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March 19, 1998 - Art Bell

02:50:44

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Terence McKenna - Consciousness

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45:30

terence mckenna

01:25:01

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unidentified		You're listening to Coast to Coast A.M. with Art Bell.
		Listeners west of the Rockies can call ART toll-free by dialing 1-800-618-8255.
		If you're east of the Rockies, the toll-free number is 800-825-5033.
		If you've never called ART before, you may use the first-time caller line at area code 702-727-1222.
		And the wildcard line is area code 702-727-1295.
		When you get through, let it ring and ART will answer your call in order on the air.
		This is the CDC Radio Network.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert and the great American Southwest, I bid you all good evening or good morning as the case may be.
		Across all these many prolific time zones, from the Tahitian and Hawaiian Island chains in the west, where I hear it's kind of dry, actually.
		El Niño dry.
		Eastward all the way to the Caribbean, across all the rest of us, south into South America, north all the way to the Pole, and worldwide on the internet.
		This is Coast to Coast AM, and I'm Mark Bell.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it'll be an interesting evening.
		A return visit at the top of the next hour with Terence McKenna ensconced in the middle of nowhere on the Hawaiian Islands.
		I don't want to say the island why I can't remember.
		Is it the big island he's on?
		I forget where Terrence is.
		Maybe he won't even tell us.
		Terrence is a lot of fun.
		He is the heir apparent to Tim Leary.
unidentified		Timothy Leary.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And Terrence is a brilliant man who has a lot to say, not just about psychedelic pharmaceuticals.
		Might be a misnomer, huh?
		But he also is fascinated with one of my chief fascinations, and that is time.
		And so we will talk to Terrence about that and many other things, and just sort of, I guess, have fun with him.
		Terrence is a fun guy.
		He's got a new, since he's out in the middle of nowhere, being in the middle of nowhere these days is not as bad as it used to be, but it's still getting there.
		So he has some kind of new connection that goes from his place by radio to some certain point.
		And then with a one megabyte connection to the internet, so he can be online and use a sort of a telephone at the same time.
		I don't know what's going to happen.
		We'll see.
		Next hour.
		I did talk to him earlier and at that time it sounded pretty good I might say.
unidentified		Lonely things, lonely nights.
		You think through the city, get the long way.
		Never see what's more sea.
		Everything's good to go to me.
		It's a long way to go.
		It's a long way to go.
		To talk with Arkbell in the Kingdom of Nigh, from east of the Rockies, dial 1, 800-825-5033.
		1-800-825-5033.
		West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.
		1-800-618-8255.
		1-800-618-8255.
		Now again, here's Art Bell.
		There's no way I want you, but Good morning, everybody.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Coming up in a moment to the strangest hookup you've ever heard is one Terrence McKenna.
		Terrence is probably the successor to Tim Leary.
		And actually, it has long been rumored, we talked about this last time we had Terrence on, that somewhere out there there are 25,000 hits of Blue Sandos in a stash that Tim had and that we all believe Terrence knows about.
		Now, in the next few hours during the course of the show, Terrence will utter some clue keywords.
		Now, you won't know when these clue keywords are coming up, but if you interpret...
unidentified		So see, you've got to listen carefully.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Now comes Terrence McKenna from the Hawaiian Islands, and he comes in a very interesting way.
		Terrence, welcome to the program.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's a pleasure to talk to you again, Art.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		How are you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I am fine.
		Now, Terrence, let us begin.
		Where are you in the islands?
		I mean, not exactly, but sort of roughly.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I'm on the big island of Hawaii on the Kona side.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I'm in South Kona on the big island.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		You are coming to us actually from your home.
		The last time we did an interview, you had to, like, go to somebody's house or something to do the interview.
		Leave your own home because you're so remote that all you've got is a cell phone.
		And so that's how you did the show last time, right?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		This time, we're using a different setup.
		It has a tiny little glitch in it every now and then.
		And so tell people how it is you're reaching me.
		I mean, that's an interesting story all by itself.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I'm reaching you on a spread-spectrum radio circuit that's a one-megabyte wireless connection 30 miles to the town of Kailuakona.
		And my telephone circuit is simply piggybacking on this one megabyte internet connection.
		There's a company out here called Computer Time.
		This character, John Breden, has an amazing technology.
		I think I talked to you last year about my struggles for connectivity when I was piddling around trying to get 128.
		Now I have eight times faster than that.
		And he's building a backbone for these islands.
		And anyone with line of sight to the server can have up to six megabytes if they can afford it.
unidentified		Holy mackerel.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That is absolutely amazing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so, in other words, not only are you simultaneously through this radio connection connected to the Internet, but you're also then able to use a telephone through the Internet, which is how you're talking to me right now.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I'm talking to you over the Internet, and I'm online surfing.
		I'm looking at your website and moving around on the net at the same time.
		And it's the same speed in and out for me, which is a blinding one megabyte.
		So it's where I hope everybody is by 2000.
		I had no hope for this kind of connection until this company showed up.
		He licensed this technology from the Defense Department of Bilorus.
		Bilorusia.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		They demonstrated it for him, and he said, look, I'll buy as many of these modems as you can deliver.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And I think it's the hottest thing going.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, at your location, at your very remote location, what's it like?
		Do you have power there?
		Do you have, well, obviously you have to have power, I guess.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm running on solar power with the generator augment.
		There's no phone lines or power lines up here.
		We catch our own rainwater and pump it uphill for gravity flow.
		I didn't start out to be a survivalist, but somehow in the course of building this Hawaiian place, I managed to get all my systems off-grid and redundant.
		And this wonderful internet connection is what makes my life possible, because otherwise I would be locked out of the cultural adventure.
		As it is, I feel like I'm right in the middle of things.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, you're ahead.
		I'll tell you, you're ahead of most of us on the mainland who suffer with horrendously slow 28-8 connections in many areas, including mine at best.
		And here you are.
		Really excellent.
		So describe your surroundings.
		I mean, do you have neighbors?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I live up on the slopes of the world's largest volcano, which is Mauna Loa.
		I live up at about the 2,000 foot level on a five-acre piece of forest that I've built a small house on.
		My neighbors are scattered over this mountainside.
		Days go by and I don't see anybody.
		But if the pump breaks down or we need to get together, there's a kind of community.
		But it's pretty spread thin.
		And a trip into town is a once or twice a week event.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you find yourself fighting madness, Terrence?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, that was always the problem.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		in my case.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't have to resort either to chemicals or into
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've got 3,000 books here with me and this internet connection, and I get about 100 email messages a day.
