Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“The Gaian process is more than a process. It is s self-reflecting entelechy of some sort.”

“It is curious that what these psychedelics do, on a scale of a community, is they release new ideas. . . . And that this is how culture moves forward. That culture is a phenomenon dependent on the generation of ideas, plans, notions, connections. So this is precisely what these compounds are doing.”

“What is always left out of descriptions of the psychedelic state, the deep psychedelic state, is how weird it is.”

“I finally realized that this 'place' that I kept bursting into [on a psychedelic experience] was somebody's idea of a playpen.”

“We [psychonauts] are all going to go into the books as pioneers, because it's too early for us to be anything else. There's no map, no finished database, just anecdotes of the crazy, crazy stuff that goes on. That's why it's so important to try and share [our stories].”

“The world isn't this unbelievably strange thing which is 'out there'. The world is this stranger-than-we-can-suppose thing which begins from the core of us out. That means nothing can be taken for granted. It can be taken apart. It can be put together many, many ways.”

“[DMT] is pure, one hundred per-cent magic. MAGIC. It's not a drug. It's an event. It's not something you do. It's something that happens to you.”

McKenna also describes a DMT experience as, “A collision with another modality.”

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Books Mentioned in this podcast

The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future

Riane Eisler

The Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion (Cornell paperbacks)

The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens (American Lecture Series)

Richard Evans Schultes

Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers

Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hofmann, Christian Rätsch

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“The Gaian process is more than a process. It is s self-reflecting entelechy of some sort.”

“It is curious that what these psychedelics do, on a scale of a community, is they release new ideas. . . . And that this is how culture moves forward. That culture is a phenomenon dependent on the generation of ideas, plans, notions, connections. So this is precisely what these compounds are doing.”

“What is always left out of descriptions of the psychedelic state, the deep psychedelic state, is how weird it is.”

“I finally realized that this ‘place’ that I kept bursting into [on a psychedelic experience] was somebody’s idea of a playpen.”

“We [psychonauts] are all going to go into the books as pioneers, because it’s too early for us to be anything else. There’s no map, no finished database, just anecdotes of the crazy, crazy stuff that goes on. That’s why it’s so important to try and share [our stories].”

“The world isn’t this unbelievably strange thing which is ‘out there’. The world is this stranger-than-we-can-suppose thing which begins from the core of us out. That means nothing can be taken for granted. It can be taken apart. It can be put together many, many ways.”

“[DMT] is pure, one hundred per-cent magic. MAGIC. It’s not a drug. It’s an event. It’s not something you do. It’s something that happens to you.”

McKenna also describes a DMT experience as, “A collision with another modality.”

Download

MP3

PCs – Right click, select option

Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Books Mentioned in this podcast

The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future

Riane Eisler

The Creative Explosion: An Inquiry into the Origins of Art and Religion (Cornell paperbacks)

The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens (American Lecture Series)

Richard Evans Schultes

Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers

Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hofmann, Christian Rätsch

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“This is a very central part of the psychedelic attitude toward the world, to entertain all possibilities but to never commit to belief. Belief always being seen as a kind of trap, because if you belief something you are forever precluded from believing its opposite..”

“In a sense, sexuality is the built-in psychedelic experience that only a very few people manage to evade.”

“Eros is an ego-overwhelming, boundary dissolving, breakthrough creating force scripted into human life that is pretty intrinsically psychedelic.”

“One of the core elements of this psychedelic thing is freedom, on the broadest scale.”

“Nothing is as boundary dissolving, except for psychedelic compounds, as travel. Travel is up there.”

“I have nothing but scorn for all weird ideas other than my own.”

“Without an understanding and a familiarity of the psychedelic experience you should be sued for fraud if you're practicing psychotherapy.”

“The archaic revival is an invitation to historical humanity to view itself as a kind of a prodigal son.”

“What the psychedelics are for us as a species, rather than for each one of us as an individual, what they are for us as a species is an enzyme that catalyzes the language-making capacity.”

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Symbiosis Gathering 2013

The Transcendent Nature of Symbiosis Festival

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“This is a very central part of the psychedelic attitude toward the world, to entertain all possibilities but to never commit to belief. Belief always being seen as a kind of trap, because if you belief something you are forever precluded from believing its opposite..”

“In a sense, sexuality is the built-in psychedelic experience that only a very few people manage to evade.”

“Eros is an ego-overwhelming, boundary dissolving, breakthrough creating force scripted into human life that is pretty intrinsically psychedelic.”

“One of the core elements of this psychedelic thing is freedom, on the broadest scale.”

“Nothing is as boundary dissolving, except for psychedelic compounds, as travel. Travel is up there.”

“I have nothing but scorn for all weird ideas other than my own.”

