Psychedelic Salon

Guest speakers: Dr. Albert Hofmann and Peter Gorman

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Albert Hofmann.]

“I reported about this bicycle ride because I had the feeling that time would stand still. It was a very strange feeling that I had never had before, this change in the experience of time.”

“It [my first LSD experience] became such a strange experience that I feared to have become insane.”

“At the climax I had the feeling to be already out of my body.”

“It [LSD] works on the very center of our psychic existence.”

“Nobody has died from toxic doses of LSD, not one case. All of the fatal cases were by accidents due to the disturbances of the consciousness of the senses.”

“They did not see any special effect on animals, because LSD works only on very high spiritual centers, on consciousness, which animals don't have.”

“[Research with morning glory seeds] shows us that LSD is not just a laboratory product. It is closely related chemically, and pharmalogically, psychologically with [morning glory seeds], with this old Indian magic drug. That means that LSD belongs, pharmalogically chemically, with a group of the sacred magic plants of Mexico. That's a very important finding.”

“I never believed it [LSD] would become a pleasure drug on the streets.”

“I think, of course, the story of LSD is not yet finished at all. If we learn to use it with respect and under the right conditions I am sure the beneficial effects are enormous.”

“In antiquity they had institutions where people who liked to have a [psychedelic initiation] could go and have a very well elaborated condition to have a beneficial effect. But we have not this. We have not. Doesn't exist.”

“I think the next thing that can be reasonably asked is that LSD and the psychedelics should be legally available in psychiatry. As doctors have access to morphine, they have access to cocaine, they have no access to LSD. This must be changed. This should be changed.”

“That is also important, that LSD produces no addiction.”

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Peter Gorman, Writer, Explorer, Naturalist

LSD Testing on British Troops

Guest speakers: Allen Ginsberg, Ram Das, Laura Huxley, Peter Gorman

PROGRAM NOTES:

As us Monty Python fans love to hear, “Now for something completely different.” Well, not really. But today's program is a little different in that instead of featuring just one speaker we have an audio collage that includes Allen Ginsberg, Ram Das, and Laura Huxley. A finer collection of psychedelic elders you would be hard-pressed to find.

First of all is a rare recording of a telephone interview of Allen Ginsberg by then “High Times” editor, Peter Gorman. When Gorman asked for a story about Timothy Leary, Ginsberg tells of the time that Leary came to his New York apartment to meet Jack Kerouac and they took psilocybin together Next is a brief conversation that Peter has with Ram Das during which we learn some more of the background of the early days at Millbrook and the interesting series of events that led up to going there. The last segment is another Peter Gorman interview, this time with Laura Huxley in which she tells of some of her own experiences with LSD. It's a short program but packed with interesting historical ancetdotes.

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Personal Message

from

Eldridge Cleaver

to

Timothy Leary

Tripping the Bardo with Timothy Leary

A Kickstarter campaign for Joanna Harcourt-Smith

Guest speakers: Oscar Janiger and Peter Gorman

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Oscar Janiger.]

[In regards to the dangers of taking LSD]

“Not everybody is committed to go to Everest. Not everybody is going to go to the Serengeti and shoot lions or whatever you want. These are risk-taking adventures. There are people courageous and adventuresome enough who are willing to do it, and when you do it you study your risks.”

“You can die of over taking aspirin and drinking too much water, but [not] LSD, and by the way, there is no evidence of physical death from marijuana either.”

“It's just the same as we go back to Everest, you can fall of the fuckin' mountain. That's all there is to it. I'm not going to make any apologies for that. You've got to be prepared. You know that old adage that LSD favors the prepared mind.”

“[The Sixties was] a time when people began to see that what was laid down for them as obligatory reality was not obligatory.”

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Wikipedia article about Dr. Oscar Janiger

Peter Gorman's 1993 interview with Dr. Albert Hofmann

Albert Hofmann.org (online Hofmann Foundation papers)

Guest speakers: Dennis McKenna and Peter Gorman

ROBERT VENOSA

January 21, 1936 - August 9, 2011

Dear Friends and Community,

A great soul has completed his earthly journey and graduated to the next level.

The great Venosa left his body on Tuesday August 9, 2011 at 6:56 PM.

His transition was graceful and accomplished in the same composed and calm manner that he exuded throughout his life.

I feel honored to have been able to accompany him to the gate, having walked 30 beautiful years together in this life.

Robert had a long and brave healing journey with cancer and showed incredible strength on this path as well as tremendous courage in facing this great dragon.

He believed in the natural healing ability of the human body and proved the doctors wrong time and again, who only gave him a few month’s to live upon his diagnosis over eight years ago.

He was a powerful human being. Together he and I, held the piece of his physical struggle safely tucked away from the eyes of the world like a precious pearl.

It is with great sadness that I’m sharing this news today but also with

deep gratitude, for his magical and special life; fully lived.

Even in death he gave those surrounding him a powerful initiation into the scared mysteries of the unknown.

