Richard Dawkins on Psychedelics

Graham Hancock questions Richard Dawkins on psychedelics and challenging his world view. Dr Dawkins, author of books such as The Selfish Gene: 30th Anniversary Edition--with a new Introduction by the Author and The God Delusion, is famous for his materialist views about the nature of reality and his belief that "the supernatural... can never offer us a true explanation of the things we see in the world and the universe around us."

On 3 November 2011, Dr Dawkins visited the British city of Bath to promote his new book The Magic of Reality and gave a reading at the Bath Central Library. In the Q&A session following the reading Graham Hancock, author of books such as Fingerprints of the Gods, Supernatural: Meetings with the Ancient Teachers of Mankind and Entangled, pointed out to Dr Dawkins that many traditional hunter-gather cultures believe there are other realities -- spirit worlds and so on and so forth -- and concrete techniques, such as the use of psychoactive plants, to access them. "As a scientist," Hancock asked, "have you ever seriously engaged such techniques to have first-hand experience of what they're talking about, and perhaps even to challenge your own concept of what is real?"

In view of Dr Dawkins' influence and importance as a shaper of public opinion his reply, given before an audience of several hundred, is a matter of public record and public interest and shows him to be more open-minded than many of his critics might allege.

Terence McKenna: What’s So Great About Mushrooms?

Terence McKenna on the Psychedelic Salon Podcast
Episode 287 What's So Great About Mushrooms? #1 FREE Download
Episode 288 What's So Great About Mushrooms? #2 FREE Download
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PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“There is no scientific truth, or new paradigm, can arrive in a vacuum vis-à-vis the opinions of the general informed public. If it doesn’t fly with the general informed public it doesn’t matter what degree of internal rigor it has, an idea is probably doomed to a kind of or a kind of obscurity.”

“How are we to relate to the plants which intoxicate? Do they drive us mad, or do they return us to the “religio” to our own origins? Are we to see the states of mind which they invoke as tremendously alien, or are we to see them as, in fact, a way of going back to the primary situation in which everything that we call human found genesis?”

“If you want to change people’s minds about something you have to get scientists to change their minds.”

“It’s actually cooperation is what nature seeks to consolidate and conserve. And it is the species which can make itself most user-friendly to its neighbor species which actually survives.”

“The de-sacrilizing of natural space is the process of cutting it into grids and erecting flat, planer surfaces along those grids to cut out the influx of energy that is part of the natural world.”

“Whatever Christianity was, it was a historical episode where the most patriarchal wrath extant on the planet was suddenly pumped full of so much energy that everything else was just shoved to the wall.”

“It’s impossible to stop the forward march of information.”

“This is the chaos at the end of history.”

“Because our culture crisis is so much deeper [than during the Renaissance], we are casting back to 20,000 or 30,000 years back into the past.”

“I think the task of finding the extraterrestrial is a task of recognizing it when you find it.”

“When talking about evolution it is important to remember that the cardinal dictum of Darwinian mechanics is that there is no teleology. That means that evolution is not moving toward something. All notion of purpose has to be given up. It isn’t that things evolve or move toward higher forms. It’s just that things complexify, and this complexification gives rise to what we define as higher form.”

“Culture is sort of a shockwave which follows behind language. Culture is fossilized language.”

“One of the reasons I think these psychedelic compounds still are important is because they catalyze the evolution of language.”

“I see the whole world we’re living in as basically the legacy of LSD.”

“The dreams of the alchemists of the 16th Century have been entirely realized in the technical accomplishments of the 20th Century.”

“[Acid] heads are in charge of designing the cutting edge of culture.”

“But there are no professionals in the field of self-exploration. That’s everybody’s job. I mean, you all are Ph.D.s in consciousness exploration, or if you’re not you should be, because what else have you got going?”

 www.GaianBotanicals.com

Carl Ruck: Mushrooms, Myth & Mithras

From: gnosticmedia.com
Podcast Episode #122 – DOWNLOAD MP3
Mushrooms, Myth & Mithras: The Drug Cult that Civilized Europe
Professor Carl A.P. Ruck interviewed by Jan Irvin

This episode is an interview with Prof. Carl Ruck, titled “Mushrooms, Myth and Mithras: The Drug Cult that Civilized Europe” and is being released on Friday, Sept. 23, 2011. My interview with Carl was recorded on Sept. 22, 2011.

Today Carl Ruck is back for his 3rd interview with us to discuss his explosive new book, Mushrooms, Myth and Mithras, The Drug Cult that Civilized Europe.

Carl A.P. Ruck is Professor of Classics at Boston University, an authority on the ecstatic rituals of the god Dionysus. With the ethno-mycologist R. Gordon Wasson and Albert Hofmann, he identified the secret psychoactive ingredient in the visionary potion that was drunk by the initiates at the Eleusinian Mystery. In Persephone’s Quest: Entheogens and the Origins of Religion, he proclaimed the centrality of psychoactive sacraments at the very beginnings of religion, employing the neologism “entheogen” to free the topic from the pejorative connotations for words like drug or hallucinogen.