“Without an understanding and a familiarity of the psychedelic experience you should be sued for fraud if you’re practicing psychotherapy.”

“The archaic revival is an invitation to historical humanity to view itself as a kind of a prodigal son.”

“What the psychedelics are for us as a species, rather than for each one of us as an individual, what they are for us as a species is an enzyme that catalyzes the language-making capacity.”

Download

MP3

PCs – Right click, select option

Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Symbiosis Gathering 2013

The Transcendent Nature of Symbiosis Festival

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“One of the things that people don't do enough of when they do psychedelic work is spend time in the library.”

“What I always hoped for out of the psychedelic voyaging was to bring back something. I always felt, and still feel, that that is the attitude with which you should go into these things.”

“I really think that the psychedelic realm is the realm of ideas, and that ideas which change the world come first from that place.”

“Life, carefully examined, is actually a form of allegorical literature with a very tight constructural grid laid over it.”

“The future holds no terrors for a person who knows how process inevitably unfolds. They are always right and with it each moment.”

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Terence's List (1987)

Psychedelics Encyclopedia

Peter Stafford

Hallucinogens : Cross-Cultural Perspectives

Marlene Dobkin De Rios

Hallucinogens and Shamanism (Galaxy Books)

Michael J. Harner

The Hallucinogens

A. Hoffer; H. Osmond

Science and Romance of Selected Herbs Used in Medicine and Religious Ceremony

Anthony K. Andoh

Narcotic Plants

William A. Emboden

The Botany and Chemistry of Hallucinogens (American Lecture Series)

Richard Evans Schultes

A New Science of Life: The Hypothesis of Morphic Resonance

Rupert Sheldrake

Plants of the Gods: Their Sacred, Healing, and Hallucinogenic Powers

Richard Evans Schultes, Albert Hofmann, Christian Rätsch

The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future

Riane Eisler

Psilocybin: Magic Mushroom Grower's Guide: A Handbook for Psilocybin Enthusiasts

O. T. Oss, O. N. Oeric

Codex Seraphinianus

Luigi Serafini

True Hallucinations: Being an Account of the Author's Extraordinary Adventures in the Devil's Paradise

Terence McKenna

The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching

Terence McKenna, Dennis McKenna

Food of the Gods: The Search for the Original Tree of Knowledge A Radical History of Plants, Drugs, and Human Evolution

Terence McKenna

A few more suggestions from Lorenzo

The Psychedelic Experience: A Manual Based on the Tibetan Book of the Dead (Citadel Underground)

Timothy Leary

Ayahuasca Visions: The Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman

Pablo Amaringo, Luis Luna

Be Here Now

Ram Dass

Entheogens and the Future of Religion

Edited by Robert Forte

Hallucinogens: A Reader (New Consciousness Reader)

Charles S. Grob

Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics

Charles S. Grob

LSD My Problem Child: Reflections on Sacred Drugs, Mysticism and Science

Albert Hofmann

One Foot in the Future

Nina Graboi

Persephone's Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion

R. Gordon Wasson, Stella Kramrisch, Dr. Carl Ruck, Jonathan Ott

Sisters of the Extreme: Women Writing on the Drug Experience

From Park Street Press

The Cosmic Serpent: DNA and the Origins of Knowledge

Jeremy Narby

The Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell

Aldous Huxley

The Encyclopedia of Psychoactive Plants: Ethnopharmacology and Its Applications

Christian Ratsch, Albert Hofmann

The Long Trip: A Prehistory of Psychedelia

Paul Devereux

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“The psychedelic viewpoint is becoming more and more legitimate, but psychedelic drugs are not. That's the odd paradox of it.”

“We are living in a state of constant scientific revolution. There is not a single area that you can name that is now seen as it was seen a hundred years ago. Nothing is left of the world view of one hundred years ago.”

“The mind is a far bigger domain than we ever imagined.”

“I think really what unites psychedelic people is the faith in the power of the imagination.”

“And science, when it examines psychedelics, as it will and must, is going to discover a revolution, I believe, that will put all the previous revolutions in perspective.”

“The psychedelics are this immense tool for the inspection of our own nature.”

“The entire drug phenomenon of the 1960s happened without the concept of shamanism to help it along.”

“I think that understanding man's place in nature is going to require integration of the psychedelic experience.”

“Nobody should be allowed more than fifty years to get their act together.”

“Part of what being involved in the psychedelic experience is about is reclaiming your own experience.”

“You could almost describe psychedelics as enzymes for the activity of the imagination.”

“We do not birth our children into the world of nature. We birth our children into the world of culture.”

“What the psychedelic thing can be seen as, when it's done with plants, as a return to Gaia, an immersion in the feminine.”