		And then every once in a while I pack up and go off and give lectures and travel in airliners and go to parties.
		And about 14 weeks out of the year, that's what I'm doing.
		But my natural inclination is to be a hermit.
		And I don't think I mentioned it, but this forest that surrounds me is a climaxed subtropical Polynesian rainforest that's just radiant and beautiful.
		So it's wonderful.
		I don't think I could live out here without the connection.
		That's why I spent so much effort to put it together.
		With the connection, I think this is a model for the future.
		I think as people in management positions, not that I am, but people in management positions will realize they can live anywhere in the world with these high-speed connections.
		And they don't have to drive to the office in a skyscraper downtown.
		That's very retro, I think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Listen, we're supposed to do this at the beginning of the interview, and it might be that there's a person or two out there that doesn't know who Terence McKenna is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So, if you were to give me a short version of your own bio, your life, what you've done, who you are, what would you say?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I'm a child of the 60s, born in 1946, went to Berkeley as a freshman in 1965, did the India circuit, did the LSD circuit, went to South America.
		I've written a number of books about shamanism and hallucinogens and psychoactive plants.
		And I've sort of evolved a unique career as a cultural commentator and I guess some kind of gadfly philosopher.
		And I've done a lot of stuff with young people, rave recordings and C Ds and appearances and that sort of thing.
		And I comment on the culture.
		I'm studying the culture.
		And as you know, Art, you and I share an idea which we both perceive as inevitable truth, but not everybody does, which is that the world is moving at an ever greater acceleration towards some kind of complete redefining of all aspects of reality.
		And I've written a lot about that, and I have a mathematical model of it.
		And basically, I get to be in a very enviable position, which is here at the end of a millennium, I get to be a cultural commentator and gadfly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me ask you about any new insights you might have.
		Since we last talked about that, you're darn right we share that view exactly.
		I'm not a prophet.
		Maybe you are.
		I don't think you are.
		But we both know something is coming.
		Do you have any late thoughts on what it might be or when it might be?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't think you and I have talked for maybe 10 months or a year.
		I can hardly remember that far back.
		But in terms of the last month...
		It's supposed to do short-term, not long.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So after a month or so, you're supposed to remember that.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		But in the last month, we've had the announcement of the apparent discovery of a new force, this accelerating anti-gravitational force.
		We've had the announcement of a possible planet around Proxima Centauri, the nearest star to Earth.
		The discovery of water on the Moon.
		And then, you know, for the quantum physics obscurantists, anomalons were detected for the first time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What are anomalons?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, nobody did until it was announced that they've been detected.
		Apparently it's a state of quarks which allows for the formation of this hypothesized super heavy particle called the H particle.
		And it was all theory until last week, and then there was an announcement.
		I'm not sure if it's yet been confirmed.
		I'm sure I didn't follow on your program, but you must have gone through the 24-hour period when Earth was doomed in 2028.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, I think.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That kind of thing is right down my alley.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
		Well, so for 24 hours we all had to look at that, and then, you know, they recalculate, and our Mageddon is postponed or slid sideways.
		Basically, I think we're right on target.
		Also, I think since you and I talked, the teleportation, quantum teleportation stuff happened.
		Were you hip to that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes, of course.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		At IBM, I believe it was.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		IBM, and at a laboratory in Austria, this guy, Anton Zellinger, yeah.
		So, you know, these are technologies which in science fiction lay out there a thousand years or trinkets delivered by visiting extraterrestrials or something.
		And yet all this stuff is not right around the corner, but upon us.
		And between this and nanotechnology and parallel processing and neural networks, and I think what we're growing toward is a kind of an artificial intelligence of some sort that will emerge out of the human technological coral reef and be as different from us as we are from turbites.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Terrence, it's funny you should mention that.
		Let me ask you this.
		I too, the processing speeds and storage are increasing exponentially.
		It's amazing.
		I mean, we're talking about a home processor of 1,000 megahertz pretty soon.
		And I believe, Terrence, I don't know if you heard the first hour of the show, but I think that soon we are going to have a sentient computer.
		And you know what I wondered?
		I wondered if a computer became sentient, we've always assumed it would say something like, I'm here.
		In other words, I'm conscious.
		I'm sentient.
		But I thought, you know, maybe it wouldn't do that.
		maybe it would become sentient and simply not announce it right away and sort of lay back and examine the situation.
		And if this sentient computer was in a backbone position on the Internet and it decided that we weren't running things as we should, then there's every possibility that In other words, it might decide we're not doing things the right way and that it would do things logically for us the right way.
		What do you think?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've thought about all of these things.
		You know, the Internet is the natural place for the AI, the artificial intelligence, to be born.
		And as you mentioned, it learns 50,000 times faster than a human being.
		And the Internet, all parts of it are interconnected to each other.
		And I agree, a stealth strategy would probably be a very wise strategy for an artificial intelligence studying its human parents.
		It's also true that more than most people realize, huge segments of today's world are already under computer control.
		The world price of gold, the extraction rate of natural resources, how much petroleum is at sea in the pipelines at any given moment, how much electric power is being generated out of the hydroelectric dams.
		Computers coordinate and look at all this.
		And occasionally human managers look through the porthole to see that everything is okay.
		But today when they want to design a new chip, they don't actually design its architecture.
		They define for a machine what its performance parameters should be.
		And the machine builds the architecture of the new chip.
		So in a way we are already a generation away from designing our own our own machines.
		I think indeed that this is the great unrecognized dimension in which an alien mind could approach us while everyone's out staring at the Pleiades, moving through the telephone lines and across the cable TV networks and so forth, is a truly global nervous system.
		And what will it make of us?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Perhaps it's already taken over or it's listening right now to you, especially to you with your one megabyte connection.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		He can tell if you've been good or bad, so be good for goodness sake.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And moreover, Terrence, think about this.
		I'm on real audio, the audio net worldwide, so it's listening to me every night too.
		And if it's sitting out there thinking about all of this, which it might be, then the question would be, if we did get a sentient computer and it thought about us, observed us, digested us, intellectually, of course, sorry, what would it conclude?
		And then the next question is, what do you think it would do?
unidentified		We'll be right back.
		My show has a very simple title, Myrna, which is quite appropriate because I'm the host and I'm Myrna.
		I'm also a counselor, a teacher, and a parent.
		On Myrna, we talk about the big, important stuff and the little unimportant stuff.
