Psychedelic Salon

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Podcast 350 – “Healing Through Sound and Ayahuasca” May 08, 2013

Show notes

Guest speaker: Hamilton Souther PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Hamilton Souther.] “Even they [the shaman] do not know what ayahuasca is, because you're never experiencing ayahuasca. You are always experiencing ayahuasca plus you, and that combination is not ayahuasca. That combination is you and ayahuasca. And that means ayahuasca then is undefinable, we don't know what it is, which then always allows us to continue to explore the unknown. And it becomes an unlimited journey for us to be able to continue to go further and further and further in our understanding.” “The shamanism becomes a guide, and the ayahuasca becomes a guide for an exploration of the purity of consciousness.” “[When interviewing a shaman] especially look at everybody in the eyes. The eyes in ayahuasca tell you everything. If you see people with eyes that get really glossed over and become really shifty, it's letting you know something there is going on that maybe you don't want to become like that. Maybe that's not why you're there.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Hamilton Souther, Medicine Hunter Blue Morpho Ayahuasca Center

Podcast 349 – “A Higher Dimensional Sectioning of Reality” Apr 30, 2013

Show notes

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Just because you have a nut theory it doesn't mean that you agree with other nut theories. In fact, it often makes you very hostile to them. After all, there's a limited pool there that we're all after.” “Because I believe psychedelics are a kind of higher dimensional sectioning of reality, I think they give the kind of stereoscopic vision necessary to hold the entire hologram of what's happening in your mind. The old paradigm is gone.” “Shamanism is about shape shifting. Shamanism is about doing phenomenology with a tool kit that works.” “I think psychedelics are sort of like doing calisthenics in preparation for the marathon at the end of time.” “[Psychedelic experiences are] beyond the reach of cultural manipulation, and discovering this and exploring it is somehow the frontier of maturity. Culture is a form of enforced infantilism. It's the last nursery, and most people never leave it.” “It doesn't matter what your cultural conditioning is, it falls into question under the influence of the psychedelic. And for most people that's frightening.” “We are the damaged heirs of a damaged cultural style which has been practiced now for about seven thousand years.” “There is an intelligence in the species that is deeper than the societies and the systems that we erect to rule us, and this wisdom of the species can make enormous changes in the evolution of the mass psyche, such as the Renaissance for example.” “Impressionism [in painting] is simply twenty minutes into LSD.” “Belief is a form of infantilism. There is no ground for believing anything.” “I believe that great weirdness stalks the universe. That's not the issue with me, but it is not tacky. It is not tacky.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Podcast 348 – “Entheogens and Plant Medicines” Apr 23, 2013

Show notes

Guest speaker: Dr. Naughtilee PROGRAM NOTES: Today's program features the 2012 Palenque Norte Lecture that Dr. Naughtilee gave at the Burning Man Festival. Natalie is a Licensed Naturopathic Doctor in private practice in San Francisco. Naturopathic Medicine is a unique, holistic healthcare system that promotes a proactive, preventative approach to health and wellness, blending the science of modern medicine with the wisdom of the natural healing arts. In this engaging talk, and through interaction with her audience, Dr. Naughtilee discusses some of the foods, medicines, and poisons that we obtain from plants and helps us to better realize what a deep connection we humans have to the plant world. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Podcast 347 – “This counts, somehow it matters” Apr 09, 2013

