______--- ~~0~~~ '~~ ~0~~~~ ~°~~~.~'~~~~~~"~~~~~~~~~~ .~~=~~_"~~~m~~~~~w~~nw~~»~~m~mmmnnm~~~~~m~~mmvmm~m~a .~~°, Terence McKenna

In Praise of Psychedelics Rumbling up from the '60s comes one gifted Irishman with the message:

The race cannot afford to give up all drugs.

BY JAY LEVIN

rice upon a time, while "housennfe-mother" in a small, largely fun- hallucinogens and will not advance past its DMT, which is a natural plant compound on one of my rare excur- damentalist Colorado town, Paonina, current primitivism and reach new dimensions that's been synthesized sions into in the laboratory, is hvpercon- McKenna recalls that the book left him of evolved without further use of the most powerful of the psychedelics and sciousnesr (on this "completely rwepr away . I remember follow- these narun-given means of expanded aware- is extremely short-acting . After one expo- occasion via mescaline), ing my mother around our kitchen, telling her ness. According to McKenna, no fan of the sure to it, 1 said : "This isn't a is someone played for drug, this me a Terence McKenna that if one-tenth of what this guy was saying pop drugs - crack, smack, et al . - or pop magic! This is a dimension to reality that tape. I was transfixed. McKenna was one of was true, then this was what l want to do with drug use, this pharmacology should be entrust- most people the loveliest never even suppose exists ." speakers I'd ever heard, with a my life . " lF7iat in fact he has done u spend 20 ed to specially trained psychotherapy profes- It was really the DMT that empowered lush Irish gift the gab of and an extraordinary years studying the philosophical foundations of sionals - the potential shamans of postmodern my commitment to the psychedelic experi- ability to turn difficult intellectual concepts , the use of hallucinogens in spiri- - and he is a happy crusader for the ence. DMT was into verbal so much more powerful, poetry. That his subject matter was tual transformation, and the enormous impact expanded legalisation of the use of such so much more alien, raising all the the kinds of of consciousness of the human and potential of natural hallucinogens an our materials by the profession. issues about what is reality, what is lan . , and particularly the role psychedel- evolving of planetary culture and emerging These days, when not out lecturing or guage, what is the self, what is three. ics in that evolution, made the tape a particu- "metaconsciousncss. " searching for new larly natural hallucinogens in the dimensional space and time, all the engaging experience in my elevated state. McKenna took hit first psychedelic - LSD --fan= of the world, McKenna spends his But questions I because involved with over the what truly converted me into a McKen- - in the '60s at Berkeley, when he was a stu- tune between his home in Mann and his So. next 20 years or so . na fan wear the levels on which he explored dent activist in the free-speech and ant-war tanieal Dunennow garden rift in Hawaii - a Arid what had been for some time I saw the psychedelic experience as one of the major movements. An an history major at first, he non-profit effort at preserving the natural me- recovering our birthright. The number of strains in my own thinking. that history, as toe participated vi a special prvgrom for gifted dictnal and prychotropic plants of the people and have know and that gone to u define it it ending, 77th was an students in which "the literature, am science, from the mrarer of civilisation. He lectures maturity and then to death without an ink- awareness I'd arrived at early in ny joronalis- mathematics, what have you " of different his- frequently to psychotherapists, and is a per- ling of tic toner while this is to me the most shocking researching a magazine amgn- torical periods were studied in depth. This laid sonal consultant to some of them. His books, thing about the human situation . Because ment on the new psychotherapies. a On mart the groundwork for what he calls his "broad- : Magic Mushroom Grower's you are not a fully matured human being in scale, were people able w break free from the brush" approach to exploring the history of Guide (written with his brother Demns) and touch with the potential of reality unless psychologital patterns and deadarks of his- human consciousness. True Hallucinations, at well as tapes his you have tory, I of had a psychedelic experience. reasoned, then all our views of human Halfway through college, harassed by Rea- remarkable lecturer and computer programs of You don't have to embrace or affairs change and it - abuse it would history at we'd gan's cops because of his barricades-sryle polit- his "time wow" theories, are available from - but you have to know it exists. And learned it - the baffles of nation states, the ical actirnsrn in the student strike of 1967, Lax Planers, 1140 Shattuck Are ., Box 2196, there's only one way snuggles