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....
Oct 07, 2012•1 hr 34 min
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 hel...
Sep 28, 2012•1 hr 7 min
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...
Sep 20, 2012•59 min
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. Yo...
Sep 01, 2012•1 hr 3 min
Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: Today's program consists of ten separate pieces from a June 2012 workshop at the Esalen Institute, eight of which are by Bruce Damer. Here are the titles that Bruce has given to these short talks: --Are we all becoming autistic astronauts? --On our dual bonobo and chimp nature --The things I loved about Terence --Esalen @ 50 --"Procreate only once" (and we will have a future) --The wellspring of human consciousness --Terence's greatest Rap: Its all about...
Aug 26, 2012•1 hr 13 min
Guest speaker: Lorenzo and Friends PROGRAM NOTES: This podcast features the final community discussions at the June 2012 Esalen workshop led by Lorenzo and Bruce Damer. Among the topics discussed were: -Creating a new myth for our community -The genesis of the Occupy Movement -Are psychedelic “mutants” among us? -Cultural Creatives -Freeing our food supply from money -Timebanks -What the mushroom has to say about the future -The Importance of myth -Developing a “Medicine Circle” app -Building ne...
Aug 21, 2012•1 hr 28 min
Guest speaker: Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.] “In my function as a [college] lecturer, it's my obligation, it's my task, it's my duty to instigate irreverence for authority, questioning of authority.” “And that's one of the things that is kind of amazing today, the junk information that we're being inundated with, the cloud, the atmosphere, the smog of disinformation.” “Reagan is a certifiable lunatic” “The first narcotics bust in history is Jehovah bus...
Aug 11, 2012•1 hr 15 min
Guest speaker: Lorenzo and Friends PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features the next installment of the workshop that Bruce Damer and Lorenzo led at the Esalen Institute in June of 2012. The majority of this program features comments by some of the workshop's participants who bring up topics that include: -Heroic doses -Body load with psychedelics -Techniques for using psychedelics -What exactly is the psychedelic state -The perfect answer when a cop asks, “Were are you at, buddy?” -The re-introd...
Aug 07, 2012•51 min
Guest speaker: Lorenzo and friends PROGRAM NOTES: In this follow-up session after Bruce Damer's “Deep Dive into the Mind of McKenna”, Lorenzo leads the discussion of the participants in a workshop held at the Esalen Institute in June of 2012. Topics of the conversation include: - Consciousness, not drugs were the focus of McKenna's work - Heroic doses are not as important as bringing back information - The healing and love value of teaching plants - We all contributed to making Terence McKenna a...
Jul 28, 2012•59 min
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: “Well, certainly the Voynich Manuscript is the 'limit text' of Western occultism. No one can read it. It is truly an occult book.” -Terence McKenna According to Wikipedia, the Voynich Manuscript has been described as “the world's most mysterious manuscript”, and so far it's secret code has never been broken . . . including attempts by top U.S. Government cytologists. And this is the subject of today's talk by Terence McKenna from an April 1983 lectur...
Jul 21, 2012•1 hr 14 min
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: This is Tape Number 002 of the Paul Herbert Collection. Some of the topics covered in this talk: Repression of psychedelic drugs Element of risk in taking psychedelics The imagination Interiorization of the body/exterization of the soul Death The importance of psychedelics Bell's Theorem [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “I regard [my] degree more or less as a joke because it was self-directed study. They don't really; there is no degree...
Jul 10, 2012•1 hr 14 min
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: This is Tape Number 001 of the Paul Herbert Collection. Some of the topics covered in this talk: Two types of shamanism, narcotic and non-narcotic UFOs and aliens The end of history – the eschaton The psychedelic experience Psilocybin allows dialogue with the Other Death and afterlife Dreams [NOTE: All quotations below are by Terence McKenna.] “The central point about the psychedelic experience is the content of the experience. And this has been occl...
Jul 05, 2012•1 hr 44 min
Guest speakers: Bruce Damer and Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: This program is a recording of part of a live event at the Esalen Institute near Big Sur, California. The workshop, titled “Terence McKenna: Beyond 2012”, was led by Bruce Damer and Lorenzo Hagerty. This specific recording took place on Saturday morning, June 16th and consists of Bruce's “deep dive” into the mind of McKenna. It begins with Bruce's “Ode to Terence” and is followed by Bruce's readings of parts of the soon-to-be publish...
Jul 01, 2012•1 hr 33 min
Guest speaker: Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.] “At every level there are eight stages of intelligence. You have to turn your brain on to the circuits that are used at that level of intelligence. And there are ways to change the human brain to different stages. The things that change your brain are called 'drugs'.” “The ketemine experience is very much like the dying experience. It is a hands-on dying experience.” “If you know how to die, gracefully, and ...
Jun 28, 2012•1 hr
Guest speaker: Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: strong>[NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.] “Since World War II, in the Western societies, the generation you belong to is almost a different species.” “It's a wonderful time in history to be alive when young people are doing things better than grownups. Because that's a key sign that evolution's happening, because evolution only happens with young people.” “I feel that it is necessary, if you want to continue to evolve, that you have to lea...
Jun 21, 2012•58 min
Guest speaker: Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.] “The way we define intelligence is the amount of information energy you can receive, that you can store and retrieve, and that you can transmit.” “It's very intelligent to be able to live as long as you want to. It's stupid to die.” “It's obvious that the blocks to evolution are anything that keeps you from changing, or discourages you from changing. And almost all the religions tell you, 'Don't change.'” “T...
