Robert Forte has lived at the center of the psychedelics/entheogens/mind control revolution.

photo by: Skeptiko

Do you know where you are, right now?

I’m in a drug trial.

What do you think is wrong with you?

I’m sick. That I don’t matter.

That’s Emma Stone and Jonah Hill participating in a futuristic drug experiment in the Netflix series, Maniac.

What would you say this trial is showing you about yourself?

Is this therapy now?

It’s not therapy, it’s science.

Science indeed. I mention that the show is futuristic but it’s cleverly not futuristic because, as many of you know, the history of government sponsored, pharmaceutical-based, social engineering mind-control stuff is well established.

But we might even take it one step further, as today’s guest Robert Forte does, and say that the history of psychedelic drugs is a microcosm of the history of religion (Entheogens and the Future of Religion).

Alex Tsakiris: I really want to understand how you’re juggling these two things, because what I hear from Wasson is this both and kind of thing. Yeah, he’s a lying ass, CIA lifetime player, yes, but I also get the sense that he’s someone who either before, during or after, has woken up to the larger reality that he’s stumbled into or that he’s been pushed into.

Robert Forte: Well, I’m glad you put it that way because I’m still kind of… when I think back to my meetings with Wasson, he had a very peculiar personality around me. I think there was some genuine affection and respect for me as a young man, who really wanted to understand what was going on. You know, I don’t really know, I’d really love to go back into his archives and read more of his letters.

I gave a lecture in New York shortly after my realization of his relationship to the American fascists and then my access to the archives was denied.

Now, this is another one of those level-3 Skeptiko conversations that kind of goes in a lot of different directions, including the LSD movement versus the LSD movements. We talk a lot about Timothy Leary, since today’s guest spent quite a bit of time with him. We talk about his early history. His experience with the CIA. His claim that the CIA wasn’t all bad in the early ‘50s but then they turned bad and he turned against them. And I love Leary’s quote that a third of what he said was bullshit, a third of what he said was dead wrong and a third of what he said was a base hit, but a 333-batting average makes you a Hall of Famer.

We also talk about Aleister Crowley and whether he really was the sick puppy he seems to be and how he’s involved in this mind-control thing.

And of course, we talk about Robert’s amazing journey through this entire psychedelics, entheogen thing, including his relationship with clandestine CIA operative, Gordon Wasson.

We also talk about Ram Dass, Neem Karoli Baba and contrast Ram Dass to Timothy Leary in some ways you might find interesting if you’re at all into that stuff.

This guy Robert Forte is quite an amazing figure in history that you probably haven’t heard about. Stick around for my interview. I think you’ll really enjoy it.