to know it exists, and between classes, the endless fight for McKenna decided a sabbatical was in order Berkeley, CA 94704 . that's to have it . human equality - world in fact become men and vent off to work as an art historian in What occasions this interview is McKenna's WEEKLr Tim Leary was saving much the same foomow in the annals of the species. It seemed , where he tried to "integrate the psyche- impending Tune 5 public appearance at the thing in the '60s, and it go him into trouble. only a matter of a couple of centuria. delic experience into a Buddhist model. " This nearby Ojat Foundation, when he will give a What's the difference with you? To this view McKenna resonated in with led him to the study of Tibetan shamanism. seminar entitled "The Return to Eden. " One MCKENIU: You know, I very extrapolanorts am much at from molecular chemistry, phys- Both cultures, he discovered, used psychoac- day earlier, on June 4, he will co-lecture with variance with the wisdom of hindsight in ics, emhnobotany, anthropology, the "marke- rroe drugs in their psychic explorations - Riane Eisler. author of The Chalice and the looking back at how Leary and Alpert and maticr of chaos, " Jung, McLuhan and much hathish and a local herb called Datura. Thus Blade, ', the ground-breaking anthropological Metzner handled it in the '60s . But to try more. And what made his talk`mon compel- began his investigation into the true nature of study of male-fenwle partnering, on Tech- to launch a "children's crusade," to try to ling, at least during my own mescaline medita- shamanism. He later finished his degree at the nologies of Liberation. " From June 3-5 the co-opt the destiny of the children tums, of the was his argument that the species' Department of Conservation of Natural Re- two will also conduct a seminar entitled "Man middle class using the media as your ad- ability (eventually) to transcend our own tusk sources at San Francisco State, when, he and Woman at the End of History. " Contact vance man, was a very risky business history . Arid stems chiefly from the impact, throrigh- says, he was a "selforgansaed major in sha- the Ojai Fonndaton at P. O . Box 1620, it rebounded, I think, badly . out history, what of McKem s called "botani- manism . " Ojai, CA 93023 (805-646-8343) . Those who I think Huxley's approach was much cal shamanism . " In other words, God's owe Apart from his wide knowledge, what know and enjoy Joseph Campbell's work unit more intelligent - not to try to reach the given psychedelics - mushrooms, peyote, aya- makes McKenna fascinating it that he has almost certainly appreciate McKenna. . largest number of people, but to try to huafra, morning glory, et al. himself experienced virtually every form of reach the most important and influential McKenna, as it turns out, has never met psychedelic and pyschotropw known to or people : the poets, the architects, the Tim Leary, whom, it seems, he is about to re- dewed by man, and yet, throughout all these WEEIL1 : You've implied that LSD is not truly politicans, the research scientists and, es. place as the culture's foremast spokesperson for experiences, has managed to retain the keen- "shamanistic "; that ir, that it doesn't induce pecially, the psychotherapists . Because the psychedelic experience . When Mary was eyed, scientific, intellectual observer part of his the higherfonts of "hallucenarsom "or wionr what we're talking about is the greatest brilliant and original in both his experimenta- consciousness which, after the experience, is or consciousness available from natural prod- boon to psychotherapy since Freud . I often and his tion salesmanship, bfcKema it bril- able to describe its nature in the most extraor- ucu like pslocybin mushrooms. Hour do you make the metaphor that psychedelics are to liant, scholarly and priestly (n the best sense dinarily lucid decal. He has thus experienced compare a w other psychedelics? psychology what telescopes in the 16th of the last word). In fact, though a child of the levels of awareness described by some of the MCKEIKk Wben 1 was young, I would take century were to astronomy. If a person is '60s, the 41 yearold McKenna came to his gnat mvstus of the past, but unlike most of LSD once a month or so, but I wasn't that not willing to look through the telescope, fascination with "ethnopharmaeology, " as he them can relate his experiences to the cultural crazy about it . 1 found it abrasively psycho- he cannot call himself an astronomer . And calls it, nor through through Leary but the far and historical evolution of the species . analytical, and I alw found it very hard to if 2 person is not willing to learn the lessons more cautious and spiritual , These experiences have led him to one pro- hallucinate . My interest in , art of the psychedelic compounds, then any whose Doors of Perception he read when he found and overriding conclusion : The human and that sort of thing had caused me to put therapy he or she doses -any thinking he was 14 . The son of a traveling salesman for species has evolved to its present dominant a very high premium on hallucination . does about the human psyche - is sand . heavy-dusv electrical equipment and of a state through the use of naturally occurring Then 1 encountered DMT in early 1%7 . continued on next page

