Guest speaker: Jonathan Ott

PROGRAM NOTES:

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.

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More about: Agave and Mescal

Mescal: A New Artificial Paradise by Dr. Havelock Ellis

Guest speaker: Bruce Damer

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotes below are by Bruce Damer.]

“What  Damasio is showing is that people who, in the lab, get a huge amount of cognitive stimulus all the time start to have no access to the emotional part [of themselves] at all. They can’t store to it, and they can’t retrieve from it. They become what he calls emotionally neutral.”

“So if ANY crisis arises you have the wrong people [in charge], probably, because the things that put them there, and the constituencies that wanted them there, create a person who is incapable of handling a real crisis.”

“If you want a future, you have to take charge of your own thoughts.”
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A Gigantic Unplanned Experiment … on You! by Bruce Damer

DigitalSpace’s Educational Spacewalk Simulation for
NASA’s upcoming Hubble Servicing Mission

The DigiBarn Computer Museum

Bruce Damer’s Personal Web Site

Mind States Conferences

Guest speakers: Earth & Fire Erowid, Ralph Metzner, Stanislav Grof, Nick Sand, and Dave Nichols

PROGRAM NOTES:

Erowid’s LSD Vault LSD and Drug Testing

LSD FAQ Part 1 LSD FAQ Part 2

“I believe it’s true to say that everyone who has experienced LSD or another psychedelic would look on that experience, especially the first one, as a major life-changing event.” –Ralph Metzner

“The introduction of LSD and psychedelics into the culture produced a transformation of the entire culture, the consciousness of the culture.” –Ralph Metzner

“The first note in that octave [of our cultural transformation], the do, was the discovery of LSD by Albert Hofmann in 1943.” –Ralph Metzner

“Just as Hitler used the Reichstag burning, the U.S. government now uses the so-called two wars, the War on Drugs and the War on Terrorism, to fuel fear in the population and establish a police security state.” –Ralph Metzner

“It [the prohibition of psychedelics] puts the industrial civilization in a very unique position. It’s just about the only society in the whole history of humanity that doesn’t have any use for non-ordinary states of consciousness.” –Stanislav Grof

“We have to recognize that spirituality is a legitimate dimention in the psyche. It’s a legitimate dimention in the universal scheme of things. It doesn’t mean that you are superstitious, that you are in to magical, primitive thinking, if you take spirituality seriously.” –Stanislav Grof

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The Psychedelic Party of Israel

Guest speaker: Wrye Sententia

PROGRAM NOTES:

[NOTE: All quotations below are by Wrye Sententia.]

“How can we have confidence in what we think we know, in our particular version of reality, in our particular take on the world? … What is real and what is false, and does it really matter if there is a difference.”

“Mind is built on consciousness. It’s an accumulation of life-experience over time. … Consciousness, for me, is sort of a snapshot in the photo album of the mind.”

“Cyberpunk, I think, is about altered states of body and altered states of mind.”

“And the reason I mention the decade of the drug wars [in connection with cyberpunk fiction] is because there are a lot of overlays between altering your mind through drugs and altering your mind through technologies, hard technologies.”

“Now we can’t protect ourselves from misconceptions. But I think we can keep from evolving them, maybe by taking the doctrine of signs and saying, instead of finding the purpose find the consequence.”

” ‘Augmented reality’ supplements the physical world, the external world, with additional information.”

“If we put filters on cameras to enhance the picture, what kinds of filters can we put on our minds to enhance our day-to-day walk?”

“If cognitive liberty is the right of each individual to think independently, or autonomously, and to engage in the full spectrum of thought, and to have access to multiple modes of consciousness, if that’s what cognitive liberty is, it’s something that is a political goal.”

“The cultural machinery never rests.”

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The Center for Cognitive Liberty & Ethics

Guest speakers: Nick Sand and Myron Stolaroff

PROGRAM NOTES:

[The following quotations are by Nick Sand.]

“This process of sharing through language our inherited ability to manipulate first stone tools, then concepts and symbols through language and printing, and then moving into the networking of electronic and virtually instantaneous world wide communication, are three quantum leaps of exponential increase in consciousness.”

“The continuity of these constructs through which we perceive the world is what we call tradition.”

“This leap across the gap into the unknown is unavoidable but it must be made. We have no choice. As we are moved to higher levels of evolution change will occur. The constructs and veils of our collective consciousness have to give way.”

“Purity of intention and purity of product go hand-in-hand to produce a transcendent trip.”

“For the chemist also, the mere intention toward purity is transformative. A path unto itself. This is Alchemy!”

