Psychedelic Salon

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 you...

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 ch...

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 c...

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 Inte...

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 cra...

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...

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, i...

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...

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...

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...

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 c...

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...

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. . . . Acc...

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 expla...

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...

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 serie...

Guest speakers: Bruce Damer and Lorenzo Hagerty PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features the first of the recordings from last weekend's workshop (titled “Terence McKenna: Beyond 2012”) that Bruce Damer and Lorenzo led in the Los Angeles area on January 28, 2012. In addition to Lorenzo's remarks and some comments by those in attendance, three videos created by Bruce Damer were shown. Those videos a...

Guest speakers: Douglas Rushkoff, Antero Alli, Tiffany Lee Brown, and Joseph Matheny PROGRAM NOTES: The featured audio that I play in this podcast is part of a two-CD collection produced by Joe Matheny and given to the salon to podcast by the distributor, The Original Falcon Press, which you can find via originalfalcon.com. The voices you will here are those of: Douglas Rushkoff, Antero Alli, Tiff...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “One of the most puzzling things about DMT is that it does not affect your mind. It simply replaces the world 100% with something completely unexpected. But your relationship to that unexpected thing is not one of exaggerated fear, or exaggerated acceptance, as in 'Oh great, the world has just been replace...

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Culture denies experience. We all have had, and even a population of non-psychedelic people have had, prophetic dreams, intimations, unlikely strings of coincidences, all of these sort of things. These are all experiences, which cultures deny.” “We live at the end of a thousand year binge on the philosoph...

Guest speakers: David Graeber & Tim Pool PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast takes a look back at some of the roots of the current Occupy Movement on the eve of the first anniversary of the death of Mohamed Bouazizi, whose self-immolation marked the beginning of the Arab Spring. Today is also the eve of the third anniversary of Occupy Wall Street, and so I have put together an audio collage that ranges...

Guest speaker: Peter Lamborn Wilson PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: The following quotations are by Peter Lamborn Wilson.] “Why are artists still meddling, or mediating, between people and their desires?” “All livelihoods are arts, from midwifery to war, nothing is mere labor.” [In reference to gift economies.] “The artist sacrifices talent for money. The audience sacrifices money for talent.” “One can no l...

Guest speaker: Makana Please support MAKAKAMUSIC.COM PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Makana.] “This whole war that we're fighting is a war of consciousness versus ignorance, of controlling human behavior by controlling people's thoughts, by directing their awareness.” “There's always going to be disagreements as to what the solutions are, and even what the problem is, but if people in...

Guest speaker: Robert Anton Wilson PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Robert Anton Wilson.] “I think we're in a period of fractal chaos, and the whole system is collapsing, and every week is a new surprise.” (1990) “Things are happening so fast that the only prediction I'll make is that everything is going to happen faster than we expect it.” “That's why I don't believe in monolithic cons...

Guest speaker: Robert Anton Wilson PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Robert Anton Wilson.] “There actually have been studies done at many schools in the big cities where IQ has measurably decreases from the entering of grammar school to graduation from high school. The longer they're there they dumber they get. And some people think that's an accident, or an oversight, or a mistake, but...