Show notes

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Our best efforts are nothing more than half-completed stories told around the campfire. We don't actually know what our predicament is. We are up against a phenomenon which we can barely bring into focus in our cognitive sphere, and it's the phenomenon of our own existence” “These religions that are so freighted with their own pomposity are no better than inspired guesses.” “Science works its miracles by turning its enterprise into a kind of parlor game confined to the category matter and energy.” “In other words, all these things you might cling to, Catholicism, democratic ideals, Hasidism, Marxism, Freudianism, all of these things are exposed [through use of psychedelics] as simply quaint cultural artifacts, tainted masks and rattles assembled by people of good intent but clearly not great grasp of the situation.” “To date, the enterprise of thinking has moved us radically away from understanding anything.” “For me, what all these years of psychedelic taking came to was a new model of how reality works, a new model of what the world is.” “And what is the primary datum? It's the felt presence of immediate experience. In other words, being here now is the primary datum.” “We need a metaphor that can contain the demon of the future that we have conjured into being.” “Fine tuning the institutions built by powdered wig guys two hundred years ago is a long shot at holding the whole thing together.” “Now, through the catalytic interaction with technology, the human species is getting set to redefine itself.” [Note: this comment was made a dozen years before the iPhone was released.] “As I see it, Being, the Cosmos, whatever you want to call it, is a struggle between two implacable forces: Novelty on the one side and habit on the other side.” “The sensory ratios that are being reinforced by the new electronic technology are like the sensory ratios that were in place fifteen thousand years ago. . . . Print imposes a condition on human mind which is now lifting.” “History was an incredibly damaging experience, and now it's over . . . in a sense.” “What was created by the era of the proper gentleman was excellent table manners and genocide over most of the surface of the planet.” “To me, the psychedelic experience is the experience of trying to make sense of reality.” “If psychedelics are, on any level, to be taken seriously as catalyzers or expanders of consciousness, then we need them, because it's an absence of consciousness that is making this historical transition so excruciating.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option MAPS Psychedelic Science 2013 Conference Books Mentioned in this podcast Where Wizards Stay Up Late: The Origins Of The Internet By Katie Hafner

Podcast 346 – “Critical Intelligence” Apr 05, 2013

Show notes

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer /* A brief history of Palenque Norte (video) PROGRAM NOTES: Bruce Damer takes the 2012 Palenque Norte audience at the Burning Man Festival on a far flung journey into what he calls his practice of "global multi-cultural, multi-ethnic, multi-technic shamanism" where you "put yourself on the shelf" and dive deeply into the worlds of Pentagon think tanks, NASA mission designers, the tribal cultures of Pakistan, the Swiss, Egyptologists, IT professionals, and Christian Evangelicals, to come back with the true alchemical gold. With apologies to Terence McKenna, he says "there is no dominator culture" and that if we aren't careful we can collectively fall for cartoon epistemologies, chase chains of weaker and weaker claims, and become a victims of our own delusions, and fall prey to others' unsubstantiated theories. Bruce advises everyone to become their own best skeptic and develop "critical intelligence". If someone says something that strikes you as flaky or just doesn't feel right, Bruce suggests that you think it through before you pass on their meme. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Check out all of the projects Bruce talks about at his personal site at: www.damer.com Dr. Bruce’s Levity Zone Podcast

Podcast 345 – “Transhuman Encounters” Mar 21, 2013

Show notes

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “We now know enough to fantasize realistically about what the alien would be like, and I think that this then sets up polarities in the collective psyche that previously we have only seen at the level of the individual.” “By passing into the psychedelic phase, the space-faring phase, the entire species is passing into adolescence.” “The question is being asked, 'Are we alone?' ” And though we now focus on that question we need to think beyond that to what if we're not alone? Then what becomes the next imperative question?” “People are, in the confines of their own apartments, becoming Magellans of the interior world and reaching out to this alien thing and beginning to map it and bring back stories that can only be compared to the kind of stories that the chroniclers of the New World brought back to Spain at the close of the 15th century.” “Actually, this is what has led us into this extremely alienated state, it's that we haven't demanded that the stories we tell ourselves about how the world works confirm our direct experience of how it works.” “In the last eight years we have undergone like a second Neolithic revolution. The first Neolithic revolution was the invention of agriculture. The second Neolithic revolution was the invention of home fungus cultivation.” (from a November 1983 lecture) “I don't think that mass drug taking is a good idea. But I think that we must have a deputized minority, a shamanic professional class if you will, whose job is to bring ideas out of the deep black water and show them off to the rest of us and perform for our culture some of the cultural functions that shaman perform in pre-literate cultures.” “The word 'self' is as great a mystery as the word 'other'. It's just a polarity between two mysteries.” “For all we know, we know nothing.” “You have to take seriously the notion that understanding the universe is your responsibility, because the only understanding of the universe that will be useful to you is your understanding.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Books mentioned in this podcast Present Shock: When Everything Happens Now by Douglas Rushkoff Against the Grain [Kindle Edition] Joris-Karl Huysmans (Author)