t n M1 .VTi IWm W(fxlr 1 7 UcKEN11A continued trorn previous Page What's the empirical evidence its of being only mysticism, what you're always talking everything into agendas, turn the opposi . 1,000 tears aid? about is the boxed. These are the most unspeakable. The un- tion into the enemy, then embark on the powerful agents MCKE//L You must know this book by thinkable . The unimaginable for uncovering the structure and potential . And psyche . old-style politics that have led us Julian James called The Evolution of Con- defies propel you through your local into of the human mind these are. this impasse . sciousness and the Breakdown of the Bicam- and into this unimaginable realm . WEEKLY : Patriarchal WEEKLY : You've said psilocybut u the most im- eral Mind? politics? Well, he makes a very inter . People need to be empowered, and MCKEM Patriarchal politics portant ofthe naatnsl kdZurtnogam. What has esting case. He . The politics says that even as late as you're not empowered by placing your of propaganda. The politics of money. The been -vow experience with it? Homeric times, people wandered around spiritual development in the hands of a politics of hopelessness. I am a political ac- MCKE11wL Actually, my fast experience rather automatically, and when they got . You're spiritually empowered by tivist, but I think the first duty of political with psikscybin was when I encountered it into a very tight spa, suddenly in there taking responsibility for your spiritual de- activists is to psychedefcize themselves . South America, in the Amazon . The would be a voice in their head saying, DMT experience velopment, by looking around and seeing Otherwise, you're not making your moves had acted like a compass. "You're in a tight spa . Here's what you what an It said. "Ah-hat That's where we be done . In a way, I see the entire with cognizance of the entire field of ac. want to should do." They caLed this God, or a as a (light from the go." But the DMT flash only lasts about psychedelic tion . This is the thing. The importance of god, or the king (living or dead) . This ego, experience. People will do anything other three minutes, and we had the feeling - human values has to be brought back into the voice we now all "me," is something than take a psychedelic compound . Be re- the discussion my brother and I - that if you could get in that of political priorities. This has been assimilated in the wake of birdied, Rolfed, this, that and the other was attempted there for 45 minutes, you could really learn civilization as in the '60s; now it's pre. a necessary means of adap. thing. Because they instinctively sense that sented as a joke that people something that would astonish people. tating to socialization . would ever Now, coming out of the psychedelic experience is real. It puts stand up and say love is the answer. It's in- And in fact there's no end to it. It intro- the HER= and dualist kinds of structures You on the line . It isn't like a five-hour conceivable in the present milieu. daces you to a world of infinite beauty that that were put on us by Christianity is cognizable and drumming session, or deep-tissue work . WEEERU: It would be Mufti) at this pant ifyott by human beings, print media and a number of cultural fac . So the issue foully comes down to: the would define "shantamssn. I I WEEKLY: What was your fort murboom expe- toss, we need to again reconnect nence like? with the citizen versus the Seth The citizen is an ex . MCKMA: Okay. Shamanism is the archaic MCKEKIC What was amazing about the techniques of ecstasy that were developed mushrooms, and it continues to be amaz- independent of any religious - ing, is that it's asirteate, that there's some. the empirically validated, experientially 'The-most extraordinary thing'obout the.. operable one talking to you . This was actually a voice techniques that produce ecstasy . in the head, making sense, speaking in DMT-:experience: is. you see entities. You-' Ecstasy is the contemplation of wholeness . English and addressing the concerns that That's why when you experience ecstasy - were most important to me personally. I encounter beings, whom" I've described when you contemplate wholeness - you was rat set up for this . come down re-made in terms of the politi- WEEKLY: Did you recognize the voice as being as self-transforming machine elves.. They _ cal and social arena because you have seen different from the voice with which you nor- the larger picture . mally talk to yourself? are obviously, in