TrueLife - Philosopher Spotlight: Terence McKenna Part 3 — Psychedelics, Consciousness & the Mind

Starting point is 00:00:01 Darkness struck, a gut-punched theft, Sun ripped away, her health bereft. I roar at the void. This ain't just fate, a cosmic scam I spit my hate. The games rigged tight, shadows deal, blood on their hands, I'll never kneel. Yet in the rage, a crack ignites, occulted sparks cut through the nights. The scars my key, hermetic and stark. To see, to rise, I hunt in the dark, fumbling, fear. Heirous through ruins maze, lights my war cry, born from the blaze.

Starting point is 00:00:49 The poem is Angels with Rifles. The track, I Am Sorrow, I Am Lust by Codex Seraphene. Check out the entire song at the end of the cast. Hey guys, it's me, it's George. Don't look over here. Just look forward. Don't look back. I'm right, I'm right behind you. I am tripping my balls off right now.

Starting point is 00:01:25 Can you hear me? How about now? me now. I wonder why he's whispering. I'm whispering because I don't want people to hear. You don't want people to hear your podcast? Listen, I'll do the talking here. What? What the hell is this guy even talking about? Who is this guy? I'm nobody. Junker Wine and a straight racer if you get too close to me. What a weird way to introduce this podcast, right? Right. Let me tell you something. Did I ever tell you this story about when I was on the train, Chew-choo!

Starting point is 00:02:24 On a warm summer's evening, on a train bound for nowhere, I met up with the gambler. We were both too tired to sleep, so we took turns as staring at the window at the darkness. The boredom that overtook us, and he began to speak. He said, son, I have made a life out of reading people's faces. and knowing what the cards will by the way they held their eyes. So if you don't mind me saying, I can see that you are out of Aces. For a taste of your whiskey, I'll give you some advice.

Starting point is 00:03:04 So I handed on my bottle. He drank down my last swallow. Then he bummed a cigarette and asked me for a light. And then, the night, it got deathly quiet. And his face lost his face. lost all expression he said if you're going to play the game son

Starting point is 00:03:24 you got to learn to play it right you got to know when to hold them you got to know when to fold them you got to know when to walk away and when to run and when to run how's that for a little intro are you guys enjoying

Starting point is 00:03:41 the spotlight on philosophy because we're still on Terrence McKenna I love this guy The more in-depth analysis, the deeper we go into the mind of McKenna, the better we will all be. However, it's imperative to leave yourself a trail of breadcrumbs so you don't get lost. Remember old Hansel and Gretel? Got to find our way back out.

Starting point is 00:04:11 We have to find our way out so that when we see our brothers and sisters who get lost, we can reach back, hold their hand, and we'll be. walk them back out. Some of us are strong. Some of us got to know when to hold them, when to fold them, and when to walk away. I am having a blast, you guys. I really am. And I can't even tell you how beautiful and amazing I think you are. Thank you so much for just taking a moment to hang out with Big George over here. You make me feel like the king of the world. I hope I make you feel like the king of the world or the queen of the world. Because wherever you are, let me tell you what I know.

Starting point is 00:04:58 However you're thinking, wherever you are, life is what you make it. You choose to feel how you want to feel. If you're feeling a little bit down, do this. Just close your eyes. Take in a deep breath and force yourself to smile. I'd be like, you know what? My life might not be that good right now, but at least I'm handsome. My life might be tricky.

Starting point is 00:05:22 But at least I'm beautiful. There's people that love me. You're like, no, I don't know if there is, George. Yes, there is. Yes, there is. There's me. I love you. I love you.

Starting point is 00:05:35 All right. How about enough of my meandering thoughts filling up your day? How about enough of that? Why don't we dive in here to this Mr. McKenna coming at you? This, my friends, is from the New Dimensions Intervention. with Michael Tom's interview was taken place in 1985 man remember those days the search for self-knowledge has occupied humanity for millennia assuming many different guises in our modern technical information culture the deeper meaning is often overlooked as we race helter-skelter toward an unknown end of values, ethics, and personal meaning are repressed under the holy banner of practicality and living in the real world. John Naisbitt, the author of Megatrends, points out that we are drowning in information, but starved for knowledge.

Starting point is 00:06:48 Think about that. This was written in 1985, and this particular author was already talking about drowning in information and starving for knowledge. I would argue that that particular statement was not only visionary, but also more true today than it was then. And yet at the same time, one researcher has estimated that 80% of the public is involved in some aspect of self-fulfillment. Another paradox to ponder, since both may be true. The quest for liberation is a journey through paradox, and perhaps by noticing how other cultures, and social milus have incorporated the search, we can learn more about our own. We live in exciting times

Starting point is 00:07:43 in which the external reality we perceive is catalyzing a renewed momentum toward exploring our internal reality. Our guest today, Terence McKenna he is one of those cultural point writers who commands our attention. Not so much for the answers he has found, but rather because of the questions he poses.

