m thinking is that I’m sure [5:57:00] that there are people who have pursued it to the point that they just walked out of [inaudible] come back.


TM: Mmm, yes, well that’s what I wanted to say. If you want to be the guy on cold mountain who is covered with hair who the village people occasionally see when the mist clears when he descends to the lower levels to cut wood. You can become that daoist immortal. Ahh, you know w- w- what I like to say about psychedelics [5:57:30] is once you get to this it’s no longer about seeking the answer. It’s now a tough or go, now you have to face the answer. And it’s so easy to seek … you know, this Rishi, that Roshi, that Geishe, that Guru and all the wonderful people and the gossip and hijinks around the ashram and all that malarkey, but once you get to this and it’s just you and it … [5:58:00] you know, it’s a- it’s a whole different ballgame.


Audience: [inaudible question]


TM: Well, to s- to s- we’re talking there are two things. The experience and the wisdom and maturity that comes from the experience. You don’t have to keep dosing to do that. But to attain, maintain and workout the implications [5:58:30] of that, but you have to keep dosing to keep encountering the unspeakable thing that is the source of all that maturation and- and so forth. My gosh, everybody’s agitated here … Yeah?


Audience: [laughs] I wondered if ahh in your experiences in Amazon or [inaudible] if you found that they were able to uhm to do this [5:59:00] without drugs or whether they were even interested in?


TM: No, largely not. Ahh, in the Amazon- I mean I discussed this with people and they- they said: “No”, you know, “you must- the plant is the teacher.” I mentioned or maybe I didn’t, but there’s an interesting book called ‘Haoma and Harmaline’ by Flattery and Schwartz and it discusses the rel- ambiance of the religious attitudes of early Zoroastrianism and they believed [5:59:30] in what they called the menog existence. And we’re talking, you know, twen- two thousand B.C. here, and they uhm ... believed there was no possible way of accessing the spiritual dimension except drugs. That was the entire way to do it. And I think it’s a- it’s a kind of pharmacological and energy barrier. It’s good that these things are aw- isolated from ordinary [6:00:00] experience ...
Transcribed by Lovro Tacol



… isolated from ordinary [06:00:00] experience by the formality of having to take the compound; if they weren’t it would be flooding in upon us all the time and we would have a hard time indeed, yeah.


Audience: well, I used to think about people taking the psychedelic


Ten there’s this other people practice meditation. [06:00:30] I read somewhere recently that people in the amazon that take ayahuasca they their


And what I haven’t seen very much is the combination of what you know mental practices ah so as to ah plus taking pscylocibin


[06:01:00]


THIS CONCLUDES TAPE 4. OUR PROGRAM CONTINUES WITH TAPE 5


Terence: why is there no talk of the combining of the techniques with psychedelica?


Audience:


Terence: well, I don’t know exactly, I mean I would certainly agree. [06:01:30] See I think that all religion is based on the experience of ecstasy.


And a religion-


Audience:


Terence: And a religion like Hinduism represents to my mind an extreme case. The roots of hinduism are in the soma rite. For 3000 years this is what hindu religiosity was about; it was an intoxicant, eh and ah without the intoxicant there was no [06:02:00] connection to the mystery. Well, then for some reason it became tremendously hierarchically structured and and constipated and ah dogmatic, and ehm ahh… well certainly dominator inla-i- if not altright fascism. And so I think all these religions have their roots in this irrational experience [06:02:30] but they constantly want to turn it into a real state operation [audience laughs], and they do, and they do, and so- but in answer to your question: all these techniques work with psychedelics, you know mantra, yantra, magical invocation, ahh, raising the kundaliny… all of these things which seem so totally obscure [06:03:00] if- from this level of consciousness it just becomes an: “of course, of course it works” so it seems to me the lost ingredient is the psychedelic. I mean ehh y-you know, if you go to India and you have any illusions about Sadhus, I mean Sadhus they’re hash-heads, with a line of patter, that’s all. I mean the main concern in any community of Sadhus is: how many [06:03:30]JOINTS can you make and smoke before you fall asleep. And m- I’ve never seen a yoga text that came clean about this and said, you know, this is basically a how to use cannabis technique, so eh yo- it’s good to go to the actual place and see, see how it’s being handled. What’s going on in the Amazon is the shamans cure, they chant, the provide and exemplar for [06:04:00] their society but when you get seriously loaded with them and talk to them their attitude is more like scientists. They will agree that they can cure and find lost objects and predict the weather and all that but they don’t understand how this works. They’re very eager to admit that it’s all a big mystery and that beyond the cheerful set of shamanic techniques, that they, the Witoto, the Guarani, whoever they are, beyond the cheerful [06:04:30] ahh power of the conjuration of these techniques lies the absolute unknown and they’re aware of that. There’s no closure in shamanism so it sort of keeps you humble, yeah.


Audience:


[06:05:00]
Terence: right


Audience:


Terence: right


Audience: of a contact high, [06:05:30] when you are around people


Terence: oh I think contact highs are very real, ehm, not only contact highs but there are also contact lows eh, [audience laughs] which are very noticeable, y-you know there’s a - there’s a phenomenon called allophrenia, do you know what allophrenia is?


Audience: No


Terence: Allophrenia is when your friend is put in the hospital [06:06:00] for schizophrenia and you go to visit him and you become- you begin acting so peculiar that they don’t let you out [audience laughs]


Transcribed by Lucas Mathias



Alophrenia is when your friend is put in the hospital for schizophrenia, and you go to visit him and you become – you begin acting so peculiar that they don’t let you out. This is a common phenomenon: misbehavior by people who have come to visit people who have been hospitalized for schizophrenia or psychosis. The best theory is that it’s pheremonal. You know, there’s one theory of what schizophrenia is, that schizophrenia is a pheremonal disorder. And, you, what happens is your pheromone system goes haywire. So then, you don’t smell right. So then the people around you begin frowning at you, avoiding you, turning their back on you when you approach, then you begin thinking, there’s something wrong with me. I’m weird. Then you secrete more of this weird pheromone and people get - and a dissonance begins to happen until finally you have to be plucked out of the situation. There are psychiatrists who swear that they can diagnose schizophrenia by sniff test. You know they just walk over and take a hit off the side of your neck and say, you know, “Lock this one up” or (laughter) Yeah.
Q: (unintelligible)
T: Now, the problem is one of – the question is, is there in Huichol art a trace of this psychedelic dimension. I guess there’s a trace, the problem is – is twofold, the problem is one of material, with wood and beads and pitch it’s very hard to get the – the – to contort that into the object seen, and then the other thing is conceptually. It’s very hard to grab and hold these very weird images. The other thing that’s happening in most traditional societies is that you operate within a canon. You know, if you’re a Huichol, you have a very limited uh, vocabulary of expression, within the iconography of Huichol art. If you’re a Tibetan Tanka painter, similarly, it’s all laid out for you. Walls of tradition are very high, the channel is very narrow. That’s why it’s so interesting when an artist can transcend the, the momentum of their cultural tradition and really produce something unique. I don’t see, I mean I think the reason I like talking to artists is because all the art of the past 20,000 years is like a tea cup dipped into the ocean. And yet any one of us, not particularly self-defined as artist, can access the ocean. Can swim in the ocean. And so you say, you know, we all can touch the same source that these great artists must have touched. Their skill was they were able to bring out a thimble-full of this material and the rest of us can only look at it and wonder and let it pass us by. Yeah.
Q: (in reference to an “extraterrestrial position” on psychedelic use and whether or not Terence still holds this position)
T: No I’m not sure, exactly, I mean the funny thing about the extraterrestrial position is that, it depends on how long it’s been since you’ve taken mushrooms, how creditable it seems. If it’s recent it seems the only possible explanation. If you wait a few months, then skepticism and reason begins to level the landscape, and you say, “No, it couldn’t possibly, really, be that.” But I think, uh . . . you know, no, I think we hardly have an inkling as to the real nature of the world, and the real history of life on this planet, and you know, we don’t know, uh, how narrowly channeled the manifestation of organic intelligence is. Does it always have to be in a body? Does it always have to be in a body that stands upright with binocular vision? I think the real task with dealing with extraterrestrials is to know when you’ve got one. It’s completely silly to search the galaxy with radio telescopes for, uh, a radio civilization. I mean to my mind that is as chuckleheaded as deciding you’re going to search the galaxy for a decent Italian restaurant. (laughter) I mean, it doesn’t work like that!
So, um, you know, if you think about the mushroom, try to think about it objectively. It looks to me very much like a good candidate for an extraterrestrial. First of all, DNA has been known to us only since 1950, less than a century and we’re already involved in this thing called the Human Genome Project. Well, the real – what that means is that we are taking control of the scripts that write human beings. It seems to me anything we would recognize as [6:12:00]



Transcribed by Kristen Askin



[6:12:00] intelligence would pass through a phase of self-analysis where (6:12:04) it would realize it was made out of DNA and it would then sequence itself. We’re about to do this ourselves. Well, that means that most extraterrestrials will be the product of their own reflexive design process. In other words, an extraterrestrial that has crossed the gulf across the stars must surely then be able to control its own form.
Well, then, if you look at the mushroom, it’s a curious combination of artifact and entity. It looks sort of manufactured. There’s very little fact on that system - I mean, first of all, um, fungi are primary decomposers. This means that they are at the very bottom of the food chain. This makes the kind of vegetarianism espoused by Buddhists look like an orgy of slaughter. You know? Because if you’re at the very bottom of the food chain, that is the only place that is absolutely karma-free. So there’s the mushroom, occupying the karma-free position at the bottom of the food chain. Well, then, it’s – you know, we’ve been reading about the huge mycelial clones spread out under the soil in Michigan and Wyoming, well those things, what that is, is that’s a cobweb-like network. And in the case of a psilocybin-like species, filled with neurotransmitter compounds. Can you imagine how many synaptic plants there must be on a 1,500 acre mushroom clone? If brain size is any relation to intelligence, then hang on, Hannah. (laughter) Because, uh, that means that this thing which has spread through the forests of the Midwest has a, uh, brain approximate in weight to, uh . . . a couple of dozen gray whales.
Uh, the other thing is, then, the spore, looks perfectly designed to sustain itself in outer space. If you want to store spores for longevity you create conditions as close to the conditions in outer space as you can. High vacuum. Very low temperature. Uh, the casing of a spore is one of the most electron dense organic materials in nature. So electron dense that it approximates a metal. Well, global currents can form on the quasi metallic surface of an airborne spore and they act as a further repellant for radiation. So, and, you know, percolating through the galaxy at an ordinary rate typical of stellar material, a mushroom species could percolate from one side of the galaxy to another in under four hundred thousand years. Well, that’s lightning speed compared to the size and age of the universe. If we were to gain the power to design ourselves, I think after a whole bunch of uh, of Madonna and Robert Redford clones, we would probably move on to becoming something very much like a mushroom. (laughter) It’s uh, you know, mild (6:15:43), its noninvasive, it’s at the bottom of the food chain, it’s virtually immortal, its laden with neurotransmitters, and it’s living in the imagination.
And this brings me back to a favorite subject of mine, this is where we have to go, we have to enter into the Blakian, divine imagination. That’s where our future lies. Uh, at this point, our relationship to this planet, as an infant-child relationship of impending toxemia, we have to be parted from the mother - to save the mother and to save us.
And there are not that many possibilities. Where are we going to go? The political geniuses who run this planet have made travel to the stars virtually impossible. I mean, don’t kid yourselves, it isn’t only a matter of announcing a program. Our short, stubby fingers couldn’t assemble something like a Saturn-5 moon rocket. That was made by a generation of people now deceased. Americans in this, uh, era, are a rather dull-witted people who have trouble even running a third world economy. So we’re not going to the stars. You can forget that. Uh, so then where are we going? Well, nanotech. Is that a possibility? Could we download everybody into a super-cool cube of gold and terbium alloy buried three hundred feet deep in the center of Copernicus? And then we’ll leave Earth and go there and dance forever in the hallways of the astral imagination?
That’s one possibility. Another possibility is, is there a way to diffuse consciousness into the environment? Can we becomes dolphins, caterpillars, gray whales, and mosquitos and just sort of defocus ourselves? I mean, all of these, of course, are wildly radical notions. On the other hand, we’re headed straight toward a brick wall at about 5,000 miles an hour. We have to figure out something pretty astonishing in a hurry. [06:18:03]


Transcribed by Kristen Askin



TM:...[6:18:00] figure out something pretty uh, astonishing in a hurry. Yeah.


Audience: Yes uh, another thing about the function of the mushroom is ??? for reentry into the atmosphere ??


[™ laughs]


TM: The heat shield! Yes, precisely. [Chuckles]


Audience: ?? can jumpstart an evolution


TM: That’s a funny question I don't know because it's so hard to tease apart genetics and environment. I mean they certainly have had a jump start on evolution picture of hanging out in the space that our lives have created. Uh, you know I think children need lots of attention lots of nurturing physical and spiritual. Uh, I guess I would say so, and certainly they haven't been programmed with the fear and misunderstanding that that is in the society. We just got through anti-dope week at our school which is an incredibly painful experience at this particular school because I don't think there's a person associated with it who believes it for a moment uh, but it's like we all have to study fascism because we live in a fascist state. Uh, a teacher made a statement that uh, that LSD caused brain damage and my son dared to challenge this. And the guy said well, who told you it doesn’t cause brain damage?


Audience: Daddy!


TM: No, not my Daddy. He said, well Albert Hoffman told me it doesn’t cause brain damage! [Audience laughter, TM laughs] End of discussion!


Audience: ??


TM: Mm mm. Yeah


Audience: I know that children are very interconnected with their parents, so when you’re doing substances do you feel like the presence of your child sometimes going on your psychotropic experiences ???


TM: Yeah well when children are very young you know all kinds of psychic phenomenon happen and you know I think mothers nursing mothers and their relationship to their two children as intensely telepathic. I remember when my daughter was not very old, she must have been like about three and a half and I had the dream and it was very unusual dream for me and very highly realized and I dreamed of an orrery. Do you know what an orrery is? It’s a model of the solar system made of gears and you crank it and there’s the sun in the center and the planets go around it, but this was a huge orrery. I dreamed I walk down the hall and I opened the door and I walked into this room and there was this orrery and these planets were circling around the sun inside this room and then, and I was awakened by my daughter crying and I went downstairs and she said uh, there were planets circling around inside my bedroom. So- and you know that's a very specific and rare image for an adult or a child to have. So yes, I think that we’re- our chuckle-headedness is the main barrier to encountering all kinds of special abilities that around us all the time. We are truly the prisoners of our limited conceptions. Yeah.


Audience: ?? go back to some of the questions about why you don't want to take it every day for 40 days in a row. And it’s more the psychological level that what causes- I’ve worked with ?? therapies in Mexico ??? stories about Jung and uh, many of the people who have gotten into the situation of psychosis are people who have used drugs as a general principle behind that is that people have experienced something that they cannot integrate back into their psyche or whatever even if it’s the ability to say well, that was then and this is now. And therefore you get psychosis. So not to, not to say these things to alarm people but ??? that this ability to come back and not be far out there and that there are a lot of different set up parameters to this ?? on your ego strength. Another one is the society you live in. If you're a shaman and you can say these things ?? Then you're fine. Um, and it doesn't have to be drugs. Um, Jung used to when he was older he used to sit in a chair and go inside and when he came back he would have this litany of things that he would say so that he could come back and function. He would say you know I'm Carl Gustav Jung, my wife is___ my children of this many children this many grandchildren.


TM: Uh huh, the reconnect affirmation. Yeah, well I think that's not a bad idea.


Audience: I wanted to ask you how you see ???


TM: Well I don't have a very popular position on ritual and I blame it on the mushroom because I just quote the mushroom. And the mush - I said what about ritual? And it said that's fine if you don't know what you're doing. And I think that, that you know, it's really not an anti-ritualist position because that is what ritual is. That's what you do if you don't know what you're doing.


Audience: ??


TM: None of us. But, you know, the purpose - can tell when the ritual works because it makes itself obsolete. That's the- it's- yeah.


Audience: ?? I think as we continue...??


™: Well [6:24:00]



Transcribed by Eva Petakovic



TM: [6:24:00] Well I don't have a very popular position on ritual and I blame it on the mushroom because I just quote the mushroom. And the mush - and I said what about ritual? And it said that's fine if you don't know what you're doing. And I think that, that, you know, it's really not an anti-ritualist position because that is what ritual is. That's what you do if you don't know what you're doing.


Audience: ??


TM: None of us. uh but you know the purpose - can tell when the ritual works because it makes itself obsolete. That's the- it's- yeah.


Audience: ?? I think, I think as we continue...??


TM: Well, you know even in the most ritualistic context there's always a footnote made for the crazy wisdom. I mean every great teacher has said that what he saying is malarkey. A teacher that doesn't tell you that what he or she is saying is malarkey is not to be taken seriously. So you know it's the if you meet the Buddha on the road kill him style of thinking. Or I was just reading this Guru who's coming on strong. Uh, is it- is his name Pucha Ji?


Audience: Dass?


TM: No, no not Dass. [Terence chuckles]. But anyway somebody- this guy said don't, don't do practice. Don't do practice. Practice is only distraction. He said we have to keep thinking up- you know running an ashram is not easy. These students they expect so much of us. To keep continually inventing stuff to keep them happy and send them off on these crazy quests and, and you know, endless fasts and all this stuff because they want that. But you know the guru is pretty much content to kick back with the latest Rolling Stone. Yeah?


Audience: If my memory serves me correctly I think I saw it on the handouts that you're doing some Sheldrake.


TM: Right.


Audience: Could you comment on that? I'd like to know a little bit about that.


TM: Well, are you all familiar with Rupert Sheldrake's work? Sheldrake is a British biologist whose written a number of books. First book is called A new science of life and it was catapulted to fame by virtue of a review in Nature which said it should be burned. And hen he wrote a book called The Presence of the Past. Sheldrake as an extraordinary simple interesting revolutionary idea that just drives scientist straight up a tree. His idea is that um, once something happens it's easier for it to happen the next time.


Audience: ??


TM: Yes, simple, but it takes then forms which drive people crazy because he asserts based on that that if you teach rats to run a new kind of maze in Australia then rats in Massachusetts should be able to run this maze uh, faster than if the rats and Australia hadn't uh, learned it because once something has been, has occurred then it has a momentum in time. He calls this the theory of formative causation or morphogenesis and it explains a lot of things which are otherwise very difficult for biology to explain but it raises also a bunch of issues that are pretty tricky. And so Rupert and I have been close friends for years and even longer I've been tight with a mathematician in Santa Cruz named Ralph Abraham who's a chaos dynamicist and Ralph and Rupert and I did a book together called Trialogues at the Edge of the West which will be out at the end of the summer from Bayer and we'll all get together at Esalen at the end of August and do a bunch more of these public three-way dialogues which are pretty spirited because we are very different people from each other. Uh, but all psychedelic in all interested in paradigm recasting. So that's what it's about and it'll be out in mid-summer. End of August for that Esalen thing. Anybody else. Yeah.


Audience: ??


TM: Uh huh.


Audience: ??


TM: Well, feminism is a necessary thing for a successful future because the archaic world was so dominated by, well that's a bad choice of words isn't it, was so characterized by an awareness of of the feminine and the boundary dissolving and the organic and the whole problem with the world uh, is that we cannot feel the consequences of what we are doing. You know, I mean recently we had paraded-[6:30:00]


Transcribed by Eva Petakovic



[6:30:00]



TM: You know i mean recently we had paraded in front of the figure of Jeffrey Dahmer as who you don't want to be like. And yet jeffery dahmer to me was an absolute paradigm of global civilization because his problem was that he didn't he couldn't feel the consequences of his actions. And this is what we are doing. I mean we are lacerating ourselves by coming down the rainforests and poisoning the ocean.


[6:30:30] This is not some airy fairy save the redwoods kind of mentalities that protests.. This is our own atmosphere our own environment that were destroying. Its a its a slow suicide not so slow at the rate were tearing in half. Well somehow we have to reactivate the maternal nurturing caring circuitry that tests the tendencies


[6:31:00] that have evolved in this fabled direction uh at at bay for a long long time and you know you can call it ego you can call it male dominance you can call it a phonetic alphabet whatever it is it has to be stopped because the planet is in peril by it and i my analysis of it is that the only way to do it is to dissolve the boundary that culture and language and tradition have allowed us to create


[6:31:30] and they are largely boundaries that deress women not because men hate women but because men hate the feminine and they want to control and hold us back threatening its devouring i mean the fact that the french refer to orgasm as the little death tells you you know how what a weird kind of ambivalence haunts uh our relationship to anything which dissolves uh


[6:32:00] out of out of the knot that we have tied ourselves into and so i you know i'm a kind of non feminist feminist. I mean i think most feminists are feminists because they think women have gotten a raw deal. I m a feminist because i think mankind is headed for suicide if we don't return to a more intense expression of the feminine so it's not a political agenda for me to


[6:32:30] liberate and oppress groups of people its a collectiveness that gender necessary to save everybody and everything on the planet. Yeah


Audience:… in the end the general.. Is that um there is this … and


[6:33:00]
Malevolent entities
There's malevolent forces out there just as


[6:33:30]
TM: ..well


Of course


TM: No i mean there are malevolent and benevolent forces in there and out there. Uh but the i dont see… i don't see the world really as a struggle between good and evil and some kind of manichean situation. It seems to me that it we confer value


[6:34:00] that nature is neither good nor evil and that must then improve as ally… its just that we confer judgement this is because when you begin to get down towards the bottom line we don't know what the bottom line is. For instance were headed towards a great historical bifurcation where we're gonna have to make some really hard choices and most of the time in the so called new age they try to fuzz


[6:34:30] all the distinctions and make you think you're never going to be slammed to the wll and have to make a choice but the choice that's coming up for us is fundamental. It is are we to become the care givers the nurturers and the gardeners of the earth or is the earth you know this is i put it this way to somebody the other night the question was is the earth our mother


[6:35:00] therefore to be cared for into her old age nurtured revered and loved? Or is the earth our placenta. Therefore to be examined for signs of toxin and then buried under theapple tree. In other words what is the true nature of human beings. Are we to be integrated into nature to celebrate it or is nature a demonic and titanic force that is imprisoning spirits and


[6:35:30] holding it back from its full unfolding in worlds of alien life and higher dimension so far from here that its a miracle that … rumour reached us of the possibility of salvation. This is a tough choice because one path leads to uh radical renunciation of technology radical tearing of population. Uh and an attempt to come to terms with


[6:36:00] this small liquid planet on which we find ourselves and the other direction uh s.. Forget it. Its the husk of a seed and it is utterly meaningless in the cosmic drama and the real destiny lies out there half way … … or some other exoitc port of call i don't see how you can have that both ways.