fact, the basis of- the WEEKLY: Nom u it manifested in shamanistic MCKEIIA : Yes, and I recognized that the in- acts? idea of elves, MCKEKIIA : formation was not something that 1 could and. they are the denizens Through the ability to cure . the have cone up with . That was the proof of shaman can confer psychological whole- of this other dimension ness the otherness of the voice. And I think . They are trying to on the people who come to him with what's really happening is that a dialogue teach something . Well, if I'm problems . He acts as an exemplar . He is opens up between the ego and these larger, not com- like a superhuman person, simply by vir- tue of more integrated parts of the psyche that are pletely mad, then it's big news. the fact that he is together. He is not normally hidden from view . Ego may be a confused . He knows when to hang on and when fairly modern invention - meaning the last to let go . See, what erodes hope is in. ertia, and the momentum of negative psy. 1,000 or 2,000 years - a fairly modern next level of the overmind - this globally tretnciy limited definition of human poten- chological activity . What the shaman sees adaptation of the psyche to its enviton . conscious, ecologically sensitive, balanced, merit tial . The self is a definition of human is that the momentum of negative activity . One of the things happening in the humane, caring kind of consciousness, Amazon is potential so broad that it threatens the obli- is, in fact, an illusion . And by simply people say they enter into a which we can access only with considerable gations of the group mind when they take it, and citizen . changing your mind, you just step aside only effort, through self-discipline, psychother. WEEKLY: Who does life look like then make decisions about the - to the fuay and the momentum sweeps past you and ropy, psychedelics, this kind of thing. self-realized person? where to hunt, who to make war on, where you are transformed . So it's with the ma11e- WEEKLY: In studying spiritual systems and MCKEIKA: Well, I certainly don't consider ability to move to, these kinds of things. drugs, did you of mind that the shaman works, and find drug-taking among eke myself to be one, so I can only begin to he has a larger WEEKLY: On a virtiortary or an oral basis? lrbetan Buddhists? view because he is not really answer. What life looks like is extremely in his culture, and I found this MCKEKIA : Visionary and oral. Collective . MCKEKIA: Not so much over and among the Bud. hopeful. The human potential is so vast . over again. Each culture has its own peculi . They see collectively what is to be done . I dhists, but I found myself spending more We don't have any problems that we can't arities and assumptions and phobias and think that this is a dissolving of the power and more time with the pre-Buddhist sha- solve by applying ourselves to them with faux pas . The shaman may appear to be a of the ego, allowing it to contact what I all mans . And then I went to India. I had open minds. Now, you see, the current member of the culture, but he's broader, the "overmind," but which someone studied yoga, but what the yogic texts might theoryallof problem-solving is that we must deeper, higher and wider than the culture call the "superego." In other words, don't tell you is that almost all sadist, all solve this much larger, our problems with solutions that that creates him . much wiser organizing yogis, are inveterate huh-smokers and/or make the force that we all carry buck. Well, it just may not be A great psychotherapist to my mind around inside our- users of Datura and were at that time, in possible to solve the selves but, ordinarily, we an problems of the 20th would be a great shaman - and there are only access the late '60s, absolutely fascinated by LSD century and nuke a buck at the same time under situations of extreme psychological . some very good ones . I don't want to name and the psychedelic drugs coming from the But if we're willing to put aside the notion, names 'cause pressure or crisis . And then there's a little West . I don't want. to leave anyone then the human future appears endlessly feeling hurt . l admire (lash of wisdom . Like a chemical habit, we WEEKLY: Among the psychotherapists . I pre-Buddhist rhamaro, bright, because the human mind appears to think they are trying to remake the sha . are hooked on ego. And the psychedelic was there drug use? be a much more open pipeline to God than monistic institution in a modern form . dissolves that chemical or psychological de . MCKEIIA: Well, I don't think that there is anyone who is outside the psychedelic ex . What they have to realize is that they're pendency and replaces it with the facts of really any difference . That is, if you study the natter: how perience could ever imagine. And God ap . wasting then time unless they use the sha- the individual fns into the shamanism