Starting point is 00:08:11 He is the co-author with his brother Dennis of the invisible landscape, mind hallucinations, and the Aiching, and generally functions as a freelance writer, reading, and researching. My name is George Monty, and I will be your host for the next hour. So get what you need to get to be ready. strap in and follow me follow me you'll all follow me you know you got two

Starting point is 00:08:43 you got these people over here that want to live you want to live get in line we'll live you don't want to live hurry up you know the gates open you know do your thing man here give him some coke all Charlie's friends get free coke Aloha Terrence and thank you for being here today let's start off with a easy question

Starting point is 00:09:03 Do you think we are in a state of transition? Are we moving from one culture to another? Terence McKenna. We are certainly in a state of transition. We have arrived at nothing less than the end of history. However, it is not something to be alarmed about. I imagine it's simply the normal situation that prevails when a species is preparing to depart for the stars.

Starting point is 00:09:33 Do you think we're really preparing to depart for the stars? On the scale of a hundred or a thousand years, I think it's an unavoidable conclusion. That span of time in geological terms is hardly the wink of an eye. In fact, from that perspective, all of humanity's history appears as a preparation for human transcendence of planetary existence. I would have thought that technology like this was years away, but it's here now.

Starting point is 00:10:06 I had thought this is the end. We get there. We're done. And I'm realizing it's just the beginning. Do we really want to get away from this planet? Terence McKinnon. I think you have to take the view that certainly the planet is the cradle of mankind. But inevitably, one cannot remain in the cradle forever. You have a warm, fuzzy feeling in your self. pleasant in your stomach right now. Goose bumps running up and down your spine.

Starting point is 00:10:35 We'll goose bump your ass on out of here. The human imagination in conjunction with technology has become a force so potent that it really can no longer be unleashed on the surface of the planet with safety. The human imagination has gained such an immense power that the only environment that is friendly to it is the vacuum of deep space. it is there that we can erect the architect's dream that drive us to produce a Los Angeles or a Tokyo and do it on a scale and in such a way that it will be fulfilling rather than degrading. So yes, I think we cannot move forward in understanding without accepting as a consequence that we have to leave the planet.

Starting point is 00:11:28 We are no longer the bipedal monkeys we once were. We have become almost a new force of nature. I think of language and cybernetics as an amalgam of computers and human brains, societal structures, that has such an enormous forward momentum that the only place where it can express itself without destroying itself is, as James Joyce says, up and it. So long. ago in a faraway galaxy, a Star Wars style society may be in our future as opposed to our past.

Starting point is 00:12:07 Alright, I'll give it a try. It's in our present, I think. Our future is probably almost unimaginable. I think the transformation that leaving the planet will bring will also involve a transformation of our consciousness. We are not going as 1950-style human beings. We're going to have to transform our minds before we are going to be able to leave the planet with any amount of grace. This is where I think the psychedelics come in because they are anticipations of the future.

Starting point is 00:12:50 They seem to channel information that is not available by the laws of normal causality. So the experience is really that of a prophetic dimension. A glimpse of the potential of the far centuries of the future through these compounds. No cultural shift of this magnitude

Starting point is 00:13:12 can be unambiguous. The very idea that as a species we could leave the earth behind us must be as difficult to understand as that a child would leave its childhood home. Obviously, it's a turning away from, something that once left behind can never be recaptured. However, this is the nature of going forward into being, a series of self-transformations, a sense of level shifting.

Starting point is 00:13:48 And we now simply happen to have reached the moment of ascent to a new level that is linked to leaving the planetary surface, physically, and to reconnecting with the contents of the unconscious collectivity of our minds. These two things will be done simultaneously. This is what the last half of the 20th century, it seems to me, is all about. By and large, psychedelics have really not been accepted into mainstream. Do you see that changing? Not particularly. They hold a certain fascination.

Starting point is 00:14:28 for a persistent minority. And in that way, they do their catalytic work upon society, which is to introduce new ideas and to release a certain kind of creative energy into society. I certainly would not like to see a return to the psychedelic hysterias of the 60s. I think it's fine that these are now the subject of interest

Starting point is 00:14:53 of a much smaller group of people, but perhaps a group of people with a greater commitment, a better idea of exactly what these things are. It's really the same people. It's just a smaller group of them. And they have accumulated experience over the past 20 years, though I certainly don't think of all psychedelic frontiers are conquered.