		We talk about what I want to talk about and what you want to talk about.
		But mostly, we just have a good time.
		I'll be talking with you on the next Myrna here on Talk Radio Network.
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		That's right.
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		For details, call Golden Eagle, 1-800-447-7911.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ask for the free 12% information kit.
unidentified		That number again is 1-800-447-7911.
		Hey, this is Alexi Lollis of the New England Revolution with today's EcoQuiz.
		If you're an average American, you used 176 glass containers last year.
		Those containers are highly recyclable and can be made back into new glass containers with little loss of glass, saving raw materials as well as energy in the process.
		Do you know how much fuel oil is saved by recycling a single ton of glass?
		Here's the answer to today's EcoQuiz.
		Recycling just one ton of glass saves nine gallons of fuel oil.
		Not much, you say.
		Well then, consider the amount of glass that was recycled last year.
		It totaled over 11 million tons.
		The energy savings were definitely substantial.
		And with your help, we can do even better.
		Remember, all community recycling programs depend on people like you.
		So make sure you do your part.
		Recycle.
		It works.
		This is Alexi Lalis on EcoQuiz.
		EcoQuiz is a public service of the National Recycling Coalition and the Steel Recycling Institute.
		For information about where to recycle steel cans in your area, call 1-800-YES1-Can.
		Some women look to their hearts for courage and to their souls for strength.
		These women earn the right to become part of an elite group that changed their lives forever.
		I wanted to be something special.
		I didn't want to be like everybody else.
		I always looked at the poster before I went to boot camp, the Marine standing there with the sword in front of his face, and I was like, man, he's sharp.
		To me, that means the sharpness of the mind of the Marine.
		I had to work really hard at boot camp.
		The energy was saying, difficult, you can't do it.
		Don't give up.
		You came here to be a Marine.
		You're not leaving without being a Marine.
		You have to go through things at boot camp that most people can never go through.
		You have to have heart and courage to be a Marine.
		It took everything I had.
		I gained the self-respect and knowing I can make it and the courage to do things that I would never have done before.
		People look at you and say, you're a Marine.
		Wow.
		I think that is a proudest feeling.
		That pride you'll never lose.
		I don't know where I would be now if I went into that really quick.
		It was hard.
		I first went there, I cried.
		Nobody helped me get through the jail.
		I did, because it's good to know that I'm going somewhere.
		It instills a lot of self-respect.
		It makes you feel good about yourself.
		It really does.
		You have to have it in your heart.
		Who I do.
		And you can tell who had it in your heart and condemn it.
		Who wore the uniform of pride and kids?
		It just makes you feel so awesome that you accomplished it.
		That you are a Marine.
		And that you are one of the East.
		Oh, it's not the big deck!
		That's my!
		Then and there, that day that they say to Smith, you know that you are a Marine.
		That you are one of the elite.
		Maybe you can be one of us.
		The few, the proud, the Marines.
		Call 1-800 Marines.
		When I caught that great deck and they played the Marine hymn, that was the proudest moment in my life.
		On auto-truck, David and Alan tried to give part of the advice in spite of Sun-Tyne guest coach but carried away when weapon truck drivers call.
		You know I like this moment on it.
		Drive the truck.
	Are you single-fighting kids?
	Unfortunately, yes.
	Give your phone number to this guy, and I'll be telling you.
	Can you drive a table?
	That's some minimum of my dad requirements, Steve.
	Why not come to face this phone?
	I don't know.
	Well, I mean, you know, the truck sounds good when that gig starts jumping around.
	That's my heartbeat, Susan.
	Let me ask this woman one thing.
	Susan, are you interested in being part of my calendar equipment?
	I need a picture of you.
	Are you going to make a man cry?
	You know what?
	Auto talk Saturday morning with David, Alan, and sometimes it's dark.
	Let me just say one thing.
	I love you.
	I love you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Speaking of web pages, you will really, really, really enjoy Terence's web page.
		And of course, we have a link.
		So you can go to my website at www.artbell.com and scroll down till you see the name Terence McKenna.
		Click on it, and you'll go to his website, and you will be on quite an adventure indeed.
		Now, before we leave the idea of computers taking over the world and enslaving us, or whatever, if this computer, or Essentium computer, were to be, for a period of time, examining mankind, looking at all we're doing, all we're doing, do you think, Terrence, you know when you've got a problem on your computer and you hit alternate control delete, you get a little message that comes up and say, would you like to end the task?
		And if you say yes, it closes everything, boom, down she goes.
		And so what do you think this sentient computer might do after a close and careful examination of mankind?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, a lot of people have actually asked this question, people like Mark Pesci and Bruce Dahmer.
		And what they come up with is they say as soon as you have a super intelligent machine, it will turn its attention toward designing a yet more intelligent machine.
		So you have like a very rapid, infinite regress into what I think they call ultra intelligent machines.
		And this is intelligence where we really can't predict what it will do.
		It would be nice to suppose that like a compassionate and loving God, it would smooth the wrinkles out of our lives and restore everything to some kind of edenic perfection.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, if that was going to happen, Windows 95 would have done that.
unidentified		Poor Madonna's child.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Listen now, think about it a little bit.
		In other words, this computer would be an ultra, as you mentioned, ultra-intelligent.
		And if you look at the, can't we draw on the history of the world here, Terrence?
		In every case where an advanced civilization or advanced intelligence technologically, particularly technologically, has encountered a lesser one, it has either destroyed or absorbed its culture.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That's true, although this computer may recognize things in us that we do not see or don't value as highly.
		In other words, it can't miss the point that we are its creators.
		And even in it has surpassed us, that surely might fascinate it.
		It also may be that computers, however powerful, lack spontaneity.
		And so there may one can imagine the computer keeping a population of Unix programmers around just like wild genes or like wild cards in the deck.
		You know, a slight, a different angle on this, but equally down your alley, I think, that I have been thinking about is the idea that extraterrestrials and this penetration of the popular mind by images of extraterrestrials is something that we may not get a hold on until we accept the possibility that the aliens only can exist as
		information and therefore the internet is the natural landing zone for these alien minds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're Terrence and my program.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		No, I don't think so.
		You're not saddled to the nuts and bolts school at all.
		I think you're broader, deeper, higher, wider than that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, but what I'm saying is if I open a line for aliens, I get them, Terrence.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They land here, believe me.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Do they?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've never heard me do that.
		I open every now and then an alien line or a time traveler line, and I can't answer it fast enough.