Audience:



[6:36:30]
TM: yes and most stars uh have lives shorter than the amount of time that biology has been on this planet. We are fortunate enough to be around a very slow burning stable star. There are a lot of.. I havent forgtotten your second question right. There are a lot of mysteries in our coscmic neighbourhood that we rarely hear addressed for example just as an example um if our destiny lies out


[6:37:00] in the great universe its a hell of technological barrier to cross to the stars. I mean it may be insurmountable however isn't it interesting that the most earth like star within seventy light years is the nearest star. Not technically the nearest star which is uh glowing red clinker called alpha centurai right, but


[6:37:30] beta centura. is 1.1 solar masses. 1.1 solar masses. No star within seventy light years is as earth like i mean .. sunl like as that star from the point of view of the galaxy uh beta centura and our sun almost look like lightly bonded binaries. This is an accident it is a tremendously fortuitous


[6:38:00] accident for us because it could well mean that there is a uh an earth like planet at an incredibly short distance away from us in terms of the cosmic neighbourhood in fact probably within the next years … will be created but if there is a water heavy oxygen rich world out there its going to show up .well then that is going to become a tremendous


[6:38:30] attractor in the historical matrix because it will be hailed as the answer. I mean can ou imagine? If an .. because there wil then be two possibilities. That there is intelligence next door not likely or that there is.. How do you assess it how many oxygen rih planets have we examined for crying out loud> and the other possibility is that its empty real estate.


[6:39:00] In tiether case it will excite keen interest throughout society so now thats a little odd … cosmic neighbourhood that is rarely mentioned or… yeah


Audience:.
[6:39:30]


TM: Yes I although I leave that to the .. of the world to work out the details. There is after all a possible … that is pretty clear in spite of the ravings and rantings of these christer…. The fossil record is pretty clear that we emerged out of uh the protohomoinids who emerged out of the ppasdf radiation that emerged


[6:40:00] out of and so forth and so on. I dont uh i think that uh but there may be mysteries i mean one question that im surprised nobody ever seems to ask in these weekends when i tell the cheerful story of the descent from the trees the… encounter with the mushrooms and so forth and so on is nobody ever asks well that who put the mushrooms in the path


[6:40:30]of these binoclura bipedal evolving primates i mean is this just a story of nature's happiest accidents? Or did someone say you know te weht planet start hte retraction of the rainforests seize the spores into the grasslands and watch what happens. Uh because then we come down out of the trees brainless as the wombat and began testing food sources and


[6:41:00] lo and behold here are these things which are obviously designed to be seen. I mean mushrooms are form of display theyre designed to be seen they demand to be eaten. And uh the consequences that that you know to lead a species to the brink of darer… well thats just a coincidence or is there a mind behind all of this> see i think that if mind


[6:41:30]the problem i have with all the extra terrestrial and all the channelling adn all the abducting and all the stuff that goes on is its all too B movie its all too simple. Too straightforward. That's what the troubles me about ths… scenario is that its perfectly understandable to us if its understandable you can betcha booties its the wrong answer i mean its gonna be weirder


[6:42:00]than that not about mineral extraction or even diplomatic goodwill. Uh i have a professor years ago his cosmology went like this you know how there are bacteria which you can introduce into gold slurry in low grade ore and the bacteria will concentrate the gold and then you just watch the gold out of ght bacteria and .uh mining technique


[6:42:30]that's very efficient for poor yielding gold ore. So this guys idea was that some day UFOs would appear over every major city on earth and they would just load up all the plutonim and fissionable material and take it away and say thank you very much uh this mining operation is now completed you people cn go back to hurling shit at each other in the tree tops as far as were concerned


[6:43:00]we have real application for this fissionable material you people were gonna use it blow each other up what a bunch of dummies and farewell and good luck so thats one possibility.


Audience:


Yes then I insist on getting to the plan…


Audience:


TM:… No, halma… and harmaline by uh no by flattery and shwaretz and


[6:43:30] its published by m the university of california press neary string studies division publication number 23.


Yeah … well what i thought we should talk about this morning as we seem to range wide and free is the practicum of all this which is you know how many of these visual plants are they there


[6:44:00]and where are they and how do you obtain them and how do you use them once you obtain them. So i thought how many of you have ever seen i… get with it. This is a uh poster which i dont even know if its still available it may be uh a print. It is still available. And its a very good ethnobotanical course in hallucinogens in one sheet of paper. Uh what it divided into basically


[6:44:30] is this is the old world and this is the new. Immediately you know this t… in the new world than the old. This is one of the great of evolution… because nobody can offer a reasonable explanation as to why there should be nearly 3 times as many hallucinogenic plants int he new world as in the old i mean other than thats where the


[6:45:00] flying saucers planted them nobody has come up with a good explanation. Nature hallucinogenic plants complexes that i have experience with and can address are uh uh well lets do a little quick geographical tour. First of all north america for reasons not well understood is quite poor in


[6:45:30] native hallucinogens. Uh there are no major north american hallucinogens. Peyote is um well yes its north american the funny thing about peyote i mean you can feed me questions…


Peyote is you know we have this tremendous respect for it we imagine that its tremendously ancient and it apparently isnt. Uh


[6:46:00]there is no archaeological evidence of peyote uyse in the aerly earth and 500 years ago. Its almost a phenomenon of the conquest. What you find in the old graves in the peyote cultural area is our the seeds of the forest… which is an ordeal poison. Strychnine and often um often drug uh human


[6:46:30]plant symbiotic relationships evolve over time. It may be that the use of hallucinogens is still in fairly dynamic evolution all over the planet uh peyote is a major hallucionce should have been used for the past 50000 years if it has only been used for the past 500 years thats pretty peculiar alright and yet that appears to be the evidence. Ibogaine


[6:47:00] not only a visionary hallucinogen but an aphrodisiac as well no evidence of any use before 1850. And yet in an area where the portugese had been trading for the past 500 years and writing cultural descriptions and interviewing hte people if its was there it would have been mentioned. So this is a puzzle uh you know ayahuasca use we assume is millennia old but on the other hand


[6:47:30]archeology is a real isreablke proposition in the amazon because the climate is so degraded. Degradaded so we can't really know um but aside from peyote and whatever its history north america seems to have only minor hallucinogens that have been utilized shamanically a pu\\le another puzzle of culture and attitudes is


[6:48:00]
(end of transcription)


Transcribed by Simon Shaw



[6:36:00] this small liquid planet on which we find ourselves and the other direction uh s.. Forget it. Its the husk of a seed and it is utterly meaningless in the cosmic drama and the real destiny lies out there half way … … or some other exoitc port of call i don't see how you can have that both ways.


Audience:



[6:36:30]
TM: yes and most stars uh have lives shorter than the amount of time that biology has been on this planet. We are fortunate enough to be around a very slow burning stable star. There are a lot of.. I havent forgtotten your second question right. There are a lot of mysteries in our coscmic neighbourhood that we rarely hear addressed for example just as an example um if our destiny lies out


[6:37:00] in the great universe its a hell of technological barrier to cross to the stars. I mean it may be insurmountable however isn't it interesting that the most earth like star within seventy light years is the nearest star. Not technically the nearest star which is uh glowing red clinker called alpha centurai right, but


[6:37:30] beta centura. is 1.1 solar masses. 1.1 solar masses. No star within seventy light years is as earth like i mean .. sunl like as that star from the point of view of the galaxy uh beta centura and our sun almost look like lightly bonded binaries. This is an accident it is a tremendously fortuitous


[6:38:00] accident for us because it could well mean that there is a uh an earth like planet at an incredibly short distance away from us in terms of the cosmic neighbourhood in fact probably within the next years … will be created but if there is a water heavy oxygen rich world out there its going to show up .well then that is going to become a tremendous


[6:38:30] attractor in the historical matrix because it will be hailed as the answer. I mean can ou imagine? If an .. because there wil then be two possibilities. That there is intelligence next door not likely or that there is.. How do you assess it how many oxygen rih planets have we examined for crying out loud> and the other possibility is that its empty real estate.


[6:39:00] In tiether case it will excite keen interest throughout society so now thats a little odd … cosmic neighbourhood that is rarely mentioned or… yeah


Audience:.
[6:39:30]


TM: Yes I although I leave that to the .. of the world to work out the details. There is after all a possible … that is pretty clear in spite of the ravings and rantings of these christer…. The fossil record is pretty clear that we emerged out of uh the protohomoinids who emerged out of the ppasdf radiation that emerged


[6:40:00] out of and so forth and so on. I dont uh i think that uh but there may be mysteries i mean one question that im surprised nobody ever seems to ask in these weekends when i tell the cheerful story of the descent from the trees the… encounter with the mushrooms and so forth and so on is nobody ever asks well that who put the mushrooms in the path


[6:40:30]of these binoclura bipedal evolving primates i mean is this just a story of nature's happiest accidents? Or did someone say you know te weht planet start hte retraction of the rainforests seize the spores into the grasslands and watch what happens. Uh because then we come down out of the trees brainless as the wombat and began testing food sources and


[6:41:00] lo and behold here are these things which are obviously designed to be seen. I mean mushrooms are form of display theyre designed to be seen they demand to be eaten. And uh the consequences that that you know to lead a species to the brink of darer… well thats just a coincidence or is there a mind behind all of this> see i think that if mind


[6:41:30]the problem i have with all the extra terrestrial and all the channelling adn all the abducting and all the stuff that goes on is its all too B movie its all too simple. Too straightforward. That's what the troubles me about ths… scenario is that its perfectly understandable to us if its understandable you can betcha booties its the wrong answer i mean its gonna be weirder


[6:42:00]




Transcribed by Simon Shaw



[6:42:00]than that not about mineral extraction or even diplomatic goodwill. Uh i have a professor years ago his cosmology went like this you know how there are bacteria which you can introduce into gold slurry in low grade ore and the bacteria will concentrate the gold and then you just watch the gold out of ght bacteria and .uh mining technique


[6:42:30]that's very efficient for poor yielding gold ore. So this guys idea was that some day UFOs would appear over every major city on earth and they would just load up all the plutonim and fissionable material and take it away and say thank you very much uh this mining operation is now completed you people cn go back to hurling shit at each other in the tree tops as far as were concerned


[6:43:00]we have real application for this fissionable material you people were gonna use it blow each other up what a bunch of dummies and farewell and good luck so thats one possibility.


Audience:


Yes then I insist on getting to the plan…


Audience:


TM:… No, halma… and harmaline by uh no by flattery and shwaretz and


[6:43:30] its published by m the university of california press neary string studies division publication number 23.


Yeah … well what i thought we should talk about this morning as we seem to range wide and free is the practicum of all this which is you know how many of these visual plants are they there


[6:44:00]and where are they and how do you obtain them and how do you use them once you obtain them. So i thought how many of you have ever seen i… get with it. This is a uh poster which i dont even know if its still available it may be uh a print. It is still available. And its a very good ethnobotanical course in hallucinogens in one sheet of paper. Uh what it divided into basically


[6:44:30] is this is the old world and this is the new. Immediately you know this t… in the new world than the old. This is one of the great of evolution… because nobody can offer a reasonable explanation as to why there should be nearly 3 times as many hallucinogenic plants int he new world as in the old i mean other than thats where the


[6:45:00] flying saucers planted them nobody has come up with a good explanation. Nature hallucinogenic plants complexes that i have experience with and can address are uh uh well lets do a little quick geographical tour. First of all north america for reasons not well understood is quite poor in


[6:45:30] native hallucinogens. Uh there are no major north american hallucinogens. Peyote is um well yes its north american the funny thing about peyote i mean you can feed me questions…


Peyote is you know we have this tremendous respect for it we imagine that its tremendously ancient and it apparently isnt. Uh


[6:46:00]there is no archaeological evidence of peyote uyse in the aerly earth and 500 years ago. Its almost a phenomenon of the conquest. What you find in the old graves in the peyote cultural area is our the seeds of the forest… which is an ordeal poison. Strychnine and often um often drug uh human


[6:46:30]plant symbiotic relationships evolve over time. It may be that the use of hallucinogens is still in fairly dynamic evolution all over the planet uh peyote is a major hallucionce should have been used for the past 50000 years if it has only been used for the past 500 years thats pretty peculiar alright and yet that appears to be the evidence. Ibogaine


[6:47:00] not only a visionary hallucinogen but an aphrodisiac as well no evidence of any use before 1850. And yet in an area where the portugese had been trading for the past 500 years and writing cultural descriptions and interviewing hte people if its was there it would have been mentioned. So this is a puzzle uh you know ayahuasca use we assume is millennia old but on the other hand


[6:47:30]archeology is a real isreablke proposition in the amazon because the climate is so degraded. Degradaded so we can't really know um but aside from peyote and whatever its history north america seems to have only minor hallucinogens that have been utilized shamanically a pu\\le another puzzle of culture and attitudes is


[6:48:00]



Transcribed by Simon Shaw



-is [6:48:00] as you all know the northwest coast Indians, the Kwakiutl, Tsimshian- um, yeah Kwakiutl, Tsimshian and Tlingit have an extraordinary evolved Shamanism and where the people who develop that x-ray style of art. Well their cultural area has the densest number of psilocybin mushrooms of any place in the world. No cultural evidence of psilocybin use. No evidence that these people even knew these things were there. I mean I know this challenges the tradition of the all knowing aboriginal but you know, but this is what the data seems to imply. Now in Southern California and across portions of the Southwest there have been datura religions which are very old apparently. The so-called tolache religions. I don't recommend datura. I don't know what astronomic- astrological sign you have to be to make peace with that stuff, but I find it really peculiar and menacing. It's about magic which is about power and control and usually uh, sexuality in some invasive and Dominator application. I've taken to Tora a number of times and it's been interesting but it feels watery and dark dangerous to me. There was a period when I lived in Nepal when I became aware that these sadhus, not content with their superior meditation techniques and their endless smoking of hashish, were also availing themselves of the seeds of datura metal which is conspecific to what we call Jimsonweed in this country, and so I thought well I should take this too and find out what it's about. Well, it was a very odd trip- it was- I sat in my room and bodenoth [?] and I would sit, say hm, nothing is happening, nothing happening. Well, you can only think that so many times, then my mind would drift into a kind of twilight state and then these wraith-like entities, I mean they were like Victorian ghosts. You know, they were like women in shredded dam- shredded damask gowns or something, would fly into my window carrying newspaper sheets in their outstretched arms and they would let these sheets of newspaper flutter down onto my lap and I would like begin to read and I would begin, and I was so astonished by what I was reading that it would jerk me out of it and then say what's happening. Nothing's happening. Nothing's happening. And then my attention would drift and this would happen again. Then after about a half an hour of that as the stuff began to build up I began to, like I would undergo these very brief periods of unconsciousness and when I came out of them I would discover that my leg had been thrown up around behind my head and my arm shot through and I was like all knotted up. And then I would very carefully unfold myself and lay back down and I remember thinking I'm certainly glad there's nobody else here because this is the kind of thing just designed to drive a sitter into a conniption fit of alarm. And you know about, about six times over the next hour and a half I went into these convulsive spasms, and then on another night these English people shared a suite of rooms off of mine and I had to get to the bathroom. I had to go through this one guy's room so this one night I hadn't taken datura but this fellow had taken datura and at one point I had to go to the John so I debated for a long time about how this is going to disturb his trip and maybe I should piss out the window, but no that would- didn't seem- although in India that's perfectly all right. And um, so finally I decided I would just walk through the room, so then as I was tiptoeing through the room I saw that he was actually having sex with this girl that we knew from Katmandu and it had a slight emotional tinge for me because I had actually had my eye on her although I never said anything about it to anybody so uh, so then uh, the next morning I mentioned this and he said that yes it had been his impression as well but that in fact she wasn't there and so it was like you know I, I saw somebody else's hallucination and then what finally decided me that datura was too peculiar was that I had another English friend who lived a couple of houses away and one day I was in the market buying potatoes and this guy came along and we were just talking and in the course of this conversation he was telling me how he'd been taking a lot of datura and in the course of this conversation I became aware that he thought that I was visiting him in his apartment and I decided that's too fucked up, you know, to not know whether you're entertaining someone in the confines of your apartment or buying vegetables in the confines of the market means that you've become too disengaged [6:54:00] from the modalities-



Transcribed by Eva Petakovic



[6:54:00] from the modalities of the real. And, of course, it creates tremendous drying, and uhm it’s a- it’s a- its- its- a uhm, deliriant, is what the literature calls it. It’s deliriant. Ahh.. but the, you know, I think that people all over the world utilize, uhm, plants for bizarre experiences. Time and time again I have run up against this [06:54:30], uhm…, one- you know there is a very rare drug in South America called oo-koo-he, oo-koo-he. It’s made by the huitoto, uhm, and the bora and the muinani in this very circumscribed area and what fascinated us about it was that it was an orally active DMT drug. And we couldn’t as pharmacologists understand how an orally active DMT drug was possible. Because the DMT should be destroyed in your [06:55:00] gut. So we wanted to get a sample of this stuff. And uhm, it’s made from the resin of virola trees, the inner bark of the virola sheds a red resin. And uhm, we eventually in 1981, my brother and I and Wade Davis, the guy who wrote the “The Serpent and the Rainbow”, we all launched an expedition of the Rio Yaguas Yacu. [6:55:30] And where there was this stuff and we would do what we call the bioaste ...which means somebody has to test this stuff. Cause we would get samples from these shaman and we would draw straws for who got to do the bioaste. Well taking this acute was appalling. I mean your heart rate goes up to about three times normal, you shed water by the gallon, your blood pressure shoots up. [6:56:00] I mean it felt like a precoronary to me. And then we come down and say to this shaman, ya know, Lorenzio, what’s the story? And he said “Yeah, it takes getting used to doesn’t it?” [audience laughs] And uhm, so then I.. And then when you look at it, when you look at this oo-koo-he chemically you see well yes there’s dmt in there and there’s 5 mao dmt in there, but then when you do the gastronaimgram [6:56:30] you see that marching along behind those spots there are all these other spots of various tryptamine compounds, some of which are cardioregulators, some of which nobody knows what they do, and so then you realize that it’s a, it’s a dirty drug. There’s too much junk in there. What you want is something that has a very clean signature. So oo-koo-he didn’t exactly seem the way, uhm, to go. Uhm, I think this is the real [6:57:00] situation with amanita muscaria. Probably the most discussed, uninteresting, uhm, drug in the world. Because so many people have tried to hang so much on it. And ya know, it’s a horrible experience most of the time.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Yeah yeah, occasionally you’ll meet someone who says “Well you’re just wrong. It’s wonderful. [6:57:30] I’ve taken it for years; I love it. And I, ya know, don’t know. First of all it’s genetically variable, it’s geographically variable, it’s uhm, uhm, seasonally variable. And it fluctuates at various times in its uhm, in its uhm, process of maturation. So what must be going on with amanita muscaria is that you have to learn how to take it in your area, [6:58:00] from people that know when to collect it, where to collect it, how much to collect, and how to prepare it. If you just go out and find one and chow down I guarantee you it will turn you every way but loose and it will turn you loose. So uhm..


