Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a talk given by Dr. Bruce Damer in May 2015 at the Lightening in a Bottle Festival. Building on a theme introduced by Lorenzo in a talk at Esalen, Bruce takes an in-depth look at the importance and essence of the Mysteries at Eleusis. In his concluding remarks, Lorenzo discusses the drawbacks of organized religion and suggests that...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “I describe myself as a tall man with a cheap watch.” “If reality is code, then it can be hacked in some way that we had not suspected before.” “In a sense, the Italian Renaissance IS the medieval lead turned to the secular gold of reform and rebirth.” “You aren't an object. You're a process of some sort.”...

Guest speakers: Ashley Booth and Amy Ralston Povah Today's podcast features Ashley Booth, scientist and psychedelic advocate, and Amy Ralston Povah, a victim and hero of the War on Drugs. The talk by Ashley was given at the 2014 Palenque Norte Lectures at the Burning Man Festival, and the talk by Amy was given at a Venice, California salon hosted by Ashley in celebration of Bicycle Day 2014. Toget...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “In hyperspace nothing is hidden.” “Culture is a narrowing.” “We're about to have the chance to create a global culture, to essentially clean our basement and decide what we're going to save and what we're going to keep.” “It's the monotheistic religions that have to take a knock for the present situation....

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Language is the software without which we wouldn't be people.” “Culture is a strategy for intensifying the dimensionality of an animal species.” “Somehow, the psychedelic experience is related to this bootstrapping process of climbing, organizationally, from one dimension to another, deeper and deeper into complexity. I...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The most politically potent thing you can do for somebody is to educate them, to give them the facts. The facts are now so horrifying, and the means of delivering the facts so effective that there is no excuse for everyone not beginning to act in an informed manner.” “How can we go to the place where idea...

We were saddened to learn that Kai left this life on February 6th, 2016 due to complications from a fast. She was on the 37th day of a 40 day fast. Guest speakers: Kai Wingo & Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: A mushroom expert, Kai Wingo's passion is highlighting the value of mushroom cultivation in the revitalizing of community. She is a mother, mycologist and lecturer on a quest to inspire reverence...

Guest speaker: Rak Razam PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a talk given by Rak Razam this year at Byron Bay, Australia. Rak is an ‘experiential’ journalist, who writes about the emergence of a new cultural paradigm in the 21st century. Rak is the author of the critically acclaimed book Aya Awakenings: A Shamanic Odyssey and the companion volume of interviews, The Ayahuasca Sessions. In this...

Guest speaker: Mikey Siegel PROGRAM NOTES: “Technology is a manifestation of mind.” Mikey Siegel, Consciousness Hacker Have you ever given any thought to the proposition that perhaps human well-being, or enlightenment, may be approached through engineering? In today's podcast, which is the 2014 Palenque Norte Lecture given by Mikey Siegel, you are going to learn not only about the possibilities of...

Guest speakers: Annie Oak, Irina Alexander, and Bruce Damer "The Psychedelic Explorer's Guide: Safe, Therapeutic, and Sacred Journeys"By James Fadiman PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a panel discussion about some of the difficulties that can be encountered during a psychedelic experience. This panel discussion took place at the 2014 Palenque Norte Lectures at the Burning Man Festival and f...

Guest speaker: Aldous Huxley PROGRAM NOTES: This podcast celebrates the ten year anniversary of programming from the Psychedelic Salon. And so we return to one of the men who was responsible for igniting today's psychedelic renaissance, Aldous Huxley. The talk featured here was delivered at MIT in 1961, sometime after it was first given at the University of California Medical Center in San Francis...

Guest speakers: George Greer, John Gilmore, Rick Doblin, Annie Oak PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features the tributes to Sasha Shulgin that were made at the Palenque Norte lectures during the 2014 Burning Man Festival. In addition to comments from the audience, we hear from Dr. George Greer (MDMA Researcher and Co-founder of the Heffter Research Institute), Rick Doblin PhD (President of the Mult...