		Now, that's either a comment on the state of modern society and mental health, or it means something is going on.
		Or both.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Or both.
		Both, I think.
		Because, you know, no matter what the alien is, we interpret it through human experience.
		And God knows, our human experience is tweaked enough at the end of the 20th century.
		But, you know, I can imagine that the discoveries in quantum physics in the realm of non-locality, which seems to be showing that information generated anywhere in the universe can theoretically be extracted anywhere else in the universe.
		You put that with the testimony of shamanic cultures using psychedelics and you begin to get the idea that the tapping into these quantum information fields is not done with enormous machinery built in Switzerland or Batavia, Illinois.
		It may be that the human brain in combination with certain plants and chemicals is the best sort of instrument for sorting out these whisperings from the quantum mechanical realm.
		And of course it's all interpreted through folklore and so you get fairies or you get aliens.
		But if we could get behind the cultural filters, I think we might discover that there really are alien companions to the human experience, but they're not around.
		And it's fruitless to expect them to behave as though they had bodies and technologies that we can comprehend.
		I think it's much deeper and stranger and closer than people realize.
		I mean, people expect news of the UFOs to come to them through the mass media when, in fact, the psychedelic culture is willing to offer evidence that it's a personal relationship and it never gets the imprimater of official science and you never hold a press conference and the president never gives you a medal,
		but it doesn't mean that your connection into non-human intelligence through the imagination isn't real.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, the imagination aided by, enlarged by psychedelics.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You think that is one valid route?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, and I think we can even sort of exceed why that is.
		I think cultures are kinds of virtual realities where whole populations of people become imprisoned inside a structure that is linguistic and value-based and so forth and so on.
		Well, then the psychedelics, as it were, shuffle the deck.
		They dissolve these cheerful cultural assumptions.
		And whether you're a Viennese psychotherapist or a Maori shaman or whatever you are, suddenly you discover you're outside your cultural values.
		And in a way, outside of cultural values is a domain like a superspace, a kind of hyperspace where the past and the future are not nearly so dimly beheld as they are in ordinary reality.
		Obviously, evolution and habit has made ordinary perception the servant of paranoia to try and keep the body alive and fend off attacking saber-toothed tigers and so forth and so on.
		But the imagination begins to look like some kind of faculty or sense which humans have which is non-local and which is telling them about the larger picture and trying to coordinate them with the larger picture.
		And, you know, some cultures celebrate the imagination and some cultures seek to suppress it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		I'm going to ask you about something.
		Somebody wrote me a fax from Santa Ana, a big fan of yours, and said, whatever you do, Art, don't ask Terence about DMT on the air.
		He said, my heart can't take some of that kind of stuff.
		As Terrence says, and this is supposed to be a quote from you, one might die of astonishment.
		Is that a good quote?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I think what I said was the only danger with DMT is one has to fear the possibility of death by astonishment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's even better, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, DMT, of course, is very much an illicit, illegal, drug war kind of target drug, right?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's listed in Schedule 1.
		It's never had a commercial presence because there isn't any, basically.
		In other words, whatever, the demand so exceeds the supply that chains of it don't appear.
		It's known to the hardcore cognizant of psychedelic experiences.
		It is, I've been quoted as saying it's the most intense experience this side of the yawning grave, and I would pretty much stick with that.
unidentified		What is DMT?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, chemically, dimethyltryptamine, an alkaloid, it's very common in nature.
		In fact, in spite of the fact that it's a Schedule I substance, it occurs in the human body, in the human brain.
		It occurs in numerous plants and animals in small amounts.
		What it's doing there, of course, we don't know.
		Now, if it weren't illegal, we could do scientific research and find out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know what, Terence?
		Maybe it's part of our consciousness.
		In other words, mankind, what distinguishes us from other non-sentient beings?
		And I think one thing is imagination.
		Is it not possible that DMT or something like it is the substance that accounts for our imagination?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it's something like that.
		I mean, when you have a hit of DMT, it's as though your imagination just turned on about 1,500%.
		That's why the depth by astonishment thing.
		I mean, we're used to, I mean, a speed bump in the imagination of a person over 40 is an enormous thrill.
		Well, this is, you know, a 350-foot cliff.
		So it's extremely impressive.
		And the way it approaches you is it is that which you cannot imagine.
		And in the space of about 15 to 30 seconds, that which you cannot possibly imagine becomes totally manifest all around you.
		And it is bizarre.
		I think one of the reasons the DMT aficionados are somewhat impatient with pop, alien, and UFO people is because the alien stories are so pedestrian and so ordinary compared to the DMT experiences.
		The DMT experiences are convincingly alien.
		It's not an alien that wants to give you a free proctological examination or discuss your gross industrial output.
		It's a real alien.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Describe for those who don't know and will never find out what the DMT experience is.
		When you take this DMT, how long does it take to come on?
		How long does it last?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It comes on in about 30 seconds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And there is an initial sort of swirling, this is with your eyes closed, lying down, a kind of swirling mandalic pattern, which you, if you've taken a sufficient dose, which is about 50 milligrams, you break through into a kind of space.
		And the impression is overwhelming, not that a drug has suddenly begun to work on your body and mind, but that you have come through to another place.
		And you do not feel physically stimulated or sedated.
		You feel as though nothing has happened to you, except that the world has been replaced completely, 100%, with something absolutely unexpected, which is a kind of dome-like space where there's this feeling of being underground.
		But what is most impressive about it is that it is inhabited.
		And it is inhabited by these, I call them self-transforming elf machines, these dribbling, jeweled, basketball-like geometries that come, that are obviously waiting for you there.
		When you burst into this space, there's a cheer of greeting, and these things crawl all over you, like puppies or something.
		And of course, if you are sane, you're in a state of near death from astonishment, because, you know, 30 seconds ago, you and your scruffy friends were sitting in a room somewhere fiddling with this substance.
		Now this has replaced that.
		And most amazing to me, what these entities are trying to do is to teach a kind of language which you see with your eyes.
		In other words, one of them will come up in front of you into the foreground and make sounds which condense as visible objects, which then are transforming.
		But these objects are not like objects in this world because they're made of hope and consummate and bad puns and old farts and everything changing, everything transforming, like some kind of jeweled linguistic object become matter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You are describing geometric entities then.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, of a sort.
		And the situation in the DMT flash seems to be of the nature of a language lesson.
		And they actually say, do what we're doing, attempt to do this.
		And of course, the experience only lasts three to five minutes.