Also included in this post is the video Heretical Visionary Sacraments Amongst the Ecclesiastical Elite" by Carl A. P. Ruck & Blaise Daniel Staples A talk presented to : The Italian Society for the Study of the States of Consciousness on August 30, 2003 at Perinaldo, Italy.

www.GaianBotanicals.com

Hurricane Irene Could Sprout Magic Mushrooms

Hurricane Irene Could Sprout Bumper Crop Of Magic Mushrooms
From: www.huffingtonpost.com
By: David Moye

Everyone knows the potential destructive power of hurricanes, but few people are aware that storms like Hurricane Irene encourage growth of psychedelic mushrooms.

Yes, it sounds trippy, but one of the strange aftermaths of a hurricane is an increased amount of mushrooms popping up -- especially the psilocybin -- or "magic" kind -- the ones that cause hallucinations.

According to Dr. Casey Simon, an addiction expert based in Orange County, Calif., hurricanes create the perfect climactic conditions for the mushrooms to grow.

"Mushrooms are spores and they multiply in moisture and are spread by wind," he told HuffPost Weird News.

Dr. Suneil Jain, a naturopathic physician in Scottsdale, Ariz., goes even further.

"The moisture, humidity, the wind and the temperature during hurricanes is the perfect climate for mushrooms," he told HuffPost Weird News. "Also, both hurricanes and mushroom growth are associated with new or full moons, so there may be a lunar element as well."

Jain says, generally, psychedelic mushrooms are noted by their bluish-gray stems, but stresses that many mushrooms can be toxic and ones picked in the wild should not be consumed unless they've been examined by an expert.

However, despite the hallucinogenic effects, he says that magic mushrooms are relatively safe.

"These substances have been used for centuries, with just a handful of cases of addiction, or long-term problems," he said. "Generally, they are fairly benign."

Recent studies by Johns Hopkins University suggest psilocybin mushrooms may have medical benefits, and Jain is one of those who believes the findings could have a positive impact on humanity.

"There is evidence that it can help in treating OCD, body dismorphia issues and even marital problems," he said.

Simon says the real danger of the mushrooms isn't the psilocybin.

"Some mushrooms can attract a fungus that makes them more toxic," he said. "It looks like a gray mold on the under side. Just a few differences in temperature can make a difference."

Jain says that's why experienced mushroom experts pick mushrooms when they are as fresh as possible.

"The optimal time to pick is right after the storm before the other elements can affect them," he said.

Still, the news that the whole East Coast of the U.S. could soon be awash in 'shrooms is bound to get every hippie worth his hemp sandals and hacky sack on the hunt for a new high.

Mushrooms are likely to pop up in locations where bark is used for decorative landscaping, like industrial parks and government offices, according to ethnobotanist Clark Heinrich

It's important to emphasize that wild mushrooms -- both mind-altering or not -- should not be consumed willy nilly, but Jain hopes to use the fact that so many potentially medicinal mushrooms will soon be popping up all over the East Coast as a way to raise a discussion about an aspect of the medical-pharmaceutical industry he doesn't like.

"There are a lot of medicinal plants that [have health benefits]," he said. "For instance, the main ingredient in statin drugs comes from red yeast rice. But instead of focusing on the plants that can heal, medical science tries to find the active ingredient, change it slightly and then market that so they can charge a lot."

"Besides that, singling out one ingredient in the plant, like psilocybin, doesn't take into account that everything in the plant, and that they all work together."

Dennis McKenna interview by Peter Gorman

Subscribe to the Psychedelic Salon Podcast

Podcast 276 – “Peter Gorman Interviews Dennis McKenna Part 1” Download Mp3
Podcast 277 – “Peter Gorman Interviews Dennis McKenna Part 2” Download Mp3
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Guest speakers: Peter Gorman and Dennis McKenna

Recorded in 1994

[NOTE: All quotations are by Dennis McKenna.]

“The idea that you could use these to actually explore other dimensions, real worlds that were outside the cognizance of our ordinary world, is really what I think fascinated me about psychedelics.”

“More than anything else, it [DMT] seemed to be not an experience, not a drug, but a place, an actual other dimension that you were plunged into.”

“In order to understand its limitations, I almost had to become the ‘enemy’. I had to become a scientist in order to understand the limitations of science.”

“I think that Ayahuasca is actually much more controllable than mushrooms. . . . I think that it is quite an amazing tool for self-understanding and for exploration. I think that it’s good for you, actually physically and psychologically good for you.”

“It’s no different than it ever was. When the Jesuits and the missionaries came to meso-America the first things to go, the first things to be stamped out was the knowledge of the sacred plants and the practice of using the sacred plants.”

“I think that Christianity linked with Calvinism has a hard time dealing with what you might call facts of biology, which in another phrase is sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. In some ways, life is about sex, drugs, and rock ‘n roll. Biology is about those things.”

“All experience is a drug experience. Whether it’s mediated by our own [endogenous] drugs, or whether it’s mediated by substances that we ingest that are found in plants, cognition, consciousness, the working of the brain, it’s all a chemically mediated process. Life itself is a drug experience.”