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: No that’s what they always say. They say “Have you drunk your urine recently?” I got a letter last week... No, i understand. But if- Do you all understand the basis of the question? Why does urine [6:58:30] come into it? Because, uhm, in Siberia they have discovered, where this amanita thing originates, that the active principle is not destroyed inside your body. That it is excreted in the urine. And the true aficionados of this stuff believe that this so called second pass is better than the first pass. And so you have to uhm, uhm, [6:59:00] you know...they drink the urine. One of the great hazards of Siberian shamanism is stepping outside of the yurt on a snowy night to take a leak and being pitched head first into the snow by frantic reindeer who butt you out of the way to try to get to the yellow snow because they’re so completely hooked on, uhm, amanita that nothing stands in their way. [audience laughs]


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Oh, your [inaudible] is pushing you out of the.. Well I’ve never hung out with the Yakuts. Maybe they’re a pretty wild-eyed gang. An example of how a very ancient, uhm, how a very ancient folkway can be incorporated into our culture without us even realizing it, and is provided by discussing amanita muscaria… If you go to the encyclopedia britannica and you look up Santa Claus [7:00:00]


Transcribed Paul Mullins



they’ll tell you that it has to do with Saint Nicholas and it got started in the 11th century and it’s a-, but when you look at the Santa Claus story it’s a perfect, uhm, mythologym to analyze from this point of view because look what’s going on with Santa Claus. First of all Santa Claus’ colors are red and white, the colors of the amanita muscaria for sure. [7:00:30] Santa claus lives at the north pole. What does this mean? It means Santa Claus lives at the axis mundi where yggdrasil, the magic work ash of Welsh mythology has, uhm, taken root. Santa Claus flies, this is what shaman do. Santa Claus is the master of the reindeer, the animal most associated with the amanita muscaria. [7:01:00] Santa Claus is aided in his work by troops of elves. And what is the work of Santa Claus? To build toys for children. Remember the DMT thing saying “Look at this! Look at this!” Well those were off duty elves, clearly. So here are all the motifs and I believe that for children in our culture that all the christer stuff is not what christmas [7:01:30] is about. Christmas is about standing in front of the tree on christmas morning with the gifts arrayed and the twinkling lights on. Well that tree is the tree that the amanita muscaria forms it’s symbiotic relationship to. It’s always spruce or pine that it has a mycorrhizal relationship to. So the number of motifs relating Santa Claus to a cult of amanita muscaria- there’s almost nothing but relational [7:02:00] motifs there. And yet if you suggest this to people they just back away in horror, you know? Well, uhm, these hallucinogenic plants seem clustered in the new world in two areas. The first area is, uhm, the Sierra Mazateca of central Mexico and related areas. And there you have a number of things overlapping. You have [7:02:30], uhm, the- a- a mushroom area of multiple species where, unlike the [quaquatal?] shim-sham [flingut?] language area, in this central mexican langua- uhm, area they absolutely did use and discover these mushrooms. And we have these things called mushroom stones that, uhm, go, uhm, 2500 b.c.. So the mushroom religions is truly archaic in Mexico. [7:03:00] In the same cultural area you have the, uhm, the morning glory seeds that come from ipomoea purpurea and- and related hybrids. Are you all familiar with these? This is a psychedelic plant that you can grow yourself and take. Don’t buy the packages of seeds and take them because, uhm, a benevolent government has made sure that they are soaked in horrendous poison so that you can’t [7:03:30] get loaded on them. Uhm, but you can grow a crop out of them that will be toxin free. And this is a tremendous visionary intoxicant. It takes a couple hundred of these seeds but in that same area, strangely enough, there’s another morning glory, [Named here. Can’t find it on the web], it used to be called [?], that, as few as thirteen seeds will flatten you. [7:04:00] Now it’s interesting, as long as we’re talking about morni- uhm, morning glory seeds, to note that pure unit volume, per by weight, probably the strongest plant hallucinogen in the world is, uhm, hawaiian baby woodrose. And yet there is no record of any culture ever utilizing that. It, uhm- there are thirteen species of argyreia. It’s called [7:04:30] hawaiian baby woodrose but it has nothing to do with Hawaii, it’s native to India. There are thirteen species of argyreia scattered from southern India out to Fiji and all contain ergot like, LSD like, compounds like chanoclavine and so forth. These- I got started on morning glory seeds because they were available. But don’t sell this stuff short folks. I mean, it’ll give you a ride you’ll [7:05:00] never forget. Uhm, and the baby woodrose even moreso. Be very careful with the hawaiian baby woodrose because it contains cardioactive glycosides and, you know, if you, you know, maybe six seeds will do you. Twelve seeds might well plant you. And twelve seeds will fit on a tablespoon. So this is nothing to start choking down in large amounts. Yea. [7:05:30]


Audience: [Inaudible]


TM: Yes and could be extracted in a fairly simple fil- filtration system. Yea, good point. Yea.


Audience: [My question is are they dry? Do you grind them up?]


TM: You- Well they are dry. They’re little crescent shape dry things. Yea grind them in a braun grinder and, uhm, uhm…


Audience: Do you mix them with anything?


TM: Apple sauce is the favorite carrier for these disgusting things, or milkshakes. Uhm, but it would be good [7:06:00]



Transcribed by Paul Mullins



[7:06:00]
TM: “Um… But it would be good to look into doing a little chemistry - the emetic in the morning glories is estracumerone, not the cardioactive glycoside in argeria nervosa but in ipomea purpurea it’s.. uh…estracumerone and you could devise a simple chemical system for removing that and I think LSD.. w-you know...have you ever had what is called “Woodrose LSD”? Well it’s wonderful! It’s unlike LSD, it’s more like psilocybin because it is highly visionary; [7:06:30]and one of the things about these morning glories is.. You know… I don’t know whether we have to talk about Rupert’s theory or what… but it’s just an archive of Mayan and Toltec imagery, I mean, you take this stuff and you’re there in the pyramidal complex on the day of Venus’s heliacal rising when they do their thing… I mean it’s pretty amazing.”


Audience: [Inaudible][7:07:00]


TM: “Uuuuummm… it’s a close relative, it’s active not in the microgram range, but in the milligram range and there are several active compounds… Eurite... I think Chenoklavine is the psychoactive… and Erganovine… all these occur there.”


Audience: “And do you grind those and swallow them whole, or make an infusion?”


TM: “No, you grind them to a powder and then just take... capsule ‘em…and it’s a lot of capsules [7:07:30] it’s like half a cup of this horrible, whitish meal with a strange smell but… yeah basically about two hundred seeds. You may want to go higher but start with that.”


Audience: [Inaudible] [7:08:00]


TM: “Well, no, but if what you’re saying is true, that’s where the glycoside would reside. That’s not my understanding actually, wh-”


Audience: [Inaudible]


TM: “Well, maybe the caption got mislabeled or something because the way they do it where [7:08:30] I’ve seen it is they take the little seeds and they grind them on a matate into a powder, then they put it in water… as you sssssaid… and then, and they shake it, ss… uh..and leave it, and come back an hour later and shake it again and do that for a while; and then uh the stuff precipitates to the bottom..the physica-.. .the...the matter...and the liquid fraction is poured off and discarded [7:09:00] and they take the... the solid matter and they let it dry in the sun until it’s no longer runny but it’s a kind of like… the consistency of oatmeal or playdough or something like that and then they make a little tiny uh...uh...tortilla which they... they then toast on a metal griddle and so you get this thing which looks slightly smaller than a ritz cracker…[7:09:30] and is a toasted morning glory seed wafer, and you eat that, and that is the thing which is active. That’s how I’ve seen it done.


Audience: [Inaudible]


TM: “Apparently not, they toast it lightly, they don’t… it’s not blackened… It’s just sort of golden…”


Audience: [Inaudible]


TM: “No, it’s the… it’s one species of morning glory turbina, previously called revea, coryembosa. [7:10:00] The other one...uh… the morning glory that you have to take uh.. a couple of hundred seeds for is used in that area as a hallucinogen, but it’s also used to induce labour and has a whole role in midwifery and...and like that.


Audience: [Inaudible]


TM: “No, that’s the Hawaiian Woodrose and it has no history of human usage, [7:10:30] so you’re on your own. This is… it’s worth talking about maybe for a minute… that… er, y’know there are… hallucinogens are like hotel rooms, some are occupied and some are not, and it’s always interesting to fiddle with the unoccupied ones, because if you’re… if you believe Sheldrake, then it’s an empty field. Uh, you know, one way of thinking of these things is… when you take a plant [7:11:00] it takes you.So, when you take mushrooms for instance, what the trip is, is all the mushroom trips that anybody ever had. And you lea… you know, you make a tiny contribution too, ah... it’s… you leave a piece of your trip in the trip and so the… the trip is slowly evolving over time as those who take the plant each leaves a brick [7:11:30] or an offering or a little architectural motif on this vast edifice. Well then if you come… that was why a- uh… y’know a plant like Hawaiian Woodrose or to some degree Stropharia Cubensis because it is not the preferred mushroom among the Mexican traditionalists, then it’s unoccupied. You can make of it what you want; it can be sort of... your vehicle. This is why a drug like ketamine, which is a new drug, [7:12:00]


Transcribed by Aurelio Lyra





TM.: … a new drug, without a thousand years of input. My impression of where you go on ketamine is like visiting a new office building. That nobody has rented offices yet, i mean all the water coolers work, and there are these recessional distances with fluorescent lighting, but, there are no hurrying secretaries or crowded offices, or chatter around the water fountains. It’s just empty. It’s empty because not enough people have left their initials on the walls.


Audience Question: What is the variety of mushroom that is common in the Yucatan


TM:.: Well, if you mean growing on manure. Yeah, that’s Stropharia cubensis. See there are about 30 species of mushrooms that grow in that Mexican area, and most of them are what are called, well not most of them, but some are ephemeral mushrooms, meaning they are very small and they can be almost anywhere. And there are some larger ones too that can be almost anywhere. Stropharia cubensis is the only one of the good ones that locates on cow dung. Now, there are other mushrooms that grow on cow dung that contain psilocybin, but they also are more sickening.There are species of Panaeolus and species of Coprinus. If you collect a mushroom off dung and you want to know if it is a Panaeolus or Coprinus or Stropharia, just keep it around for a few hours. If it is a Stropharia it will just sort of be around. If it is a Coprinus or a Panaeolus, it will do what is called auto-digest. It will turn into a slimy mess.


Audience Question: Can’t you tell from the spore print


TM:’ No, you can’t tell from the spore print, but you can tell from the macro-morphology of it, if you know mushrooms. They’re easy to tell apart.


Audience Question: [inaudible]


TM,: You see that’s tricky unless you’re someone who really knows their stuff.


Audience Question: [inaudible] have you found that there is way in Hawaiian woodrose seeds [inaudible]


TM;: It was more speculative, but i think it would be worth trying.


Audience Question: I thought that the ergamine alkaloid is not water soluble


TM; Some are and some aren’t.


Audience Question: [inaudible] … synthesizing LSD. Its apparently hard to get it started. I hear if you get a bunch of morning glory seeds and soak them in lighter fluid… [inaudible]


TM;: Yeah that sounds right. Pet Ether is a good one. So is Chloroform. Have any of you read The Road to Eleusis. That’s about the Eleusinian Mysteries, and argues, its by Wasson and Hoffman and Ruck, and argues that the mystery at Eleusis was a kind of ergotized beer. That they were gathering ergot off Paspalum and making an ergotized beer, and the only way they could’ve done that for 2000 years, stoning thousands of people each September at this cult site, without the thing getting a reputation for being toxic or causing convulsions, unless they had some way that was very efficient, of separating the toxic alkaloids from the hallucinogenic ones. So, that may have been a water fractionation technique, as well. Or, you know, the whole theory may be wrong, and whatever was drunk at Eleusis may not have been ergotized beer. It could have been a mushroom of some sort. This is what Robert Graves thought, that it was a mushroom.


Audience Q: [inaudible]


TM;: The Road to Eleusis. Probably not, because Wasson is now dead and the estate is kind of funny about that kind of thing.


Audience Q; Two Questions. One is can you talk more of the emetic of morning glory and how to get rid of it.


TM: The emetic is Estracutarone. If you’re not a chemist and used to dealing with high molecular weight solvents that you should do some kind of water, you know, dissolve it in water and then try and separate out the fractions. This would be, i mean, a lot of work needs to be done. I think in the underground there are publications being circulated that are, you know, the Wizard’s Workbook for mushroom , er i mean, morning glory reclaimation and stuff like this. Its that, you pay your dues with morning glories, but it’s usually worth the price of admission. I mean, it’s only nausea, for crying out loud. Yeah


Audience Q: You were talking about different hallucinogens and were telling, i got the impression that you vocation is that somehow consciousness creates the reality that’s out there depending on how consciousness is used with different hallucinogens. Is that…
.
TM; … Yeah, i think so. That we leave our fingerprints on the drugs that we take, and that drugs that have been taken for thousands of years have a lot of fingerprints on them.



Transcribed by Chris Galbraith



TM: (07:18:00)..into the field, you know. One way of thinking, since someone talked of Sheldrake earlier, one way of thinking about psychedelics and trying to define what do they do, is that they are amplifiers of the morphogenetic field. That, you know, that the past of objects somehow becomes present. Em, this would fit it in with my notion that when you take a psychedelic you are rising into some kind of superspace, (07:18:30) that can be mathematically described. Because having the past be co-present with the present is a way of saying that you will shift your dimensional relationship to the datafield, and now it appears to be one coherent thing. Yeah?


Audience: Um, what is the plant that grows in the South West that has harmeline in it?


TM: Pegamum Harmala, the girant syrian rue. Its original (07:19:00) range is from Marocco to Manchuria, but at some time in the nineteenth century it was brought into this country as a range fodder for, for goats. I mean its pretty rasky plant. Em..


Audience: INAUDIBLE


TM: It,s uh, it has small yellow flowers, and it´s a kind of, it has succulent leaves, sort of waterholding leaves, and it looks like a form of sage brush, and when you cut into it (07:19:30) with a knife or a machete it´s brilliant yellow inside. And that brilliant yellow is the harmine.


Audience: INAUDIBLE


TM: Pound it up with a sledgehammer to separate the fibers and do a hot water wash on it, and then, you know, do a second hot water wash, then get rid of the physical stuff. Combine the two mother liquors and drive it (07:20:00) down to a reasonable volume. And it´ll do the trick. Yeah.


Audience: You´re probably familiar with ..INAUDIBLE


TM: JohnAllegro and Andrija Puharich, yeah,


Audience: What´s your assessment of... inaudible


TM: Well, not to rain on anybody´s parade.. Andrija Puharich is a very mercurial person, is that what we want to say. (07:20:30) Recall that he was the guy who pushed Uri Geller for a long time. And they were forever tromping into the Negev and coming out with blank cassettes that had held the wisdom of the galaxy, but the aliens erased them before they let them return.


(Audience laughing, unrest).


That could happen here.. So that´s Andrija Puharich. Ah.. He´s been around for a long time, so you have to, these people are such eccentrics, I mean you have to (07:21:00) just respect people´s persistence and survival power. (Audience laughter) Eh, but I think you know his scholarship, and his notions, the rules of evidence is fairly divergent from even from my fairly loose cannon. (LAUGHS) So, Allegro is a little different case. You all know the book ´The sacred mushroom and the cross´? He managed to hypothesize one of the most radical (07:21:30) theories ever to come down the pipe. I don´t know how true it is, but his theory is that Jesus was a mushroom. (Audience laughs) Ha, ha.. And you know this would not probably have cut too much mustard except that the guy was a dead sea scroll scholar of world renown, ah, had a scholars grasp of Arameic and Akkadian, and was fully licenced (07:22:00) to be one of the people who tell us what the primary documents of Christianity really mean. The problem was, when Allegro got a hold of them, he said, well, what they really mean is that a sacramental mushroom was gr.., being grown in caves by navateans (?) down the Ram Qumram and they called it Jesus, in order to befuddle the Roman authorities and created (07:22:30) the cheerful fairy of the friendly carpenter who tells us to render unto Cesar that which is Cesar´s, and this was all a publicity stunt just to keep, uh, the Roman authorities guessing. And he has textual, he claims he has textual support for this. The problem is,you have to be an Arameic philologist to follow the argument, and I mean, the argument is unbelievably tortured. (07:23:00) There is a lot of question.., there is a peculiar opaqueness about the early history of Christianity. I mean, if we are to try and take it seriously and understand what happened there, then it must be, that, first of all, if we believe that Christ was a real person, then he must have been born in 6 B.C. Because there was a conjunctial maxima of Jupiter and Saturn at that time, which is a good astrological (07:23:30) event to hang the nativity on. Which means, then, that the crucifiction would have occured in 27. Well, why is it, then, that there are no mentions, no mention of cristh.., of Christ can be pushed back later than, earlier than AD 69. What was going between 27 and 69? The gospels are not contemporaneous, and uh, the mention (07:24:00)



Transcribed by Aina Mumbi



24:00 - 30:00


Women know whose children are who’s because they see the child come out of their body, and they nurse the child. But men do not in that situation have their children. My children. What they have are our children, the tribal group. And uh, this boundary dissolving thing. Let's dwell on this for a moment, because this is central to my arguments, and it has political consequences for our own lives. Um, all primates, clear back down into squirrel monkeys and lemurs. Um, all primates have what are called male dominance hierarchies. Uh, what this means is that most, th the males with the longest claws, the hardest muscles, and the meanest dispositions, take control of everybody else. Uh, women, children, weaker males, uh, everybody comes under the thumb of the alpha males of the pack. This is true, as I said, of squirrel monkeys, howler monkeys, so forth and so on. It is also true of us, sitting here in this room. This is a male dominant society, I mean there's a lot of complaining and hair pulling about it. And there's a political alternative, in the form of, of the women's movement and feminist sensitivities, but for most people, male dominance is the rule. Well I would like to suggest that our peculiarly discomforted relationship to reality is a consequence of the fact that, for a long period of time, perhaps as short as twenty thousand years, perhaps as long as a million years, as a species, and not consciously, we accepted into our diet a drug that had the consequences of suppressing male dominance.
That this was the social consequence of accepting psilocybin into the diet. The ego is a structure that forms in the psyche like a calcareous tumor, or growth, if you do not have regular recourse to the cure. And the cure is, uh, psilocybin and the boundary dissolving sexual and social style which is carried in its wake. So the reason that we as a people are, uh, haunted by the idea of a lost paradise a perfect world sometime in the misty past is not, you know, Mircea Eliade called it, "the nostalgia for paradise" and thought of it , uh, as longing that had no basis. But I think that it's entirely a memory of the period when male dominance was chemically suppressed, ego was chemically suppressed. And by male dominance and ego I don't mean to lay this entirely on men. I would wager probably that everyone in this room has more ego than they need. For example, starting with me, and that's part of the paradox you're supposed to enjoy.. (audience laughter). You know, the ambiguity of me preaching the loss of ego. (audience laughs). So, essentially, you know, what happened was, chemically, a chemically driven leap in evolution as a consequence of the suppression of these behaviours that savoured male dominance. Uh, as a species, uh, we would have continued with male dominance forever had it not been for psilocybin in the diet. And it established uh, a situation, in which, in less than two million years the human brain size doubled. This is without contest the greatest mystery in the whole of evolutionary theory. Uh, Lumsden, who is an evolutionary biologist, called the doubling of human brain size in the last two million years, uh, the most spectacular transformation of a major organ of a higher animal in the entire fossil record. Well now it would be spectacular enough if it were the liver of an otter, or the (both laughter) hha, ha the pancreas of an elephant. But notice it is the organ that created the theory of evolution itself. And all other theories, so that we're getting a little chronological here folks. (background laughter) There's something fishy going on. Uh, what was it that caused this explosive doubling in human brain size. Well I maintain that it was the new behaviors that emerged with the suppression of ego, and their reinforcement of nomadic pastoralism. And that there was a period, let's call it from the melting of the last glaciers in (unintelligible), 6500 BC, there was a period when men and women were in balance with each other. Children and adults were at peace with each other. And human beings and the planet were at peace with each other.



Transcribed by Christy Redden



[07:30:00]


TM: Hans Jonas is a brilliant—his book, “Chri-”, uh ... “Gnosticism: The Message of The Alien God to Infant Christianity”—if that’s not a title to die for ... Ahem. [audience laughter] Huh?


Audience: [inaudible question]


TM: Oh, “The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the New Testament” by Charles[worth]. Now that's a ... that ahh weighs in at about 35 pounds, but theological libraries shoul-... will have it, but it's in the locked case. You don't want seminarians [07:30:30] mucking around with this kind of stuff ... uhh …


Audience: [inaudible] And by extension, there’s “The Urantia Book” too, which has about 2000 pages on the life of Christ, and covers those years after 30, or I guess after 27 or so …


TM: That's right. “The Uranita Book” is a very spectacular and early example of channeling before it was even named, ahh, and, uhh, very interesting of all the channeled material, “The Urantia Book” for its pure grandiosity puts everybody [07:31:00] else, uhh, to shame, right? [audience laughter]


Audience: They talk about seeding the planet.


TM: Yeah! Well, these are persistent themes, you know. I mean all of Gnosticism is the perception that we don't belong here. That we are creatures of another realm, Beings of Light, who because of some horrible cosmic mistake have been trapped in the world of matter; and the gnostics take the Pentateuch, [07:31:30] the first five books of ... of Moses, and turn it into a nightmare story, and say that, you know, the god of this world, which in Jewish tradition is called Yahweh, who is creator of the world for the Gnostics, he is not the real god at all. He’s the demiurge. He’s a kind of mad god who has entrapped the light, and the task of salvation [07:32:00] is to gather the light and then release it back to it’s hidden higher source beyond the machinery of Cosmic Fate.


[Sudden silence in recording; audience inaudible]


TM: Well, that—that’s good. That’s, it’s sort of like, you know the “Māṇḍūkya Upaniṣads” — it's my favorite Upanishad, because it’s the shortest. It’s only a page and a half long, which it—uhh, [audience laughter] you know, which it, uhh... you know, others have been so similarly inspired to brevity, [07:32:30] but it’s the Breath of Brahman. It traces - it’s the description of one — eh-uh ... exhalation/inhalation cycle. Yeah?


Audience: I know people who can’t even say it: Yah—Wha-!


TM: Yeah, wha…!? Well, you’re not even supposed to say it, if you’re Orthodox.


Audience: [light laughter]


TM: G—dash—D. Yeah?


Audience: You said Yahweh. I'm fascinated by the Rastafarian [inaudible, cough] by which the abbreviation of Yah, [07:33:00] or … the same phrase hallelujah is supposed to be that twist that [inaudible] could be [inaudible] your understanding is that [inaudible] Yahweh as a verb?


TM: Well, I don’t know too much about Rastafarianism. It was founded by Marcus Garvey and get - had this notion of return to Africa. Uh, you know, syncretism is always with us. Gnosticism was characterized by syncretism. The whole late Hellenic uhh, religious efflorescence, was largely [07:33:30] syncretic and certainly that's what we have now. I mean, you know, The New Age. You go to these fairs and the people who are talking to the Pleiades have the booth next to the people who are talking to Zubenelgenubi and both have world plans from the Saucerian Allfathers, and the two plans are different and you just phooey, uuh, ugh … you know?