Jun 14, 2012•1 hr 1 min
Guest speaker: Eben Moglen PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Eben Moglen.] “For the policy makers, in other words, an overwhelming problem is now at hand: How do we have innovation and economic growth under austerity? They do not know the answer to this question, and it is becoming so urgent that it is beginning to deteriorate their political control.” “Nobody will ever try to create a commercial encyclopedia again.” “Disintermediation, the movement of power out of the middle of the Ne...
Jun 04, 2012•1 hr 20 min
Guest speaker: Lorenzo PROGRAM NOTES: This podcast features a recording of a talk that I gave in March of 2001 at The Inside Edge, a Southern California association of cultural creatives. The topic was some of the themes in my book, “The Spirit of the Internet: Speculations on the Evolution of Global Consciousness”. One of the more controversial aspects of this talk is my comparison of a deep Internet experience with a psychedelic experience. . . . Also included in this podcast is some discussio...
May 29, 2012•1 hr 9 min
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 choos...
May 19, 2012•1 hr 29 min
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “I think it's time to begin to talk very, very frankly about the forced engineering of consciousness, about the re-shamanising of society, about the re-birth of archaic values before it's too late.” “Anyone who loves adventure, and who loves life, and who loves the experience of being, has an obligation, I think, to explore this [the psychedelic realm]. It's as much a part of your identity as your sexual...
May 11, 2012•1 hr 2 min
Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] This is the first part of an evening lecture given by Terence McKenna in early February, 1994 on the Hawaiian island of Maui. “Our [Western] civilization touches everyone on this planet. We are involved in a species-wide crisis, and it's a crisis of adaptation and intelligence. If we can meet the crisis, if we can re-design the cultural machinery so that it can glide in to the new value systems that a li...
May 11, 2012•1 hr 7 min
Guest speakers: Matt Pallamary, Wild Bill, & Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: Today's program features, first of all, a conversation between Matt Pallamary and Wild Bill, who begin by reminiscing about the legendary Palenque Entheobotany Seminars, but who then go on to other wild tales, some of which may actually be true. After that is the first of our long-awaited Global Trialogues in which Bruce Damer answers a question from a young man in Australia. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option...
Apr 26, 2012•1 hr 19 min
Guest speakers: Ram Das, Terence McKenna, and Angeles Arrien PROGRAM NOTES: “The thing that seemed to me so important about the psychedelic experience was that it happened to me. I wasn't reading John Chrysostom or Meister Eckhart. And so I assumed that I am a very ordinary person, therefore, if it happened to me it could happen to anyone.” --Terence McKenna “Psychedelics are a miracle, yes. They may not be the only miracle. I think they may have already done what they were to do. I think what i...
Apr 25, 2012•1 hr 6 min
Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Bruce Damer.] “I think it's clear to everyone on the left, the right, the center, every walk of life, that we have to undo a mess that's been created, a tangled mess. And we have to remake the System. There's no way to reform the System. We must re-do it.” “If you put out a powerful vision, the universe just lines up the stones and the pebbles and allows you to walk toward it. As long as you're pure in that vision and you rea...
Apr 05, 2012•1 hr 36 min
Guest speaker: Timothy Leary PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Timothy Leary.] “I don't even use the word 'United States'. If there is such a thing I'm not a part of it. I'm not an American, I'm a Californian, and maybe I'm a Southern Californian.” “I think any sensible person would do this, but since my 70s I have been planning, thinking about, my dying, because that's going to be the climax, the final going away party. And you can't believe the taboo when you start talking about how ...
Mar 30, 2012•56 min
Guest speaker: Joanna Harcourt-Smith PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Joanna Harcourt-Smith.] “In my childhood, and in those [wealthy] circles, I never encountered compassion. If I ever encountered compassion it was from someone who was serving these people. And I wondered why that is. And this man said to me, 'Well, you see, the very, very rich have to kill compassion in their children. Every child is born innately compassionate, but they have to kill compassion in their children so ...
Mar 25, 2012•1 hr 34 min
Guest speaker: James Fadiman We are saddened to report that long time friend of the salon and psychedelic research pioneer extraordinaire, Gary Fisher has gone on to his next adventure. Archive of podcasts featuring Gary Fisher The Gary Fisher Page PROGRAM NOTES: “There is so much more psychedelic use in this country than any of us, even those of us who think we know a lot, are aware of. . . . According to [the government], 23 million Americans have used LSD since it became illegal. And that fig...
Mar 12, 2012•1 hr 21 min
Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: In this, the concluding episode of recordings from the workshop titled “Terence McKenna: Beyond 2012” and led by Bruce Damer and Lorenzo, we hear Bruce's final presentation in which he begins by taking us on a mental voyage around our solar system. From there he tells a fascinating story of his meeting with a somewhat dodgy character who convincingly explained that, although it may appear that way at times, there actually is no cabal secretly controlling...
Mar 03, 2012•1 hr 49 min
Guest speaker: Lorenzo PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast picks up with the third section of the workshop that Bruce Damer and I led on January 28th. This section features my second presentation of the day in which I try to live up to the advanced billing for the workshop which read: “Lorenzo will take us from 2013 into the emerging era of cyber-enhanced humans, immersed in a meme-space stranger than we can suppose.” In the Occupy segment of the podcast I feature an interview with and a talk by Chri...
Feb 20, 2012•51 min
Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: In today’s podcast we pick up with the next part of a workshop that was held on January 28, 2012 titled “Terence McKenna: Beyond 2012”. This section features Bruce Damer, who begins with his “Ode to Terence” [ In the Occupy segment I begin with a recap of what went down in Washington, D.C. the day of the eviction from McPherson Square. Also, I play a series of short audio clips. The first one is of a young man from San Diego who was speaking at the Gener...
Feb 12, 2012•1 hr 52 min