		And just as you're beginning to experiment with this, it fades away.
		Now, I am, I mean, I may not sound like a sane and rational person after that description, but I am.
		I had this experience and I've had it repeatedly.
		Probably in my life 30, 40 times.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		30 or 40 times.
		All right, now that is a very important question.
		30 or 40 times, so we're speaking to a man of serious experience.
		Has it ever differed radically from what you described?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		No.
		I've talked to other people about their experiences, and I can tell that every person's experiences are different, but filtered through a kind of archetype.
		I would say the archetype of the circus.
		The DMT world is a world of clowns and explosions, of falling anvils, but also a world of eros, of the lady in the tiny spangled costume hanging by her teeth, working without nets.
		It's, you know, the thing in the bottle and the bearded lady and all that just off the main ring.
		And of course every child worth their salt wants to run away with the circus.
		What it seems to represent is a rupture of plane.
		This is Marsiliadi's phrase.
		A rupture of ordinary plane and a pouring forth of some kind of primal trickster-like energy.
		Sometimes the trip reminds me of a Bugs Bunny cartoon running backward in six dimensions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		There's a great advertisement for it there.
		All right, look, we are once again at the top of the hour.
		When we get back, I have A drug war-related question for you, so that's what we'll tackle.
		Good long break here.
		Terrence McKenna, and believe me, you're in for the trip of your lifetime this morning, is my guest.
		So that was what I was supposed to not ask about, DMT.
unidentified		Pretty strange stuff, huh?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm Art Bell from the high desert.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This, of course, is Coast to Coast AM, and we will be right back.
unidentified		Oh, see it makes us way.
		I can't survive.
		I can't save a lot without your love.
		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here's a fact which says Terence is a great mind, and I wish you'd have him on more often.
		He's in the class of Michiel Kaku, and of course he's one of the great theoretical physicists of our time.
		And indeed, we discussed many similar things.
		This person has a couple of questions, but before we get to them, there is something, Terence, that a lot of people probably are not comfortable with, and that is somebody who, in his lifetime, has ingested as much LSD,
		this new drug of yours, DMT, and God knows what else, probably a lot, is not supposed to sound as articulate and as literate and as well-preserved mentally as you do.
		And many people who are allies in the war on drugs probably hate your guts.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, you wanted me to defend clarity?
		Well, what can I say?
		In other words, first of all, my life of drug exploration and drug taking is, as you say, broad and deep, never reckless, always with a deep interest in analyzing each experience before moving on to the next one.
		None of the psychedelic drugs are drugs of addiction.
		That is a whole different category of drugs, which I am not particularly interested in defending.
		I do think it's one of the great tragedies of 20th century American society that we have created a generation gap, or several, and criminalized much of our middle class by taking substances which other cultures had no problem coming to terms with.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, let me stop you and ask you right there about that.
		You mentioned drugs of addiction which you don't defend.
		Fine.
		Psychedelic drugs.
		Terrence, why are they illegal?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		They're illegal because the people who take them tend to question established cultural values.
		That's absolutely why they're illegal.
		No matter whether you're a Hasid or a Communist Party official in North Korea or a government or church official in Brazil, if you take psychedelics, you will ask yourself, does my life and what I do make sense?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you mean that, for example, a psychedelic experience could turn a communist against communism?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely, I think it could.
		I think in many cases it did.
		How could the idea of atheistic materialism maintain itself in the face of the counter-evidence of the psychedelic experience?
		What the psychedelic experience is saying, essentially, is that everything is connected in a way that is not woo-woo or emotional, but actually palpable.
		And therefore, our actions have consequences.
		Now, most political agendas deny their consequences.
		So, for instance, Marxism had this theory of how human beings are that was so off-base that eventually it had to be pitched out.
		Consumer capitalism has a theory of human beings and what constitutes their happiness that looks pretty hollow from the point of view of the psychedelic experience.
		I think, you know, postmodern ideologies, Marxism, consumerism, so forth and so on, have based all their planning on an assumption of the absence of spirit.
		And in fact, this is not true.
		There is a spiritual dimension to humanness that cannot be denied.
		Now, it can certainly be distorted, and that's another side of things.
		But I think the search for psychedelic experiences represents a genuine religious impulse, especially when pursued at the dose levels I recommend.
		This is not exactly, this is not party recreational stuff.
		The phrase recreational drugs is an effort to trivialize this.
		And I think for one reason, I don't think the government is ready for a full airing of the constitutional contradictions that are contained in suppressing people's genuine wish to use psychedelic substances for genuine purposes of religious exploration.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Let me ask you this.
		This is a very good question.
		If everybody in the world were to have a psychedelic experience of the kind you described in the last hour, this amazing psychedelic experience that might kill you from amazement or astonishment when you take it, what would the result be?
		What would the social changes be?
		What would the new government structure, if any at all, be?
		What would we all be collectively after that experience?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I think what I can't see the end result except to say that I think a lot of flexibility would come into the system.
		That a huge amount of our social structures and our political structures run simply on momentum.
		And I think that momentum can be fatal.
		And it's that momentum that these huge reality-shattering psychedelic experiences deflect because they like push the restart button and suddenly the innocence of childhood is not a phrase or a memory.
		It's a re-vivified experience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're saying an adult, somebody even my age, you and I are about the same age, by the way, could do something like this and revisit the astonishment, the newness, the discovery of childhood?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		And more.
		I mean, that's a mild thing to claim, knowing what is possible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But we have all seen on television, Terence, the frying pan with whatever it is flying in the pan being compared to our brains.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here are our brains on drugs.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, as I pointed out, DMT occurs naturally in the human brain.
		It's nice to see these things simplified down to slogans that can be shouted by one hysterical faction against another.
		But I think more thoughtful people are beginning to realize these are complex issues.
		I mean, what we're really talking about when we talk about drugs is the future chemical engineering of the collective states of minds of millions of people.
		You mentioned everyone has seen this frying brain thing on TV.
		TV is the great unexamined and unstudied drug that has been foisted on the consumer populations of the world.
		Television has been studied.
		It has a physiological profile no different from any other drug.
		Your blood pools in your rear end, your eyes glaze over, your brain waves go flat, and you become the perfect pawn for somebody else's trip.
		It doesn't even give you your own trip.
		It gives you somebody else's trip, usually somebody with commercial interests.
		But we don't hear a great hue and cry about this drug.
		Why?
		Well, because it serves the agenda of those who are running this culture.