Audience: [laughter]


Audience: Gnosticism is alive and well in the hallways of academia, I mean. You got guys like Marvin [inaudible: Lins-key] [07:34:00] and Hans [inaudible: Bor-betch] who ran an [inaudible] into his brain and into the computer and you know so he can become pure information. So that’s about the least for which people matter, is for information, then I don’t know what is …


TM: No, I agree. There are two sentiments loose in the world, and you’re going to NOT get through this life without taking sides. You know? Do you believe that our destiny is in another dimension made of light on the other side of the Universe, or do you believe that we should, uhh, you know, clean up the rainforests and save [07:34:30] the planet? You wanna be very careful with your political agenda. One of my sub-interests, which sort of has a relationship to this, but it's oblique, is: asteroidal impacts. I think asteroidal impacts are one of the great undiscussed, uhh, factors in evolution that tie... that every solid body in the solar system is heavily [07:35:00] cratered with impacts by infalling bodies. There's this thing down in Arizona that only happened 50,000 years ago. It was a pissant sized object and everything within 800 miles of the impact point died instantly. It dug a hole half a mile into the ground. It was a nothing-burger. This thing which came down 65 million years ago, they now think on the Yucatán, that it killed everything on the [07:35:30] Earth larger than a chicken — died. You know, I mean, you wanna talk about eco-castrophe, I mean, we have never - you can’t even conceive of what it’s like when something like that happens to a planet. They estimate that the … at the velocity this thing must have been traveling, it was five miles into the planet in the first second and a half. It raised a wall of rock 6,000 feet high that moved outward at Mach 7. [audience laughter] [07:36:00]


Transcribed by Nathan Johansen



[07:36:00]


TM: Kay? Eeee! I mean, [clears throat] he-yeah . Ah-ha-hem! [audience laughter] Eh! And the planet rang for a million years, you know, and it was, and but if it hadn’t been for that, there would be no flowering plants, no triumph of the mammals, no Whitney Houston ... no … [laughter]


Audience: No sperm entering the egg.


TM: Well, but … eh, suppose: you know, there’s all this tumult in our psyche about the great change that’s supposed to happen, and where are we supposed [07:36:30] to put our political energies, and what are we supposed to be doing? Well, it would be pretty ironic if we, you know, beat ourselves over the head and saved the rainforest and all this malarkey, and then this something came down and just turned the whole thing into hash; and people would say: “My God! How could we have been so stupid!? We should have been extracting and sequestering U-235 and plutonium. We should have been building starships the size of Montana. [07:37:00] We should have been sparing no effort; and what did we do? We re-planted rainforests!?” And now look, the whole thing … so, you have to [audience laughter], it uhh, you know, good intentions are not sufficient. You have to locate where the threat is coming from and act accordingly. There are no points for good intentions in the game of evolution. So mind and .. and we have to decide, you know, what does life want? Is it that life at it’s most [07:37:30] basic level senses the finite, uhh, duration of the star’s life? And so it wants to use this moment of sunshine to build something that could carry us out into the mainstream of the galaxy to the denser star-fields? Or, no!? Is that some kind of Titanic-Apollonian Male-Dominated Techno-Fascist Materialist-Trip, [audience laughter] and what we need to do is cultivate [07:38:00] gentleness, and attention to the bugs, and the grasses, and the water? I don’t have an answer to that. I think it’s a real dilemma. I think people who think they do have answers haven’t really connected with how ambiguous the situation really is.


Audience: How can you do both?


TM: How can you do both?


Audience: What says The Mushroom? Well, no. I mean, some people can use [cough; inaudible].


TM: Well, what the mushroom says is it’s .. it’s a total “Apocalyptarian” [07:38:30]. I mean, it says: “Rouse your camels, pack your tents, we’re moving out! This has been fine for a while, but ahead lie worlds of unimaginable challenge at great distance.” But, of course, the—the mushroom sounds like a Techno-Fascist Hortatory Male-Dominator, uhh, when it talks like that. You take Ayahuasca and it says: “Clean up the rivers. Care for the children. [07:39:00] Replant the forest.” Well, wha’ …? (sigh).


Audience: But then you have to live with the mushroom possibly being the Universal Traveller that it is, it has that Urge. It’s got the Wanderlust. So it’s of course it’s going to be [inaudible; “cosmic”?]. [laughter]


TM: That’s right. It has nomadic ethics, so it pushes nomadic solutions. Where the Ayahuasca, an enormous jungle plant—a flowering plant, a creature born out of the last catastrophe, just like we are—has a different, uhh, agenda. No, the demons are of many kinds [07:39:30]. “Some are made of ions, some of mind / The ones of DMT, you’ll find / Stutter often, and are blind.” Means, you know: just because somebody, uhh, ehh, just because [light laughter] somebody once said of channeling: “Just because somebody’s dead doesn’t mean they’re smart.” [raucous audience laughter]


TM: So, [laughter] it could be, you know? [laughter] Everybody’s got their own, uhh, agenda. Well, why don’t we break ... yeah? [07:40:00] Or question? Last question.


Audience: Speaking of the [inaudible; “cosmological expanse”?], are you aware of the present Miles’ work?
TM: Uhh, on the steady-state or something?


Audience: On virus’ [inaudible; “spreadability”?].


TM: Oh, yeah, uh-hm: The Panspermia Theory.


Audience: Yeah, and … and, and again that argues strongly for the fact that even [inaudible] may have come out of space, and probably only other than an impressive array of statistics, uhh, [inaudible] that lent cometary presence [07:40:30] in near-orbit to viral disease.


TM: Yeah, well I think that the next revolution in biology is so obvious that you can be totally radical and completely confident you’re on safe ground and say the next great revolution in biology is the realization that space is not a barrier to life, and that, eh, technology is only one method for traversing [07:41:00] between the stars. If in fact planets are regularly pulverized by cosmic catastrophes, then they must be like bursting seedpods and, uhh, everything is subjected to a tremendous evolutionary hammering; but spores, viruses, stuff like that. Particulate matter, it just drifts out between the stars and when it finds another suitable environment, uhh, it it [07:41:30] breaks out. We don’t know what the constraints on life are. You know, the Oceans of Europa could harbor life. You know, these hot-vent sulphur-vent organisms that we find, uhh, in the O—in the deep oceans here? They could survive in the Oceans of Europa. If there were hot sulphur vents at the bottom of those oceans, those organisms wouldn’t, uhh, bat an eye.


Audience: [inaudible] Isn’t it ice covered?


TM: Ah, Europa [07:42:00]



Transcribed by Nathan Johansen





Audience: [inaudible] Isn’t it ice covered?


TM: Ah, Europa [07:42:00] is covered with ice, but underneath the ice is water, and there are — uhh, fractures, uhh — and uhh, you know, the uhh — the exotic chemistries and pressures and temperatures of the Jovian environment could produce life. We don’t know, uhh — what the constraints are. If — if cometary environments are a better place for life to arise than a warm pond on a newly condensed planet, [07:42:30] then all bets are off as to what, you know — planetary surfaces may be unlikely places for life to get going. Uhh, it’s hard to say.


Audience: How sustainable are gaseous creatures on a gaseous planet?


TM: That’s right. We don’t know. You could have — you could have life at temperatures and pressures, uhh, where WE couldn’t exist for a microsecond, uhh, like at the bottom of the Jovian atmosphere — something like that. No, there’s more mystery [07:43:00] than anything else.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Uhh, the—the (ehh) it’s—okay the notion here is—I’ve always felt that the psychedelic experience should be good for something. It arose—uhh, [audience laughter]—in a very practical sense, and I always felt that there was something that wanted, that you should be able to learn that was very hard to bring out. Ahem [clears throat] and we talked a little bit yesterday [takes sip from drink] about [07:43:30] this strange episode that happened in the Amazon, where instead of an ordinary trip, it was locked in for weeks and weeks, and then people differed as to whether it was a transformative incident or a psychosis, or … what exactly it was, and but, what happened was — uhh, or what I think wants to happen in every psychedelic experience is that there is a totality symbol, you know Jung tried to get his patients to make [07:44:00] mandalas because he says they were totality symbols. Well, eventually the totality symbol is more than a symbol— it actually becomes a true map of the totality and I—what this boils down to is a kind of very strange revelation about the nature of the I-Ching that takes very seriously the idea that the I-Ching is a tool for studying time, but then takes the idea much further. It’s hard to give this lecture, it’s hard to listen to this lecture, because the learning curve is steep, and you just have to stick with it for awhile and then there will be pay dirt, but it’s — uhh, you have to umm, bear with me — and I had to bear with the entity which was revealing this stuff to me, because it took the form of [07:45:00] … a, uhh … Are you all familiar with the idea of a Kōan?


Audience: [a soft murmur, but mostly silence]


TM: This is something that your Guru — a little saying or something — that your Guru gives you that if you can figure it out then you move on to the next stage. Well, so the Koan (sips from drink) that I was presented with had to do with the I-Ching, which I was not that passionately fascinated by—I was just sort of mildly interested in it, [07:45:30] like a lot of other freaks, and I was not at all mathematically inclined, I mean, that I am the author of a theory of pure mathematics is as astonishing to me as it is to anybody else, I’m sure.


TM: Basically, as you know but let me review it, the I-Ching is a Chinese System of Divination that uses 64 structures called hexagrams, and hexagrams are made of broken [07:46:00] and unbroken lines stacked one above another, and they are uhh, the sum set—sum total—of the possible set of such structures is 64. And it’s been remarked by a number of people that the I-Ching has peculiar structural affinities with the DNA, but nobody has ever really known what to make of that. Well, this dialogue with this mushroom entity, uhh, began by [07:46:30] posing a very simple question, which is—as, you know, most of you—the I-Ching hexagrams occur in a sequence which is called the King Wen sequence, which is very old. In fact, portions of the King Wen sequence are scratched on shoulder scapula, umm, that are 35,000 years old. It’s possible to argue that the King Wen sequence of the I-Ching is the oldest abstract sequence, uhh, [07:47:00] ehh, in the world. The question is, or what the Koan was, was: Is the King Wen sequence a Sequence or is it simply a jumble of hexagrams that over time has become traditionally sanctioned as The Sequence? In other words, if it’s a sequence, you should be able to write the rules that generate that hex—that sequence— and no other. [07:47:30] So umm, lemme dig into this here … the first hexagram … can you see this colored chalk? We have two other choices: we have a orange and blue. Here, we’ll do a visual test ... Ooo... Eww. (multiple utterances indicating distaste) Is this the stuff?


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Okay. Why is this so “half-acid” (ordinarily: half-assed) as they say ... [laughter]. Uhh.


[07:48:00]


Transcribed by Nathan Johansen



[07:48:00]


TM: So, here’s the first hexagram. It’s called the Creative. And it’s made of six lines. This is no news to anybody, I hope. Here’s the second hexagram. It’s called the Receptive.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: The yellow? Kay, lemme do these this way and then I’ll switch ... [07:48:30]


TM: So, when I started looking at this question of, uhh, of the order in the I-Ching, umm, the first thing I saw — it only took me about ten minutes, of just looking at it — and I noticed, and I’m not the first person to have noticed this — that it isn’t 64 hexagrams, it’s 32 pairs [07:49:00] of hexagrams, and the second member of each pair is formed by turning the first member upside down.


TM: Do you see? So—so that only took ten minutes; that was no—no problem.


TM: Now, there are eight cases in the I-Ching where inverting the first hexagram causes no change because of the nature of its structure. Uh, you meet the first case here. Obviously if you turn this thing upside down, [07:49:30] it’s still six unbroken lines. So, in the eight cases where inverting a hexagram causes no change, a second rule is generated.


TM: The second rule is: if inverting the first hexagram causes no change, then all lines change. Very straight forward, right? But now, umm, the problem—the Koan—has changed. And the question is: What are the ordering—what rules order the 32 pairs? [07:50:00] And this was much trickier. Much trickier. And after awhile the prompting voice said: “Look at the first order of difference.” This is just a fancy way of saying: count how many lines change as you go from one hexagram to another. It—ehh—if you go from this hexagram to this hexagram, how many lines change?


Audience: Six.


TM: Six. So, the first order of difference is six, between [07:50:30] these two hexagrams. Similarly, we can go from two to three and there will be another first order of difference.


TM: Now, logic should tell you that the values of the first order of difference are going to be whole numbers One through Six, right? What I did was I went through the I-Ching and actually checked on these, and I discovered that again—immediately, what jumped out, uhh, at me—was there were no Fives. So we wrote [07:51:00] computer programs to randomly arrange hexagrams and check for Fives. Now, we discovered Fives are as common as any other number. The exclusion of Fives in the King Wen sequence was a human decision.
TM: Someone didn’t want Fives to show up in the first order of difference. Okay… so then I, uhh, looked at these values, and what I discovered was: When you … inside the pairs—when you [07:51:30] invert one to get the other—the first order of difference is always an even number. So within the pairs you have no freedom, it’s going to be an even number. Between the pairs, you can arrange them so that you get odd numbers or even numbers.


TM: Now what I discovered was, between the pairs, half are odd and half are even. Again, human agency did this. We wrote computer programs [07:52:00] to randomly throw hexagram sequences and test for this quality, and we found that—uhh, only one in every 7,500 times could you expect to get a sequence which would be, uhh: 25% odd, 75% even; which is what this enforces. So, I was very excited by this, because I said: “Wow! There’s all this hidden stuff in the I-Ching [07:52:30] but I’ve never once … why is this thing not ... [inaudible; interrupted by something irritating needing adjusting] Umm, [inaudible] inching up on me …


Audience: [inaudible] … There may be one on the the other side of you.


TM: This thing?


Audience: Yeah, right on the other side of you.


TM: Okay. [continues to adjust something on the TimeWave graph]


TM: So, I thought, how weird that all this structure is in there … and I’d read all of Wilhelm’s Commentaries, and Lama Govinda, and these people, and uhh, it didn’t seem that they had noticed this kind of stuff. So I was very excited. I thought that I was really on to something, and I made a graph of the [07:53:00] first order of difference and it looked something like this. Of course it has [counting deliberately, slowly]: One, Two, Three, Four, Five, Six ... on this axis ...


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Blue?


TM: And [counting deliberately, slowly]: One, Two, Three, Four ... to 64, this way ... because there are 64 hexagrams. And then I drew the first order of difference. Now, notice ... remember this was Six, so ... [07:53:30] up here we put a point, and the next one is something else ... and the next one is something else, and then we connect the points. And what you get is a structure which looks ... like this. Roughly.


TM: In other words, it looks stochastic, it looks random. [07:54:00]



Transcribed by Nathan Johansen



TM: [7:54:00]...it doesn't look like you're on the track of any kind of order here, except that, i noticed a really funny thing, about this. What i noticed was, that this section and this section, are mirror images of each other. So imagine for a moment that you have a copy of this, right here. What you're then able to do, is rotate the copy a 180 degrees within the plane [7:54:30] and you'll discover that it fits perfectly in here. It dovetails at the beginning and at the end but nowhere in between. This is, this is again a product of human decision. Someone made it, so that it would do this and the question is why? Why would anyone want to do that and when it works you have hexagram 1, across from hexagram 63 [7:55:00] and hexagram 2, across from 62, 62... In other words, these always sum to 64, when it's in the right position. So i just thought that i was uncovering some kind of, like (ahh), you know, the equivalent of Chinese kabbalism some kind of lost intellectual system and (ahh), and, but the voice said to me, it said, this is a picture of time [7:55:30] and i couldn't understand what exactly was meant by that, it seemed to me a fairly esoteric thing to assert that it was a picture of time. Now remember they're 64 hexagrams in the I Ching and they have six lines each. 6 x 64 is 384. When it told me that this was a picture of time, i began to entertain the idea that this was, [7:56:00] somehow could be used as a calendar. So then i said, well what it is, is it the whole I Ching running one way and the whole I Ching running backwards the other way combined into this peculiar structure, which has 384 data points in it, which are the lines or so called yáo of the I Ching. Now 384 is 19 days longer than the solar year length, so if you have a calendar [7:56:30] of 384 days it would precess against (ahh), the equinoxes 19 days every year. So it doesn't seem a good candidate for a calendar if you're trying to keep solar dynamics central. But i discovered something weird about (ahh) this number, 384 days, now think of it as days and that is that, peculiar things happen when [7:57:00] you multiply this number by a numbers that are inherent to the structure of the I Ching. When you might, when you multiply this number by 64, you get a day number which when you break it down into years is 67 years 104.25 days. Now what's interesting about that number is that, it-it is 6 sunspot cycles of 11 plus years. [7:57:30] There's also a major sunspot cycle of 33 years so it meant each line, in a super hexagram made by multiplying this number will be associated with one sunspot cycle and the trigrams inside the hexagram will be associated with the major sunspot cycle. When you take 67 years 104.25 days, again by 64, you get [7:58:00] 4306 years, plus some days. This number, is very close to twice the amount of time that it takes for (ahh), a Zodiacal Era such as the Age of Pisces or the Age of Aquarius they, last roughly this long. Well if you take this number by (ahh) 6, not 64 but 6, [7:58:30] which is a legitimate, number because it's built into the I Ching, you get (ahh), 25 thousand years roughly. This is the precession of the great year or the equinoctial year as it's called. So i thought, wow this is really far out! It's some kind of a, (ahh), multi-level resonance calendar... Oh and i forgot to say about 384 days, this was central excuse me. (ahh) That this is 13 [8:59:00] lunations. A lunation is 25, is 29. something days and when you multiply that number by 13 you get 383.89. So i said, ah ah! What this thing is, is that keeps track of the moon on this level, it keeps track of the sunspots on this level and it keep track of the great year of the zodiac on this level. All naked eye astronomical phenomenon not hypothesizing [7:59:30] any advanced technology but hypothesizing an advanced (ahh), (ahh), intellectual, point of view. Well, [drinks water] so i thought i was finished and that somehow it wanted to tell me about a Neolithic Calendar in ancient China for some reason, but there was more. [drinks water] Popeye had spinach, i have this. [audience laughs] The prompting voice...[8:00:00]


Transcribed by Tiago Ramos



[08:00:00] The prompting voice said “this structure which you have created” by the way some of you who are scholars of the I Ching remember in the uhm second half of the Wilhelm and Baynes translation there are whole bunch of VERY ancient sayings that nobody knows what they’re talking about they’re so esoteric. And the most MYSTERIOUS of these sayings is the saying which says “the forward running numbers refer to the future. The backward running numbers [08:00:30] refer to the past”. Well in the I Ching there ARE no forward or backward running numbers unless you do something like this and then look what you get: one, two, three, ... 63, 62, 61, 60, 59. You get forward and backward running numbers. So I said “wow.. you know, we’re digging this thing out. The I Ching is NOT enorical [??] as it’s been done at country fairs for three millennia - the I Ching as we possess it is a piece of broken machinery. [08:01:00] It’s a though you have you know, the main gear out of a machine and you’re trying by.. [pause] archaeological reconstruction to re-build that machine. So.. [pause] I was sort of stuck at this point and the prompting voice turned on and said “this structure which you’ve made which is the entire I Ching running forward and backward against itself - which would place it then at the top of a [08:01:30] um, of the uh hierarchy should be placed at the bottom of the hierarchy. Treat this thing as a single line” it said. And I was calling this at this point the simple wave. It said “treat the simple wave as a.. a line in a hexagram”. Well when you do that, [pause] bear with me folks. Remember I said the learning curve is steep. [08:02:00] However, it’s not long.


Audience: Can I ask for you’re [inaudible]
TMK: Oh yeah.
Audience: Can I get the [inaudible] across the room.
TMK: What.. what color?
Audience: Yeah well uh..
TMK: Yellow?
Audience: [Inaudible]
TMK: Yellow?
Audience: [Inaudible]


TMK: Lemme see.. [pause] Ahh. Ok so if we treat this module as the bottom of a hierarchy then we want to treat it like a line. So what do you do with lines [08:02:30] in I Ching land? You p.. stack six of them on top of each other. So I’m gonna symbolise this thing with an “S”. Ok. So here’s what I did. I made.. I took one of them. And another one. And another one. [sounds of drawing on a surface] and another one. And I said “did I do good?”. [08:03:00] [audience laughs] And it said “Sort of. But a hexagram is more than six lines isn’t it?” And I said “Well what more is it than six lines?” It said “well it’s two tri-grams”. Said “oh.. ok”. So then I went like this.. [sounds of drawing on a surface]. Do you see how I superimposed the thing over the six two-larger ones which were [08:03:30] superimposed over three? So then I said “S’alright?”. It said “Yes, except you forgot one thing. A hexagram has an identity as a whole. As a hexagram”. Said “Ok..” [scribbles] “Good?”. It said “Yes. Good. Now, what are you going to DO with it?”. And I’ll show this to you. Uhm.. [scribble] Just so you can get.. [08:04:00] the idea. I don’t know how visible this will be. This is what you get if you do that. And what it looks like is exactly what it looks like, which is a hodge-podge of crazy lines running everywhere on three levels [audience laughs] and uh.. The thing said to me.. It said “this is a map of time”. And I.. went.. I made the mistake of saying to my [08:04:30] friends and acquaintances “this is a map of time!” [audience laughs]. And they said, you know “we’re very concerned. Apparently.. [audience giggling] you didn’t get better even though you claimed you got better. And now, you know, you run around, showing this thing to people.. And notice.. It.. oh it ha.. Everything is in closure up here, and then everything attains closure down here. And then there’s sub-closures. Six [08:05:00] on one level, two on another, and the final on this line. And FINALLY my friend Ralph Abraham took pitty on me and he said “the problem with this thing.. is.. That it cannot coat [??] dogma. Nobody can understand this thing.. except you. You are necessary for its interpretation”. [audience laughs] And I said “So what am I.. what do I do?”. And he said “you must LEARN how to change this into a more orthodox mathematical object that.. That math.. Mathematicians can then discuss with you”. And I was completely stuck. And I s.. sat with it for.. two years. I.. cause it just seemed.. I.. I am not a mathematician. I had NO clue as to how to do that. And finally one afternoon.. Uh.. the pot was good enough, or the stars moved into position or something.


