Psychedelic Salon

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 fa

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!

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

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 myria

Guest speaker: John Allen and Tango Parrish Snyder PROGRAM NOTES: This podcast features another of the 2012 Palenque Norte Lectures that were held at the Burning Man Festival. The speakers are John Allen and Tango Parrish Snyder, both of whom have been involved in many large-scale Earth Science projects, including Biosphere 2. In his presentation, John makes a strong plea for all of us to gain a better understanding of not just our own local ecosystems, but of the Earth's entire biosphere as well. It is a fascinating talk and is followed by an interesting Q&A session. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Me and the Biospheres: A Memoir by the Inventor of Biosphere 2 By John Allen The publishing home of John Allen and Tango Parrish Snyder Upcoming Events Books from the Synergetic Press

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “This is where I think the psychedelics come in, because they are anticipations of the future. They seem to channel information that is not strictly governed by the laws of normal causality. So that there really is a prophetic dimension, a glimpse of the potential of the far centuries of the future through these compounds.” “Actually, 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, which is the mind of the species, which is actually the hand at the tiller of history. . . . It is an organized entelechy of some sort, and human history is its signature on the primates.” “I think it's the sheer power of the hallucinogens that puts people off. You either love them or you hate them, and that's because they dissolve world views. And if you like the experience of having your entire ontological structure disappear out from

Guest speaker: Myron Stolaroff PROGRAM NOTES: This podcast features a few sound bites from several of the previous podcasts featuring Myron Stolaroff, who departed this life on January 6, 2013. Not only was Myron one of the world's leading psychedelic researchers, earlier in life he was instrumental in helping the Ampex Corporation develop the audio and video tape recorders. Below are a few links, videos, and books that more fully illustrate the life of this Renaissance Man. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option The Myron Stolaroff Archive on the Psychedelic Salon Donate to The Stolaroff Collection at Erowid Myron Stolaroff memorial video Myron Stolaroff and Gary Fisher in Dialogue The Gary Fisher Archive on the Psychedelic Salon A Visit with the Stolaroffs The Myron Stolaroff Vault at Erowid.org The Secret Chief: Conversations With a Pioneer of the Underground Psychedelic Therapy Movement By Myron J. Stolaroff The Secret Chief Revealed By Myron J. Stolaroff Th

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “And yet my, not only my faith, but my experience has led me to believe that the world is not a construction of space and time and matter and energy. That that mapping is insufficient. That the world is instead some kind of a linguistic construct. It is more in the nature of a sentence, or a novel, or a work of art than it is in the nature of these machine models of interlocking law that we inherit out of a thousand years of rational reductionism.” “It seems to me that information is the thing which uses matter, uses light, uses spirit, uses whatever it can put its hands on to organize itself into higher and higher levels of self-reflection.” “It's meanings that we need to coax into our lives.” “And the whole schtick of the psychedelic experience, I think, is reclaim immediate experience, realize that you out vote all parliaments, police forces, and major newspapers on the planet because, who knows, they may be

Guest speaker: Daniel Pinchbeck PROGRAM NOTES: This podcast features my friend Daniel Pinchbeck as our guest speaker. As you know, Daniel wrote a book titled “2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl”, also, he is widely known as a speaker and writer about many things psychedelic and esoteric. However, I know him best as a fellow alumnus of the Entheobotany Seminars at Palenque, where Terence McKenna and his merry band of psychonauts would hold forth each January. In this talk, one that he gave at the Palenque Norte lectures during the 2012 Burning Man festival, Daniel follows the format of other psychedelic luminaries and lets the audience guide the direction of the lecture through their questions. Among other topics that Daniel covers are 2012, consciousness, the Occupy Movement, and possibilities for the future. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Direct link to video of this talk

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “[The wide variety of psychedelic plants] are the way in which the Earth itself is stepping in to aid in the agenda of cultural transformation. There are too many doorways in nature that lead to heaven, there are too many paths to the mystery for any institution or social policy to be able to thwart the intent of the human species to evolve.” “The smart people who are straight are involved in simply the media management of what has turned into a slow apocalypse, spreading starvation, exacerbated class differences, toxified agriculture, so forth and so on. I don't believe the Establishment thinks there are solutions. Their policy is basically the management of panic, which is hardly a forward moving approach to the adventure of human civilization.” “Inside the boundaries of the old paradigm there's no hope, there's no way out of the box of capitalism, monogamy, consumer fetishism, egoism, money worship, no way ou