Starting point is 00:15:16 One of the subjects that I write and speak about is a phenomenon many people experience with the psilocybin family of hallucinogens. That has not been a phenomenon. included in the standard model of psychedelic substances. I am referring to the logos like phenomenon. Something like a phenomenon of an anterior voice that seems to be almost superhuman agency. A kind of genius loci.

Starting point is 00:15:52 I consider this an alien intelligence, an entity so beyond the normal structure of the ego, that if it is not an act, extraterrestrial, it might as well be. Its bizarreness and its distance from ordinary expectations about reality is so great that a flying saucers arrived here tomorrow from the Pallades. It would make the mystery no less compelling in comparison. It amuses me that the scientific community has taken over the search for extraterrestrial intelligence and defined it as they care to define it and have dedicated radio telescopes to search the the galaxy for signals.

Starting point is 00:16:33 The world's largest radio telescopes is in Erescibo in Puerto Rico. And within the shadow of that installation, psychedelic mushrooms grow in the fields and cows graze quietly in the sunshine. It's a marvelous interpretation of the near and the far away. I believe that the place to search for extraterrestrials is in the psychic dimension. And there, the problem is not the absence of communication, but an abundance of signals that must be sifted through. Because the fact of the matter is that shamans and mystics and seers

Starting point is 00:17:15 have been hearing voices and talking to gods and demons since Paleolithic times and probably before. We should not rule out this approach to communication. It seems to me far more likely. likely that an advanced civilization would communicate interdimensionally and telepathically, and the amounts of time available for an intelligent species to have evolved these kinds of communication are vast. I think that it's very interesting then that the triptomines, psilocybin, and DMT are effective doses very reliably trigger what could only be described as contact-like phenomenon.

Starting point is 00:18:03 Not only the interior voice in the head, but also the classical flying saucer motifs of the whirling disc, the lens-shaped object, the alien approach. This seems to be something hardwired into the human psyche. And I would like to find out why. I think it's a very odd fact of human psychology. And I do not buy any of the current theories, ranging from that nothing at all is happening to that this is, in fact, a species from a world

Starting point is 00:18:37 around another star that is getting in touch with us. I think this alien intelligence is something so bizarre that it actually masquerades as an extraterrestrial so as not to alarm us by the true implications of what it is. I'm going to pause there for a second. It's so fascinating to think about that. What if indeed there is this alien intelligence? What if the voice in your head, the little voice of reason, what if the little voice that tells you,

Starting point is 00:19:12 oh, I should probably get out of here, hey, it's probably not safe here, or hey, there's something wrong with this person? What if that is a different type of being? What if that is actually you, but it's a part of you you don't understand? What if you are the voice in the head of another? Projected in there.

Starting point is 00:19:35 Fascinating to think about. Remember, life is not only stranger than you imagine, it is stranger than you can imagine. Let's get back to the interview. Your statement implies that it's something external to ourselves, and I wonder about that. Terence McKenna. This dualism of the interior and the exterior

Starting point is 00:19:59 may have to be overcome. It obviously transcends the individual, but I suspect it is something like an overmind of the species, and that the highest form of human organization is not realized in the democratic individual. It is realized in a dimension none of us have ever penetrated. The mind of the species. It is the hand at the tiller of history.

Starting point is 00:20:26 Well, if they had eyes in their head and they could see under the bed, they see that heads of lead and eyes of wood. It doesn't really matter because rubber fingers is taking the hand off into the universe anyway. It is no government, no religious group, but actually what we call the human unconscious. However, it is not unconscious, and it is not simply a cybernetic repository for myth and memory. It is an organized intelligie of some sort, and through human history is its signature on the primates. It is very different from the primates. It is like a creature of pure information. It is made of language.

Starting point is 00:21:12 It releases ideas into the flowing stream of history to boost the primates toward higher and higher levels of self-reflection. We have now reached the point where the masks, are beginning to fall away, and we are discovering that there is an angel within the monkey, struggling to get free. This is what the historical crisis is all about. I am very optimistic. I see it as a necessary chaos that will lead to a new and more attractive order. Terrence, you were talking about extraordinary realities,

Starting point is 00:21:52 and it occurs to me that there is an enormous amount of prejudice against the psychedelics. and the use of hallucinogenic substances. Almost as if there's an inordinate fear to open up the closet that these substances reveal. What about that prejudice? How is it going to be resolved? What is the resolution of that? Terrence McKenna. I think it's more complicated than a prejudice.