[08:06:00] (end of this transcription segment)


Transcribed by Nick Whiu



TM: [8:06:00]...and in a single instant i saw how to carry out the mathematical reduction of this wave and i did it.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Oh, on this?


Audience: Yeah, it looked that way from here.


TM: Oh well if you look at it closely you'll see that because of a, are at different scales it isn't that, one side is egla-exactly like the other side. Yeah, there are dissimilarities. [8:06:30] So i finally, figured out how to, mathematize and conserve all the qualities of that wave and i put it into an ordinary cartesian object, which i doubt you can see but you don't really have to see it anyway. All this is, see what that is? It's just a one, it's an ordinary graph of some sort.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Ah?


Audience: Is that the sum of...[inaudible]?


TM: It's the sum of certain qualities. There was skew, [8:07:00] parallelism, angle of approach, crossover. There were about five things that i felt were important and i figured out how to mathematize them all, so that this, which is an or-ordinary cartesian graph, is in fact a topological equivalent of Maya cult diagram and... Yeah?


Audience: Each one of those points is a summation of these factors?


TM: Yeah right, uh uh. So, then (ahh), [8:07:30] and then i started saying to people, this is a map of time. [audience laughs] And they said, is it? [Terence laughs] Well, where are we? [Terence laughs] And i said, well (ahh), hum, (ahh), we, (ahh), hum... In order to know where we are we would have to know where the endpoint is. If you have a wave you have a wavelength so, we have to find the endpoint. So then i began collecting historical data, and fitting [8:08:00] curves,
to it, trying to define the endpoint. Now, remember yesterday at the close of the day or in the afternoon we got off on what appeared to some people to be, attention about novelty and science and time and whether, it was (ahh), whether it-it should be viewed as a flat plane or a fractal or something like that? Well, what the thing was telling me was, that novelty, is (ahh), something [8:08:30] which can be charted in time and that these waves were actually pictures of (ahh), of (ahh), the ebb and flow of novelty. That this wasn't charting stock prices or population rise or average temperatures, it was charting the ebb and flow of novelty through time and that… Como?


Audience: Novelty is...[inaudible]?


TM: Novelty is (ahh), [8:09:00] a density of connection, as opposed you know, complexity can be quantified then you say complexity ebbs and flows. Mean if we have a device which measured complexity and we measured this point right here, as opposed to this point an inch behind my finger, i'm hoping it would tell us that an inch behind my finger is a more complex environment than this point right here. [8:09:30] So space and time, is then, seem to be a medium with a density (ahh), comp-densification of complexity embedded in it like raisins or something. Yeah?


Audience: Looking at your...[inaudible]...creation in that graph. In other words, how do you establish origin and the endpoint when looking at that graph?


TM: Well, until you scale it against time, you don't have to, i mean i think…


Audience: [inaudible]...[8:10:00]


TM: Well i think what you're, i think if i understand your question right. Remember how i said that over here it was at closure? It goes like this. And that's both lines, they're running, that's both sides of the graph they're perfectly superimposed over each other. At this point they ceased to be superimposed. One goes that way and one goes that way and then you start getting this kind of stuff and then when you come down to the end [8:10:30] they fall into closure again.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Yes it's a thing of say... exactly you got it. Okay.


Audience: What would be the beginning of time? Is that some...[inaudible]...Garden of Eden...[inaudible]?


TM: Well (ahh), to this point we haven't discussed this thing scaled against calendrical time we just kind of look at it as a mathematical object. Then what i realized was, if these are part, if-if [8:11:00] this thing has 384 points in it, and this has, six. Then the, what the thing was telling me was, you have to map the, you have to map the way back over itself. So you take all 384 points and you cram them into this space wandering up this hill, then you go to this space and you cram all [8:11:30] 384 points in here and you create a fractal infinite regress. Do you understand? [audience laughs] Say you understand. [Terence and audience laughs] You will understand. Okay so then that was the time, that was the time map. It was saying novelty can be described by an infinite fractal regress that is contained in the I Ching. Now, the main objection that i was meeting from people who wanted to lock me up was, they were saying...[8:12:00]



Transcribed by Tiago Ramos



TM: [8:12:00]...was, they were saying, now let's get this straight. You want to revise modern physics, based on a pattern which you found in an ancient Chinese book of divination is that correct? [audience laughs] And i-i could feel the force of that criticism but that's how i think, you know, where somebody from some nut piece of data then wants to build castles in the air and so (ahh) i created a metaphor [8:12:30] which is satisfying to me i hope it's satisfying to somebody else, trying to explain why we should seek a law of physics, inside the structure of (ahh) the I Ching. [drinks water] And here's the metaphor, think of sand dunes. Picture them in your mind, since this is the New Age you may even close your eyes if it helps. Picture sand dunes. Now, [8:13:00] notice, that sand dunes, look, like wind. Sand dunes look like wind, and sand dunes are made, by wind. So now let's analyze the situation, let's think of wind as input and let's think of sand grains as bits inside a computer. So when the wind blows the program [8:13:30] runs and the bits rearrange themselves and they arrange themselves into a lower dimensional slice of wind. Essentially wind, which his a pressure variant phenomenon variable in time, turns into a pictorial phenomenon variant across the pictorial surface. You see how that works? Well, now...[drinks water] [8:14:00] Sand dunes created by wind, bear the impression of wind. (ahh), lines of foam and beach detritus deposited by the incoming tide, bear the form of waves. So what it was telling me was, it was telling me that, things formed in time bear the impression of the forces which created them. And i said, well then what is the equivalent of sand dunes or waves of beach detritus [8:14:30] in the real world? And it said, human beings! Genes, not grains of sand. Genes are moved by time and we as hyper dimensional objects, we human beings and other animals, we bear the impression of the forces that created us and if novelty truly does Adam flow, the way wind speed ebbs and flows over a landscape, than the creatures [8:15:00] that have arisen in time will bear the imprint of this ebb and flow and i believe that what was going on with the people who created the I Ching, was that they (ahh), were practicing some kind of yoga or some kind of psychedelic + yoga thing and they were, (ahh) stilling their micro physical functions and they were descending deep into organism, and there they [8:15:30] were seeing the ebb and flow of variables of some sort, and they watched... Who knows how long? Centuries maybe. And they said, you now, in the organism there is the ebb and flow of variables
and then they ask questions like, how many variables are there are there an infinite number? And they began to create notation system for these variables and finally they came to the conclusion, no, there are not an infinite number [8:16:00] there are 64 of these temporal variables. And think of them as elements, in the same way that the entire world of physical manifestation can be created out of a 104 physical elements, the entire world of temporal manifestation can be created out of 64 elements and so the way i think of reality having survived this experience, is, [8:16:30] you have hexagrams moving on many levels. Let's say you have a hexagram which rules this 10 thousand year period. For 10 thousand years this hexagram will rule and then on the next level the hexagrams are changing every, 100 years, and then on the next level every 10 minutes, and on the next level every 15 seconds. Wha-what any point in The Matrix called now, is, is the perspective [8:17:00] you have when you look through the moving film of these temporal elements moving on many many levels you see, They're, they're, they create and unique juxtaposition with each other in every single moment and that is (ahh), what the unique felt presence of-of (ahh), immediate reality is all about. Well, i, by this time... Yeah question? [8:17:30] No…


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: What?


Audience: That, that position where, where they all come together...[inaudible]...I look at that, always look at this symbol, the I Ching symbol as the guiding symbol of this plane and reality...[inaudible]...So your thoughts about the exact...[inaudible]...time and body time. Is that true? [8:18:00]



Transcribed by Tiago Ramos



Audience : […] [8:18:00] membrane that is between time and [non-time? God-time? ..inaudible], but is that true?


Terence : Yeah, pretty much. I mean... You know… Plato said “Time is the moving image of eternity.”


Audience : It’s a wavefront.


Terence : It’s a wavefront, and it’s an interference pattern. Yes, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a, uh a kind of hologram, uh.. and a set of resonances and interference patterns that are created when these waves moving at many levels expression, superimpose and collide with each other. [8:18:30] And through the use of small computers, we can explore various places within the wave, and we can position it against time. Because what it’s saying is that novelty comes and goes. You know.. Yesterday was wonderful, tomorrow could be dogshit. Same for last year and next year. Uh.. Time undergoes changes, on many scales. [8:19:00] I mean from moment to moment if you watch your mind... You’re going up, you’re going down, and then on the daily scale up, down, yearly scale up, down, and then on all scales there is ebb and flow of novelty. And all these scales can be mathematically collapsed into one wave and then with a computer you can not only predict the future, which is fairly trivial because who can gainsay it, but you can also predict the past! [8:19:30] Which is very tricky. Because most people have a good deal more information about the past than they do about the future. Ya..


Audience : [8:19:40] [hardly audible comments or questions] larger scale… going up.. .


Terence : That’s right… That’s right.. Well no, you’ve got the whole concept correct except you don’t need [8:20:00] an infinite number because look what happens… If you start with 384 days and you start multiplying upward by 64, remember I said the first one was 67 years, we only have to carry out about six of these till you have 72 billion years, more time than is necessary for the universe to have burst itself and reached its present state. Similarly, if you start dividing… uh, you only have to divide [8:20:30] 11 times to reach the realm of Planck’s constant (6.55 X 10^-23 Earth seconds), in technical parlance known as a jiffy. Beyond the jiffy, there is no need to continue the divisions because the jiffy defines the grain of the canvas on which reality is projected. So what we have are, uh, you know, uh, a cosmology of roughly 22 levels [8:21:00] at the highest level it’s 72 billion years, at the lowest level it’s in the realm of Planck’s constant, and we are somewhere suspended in-between, and these things are coming and going on every level. Yeah..
Audience : [inaudible] .. the way that you arrived at this conclusion.. to say the least… however, it seems to me that you’ll be able to use this model to see some difference in the way [inaudible] compared to the Third Reich. [8:21:30]


Terence : Absolutely!


Audience : [inaudible]


Terence: Yes, I’m hurrying us toward the more fun part of this and I think that we’ll do it now. What we’re gonna do now is look at the wave placed against history, with my end date, December 22 nd 2012, although the machine will accept any end date. And the idea that you should be asking yourself is.. you know, “this clown [8:22:00] claims that this thing describes the ebb and flow of novelty, but does it in fact fit my intuition of the ebb and flow of novelty?” Now, here’s the good news: the next part of the lecture does not depend on anything that’s been said in the first part. Uh.. you don’t have to understand anything I said in the last half hour to appreciate the neatness of the next level. Lucky for us, eh? [laughs in the audience]


Audience: [inaudible] [8:22:30]


Terence: Mmm. That’s fine i think. So now… Because you know some people aren’t interested in this.. You tell them you can predict the future and they say “well, predict it!”. And then you predict it correctly, and then they say “Great!”. It never enters their mind to ask “How did you predict it?” which is what I, out of obligation to intellectual fairness, feel that I should expose you to.


Now, let’s look at the wave. [8:23:00] Eum..


Now, let me explain the rules of the game here. There are six billion years currently on screen. Today is over here, at 98.8 percent. This is the last 6 billion years. And, let me explain to you how you interpret the wave. And if you want to take a moment and rearrange yourselves, [8:23:30] the rest of it is gonna be fairly close focus on this thing, so don’t be shy, and don’t make yourself uncomfortable.


Audience: [two people talking, inaudible questions about the end date]


Terence: Ah, the end date! Uh.. It.. I got it by fitting historical data to the wave and seeing.. I had certain intuitions.. I mean, for instance, I said “Well, if I have a wave which describes historical novelty, by God it better do well on the Italian Renaissance, it should do well [8:24:00] on the 20 th century, and it should do well on the Golden Age of Greece. If a wave of novelty incorrectly predicts those episodes, it’s a pretty worthless theory of novelty. Once I had chosen an end date, and I chose December 22 nd 2012, I got a lot of support for that by realizing that the Mayan calendar chose the same end date. [8:24:27]


Transcribed by Giovanni Colombo



TM: [8:24:00]...it should do well on the 20th century and it should do well on the Golden Age of Greece. If a theory of novelty incorrectly predicts those episodes, it's a pretty worthless theory of novelty. Once i had chosen an end date and i chose December 22nd 2012 i got a lot of support for that by realizing that the Mayan calendar chose the same end date. Now the only thing i have in common with the ancient [8:24:30] Maya, is that we both take psychedelic mushrooms. Now is it conceivable that there is a message in the mushroom, as specific, as no matter where in space and time you are and you take these mushrooms it says, December 22nd 2012 AD. It appears so because the Mayans, their civilization rose and fell with a very interesting part of their own cale-(ahh) calendrical machinery. [8:25:00] They predicted the end of the world a thousand years after their own eclipse and they predicted the birth of their cal-they set the birth of their calendar a thousand years preceding the emergence of their civilization. Yeah.


Audience: (ahh) So, now this is 2012…


TM: Huh, huh.


Audience: Is this what the Mayans have as a completion of a large cycle or is it what they are believe it is, the completion of all their cycles?


TM: It depends on, on who you talk to. (ahh) [8:25:30] The Mayan calendar is built up of nested cycles some twenty years in length, some two forty and there are 13 baktuns. Which i think a baktun is 396 years in duration and most Mayanists believe, that, that a set of 13 baktuns, is the complete calendrical set. There's a minority of Mayanists who want to argue that there are greater cycles than that. [8:26:00] (ahh) In any case baktun 13 will come to an end December 22nd 2012, so (ahh), you know, it's good enough for me. [audience laughs]


Audience: Could you say just a little bit more about the, property of novelty, is, is it synonymous with complexity?


TM: Well (ahh), you know, if, since this is a push-pull theory and we have novelty versus something, the opposite of novelty is habit. [8:26:30] Rupert insisted on that. I was calling it entropy and, conservatism and recidivism and he said no no. It's a war between habit and novelty. Habit means a reversion to a traditional and already established pattern. Novelty means a breaking out into a previous domain, untested domain of new connections and (ahh), and new possibilities.


Audience: [8:27:00] [inaudible]


TM: You mean as in...(ahh)?


Audience: Something...[inaudible]...surprising you?


TM: Yes. The unexpected is built into it because when you come around some of these curves there are unexpected things going on.


Audience: What about the chaos order boundary, sounds like that a lot?


TM: Yeah, well you can think of it that way. I haven't completely, resolved how novelty should be defined because if you know anything about Information Theory you know that they had a hell of a time getting a definition of complexity [8:27:30] together over there. They also were interested in mathematical definitions of complexity but they haven't made too much progress.


[This concludes tape 6, our program continues with tape 7. Our program continues with tape 7]


TM: Let me explain to you how to read the graph. Because it's the exact opposite psychologically of a, stock market graph. I think when you [8:28:00] look at a stock market most of us want it to go up, not down. In this game we want it to go down. The, nov-, the higher states of novelty occur as you approach zero. So this is the most novel point on the screen, this is the most, habit impacted moment on the screen and what you see is habit and novelty are at war with each other. (ahh) Now here's how i [8:28:30] interpret this particular screen and it is a basis for interpreting all the rest. This is a turning point, after a long period of habit, consolidation and recidivism, whatever that means at 4.7 billion years ago. (ahh) Something very novel happened along this descent. I maintain that it's actually the stabilization of the surface of the Earth itself.
That what we're seeing here, [8:29:00] is the Earth changing into a stable planetary body and then (ahh), the earliest forms of life, the Proto life, appears right here and undergoes a series then of fluctuations then (ahh), there is some kind of a problem, some impediment to what would otherwise be, the rather straight shot toward novelty by this (ahh), [8:29:30] spike here. Well, evolutionary biologists say that in the early history of the Earth there was a crisis having to do with the production of oxygen as a waste gas. Life arose in a non-reducing atmosphere. The first, pollution crisis in the history of the Earth was pollution by oxygen and organisms had to develop complex membranes and mechanisms for dealing with this and that's what happened along here...[8:30:00]


Transcribed by Tiago Ramos



TM: [8:30:00]... and that's what happened along here. And (ahh), once that was achieved then the pace of novelty quickened and the descent continued and we, our entire civilization, in fact, you know, the last bill-million years as a matter of fact, is lost down here in this decastic fluctuation near the zero point. In other words, relative to these places in the wave, we're so near the maximum of novelty [8:30:30] that it's practically punching in through the walls and in fact human civilization (ahh) correctly mirrors that. I mean, for you would expect to find a civilization on this graph, it's somewhere down in here. Well now if everything is working right...
Audience: [inaudible]...98.8%.
TM: 90 let's, yeah, 98.8% if the...
Audience: The target date of today.
TM: The target date of today. Now what I'm going to do if there's a zoom function here [8:31:00] and we're gonna start flying towards the present and every time a screen changes we're gonna see half as much time on the screen. We have six billion years up, we'll go to three, then one and a half, then .7 time and so forth. This seems to be an excellent computer with a fast chip so...
Audience: [inaudible]...the right hand on the screen.
TM: Yeah, yeah, yeah, and [8:31:30] we're gonna get greater and greater detail and, your attitude towards this should be, i'm asserting that this is true, you have a notion of where the high points in the evolutionary human history have occurred. You should be asking yourself whether this fits your intuition. Now obviously (ahh) it's pretty vague stuff when we're looking at 6 billion years but on the other hand, we can take this thing down [8:32:00] to three days if necessary and (ahh) we know where the great changes have come in the last thousand years it's not that ambiguous. So let's (ahh) test the zoom function...[silence]...zoom it asks me, yes i reply. Seek minimum it asks me, no i reply. Approach factor it asks me, and i'm going to tell it two, in order to have the screen each time it would accept any number but two [8:32:30] seems rational for demonstration purposes.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: No it's gonna slice the time. It's gonna slice it each time and rescale.
Audience: It's coming up with minute, hour and day...[inaudible]...so is the origin of time... [inaudible]...like the origin of the universe?
TM: You would presume so.
Audience: So the Big Bang would kind of like be in the middle of the novelty...[inaudible].
TM: The Big Bang would be, no, the Big Bang would be very high because there's no life, [8:33:00] there's no atomic system, there's no molecules it's a very low complexity situation at the birth of the universe.
Audience: It's not the...[inaudible].
TM: Yeah, no, yes that's right, the Big Bang it's somewhere up here, up here (ahh). Okay now, before i do this let me locate escape, okay. This is such a pleasure to do it with fast machines. Okay there's three billion, see how detail [8:33:30] is coming up as time is lost? And, and if anybody wants me to stop it at any point i will (ahh).
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: Here's 750 million years. This is virtually the entire history of life on Earth and in fact, of higher life. I'm sorry, you know, organisms, not, not multicellular life. This is the history of multicellular life and what you see is there was a steep descent [8:34:00] into novelty, until about 300 million years ago and then there are a series of oscillations close to zero until (ahh) about 65 million years ago and then there's a sudden plunge deeper into novelty immediately preceding the concrescence which occurs on the, at dawn Greenwich Mean Time December 22nd 2012. One thing about this theory, it's not vague [8:34:30] (ahh), and it, notice that it doesn't edge on
predictions either. It fills every screen is full of predictions.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: Two.
Audience: Approach factor?
TM: Approach factor, yah. Okay we got 750 million years on the screen, 375 million years on the screen. Now i wanna talk about this for a minute. Now this is a screen full of dramatic [8:35:00] predictions, these are tremendously punctuated and temporally define plunges into novelty and (ahh) we don't have tremendous paleontological records for what's going on 275 million years ago but from studying these low points and talking to geochronologists about them, i've decided that these are (ahh) planetesimals impacts on the earth. [8:35:30] Now you know that the last one was 65 million years ago, that's this one, right there but there were others, there was one (ahh), this one, 220 million years ago.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: Oh, asteroid strikes on the Earth.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: Oh well, there was a little tiny one in Arizona. Those happened all the time in Cosmic terms, every hundred thousand years or so. [8:36:00]