artfully, most shamanism that pears to be a life and organization of much more benevolent and manistic tools . And the foremost tool of the this planet, the vast is vital is hallucinogenic-plant shamanism. involved force in human amounts of time all these things have affairs than the shamans is the technique of ecstasy, and been WEEKLY : Nova did the level of mystical aware- kind of image we have in existence and have worked themselves to inherited from that means the hallucinogenic plants . If ness and manifestation of the shamans com- Western religion . you then present status . pare with suggested to a South American shaman the ashram of India? Now, why should taking a natural psy- that he could do it It was my reading in lung, which hap. MCKEIIA: As an without the plants, it anarchist and skeptic, I chedelic drug compound like psilocybin would be absurd, like pened very early, that put me strongly in saw India basically a suggesting to a stunt as very stratified kind give you hope? It's because it connects you flier that he do it without an airplane. And touch with this notion of the self as a larger of con game . I am no fan of gurus . I think up with the real network of values and in- we are moving toward the brink of global and more inclusive mode of being than they've done quite enough for us, thank formation inherent in the planet, the values catastrophe without using the tools present what the ego provides. I don't are to get you, and that it is nothing that sophisti. of into biology, the values of rather at hand that might save us . That's stupid . questions about "Is [the voice] God?" caned people need to have anything to do than the or "Is it values of the consumer . Plain and simple, stupid . an extraterrestrial?" I don't think with. Now I'm not saying that there aren't WEEKLY : What are those these things an planetary values? WEEKLY: What's your sense of be known at this stage. people who have the wisdom that life con . MCKEIIA: Well, life comes first But what is important is that it knows . Death is now? more fers, who can tell you how to live, how to nothing to be afraid of; it's a natural part of about one than one knows about one's self MCKEIIA : Well, I think we're entering into die, how to carry on a relationship, have a the process. Sexuality is the glory of the liv- a further narrowing and, consequently, it is a source of options . Eager as I of stabili- child, and so forth and Sts on . But psyche . ing experience, and so forth and so on . ty, a source of gnosis, a source of informa- am to put the Reagan area behind me, the delics address the unseen side of reality, They are, in fact, the humane, caring, eco- first tion, and this is what most people lack . the half of the '90s will be a further explo- utterly other, the transcendentally logically sensitive values which are at- ration They are only superficially in touch with alien, and of these screwy cultural modes : fun- that is what interests me . Be- tempted to be communicated by the New damentalist religion . sexual their own destiny, their own birth, their cause if cow look repression . at classical descriptions of Age, by the ecology movement, et cetera . The AIDS epidemic is playing right into own death . Gel, whether you're talking about the The problem is that then movements the hands of the people who want to re WEEKLY: Let's go back to the ego structure . or Christian mysticism or Sufi politicize everything immediately, turn continued on page 20 18 n weeetr- .v .'s ~-

11oKE1111A continued from 0090 18 spiritual movement (such as it u), the ecology know, that this is natural, this is going to trip will count. You won't have to do it movtmrm, the cdnnd rebellion - all this, oi have a termination and it is pan of the more than three or four times a year to feel press and distort human misery. I think fact, is tlu basis for profound positive change . plan . fully psychedelic. that there is a New Age about to dawn . I Psychedelics played a part in this, and they WEEAI Now many rioter have you taken WEEKLY: What' a committed dose of psilocv- think it will come, but I think it will come continue a play a roe, but you can't expect LSD? bin? in the late '909, that we still have much to this culture to move into mass psychedelics . MCKEYA: Well, if you put them all together ltUE1111gA: Five dried grams. Five dried go through. Because the cultural institu- 1ACREAAC I think that's true . I'm not con- . . . 