Guest speakers: Ginny Rutherford & Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features an interview of Ginny Rutherford by Shonagh Home. Ginny is a Certified Transformational Life Coach in the Seattle area. She has studied Alchemical Tarot for the past 5 years and uses the Tarot in her coaching to get insight for her clients and information on their next step. She has spent time in the jungle of...

Guest speaker: Daniel Pinchbeck PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features the 2014 Palenque Norte Lecture delivered by Daniel Pinchbeck. Beginning with a discussion of his experimentation with toad venom (primary active ingredient 5MEO-DMT), his interaction with the audience leads down many of the different roads that Daniel has traveled as he was gathering information for his books Breaking Open th...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “These psychedelics, which in the Sixties and Fifties were simply called consciousness expanding drugs, a good old phenomenological description, if there is an iota of possibility that they expand consciousness then we must put out attention on this area. Because it is the absence of consciousness that is...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: In this continuation of a Terence McKenna workshop from June 1994, he does brief riffs about Joyce's “Finnegan's Wake” and Orwell's “1984”. He then continues with some speculations about what he thought 2012 would bring. Step 1, he speculated, would be that everyone in the world would go outdoors and get naked. And from there he takes off on a wild fli...

Guest speaker: Bernardo Kastrup PROGRAM NOTES: Today Bernardo Kastrup returns to the salon with more metaphysical speculations. Supplementing his recently released book, “Brief Peeks Beyond,” he touches on the so-called hard problem of consciousness faced by materialists. In his examination of the dominant materialistic world view, Bernardo reveals the forces behind our value systems, which in tur...

Guest speakers: La Laurien & Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: In this wide-ranging conversation between two experienced medicine women, in addition to talking about shamanism and psychedelic medicines, such as magic mushrooms, MDMA, LSD, and others, they also venture into such diverse areas as aliens and language. Most importantly, they talk about Atlan, which was co-founded by La Laurien. Atlan is a l...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: “If I didn't have cannabis I wouldn't take a psychedelic drug. It is indispensable.” Terence McKenna In this talk, Terence McKenna tells some stories about how Gordon Wasson was first led to investigating the mushrooms of Mexico, and of possible use of magic mushrooms by the Sufi's. We also get to hear one of the rare instances where the bard McKenna g...

Guest speakers: Meriana Dinkova & Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: In today's podcast we get to listen in on a conversation between Shonagh Home and Meriana Dinkova. Meriana received her initial training in psychology studies at Vienna University and at the Free University in Berlin. And in 2003 she completed her MA in Counseling Psychology at the California Association of Integral Studies in San Franc...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: Today's talk by Terence McKenna takes us on an in-depth description of what he experiences on a DMT trip. While it is a story that we have heard before in various guises, Terence once again manages to tell his DMT stories in a way that makes it seem like you are hearing it for the first time, and with new detail if that can be imagined. Who else, for e...

Guest speaker: Kathleen Wirt PROGRAM NOTES: Today we feature a talk given by Kathleen Wirt, the hostess of the legendary salon that took place in Venice, California. While the stories Kathleen tells are of interest from an historical point of view, they are also very informative for anyone who is also interested in starting a salon in their area. Kathleen's talk was given at the inaugural session...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “One of the reasons I'm so fond of psychedelics is because they transcend rhetoric.” “Meditation and all these other things I take to be co-options organized by beastly hoards of priests.” “One of the most uncool things you can say to another human being is, 'Could you explain to me what it is I just said?...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The absolute victory of habit is death itself.” “Life is apparently a phenomenon in this universe considerably more tenacious than stars.” “When the democratic crunch hits, democratic values will go down the drain long before they turn off the lights and stop delivering the food.” “The Net is a tremendous...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The present is this hairline division between the past and the future, and the past exists in memory largely for the coordination of some agenda in the future. And that's history!” “We have thought of history as something that we do. History is something that is done to us, and therefore we are not respon...