Transcribed by Tiago Ramos





TM: [8:36:00] But, (ahh) this thing that happened 65 million years ago was a planet shattered (ahh) and, they're rare, they're rare. Okay so, so, i'm suggesting that these are asteroid impacts which then evolution had to restart, reclaim his territory and then, there is something else happening. They may not all be asteroid impacts. They could be (ahh), you know, enormous episodes of volcanism on the Earth such as [8:36:30] the Deccan traps in India or something like that. Now let's start the thing again.
Audience: And now what timeline...[inaudible].
TM: What we're looking at now? 375. [silence] Seek minimum, no. Approach factor, two, go for it. [silence] That's 187 million years, there's the impact 65 million years ago. Now let's look at this. This is the last [8:37:00] 93 million years.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: Ah yes, it looks like the thing we started out with, somebody's paying attention! [audience laughs] Right on, yes yes.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: See what happens is a fractal is a nested dataset and every time you pass through a whole number, the pattern repeats. This sets up a very interesting, (ahh), (ahh), set of circumstances inside [8:37:30] the way which is that we can talk about temporal resonance. We can talk about how the Third Reich, is a resonance of ancient Egypt. We can talk about Saddam Hussein as a resonance of Muhammad because when we look at the way these things are lined up historically we see that, directly above Saddam Hussein and in a relationship of parallelism is the career of the prophet [8:38:00] and so what is being suggested here is that every day, every moment, is in fact an interference pattern created by other times and places. This is not, this is a fairly challenging and peculiar idea not something the linear western mind would have ever come up with. So for instance, if you should find yourself having lunch in a place called Hadrian's hamburger stand, this has [8:38:30] something, to do, with the emperor Hadrian and his four-year military campaign in Scotland. He is a direct causal influence on your being at Hadrian's hamburger stand for lunch. I like to say, (ahh) Rome falls 9 times an hour [audience laughs] and you have to be, perceptive. You have to be paying attention to the ebb and flow of your own inner, thoughts but, if you are you feel the fall of Rome, [8:39:00] you also feel the Age of Exploration, of the birth of Buddha (ahh) the, the fall of Carthage. It all happens nine times an hour. It also happens twice a day and once a year, yeah.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: (ahh) Sometimes, yeah it is very similar.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: That's right.
Audience: [inaudible] [8:39:30]
TM: Yeah there's, (ahh) we never tried to do it, scientifically, you know where you would actually keep track, but (ahh) major astrological conjunctions are often reflected in major ingressions into novelty.
Audience: Terence, interestingly as you or anyone else that's (ahh) aware of this, ever tried to convolve this with, with say Einstein field equations?
TM: No because i'm not smart enough to do that.
Audience: I think that would be a fascinating [8:40:00] thing to do because what you do is input, input using as one variable this entire system.
TM: That's right.
Audience: And what it would produce would be fascinating.
TM: I think God has chosen you for this work. [audience laughs]
Audience: This makes me ask, what are the historical antecedents of Reagan and Bush? [audience laughs]
TM: Ohh, ohh, Ronald Reagan was, (ahh), (ahh), his historical antecedents were the last six Roman emperors [8:40:30] before the fall of Rome in 475 and Bush's antecedents is (ahh), (uhm)...
Audience: [inaudible]...clowns...[audience laughs]
TM: No i think, i think, i think Bush gets to be (ahh) Justinian.
Audience: Oh!
TM: You remember somebody said history always occurs twice, first as tragedy then as farce? [audience laughs] That person, who had a good intuitive (ahh)... [8:41:00] So now let's go into this a little more. (ahh) How much time do we have? Oh 93 million years, okay. [audience laughs] So, here's the a, here's the asteroid impact and, and, dead on! I mean, 65 million years it's right there, to the degree that we can date these two events. It's a win it's a bull's eye, and, you know it was a huge setback for organic life as i said this morning, nothing larger than a chicken [8:41:30] survived it. (ahh) The mammals begin their radiation and, and (ahh), this are, you know, just different vicissitudes. I'm not sure what to make of this spike here but i haven't really spend a lot of time on that period from 40 to 36 million years ago. Somebody else may have a notion as to what this represents.
Audience: [inaudible]...the recovery though is fairly rapid.
TM: Which it was. (ahh) Evolutionary biologists say, you know, that forms quickly...[8:42:00]



Transcribed by Tiago Ramos



TM: [8:42:00]...reoccupied all the niches and remember if this hadn't happened, we wouldn't be the planetary rulers that we are. We'd still be little furry creatures trying to steal eggs out of the nest of the saurian masters who ruled the planet.
Audience: Why is this?
TM: Why? Because all the dinosaurs were killed in this impact and that allowed these little egg stealing rodent-like furry creatures to undergo an [8:42:30] explosive evolutionary radiation leading directly to our own vast superiority over the rest of nature. Oh, yeah, yeah, no, yeah?
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: Oh, that's a whole different scale you see, the dinosaurs died off 65 million years ago. The ice age is a phenomenon of the last 5 million years, and we'll see the ice ages but not there, right now those ice ages [8:43:00] are down in here, somewhere lost in the detail. Let's to go back to our zoom.
Audience: We'll get there, won't we?
TM: Oh yeah, we'll get there.
Audience: I'm waiting to be at my writing spot.
TM: Don't worry! No, we don't wanna seek the minimum, the approach factor should be two. [silence] Ok, 93 million years on the screen, 46 million years on the screen, [8:43:30] 23 million, 11 million, 5 million, 5 million years on the screen, now here your ice ages. Here they are you see, (ahh) when the ice is in place, species are bottled up and gene transfer is impeded, [8:44:00] this constitutes a non-novel situation. Then when the ice melts, these gene pools re-encounter each other and you get proliferation of form. We're getting excellent agreement here, this is the melting of the last glacier, (ahh) maybe. I'm not...
Audience: [inaudible]...the last glacier was about 13 thousand years ago?
TM: Yeah i think it's actually over here still lost in detail. But these are, (ahh) you know how evolution is described as punctuated, how it [8:44:30] isn't that evolution proceeds smoothly but that will be a climax stasis and then suddenly many new species well, these are the punctuated evolution. This is actually a picture of punctuated evolution and the high numbers of species
are down in this troughs and the low numbers of species are on this ascents close to the changeover, point. So, (ahh) again the paleontological data isn't that clear but at this [8:45:00] scale of resolution we're getting good agreement between data and theory.
Audience: I think different...[inaudible]...(ahh) a guy called...[inaudible]...do you know?...[inaudible]
TM: Well, it, it's, the, they are topologically equivalent but not numerically equivalent.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: Yeah.
Audience: [inaudible] [8:45:30]
TM: That's right. It's a damped oscillation. Is really what we're seeing.
Audience: [inaudible]...because that's one of things...[inaudible]
TM: Yeah, well i'm hope you'll be on it by Monday afternoon (ahh). [audience laughs] Ok, let me restart the zoom. No, i'm restarting the zoom, zoom. Yes?
Audience: I have a question.
TM: Ok.
Audience: About magnetic poles...
TM: Yes, these [8:46:00] could very well be magnetic reversals.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: Yeah, they, they very well could be magnetic reversals and...
Audience: So we're looking at ice ages.
TM: I, well what we're looking at is i'm suggesting they're ice ages, it was suggested that they're geomagnetic reversals. Geomagnetic reversals and ice ages may even have links to each other.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: (ahh) Well we see that over here (ahh) a steep [8:46:30] descent into novelty going deeper than we've ever gone before and that would probably indicate that an animal or an organ as appeared of a density of complexity greater than anything which preceded it. So i would say yes.
Audience: What, how, how you know that?
TM: Well, let me start the zoom and we'll get over in here on a big scale and then you can see. Ok, we're gonna go from 5 million, [8:48:00] down to 2 million. Now let's discuss this. Because this is the domain in which we evolved. Our story is on screen at this point (ahh), it's said that (ahh), the... A hundred thousand years ago at the Klasies Cave River mouth in South Africa
there were Homosapiens indistinguishable from the people sitting in this room. [8:47:30] The oldest Homosapien skeletons are from there. That clear over here (ahh), this is the fungi deradiation meaning the proliferation of these crymate forms (ahh), and, and that's about (ahh), 900, a million years ago. (ahh) This, this is the whole period in which the primates were, breaking away from the rest of Nature and, and this is, i think probably... [8:48:00]


Transcribed by Tiago Ramos



TM: [8:48:00]...where the mushrooms begin to come into the picture and see how the whole system is propelled into lower levels of novelty than anything which preceded it.
Audience: Lower...[inaudible]
TM: Higher levels is novelty, when the wave moves down novelty is increasing. Zoom, yes. Seek minimum, no.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: That's one way of saying it [8:48:30] or increase density of connection or (ahh), it means something happening which is never happened before which allows (ahh), novelty to build upon itself. We talked about this a little bit yesterday. About how the early Universe was very simple and then came ordinary chemistry and then (ahh), organic chemistry and then life and then complex life and then higher [8:49:00] animals and then primitive human beings and then language and culture and then computers and particle accelerators and all of this representing steeper and steeper descents into novelty. Headed toward a confrontation with novelty at infinite density, not millennia or ballenia in the future but, twenty years from now.
Audience: It's known that something being created...[inaudible]...being [8:49:30] stored...[inaudible]...entire system.
TM: Conserved is the word i use but yes, that's right.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: That's right. Well, when we get to the present you'll be able to see, you know, the past few months, the next few months, the next few years. We approach it this way cuz i wanna convince you that there's something [8:50:00] sort of woo woo about this thing. It does seem to have an uncanny predictive ability. Now, the most commonly met-abjection to this, and it may be forming in your mind is, that this guy just doesn't understand patterns and that every pattern can be used to describe a different pattern. But i resist this because notice that, this whole set of correlations is dependent upon this zero [8:50:30] date which we inputted. If we shift the zero date, then all the other, predictions would be thrown off. Well now naturally if we shift the zero date 50 years, it's not gonna have a hell of an effect on an event 175 million years ago, but if we move the date 50 years and we look at 1492, you know, it's all screwed up. You have to be right on the money [8:51:00] when you get into the historical data field because the historical data field can vary over a 24-hour period. I mean, John F. Kennedy dead, John F. Kennedy alive, the difference is 10 minutes. So, it can be very, (ahh) it can be very, highly, (ahh) quantified specific yeah, (ahh) okay. (ahh) Enter. That's 2 million, roughly 3 million years on the screen, 1.5 [8:51:30] million years on the screen, 700 thousand. Let's look at this for a minute. This is the last million years and the last hundred thousand years are right there. This is the emergence of modern human type and it sets off the last cascade at least at this scale. So, all of this is evolutionary advance and [8:52:00] climatological flux and so forth and then from the time the modern human type emerges, it's a straight shot, down in there. [silence] Now, obviously we all know more about time as we get closer to the present. This is 366 thousand years to a 100 thousand years up there. [8:52:30] There's the last 200 thousand years, there's the last 100 thousand years. [silence] This is, this is the environment in which we were, shaped. These are (ahh), very pro-, these are climatological fluctuations here but the last, this is the last glaciation...[sex moaning sounds from a computer in the audience]
Audience: Oh, forgot, shut down the computer! [8:53:00] [audience laughs]
TM: Is it dying or is it having a good time?! [audience laughs]
Audience: [inaudible]...I forgot it does that! Anyway...
TM: What are you doing this evening? [audience laughs]
Audience: [inaudible]...Harry met Sally remember that orgasm in the restaurant?
TM: Remember the orgasm in the restaurant when Harry met Sally? [8:53:30] Vaguely… [audience laughs] (ahh) Ok, the last 91 thousand years the glaciers melt, here. The glacier melt begins around 19 thousand years ago and as you see is just a straight fall from there to the moon flight into, H. Ross Perot [audience laughs] and to all the rest of it. And these are again episodes probably of glaciation or flux in the incidence... [8:54:00]



Transcribed by Tiago Ramos



TM: [8:54:00]...of incoming cosmic radiation, is hard to say what it is.


Audience: [inaudible]...the last 3 or 4 days...[inaudible]


TM: Oh yeah, we can go down. We can take it down to very small. The, (ahh) i mean, understand that the (ahh), the program does many wonderful things which we're not doing. I'm just doing a simple demo but obviously all this stuff has got to be about something. (ahh) [audience laughs] [8:54:30] Now we're getting into the area where people have real data, that's 45 thousand years, 22 thousand years on the screen. Let's look at this for a minute. This is worth talking about. Now we, now the pressure begins to come on. It's all very well to predict the interglacials that may or may not have occurred, the predicting assassinations of dynastic families is a little trickier. Here's the glacial melt, [8:55:00] begins and species, this is the descent, this is where the mushroom paradise, existed in its fullest expression from about (ahh) 17 thousand years ago to about 10 thousand years ago. Well now what is this sudden interruption of the descent into novelty here? I maintain based on the archaeological record that is what is called the Tanged Points techno-complex. Do you all know what that is? [8:55:30] It's (ahh), does anybody know what it is? Tanged Points techno-complex means that (ahh), before this, before this point (ahh), when an arrowhead is found, you find one. It means it was lost by somebody who was hunting. Around 10 thousand BC you begin to find large numbers of arrowheads all in one place without (ahh) chipping, fragments. [8:56:00] This was not an arrowhead factory, this was the site of a battle between human populations. War, is invented here because agriculture, is invented here. You're looking at the end of the partnership paradise. The era of orgy gives way to the era of anxious monogamy, warfare, agriculture (ahh) you know, egohood, is born. Now somebody asked about, [8:56:30] who who, asked about Çatal Höyük? Somebody... Çatal Höyük, bottom of this stab here. The fire that burned through Çatal level 5A occurred in 65 hundred BC. We know this from charcoal dating. It's right there, it's on the money. See, somehow this, the, this whole thing Tanged Point techno-complexe bummer was overcome and there was a steep descent, into novelty [8:57:00] and (ahh) Çatal Höyük was the product of that. But then it was destroyed and there was a rebound into chuckle avidness for a while and then write down here in the bottom of this thing, is where the Great Pyramid is sitting. You know, the Great Pyramid was finished in September of 2970 BC. Why this should be so controversial?
I do not understand because there are grains of charcoal [8:57:30] between the unmoved stones. That charcoal is not been anywhere since the day that stone was set in place and its 2790 BC. These people, who want to push it back and say it's 10 thousand years old, well the obligation to prove is on them because the carbon radiological data argues. You see, there's some tendency in the New Age, which i don't understand very well, that wants to make everything older, than it is. [8:58:00] You know, the pyramids are 50 thousand years old, Atlantis rose and fell a 100 thousand years... The miracle, is how new, everything is. The pyramids were built day before yesterday. Charlemagne was King of France early this morning. It's all, very, very, recent. I mean the emergence of mind out of non-mind is an event, practically (ahh), on top of us. Now let's start it up and we'll get really down [8:58:30] to the…


Audience: Can you hear me?
TM: Huh, huh.


Audience: Is the progression of time changing...[inaudible]


TM: Well, yes in a sense because you see what happens is when you, it's a built-in mathematical property of this wave that when you get to the end of a big wave, there's, when you get to the end on any scale there's a sudden drop, to the next scale and then it goes along to the end [8:59:00] and then there's a sudden drop. So if what we're saying is that a universe is made like, a universe that actually have this structure that i outlined for you, of 26 levels, where each level was 1/64 smaller than the level which preceded it, a universe built on that kind of architectonics would only be half way through its, life, an hour and 35 minutes before the end. [8:59:30] Do you see how that would work? But in the last hour and 35 minutes it's going to go through as much development as it went through in the previous 72 billion years. So yes, time is accelerating, accelerating into, you know, we've gone from, barely moving to approaching a staggering speed and i maintain, you know, that in 2012, the last, 6 days preceding the approach to concrescence...[9:00:00]


Transcribed by Tiago Ramos



TM: [9:00:00]...will be the jackpot. I mean the laws of physics will break down, everything will be in a state of visible motile transformation. This isn't happening in the human world, it isn't happening in our minds. It's a crisis in the strut- the structure of physical law itself and that's why, people, that's why, this theory will be hard to disprove or prove until so close to the end date [9:00:30] that you'll barely have time to make a telephone call to say whether it's true or not before if it is true your telephone call becomes totally irrelevant you know.


Audience: [inaudible]...space time itself are being contorted, twisted and...[inaudible]


TM: Yeah, that's right.


Audience: [inaudible]...to make that particular note.


TM: No, that's right. And in fact seems unlikely to you, let's always, let's never forget what the Orthodox guys are peddling. [audience laughs] They're peddling the Big Bang Theory [9:01:00] which says the universe sprang from nothing in a single instant. I would prefer what i called the big surprise cosmology because it seems to me if you have to have a singularity, the, the least likely place to find the singularity would be in a featureless high vacuum. If you want to find a singularity look in a corner of the universe where there are planets, stars, elements, organisms, alphabets, civilizations, [9:01:30] mines, in other words look in a complex domain if you want to find a singularity. That's where you might have some chance of finding it but finding it in a unflood nothingness is a strange place to look even.


Audience: One of the arguments, maybe being proposed by those on the...[inaudible]...that in fact is a very complex universe that then push through a membrane into the singularity which then creates another entire…


TM: Well, one possibility [9:02:00] is that it's a wrap around that we're just not, we're not whistling dixie when we talk about the archaic revival. We're actually, what history is, is a finger reaching for the reset button and when you finally touch if you find yourself at the moment of the Big Bang. You know, you've actually sent it screaming back to the first moment.


Audience: [inaudible]...exercise in, in holographics...[inaudible]...that final experience is a very pertinent important holographic description [9:02:30] (ahh) the whole, the whole…


TM: That's right and every cycle is a holographic description of the cycles that preceded it.


Audience: We've just seen.


TM: Right. So in 1945 when the bomb flickers into existence over Hiroshima, this is the resonance of the Big Bang. It's being caused by the Big Bang and, the entire life of the universe, is then [9:03:00] somehow reenacted in the remaining 67 years. In the same way the, remember there was a 4306 years cycle. We are reenacting that cycle in, in the present 67 year cycle. We have reached A.D 700 right now, i mean if you wonder why things are so benighted, it's cuz we're in the heart of the Dark Ages. [audience laughs] You wonder why you can't understand the nature of the collapse [9:03:30] of the state vector? Well it's because you have an AD 700 intellectual machine looking at it. My God, the Calculus hasn't been invented, Algebra hasn't been invented, the New World hasn't been discovered. These things will all happen ahead of us. (ahh) Right now we are in the heart of the Dark Ages by the late nineties will be closing distance with the Renaissance. Clearly we have to put up with a bunch of Christ fundamentalism, epidemic diseases [9:04:00] and general not headedness until we get to that point, but then after the turn of the century we can expect the equivalent of (ahh), (ahh), the (ahh), Renaissance, the Industrial Reformation, (ahh) the rise of Napoleon, the Civil War, Adolph Hitler. It will just be coming quick, quick, quick, quick and finally you know, you just, it just, pulls you in and everything happens at once. One way [9:04:30] of thinking of this is that the entire rest of the future history of the universe is being compressed into the next 20 years.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Yeah.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: But in other words the heat death of the universe is 20 years away essentially is what is being suggested. Because time is beginning to accelerate at such a rate that this compression factor is enormous. Okay (ahh), (ahh), let me see, what have we got. We got 22 thousand [9:5:00] years on the screen and we talked about it, so let me shift here. Oh no! Zoom, yes. Set minimum, no.


Audience: What gives us to be able to, sense this acceleration of time?


TM: (ahh) Yes, i-i think you know, Jeremy Rifkin wrote a book (ahh) anybody read it, what was it called? Nobody read it. [audience laughs] It was called, anyway the premise of the book was that time is accelerating but he thought of it as social time, [9:05:30] cultural time. I don't. I think it's embedded in the fabric of space-time itself. Yes i think in a few, you see, you can only react to crises that you understand. So if i tell you the ozone hole is disappearing, you're alarmed. If i tell you an asteroid is going to strike the Earth, you're alarmed. But if i tell you that the Earth is about to collide with a hyperdimensional knot in the nexus of space-time...[audience laughs] [9:06.00]



Transcribed by Tiago Ramos





[Audience laughs]
TM: [9:06:00] (ahh) You know. But that’s what’s happening. Ahead of us is an enormous speedbump. We are colliding.. We’re about to collide with something that we can barely cognize. So, it’s hard to know what to think about it. Yeah?
Audience: Uh, this may be a little lala, and a bit simplistic but you said in words uhh, you know we all have experienced this sort of sudden shift in time, just the experience in one lifetime (uhh). You know, like a two or three year old, (uhh) the moment that we experience it seems to last along a period of time. I mean, my god, some of it lasted (inaudible), well we don’t have that sort of. Well, that’s what happens over a course of a lifetime. What happens when consciousness.. consciousness shifts out to infinity, what happens to the moment then, does it become vanishingly small or, in terms of the frequency..
TM: It stops! It stops! Yeah, well, see.
Audience: Or, the whole process of speeding up, that it takes forever.
TM: [9:07:00] Yes, it’s possible that dying takes forever.
Audience: Right.
TM: You see.
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: And, and, and, so you know. You start to die and then you die and die and then realize you’re going to die forever, and never approach it. Because the, the seconds become stretched to millions of years. It’s something, it’s something like that. It’s about, and I think the psychedelics are about the fabric of time. [9:07:30] When you strip away the hallucinations and the personal reference, and the crazyness. The barebones of it are, it’s about time, it illuminates what time is. Yeah?
Audience: [inaudible]... when time is.. [inaudible].. towards and end-point. [9:08:00]. [inaudible].
TM: Yeah, I mean, part of the problem with proceeding what’s going on is that we’re mayflies, something. I mean, we live so briefly, that to us it looks like the world is standing still. But in fact, staggering amounts of strange are going on. I mean (uhh) [9:08:30], the automobile is a hundred years old for crying out loud, we can’t conceive of a reality without the automobile. So, uhh, and just in my lifetime, you know, I’ve seen immense change. So, and this is going to accelerate eventually to the point where I believe they’ll hold conferences on the acceleration of time and, people will, boards will be appointed to try and figure out if anything can be done about it.
Audience: [laughs]
Audience: I know you have a distante for [9:09:00], quantum physics, but there was a conference apparently last spring in Spain. Actually, it was a conference of astrophysics, I believe. Because I heard some reports on it, their serious topic of discussion was, was trying to attempt to answer the question does time exist. I mean, this was being serious, on the agenda, at some astrophysics conference.
TM: Yeah, time is the great, misunderstood, or ununderstood quantity in our lives, for sure. [9:09:30]
Audience: Terence,
TM: Yep
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: Right
Audience: [inaudible]
TM: I don’t necessarily reject it, I just think they shouldn’t sneer at me. When their theory is so kakamany. I mean, in other words, I haven’t proposed anything weirder than the big-bang. Saying that a universe can condense itself faster and faster [9:10:00] down into a supernovel object, sounds to me like a considerably more conservative statement than to say that a universe can spring from nothing, for no reason, in any single instant. They cornered the market on unlikely approach to cosmology.
Audience: [inaudible] alternative to their stuff.
TM: To their theory? No, but I’m gonna write one.
Audience: There is actually serious debate on the whole topic. There was a book recently published [9:10:30], in the last year. Called ‘Did the big bang happen?’ which was written by another cosmologist,
TM: Well, the big bang looked like it was a real trouble as recent as six months ago but the new data from this, is is ogos three or, one of these satellites. They finally actually found, uhh, irregularities in the microwave background, and until they found some irregularity. Because they couldn’t figure out how you get from the supersmooth initial conditions [9:11:00], to the clumpy present situation. Now, this new data appears to have pulled their chestnuts out of the fire. But I think the big bang may be in need of serious review. I mean, you have the inflationary, the super inflationary cosmology is an attempt to fix some of those problems, but it gets you know.. There are problems yeah.
Audience: [inaudible] [9:11:30]
TM: That’s right.
Audience: [inaudible].. are also.. [inaudible]
TM: What does he say exactly?
Audience: Uh, I can’t remember the exact book but he.. [inaudible].. speeded up.. [inaudible]
TM: Yeah, that’s absolutely right, if we get a little deeper into this we can actually discuss..[9:12:00]


Transcribed by Dirk



TM: [9:12:00]...discuss maybe why he would have said such a thing because i think we can illuminate it. Here let's (ahh), do a little more. We've got 22 thousand years on the screen, 11 thousand years on the screen, 5 thousand and some. This is in a way my favorite screen because this book i want to write i'm going to call, History's Fractal Mountain and there it is folks. [9:12:30] History's Fractal Mountain (ahh), Çatal Höyük is over here in the bottom of this. Along this descending gradient here, like pearls on a string, you get the great ancient civilizations, Ur, Chaldea, Babylon, and Egypt. And, this actually, the graph actually confirms the intuition of the theosophical mentality [9:13:00] that Egypt did achieve, some level of advance that was not surpassed, until late Roman times. That there was a-a tremendous breakthrough on the part of these civilizations. This, negative habitual or recidivist upward curve is studded with a whole bunch of a, of war-like [9:13:30] male dominator civilizations. The Hittites, the Mitanni, the Assyrians and up here at the top, Mycenaean Pirates overwhelmed the last outpost of the Goddess Culture on Minoan creed. This is Homer, right there. Homer sings his song and it's that, that to me fits because i had a professor who once said to me, you want to know where it went wrong? I'll tell you where it went wrong. When these Greeks pulled their boats [9:14:00] up on the shore and stopped being fisherman and started talking philosophy the shit hit the fan [audience laughs] and that's precisely what happened. There it is. You see the steep, steep descent into novelty and then after the fall of Rome, oscillation around the mean, where it's sort of up it's sort of down but there's no real progress until the Industrial Reformation. I mean in the Industrial Revolution of the 17th forties. [9:14:30] Let's…


Audience: [inaudible]...makes sense because any, any-any...[inaudible]...attempted, (ahh), descend into novelty ascend into novelty...[inaudible]...by the emerging church at the time.