1don't know, maybe 150timeswhen I grams will flatten the most resistant ego. tions will not reach for the emergency cerned . I think we're fine. Everything is was young. Not a lot. I think if you do WEEKLY: And mescaline? brake until things am really cracking to tight on track, developing the way it these drugs right, they give you plenty to MtMIEC 800 milligrams . I'm less fond of pieces. Becatase, you know, the (present should . The trick is to know that, so that thinkabout. One thing people do, that I'm mescaline because it's an amphetarnme. . forms of civiliationl repRaatt a sinking one can contribute to it, rather than being definitely opposed to, is diddle with it . If And it's rough on you. ship. from by anxiety. I make the analogy to a you're not taking so much that going into it WEEKLY: And peyote? AEFItlr On the other hand, one could argue the birth. A birth looks like somebody's being you're afraid you did too much, then you MMI(NA: Well, Ican give it to you in anut- that caUrctior mind has abeady made col- split apart, and there's a lot of blood, guts didn't do enough. Not the way people will shell. There are threequestions you should Lwoos dectsacto abase colkcnw healing, thin and gore . You'd swear that this is death, take it to go to the movies, go to the beach, ask about a drug you're considering tak- the healing process and the climb toward cot- not life . But in fact, it's a completely this and that. No, I talk about what I call ing. Number one, does it occur naturally in loctioe conscionmen u already going on . In natural process. The goal then is to rets- heroic" doses, "committed" dues . And a plantor an animal or something? Because otherwads, theprychommlync movement, the sure the mother so that she realizes, you if youonly do committed doses, then every nature has use-tested these compounds over millions and millions of years. Some- thing that came out of the laboratory four or five years ago - who knows? So it should be a product of the natural world. Secondly, does it have a history of human PROFESSIONAL EYECARE & EYEWEAR usage? Mushrooms do. Mescaline does . LSD doesn't. Ecstasy doesn't. And third- ly, and most important, it should have DAILY WEAR CONTACT LENSES some affinity to brain chemistry. It BAUSCH & LOMB shouldn't be just like landing on the moon ; SOFSPIN it should be related to what is driving or- $79 complete dinary consciousness: This last criteria is the narrowest, because mescaline won't get through that . LSD won't get through that. I think the drugs should be as non-invasive as possible, and I know I'm on the right ON TACT LENSES track because the strongest psychedelic CP E drugs there are arc the ones that last the $149 complete shortest amount of time. Now, what does that mean? It means that your brain recog- nizes the compound and within a few SPARE PAIR clear minutes can completely neutralize it . when purchased DMT is the strongest psychedelic there is, same day. Daily/ yet it lasts only five minutes. Twenty 30/99 Extended wear trams+. minutes after you do it, it's like you've never done it . Nature is the great guideline in all of this. The natural chemistry of the brain. ROWN EYES The natural history of the planet. The nat- urally evolved social institutions of small H groups of human beings that are still in $199 touch with reasonable social values. WEEKLY: Let's talk about schematic definitions of your various experiences. I've heard you DAILY WEAR CONTACT LENSES speak about something that broughtyou closer BAUSCH & LOMB to what gnostics and kabbalisu call the TINTED ", " the ultimate source of knowledge. If $119 complete you made a chart of the levels of the uncon- scious you've experienced, how would you schematise it? MCKEAIIA : I guess theway I'd schematize it EXTENDED WEAR is : Psilocybin "speaks." The speaking TINTED CONTACT LENSES voice of psilocybin is absolutely extraordi- BARNES / HIND . complete nary DMT combines the speaking voice $159 and the seeing eye - the most extraordi- nary thing about the DMT experience is you see entities. You encounter beings, HOUR whom I've described as self-transforming SERVICE machine elves. They are obviously, in fact, in most cases COMPLETE CARE INCLUDES : the basis of the idea of elves, and they are 1 r Professional EYE EXAM & fitting ,~ 3 months follow-up care the denizens of this other dimension. They r One pair SPHERICAL lenses r Care kit and instructions are trying to teach something. Well, if I'm not completely mad, then it's big news. MYOPES ONLY. OTHER TYPES OF LENSES AVAILABLE AT SIMILAR SAVINGS Straight people - skeptical people - if given DMT will be conveyed to, essential- ly, the hall of the Mountain King. We're EYEGLASSES ECONOMY not prepared for this. We expect every- COMPLETE SINGLE VISION ~9 COLLECTION thing to fall into the rational maps that sci- CLEAR PLASTIC ence has given us, and science doesn't describe a hyper-dimensional university, teeming with alien intelligences that can be contacted within a moment if you have recourse to a certain chemical compound . DR. L.M. PHILLIPS Science is hard-pressed to admit that, Gght years away, there might be beings around OPTOMETRIST another star . WEEKLY : LL'hat already-existing metaphysical map would describe this? Would the Sufa ex- 8150650-0414Santa Monica Blvd. 4708827-5060Lincoln Blvd. penence be close to it? West Hollywood Marina del Rey ? ~` E,pan 5-26AA MCKEAAA: 1 think Maharani Buddhism, the continued on page 77