Starting point is 00:22:25 I don't think that's the right word. It's a prejudice born of respect. because most people sense that these compounds probably actually do what their adherents claim they do. It's possible to see the whole human growth movement of the 70s as a wish to continue the inward quest without having to put yourself on the line the way you had to when you took 250 gamma of LSD. I think all these other methods are efficacious, but I think it's the sheer power of hallucinogens that puts people off. You either love them or you hate them. And that's because they dissolve worldviews.

Starting point is 00:23:09 If you like the experience of having your entire ontological structure disappear out from under you, if you think that's a thrill, you'll probably love psychedelics. On the other hand, for some people, that's the most horrible thing, they can possibly imagine. They navigate reality through various forms of faith, whereas with the psychedelics, the doors of perception are cleansed and you see very, very deeply. I spent time in

Starting point is 00:23:38 India and I always visited the local sadhus of great reputation. I met many people who possess what I call wise old man wisdom. But wise old man wisdom is a kind of tau of how to live. It has nothing to say about the dimensions that the psychedelics reveal. For that, you have to go places where hallucinogenic shamanism is practiced, specifically the Amazon Basin. And there, you discover that beyond the wisdom of simply how to live in ordinary reality, there is a nois of how to navigate in extraordinary reality. This reality is so everything.

Starting point is 00:24:23 extraordinary, that we cannot approach what these people are doing with any degree of smugness, because the frank fact of the matter is that we have no more viable theory of what mind is than they. The beliefs of the Watoto Shaman and the beliefs of a Princeton phenomenologist have an equal chance of being correct, and there are no arbiters of who is right. here is something we have not assimilated we have been to the moon we have charted the depths of the ocean and the heart of the atom

Starting point is 00:25:02 but we have a fear of looking inward to ourselves because we sense that is where all the contradictions flow together the kind of prejudice leveled against psychedelics attended psychoanalysis during the 20s and 30s when it was thought to be superfluous or some kind of fad.

Starting point is 00:25:29 Psychedelics touch a very sensitive nerve. They touch the issue of the nature of humanness. And some people are very uncomfortable with that. What is the value of exploring extraordinary realities? Terence McKinnett. I believe it's the same value that attends the exploration of ordinary realities. There's an alchemical saying

Starting point is 00:25:56 that one should read the oldest books, climb the highest mountains, and visit the broadest deserts. I think that being imposes some kind of obligation to find out what is going on. And since all primary information about what is going on

Starting point is 00:26:14 comes through the senses, any plant or any compound that alters that sensory input has to be looked at very carefully. I've often made the point that chemically speaking you can take a molecule that is completely inactive

Starting point is 00:26:31 as a psychedelic, reposition a single atom on one of its rings, and suddenly it's a powerful psychedelic. Now, it seems to me that this is a perfect proof of the interpenetration of matter and mind.

Starting point is 00:26:47 The movement of a single atom from one known position to another known position changes and experience from nothing to overwhelming. This means that mind and matter at the quantum mechanical level are all spun together. This means in a sense that the term extraordinary reality is not correct if it implies a division of category from ordinary reality. It is simply that there is more and more and more of reality.

Starting point is 00:27:19 And some of it is inside our heads. some of it is deployed out through three-dimensional Newtonian space. I think most of us just simply accept the everyday... This is the moderator speaking. I think most of us just simply accept the everyday reality as the only one. You're talking about journeys into nether regions, far beyond most people's conception or desire. Terence McKenna.

Starting point is 00:27:48 I think there's a shamanic temperament that is characterized by a craving for knowledge. Knowledge in the Greek sense of noses. In other words, knowledge, not of the sort where one subscribes to scientific American and validates what you believe, but cosmologies

Starting point is 00:28:07 constructed out of immediate experiences that are always found to be applicable. You see, I don't believe that the world is made of quarks and electromagnetic waves or stars or planets or any of these false things.