TM: That's right. Of course this isn't Eurocentric, it's global.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Oh you mean, where is the birth of Christ? Roughly, i-is right here. It's this, it's (ahh), there's a little kind of a choke and then a very steep fall right afterwards. That's the birth of Christianity [9:15:00] of Roman, of the Roman Empire vs The Republic and so forth.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Yeah.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Yeah, sort of.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Yeah, right about there. Let's see, we may get it on the next pass.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Well it wasn't. [9:15:30] At first it was (ahh), physical. It was that, chemis-it was that atomic physics gave way to chemistry which gave way to molecular biology, which gave way to life. It keeps moving, it keeps being active at the front of the wave but it leaves a residuum behind it of this previously created structures. Right now the wave is clearly lodged in all-in our species while everything else [9:16:00] is, is, under the Aegis of Darwinian mechanics.
We're apparently under the Aegis of cultural, mechanics.


Audience: [inaudible]...absolutely. Depends on the intensity of the prominent future. You know, if a meteor came in, in the middle of the...[inaudible]


TM: Yeah, that's right.


Audience: It's not really...[inaudible]...or dictate by human law. It just so happens...[inaudible]
TM: Wow…


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: How so? [9:16:30]


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: It-it keeps condensing toward, it keeps-it builds on complexity. Wherever there is complexity, you will get more, complexity. It doesn't build on simplicity. It-it builds on the last most complex achievement see? [9:17:00] So intelligence rest on animal organization which rests on, cellular biology which rests on molecular biology which rests on physio…


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: You got it, okay. (ahh) to…


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Now pretty soon we're... Now there's the descent. Here let's stop and look (ahh), the-the [9:17:30] crucifixion is right there and it's interesting you know, Christ was an absolute contemporary of Caesar Augustus, so you get this great religious reformer at the same time that you get the great reformer of Roman Politic. So two of the most important personalities who ever lived are alive at that point. That strangely enough does not win the prize. See this deep little chip here? [9:18:00]


Transcribed by Tiago Ramos



TM: ..See this deep little chip here? [9:18:00] If we were to blow that up and look at the bottom of that trough, there was a moment when you could have had a dinner party, when Lao-Tzu, Confucius, Mencius, Pythagoras and Ezekiel could have all gotten drunk together, uh, had they.. been able to find each other. Right back there, in the.. immediately preceding the Greek Renaissance. Now the fall of Rome is in 475 [9:18:30] right there. And you see how the time after the fall of Rome is all of a certain general character, clear up to seventeen-hundred. And then certain technologies and mathematical techniques propel to an even deeper level of novelty. Now the next screen is the one that I think that is probably where we either win or lose you.



Audience: Look at the overall shape of that wave. It’s clear that there’s an [9:19:00] overlining principle at work here. I mean the birth and death of Christ is practically [inaudible] on that curve.


TM: uh, yi-.. mmm..



Audience: No, I mean there is a deep and strong move into novelty in those positions and [inaudible] and those events are relatively [inaudible]..



TM: That’s true.



Audience: It just points out that it’s not being driven by what we do [inaudible].



TM: No, it’s not being driven by these great personalities. They are being driven by it. I’m sure that if you could’ve [9:19:30] stepped into Christ’s mind while he was undergoing the passion, the main question he was asking himself was: “What.. is going on? You know, why do I say what I do? Why do I do, what I do? I don’t seem to be my own person. You know, I seem to be a puppet of some cosmic force.”


Because he was a puppet of some cosmic force. You see, the transcendental object at the end of time is like [9:20:00] one of those reflecto balls that hang in discos, you know. And as it turns and spins it sends off distorted reflections of itself which ricocheted into the past. And if you are correctly situated, it’ll turn you into a Christ, or a Buddha, or a Lao-Tzu. If you’re not quite correctly situated, it turns you into a Madame Blavatsky, a Meister Eckh-.. in other words second stringers. [9:20:30] If it.. uh if.. if it’s you know just get a little of it well then you are a person with strange insights and great personal charisma, and the people around you love you. We all are very close to this thing. Every night when you dream you come into the presence of the transcendental object of the end of time. We are all distorted reflections of the last thing. And as we get closer and closer [9:21:00] to the eschaton, the last thing, the distortion begins to leave. And you say, “my god, it’s like watching a photograph from a SX-70 develop. First it’s just mirk, and then you say, oh there’s a person there and it’s getting clearer and clearer”. You know, we are actually being pulled into the attractor. The veils are being parted. The truth is becoming more and more and more immanent. [9:21:30] And in the final confrontation with it, you know it’s the apotheosis. It’s the apocalypse, the apotheosis, the apocatastasis. A whole bunch of Greek words beginning with ‘a’. [audience laughs]



Audience: We are all [inaudible]..



TM: [laughs] No.



Audience: [inaudible] [audience laughs]



TM: ..okay.. [audience laughs]



Audience: [9:22:00] Did you address the time-span [inaudible]..?



TM: Well, no it picked up the time-span that we had. See it just accepted the correction. Thank you very much. Good thinking. Now is it alright? Yes. Okay now, this is the screen upon which the theory will stand or fall. Because this is the screen that is filled with the history that we know. We’re not talking fossil records or Çatalhöyü k [archaeological site in Turkey, of a 7500 BC to 5700 BC Neolithic era settlement] or any of that. [9:22:30] We’re talking very precise dates. It’s saying that there was a very steep descent into novelty around 948 AD. What is this?



Audience: What is its center again?



TM: W-.. 1400 years. And this first steep descent into novelty is, uh the intellectual flower of Islam within the confines of the Umayyad and Abbasid caliphate and the invention of algebra. [9:23:00] An intellectual tool that sets the stage for modern science. Essentially *this is* the birth of modern science. And you see how steep, sudden and precipitous it was. Okay, then you go over to this next one. ..and let me try something over here since this is such a fast machine.. See I’m moving the little pointer. [9:23:30] And it’s telling me exactly what I’m pointing at. I haven’t done for you before. But this is very good for checking these things.



Audience: Oh, to know exactly the dates.


TM: To know exactly, yes. We’re pointing at the exact date. And I wanna get it over here. To the bottom of this sucker. 1121, [9:24:00] the first crusade. The collapse of fortress Europe.


Transcribed by Andrea Casanova





TM: [9:24:00] 1121, The First Crusade, the collapse of Fortress Europe. This is the beginning of
the globalization of the European mind. We're dead on here. Okay now the next steep descent
into novelty is this one, obviously. Let's go over there and see what it is. [9:24:30] There it is,
12-1430, oh no 1358 i'm sorry, just a minute here let me get my... Okay, do we all agree it's
pointing at the bottom of the thing? Yes?


Audience: That's the end of the novelty, not the beginning of the novelty.


TM: No, that's the densest point of the novelty. It's 1354, what happens in 1354?


Audience: The Black Plague.


TM: [9:25:00] That's right. One third of the population of Europe is dies in an 18-month period
beginning in the late 1354. The greatest demographic collapse that Europe has ever experienced, it's an absolute hit, dead on (ahh). Now let's (ahh), go over here to this... Now notice though that the recovery is quick, there's a steep descent into novelty and an almost immediate reversion back up to the [9:25:30] the same level of (ahh) habit exactly, business as usual. But this next one is different, it's a steep descent into novelty and then it really stays down, for a long time and explores this. So let's go over to the turning point, which is up at the top.


Audience: [inaudible]... It's global.


TM: It's global, but having said that you have to notice that [9:26:00] (ahh), the world is now dominated by European values and culture so, while we can chart the ebb and flow of the Han Dynasty at this point European culture is moving to the four because European culture is beginning to put its imprint on all of world history.
[This concludes tape 7, our program continues with tape 8. [9:26:30] Continues with tape 8]


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: That's right. This is a picture of a resonance pattern, an interference pattern of many times and places. Now up here at the top of this thing, at the very top, it's, 1455. What happened in 1455, does anyone know? [9:27:00]


Audience: Christopher Columbus?


TM: What? [audience laughs] Columbus was born? Thanks for playing! (ahh) [Terence and audience laughs] (ahh) In 1455 Constantinople fell to the Ottoman Turks making European access to the Far East impossible, therefore the Age of Exploration, begins and (ahh), and you get Vasco de Gama and all those people. This was a tremendously shattering [9:27:30] event for European civilization to lose Constantinople to the Ottoman Turks. (ahh) Now let's go over to, (ahh) wait, back i mean, to, this place. This is another very seminal event which combined with this Constantinople loss set the stage for this descent into novelty, even though it's way up here in habit there's a little chip out as there's a, [9:28:00] a-a novel invention of some, sort that happens in 1540, (ahh)...


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: 1440 i'm sorry. The invention is, the invention of printing in months in 1440 (ahh), that did it friends (ahh), as far as most people are concerned.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Enlarge at one set now? Good idea.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Yeah, let's do one Zoom (ahh)... [9:28:30] I think i have to move it over clear all the way before we do that zoom or it'll be some kind of a screw-up.


Audience: [inaudible]...focus on your right.


TM: Right, let me (ahh)...


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Well, i'm glad you like it because it's my best trick. [audience laughs]


Audience: Not bad. [inaudible]


TM: I do, i do.


Audience: Oh you do?


TM: It's just we haven't written a manual yet. [9:29:00]


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Ooh, hard to say. [audience laughs] Okay, now it's pointing at today. Now let's do our zoom. Approach factor, 2, strange that it didn't ask for the seek minimum, isn't it?


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: [9:29:30] Okay. Now we're seeing the same thing again, we're just seeing in higher detail (ahh), but what i'll, i'll fudge by telling you that up here 1455, down here 1492. Along this screaming descent into novelty are all the painters of the Quattrocento. This is the Italian Renaissance. [9:30:00]



Transcribed by Tiago Ramos



TM: All the painters of the Quattrocento, this is [9:30:00] the Italian Renaissance, this descent into novelty. And this, is the era of exploration. 1492, good huh? Good, good! The absolute thing is in 1485, and all the painters of the Italian Renaissance are along this thing. Now notice that in 1492, there isn’t an instant rebound. [9:30:30] There’s 1492. But instead, because this lost half of the planet has been discovered, this sets off the age of discovery and, and habit is unable to reassert itself, because too much peculiar data is flowing in, too many lands, people, materials, philosophie, alphabets, languages, sexual styles, cuisines.. It’s like they’re overwhelmed. [9:31:00] However after a while they get their act together, and manage to turn it into, uh hell itself. RIght there, right… [audience laughs]. What that is, what ends the era of discovery and optimism and psychedelic exotica, [9:31:30] is the 30-years war. The 30-years war begins 1619 [actually 1618], it ends 1648. It begins with Europe Medieval. It ends with Europe Modern: Parliaments have replaced popes and kings. The whooole name of the game has been changed. Now, the 30-years war lasts until 1648. Sorry. 1648. [9:32:00] At the bottom of this cut in here, which is in a situation of rising habit, there nevertheless is a strong tendency towards novelty, reaching a culmination.. in 1677. Newton publishes the Principia, the celestial mechanics are put on a firm basis, the Calculus has been invented. The modern-, the world of modern science is now [9:32:30] completely in place. Then an- an-, wha- an- aside from the 30-years war, what Europe is exporting to the rest of the world on this hellish offswing, is slavery, the Patron system, forced labor, uh brutal return to habitual methods of the past. You may not know that slavery died with the fall of the Roman Empire. If you’ve owned a slave [9:33:00] during the medieval period, you owned ONE slave. It was a house slave. And it proved, your own ownership of this person proved, that you were a person of IMMENSE wealth. It would be like owning a beach bonanza today, it’s beyond owning a Rolls Royce. But, the need for a drug strangely enough, the drug being sugar reversed this, and in the 1440’s [9:33:30] they began buying Africans and taking them to the Canary island to work sugar. So, uh you know, the moral power of Western civilization could not stand in the way of the re-establishment of slavery and the sugar trade. Now, up here at the top of this thing there is a steep, there is a twist, a turn, right there, in 1739. This is the European Enlightenment. [9:34:00] The European, uh Enlightenment was the great uh intellectual step that set the step of secular civilization. People like Voltaire. And out of that came two revolutions.



Audience: [inaudible question]



TM: Well, the inquisition would have been I presume a fairly un-novel thing. Since what it was, was a power group [9:34:30] torturing the helpless. Which there’s nothing new in that for heaven’s sake.



Audience: It went on for a long time too.


TM: It went on for a long time, and enough of that. It was a Spanish phenomenon. I- It was confined geographically to a number, to a very small number of places. Right.. there. August 1, 1776. The American Revolution takes place as a consequence of this steep descent into [9:35:00] novelty at the beginning of the European Enlightenment. Well as you know, the American Revolution is generally thought to have had a happy conclusion. The French Revolution.. not so happy. And if you explode that Arean look, you can see that they’re happening at different slopes of that thing. Then the restoration of Louis Napoleon in 1803, is there. [9:35:30] This bump is the American Civil War and the Franco-Prussian war, which were the first modern wars and completely distorted the demographics of the United States and Europe. And, now i want to..


Audience: What year is that?



TM: The Franco-Prussian war began in.. 1848, I think. And the Civil War was 1865. Let’s uh, I wanna go over here tooooooo.. [9:36:00]



Transcribed by Andrea Casanova



TM: tooooo [9:36:00]



Audience: [inaudible statement]



TM: I think you’re right. I didn’t feel right about saying that. And that would-



Audience: 1848 was the other one.



TM: Was-, 1848 was the year of revolution. But the Franco-Prussian was at the same of the American Civil War, you are right. Ok, there’s today’s date. Now let’s do the approach. [9:36:30] Approach factor.. two. [beep] Ah, okay that’s 357 years on the screen. You see the American and French revolution. The Franco-Prussian War, the American Civil War, the Twentieth Century. Now let’s look at the Twentieth Century. And this is, remember how I said that the Great Pyramids were at the bottom of this trough, at a higher level. Now we are seeing the same pattern again. What we get [9:37:00]at the bottom of this trough here, is the Third Reich. And to show you how the resonances work, think about the Third Reich in relationship to Ancient Egypt. First of all, probably the word ‘Führer’ can be traced to the word ‘pharaoh’. These-, this is the same concept [9:37:30] of a master leader. In addition, the Third Reich and Ancient Egypt shared an obsession with large-scale tasteless architecture. In addition, both civilizations had a real tendency to lean on the jews. So you see, you get this strange kind of microscope on the histor-. Most people would not associate Ancient Egypt to the Third Reich. But when you begin listing [9:38:00] the similarities you see, one is a reflection of the other. Okay within the Twentieth Century, ah this is somewhere like 1903. The- uh, uh invent- you know, uh, Einstein was in 1905, the general theory, I think. Which came first, the general of the special?



Audience: The special.


TM: The special came first [9:38:30] in 1905, and the general came slightly later. Down here in the bottom of this trough, let me show you. Right there. Hitler becomes chancellor of Germany. And then all of World War II is fought in the bottom of that trench. Here’s 39’, here’s August 39’. That’s June, that’s September [9:39:00]. So that when it begins. Even though it’s a novel situation, because it’s a war it’s a recursion to habit. So at the bottom of a trough of novelty you get a little upward pimple of recursion to habit. Then, uh let's look at.. There it is. That’s Hiroshima right there, and Nagasaki right there. The war ends, and novelty is left behind [9:39:30]. And remember that the psychology of the post-war mind was everybody wanted things to get back to normal. I mean, certainly the Europeans wanted things to get back to normal. Their whole scene had been bombed into the Stone Age. And in this country, people just wanted to get their place in the suburbs and marry the girl next door, and have a slew of kids, and buy a Chevrolet. And forget about, you know thousand year millennial plans, and all the rest of it. [9:40:00] And so this is the post-war, cold-war era. And it lasts, let’s look. Oh there’s 1952. Uhm, 19-, here’s-, the launching of Sputnik is there.



Audience: It was in 59’.


TM: No no, Oct- October first 1957. A day graven in my mind till they lower my box. [9.40:30]. Uhm. The first american satellite was launched right around there, Explorer 1.



Audience: [inaudible].


TM: Give me the date! [audience laughs]. Ok there’s the assassination of John Kennedy, as close as I can get it at this resolution. If I go back one, I’m before it. So you see, [9:41:00] it’s right at the bottom of that steep stab, that takes place against this other thing.



Audience: What turned it around?



TM: What turned it around? What’s- What’s the turning point? I thought you’d never ask.



Audience: Yeah yeah yeah yeah, and what is it?



TM: Oh, I’m about to get it for you. There it is. August 1967. It’s the summer of looove. Not only does this thing illuminate history it also, you know fulfills my deepest inner delusions [audience laughs] [9:41:30]. So, and remember I said when we were looking at history’s fractal mountain, that this was Homer, up here. So, then you can see that the freak thing, the hippies were like the pre-hellenic Greeks. I mean, all those, you know all that bra-lessness, and loose-fitting clothes and tambourines and ecstatic Bacchanalian with a [9:42:00]


Transcribed by Andrea Casanova



TM: [9:42:00]...with a philosophical undertone. I mean it was a Greek mentality, that broke out in 1967. Then here's the long descent into, you know, the dreary present moment and (ahh), (ahh)
what can i show you hereeee? Richard Nixon getting the axe.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Yeah. Now we're into the Reagan-era down here. [9:42:30]


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Yeah.


Audience: Can you enlarge?


TM: Yeah i'm gonna cut it. I'm just trying to get back to today. There it is. Oh, okay. Cut it, zoom yes, approach factor 2, enter.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Ah well it's gonna be…


Audience: [inaudible] [9:43:00]


TM: There it is. That's the Hippie thing and then the descent. Now that's in the, that's the 8-the 70s and 80s. That's the last 11 years (ahh), i wanna stop it here. Now, now, see how tight, it has to be, to work. Remember that we've been looking at this thing from, we've descended from 6 billion years, [9:43:30] to 11 years. We have predicted asteroid impacts, glaciation, speciation, the rise and fall of Empires, now we're down to the short and curly i would think. (ahh), [audience laughs] Let's take a look here at what we've got.


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Who, i suppose, now we're all experts on this phase of things cause we've all just lived through (ahh), i don't see anyone here under 11, [9:44:00] so we've just lived through all of this. So let's take a look at what it is (ahh). Now, let's see, when was George Bush elected president?


Audience: 88.


TM: 88. So would have been November 88. That's October, that's November. Now what is the resonance to that moment? I don't think of it so much as, as Bush being elected as Reagan leaving office. The resonance here is the fall of Rome [9:44:30]. Rome falls right there. Well then, then see we have a series of, of high and low points which we should be able to correlate to, (ahh) recent, catastrophic or world-changing events. So let's play the game... [9:45:00] What's happening down here, for the 30 days preceding, that day, is a million people are camping out in Tiananmen Square. They, the-they, at the very bottom of the trough is the night that they had the most people in the square and then it turns upward as you can see because the, constipated fascist oligarchs in [9:45:30] charge of that society were preparing to do murder and there's nothing novel or new about murder, it's the oldest game in the book. So that went on there, then remember the Romanian, oh-no no. Let's go over here, the next steep descent into novelty is right, there. Right, that's too far. No, no no, that's right. Okay right there, who knows what happened very close [9:46:00] to 11-, 11/89?