Guest speaker: Brian Wallace PROGRAM NOTES: This podcast features Brian Wallace's 2012 Palenque Norte Lecture at the Burning Man Festival. Brian, who has been a community organizer for MAPS and other organizations, is also expert on the cacao plant. Originally, Brian titled this talk “The Entheobotany of Cacao”, however, I decided to change the title to better reflect the wide-ranging discussion of a little-understood, but extremely important, plant. Brian's talk is about significantly more than chocolate treats. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Brian Wallace's Web Site (click) Naked Chocolate: The Astonishing Truth About the World's Greatest Food By David Wolfe Following Brian's talk I play a short segment about the work of Occupy Sandy and close with a song sent in from some fellow saloners, The Chooks. It is simply titled “Occupy” and is freely available for download immediately below. "Occupy" (mp3 file) by The Chooks Podcast 256 - "A Drug Enhancer Call

Guest speaker: Ken Adams “I'm almost sixty years old, and I can guaranty you that I'm fucking tired of having to whisper about psychedelics.” - Ken Adams Watch a video of this talk PROGRAM NOTES: Today we feature the fifth Palenque Norte Lecture of 2012, which was given at the Burning Man Festival. This talk features the filmmaker Ken Adams, who was a neighbor, friend, and collaborator of Terence McKenna in their search for new ways of explaining the psychedelic experience. Ken is the producer/director of a new, and experimental, film titled “The Terence McKenna Experience” which features never before seen and heard raps by Terence. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option TerraLucida-The Terence McKenna Experience-test sequence from Ken Adams on Vimeo. Ken Adams "Producing “The Terence McKenna Experience”" - Burning Man 2012 from Palenque Norte on Vimeo. Rolling Jubilee A bailout of the people by the people

Guest speaker: Charles Shaw Watch a video of this talk PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Charles Shaw.] “Having a felony conviction, and having a drug conviction, essentially makes you a second class citizen.” “For the lower classes, the poorer classes, which generally in this country are people of color, drug laws have always been used as a way to control them.” “And if you take away the distinction between tobacco and alcohol and cannabis and cocaine or alkaloids or whatever, what you've got is a war against altering consciousness.” “But what they're trying to stop more than anything is ideas. Because what it is is a war of ideas. And it is a war of control, a breaking away from an external control factor, like a government, or a religion, or an ideology, or an economy that enslaves you, and thinking outside the box in revolutionary terms to try to solve it.” “It's no secret that psychedelics change consciousness. It's no secret that they're revolutionary. I mean, we've known this for a whi

Guest speaker: Dr. Brian Hewlett Watch a video of this talk PROGRAM NOTES: This podcast features the third in the series of the 2012 Palenque Norte Lectures at the Burning Man festival. The speaker is Dr. Brian Hewlett and he titled his talk "An Algorithm of Human Consciousness and Implications for Artificial Intelligence". As you can see, I have re-titled the talk “Understanding the Default Process of Consciousness” to better fit with some of his closing remarks which included: “If you understand the default process of your consciousness, and you work with that default process and start to pay attention to that process, then you can actually start to manipulate the process, just like you can manipulate any process that you understand.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option “What you experience as reality IS reality, and it's got consequences for you.” - Dr. Brian N. Hewlett Dr. Brian Hewlett "Understanding the Default Process of Consciousness" - Burning Man 2012

Guest speaker: Dr. Maddy Corbin Watch a video of this talk PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Dr. Maddy Corbin.] “I've been a nerd for a long time. That's how you get a Ph.D.” “At least in my experience of psychedelics, and people who take psychedelics and why they value psychedelics, is because it helps to critique you. It helps to break you down. It helps to challenge your assumptions. Isn't that part of what we find, whether it's in our meditation or in our psychedelic practices is it pushes you to your edge, and it teaches you about your assumptions that you are making without even realizing it. And you learn to challenge yourself.” “How can we be as rigorous in our engagement with the outer world as we try to be with our engagement with our inner world?” “Psychedelics don't actually come from the counterculture. They come out of scientific laboratories.” “And because it came through a chemical that allowed them to study it, they began to engage with spirituality in a way that was histori