“He [Terence McKenna] will never let a fact get in the way of making a provocative statement. He’s a good story teller, but I think it’s important to remember that they are stories, and that he often makes mistakes in his lectures.”

“In that position, a guy who can pack the houses every time, I feel has a larger responsibility to the psychedelic community to refrain from making these completely off-the-wall comments, and to actually tell it like it is, not how he imagines it to be.”

“I’m sure that Terence views it as theater. I can’t believe that he takes what he says seriously. I mean, I can tell you that he doesn’t. Much of what he says he says it because it’s going to get a rise out of somebody. He’s always been that way.”

---

Peter Gorman

Writer, Explorer, Naturalist

• Web Site
• Blog
• Archive

Dennis McKenna

Writer, Ethnopharmacologist, Researcher, Explorer

• EROWID
• Psychedelic Salon
• Hefter Research Institute
• Wikipedia

www.EROCx1.com • www.GaianBotanicals.com

Electric Daisy Carnival LV 2011 Mp3’s

Unfortunately I was unable to score tickets to this years EDC in Las Vegas even though I could see the fireworks from my house. Talk about rubbing it in. At any rate many friends knew how badly I wanted to attend so they began sending me digital audio recordings made from some of the top performances at the 2011 Electric Daisy Carnival.

I will share those here in the name of community. If you have some that I am missing or have better copies of any listed, please do share. Big thanks to Paul Loeb.

For best results, right/ctrl click and Save As.

• Afrojack (set 1, set 2)
• Alesso
• Avicii
• Benny Benassi
• Chuckie
• Cosmic Gate
• Christopher Lawrence
• Crystal Method
• Dash Berlin
• Ferry Corsten
• Hardwell
• John O’Callaghan
• LA Riots
• Laidback Luke
• Manufactured Superstars
• Markus Schulz
• Martin Solveig
• Mogaui
• Paul Oakenfold
• Robbie Rivera
• Roger Sanchez
• Sander Van Doorn
• Sidney Samson
• Skrillex
• Steve Aoki
• Thomas Gold
• Tritonal
• Wippenberg
• Zedd

www.EROCx1.com

Timothy Leary archive sold to NY Library

On June 16, 2011 the New York Public Library announced that it has acquired the Timothy Leary archive for $900,000. The well organized, invaluable collection contains >335 well organized boxes equivalent to 412 linear feet of letters, manuscripts, research documents, notes, legal and financial records, printed materials, photographs, video and audio tapes, CDs and DVDs, posters and flyers, and artifacts, dating from Leary’s youth in the 1920s until his death in 1996.

William Stingone, curator of manuscripts at the library acknowledged Tim as one of the most influential figures of the 20th century and predicts the collection will help researchers get beyond the “myth making” around ’60s figures and “Hopefully we’ll be able to get to some of the truth of it here”. It will no doubt be of great resource for the recent resurgence of psychedelic research by Charlie Grob, Rick Strassman, Roland Griffiths and organizations such as Heffter Research Institute & MAPS.

The complete documentation from Leary’s early psychotropic drug experiments are in tact. Thomas Lannon, the library’s assistant curator for manuscripts and archives explained that much of the archive includes legitimate scientific research performed prior these substances being made illegal. Leary kept meticulous records at many points during his life. There are comprehensive research files, legal briefs, budgets and memos about the many institutes and organizations he founded, but there are also notes and documents from when he was on the run after escaping from a California prison with help from the Weather Underground. A folder labeled as notes from his “C.I.A. kidnapping” in 1973 is full of cryptic jottings recounting the details of his arrest in Afghanistan, at an airport in Kabul, after he fled the United States.

Partial list of items in the archive purchased from the Leary Estate include:

• Thousands of letters to Leary, many from luminaries of the 1960s era, including Aldous and Laura Huxley, Gerald Heard, Alan Watts, Jack Kerouac, Allen Ginsberg, William S. Burroughs, Peter Orlovsky, Charles Olson, Arthur Koestler, Huston Smith, Walter Houston Clark, Walter Pahnke, Humphry Osmond, Al Hubbard, Oscar Janiger, Cary Grant, Charles Mingus, Maynard Ferguson, Michael Hollingshead , Robert Anton Wilson, Gordon Wasson, Ken Kesey and Augustus Owsley Stanley. Other correspondence is with his family – including letters to and from his mother, his wives and his children – as well as publishers, attorneys, politicians and his numerous adversaries, including G. Gordon Liddy and law enforcement figures from local sheriffs to Drug Enforcement Agency and Central Intelligence Agency operatives.
• Professional and research papers, which will provide scholars a unique opportunity to study Leary’s clinical work from graduate school through his years at Millbrook, including hundreds of reports documenting the psilocybin-induced experiences Harvard graduate students and faculty, creative artists, prisoners at the Massachusetts State Prison at Concord, and theology students.
• Files and correspondence detailing Leary’s experience at Harvard University, including his initial acceptance, the university’s eventual resistance to his research, his controversial research methods and his eventual dismissal. These files depict the evolution of Leary’s studies from rigorous, empirical research into more free-flowing, scientifically problematic exploration, as well as the promotion of psychedelics.
• The complete records of the organizations Leary formed to continue his research after leaving Harvard, including the International Federation for Internal Freedom, Castalia Foundation and the League For Spiritual Discovery. These files, like those from Leary’s research at Harvard, include session reports, completed questionnaires, and letters describing the mushroom and LSD induced experiences of many notable cultural figures and Leary’s associates, such as Richard Alpert (Ram Dass) and Ralph Metzner. Letters among Leary and his research partners also document their turbulent and intense personal and professional relationships.
• Extensive correspondence, legal briefs, prison writings, letters of support and petitions sent to and produced by the four Leary defense funds during his time in prison after his arrest in 1973. There are also materials connected to his exile period in Algeria and Switzerland, including correspondence, notebooks, statements, letters and manuscript material.
• Copies of government documents, released to Leary under the Freedom of Information Act, pertaining to various agencies’ surveillance of Leary, as well as his arrest. Leary’s cooperation with the authorities, still considered by many as a betrayal of the counterculture, is also well documented.
• Computer generated text, correspondence and material relating to the computer revolution, the Biosphere project, space colonies, cryogenics and more from his time in Los Angeles.
• More than 300 videotapes and 300 audiotapes featuring Leary, including about 50 early lectures. A large portion of these tapes are noncommercial and probably represent the only copies in existence.
• Manuscripts of published books and articles, as well as a substantial number of unpublished works, some book length. Scores of unpublished essays on a variety of subjects, unproduced movie scripts, fiction and poetry are also included.

The archive is currently sitting in a storage complex in Long Island, waiting to be sorted and processed over the next 18 - 24. It is my hope that it will soon be digitized for the world to access online similar to Hofmann.org. A portion of the sale is being donated back to finance the processing of the material. When Tim announced his illness, he attempted to comfort us by saying something to the effect of “I will live forever, spreading through the WWW like a virus corrupting the minds of young people.” It has been heart breaking to see his website dead all these years and will be awesome to see Leary’s wish come full circle. I believe letters of support to the New York Public Library are appropriate, they may be contacted HERE. A big thank you to all who helped make this happen!

Further information may be found at:
FREE Mp3 recordings are featured on the Psychedelic Salon Podcast
NYT Article on TimothyLearyArchives.org
The Timothy Leary Movie Archive
www.EROCx1.com

Manly P. Hall: Gulliver's Travels Interpretation

Travels into Several Remote Nations of the World, in Four Parts.
By Lemuel Gulliver, First a Surgeon, and then a Captain of Several Ships. Better known simply as Gulliver's Travels. Published in 1726 amended 1735 By Jonathan Swift aka Dean Swift.   
Both a satire on human nature and a parody of the "travellers' tales" literary sub-genre. It is Swift's best known full-length work, and a classic of English literature. The book became popular as soon as it was published and has never been out of print since. 

 

Peace Revolution
Podcast Episode #29
Metaphors of Liberation
The Wisdom of Gullible's Travels

Manly P. Hall’s interpretation
of Gulliver’s Travels

Free Download: Mp3 Right Click, save file

Outstanding Lecture, well worth the download!

Great Google Ebook (1863) read online
PDF or ePub formats.

 

www.EROCx1.com
www.GaianBotanicals.com
Peace Revolution Podcast
www.gnosticmedia.com

 www.manlyphall.org

Jonathan Ott: Inebriating Potions from Agave

From our friend Lorenzo
Subscribe  to the Psychedelic Salon Podcast

Podcast 269: Inebriating Potions from Agave” 
Download: Mp3 File

This is a talk that Jonathan Ott gave in September 2004 at the Mind States Conference in Oaxaca, Mexico.
From the program for Mind States 2004:
Jonathan Ott will give a talk titled “From Octli/Pulque and Xochioctli to Mezcal and Vino de Mezcal Tequila”.
The ethnopharmacognosy of inebriating pre-Columbian potions based on octli or pulque, wine of various species of Agave, with special reference to numerous inebriating additives; traditional foods and beverages made from mezcal Agaves; and colonial development of distilled mezcal from fermented, cooked mezcal Agaves. Finally, more recent development of Vino de Mezcal Tequila or Tequila, a regional type of mezcal brandy, from cooked hearts of Agave tequillense or blue agave.
See: The Spirits of Maguey Erowid Extracts NOV2004

Jan Irvin: Logic, Fallacies & the Trivium

Tony Myers interviewing Jan Irvin following his
appearance at the Free Your Mind Conference

This interview goes into Entheogens, Critical Thinking, Logical Fallacies and the 7 Liberal Arts which are divided into the Trivium ("the three roads") and the Quadrivium ("the four roads").

