Psychedelic Salon

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 will be the beginning of an ongoing discussion of this important topic. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Neşe Devenot is a founder the Psychedemia psychedelics conference and a PhD Candidate at the University of Pennsylvania, where she studies and teaches psychedelic philosophy and the literature of chemical self-experimentation. Website: https://upenn.academia.edu/ndevenot Contact: ndevenot (at) sas (dot) upenn (dot) edu

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 you don't eventually get your mind altered.” “Anything which changes your mind can be abused as a drug.” “People who have taken 50 gamma of LSD, or 100 gamma of LSD, or two grams of mushrooms or something like that, they are not qualified to hold forth on the nature of the psychedelic experience, because those doses don't deliver it to you.” “DMT is the strongest hallucinogen there is. If it's possible to get more loaded than that, I don't want to know about it.” “A ten minute DMT trip is worth of academic pharmacology, art history, psychology, and all this other malarkey.” “Clearly we need to transform

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 this. And ego is not now a male problem. We are all completely infected by ego.” “We do not have group values. The reason the planet is dying is because we cannot place the good of the group above our own desires, consistently.” “The big news is that the rise of the ego has suppressed a portion of reality, which is that nature is an animate and minded thing of some sort.” “Culture is the condensation of language.” “Every society is based upon a lie of some sort. “Drug smuggling is like assassination, if the government isn't involved it never seems to really happen.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select

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 enslavement to a linguistically powered paradigm, a virtual reality within which you will walk around your entire life.” “The clue that something weird is going on on this planet is ourselves. Obviously! I mean, we are like a fart at the opera.” “History is no longer rationally apprehendable by the systems which created it.” “We're taking bone marrow from the children of the future in order to keep a corpse alive.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

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 of healing that has been brought about through the proper use of the peyote plant. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Shonagh Home is a teacher, shamanic practitioner, and the author of ‘Ix Chel Wisdom: 7 Teachings from the Mayan Sacred Feminine,’ ‘Love and Spirit Medicine,’ and the upcoming, ‘Honeybee Wisdom: A Modern Melissae Speaks.’ Website: www.shonaghhome.com Contact: shonagh.home (at) comcast (dot) net Allysum Old Coyote is a woman of prayer who leads peyote ceremony for her community. She is a master beader, wife and mother.

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Bruce Damer.] “Your brain has distinct pathways that outnumber the number of subatomic particles in the universe by a very large number. . . . Your brain is an information system that is bigger than the whole cosmos.” “Your brain is reverberating the whole cosmos.” “We are the great project of being.” “It's the informal experimenter (in their millions) that is the pioneering front edge of the science of psychedelics.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Tom Riedel's light show for this talk Johns Hopkins "Bad Trip" Survey After Psilocybin Mushrooms 2014 The main survey will take about 30 minutes to complete, and an optional open-ended section could take another 10-15 minutes. If you have previously completed a Johns Hopkins survey of "bad trips" on psilocybin mushrooms (aka. magic mushrooms or shrooms), please Do Not complete this survey. This is a questionnaire study of bad trips on psi

Guest speaker: Shonagh Home & Neşe Devenot PROGRAM NOTES: We again join Shonagh Home and Neşe Devenot in a conversation centered on how plant and psychedelic medicines may used in ways that aid in healing and in improving self-awareness. Along the way we hear stories of some of the difficulties that they encountered not only as women in the psychedelic community, but also as young people coping with a rapidly changing world. And their discussion about ways in which some people use the power of psychedelics to manipulate (and in some cases even abuse) others is worth listening to more than once. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Shonagh Home is a teacher, shamanic practitioner, and the author of ‘Ix Chel Wisdom: 7 Teachings from the Mayan Sacred Feminine,’ ‘Love and Spirit Medicine,’ and the upcoming, ‘Honeybee Wisdom: A Modern Melissae Speaks.’ Website: www.shonaghhome.com Contact: shonagh.home (at) comcast (dot) net Neşe Devenot is a founder the Psychedemia