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AIcKEUNA continued from papa 2p wav or another. shamanism. So I see Christianity as part of WEEAY : While we're MCAE/IIIA: I'm not familiar with Jewish on the track of exploring this paternalistic shell game . mysticism, multileveled, many-inhabited, dernon- existing cosmologies, how but I do know it is powerful . do you see the Christ WEEAlr You seem to mfer that the highest rha- haunted, Buddha-haunted realms of mind? I'm My feeling is that abstractions of that kind peace talking about the Christ mind at masnsat it plant shamanism, and that pagan- and joy . The insistence of Maharani Bud- the Heart mind. represented by Kabbalistic theory suck im- ism mproenrs a higher form consciousness dhism that there is tally no center, MCIIEIIIIA of mediacy from experience and are part of that : This is sort of a problematic area because it's in touch unik beings another everything is a construct of time and space, for I of the historical movement that has brought rm. would think that d you want to level. But in Jewish spiritual practice. through is the most sophisticated psychology us down the track of modern science, Aris- . But talk about the heart thing, the rebirth of combined study of the Kabbalah and Torah, I'm not willing to climb showd the Bud- the totelian theory, dualism, materialism and Goddess is a more viable metaphor . there's demonstrable evidence the dhist ethics because Buddhism says of ability to so forth . suffer- The problem with Christianity is it's the array high degrees ing is inevitable. That's of shamanutic power with- WEEKLY: You think you've gotten front your vi- not a psychedelic single most reactionary force in human out the use drugs. also point of view . I think that the psychology of Kabbalisu recognize sions some sense of the nature of where we are history . I don't even know what's in sec- the pagan level as one level higher of Buddhism the older of corn going. But is there, in fact, a "choice point" u strata, and that ond place, it's so far behind . And I believe sciountess achievable arises that, while and while - a moment when the individual - or the out of shamanism . Shamanism that the destruction of paganism was prob- highest real, is not the or most transcendent or species collectively - has to make a chore worldwide insists that the is mul- ably the greatest disservice to the evolution tileveled, closest to God. the promese is that combined about this direction rather than that? Or is it populated by beings that can do of the human psyche that's ever Kabbalah-Torah been study can take you to a simply that you tee then u a direction you great good, do you great harm . And done . The repression of witchcraft is really of much greater dimension than drugs - or any history in which six are naturally going? beings who don't give a hoot about you one the repression of botanical knowledge, of form of Buddhism. MCIEAAA: The thing is, reality itself is not static. This is one of the things that the psychedelic is trying to put across, that the reality we're imbedded in is itself some kind of an organism and it is evolving toward a conclusion . So 20th-century his- tory is not simply a fluke or an annmaly, it is the culmination of a process that has been in motion for as long as the planet has been in existence . We are not alienated and outside of nature ; we are somehow the cut- ting edge of it . And this vast output of building and highways and all the things that characterize the modern world is ac- tually a feature of the natural world . Simi- larly, the evolution of technical intelligence on the surface of the planet, while new, is not unnatural . Human beings are therefore the natural agents for a compression that is building up in the temporal world towards transi- tion into some higher dimension of exis- tence . History is going to end . This is the astonishing conclusion that I draw out of the psychedelic experience. And all the scenarios of history's ending that haunt hu- man thinking on the matter, ranging from the apocalypse of John down to the latest prophecies of the flying-saucer cults, are attempts to grasp or come to grips with an of transcendental departure from business-as-usual . And I think with things like the Harmonic Convergence and all this New Age stuff, these prophecies are build- ing more and more rapidly : Looking at present cultural trends and extrapolating them, it's reasonable to sug- gest jots the Harmonic Convergence theorists predict I that by the end of the Mayan calen- dar - which is in 2012 A . D . - we unll be unrecognizable to ourselves, that what we take to be our creations, which are these computers and , are actually another level of ourselves . And that when we have worked out this peregrination through the profane labyrinth of