TelexExternal LinkInternal LinkInventory Cache

History Ends in Green : Gaia, Psychedelics and the Archaic Revival/Audio Cassette by Terence McKenna

Audio Cassette (March 1993)
Mystic Fire Audio; ISBN: 156176907X
 
 

Synopsis
Recalling the '60s, McKenna seeks nothing less than "symbiosis between human beings and the biosphere," and makes a stunning case for achieving this union through the psychedelic experience.  6 cassettes.
 

 Terence McKenna gives us a look through the window into our potential as humans. He helps put the hysteria of our time into perspective and gives a path that could help us to deal with this strange and wonderful world we live in. An articulate explorer whose name belongs up their with Joseph Campbell and Huxley. If you are interested in human potential then this is a "must listen" seminar.
 

Terence's gift of the gab is in full force in this hypnotic, spellbinding lecture series recorded at California's Esalen institute in 1990. Mr. Mckenna presents an astounding overview of his theories regarding the evolution of man and his relationship with psychedelics. Even those who have never taken a psychedelic substance, or would never even approve of such a thing will find this work interesting, if not amazing.

• _History Ends In Green Part 1_ MP3 (56k) - (59:54) on Mystic Fire Audio

[...]

religion, originally, was the the dimension of the self that directly interfaced nature, or the overcell... and this happened through the use of psychedelics... so the reason why the weekend is called "history ends in green" and what this whole gaian awarenss thing is in my mind... it's not a nary-fary attempt re-cast a new image for religious ontology... it's the actual discovery of the minded presence of the planet, which has always been here...

• glitch track _We Have Always Been Here_ MP3 by ELpH vs. Coil off of _Worship The Glitch_ 10"x2 on Eskaton #006 (1995)

which is real, it's an existential fact like chlorophyll or the rings of Saturn... the planet has a biological mind of some sort... once you articulate this notion, it doesn't seem that unlikely, after all, the planet is clearly a boundary definining topology... it's had 2 billion years to make itself meta stable, undergo all kinds of autopoeisis... we see the evidence around us in the form of the climax biome of the planet, we see that biology and water chemistry has been very active.  but what we don't see, is that as active as the chemistry of water or electron transfer have also been the invisible alchemies of, call it spirit, call it mind, call it the morphogenetic fields... whatever it is, that is the frontier of our awareness.  every society in history has had the erroneous belief that it just required six more months and 5% more data and they would have the full picture of reality.  but the fact of the matter is, our society at its present state of sophistication, the only science we have that can be any serious credibility at all is physics.  the most primitive of all sciences... the science of momentum and moving bodies in three dimensional space.   when you move onto biology, essentially what we have are a series of interlocking fables and a few bright spots of light in a few areas... when you move onto psychology, what you have are shouting charlatans.   each claiming domain over their own special area.  it's like a medieval fair... so the belief that our intellectual maps are somehow adequate is just whistling past the graveyard... and the way we have achieved this illusion of good maps is by tossing out all the disturbing and unintegratable phenomena... for instance, dreams were trivialized and ignored for centuries... madness was something that you can find a way to criminality; it was not to be looked at... sexuality.  i don't have to remind that as recently as 120 years ago people were putting bloomers on piano legs to preserve youth from impure thoughts.  you talk about a rejectionist style toward reality... we have just begun to open our eyes to what is around us... so then front and center, when we begin to explore... let's take a conservative position towards exploring the universe... let's explore from the center outward... that means from within the confines of the mind/body system... before we generalize about tectonic plates or the motion of the rings of Uranus or something like that... just start from the body up... immediately, you discover total terra in cognito... psychology gives us a flickering model of ordinary consciousness under ordinary circumstances and everything else is up for grabs... and then we discover that at the center of human concerns is this weird itch about invisible worlds and higher order entities and sources of hidden knowledge... and we discovered people have been at that for 100,000 years... and the centerpiece technique, which is to trigger these non-ordinary states of consciousness, with all our sophistication, we have no better grip on what this is than people in the late neolithic.  they knew more than we did.  because they logged more time on in the real modality... we have models, we say "the drug molecule is translocating to the synapse and displacing ordinary neurotransmitters and raising therefore the endogenous level of electron spin resonance..."  this is not ANY kind of explanation of what's going on.  this is just the CHANT, the INCANTATION...  but the people who are logging time in there... they come back with maps of reality that fit very uneasily with our cheerful cartesian democratium atomistic causal entropic models.  and they say "no no, the universe is an infinite honeycomb.  each honeycomb ruled over by different spiritual forces.  each commanded through different languages, magical techniques, gestural repetoire.  everything is language.  everything holds information for man... everything is somehow constellated on the presence of observing mind.

[...]

if you use, as your index, complexity, then you suddenly discover that human beings have moved back to the very center of the universe... that  the most complex physical thing in the universe, as far as density of connectedness, is the human cerebral cortex... that if novelty and density of connectedness is what is being conserved, then somehow we are central.  then other issues are raised.  if we are central, then the modern model of history is that it is trendless fluctuating... [...]   the universe seems to be an engine for the conservation of complexity.  until we reach the social sciences... where they want to tell us that history is just dropped into this process willy nilly, is not fractally modeled on anything that proceeds it, does not express an internal coherence, and is a completely trendless process.  yet  notice that this completely trendless process is atomically composed of the most complex matter material organization in the universe.  the human cerebral cortex.

• _History Ends In Green Part 2_ MP3 (56k) - (55:24)
• _History Ends In Green Part 3_ MP3 (56k) - (89:42)
• "it's like a bugs bunny cartoon directed by Tristan Tzara..."
• _History Ends In Green Part 4_ MP3 (56k) - (86:14)
• "i don't know, the vibe of these creatures is very strange... they're knowledge holders... like i've often thought that what they were, was meme traders... because they had the same feeling i associated with the Indian hashish traders... when they spread out all this stuff in front of you and are saying, "look at this!  look at this!" these marvelous jewelled objects... these are things they are selling... they want to trade... they are asking, "what have you got? what can you show us?"  your rolex, your fountain pen, your political beliefs, you sexual orientation, you know... what do you want to trade?  so they're sort of like cosmic pack rats... you know pack rats will take something but will always leave something... have you ever dealt with pack rats?  oh pack rats are fascinating because if one finds you, it will leave an object in trade for whatever it takes..."
• _History Ends In Green Part 5_ MP3 (56k) - (87:27)(35.9megs)
• "but then of course as William Blake said, 'attend the minute particulars'... it's all in the details...this is what psychedelics teach us i think... it's all in the details... getting there is half the fun.  the experience of life is in the fabric of it ... the actual tactility of the passing moment..."
• "you need to be very careful what you wish for because you usually get it... the rule about wishing seems to be... it's kind of a quantum mechanical    process and no jerking is allowed... the key to having your wishes fulfilled is slow steady pressure... if you can hold an image for 2-3 years, it hardly matters how outlandish it is, it will probably be delivered unto you in fairly good order..."
• _History Ends In Green Part 6_ MP3 (56k) - (56:43)(23.3megs)
• "there is no full development of the individual... there is this kind of arrested, prolonged adolescence... and it's created through institutions... institutions are a demonic force in human life because they give permission for us to cease developing and to put our loyalty behind some weird creed that has been worked out..."

TelexExternal LinkInternal LinkInventory Cache