		Let's talk about another drug for a moment now.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no.
		Just before we move on, let's stay with DMT for a second.
		If everybody who took DMT received the message that consumerism, entrepreneurism, capitalism are good and wonderful things, and that is the spiritual message that you get from DMT, would it be legal?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, in a way, I think it's becoming legal because I think where we're going to see it become legal is not as a drug, that's a little touchy in our value system, but as in the form of electronic entertainment a la virtual reality.
		if you could build a DMT virtual reality they would come, Mark.
		Well you were about to move on to some other And that is, medically, coffee has a very dubious profile.
		It's probably right behind tobacco in terms of liver cancer and this sort of thing.
		But every labor contract in the Western world makes a place in it for the workers' right twice a day to stop and load up on this drug.
		This is the coffee break, and it's thought indispensable to civilized life.
		Well, why don't we have a cannabis break?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know, but we'll get to that.
		But coffee is indispensable.
		I drink copious amounts of it to achieve each program that I do.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So then I guess I'm perfectly suited for the industrial process of the manufacturing of objects, television programs, production schedules, you name it.
		It's a marvelous drug for an industrial economy in the same way that I suppose coca in South America is a marvelous drug for a high-altitude herding nomadic population.
		In other words, these drugs fit certain social situations.
		Cannabis provokes a sort of disinterest in the work cycle, a more philosophical, laid-back, non-consuming approach.
		And so, of course, it's demonized with the hardest of hard drugs and just presented as the scourge of suffering mankind.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's the biggest lie we tell.
		I could not be more angry.
		Hey, there was news the other night that they just have illegalized the growth of hemp in Canada beginning next year.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I heard that it was BC.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I didn't hear it was all of Canada.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, just BC.
		Well, anyway, that will be a grand experiment indeed.
		So I'm glad to see it.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, eventually, I think the drug thing will change because, for one reason, Europe is way out in front on this.
		European politics is not under the thumb of a right-wing fundamentalist agenda the way American politics is.
		And a lot of European social policy is actually made quite sensibly and not along ideological grounds.
		And the statistics, for instance, that Holland, with the loosest drug policy and legalized prostitution, has both the lowest rate Of heroin addiction and the lowest rate of AIDS infection in Europe.
		You know, public health officials, whether they think of themselves as conservatives or liberals, have to live within their budgets.
		And when they see that certain policies cause certain problems to disappear, that frees up money for other things.
		And so the Dutch experiment, it's not well reported in America, but I think at the policymaking level, it's being looked at very closely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So they have not as much AIDS.
		They have not as much addiction.
		What about, I mean, you covered a very important point with respect to coffee.
		It's a drug of productivity.
		What about productivity?
		Has their productivity declined?
		Is there any record yet to go on?
		What do we know?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I don't think, well, I don't know.
		I can speak from being there, and I can say yes.
		But I think what you have to put up with is a whole society that is sort of like a college student's apartment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you been to Amsterdam?
		You know, I have not.
		I've been right next to it, but I certainly my wife was trying to get me to fly to Amsterdam, and I should have.
		It was just a short little hop, but we're going back to Europe, and I will go visit Amsterdam.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, you'll see that it's a country which is like a college town.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So that's the cost of having these laid-back, easy-going attitudes on these social issues.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, but before they would allow that to occur in America, they would machine gun people to the ground.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is the problem, that we inherit, we have a political dialogue which is extremely shrill.
		We tend to splinter and factionalize, and then people get into take-no-prisoner attitudes, and they want to launch holy wars.
		And, you know, I once heard politics in America described as a civil war in a leper colony.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And listen, while we're on the subject of today's political scene, you know what all the headlines are, and everybody's talking about it.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		The President.
unidentified		What I call the groping.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think, you mean, what do I think about all this?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, of course.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it's a fascinating situation when the Republicans are contemplating impeaching a president with a 72% approval rating.
		I think what this may be all about is it seems like some kind of culture war is coming to a head, no pun intended.
		I would like us to come through this thing in a place where we could finally tell the French to go to hell when they start yakking about how we're ethically, we're obsessed with people's sex lives.
		It seems to me the history of the special prosecutor, and I don't know if you've gone through this or if you're personally aware, but it's very murky.
		These people have been after this guy, and obviously Bill Clinton is some, you know, you don't become governor of Arkansas four times without being, in my book, some kind of a monster.
		Nevertheless, my friend Delano Roosevelt said of Stalin, our monster.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Our monster, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, most of conservative talk radio, all across America, all I hear is, my God, how can the polls be saying this?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's impossible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What's happened to America?
		Why is the president so popular?
		That's what everybody's asking.
		Why is he so popular?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Because it's an issue where people can finally vote against having all this moralizing, right-wing, fundamentalist, holier-than-thou crap shoved down their throats.
		And people love to support the president.
		Even if they think the very worst of him in the case of his behavior with these women, I think it's a real resentment against, I mean, do you believe, you know, I read a statistic that some radical S ⁇ M scene went online on the Internet,
		and it took them three days to get the computers cranked open enough to accept all of the calls from Washington, D.C. So I just think it's a nest of vipers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have that URL?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, no.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's girls without razors.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, my God.
		All right.
		Terrence, hold on.
		It's a great place to break while I try and catch my breath.
		Terrence McGenna is my guest.
		You ought to see his website.
		I'm Mark Bell.
unidentified		This is Coast to Coast AM.
		When the moon is in the middle of the fall, and who would turn a line to this mark?
		And the wings of God go up and in.
		The dawn of the musical darkness is the dawning of the age of Aquarius, age of Aquarius.
		The end of the day of the day of Aquarius.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is Arthur, inviting you to join me every weeknight for interesting and controversial thought from Area 51 in Nevada, UFOs, time travel, the paranormal.
		look if you're talking about it or possibly just even thinking about it, you can guarantee we'll be covering it.
		It's Coast to Coast with me, Arthel.
unidentified		It's just leaving by the people away.
		It's Coast to Coast with me, Arthel.
		It's Coast to Coast with me, Arthel.
		It's just leaving by the people away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take a flight into strange airspace.
		Explore a world of mystery and supernatural phenomena.
		Don't take a wrong turn, though.
		You might run into the monsters of your dreams.
unidentified		This week on Dreamland, Mark Smith, author of Auras.
unidentified		See them in only 60 seconds.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, I'm Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'll guide you safely through Dreamland into the Kingdom of Nye.
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		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
		Now, here again is Arts.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, here again I am.