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “What's happening is that the computer is allowing us to go beyond the mathematical objects of Greek philosophy.” “The unconscious of the species is actually being hard wired as an artifact. We're pouring glass, and gold, and silicon down the microtubials of the racial imagination. And as it were, making a kind of casting of the state of the human imagination at the close of the millennium.” “Technology is facilitating the drive toward community, at this incredibly accelerated rate..” “The Earth is on the brink of the greatest change since the end of the mesozoic, but people don't like to think about that because all they can think about is the possibility of personal extinction.” “No one can run or program these vast networks except guys with ponytails.” “My intuition was always that the psychedelic experience was a fractal anticipation of human history.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs –

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: At the end of this talk Terence takes off on an interesting riff wherein he speculates that our life here on Earth may have something to do with us learning how to interact with matter as a preparation for some future existence in dimensions yet unknown. If, he postulates, we are the only intelligent species in the universe, then, he asks, don't we have an obligation to announce ourselves to destinations that exist beyond the limits of our solar system. [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Being itself is some kind of opportunity.” “Outlandish things are going on inside the psychedelic experience. It seems to imply the thing we had hardly dared hope, which is that the world is whatever you say it is, if you know how to say it right.” “We have never taken the self-management of culture seriously.” “I'm amazed at what thin soup is dished out as spiritual food.” “It's hard to take psychedelics. It's not hard to sweep up around the ashram, but it's

Guest speakers: Shonagh Home & Nese Devnot PROGRAM NOTES: Today's podcast features a perspective of the psychedelic community that sometimes gets ignored, a woman's point of view. Shonagh Home is joined by Nese Devenot in a wide-ranging conversation about not only womens' roles in the community, but also how they are often perceived as second-class members of our community in many ways. While I am convinced that it is only the rare male psychonaught who is always a jerk, some of us have inadvertently slipped into jerkiness from time to time. This conversation may be just what us men need to hear. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Shonagh Home is an author, teacher, shamanic practitioner and doting beekeeper. Her offerings focus on the cultivation of our intuition, creativity and the essential awareness of our personal shadow. Her shamanic work with the sacred mushroom informs both her teaching and her private practice. She is author of the books, ‘Ix Chel Wis

Guest speaker: Friends of Ann & Sasha Shulgin PROGRAM NOTES: On August 2, 2014, a memorial was held for Sasha Shulgin. In addition to several of the talks that were presented that afternoon, Bruce Damer captured a few sound bites from those in attendance. At the end of the podcast you will also hear a short segment from one of the famous “Ask the Shulgins” conversations. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Pihkal: A Chemical Love Story By Alexander Shulgin, Ann Shulgin Tihkal: The Continuation By Alexander Shulgin, Ann Shulgin The Shulgin Memorial (video) Shulgin on Alchemy, Basel, 2006

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Even a billion people is too much. There's no way back to the simplicity we once knew, but there may be a way forward to the simplicity that we once knew.” “The human imagination, which is our great glory, has grown so powerful that we can barely unleash it on the surface of the planet.” “Ideologies are cultural memes. They are the most confining of the cultural memes. That's where culture gets real ugly. It is when you rub up against its ideologies.” “What we now have is the freedom which attends decadence, or the decadence which attends freedom.” “For me it's an issue of are we afraid of ourselves? And we inherit a huge bunch of idealogical baggage, not only Christianity, but Freudianism, and Marxism . . . We inherit all kinds of idealogical baggage designed to make us fear ourselves.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Book mentioned in this podcast The Movemen

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “Information is just simply bootstrapping itself to higher and higher levels of self-reflection and self-coordination using whatever means are necessary.” “It's our machines and our technologies that are now the major evolutionary forces acting upon us. It's not our political systems.” “Everything will come true in cyberspace. That's the whole idea. What cyberspace is, on one level, it's simply the human imagination vivified, hardwired.” “In a sense, what's happening is that the unconscious mind is a luxury the human species cannot afford at this point in our dilemma, and so the unconscious mind is simply rising into consciousness by being hardwired into this global infrastructure.” “The thing that excites me about these informational technologies is I think we are going to be able to use virtual reality to show each other the insides of our own heads.” “The most beautiful things in the universe are inside th