The Trivium consists of:

• Grammar
• Rhetoric
• Logic

The Quadrivium consists of:

• Arithmetic - Number in itself
• Geometry - Number in space
• Music, Harmonics, or Tuning Theory - Number in time
• Astronomy or Cosmology - Number in space and time

I also recommend the Peace Revolution Podcast #23
How to Free Your Mind / The Occulted Keys of Wisdom
Free Download: Mp3

Notes, links, references, etc.:
Transcript of this episode, for your convenience.
1.     Jan Irvin’s Trivium and Quadrivium
interviews with Gene Odening, episodes 49, 50, 51
          a.    Video version: Trivium
          b.    Video version: Quadrivium
2.     Jan Irvin’s Fallacy interviews with Dr. Michael Labossiere
3.     Dr. Labossiere’s Fallacy video
4.     Peace Revolution episodes 1, 2, 3, etc., an entire podcast dedicated to a comprehensive or full-spectrum education
5.     What You’ve Been Missing episodes 1 and 2
6.    Government / "to control the mind" etymology: http://latindictionary.wikidot.com/noun:mens
from the Latin, mens, mentis, menti, mentem, mente; which are 3rd declension nouns which mean "mind", the ablative meaning "the mind". Gubernare (to control) + mente (the mind) = the root of government (to control the mind).

Also See: Critical Thinking and Logic

For more information on the Trivium www.triviumeducation.com
Interviews, lectures & videos from Jan Irvin www.gnosticmedia.com
For more from Tragedy & Hope visit: www.tragedyandhope.com

Terence Mckenna: Earliest Lecture Recorded

From our friend Lorenzo 
 Subscribe to the Psychedelic Salon Podcast

Podcast 267: Exploring the Abyss
Download: Mp3 File

This is possibly the oldest Terence McKenna lecture in existence. Recorded November 1982. The workshop was titled New & Old Maps of Hyperspace: Dreams, Hallucinogens & UFO’s.

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“My assumption whenever I am confronted with opposites is to try to unify them, to create a coincidentia oppositorum as was done in alchemy, to not force the system to closure but to try and leave the system open enough so that the differences can resonate and become complimentary rather than antithetical.”

“Shamanism, on the other hand [as compared with science], is this world wide, since Paleolithic times, tradition which says that you must make your own experience the centerpiece of any model of the world that you build. No amount of readings from meters, whether they’re metering cyclotrons or any other kind of instrument, are going to satisfy you.”

“What psilocybin focuses as a problem that these other hallucinogens do not is that it allows a dialogue with the other that is full of give and take. In other words there are entities in the hallucinogenic world that psilocybin, and DMT, and a few other not well-known or widely distributed plants, hallucinogens, induce.”

“Our alienation from ourselves has caused us to set up a number of straw men that are keeping us from building actually a mature model of how the universe really works. The content of the dialogue with the Other is a content that indicates that man’s horizons are infinitely bright.”

“Alchemy is about the generation of a psychic construct, a wholeness, a thing which has many properties, which is paradoxical, which is both mind and matter, which can do anything.”

“[UFOs are], in other words, something which in order not to alarm us has disguised itself as an extraterrestrial being but is in fact the collectivity of the human psyche signaling a profound historical crisis.”

“A mature humanity could get into a place where we no longer required these metaphysical spankings from messiahs and flying saucers that come along every thousand years or so to mess up the mess that has been created and try and send people off on another tack.”

“Eternity does not have a temporal existence, even the kind of temporal existence where you say it always existed. It does not have temporal duration of any sort. It is eternity.”

“We are not primarily biology with mind emerging as a kind of iridescence, a kind of epiphenomenon at the higher levels of organization of biology. We are in fact hyperdimentional objects of some sort which cast a shadow into matter. And the shadow in matter is the body.”

“The whole purpose of shamanism, and of life correctly lived, is to strengthen the soul and strengthen the relationship to the soul, so that this passage [death] can be cleanly made.”

“Technology is the real skin of our species.”

“There is not the Newtonian universe deployed throughout the parsecs and kiliacosoms of physical space and the interior mental universe. They are the same thing.”

“An Aquarian science, or a science that places psychedelic experience at the center of its program of investigation, should move toward a practical realization of the goal of eliminating the barrier between the ego and the overself so that the ego can perceive itself as an expression of the overself.”

“This [psilocybin] is a source of gnosis, and the voice of gnosis has been silenced in the Western mind for at least a thousand years.”

“We can release this thing once again. The logos can be unleashed once again, and the voice that spoke to Plato and Parmenadies and Hericlitus, that voice can speak again in the minds of modern people. And when it does, the alienation will be ended because we will have become the alien.”

“But the main thing about psilocybin, and I stress it over all these other hallucinogens, is information, immense amounts of information.”

“Only through the medium of sight can the true modality of this logos be perceived.”

“This situation called ‘history’ is totally unique. It will only last for a moment. It began a moment ago. It will only last for a moment. But in that moment there is like this tremendous burst of static as the monkey goes to godhood.”