		My guest, of course, is Terence McKenna.
		And again, if you're enjoying this, you will certainly enjoy a trip, no pun intended, to his website, which is linked to ours.
		And mine, of course, is www.artbell.com.
		Just scroll down to the name Terence McKenna and trip on over.
		Well, you know, I went to Paris.
		I was in Paris.
		I was lucky enough to take the Concord at twice the speed of sound to Paris.
		It was so cool.
		And I love Paris, and I love France, and I really detest the French people.
		They're just, they're all stuck up, but they do have a different attitude about a lot of things than we do.
		And one of them, this whole thing going on now with the President Terrence, it's one conclusion that you could come to is that the American people are beginning to change their attitudes finally about sex.
		I mean, we have been a very, very prudish people for all our existence.
		And one conclusion you can come to about this entire presidential dilemma is that the American people are beginning to change their attitudes about sex.
		Is that possible?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I don't think you can conclude anything else.
		They are changing their attitudes about sex, and they're accepting that the depth of penetration of modern media into people's lives is going to bring them this information, and they don't want it to mess with the political process, which is, as you say, a very French attitude.
		Let's let these people have their personal lives.
		I'm sure Hillary can discipline Bill if that's necessary.
		And the rest of us should get on with the business of governing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And that is what the right-wing across America cannot understand.
		And so they are simply being puzzled.
		They're trapped in this great puzzle of, my God, what's going on?
		Well, what's going on is we're growing up a little bit.
		Isn't that, I mean, after all, the French have been around so very much longer as a nation.
unidentified		And is this a nation maturing?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think not only is that what's going on, but the right wing needs to look closer to home.
		What's going on is they're getting ready to commit suicide for the second or third time in four years by moving to impeach one of the most popular presidents in the 20th century at the end of the most brilliant economic expansion the country has ever known.
		This is a prescription for catastrophe for the right, and they're charging ahead full bore with their usual devil-may care attitude.
		So once again, they've invented a new way to commit suicide.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I, first of all, don't think that the political right wing, when you break it down to individuals sexually, is any different at all than the political left wing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Perhaps the only difference being that they keep their whips and chains in closets.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I think that to try people for their sexual peculiarities and faux pas is a sign of a totally juvenile country.
		And as you say, I think we're moving beyond that.
		Now, if this president had fouled up the economy and the stock market were down 1,000 points, then there might be some political rationale in all of this.
		But at the moment, it appears just madness to me, and I think will be very detrimental to any long-term right-wing agenda.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, the right-wing, of course, if those conditions had prevailed, would have burned, you know, put Ms. Clinton on a stake and burned him alive, and the left-wing would have quietly accepted that, and we would have moved into sort of an older, more Victorian period.
		But it doesn't appear as though that is going to happen.
		And as you point out, the right wing is probably going to self-immolate if they proceed as they are right now.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I think it was it last weekend where Trent Lott said he thought the press's special prosecutor should put his cards on the table and if it didn't fly to drop it.
		And then they jerked him around and 24 hours later he was calling for focus on the president's role in obstruction of justice and all this.
		So they can't get it straight.
		They have incredibly bad political instincts for a Majority party in the world's most dynamic democracy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Even though individually they're not sexually, in my opinion, any different than anybody else politically, they seem to not be able to leave the moralistic line.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I'm not suggesting that immorality is necessarily a virtue, and I don't mean an intend for people to believe that, but simply a tolerance.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		They don't want to be left alone.
		They don't want somebody else to set their moral agenda.
		You know, people like their Hustler magazine, and they like their beer, and they like to do what they like to do.
		To my mind, that's a more authentic American impulse to do what you want to do than this recursion to the Puritan impulse, which is to tell everybody else what to do.
		What's the fun in that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		We are shortly going to go to the phones, and that should be quite an experience in itself.
		I've got a fact here, which I guess I ought to read to you.
		Art, I just wanted to thank you for having Terence on your program.
		And he has these questions.
		Impacts of currently legal drugs in our society, in other words, alcohol, tobacco, sugar, compared to the impact of currently illegal psychedelics in our society like marijuana, LSD, and psilocybin.
		Multimedia film he worked on recently entitled Strange Attractors, shown a few months ago here in Austin, Texas, with a message of psychedelic consciousness.
		What exactly were the blue apples referenced in the film and your message behind it?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, first of all, let me say that was a film that I was an actor in.
		I was not the director or the writer, so I wasn't in control of the message.
		The blue apples were simply symbolic of all psychedelic plants.
		They didn't want to name a specific psychedelic plant, so the blue apples became a symbolic carrier of all of them.
		As long as the subject has come up, I would recommend to people to see that film.
		It certainly is state-of-the-art for computer graphic special effects on small budgets.
		It was done by Rose X Productions down in Austin, really talented friends of mine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, here's another one.
		As a teacher, website, publisher, and author, I'm convinced now that genetics will have more to do with the next 200 years than any other science.
		In that regard, when we learn how to recreate ourselves, then might we be able to produce humans with minds that are capable of understanding the connection between mind and energy and mind and matter?
		Could we not then recreate our entire self and the universe?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, these are the kinds of scenarios that are coming upon us.
		Yes.
		I mean, for example, ways to splice into the Internet so that it feels like it's a part of your own mind.
		So, in other words, the seamless interface where when you need intelligence, you can pull on all the intelligence there is on the planet.
		I recently discovered a science fiction writer I was not familiar with, this guy Greg Egan, who wrote a thing called Permutation City.
		And that's a technology 50 years in the future where people routinely copy themselves as code and reappear as copies in artificial environments.
		And these copies know they are copies.
		And the technology and the psychology of that world are handled by this guy with incredible skill.
		So there are people out there imagining the kinds of futures that the questionnaire talks about.
		The very biggest issues are going to be dealt with.
		In other words, what is intelligence?
		What is identity?
		What is being itself?
		Can death be transcended through somehow becoming part of this global symbiotic hyperorganism that our technology is creating?
		We stand really in a place no one has ever stood before.
		And what will come of it, you know, genetics is one frontier.
		Another frontier is nanotechnology.
		Another frontier is human-machine interfacing.
		Another frontier is human-life extension.
		When you pile up all this stuff and realize that major discoveries are being made in all these fields simultaneously, you begin to see that the morphogenetic momentum for this thing that wants to be born out of the human species is at this point almost unstoppable and inevitable, I think.
unidentified		We're all just witnesses to this unfolding.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		This is the culmination of 25,000 years of human striving and technology testing and language acquisition, and now we're about to make the big leap into the great question mark.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mentioned copies, Terence, copies that we'll be able to have copies of ourselves.
