Guest speaker: Terence McKenna
PROGRAM NOTES:
[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]
“Basically, for me the psychedelic experience was the path to revelation. It actually worked on somebody who thought nothing would work.”
“What I like to talk about, and what I have very little competition in terms of talking about, is the content of the psychedelic experience.”
“I have a skeptical and cranky side, and I’m forever puzzled why people believe the, seeming to me, dumb things that they choose to believe.”
“Psychedelics are actually a kind of miraculous reality that can stand the test of objective examination.”
“Actually, these things [psychedelics] reveal scenarios, modalities hierophanies of emotional and poetic power that are very emotionally moving, and sometimes leave in their wake powerful ideas, ideas as powerful as any of the ideas that have moved and shaped civilization.”
“The good news about psychedelics is that they are incredibly democratic. Even the clueless can be swept along if the dose is sufficient.”
“History, call it 15,000 or 25,000 years of duration, is the story of an animal, some kind of complex animal, becoming conscious.”
“One has attained a very fortunate incarnation, I think, to be in a culture, in a place, in a time when psychedelic knowledge is available.”
“The reason for the emphasis on shamanism and on other techniques is, you will need techniques if you go into the deep water. And they can make your life very simple and save you from unnecessary suffering. Not all suffering is necessary. Maybe no suffering is necessary.”
“The thing that is so powerful about the psychedelics is that they perform on demand, which almost in principle you cannot expect of a mystical experience because that would be essentially man ordering God at man’s whim, which is not how it’s supposed to work.”
“Part of what the psychedelic point of view represents is living a certain portion of your life without answers. Just accepting that certain dilemmas will never resolve themselves into some kind of a complete answer. That’s why psychedelics are so different from any system being sold, from one of the great elder systems like Christianity, to the latest cult out of Los Angeles.”
“So part of what being psychedelic means, I think, is relentlessly living with unanswered questions.”
“Ecstasy is not simply joy. Ecstasy is an emotion of great complexity that hovers almost on the edge of terror sometimes.”
“Once you get to this place on what we might metaphorically call your spiritual quest, once you get to the place where you hear about psychedelics, the issue is no longer then about where is the gas peddle on the spiritual vehicle. The issue suddenly becomes, where is the brake? Because this is the fuel to go where you want to go. This is the power to lift you where you want to be lifted.”
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Terence McKenna and Ralph Abraham discuss
“The World Wide Web and the Millennium”
Podcasts of
Into the Valley of Novelty Workshop
<style=”text-align: center;”> Weekend of June 15-17, 2012
“Terence McKenna: Beyond 2012”
Esalen Workshop
with
Bruce Damer and Lorenzo
Here’s a link to Sorenson’s “Preconquest Consciousness”:
http://rewild.info/anthropik/vault/sorenson-preconquest/index.html
“It’s important for all of you to notice everyone who’s here because our agenda has triumphed so completely culturally that we can’t tell ourselves from the rest of the population as we could in the sixties. So it’s only at moments like this when we emerge out of the darkness and show ourselves to each other…” Glad the internet and podcasts like this are making it even easier to connect!
Is it just me or is there no email address for the site or podcast? I have a question pressing which I’d like to pose to Lorenzo.
Great work on the podcast!
[COMMENT by Lorenzo: My email address is lorenzo(at)matrixmasters(dot)com . . . but I get so much email that it is nearly impossible to sort through. So it is difficult for an email to get through all of the noise. Comments here on this blog are the best way for us to communicate.]
We LOVE your podcasts Lorenzo – this family / tribe are never going away from you! Such a lovely podcast you produce – without doubt the best on the Web. Love ya man!
@Blow_In Said,
that sounds very interesting. i’d love to see it. i’m going to see if i can’t somehow locate it in perhaps some other source than it’s original url, or anything else on Sorenson i can find. if it weren’t for spammers, i’d leave my email address.
from the little you mention it somewhat reminds me of this,
Ascent of Humanity
The Evolution of the Human Sense of Self, by Charles Eisenstein
http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/Ascent_of_Humanity
http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/archive/audiobooks/Ascent%20of%20Humanity/Ascent%20Of%20Humanity%20(Audiobook).zip
http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/archive.php?url=audiobooks/Ascent%20of%20Humanity/
‘This is a large book which tackles today’s social and environmental troubles on a fundamental level. It addresses the evolution of life as a process of incremental separation from ones environment. Eisenstein traces the modern alienation a looong way back (before protozoa!) and takes a detailed look at what is happening around the world, putting forward an animist view of spirituality that emphasises the fundamental connectedness of all life.
Eisenstein uses a Biblical parallel, likening the human effort to conquer nature to the building of the Tower of Babel. The psychology of previous investment makes it increasingly hard to give up the effort to reach heaven, even as it becomes ever more painful to continue the effort. He looks forward to what he refers to as “the age of reunion”, in which technology and human ingenuity is turned to the task of nurturing life and celebrating its difference, spontaneity and chaos, rather than attempting to separate and dissociate ideas and events and thus to bring them under human control.’
Lorenzo’s accomplishment here is huge, a mountain of podcasts in the archives to catch up on, and each great. taken as a whole it’s a notably integrated and interconnected mountain for all the different sources it’s comprised from. it may be daunting to catch up on, but i think i can speak for all his listeners in saying you’ll find doing so worthwhile. this is one place that won’t waste your time or hard drive space, that’s for sure. (not to mention any donations you may make.)
Hi Lorenzo,
I am not one to pay much attention to high profile psychedelic pundits, but I listened to this podcast out of pure boredom. Turned out, I was glad I did.
The most interesting part for me is when he talked about the use of psychedelics to return to a type of consciousness we once [as a species] possessed.
I read a very interesting article on that subject.
Preconquest Conscousness by E. Richard Sorenson.
The link I had got a 404. I did a quick search and got quite a few hits, but not the complete article. Luckily enough I had downloaded the article before the page went missing. It’s a PDF with pictures. I’ll send it to you via an attachment if you or someone you know may be interested.
It may be a bit of a slog to read, but I think it is worth the effort.
I am always looking forward to your next podcast! Press on Lorenzo!!!
True Hallucinations (Terence McKenna) 9 hours
http://m.youtube.com/?reason=8&rdm=2033#/watch?v=8sHcHOmNwaw