Starting point is 00:28:22 I believe the world is made of language and that this is the primary fact that has been overlooked the construction of the flying saucer is not so much a dilemma of hardware as it is a poetic challenge people find it very hard to imagine exactly what I'm talking about

Starting point is 00:28:43 what I'm saying is that the leading edge of reality is mind and that mind is the primary substratum of being. We in the West have had it the wrong way around for over a millennium. But once this is clearly understood, using what we have learned in our little excursion through three-dimensional space and matter, we will create a new vision of humanity

Starting point is 00:29:12 that will be a fusion of the East and the West. The moderator, you suggest that the, world is made of language, yet I think of these extraordinary realities that are totally beyond any language that we use in any ordinary sense. Terence McKenna, yes, they are beyond ordinary language. I always think of philo-Judeus writing on the logos. He posed to himself the question, what would be a more perfect logos? And then he answered, saying it would be a logos that is not heard, but beheld. And he imagined a form of communication where the ears would not be the primary receptors, but the eyes would be. A language where meaning was not constructed through a

Starting point is 00:30:06 dictionary of spoken words, but where three-dimensional objects were actually generated with a kind of hyper language that there was perfect understanding between people. This may sound bizarre in ordinary reality, but these forms of synesthesia and synesthetic glossolalia are commonplace in psychedelic states. Terence, could you identify Philo for us and tell us who he was? Terence McKinnon. He was an Alexandrian Jew of the second century who made it his business to travel around the Hellenistic world discussing all the major cults and religious and cosmogonic theories of his day. Fuck, you believe this two fucking days and nights.

Starting point is 00:30:54 Fuck me. Fuck me, you motherfucker. Give me the fucking name. Charlie M. Charlie M. You make me pop your fucking eye out of your head to protect that piece of shit. Charlie M.

Starting point is 00:31:06 You dumb motherfucker. So he's a major source of Hellenistic data for us. The moderator. How would you relate to Socrates' view of the world? Terence McKenna. I think that is hard not to be a Platonist, but it's something that perhaps we should struggle against, or at least struggle to modify.

Starting point is 00:31:30 I think of myself as sort of a whiteheadian Platonist. Certainly, the central platonic notion, that of the ideas, archetypal forms that stand outside of time, is one that is confirmed by the psychedelic experience. The Neoplatonists, the school of Platonius, are psychedelic philosophers. Their idea of an ascending hierarchy of increasingly more rarefied states is a sophisticated presentation of the shamanic cosmology that one experientially discovers when involved with psychedelics. What I think most of us don't realize is that Greek culture

Starting point is 00:32:20 and the Illusinian mysteries incorporated the use of something very akin to psychedelics, essentially Western civilization is based on a culture that had at its core an experience and a ritual that used psychedelics. Again, pausing for just a moment, I think that's a very important point right there. It's the very foundation of our culture

Starting point is 00:32:48 and you could argue that the very foundation of most cultures are built on ritual or sacrifice or right of passage might that be what we are missing today there's no rights of passage for young men there's no rights of passage for young women I think that is something that if we are truly to come together as a planetary species,

Starting point is 00:33:23 there must be some sort of planetary right of passage for all of us to go through. So much of our time is spent thinking about the differences of one another. However, the only way to truly come together is to spend time talking about the similarities, the trials, the tribulations, the rituals in which all of us are forced to, to face sometime in our life. You come to do, but I come to pre-lead. Yeah, thanks, George, for that. Let's get back to the interview, though, buddy.

Starting point is 00:34:03 I'm with you. Here we go. Terrence McKenna. Yes, for over 2,000 years, everyone who was anyone in the ancient world made the pilgrimage to Elusus and had this experience that Gordon Watson and Carl Ruck have argued very convincingly was indeed a hallucinogenic intoxication produced by Ergot.

Starting point is 00:34:27 But of course, as soon as the church solidified its power, it closed these platonic academics and moved against so-called pagan and heretical knowledge. Not only the Platonists, but all the Gnostic sects and mystery schools were repressed. I like to think that this repression ended in a very odd way when in 1950s, Gordon Watson and his wife Valentina discovered the psilocybin mushroom cult in the village of Hualta de Jimenez. It was as if Eros, who had been martyred in the old world, was found sleeping in the mountains of Mexico and resurrected. The experience of the mushroom is very much the experience of a genius loci, a god on the Grecian model. not the god who hung the stars in heaven but a local god

Starting point is 00:35:24 a pre-Christian bachanilian nature power that is very alien and yet resonates with our expectations of what the experience would be like moderator interesting that the mushroom is a symbol in our culture of death and destruction the symbol of the nuclear explosion Terence McKinnon. Yes, my brother has made that point asking,

Starting point is 00:35:54 what mushroom is it that grows at the end of history? Is it the mushroom of Fermi and Oppenheimer and Teller? Or is it the mushroom of Wasson and Hoffman and Humphrey Osmond? Somehow I think the latter is safer. It may not only be safer. It may open the way to escape, from the former. It's like a pun of physics that the force of liberation and the force of destruction could take the same form. It's like alchemists call the coincidencia oppositorium.