“We, and I, we are intellectuals trapped in a world of too much information. Innocence is gone for us. We cannot expect to cross the rainbow bridge through a good Act of Contrition. That won’t be sufficient. . . . Because to fear death is to not understand what’s going on. And to even see it as a big deal is to not understand what’s going on, although I don’t claim to have reached that exalted plane.”

www.EROCx1.com

San Francisco Gathering Sets

The Gathering Sets

These MP3 files are created from WAV files, which were generated from the DATs recorded from the mixing desk at each party.

We started recording with audio tapes from 1992 to 1996, and with DAT from 1996 onwards. We intend to create MP3 files from the content of the audio tapes and post them here over the next few months.

• 1992 October Gathering 1992 October Gathering – Tony
• 1992 October Gathering – Josh
• 1992 October Gathering – Garth
• 1992 October Gathering – Doran
• 1997 April Gathering – Monty & Josh
• 1997 June Basics
• 1997 June Basics - Tony
• 1997 June Basics - Mark E Quark
• 1997 June Basics - Andre Lucero
• 1997 June Basics - Carlos
• 1997 June Basics - Josh
• 1997 June Basics – Spun
• 1997 July Freedom
• 1997 July Freedom - Stacey Pullen
• 1997 July Freedom - Roy Davis Jr and Peven Everett
• 1997 July Freedom - Jon Williams
• 1997 July Freedom - Spun
• 1997 July Freedom - Tony
• 1997 July Freedom – Josh
• 1997 October Gathering
• 1997 October Gathering- Josh
• 1997 October Gathering- Tony
• 1997 October Gathering- Onionz
• 1997 October Gathering- Jason Mess
• 1997 October Gathering- Jeno
• 1997 December Gathering
• 1997 December Gathering - Tony
• 1997 December Gathering - Dan
• 1997 December Gathering - Harry
• 1997 December Gathering - Jeno
• 1997 December Gathering - Josh
• 1997 December Gathering - Mark Farina
• 1998 January Basics/Come-Unity
• 1998 January Basics/Come-Unity - Markie
• 1998 January Basics/Come-Unity - Josh
• 1998 January Basics/Come-Unity – Simon
• 1998 February Basics 
• 1998 February Basics - Steve Loria
• 1998 February Basics – Simon
• 1998 February Basics – Josh
• 1998 February Basics - Terry Francis
• 1998 February Basics – Tony
• 1998 March Vision
• 1998 March Vision – Tony 
• 1998 March Vision – Jeno 
• 1998 March Vision - Gene Farris
• 1998 April Gathering
• 1998 April Gathering - Alex Patterson 1
• 1998 April Gathering - Alex Patterson 2
• 1998 April Gathering - Joe Rice
• 1998 April Gathering - Nick Philips
• 1998 April Gathering - Stuart McMillan
• 1998 April Gathering - Tony
• 1998 April Gathering - Jeno
• 1998 April Gathering - Josh
• 1998 April Gathering - Tony
• 1998 April Gathering - Orde Meikle
• 1998 July Freedom
• 1998 July Freedom - Jon Williams
• 1998 July Freedom - Tony
• 1998 July Freedom - Spun
• 1998 July Freedom - Jeno
• 1998 July Freedom - Huggy
• 1998 July Freedom - Onionz
• 1998 July Freedom - Terry Francis
• 1998 December Gathering
• 1998 December Gathering - Simon 'Faze Action' Lee
• 1998 December Gathering - Mark Rae
• 1998 December Gathering - Deep Dish
• 1998 December Gathering - Joe Rice 1
• 1998 December Gathering - Joe Rice 2
• 1998 December Gathering - Josh 1
• 1998 December Gathering - Josh 2
• 1998 December Gathering - Romanthony
• 1999 April Gathering
• 1999 April Gathering - Onionz
• 1999 April Gathering - Eric Spire
• 1999 April Gathering - Huggy
• 1999 April Gathering - Joe Rice
• 1999 April Gathering - Jon Santos
• 1999 April Gathering - Noel
• 1999 April Gathering - Onionz
• 1999 April Gathering - Mr. Scruff 1
• 1999 April Gathering - Mr. Scruff 2
• 1999 April Gathering - Mr. Scruff 3
• 1999 June Basics
• 1999 June Basics - Garth
• 1999 June Basics - Spun
• 1999 June Basics - Tony
• 1999 June Basics - Josh
• 1999 June Basics - Jeno
• 1999 July Freedom
• 1999 July Freedom - Jon Williams
• 1999 July Freedom - Spun
• 1999 July Freedom - Josh
• 1999 July Freedom - Phil Smart
• 1999 July Freedom - Terry Francis
• 1999 July Freedom - Huggy I
• 1999 July Freedom - Huggy II
• 1999 September Gathering
• 1999 September Gathering - Doc Martin
• 1999 October Basics
• 1999 October Basics - Josh
• 1999 October Basics - Simon
• 1999 October Basics - Tony
• 1999 December Gathering
• 1999 December Gathering - Tony
• 1999 December Gathering - MarkEQuark
• 1999 December Gathering - Onionz
• 1999 December Gathering - Halo
• April 2000 Basics
• April 2000 Basics - Mark E Quark
• April 2000 Basics - Tony
• July 2000 Freedom
• July 2000 Freedom - Carlos
• July 2000 Freedom - 'Evil' Eddie Richards
• July 2000 Freedom - H-Foundation
• July 2000 Freedom – Tony 
• September 2000 Basics
• September 2000 Basics - Tony
• 2002 May Basics
• 2002 May Basics - Leo Lennard
• 2002 May Basics - Jeno
• 2002 May Basics - Markie
• 2002 May Basics - Tony
• 2007 July Basics
• 2007 July Basics - Bones
• 2007 July Basics - Spun
• 2007 July Basics - Galen
• 2007 July Basics - Tony
• 2007 July Basics - Jeno

History...