We will carry him in our hearts forever, remembering the light he shone on so many. He so appreciated the light that others shone upon him.

In loving memory of my great love, compañero, best friend and artistic accomplice.

Martina Hoffmann and family

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Dennis McKenna.]

“I think that ayahuasca is actually much more controllable than mushrooms. . . . I think that it is quite an amazing tool for self-understanding and for exploration. I think that it's good for you, actually physically and psychologically good for you.”

“It's no different than it ever was. When the Jesuits and the missionaries came to meso-America the first things to go, the first things to be stamped out was the knowledge of the sacred plants and the practice of using the sacred plants.”

“I think that Christianity linked with Calvinism has a hard time dealing with what you might call facts of biology, which in another phrase is sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. In some ways, life is about sex, drugs, and rock 'n roll. Biology is about those things.”

“All experience is a drug experience. Whether it's mediated by our own [endogenous] drugs, or whether it's mediated by substances that we ingest that are found in plants, cognition, consciousness, the working of the brain, it's all a chemically mediated process. Life itself is a drug experience.”

“He [Terence McKenna] will never let a fact get in the way of making a provocative statement. He's a good story teller, but I think it's important to remember that they are stories, and that he often makes mistakes in his lectures.”

“In that position, a guy who can pack the houses every time, I feel has a larger responsibility to the psychedelic community to refrain from making these completely off-the-wall comments, and to actually tell it like it is, not how he imagines it to be.”

“I'm sure that Terence views it as theater. I can't believe that he takes what he says seriously. I mean, I can tell you that he doesn't. Much of what he says he says it because it's going to get a rise out of somebody. He's always been that way.”

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Peter Gorman

Writer, Explorer, Naturalist

Web Site

Blog

Archive

Guest speakers: Peter Gorman and Dennis McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Dennis McKenna.]

"The idea that you could use these to actually explore other dimensions, real worlds that were outside the cognizance of our ordinary world, is really what I think fascinated me about psychedelics."

"More than anything else, it [DMT] seemed to be not an experience, not a drug, but a place, an actual other dimension that you were plunged into."

"In order to understand its limitations, I almost had to become the 'enemy'. I had to become a scientist in order to understand the limitations of science."

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Peter Gorman

Writer, Explorer, Naturalist

Web Site

Blog

Archive

File Cleanup Test

Thank you for all who worked on this project. ... A solution has been found and the files are being restored :-).

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

"It seemed probable to me that this phenomenon encountered in deep psychedelic experiences with psilocybin actually has a potential historical impact. It is a kind of human ability, which is at present submerged in the psyche, contactable only by the shamanic means of journeying into historical hyperspace. In other words, of going into that place where the adumbrations of the future are intense enough that you can have an intimation, at least, of what is to come.”

“I think the gradual evolution of language is actually the gradual lifting of the veil that is imposed between ourselves and meaning by the planetary ecology. In other words, the forward thrust of history is actually regulated by the ecology, and it is regulated through control of the evolution of language. Because what you cannot think you cannot do, and where you cannot imagine you cannot steer your culture and go. So I'm proposing on one level that hallucinogens be thought of as social pheromones that regulate the rate at which language develops and therefore regulates the evolution of human culture generally.”

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

“This is what magic is. It's being able to speak in a voice which makes things happen, being able to speak in a voice which causes facts to be beheld by groups of people in a way that has been purged from profane language, for us relegated to poetry and that sort of thing.”

“The history of man that you don't know is what your unconscious is made out of. Just as the history of yourself that you don't know is what your personal unconscious is made out of.”

“Knowledge, or verbal facility, is no proof that you know what you're talking about.”

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Women's Visionary Congress

Consciousness, Healing, and Social Justice

The Women's Visionary Congress (WVC) is an annual gathering of visionary women healers, scholars, activists and artists who study consciousness and altered states. The WVC supports the transfer of knowledge among women who apply the insights of their research and spiritual path. We gather on beautiful land in Northern California to renew our community of adventurers and visionaries.

The fifth annual WVC will take place from July 29 - 31, 2011 at the Institute of Noetic Sciences (IONS) Earthrise Retreat Center, near Petaluma, California. The WVC welcomes interested women and men to join us as we talk, dance, eat delicious food and participate in a series of conversations with wise women.

Presenters include Copperwoman, Valerie Corral, Earth and Fire Erowid, Dorothy Fadiman, Amber Field, Carolyn (Mountain Girl) Garcia, Dorka Keehn, Jessica Lucas, Mariavittoria Mangini, Jean Millay, Eleonora Molnar, Annie Oak, Linnae Ponté, Miss S, Nick Sand, Stephanie Schmitz, Jane Straight, Justine Willis Toms, Keeper Trout, Clare Wilkins and Nina Wise.

Guest speakers: Ann Shulgin and Dr. William Rowlandson

PROGRAM NOTES:

"If you are going to experiment with a psychedelic of any kind, make sure you are depranil-free for at least five days, probably seven would be safer.”