Starting point is 00:36:36 Moderator. It seems an amazing synchronosity. I was interested in talking with Andy Wheel, the author of Natural Mind, about the fact that a new genius of psilocybin-containing mushrooms is appearing that has never been seen before. It's all. almost as if they're appearing now for a reason. Terence McKenna. It's amazing how many new species have been discovered, since people have bent their attention to hallucinogenic mushrooms. There have been psilocybin mushrooms reported from England and France, localities where, so far as we know, there is no cultural history of usage at all. However, it's interesting that cultural usage seems to come very early in human history.

Starting point is 00:37:23 Hallucinogens are hardly welcome in agricultural societies. I think it was Weston Labar, who made the point that once one learns how to grow plants, one's gods shift from the ecstatic gods of hallucinogens to the corn god or the food god, and life is no longer about divining the hunt and the weather through the ecstatic use of hallucinogens, Rather, it becomes about being able to get up every morning, go to work, work in the fields. You mentioned earlier the prejudice against hallucinogens. I think cultural suppression of hallucinogens reaches back to the beginning of agriculture, when there was competition among plant gods that exemplified lifestyles that were alien to each other.

Starting point is 00:38:14 Isn't that interesting to think about anyone who's... utilized a psychedelic substance at higher than a recreational dose. More than likely, everyone I have spoken to has had a feeling or a thought, but I think feeling is more apt. I think a feeling is a better way to describe it. It's a boundary dissolution. Like it breaks down boundaries. It promotes critical thinking.

Starting point is 00:38:50 It forces you to ask big questions, and it will not allow you to be nullified by silly things like, because I said so. It's like this unwavering need to drill down and find out why. I think that's exactly the reason why when we move to an agricultural-based society, that we moved away from psychedelics. You see, when you are constantly asking why, it makes it incredibly difficult for the people in positions of authority to justify their reasoning.

Starting point is 00:39:37 You must first think about the person who seeks to be in positions of power, who seeks to be in positions of authority. Those are the same people that do not want to be questioned. They do not want to be reminded how selfish they are. They do not want to be reminded that they are responsible for the well-being and the group of the people they claim to lead. They would like to have all the resources.

Starting point is 00:40:05 They would like to have all the authority and all of the good things that come with it. But very few people in positions of authority will want to take the good and the bad. It's that shift in mindset from hunters and gatherers to an agricultural-based society, to the pyramidal structure of the church, to the social strata of today's environment. Psychedelics break down those borders. They break down those ideas of authority. They're constantly questioning the motive. I think it's also important to add here that a question mark

Starting point is 00:40:48 if flipped upside down, it kind of looks like a scythe. You know the weapon carried by the Grim Reaper. That's why questions are so important. A really well-timed question can, without a doubt, derail the motivations. Without a doubt, derail the poor decision-making coming from our so-called leaders. Let's jump back in here to the interview. The moderator is still a side-bishop. been illegal? Terence McKenna. Yes, it is a Schedule 1 drug. It was placed on the list at the same time

Starting point is 00:41:26 as LSD, even though the issue was presented to the public in terms of LSD being made illegal. Actually, at the time, a number of compounds were made illegal, yet there was never any public debate. All psychedelics were viewed the same way, and LSD was used as the model. Actually, these compounds vary widely. There is a spectrum of psychedelic effects, and certain compounds trigger some of them. But yes, so the siphon is illegal. You may recall Andy Weill saying that he walked along a downtown Seattle residential street

Starting point is 00:42:09 picking up psilocybin mushrooms from the front yards of residential homes. That was the moderator. Terence McKenna. English law took the view. that it was preposterous to try to outlaw a naturally occurring plant. They took the position that only the chemical was illegal, which I think is a very wise position. But I noticed that Canada recently chose the American interpretation over the British one.

Starting point is 00:42:38 Moderator. The kind of knowledge and the kind of information you are putting forward is not generally available. It is not the kind of information. and knowledge that one would find in the typical academic anthropology curriculum. Yet, it seems to be knowledge that is ever expanding. Somehow it's outside of the cultural institutional entities. Number one, why do you think that is the case?