history, we will recover what we knew in the begin- ning: the archaic union with nature that was seamless, unmediated by language, unmediated by notions of self and other, of life and death, of civilization and nature. These are all dualisms that are temporary and provisional within the labyrinth of history . When we arrive there it will be seen that all our religions were pale imita- tions of the mystery itself. Then everybody will say, "Non I understand! Now I understand why the pyramids, why Rome fell, why Auschwitz, why the H-bomb ." All these things are signposts on the way to the transcendental object . And once we reach it, meaning will flood the entire hu- man experience. WEEKLY: But to see people to transformed, so back in nine with nature on such a mass level, would mean we nrre collecrtaely, prepared to put etch low-coructnruness matters as plane- tary pollution or the Arab-Israeli struggle be- hind its vrrrually oremtghs. For that to happen, uruldn't there have to be some kind of transcendent event? A suit from a flying continued on page 24 ., wernsr wr .n w urn

MaKEK11A continued itom page 11 But if the monkey body were to be dis. MCKEIIKA continued from page 14 haunts solved . then we would he much more likely our efforts at communication will server? Nuclear warfare? I don't know, I'm become to define ourselves as pure information . I that culture( that will arise out of the impossible and obsolete . And it trs'trig to remain a rationalist. think clear will be in this this is what is happening . That perception of human needs, rather than the environment of beheld com- MCKElt/A: It seems highly improbable such a beyond 2012, everybody (Present] munication that the new world thing becomes every . unclear and politically arguable of the logos would occur. However, look at some- thing . All possibilities act relzed, perception of will be realized. thing like even human beings. We're Masi- the phenomenon of language in Possibilities which are mutually exclusive cally bumping along MEEKLY: And Af V and the computers are just our species . How probable was . not in a Model-T rushing that before Because the resolution and the realization Ford, but in a Roman chariot us them? it existed? It represents some kind of . And we MCKEKIA: inter- of this possibility occurs in a different kind have 24 years to turn that into a Yes, they're pushing us right section of the monkey species with a tran- of starship . there. space - "nanotechnological" space or ' That's why it's so important to comm- scendental force of sort . And yet, psychological MEEKLF The metaphyswal space, or a true hyperdimen . c2te,for all of us to put our best foot for- experience, a lso,y, once it came into existence,some it is seen to be sion . It's very hard promise that once the ego to imagine what it will ward, to put our best metaphors on the is dropped, and true inherent in our biological organization . like, because we simply table. knowledge u arrived car, that m MEEKLY: be do not have the Because we can move no faster than fact you begin Nothing in your drug experiences has metaphors and the experience the evolution to experience reality through the shown you what to cognize of our language . And this is embodiment that single shamanistic event what we are moving toward. certainly part of of God - which is supposedly vourrelf. might be? what the psychedelics are And MEEKLY. I asswne you don't mean a literal end about: They forte the that that embodiment a joy and love, a pro MCKEMIL I think that it could evolution of lan- . be something to the monkey body but a the + guage. And no culture, so findity of pleasure. experiential awareness, like this: The transcendental_ of far 2s I'm aware, consciousness object, .which sway two see and use the body, 1 assume you has ever consciously tried to and radiance beyond what moss has been evolve its lan- people well-described since the 16th cen. don't think we won't have sex and procrea. , guage with the awareness that evolving have ever experienced on the most pro- tury, is the union of cum? ' Ian . fm d levels. sprit and matter. It is guage was evolving reality . And yet, we How does that integrate with entirely spirit and it is MCKEIIA: are your sensibility? entirely matter . The Of course. We'll have everything on the brink of that . Madison Avenue un. transcendental object is matter that be. we have now . derstands that, but in a kURNIk My notion of the post-transition haves pervesse way . If we felt like thought, and it is a doorway into MEEKLY: Can you conceptualize - o vtsualme ~. can get away from the idea experience is that it is that domain the imagination of making a where . This is where we're all go- - the nature of a computer program that buck, get into the idea of using appropriate activity is the path of ing to live . This why this idea to least resistance is the psychedelic ex . would facilitate this higher