Audience: The Berlin Wall.


TM: The Berlin Wall fell down. Germany is unified right there. So Tiananmen, Germany, then a bummer of some sort and what is that bummer? It's the Romanian Revolution which as you'll recall was handled in a messier style, where you hurl, put people up against walls and machine-gunned them and so forth and so on.


Audience: [inaudible]...convergence...[inaudible]...August 87.


TM: August 87?


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Along that line. Well then let's go over to here.


Audience: I wanna see that harmonic convergence.


TM: Oh you want to see the harmonic convergence? Give me the date.


Audience: August 87. 8/87.


TM: 8/87. In judging this you have to ask yourself, was the harmonic…


Audience: [9:47:00] [inaudible]...1st anniversary Iran-Iraq war...[inaudible]...Wait we'll go back to 87.


TM: But don't you want to go back to 87?


Audience: Yeah.


TM: Yeah.


Audience: [inaudible]...harmonic convergences on the anniversary every year...[inaudible]...six month...[inaudible]


TM: Well maybe it's not... Oh, okay. August what?


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: There is the closest we can get. What it shows that, is, that a long descent into [9:47:30] novelty that had previously been impeded but there isn't anything particularly special about that day but it does fall in the domain of going over this hump. Over here (ahh), you'll recall the, the Gulf War and all that. Here's how that looks. [9:48:00]


Transcribed by Tiago Ramos



[9:48:00] Terence: “Mmkay now, look here, August 3rd, 1990, there’s where saddam hussein invades kuwait, it’s also where mohammed is born one level up. Uhm, I can get higher and lower resonances simply by touching eye here, we haven’t done that but it’s possible. [9:48:30] Now remember how after he invaded - then there was a lot of breast beating and armies being moved into position and so forth that goes on until there, now there, no, no, there is where the 30 day ultimatum from the security council is issued. The war begins, the air war on the 17th of January right there [9:49:00] and the land war, well you can see that it’s - it’s, there’s a steep descent into novelty which then is slightly moderated and at the kink is where the war begins. Now the next steep descent into novelty-”
[AUDIENCE: “So lining people up and machine gunning them happens during the periods returning to, to -” ]
Terence: “- to habit, that’s the usual habit.”
[AUDIENCE: “and war happens during novelty?” ]
Terence: [9:49:30] “well, wars can have, war is kind of an ambiguous thing, was is a habitual activity but it does cause novelty, especially technological novelty so you know that’s why it’s nice that you can blow up these waves and see the variation within the theme. Now this point, that’s it, there it is [9:50:00] the coup in the soviet union, right at the bottom of this one, and now the next one is really intriguing to me and i'll show you why, there it is, it’s february 21st of this year and it’s the lowest point of novelty for this year. Now, i was really puzzled by this because i watched very carefully that [9:50:30] week and there didn’t seem to be anything very novel going on-”
[AUDIENCE: “Your book came out” ]
Terence: “My book did come out, you’re right but i was modest enough to not place that in a context of world history.”
[AUDIENCE: *inaudible* ]
Terence: “Well you know what happened and this leads us to the slippery edge of prophecy, there was an event which happened not on the 21st of February but on the 20th which may be [9:51:00] trivial and forgettable and absolutely not worth talking about or maybe one of the most important events in the history of the 20th century. Do you know what it was?”
[AUDIENCE: *inaudible* ]
Terence: “No no, Ross Perot goes on Larry King and offers a suggestion about his availability for the presidency now if the guy fades and becomes a nothing-burger it doesn’t count but he does have the wave [9:51:30] blowing at his back, uhh that’s for sure. So that’s basically it uhh, if you want to see, let’s see”
[AUDIENCE: *inaudible* ]
Terence: “No, well, let’s look at the future, let me get the *shmiggy* somewhere roughly into the middle and then we’ll build. [9:52:00] Okay now let’s see if i can figure out how to do this. Specify target date , C, target date months, let’s do today, today is the 5th month, the 31st day, of 1992, we don’t want to add days, okay we want to move that over to [9:52:30] 50 percent. “
[AUDIENCE: “Target date..” *inaudible* ]
Terence: “Yes, that’s where the cursor pops up. Now let’s choose the timespan, E, let’s do 10 years, plus months zero, plus days zero, now let’s graph the wave. Yes, yes. [9:53:00] So it’s pointing at today. 10 years. The last 5, the next 5. And what it shows is that we are actually as if you didn’t know, exploring a very deep trough of novelty, it will last until August of next year and then there will be some kind of uhh, some kind of return to habit with a vengeance [9:53:30] now the november election is, now wait a minute there’s something wrong here let me see, no i want to point it at today.
[AUDIENCE: “You see it right there, right there right?” ]
Terence: “Yeah, okay that’s as close to today as we can get. ”
[AUDIENCE: *inaudible* “ very creative..” *inaudible* ]
Terence: “Yeah, we’re definitely getting ready to go down into novelty.”
[AUDIENCE: *inaudible* “thing next to the novelty thing..” *inaudible* ]
Terence: “[9:54:00] You mean clear to here?”



Transcribed by Jonathan Laliberte



TM: You mean clear to here?


Audience: Yes


TM: Ok well it’s gonna last until… August ‘93. The thing to keep you eye on is this. Which is such a spectacular drop. I mean look how much weirdness we’ve been through, but it’s taken us this much time to do it. This sucker is gonna do it in a three month period in early ‘96.


Audience: [Inaudible] [9:54:30]


TM: I haven’t the faintest.


Audience: [Inaudible]


TM: Well, I hope you’ll do this. Uhm, I think it should be done. Here I’ll show you [9:55:00] a function you haven’t seen. Instead of zooming in we’ll zoom out.


Audience: [Inaudible]


TM: Uhm, well no I’ll just- instead of ten years on the screen we’ll see 20


Audience: Oh I see


TM: Now it’s still pointing- uhm, well no wait a minute. Ok there you see it.


Audience: [Inaudible]


TM: Yea, right, then there’s the whole thing. [9:55:30] So that’s the idea. Now, the notion is that- remember how I kept talking about how a cone contains all possible ellipses and you section it? What the psychedelic experience is, is a sectioning of eternity. And you can build up a picture of the cone by sectioning eternity sufficiently that you get a map like this. I mean I’m convinced by this that [9:56:00] time is fractal. That instead of treating time as a zero quantity as the newtonian equations do, or as a very gentle curvature as the Einstein equations do, but we have to sub in this fractal dimension. And that this will make possible a science as mo- more powerful, relatively, to present science as present science is through the power of the calculus to Greek science. Time, [9:56:30] about which we previously knew next to nothing except that it seemed to keep happening, can actually be described, uhm, in the same way that energy and, uhm, other factors in the universe can be described. Now what I- the last thought I want to leave you with, is I don’t think anybody could fig- could make this up. Certainly not me. A person with no training in mathematics, no interest in this kind of [9:57:00] thing. I was told this stuff. And, you know, most, God forbid, channeling is of the horrible variety which tells you to eat brown rice and love your neighbor. You don’t need channels to tell you that, you have channels in your own head which tell you that. This is a mathematical equation. I mean, it’s embedded in a lot of rap. But the real channel is [9:57:30] an equation for the description of time which makes, uhm, assertions, makes predictions, uhm, is willing to be held to mathematical analysis. All the things scientists are always screaming that occultists never will provide them with their theories, this provides. So I’m willing, since it’s only one person, one person’s life, I’m willing to, uhm, preach this, a little bit, because I’m not- [9:58:00] maybe I- I can’t believe- see the choice here is pretty stark. Either I’m nuts or I’m Newton. There’s no inbetween. Becau- there is no inbetween!


Audience: [Inaudible]


TM: Uhm, yea, def, uhm,it’s- it’s- It’s right, I’m the greatest intellectual synthesizer in the history of man. If Im wrong, it’s just horse shit. So then the question is which is it? [audience laughs]


Audience: [Inaudible] [9:58:30]


TM: You- you mean, who am I the resonance of?


Audience: Yea


TM: A question I’ve never asked, uhm. [laughs]


Audience: [Inaudible]


TM: I figured this out… There were many- it took a long time but from 1971 to 1973 [9:59:00] is when I figured it out.


Audience: [Inaudible]


TM: Here to- let’s see. Let’s go back. Let’s go there and see.


Audience: [Inaudible]


TM: Then you would have it. Then you would have it. [9:59:30] Okay Let’s see.


Audience: [Inaudible]


TM: No, the life changing experience was in 1971. Well let’s- let’s point at this little dip here, giving me the benefit of the doubt, and say that it was April 26, ‘73. I’m sure that had you visited me in April 26, ‘73 you would have found me hunched over graph paper and working seriously. Now let’s see what the resonance of that is. [10:00:00]



Transcribed by Paul Mullins



™:Now let’s see what the resonance of that is, I, is the resonance call. It asks higher or lower. We answer higher, that means earlier..Higher. Major or trigonometric resonance, forget that, major is the answer. Which point, 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 99th, I have no idea what that means, let’s answer, first. Uuuuumm 526 B.C., Oh it’s the Greek renaissance, Plato Pythagoras, Ezekiel Confucius Lousive? …(talking to the guy that asked the question) hey I think it’s time to knock off , you should quit when you’re ahead, you know?…(audience laughs)....Inaudible question… ™:Well in a sense there is, no no (audience laughing), wait a minute, in a sense there is, this is a fractal, it was invented or channeled by me before fractals became the absolute obsession of frontier mathematics, now everybody wants to talk about fractals and everybody says, you know population growth, river mouths, everything can be modeled by fractals, but nobody says Time can be modeled by a fractal. So I think probably the rise of fractal mathematics is indicative of this, the other thing is, this could never have been brought to the public without small personal computers. I developed this/finished in 75 and in 77 they began selling small computers, so uh, it’s uh. It’s a weirdness, it’s a hallucination. That’s what it is. My dream has always been to bring something here from there, and apparently the only things which travel well from there to here are ideas, and I’m not an artist so I couldn’t paint, so this is a psychedelic idea, I think there are millions of these kinds of ideas swimming in the psychedelic ocean..Yeah (Inaudible question) [10:02:28] Well that’s because we really haven’t talked about the nature of the concrescence, you know what is, what is, this all argues for an impossible conclusion, that the world is going to disappear up it’s own wazoo at dawn December 22, 2012…(inaudible crowd mumbling) ™ what?...oh you want to see the last day? (more crowd mumbling) ™ well here lemme uh, well here, yeah I’ll show you, I’ll show you the final thing, we’re running over but anybody that wants to leave has my blessing and my sympathy. (More crowd mumbling) (Sounds like they are working out a math problem on the white board) [10:05:00] ™ You see there it is, it runs down, he don’t go no mo, that’s the end. Now I have created one way out that preserves the theory and a rational universe and it is simply this, that what happens on december 22, 2012 is that time travel is invented and because it is invented it is no longer possible to portray historical data on a linear graph, so that’s all. It’s just it was a thing about technology and eventually a technology was created which made the three dimensional spacetime matrix itself, obsolete….(crowd member says it’s the dimensional octave jump)™ The transcendental object is the despair of description, it cannot be known it can only be approximated, it’s the sacred heart of Jesus, it’s the flying saucer, it’s the philosophers stone….[10:06:00]


Transcribed by Shane Poe



TM: [10:06:00]...it's the Philosopher's Stone, it's tantric union, it's good LSD, it's all of these things and more! It cannot-it transcends, language and understanding but the closer we get to it, the more it will be revealed. And the reason the 20th century is so peculiar, it's because we're so close to the zero point, we're so close to the transcendental object but, you know, take a hit, there it is! [10:06:30] Close your eyes and daydream, there it is! Have an orgasm, there it is! It's trying to breakthrough, it's almost upon us. We've been sailing towards this thing for, 72 billion years and we are now 22 years from impact, the walls are so steep, the acceleration is so great, we are there, for all practical purposes and then what spiritual life and head-dom and all that means is, realize [10:07:00] that we are there, so that anxiety drains from your life body and world view and then you just ride the wave and when people talk of catastrophe, revelation, salvation and destruction, you just smile a small smile knowing that it will be all that and more and more and more, It's something, i think it's to reassure us, you see i think the world is going to get hip to the fact that we are actually [10:07:30] caught in a plural pool in time that is sucking us into another dimension, without something like Timewave Zero a notion like that could get fairly alarming and spread a lot of panic. With Timewave Zero you just say, look we have a map of what's going on, we'll check off the milestones, as long as the wave keeps working nobody should freak out. Just settle in, hang on and we'll [10:08:00] navigate through this. So it's a vital piece of knowledge necessary to face the eschaton without panic because this crazy religions want to tell you that you're going to be judged and damned and fired and roasted, no no that's not it, they got the story wrong. We're just being sucked into hyperspace, and hyperspace is, the human imagination, the human heart, the human soul, it's the domain of our dreams. [10:08:30] Our imagination is a flickering image of what it will but what it really will be, (ahh) is the despair of prose. What it will really be, can only be, approached in, silent darkness on 5 grams and then you can't tell anybody about it. Thank you very much. [audience applauses] [This concludes In Search of the [10:09:00] Original Tree of Knowledge, a weekend workshop with Terence Mckenna. If you would like additional copies of this recording or a complete catalog of transformational audio tapes, please call Sounds True. 1-800-333-9185 or write, Sounds True 735 Walnut Street, Boulder Colorado 80302] [10:09:30]


TM: Does anyone want to ask a question or is it all just perfectly clear utterly convincing and…


Audience: [inaudible]


TM: Bad effects of psilocybin? Somebody once said, what's wrong with DMT and i said, well nothing unless you fear death by astonishment. [audience laughs] (Ahh), but-but your question is a good one. [10:10:00] First of all, (ahh) you know, i talked a lot about how all we have to do is destroy and oblate ego, however there is a very small percentage of us who have a hard time creating any ego whatsoever and the-for this people boundary dissolution is no problem, their boundaries are dissolving all the time on them. I would say that they are at the, (ahh) contraindicated end of the spectrum. [10:10:30] That if you're, fearful already and fighting to keep from being overwhelmed by confusion at what's going on in your life at the paper box factory or something, [audience laughs] then probably tossing in mega doses of hallucinogens is not, the way, [audience laughs] for you, to do it or if you do, if you're, just bent on doing that, then i would say (ahh), do it in the presence of some kind of professional and how you find a professional [10:11:00] in this legal climate you'll have to discuss with me in privately (ahh), (ahh). I don't want to make it sound dull, i mean, it's a tricky thing. I don't want to make it sound like it's absolutely riskless. Physically, i think it's pretty safe, unless you are odd in some way but you need to know, you know, you don't want to find out you're odd an hour and a half into it. [audience laughs] But the, the-the problem comes, [10:11:30] with the mind, you know. If, if-if you are delicately balanced, if your whole life has been about not looking at that, or that, or that, then this is not your game, you know, you should go back to, watching Jeopardy [audience laughs] and... (ahh), the, the kind of person, the kind of person who is called to this, is a person who has an exploring soul. [10:12:00]



Transcribed by Tiago Ramos



Soul, I mean my- I..I..I am not a courageous person in the sense that you won’t find me shooting white water, you don’t see me, ah, you know- rappelling down the faces of cliffs, but from the time I was a..a, the tiniest little kid I was into the weird. What weird- “Weird is the compass heading, and if you keep your compass always pointed toward the peculiar, toward the acrab, the bizarre, the unspeakably alien - then, you know, you'll find these places… [audience laughter]...the people...the people who think life is all cut and dried, and are perfectly happy to have Carl Sagan and George Bush explain all of reality [audience laughter] have never left the broad, swift stream of mundane thinking, but you know, off in the byways [10:12:57] ...and tributaries, there’s a wonderful alchemical saying, which I generally mangle, but I think it goes something like this: “the tallest mountains, the oldest books, the widest deserts - there you will find the stone”... and what it is, is it’s a prescription for exploring weirdness, that’s all. It’s not gonna be on MTV… it’s not gonna be in, god forbid, Esquire… [audience laughs] it’s going to come, uh from, you know… doing your homework, visiting strange people in strange lands, and checking it out. The… what, what I can’t give you, to return to your question, is… I can’t give you a guarantee that it will be fun. You know, the Rolling Stones have that wonderful line, “You don’t get what you want, you get what you need” [10:13:50] This stuff is ruthless… and if there’s something you’re trying not to look at, it’s gonna get you, for sure… but… ask the veterans, most people will tell you, you learn more from the bad trips than you do from the good ones… the good ones are ecstatic, and connect you up to nature and other people… the bad ones show you your kinks and your limitations and your thought *ferrers, and that sort of thing… it’s not an easy road to hope… that’s why I think, uh, there’s a little bit of social confusion about it… one of the things I should make [10:14:30] clear is, I really advocate high doses rarely… I think the worst thing you can do is get into a style of psychedelic diddling, where you know, you take half a gram every day… all this is doing, is giving you a tolerance to psilocybin… you’re not having The psilocybin experience, you’re having the tolerance to psilocybin experience. The, really the [10:15:00] way to do these things is to, um, do them rarely, so that your whole system can reassert itself and come to equilibrium, and then, just slam it! [audience laughs] And, uh, this is amazing… I mean, I think… I think this works for all these psychedelics… I’m, uh, I’m an inveterate cannabis user, and I wish, in a way, that I could get a slightly better grip [10:15:30] on my cannabis use because, I think the real way to do cannabis is like... once a week, by yourself, in silent darkness, with the strongest stuff you can get… and then immense amounts of it [audience laughs]... and you know, people call it a recreational drug, and a this and a that… hey, done that way, [10:16:00] it will catapult you into places where it’s the… I love it, it’s a great place to get to on cannabis, and some people never in their whole life touch it, is the place where you say, “My god, I’ve done… too much!” [audience and Terence laugh] It’s not easy, folks but… it’s worth shooting for! [laughter continues] basically, what you should do is, is, you know, do some homework, [10:16:30] read some books, talk to your friends, and then, hang on hammoth! It’s like,[laughter] you know… it’s very much like riding an enormous roller coaster.. You know, once that baby rolls out of the station, do not stand up… do not try to climb out of your car… shut up and hang on, with the faith that most people have lived through this! [laughter] [10:17:00]
TM: Someone else… yeah?!
Audience: [inaudible] …
TM: Well, I… uh.. my argument would be, that people don't take it enough [10:18:00], and they don't take it, uh, frequently enough… that, there are a lot of people who would really rather not get loaded, but who feel they must take some psychedelic drug in order to keep membership in their peer group…



Transcribed by Randy Sloane



... and they don't take it, uh, frequently enough… that, there are a lot of people who, who really would rather not get loaded, but who feel they must take some psychedelic drug in order to keep membership in their peer group… so what they did, you know, you can always spot these people, because their first question off at the get-go is, “will I be able to drive?” … I love this question! [audience laughs] because, you know, it indicates you’ve got a real tough nut [10:18:30] on your hands... in every sense of the word - “No, you will not be able to drive.” Uh, so, you know, I , uh, one of the things that inspires me to do this is, I want to get to the people who’ve taken 3 grams of mushrooms, and the people who’ve taken 150 mics of LSD, and I want to convince those people that they never got close to what I’m talking about, [10:19:00] even though they had a life-transforming experience and saw things totally differently… they never got close to what I’m talking about… and so, what you have to do is convince people to take high doses, and then, that can break them through, and then, frequently enough that they don’t forget what the deal is… so I think if you take a psychedelic population and divide it into those who’ve done 5 grams and above… then you will see [10:19:30] an exceptional, uh, slice… but not the dabblers… the dabblers don’t count, and we can all be at times guilty of this, I think…


™- Is that your last question? Does that do it for you? [inaudible] Or do you want to be ? psychotic, you choose. [laughs]


[inaudible]
[laughter]
™- Well I love competition, I mean I… The competition is terrible, that’s the entire basis of my success… Yes, you because you were before, if you still wish.


Audience: [inaudible] [10:20:30]


™- Why? Because, I mean I don’t know if it’s preferable but, here's the thing- people are going to think you're a nut if you come down and say, Johann Sebastian Bach or Jerry [10:21:00] Garcia is God, and this is what you'll have to say if you listen to the dead or the B Minor (mass)… so what I’m interested in, is, um, I want to know the thing in itself… not what it does to Bach, not what it does to a river flowing through a forested valley… I want to see what it can do with darkness, [1:21:30] and silence… and I think most people think it will be boring. Probably because they’ve been hanging out with these beady-eyed gurus meditating, and god knows there’s nothing more boring on earth than most meditation - however, psychedelic... sitting in a darkened room on 5 dried grams of psilocybin mushrooms is nothing like meditating, and that's where it can get at you. My relationship to it is always one of, [10:22:00] I want to know
what it is… and so, I think this sensory deprivation method is the only way to get at that… other people might not like that, people say “you mean you put down that whole thing of going into nature? Isn’t nature the great affirmation?” and all this, and my answer is, yeah, but it works for me sortof without the drugs, plus, and this is maybe my own weirdness and I’ll share it with you… I have noticed [10:22:30] that these things are incredibly disruptive of the ordinary flow of casuistry… you all know the ordinary concept of synchronicity? Well if you don’t stay in your room with the lights out and the phone unplugged.. And the damndest things will happen to you. I mean, I- you couldn’t pay me to go into an American city even mildly loaded because... adventures beckon. Now, some people like that… you know, some people [10:23:00] say, you know, “Let’s take 500 mics and go meet weird people!” [laughs] nuh-uh, not this cookie! uh...



Transcribed by Randy Sloane







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