Starting point is 00:43:09 Of course, there's a logical answer to that one, but what do you see as the future of this kind of information and knowledge? Terence McKenna. I think, in a sense, it signals the rebirth of the institution of shamanism in the context of modern society. Anthropologists have always made the point about shamans that they were very important social catalyst in their groups. But they were always peripheral to them, peripheral to the political power, and actually, usually physically peripheral. living some distance from the villages. I think the electronic shaman, the person who pursues the exploration of these spaces,

Starting point is 00:44:00 exists to return to tell the rest of us about it. Hopefully, we are now coming into a period of maturity as a species. We can no longer have forbidden areas of the human mind or mindless cultural machinery. we have taken upon ourselves the acquisition of so much power that we must now understand what we are we cannot travel much further with definitions of humanity inherited from the jitdaio christian tradition we need to truly explore the problem of consciousness because as human beings gain power they are becoming the defining factor on the planet the questions

Starting point is 00:44:50 that loom are, is man good? And then if the answer is yes, what is man good for? The shamans will point the way because they are visionaries, poets, cultural architects, forecasters. All these roles that we understand in more conventional terms rolled into one and raised to the nth power. They are cultural models for the rest of us. It has always been true that the shaman has access to a superhuman dimension and a superhuman condition and thereby affirms the potential for transcendence in all people. The shaman is an exemplar, if you will, and I see the new attention that's being given to these things, signaling a sense on the part of society that we need to return to these models. This is why, for instance, in the Star Wars phenomenon,

Starting point is 00:45:48 on Skywalker, the name of a major character is a direct translation of the word shaman out of the Tungusik, which is where Siberian shamanism comes from. So these heroes that are being instilled in the heart of the culture are shamanic heroes. They control a force that is bigger than everybody and holds the galaxy together. This is true, as a matter of fact. As we explore how true this is the limitations of our previous worldview will be exposed for all to see. I think it was J.B.S. Haldane who said, The world may not only be stranger than we suppose. It may be stranger than we can suppose.

Starting point is 00:46:37 Moderator. I think that the character Yoda is a shamanic type character. Terence McKenna, very much so. Moderator. As we talk about shamanism, again, that brings up cross-cultural currents. Do you see shamanism taking on a new form? Terence McKenna. I believe, along with Gordon Watson and others, but in distinction to Mersailles,

Starting point is 00:47:05 who is a major writer on shamanism, that it is hallucinogenic shamanism that is primary. Where shamanic techniques are used to the extraordinary. exclusion of what lucidogenic plant ingestion, the shamanism teams to be vitiated. It is more like a ritual enactment of what real shamanism is. The shamanism that is coming to be is coming to be with in people in our culture who feel comfortable with psychedelic plants and who by going into those spaces and then returning with works of art or poetic accounts of science. scientific ideas are actually changing the face of culture. I connect the psychedelic dimension to the dimension of inspiration and dream, and I think history has always progressed by the bubbling up of ideas from these nether dimensions

Starting point is 00:48:07 into the minds of receptive men and women. It is simply that now. With the hallucinogens, we actually have a... tool to push the button. We are no longer dependent upon whatever factors previously controlled the ingression of novelty into human history. We have taken that function to ourselves, and this will intensify and accelerate the cultural crisis toward its ultimate resolution. Moderator. So as we continue to move toward the further exploration of these spaces, We can expect social change as a result of personal change.

Starting point is 00:48:54 Terrence McKenna. Tremendous social change. In fact, what is happening is a tendency toward what I call turning the body inside out. Through our media and cybernetics, we are actually approaching the point where consciousness can be experienced in a state of disconnection from the body. We have changed. We are no longer bipedal monkeys. We are instead a kind of cybernetic coral reef of organic components and inorganic technological components. We have become a force that takes unorganized raw material and excretes technical objects.

Starting point is 00:49:40 We have transcended the normal definitions of humans. We are like an enormous collective organism. with our data banks, our forecasting agencies, and our computer networks, and the many levels at which we are connected into the universe. Our self-image is changing. The monkey has been all but left behind. Shortly, that will be left behind as well. Again, I take the flying saucer to be an image of the future state of humanity.

Starting point is 00:50:16 It is a kind of millinerian, transformation of the human where the soul is exteriorized as the apotheos of technology. It is that eschatological event that is casting enormous shadows backward through time over the historical landscape. That is the siren singing at the end of time, calling all humanity across the last hundred millennia toward it, calling us out of the trees and into history, and through this series of multi-leveled cultural transitions to the point where the thing within the monkeys, the creature of pure language and pure imagination, whose aspirations are entirely titantic in terms of self-transformation, that thing is now emerging and it will emerge.

Starting point is 00:51:18 as humanity leaves the planet. It's not something quantized and clearly defined. Nevertheless, it is what the next 50 or so years will be about. At the end of it, the species will be off-planet and transformed and fully wired from the depths to the heights. Moderator. Are we talking about another version of the Christian death, resurrection, ascension, and to heaven? Terence McKenna. Except that it is coming into history.