In 1991, the Gathering parties were born. Malachy (Come-Unity), Tony (Pieces), Kenny & Harry (Destiny), and Martin (Eklypz), met and the circle was now complete. We were four small parties joining as one to try to bring the scene together for a massive party. During the first meeting Mal busted out a Hopi Indian prophecy book with the passage.....

Hopi Indian Prophecy for 1991 (The year of the first Gathering):

For those who stay here on Grandmother Earth,
They will totally gain the light of the great light wheel.
There will be one humanity, one planet composed of all the different ways of dancing in complete harmony in the great gathering together circle.
In 1991 the seeds will be planted....

Peace & Love, & please help us spread the word.The Gathering Family

www.EROCx1.com

Terence McKenna: The Final Interview

From my friend Lorenzo & Erik Davis / Wired Magazine

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Podcast 262 – “Terence McKenna’s Last Interview” Download Mp3
Podcast 263 – “Terence McKenna’s Last Interview” Download Mp3

 

[NOTE: All quotations are by Terence McKenna.]

“But I did [as a child] spend a lot of time grappling with shit like the nature of the soul, and the nature of sin, and all of these imponderables. And, of course, what you end up doing is you end up reading scholars of mysticism.”

“To me it’s the most psychedelic part of the psychedelic experience, it’s when you get the logos coming out of the trees, the rocks, the berries, the water, everything.”

“[Speaking about how to pursue a psychedelic culture.] Well, I’d say the wrongly-packaged version would be something like ‘Castenadaism’, a formulaic cult. Do these things, take these drugs, follow these instructions and moral obligation will flee from your kin. Nobody can be that foolish. If, on the other hand, you sincerely pursue this stuff, grow the plants, try to understand it, try to revivify the rituals and figuring out what it’s all about, well, that’s an authentic push towards spirituality, a very authentic push towards spirituality, and probably fruitful.”
“It seems to me that ‘the shamanic drug of the month’ is not a very appealing idea.”

“The basic concept [of alchemy] is that somehow intuition and nature are reflective of each other. Until that hypothesis fails we should probably hang on to it, because look how far we’ve gotten. I mean it is really bizarre how much of nature the human mind seems to be able to understand.”

“[I'm hoping] that some lack of resource or vision doesn’t reveal that we can’t give enough people a bearable life. So we [would then] have to live forward into an age of revolution, social turmoil, and struggle for resources. It doesn’t have to be this way.”

“Now let’s see if information can liberate. That’s why I don’t want to do something stupid like die and miss the whole unfoldment of this proposition that knowledge is power, information will liberate. And it will be settled in the next ten or fifteen years. Either they’ll get a handle on it, whoever ‘they’ are, whatever a ‘handle means. Or it will slip from their control, and it will be clear that some kind of dialogue is now going on between individual human beings and the sum total of human knowledge, and that nothing can stop it, that some kind of Renaissance, some kind of total new relationship to knowledge and possibility is put in place.”

“The trick to making the shamanic virtual world compelling is to fairly and truly convey it. You can’t cut corners. You can’t fake it. . . . So that this stuff really does blow people’s minds, so that people see, well, human imagination is large enough to accommodate the human soul. It doesn’t leave you feeling like you’re wearing too tight a pair of shoes.”

“We have no idea how strange the world we can create in the near term will be.”

“Given the circumstances as we find them, what rational momentum is there to think that life is unique and arose on this planet only?”

“I think that’s the question that remains unanswered, you know, that’s the grail of the thing. What is the nature of the Other, is basically what you’re asking. Is it a construct, a projection or a discovery? It’s not clear to me what it is.”
“ You can’t believe everything you hear. The are of many kind, ‘some are made of ions, some of mind, the ones of DMT, you’ll find, stutter often and are blind.’”

“I think [ketamine] is an inter-uterine memory drug. I think there are things about it that cause you to recapture some kind of inter-uterine state.”

“The psychedelic vision is of some kind of relevant thing. It isn’t just the equivalent of a dust bunny under your psychic bed or something like that.”

“Mathematics is really what it’s all about when you finally get it sliced thin, I think.”

“All doubt means is that ‘I’m shopping, thank you.’”

[Before I had cancer] I had no idea that such peculiar states of mind were naturally available to people, and non-lethal. In other words that you could have fairly frequent brain seizures and experience very bizarre states of body/mind dislocation and have it not kill you. So now I see that the spectrum of human experience is a lot broader than I previously imagined.”