-Ann Shulgin

“You don't really need MDMA or a psychedelic to do [deep personal therapy]. … I think that until at least some of these materials become legal, don't dismiss the possibilities of hypnotherapy doing exactly what you need and want.”

-Ann Shulgin

“As far as I'm concerned, there is no substitute for MDMA, because it is the insight drug. And it does this magical combination of allowing you to see inside without fear and hostility toward yourself. It has a beautiful, beautiful effect, and no other drug that we know of so far manages to do that.”

-Ann Shulgin

“[Our] paradox is the ceaseless, constant drive to understand something that is inherently un-understandable. Now, of course, the paradox lies in the fact that we understand it is not to be understood, and yet we understand that we continue to try to understand. It's a beautiful paradox.”

- Dr. William Rowlandson

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2CT-7 Survey by Casey Hardison

Guest speaker: Kathleen "Kat" Harrison

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Kat Harrison.]

"If a bird you're not used to seeing comes and sits on a tree outside your window and calls, and calls, and calls. It's not just a bird of a trip. It's a bird that has a message that it is sending you that may be positive, that may be a warning. It's something you pay attention to.”

“You really need to, at least part of the time, speak [out loud] to the entity that you are invoking the presence of. That the whole idea with these medicines is to go into an active, right now, relationship between beings. It's inter-species communication.”

“In order to do this kind of magical work, energy transforming work, you have to create a vulnerable oasis. You have to be willing to be open and be vulnerable, and in order to do that you have to set up protection around you, around the people you're working with, or even the place you're working. And one of the ways to set up protection is to plant plants that carry that kind of protective power around you.”

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[From their Web site: "Thank you for considering Gaian Botanicals as your source for high quality ethnobotanicals, herbs and teas. We are a small privately owned and operated specialty shop who imports direct from growers & harvesters in small quantities to ensure everything is fresh. We use our own contracted laboratory to manufacture high quality, safe and effective botanical extracts. We maintain the highest level of respect and great relationships with the plants, those who cultivate and manufacture our extracts, our customers and Gaia. We take great care with every aspect of our business and keep overhead low to save you money!"]

Guest speaker: Timothy Leary

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.]

"I like the Pope. I think he's the finest mind of the 12th century.”

“It really is an awesome epidemic of deliberate stupidity that is laid upon us by the media, by the press, by the magazines and so forth. They simply do not raise any of the issues that will challenge our interest or intelligence.”

“There's simply no question that anyone who knows anything about how to use brain-activating drugs and is operating with a clear mind, with no desire to screw other people's minds up, whose willing to put in time and patience, and sensitivity, can help anyone wash their brain. There's no longer any excuse for having a mind that you don't like, or having a brain program that you're dissatisfied with.”

“I've always hated the Second Law of Thermodynamics.”

“It always comes down to individual choices of what chemicals you're going to use to stimulate your evolution.”

“You use a drug intelligently when you know what effect it's going to have on you, and you use it at the time and the place that it's going to add to your growth, or your fun, or your overall program of life management and directorship. And you're not going to use a drug that in any way will fuck up, or slow down, or throw obstacles in your overall path.”

“Computers are to the Eighties what acid was to the Sixties.”

“One thing that drugs give you: Personal options to change your own mind, a way of rewarding yourself, of teaching yourself, of activating yourself, of changing yourself. And one thing that the power-holders do not want you to do as an individual is to change your own mind and learn how to reward yourself.”

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Guest speaker: Kathleen "Kat" Harrison

Big Island, Little Planet

March 17–28, 2012

A Travel Intensive in Polynesia on the Big Island of Hawaii

Ethnobotanist Kathleen Harrison and Hawaiian cultural teacher Momi Subiono will lead this travel intensive, open to all who have a desire to immerse themselves in the story of plants, nature, and a deep cultural awareness of place.

PODCAST PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Kat Harrison.]

"The role of conscious, intentional behavior that is described by culture or subcultural rules of behavior with reflected meaning is sort of a way of describing ritual generally, and we draw these forms out of a number of traditions.”

“I think when we go into thinking about how to do psychoactive medicines it's very valuable to look deeply, to look seriously, at the traditions that have attended these medicines through time.”

“Repeated behavior in the same mode over a long time generates a kind of an etheric possibility of it recurring and being potentized by its ongoing, indefinite repetition.”

“I feel that it's really valuable to look into the ritual history of the place where you live or the place where you're working.”

“Pay homage to the history of ritual that is coming through the place.”

“Why one [psychedelic medicine] may be your best friend's ally and not your ally is a mystery. And maybe you can solve that mystery and maybe not. But you should honor the fact that some things work for you and some things are not your medicine, even though everyone around you appears to be having a good time.”

“You don't lead with your head. You let your heart and your body tell you what to do in these [introspective psychedelic] moments. Then if you think it's time to get up and bolt out into the street, you let your head come in and tell you, 'Don't! Sit down. You're not going anywhere.' ”

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Thank you to The Turtles for "Eve of Destruction"