Starting point is 00:51:55 What is happening is that the paradise promised the soul is actually going to enter into history. Technological men took the apocalyptic aspirations of Christianity so seriously that we are going to realize them. It has become the guiding image of what we want to be. I'm reminded. of the poem by William Butler Yeats, sailing to Byzantium,

Starting point is 00:52:24 where he speaks of the artifice of eternity and says, Once out of nature, I shall never take my bodily form from any natural thing, but such a form as Greece and goldsmiths make, of hammered gold and gold enameling to keep a drowsy emperor awake or set upon a golden bow to sing to lords and ladies of Byzantium of what is past or passing or to come. This is the image of the human body

Starting point is 00:53:00 become an indestructible cybernetic object yet within that indestructible cybernetic object there is a holographic transform of the body that is released into the dream. It is an image of the human transfer formed and released into hyperspace of information, where one is a thing of eternal circuitry, but one appears to be walking along an unspoiled beach in paradise. We are going to find the power to realize our deepest cultural aspirations. This is why we must find out what our

Starting point is 00:53:39 deepest cultural aspirations are. Moderator. What about the idea that these spaces, that we've been talking about, that you've been illuminating are spaces that can be achieved without the use of psychedelics. Is it possible to achieve this without the use of psychedelics? Terence McKenna.

Starting point is 00:54:04 I've scoured India and my humble, personal opinion, is that it is highly unlikely. I've always approached people of spiritual accomplishment with the question, what can you show? show me? Wise old man wisdom is one thing, but the hallucinogen using shaman of the Amazon

Starting point is 00:54:25 seems to be able to go far, far beyond that. There may be physical techniques for duplicating this, but the efficacy and the dependability of the hallucinogen seems to me to make them the obvious choice. Only a series of cultural taboos would cause one to engineer. One of the engineer around hallucinogenic shamanism. It is the obvious path to transcendence. People must face the fact that at one level, we are chemical machines. That doesn't mean we are that at every level, but it does mean that there is a chemical level where we can intervene to change the pictures that are coming in and going out at higher levels. moderator

Starting point is 00:55:16 you're not suggesting that people should do this by themselves are you Terence McKenna take hallucinogens well I don't know about taking them by themselves

Starting point is 00:55:32 probably not although I always prefer to what I am suggesting is that hallucinogens be taken in a situation of minimum sensory input lying down in darkness with eyes closed cannot be surpassed people want music they want to walk around in nature and all these other things nature and music are beautiful in their own right they are the

Starting point is 00:55:59 autumbrations of the psychedelic experience that we deal with in ordinary reality in confrontation with the deep psychedelic experience these things are hardly more than impediments Very interesting things are happening in the utter blackness behind your eyelids while lying still in silent darkness. And that is where the mystery comes from and goes to. Well, my friends, there you go. We banged out number three. Maybe the most interesting of all of them so far. I hope you guys are enjoying it.

Starting point is 00:56:43 I wanted to add just a little bit more on the method of set. and setting in which Terrence McKenna tells us to explore. I once heard him explain it as pushing off into the dark night on the ocean of chaos. And you push your skiff off and you begin your journey as the warm winds blow you towards the drop point. And when you get out where you can no longer see land, you drop your nets into the oceans of chaos. And right about that time, the winds begin to howl.

Starting point is 00:57:28 The rains begin to fall. The sea becomes angry. Chaos is around us. Sometimes that chaos becomes so great. The ship capsizes. The wind blows holes in the sails. As you pull up your nets, if you're even able to pull up your nets, you see that something large, vicious

Starting point is 00:57:54 has torn through your nets like a hot knife through butter. However, there are the times when you weather the storm. Whether the weather be fine or whether the weather be not, whether the weather be cold or whether the weather be hot, well weather the weather, whatever the weather,

Starting point is 00:58:15 whether we like it or not. There are those times after weathering the weather that you pull up your nets and you find the new idea you pull up your nets and you find a cultural treasure a game-changing idea something new some substance for the community and you bring that back and you share it with the community and you make the community better that is our goal that is my goal I hope that's your goal, to bring something back from those areas.

Starting point is 00:58:55 It's imperative to understand. It's very difficult to do, especially the higher the dose. One must spend countless hours in a library to truly understand the techniques possible to do so. I hope you choose to do that. I also hope you choose to spend some time with me and maybe share this podcast. I love you guys. I hope you have an amazing day because things. are about to get really interesting.

Starting point is 00:59:25 I love you guys.

TrueLife - Philosopher Spotlight: Terence McKenna Part 3 — Psychedelics, Consciousness & the Mind

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