Guest speakers: Dr. Roland Griffiths, Dr. Alicia Danforth, and Gabrielle Agin-Liebes PROGRAM NOTES: This program features a recording of a panel discussion and Q&A session that took place at the 2013 Burning Man Festival with three people who are currently on the front lines of psychedelic research: Dr. Roland Griffiths, Dr. Alicia Danforth, and Gabrielle Agin-Liebes. This is an overview session covering a wide range of psychedelic research currently underway. Their detailed talks about their work is available in earlier podcasts. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option Dr. Roland Griffiths Johns Hopkins University Psilocybin & Spirituality Current Psilocybin Research Projects Q&A with Roland Griffiths Dr. Alicia Danforth MDMA-assisted Therapy for Social Anxiety in Autistic Adults Gabrielle Agin-Liebes NYU Psilocybin Cancer Anxiety Study

Guest speaker: Sarah Lovering PROGRAM NOTES: Today we travel back in time once again to the 2013 Burning Man Festival where Sarah Lovering gave a Palenque Norte Lecture detailing her work with the Marijuana Policy Project. It was MPP that led a coalition of cannabis activists over a several year period leading up to the legalization referendum in Colorado. Sarah not only explains how that campaign unfolded, but she goes on to describe the community's long term plans for the ultimate legalization of cannabis in the U.S. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: During the 1980's, before the birth of the Web, Terence McKenna's workshops were just about the only source of information about psychedelics that reached the streets. While there was some information about psychoactive plants available in professional journals and university libraries, it took Terence to pull out this information and repackage it for the rest of us. In this June 1989 workshop, he does what he did best back then, give us a detailed inventory, continent by continent, of the psychoactive plants native to each area, along with a brief history of how humans interacted with them in the distant past. [The following quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “We can't sell short the spiritual power of cannabis, especially when eaten.” “In a way, this is a definition of shamanism. A shaman is a person who by some means has gotten out of their own culture.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option

Guest speaker: Sasha Shulgin PROGRAM NOTES: On June 2, 2014 Alexander “Sasha” Shulgin passed on to his next adventure. Although this podcast is a tribute to his life and work, I have decided to let it be told mainly in his own words. First you will hear the audio portion of a video tribute to Ann and Sasha Shulgin. Following that is a short interview of Sasha that was conducted by Terence McKenna. In closing I play the famous talk that Sasha gave at the 1983 Psychedelics and Spirituality Conference. Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option A Tribute to the Shulgins /*

Guest speaker: Rick Doblin PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Rick Doblin.] “Once you've produced the scientific data that's necessary to make a drug into a medicine, you've gone a long way towards mainstreaming the acceptance of these drugs as having beneficial properties. And then the step to legalization is not that far behind that.” “The government has a monopoly on the supply of marijuana that you can use in FDA-approved research. So even though there are 20 states and the District of Columbia [that have legalized medical marijuana], and there's marijuana everywhere, we've spent seven years trying to get 10 grams of marijuana for vaporizer research. We're the only people in America that can't get 10 grams of marijuana.” “We are all dying and we all have some anxiety about it. And so people are more scared of dying than they are of drugs. If we can show that people who are facing death can be assisted with psychedelics that's a powerful message.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select opti

Guest speakers: Glenn Greenwald and Stefan Molyneux PROGRAM NOTES: “What the NSA has done is essentially converted the Internet from this unprecedented zone of freedom into the most powerful means of surveillance ever known in human history.” -Glenn Greenwald [NOTE: The following quotations are by Stefan Molyneux.] “If we have a bitcoin universe, you don't get to print money for war. You don't get to have money for a prison/industrial complex. You don't get money for a war on drugs. You have to ask the people.” “So bitcoin gives us an opportunity to reclaim the power of the people to say yes or no to what the government claims that it wants to do.” “Freedom for the government is enslavement for the people. When the government is free the people are enslaved. When the government is contained then the people are free.” “To limit money is to limit political power.” “If we have a bitcoin universe, you don't get to print money for war. You don't get to print money for a prison/industrial complex. You don'

Guest speaker: Terence McKenna PROGRAM NOTES: [NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.] “We can step out of the assumption of a universal history in which we're trapped, and realizing this is the beginning of a kind of liberation.” “Our assumptions are the edges of our worlds.” “When we really understand time travel we may find out it's as common as dirt and has been going on all around us is all kinds of physical processes.” Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option