Podcast 344 – “A Global Cultural Crisis” Mar 13, 2013

Show notes

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “I'm proposing on one level that hallucinogens be thought of as almost as social pheromones that regulate the rate at which language develops, and therefore regulate human culture generally.” “Where psychedelics comes together with that is that it's going to require a transformation of human language and understanding to stop the momentum of the historical process, to halt nuclear proliferation, germ warfare, infantile 19th century politics, all these things. It cannot be accomplished through a frontal assault upon it by political means.” “Transformation of language through psychedelic drugs is a central factor of the evolution of the social matrix of the rest of the century.” (quote from 1983) “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.” “I think there is a global commonality of understanding coming into being. And it is not necessarily fostered by institutions.” “If I had to pick an ontological vision that was compatible with what I think these drugs are about, and with what I think is trying to happen, I would pick Taoism.” “So it's [shamanism] a kind of a profession. It's almost like clergy. It's to be deputized by the society as an ecstatic for the purpose of introducing back into society the material that comes from the mystical voyage for purposes of cultural renewal.” “The history of man that you don't know is what your unconscious is made out of.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Books mentioned in this podcast A People's History of the United States: 1492 to Present By Howard Zinn Burr: A Novel By Gore Vidal Perpetual War for Perpetual Peace: How We Got to Be So Hated By Gore Vidal

Podcast 343 – “Developing a Community Tea House Model” Mar 04, 2013

Show notes

Guest speaker: Annie Oak PROGRAM NOTES: Today we hear from civil rights activist and the founder of the Women's Visionary Congress in her 2012 Palenque Norte Lecture at the Burning Man Festival. Anyone who is feeling that they are “out there at the end of the line” may find great encouragement in what Annie has to say as she tells the story of her own unique journey through life. And for the psychedelic community she has these powerful words, “We're not the counter-culture. We are the culture, and we need to make the culture visible.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option The Women's Visionary Congress Consciousness, Healing, and Social Justice Links mentioned in this podcast The Terence McKenna Legacy Library book list at LibraryThing Dr. Bruce's Levity Zone The Evolver Network BrynStoneBooks.com UKCSC Podcast 006: Please Hire Me, I'm a Cannabis Campaigner!

Podcast 342 – “Psychedelic Family Business” Feb 20, 2013

Show notes

Guest speaker: Allyson & Alex Grey PROGRAM NOTES: “If it's a psychedelic family business, then you've got to consider the 'top line' [as contrasted with 'the bottom line']. What's the top line? The top line is: You have one unique life, and what do you love to do? What do you want to spend your life doing? What is the highest impact you can have on the world in a positive way?” -Alex Grey “We know that in the wake of our psychedelic experiences we're awakened to a oneness with the environment and with a sense of the need to protect it. And at least the dream of Eco-sustainability and how could we possibly manage that at this point in our trip. And yet it's up to us to take responsibility for it. All of these things kind of naturally evolve in the wake of the psychedelic experience for many people.” -Alex Grey “If you really want something big to happen in your life you have to make promises that you don't know how you're going to keep, and you have to keep them. That's all. That's all it takes.” -Allyson Grey Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option COSM Allyson & Alex Grey's Chapel of Sacred Mirrors A sanctuary for seeing ourselves and the world as reflections of the Divine

Podcast 341 – “Ayahuasca Research Report – 1984” Feb 13, 2013

Show notes

Guest speaker: Dennis McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Today's talk features Dennis McKenna in a June 1984 presentation of his research concerning ayahuasca. This is one of the first, if not the first, public presentation of Dennis' early work involving this sacred medicine. For most of the last 33 years, ayahuasca has been one of the major preoccupations of his professional life, and he is considered one of the world's leading scientific experts in this field. As Dennis says in a recent article in The Journal of Psychoactive Drugs: “In that time, I have written extensively on the botany, chemistry, and pharmacology of ayahuasca, on its potential therapeutic uses, and on the need for more, and more rigorous, scientific and clinical investigations of this remarkable plant decoction. Working with colleagues such as Dr. Grob, my good friends Jace Callaway and Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna in Finland, my mentor Dr. Neil Towers, my late and beloved brother Terence, Dr. Glaucus de Souza Brito, and others, to investigate the myriad mysteries of ayahuasca, has been as rich and rewarding an experience as any scientist could ever hope for.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Index of Dennis McKenna Articles (from Erowid.org) The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss (2012) Dennis J. McKenna (Erowid Character Vaults) “Ayahuasca and Human Destiny” by Dennis McKenna Dennis McKenna on the Joe Rogan Experience

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