“It is time to become conscious, and existence has given us this valuable tool, LSD, to start this process. I pray that we have the time and courage to make this next leap in evolution. I believe that LSD is one of the gifts given to us by Spirit to do this.”

“I think that the psychedelics are the midwives of change. They help the change occur.”

[The following quotations are by Myron Stolaroff.]

“Having been working with this for a number of years, and observing a lot of experiences, I’m convinced that what LSD does is simply to open the door to your unconscious.”

“As one who has abused LSD by trying to overcome difficulties with repeated experiences, I have found that a good meditation practice is an excellent way to keep the gains from experiences alive. … Deepening meditation practice deepens your LSD experience, and having more profound LSD experiences yields instant gains in deepening meditation practice.”

“When we use LSD appropriately, it can provide a direct, crystal-clear path to the height of spiritual ecstasy. It can provide the direct experience of the godhead, and our government makes this valuable tool illegal.”

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Hofmann’s Potion – Video Documentary Part 1 of 6

RESEARCH REPORT NO. 1
INTERNATIONAL FOUNDATION FOR ADVANCED STUDY
QUESTIONNAIRE STUDY OF THE PSYCHEDELIC EXPERIENCE

The Discovery of Love: A Psychedelic Experience with LSD-25
by Malden Grange Bishop
(Dodd, Mead & Company: New York, 1963)

Guest speaker: James Fadiman

PROGRAM NOTES:

From the Mind States conference in 2003, James Fadiman gives an entertaining account of his early days in psychedelic research. The Mind States program that year had this to say about Dr. Fadiman:

James Fadiman, Ph.D. has been involved in both teaching and facilitating creative problem-solving with and without psychedelics for more than three decades. His experience ranges from early experimentation with Ram Dass and Tim Leary at Harvard to government-sanctioned legal research with Myron Stolaroff and Willis Harman at Stanford. He co-founded the Institute of Transpersonal Psychology where he now teaches, is the co-author of Essential Sufism, and has just released a novel, The Other Side of Haight.

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Books mentioned in this podcast:

The Other Side of Haight

What the Dormouse Said

Scrapbook of a Haight- Ashbury Pilgrim

“Higher Wisdom: Eminent Elders Explore the Continuing Impact of Psychedelics”

The Discovery of Love

Guest speaker: Earth and Fire Erowid

PROGRAM NOTES:

Earth & Fire Erowid return to the Psychedelic Salon with a talk they gave at the 2002 Mind States conference that was held in Jamaica. In this presentation, Fire and Earth begin what has become an ongoing discussion among psychonaughts regarding ways in which to judge the validity of information in an age when information overload has become an everyday experience for many people.

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Guest speakers: Julie Holland, Rick Doblin, Charles Grob, Ann & Sasha Shulgin, Alex Grey, and LorenzoPROGRAM NOTES:

Here are a few samples from the 2005 Mind States conference that was held in Berkeley, California in May of that year. Sound bites from the following talks are included here:

Dr. Julie Holland: “Medical Ecstasy: A Harm Reduction Model”
Dr. Rick Doblin: “Psychedelic Psychotherapy & Culture”
Dr. Charles Grob: “Psilocybin Use in Psychiatry”
Ann & Sasha Shulgin: “Ask the Shulgins”
Alex Grey: “Artists & Their Drugs”

Additionally, this podcast includes a talk by Lorenzo at a salon in Venice Beach, California in 2003, where he recapitulates his “Living Under the Radar” talk from Mind States IV.

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Guest speaker: Zoe7

PROGRAM NOTES:

Zoe7 is a multi-dimensional synergy personality cluster who inhabits the body and mind of consciousness researcher, Joseph Marti. (The other five personalities are: Max McCullan, Ebhrious, Jiebro, Kzark Prestidius, and Lee Steel.) His book, Into The Void Exploring Consciousness, Hyperspace and Beyond Using Brain Technology, Psychedelics and Altered-Mind States, depicts Marti’s experiments with mind machines, entheogens, and psychological time travel, how the Zoe7 cluster came to be, as well as new theories on parallel universes and probable Earths, the mechanics of reality and existence, and the mind of God.

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Guest speaker: Nick Sand

PROGRAM NOTES:

In this program, Nick Sand, one of the original psychedelic guides from the Millbrook commune, alchemist, yogi, spiritual practitioner, and drug war victim, discusses the psychological states encountered as an underground chemist, a fugitive, and his five years in prison. The topics dealt with will be how attitude, intention, and time, reveal the reality of true inner freedom.

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