Guest speakers: Amanda Sage and Bruce Damer Watch a video of this talk Watch a video of Bruce Damer's brief history of the Palenque Norte lecture series PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Amanda Sage.] “Let's turn the museums into temples. I think the new museums are going to be temples.” “I'm interested in this collaboration, because I'm interested in what can we do to wake people up, to turn people on.” “And dream. I mean if this is about dreaming, what can each of us do to evoke the dream, a deeper dream, in another?” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Amanda Sage (official site) eARTh Voyage::: The mission is the art of transformation Amanda Sage “Vision Mapping for the Golden Age” - Burning Man 2012 from Palenque Norte on Vimeo. A brief history of Palenque Norte, from which the podcasts sprang . . . by Dr. Bruce Damer Dr. Bruce Damer "A Brief History of Palenque Norte" - Burning Man 2012 from Palenque Norte on Vimeo. The Twilight o

Guest speaker: Graham Hancock PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Graham Hancock.] “There are all kinds of ways to challenge ourselves. Some people do it by climbing a mountain or scuba diving. The most profound and challenging ordeals is to drink Ayahuasca. It is in a way the ultimate adventure.” “I think that ayahuasca requires us to confront the truth about ourselves. That's one of the fundamental, universal experiences of anybody who has drunk the sacred visionary brew of the Amazon.” “All across the world we have a venal class of dishonest, self-serving bureaucrats who are using the power we give them to impose themselves upon us.” “You have to understand that we've had more than 40 years now of massively financed propaganda called the 'War on Drugs'.” “Do we as adults have the right to make decisions about what we put in our own bodies and what we experience with our own consciousness without reference to the powers of the state, or must we seek permission from the state in order to expl

Guest speaker: Jonathan Talat Phillips PROGRAM NOTES: This podcast features a talk given by Jonathan Talat Phillips in Vancouver sometime earlier this year. In it, Jonathan tells the story of how, after a devastating loss as countercultural activist, he embarked on a mystical initiation involving underground ayahuasca ceremonies, kundalini awakenings, DMT cowboys, shapeshifting extraterrestrials at Burning Man, miraculous healings, and an international movement trailblazing visionary ways to help our planet in crisis. Along the way he uncovers the lost rites of the Christian mystery schools and secret “electric” messages for personal and global transformation. Jonathan is the author of “The Electric Jesus: The Healing Journey of a Contemporary Gnostic.” He co-founded the cutting edge web-magazine Reality Sandwich and The Evolver Network, coordinating 40+ regional Evolver communities. He is a religion blogger for "The Huffington Post," the creator of “The Ayahuasca Monologues: Tales of the Spirit Vine,” a

Guest speaker: J. Krishnamurti J. Krishnamurti ONLINE PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by J. Krishnamurti.] “The crisis is not in the outward technological advancement, but rather in the way we think, and the way we live, and the way we feel. I think that is where a revolution must take place.” “No revolution, psychologically I'm talking about, is possible if there is merely the imitation of a particular ideology. To me, all ideologies are idiotic.” “What has meaning is what IS, not what should be.” “I think that is the worst thing one can do, to break up one's own existence into various fragments, and that's where contradiction lies.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Safe Access Now Martin Wittfooth Web Site Corey Helford Gallery

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Safety is really a concern of mine, and what I've been telling people recently is that until there's animal and human data on a drug it should probably be looked at very carefully.” “In the absence of good scientific data about the effects of artificial hallucinogens it's good to stick to the natural ones.” “I think that what these psychedelics do, is they actually do connect you to the whole circle. You stand outside of the moment from which you embarked on your psychedelic experience, and you see eternity like a vast landscape deployed in front of you. So what I think psychedelics are is they're about time, and they somehow make all time co-present.” “The apocalypse is the millennium, and the psychedelics move you into the future.” “I think that the whole thing, the crux of the whole psychedelic issue, is that it accentuates personal responsibility by making people take their own experiences seriously.” D