“The mind can adjust to a great deal more than that which simply kills it.”

“Given how weird life has been, why rush to prejudge death. It’s bound to be mighty strange, life was mighty strange, and I’m curious. … It’s an interesting situation to be told that you have a very limited amount of life left, because it composes your mind for you, wonderfully.”

“What psychedelics show is that the world is full of surprises. I consider psychedelics a constant and verifiable miracle. The fact that that can happen to your mind. So it means that all kinds of things are possible.”

www.EROCx1.com

Neil Postman: Amusing Ourselves to Death

History of Media in America
Education for your Edification
Peace Revolution Podcast #25
By: Neil Postman

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Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business (1985) is a book by educator Neil Postman.

The book's origins lie in a talk Postman gave in 1984. He was participating in a panel on Orwell's 1984 and the contemporary world. In the introduction to his book Postman said that the contemporary world was better reflected by Aldous Huxley's Brave New World, whose public was oppressed by their addiction to amusement, than by Orwell's 1984, where they were oppressed by state control.

Invitation link to the Tragedy and Hope online community

Neil Postman (1931 — 2003) was an American critic and educator. Postman received his B.S. from the State University of New York at Fredonia and his M.A. and Ed.D. from Columbia University. He was the Paulette Goddard Chair of Media Ecology at New York University and chair of the Department of Culture and Communication. His pedagogical and scholarly interests included media and education, as can be seen in many of his seventeen books, including Amusing Ourselves to Death (1985), Conscientious Objections (1988), Technopoly: The Surrender of Culture to Technology (1992), and End of Education (1995). Postman died in 2003.

• Neil Postman Bibliography
• Propaganda (ETC Vol. 36)
• The Educationist as Painkiller (English Education 1988)
• Language Education in a Knowledge Context (ETC Vol. 37)
• Social Science as Theology (ETC Vol. 41)
• Foreword from Amusing Ourselves to Death
• Five Things We Need to Know About Technological Change
• Science and the Story That We Need (from First Things 69)
• A Graduation Speech
• Profile of Philo Farnsworth (from Time Magazine)
• Neil Postman Ponders High Tech (Q&A Forum 1996)
• Informing Ourselves To Death (given at a meeting of the
• "Technology and Education," lecture by Neil Postman 1994.
• The Error of Our Ways (August 1, 1995)
• The American Experiment (September 6, 1995)
• Commentary: Learning in the Age of Television (1985)
• Ray Suarez (from NPR) interviews Neil Postman on the state of contemporary American education standards.
• Neil Postman on the topic "In Search of New Ideas."
• Neil Postman speaks about Media Ecology Education at the SCA conference, Chicago 1973. Part 1 & Part 2. [MP3]

2012 Message of Hope: Global Meditation

We are arranging a monthly world meditation, visualization and prayer across the whole wide world to heal ourselves and the planet and lift the consciousness of every being. Join us in global meditation! You can meditate on the first Sunday or at the New Moon in every month, or both. We do this because the NEW MOON is an unbiased celestial event strongly linked to our psyche happening at the same global time all over the planet, unlike the calendar event that is bound to the western calendar. But now you can choose.

There is no time left to be complacent. The world is changing now. Not tomorrow. Be part of the change for good. The love. Not the fear. Let go your attachment to the old world and embrace the new.

Learn to meditate for free! Ten day course: www.dhamma.org/

The most important thing is that everyone is aware of the day being a World Meditation Day with people meditating all around the world at this day. Be it at the same global time, or different times during the 24 hour period. If you don’t sit in meditation you can spend the time sending love and positive feelings to your surroundings.

DATE 1: First Sunday of every month.

Anytime during the Sunday will be fine, but the core time is 7 – 8 in the evening, local time.

DATE 2: New Moon of every month.

Anytime during the New Moon day will be fine, but the core hour STARTS at the New Moon global time.

Use the New Moon calendar to find the next new moon or look at the list to the right.

Use the timezone converter to find your local time.

PLACE: Your home, a church, a mosque, a classroom, outside, wherever you are.

WITH: Your group, your self, friends, family, collegues, anyone.

HOW: Anyway you want. Check out our meditation page for a guided audio meditation, and links for how to meditate and different approaches to this.

Join the Choice Point Facebook community

How the Hippies Saved Physics

How the Hippies Saved Physics
David Kaiser Professor, science, technology & society, MIT

MIT Professor David Kaiser describes the field of physic's bumpy transition from New Age to cutting edge.

In recent years, the field of quantum information science has catapulted to the cutting edge of physics. Long before the big budgets and dedicated teams, however, the field smoldered on the scientific sidelines within the hazy, bong-filled excesses of the 1970s New Age movement. Many of the ideas that now occupy the core of quantum information science once found their home amid an anything-goes counterculture frenzy, a mishmash of spoon-bending psychics, Eastern mysticism, LSD trips, CIA spooks chasing mind-reading dreams, and comparable "Age of Aquarius" enthusiasts.