Originally from High Times

What we were doing was not science - it was magic. We thought we were doing science but we didn’t know anything about science at the time. We set up what we called an experiment, but what we should have really called a ritual. Honestly it was a ritual but we had the idea that if we took a large dose of mushrooms, along with ayahuasca and heard this sound, that we could generate this standing wave form and that we could actually transfer that into the body of a mushroom in a stable way so that it would be outside the body and it would be sustained by it’s own superconducting circuitry, and you would be able to see it and be it at the same time. It would be, in a sense, an artifact from beyond that you generate out of your own head. It would be a super, transbiological artifact, translinguistic matter that would be meaning itself fixed into a biological matrix.

RAK> And do you think it succeeded, the experiment?

DENNIS> (hesitates)… No… (laughs) No, not exactly… What we were trying to do, essentially, if I can harken back to the basis of this in myth and history, I mean the closest analogy to it is the Philosopher’s Stone. We were trying to recreate the Philosopher’s Stone, which in some ways is the ultimate artifact. That thing that exists and is both mind and matter and responds to thought and is you and can do anything you can imagine, literally, anything you can imagine.

Full Story: Undergrowth

Dennis McKenna will be keynoting Esozone: the Other Tomorrow in Portland, OR this October.

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Esalen lost little of their own archives, the vast bulk of their books, photos, audio and videotapes residing elsewhere. Unfortunately, the institute was also using the offices to store the amazing library of Terence McKenna, the visionary psychedelic bard who passed away in 2000. The plan was to eventually install the books at Esalen, a place that Terence loved but which is hardly associated with scholarly pursuit. That plan will never be realized.

Full Story: TechGnosis.

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Do people meet alien entities on DMT because they expect to meet alien entities? It’s not an idle question, it’s grounds for a fun experiment, too. From the Rodruigez paper:

To validate or falsify this hypothesis, the experimenter should perform a single blind study in which human subjects are used who have never heard of DMT and its extraordinary effects on the human psyche. These subjects are told that DMT inebriation will provide them solely a visual and auditory hallucination. By simply defining the experience as that experienced in front of the veil, the ill-informed subject will have no preconception as to what is possible given the right conditions for entering into the DMT-induced alternate reality. If subjects continually return only to describe the world in font of the veil, then it can be concluded that the DMT experience can be influenced by biasing the subject. In this sense, the hallucination is driven by preconceptions and therefore may be understood solely as an inconsistent subjective hallucination. On the other hand, if the inexperienced human subjects return with testimonies of encounters with alien beings, then DMT is responsible for alien entity experiences. It is noted that this experiment has already been implemented with positive results. Dr. Strassman’s work used unassuming human subjects that did, in fact, return from DMT inebriation with entity experiences (Strassman 2001).

Full Story: Brainsturbator.

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Audio of lectures by the likes of Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, and Alex Grey. Plus a couple of videos.

Second Attention media archive.

(Reality Carnival).

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Late night rant about techno-utopianism and passitivity in dangerous times:

I think there’s a great value in technology, and I think much of our ability to survive in the future will be based around technological innovation. But a lot of it is going to also have to depend on adaptation. We simply cannot continue our current path and expect technology to solve all our problems. It’s faith in technology for salvation. It’s not science, it’s religion.
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Passed on without comment:

The stronger solar storms could start as early as this year or as late as 2008 and should peak around 2012.

“We predict the next solar cycle will be 30 to 50 percent stronger than the last cycle,” said Mausumi Dikpati, a solar scientist with the National Center for Atmospheric Research in Boulder, Colorado, yesterday in a telephone briefing with reporters.

The last cycle peaked in 2001.

Full Story: National Geographic.

(via LVX23).

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Collection of interview with Timothy Leary, Robert Anton Wilson, Terrence McKenna, John Lily, Alex Grey and many more.

Link (via LVX23).

Also of note: New York Times article on Alexander Shulgin.
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I’d never heard of this guy before, but I like this quote about Burning man:

Burning Man is the post-modern continuation of those ancient festivals-it is a miraculous manifestation of the “Archaic Revival” described by Terence McKenna. On an occult level, I almost suspect that Burning Man is creating a model, on the astral plane, for how all human communities will exist in the future. One amazing aspect of Burning Man is how the event penetrates into one’s dream life-after going there, I dreamt about some version of it almost every night for many months afterwards. I know that many people have the same reaction. How could the egalitarian, freedom-oriented, cashless, utopian form of Burning Man be implemented in a more permanent way, or on a larger scale? I have no clue.

Link (via New World Disorder)

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“I Understand Philip K. Dick” by Terrence McKenna.
Link (via Die Puny Humans)

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Trip Receptacle is “a series of three 3-hour shows consisting of all-psychedelic, all-entheogen radio.” It includes interviews and talks by Timothy Leary, Terrence McKenna, Sasha Shugin, etc.
Link.

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