Psychedelic Salon

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Now all that stands between us and some kind of angelic completion of some sort is the dark side of ourselves and the unpaid bills of the historical process.” “I am a resolute optimist of a very complicated sort.” “If you have the psychedelic experience in your inventory of experiences, you are able to ma...

Guest speaker: Lorenzo   THE FUND DRIVE HAS COME TO AN END AND THANKS TO EVERYONE FOR MAKING IT SUCCESSFUL   PROGRAM NOTES: It has been one year since our last fund raising effort, which means that the time has come once again to see if there is enough support for these podcasts to keep them going for another year. As I did last year, I will update the graphic that you see here to display the prog...

Guest speakers: Yalila Espinoza & Shonagh Home PROGRAM NOTES: Today we feature a conversation about psychedelics, sexuality, and the dark side of ayahuasca tourism. The conversation is between two highly experienced medicine women, Shonagh Home and Yalila Espinoza, Ph. D. Yalila's Ph. D. studies and diverse training in Integrating Sexuality & Spirituality have inspired her to create the Spiritual...

Guest speakers: Marian Goodell & John Gilmore PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Marian Goodell.] “I don't think Burning Man is the solution. I think that we are a really powerful gravitational force, and mixed with other cultures and other groups, that's what's powerful.” “The biggest problem I think Burning Man has is translating what people think is Burning Man into what really is Burn...

Guest speaker: Marina Korsakova PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features the 2014 Palenque Norte Lecture given by Dr. Marina Korsakova. Marina is a professional pianist and scholar in music cognition. Her research is focused on emotional responses to music and on the perception of melodic transformation. Currently, Marina teaches Music Cognition at Touro College. She performs regularly as a member...

Guest speaker: Bernardo Kastrup PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Bernardo Kastrup.] “It is not the mind that is in the body. It is the other way around. It's the body that is in the mind.” “In the same way that there is nothing to a whirlpool but water, I claim there is nothing to a brain-body system but consciousness.” “The psychedelic trance allows us to 'see the stars at noon' becaus...

Guest speaker: Rak Razam PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features Rak Razam's 2014 Palenque Norte Lecture, which was originally titled “Cosmic Consciousness To Convergence: Activating the Species.” As you can see, I have shortened it to a phrase that Rak used in his talk, “Consciousness Browsers,” which is an excellent way to describe the psychedelic experience. During his talk, Rak ranges from a d...

Guest speakers: Katie Tomlinson & Rachel Hope PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features two of the Palenque Norte Lectures that were given at Burning Man in 2014. The first talk is by Katie Tomlinson, founder of GAPS, the psychedelic student organization at Evergreen State College in Olympia, Washington. For anyone interested in establishing student groups on other campuses this talk has some great...

Guest speaker: Tom Barbalet PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a conversation between fellow podcaster Tom Barbalet and his guest. Their discussion centers on what we have all come to think of as that voice in our head. As you will hear, it may not be anything like what you think it is. As Tom's guest says, “The idea for me is really very simple, break the identification with the voice in you...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “I sort of see [cannabis] as the pilot light of Gian consciousness.] “The danger is [in using psychedelic drugs], just to put it out there, is madness.” “LSD is different. LSD is like psychoanalytical Drano. It's not a personality.” “Matter is simply a concept. The world is made of language.” “If you're tr...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “History is anomalous, and there is no way to get used to it.” “The miracle of our predicament is not how long everything has been in place but how brief it all has been.” “Each stage of cosmic development proceeded more quickly than the stage which preceded it.” “A singularity is a place where the rules a...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “After you fiddle with psilocybin for a while the question of whether or not there is an alien intelligence becomes moot.” “We are embedding ourselves in a matrix of silicone and glass.” “ We are beginning to embed ourselves into a cultural membrane of some sort.” “What is happening is a globalizing of int...

Guest speakers: Lorenzo Hagerty & Chris Hedges PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Chris Hedges.] “I think when we speak today about American values what we're really speaking about are corporate-instilled values.” “When you spend over a decade brutalizing people, people become brutal.” “You can't use the word 'liberty' when your government watches you 24 hours a day. That's the relationsh...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Once you encounter [the psychedelic experience] you see that this is an aspect or an activity as informing of what it means to be human as something as inimical to our nature as sexuality.” “What we lack is the will to change our minds.” “WE are the anomalous factor in the natural world.” “I think part of...

Guest speaker: John Gilmore PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by John Gilmore.] “I thank medical marijuana for breaking down social resistance to recreational marijuana.” “In medical marijuana states it was the gay community that developed political skills in working for their own liberation that then applied those skills to liberate marijuana in a medical context in the aids fight. Those p...

Guest speakers: Shonagh Home & Diana Reed Slattery PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a conversation between Shonagh Home and Diana Reed Slattery who is a practicing xenolinguist and psychonaut. She has been investigating linguistic phenomena in the psychedelic sphere for over 15 years. Her website, Psychedelics & Language, details this research. Her science fiction novel, The Maze Game, tell...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Everything appears to me to be authored, in some strange way. And I wonder if this is not the spreading assumption of the psychedelic illusion/delusion/revelation that life is in fact art.” “[This legendary Amazonian substance is] a cybernetic transdimentional medium of some sort that is generated out of...

Guest speaker: Niles Heckman PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Niles Heckman.] “The visual component of the psychedelic experience is for the most part the final frontier for what computer graphics still have yet to replicate faithfully.” “Art isn't really important unless it helps you grow in creating it, or it helps others grow through its consumption.” “Computer graphics are, and will...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “The world is magic, not a little bit, one hundred percent. Every atom from one end of this cosmos to the other is magic, magic, magic.” “Fate has chosen you to hear about [DMT]. . . . If you now go ahead and live in your mundane, stock portfolio, BMW existence, it's because you're making a choice.” “To go...

Guest speaker: Grover Norquist PROGRAM NOTES: The final speaker at the 2014 Palenque Norte Lectures, which are held at Burning Man each year, was Grover Norquist. According to Wikipedia, “... he is an American political advocate who is founder and president of Americans for Tax Reform, an organization that opposes all tax increases and a co-founder of the Islamic Free Market Institute. A libertari...

Guest speakers: Nese Devenot Photo credit: Randy Mayfield PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a conversation with Nese Devenot who pose a number of challenging questions. One of the issues they raise regards the reluctance of some of us in the psychedelic community to discuss some of the serious problems that arise out of a false sense of protecting the reputation of us all. Hopefully this wil...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Every drug problem can usually be traced to a previous drug problem.” “I think drugs are much safer than gurus.” “I've never been absolutely certain that psychedelics have anything whatsoever to do with the spiritual quest.” “Academic culture runs very heavily on alcohol.” “It's hard to live a life where...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Alcohol could hardly be more different than psilocybin in terms of the social values that it promotes.” “Warfare is the natural consequence of agriculture.” “I really see psilocybin as a kind of inoculation against the primate nature.” “Noting on Earth is as much like a man as a woman. We tend to forget t...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Culture is the sanctioned virtual reality.” “They try to tell you that you're in a social contract, but when you ask to see your signature on the document they tell you that you were born into this contract. Well what the hell kind of contract is that? It means that you were born into a kind of enslavemen...

Guest speakers: Shonagh Home and Alyssum Old Coyote PROGRAM NOTES: Today we join Shonagh Home in a conversation with Alyssum Old Coyote as they talk about peyote. In addition to describing the elements of a traditional peyote ceremony, we learn of the difficulties that Native American people have had in preserving these important ceremonies as well as stories about some of the astounding stories o...