“The real nature of our predicament is completely opaque to us.”

“Ayahuasca, unlike mushrooms and all these other things is only as good as the person who made it. . . . The ayahuasca is a combinatory drug, and so it brings the human interaction and the lore of it into a much more central position.”

Download

MP3

PCs – Right click, select option

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Palenque Norte Lecture Schedule

at the 2013 Burning Man Festival

Erowid Extracts (PDF)

Erowid Prospectus (PDF)

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“The psychedelic viewpoint is becoming more and more legitimate, but psychedelic drugs are not. That’s the odd paradox of it.”

“We are living in a state of constant scientific revolution. There is not a single area that you can name that is now seen as it was seen a hundred years ago. Nothing is left of the world view of one hundred years ago.”

“The mind is a far bigger domain than we ever imagined.”

“I think really what unites psychedelic people is the faith in the power of the imagination.”

“And science, when it examines psychedelics, as it will and must, is going to discover a revolution, I believe, that will put all the previous revolutions in perspective.”

“The psychedelics are this immense tool for the inspection of our own nature.”

“The entire drug phenomenon of the 1960s happened without the concept of shamanism to help it along.”

“I think that understanding man’s place in nature is going to require integration of the psychedelic experience.”

“Nobody should be allowed more than fifty years to get their act together.”

“Part of what being involved in the psychedelic experience is about is reclaiming your own experience.”

“You could almost describe psychedelics as enzymes for the activity of the imagination.”

“We do not birth our children into the world of nature. We birth our children into the world of culture.”

“What the psychedelic thing can be seen as, when it’s done with plants, as a return to Gaia, an immersion in the feminine.”

“The real nature of our predicament is completely opaque to us.”

“Ayahuasca, unlike mushrooms and all these other things is only as good as the person who made it. . . . The ayahuasca is a combinatory drug, and so it brings the human interaction and the lore of it into a much more central position.”

Download

MP3

PCs – Right click, select option

Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Palenque Norte Lecture Schedule

at the 2013 Burning Man Festival

Erowid Extracts (PDF)

Erowid Prospectus (PDF)

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“That's the core puzzling experience, when you meet the Other organized as a speaking mind.”

“What you call man is time.” [Quoting the mushroom.]

“It's as though a certain level of intoxication with the mushroom is the precondition for being able to communicate, but is not itself enough.”

“What happens with DMT is you leap over all the barriers in the first few seconds. Unlike mushrooms where over hours and hours on a high dose you might navigate yourself to the center of the Mandela, DMT is like being struck by metaphysical lightening.”

“[DMT] raises all the questions in a hurry. It's so intense and so oriented toward the other and the visual and the hallucinogenic that it isn't really like a drug. It's more like an event that you ran into. You just came around a corner and there was the unspeakable.”

“History is the siren song of the soul.”

“The terror of drugs is a terror of giving up control. This is what people are most alarmed about by psychedelics, is the giving up control.”

“I see the psychedelic experience as both the centerpiece of prehistoric life and destined to be the centerpiece of any future that we want to be part of.”

“The tension in the world is the tension between the ego and the feminine, not between the masculine and the feminine.”

“And psychedelics now, as we de-condition ourselves from the post-medieval world, they are present to hand as tools.”

Download

MP3

PCs – Right click, select option

Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Books mentioned in this podcast

The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future

By Riane Eisler

One Foot in the Future

By Nina Graboi

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“That’s the core puzzling experience, when you meet the Other organized as a speaking mind.”

“What you call man is time.” [Quoting the mushroom.]

“It’s as though a certain level of intoxication with the mushroom is the precondition for being able to communicate, but is not itself enough.”

“What happens with DMT is you leap over all the barriers in the first few seconds. Unlike mushrooms where over hours and hours on a high dose you might navigate yourself to the center of the Mandela, DMT is like being struck by metaphysical lightening.”

“[DMT] raises all the questions in a hurry. It’s so intense and so oriented toward the other and the visual and the hallucinogenic that it isn’t really like a drug. It’s more like an event that you ran into. You just came around a corner and there was the unspeakable.”

“History is the siren song of the soul.”

“The terror of drugs is a terror of giving up control. This is what people are most alarmed about by psychedelics, is the giving up control.”

“I see the psychedelic experience as both the centerpiece of prehistoric life and destined to be the centerpiece of any future that we want to be part of.”

“The tension in the world is the tension between the ego and the feminine, not between the masculine and the feminine.”

“And psychedelics now, as we de-condition ourselves from the post-medieval world, they are present to hand as tools.”

Download

MP3

PCs – Right click, select option

Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Books mentioned in this podcast

The Chalice and the Blade: Our History, Our Future

By Riane Eisler

One Foot in the Future

By Nina Graboi