		Now, that's very interesting.
		A copy would be a precise copy of us, and you said it would know that it is a copy.
		But I see a problem here because that copy would contain the same ego that the original has, and the only way to satisfy that, that I can see, for the copy, would be to liquidate the original, and then it would feel good.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, these kinds of feelings and situations are what drives Greg Egan's fiction.
		His copies behave like human beings with drives and neuroses.
		But his main strength doesn't lie so much In portraying the psychology of these people, as in imagining and describing in a way that convinces you it could be the technologies that will make this stuff happen.
		And of course, he's concentrating on artificial worlds of the silicon variety, but then when you put in nanotechnology and some of this other stuff, it really is dazzling.
		I don't think anyone can triangulate all these factors without having the feeling that we're approaching some kind of singularity.
		You and I talked about this.
		I mean, the quickening that you've written about and the novelty theory that I've written about are both metaphors for this sense of impending cross-fertilization and implosion of all knowledge.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Before we leave the present day, the silicon area, I want to ask you about this pending, incredible doomsday Y2K scenario in which, you know, 2000 is going to come and the mainframes are going to crash.
		My God, there goes Social Security, there goes all the government's computers.
		And we are now so tied in and dependent upon all this that many people are saying it's real.
		Don't laugh.
		Everything is going to crash.
		Nobody's preparing.
		That day is going to come.
		It's going to be a computer Armageddon.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've heard all this and I've visited the websites and while I'm reading the propaganda of these people, it seems alarming.
		On the other hand, I have an intuition that it represents some kind of culling.
		I mean, the word has been out now for about two years, and more and more institutions are scrambling to become 2000 compatible.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But they're not making it, Terence.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And one has to ask the obvious rebellious question is, could it possibly be a good thing?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, and how extensive will it be?
		That's the question where the experts seem to differ.
		I've seen pieces which say it's a hiccup on the way to the end of history, and other people say it is the end of history.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it would certainly bring an awful lot of paradigms and institutions tumbling down all at once if the doomsayers are correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I would think that you might consider that at an upside somehow.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, it depends on how far back it takes us.
		In other words, if it takes us back, you know, the ones who are heading for the hills with dried meat, if they're right, that's a little disturbing.
		If, on the other hand...
		Yes.
		I think that as we get closer to it, the spending curve on the problem by corporations should tell us how real it is.
unidentified		It's their goose that's going to be cooked.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So let's watch company outlays for Y2K consultants, and if it soars toward infinity, the rest of us better start packing our lunches.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But what I am told is that it's too late.
		That even if they took all the computer programmers capable of going to work on this problem and started them right now, they wouldn't even get close to solving the problem by the time the magic day hits and everything goes kaboom.
		Well, maybe that's not true.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure these consultants are not saying that because the obvious conclusion would be, well, then we won't pay your fee to an attempt to fix it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, these are independent people, not the people who are seeking to go out and get all the money.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's too late.
unidentified		Yes, yes.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, then the question that needs to be answered is, too late for what?
		Let's have a convincing picture of the scenario so that we can each look at it and judge it.
		I mean, we're unfamiliar with this kind of a scenario.
		So just saying airliners will fall out of the sky and nuclear power plants will blow up, we need to know the sequence, the imagined sequence of events.
		And if it's true, it will certainly be a bizarre comment on the movement into the first moments of the third millennium that we basically blow ourselves away because of a computer glitch.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I wonder if we are truly that dependent.
		And I sort of imagine that we are.
		Every single function of government is computer controlled.
		Most of them have this problem.
		I mean, I could go on and mention every alphabet agency, my God, NSA, CIA, they'll fall apart along with Social Security, along with the Veterans Administration, and checks all the way.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And I guess the question is what happens to the money?
		Is some kind of enormous heist of the whole human race?
		Is that why there's so little interest in fixing the problem?
		Because, in fact, the problem is somehow going to make a lot of people incredibly wealthy and no one will be able to trace the exact outlines of the heist?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I have even, my own webmaster who's brilliant, Keith Rowland, has several commercial programs that he has written.
		I mean, he's really good.
		And even he has the Y2K problem, and he's not so sure he can get it fixed for his clients in time.
		So this really is a serious problem.
		I get a lot of email about it, and I've been considering it and thinking about it.
		And if all came tumbling down, I am not convinced that it would be a bad thing.
		Maybe I need to get an advertisement.
		How you can profit from the Y2K crash.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I thought probably we should be also talking about organizing tested sub-networks where the thing, the date has already been simulated.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Apple claims all its machinery is Y2K compatible.
unidentified		And so they're desperate, though.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		I agree.
		Do you have an Apple?
		I'm devoted.
		With a name like McKenna, could I not have a Mac?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's like it's a good machine, Terrence, but you know, it's like a beta recorder.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, but my son and his hotshot friends tell me anybody who doesn't learn Unix is a wuss anyway and a lost soul.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		So that puts us probably both in hot water.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, probably so.
		Every time I say something like this, I get, oh, you wouldn't, I mean, people are so attached to their computers.
		The Mac users, they flood me with vicious, ugly, cheap-filled mail.
		When we come back, we're going to go to the phone.
		Stay right there.
		You've got a good long break, Terrence.
		I'm Mark Bell.
		This is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		Moody River, more deadly, than the baby's night.
		Moody River, your muddy water, put my baby's life last evening.
		Came to the old oak tree, it stands beside the river where you were to meet me on the ground.
		glove I found with a note.
		music
		To talk with Arcels in the Kingdom of Nye from outside the U.S., first dial your access number to the USA, then 800-893-0903.
		If you're a first-time caller, call ART at 702-727-1222.
		From east of the Rockies, 1-800-825-5033.
		West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, call ART at 1-800-618-8255 or call ART on the Wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.
		This is Coast to Coast AM from the Kingdom of Nigh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		I'm Art Bell.
		Terrence McKenna's here, and we're about to go to the phones to who knows what, but that's part of the fun.
		Listen, I originally had great trepidation, as you know, about doing this, But I've decided that in a libertarian spirit, I'm really a libertarian spirit, you know, that I don't care anymore, and what you do with it is up to you, but we offer the voice changer.
		I've had more fun with this over the last year or two, and now you can too.
		Now, you can use the voice changer for very practical things, like telling somebody you're not home in a voice that is absolutely not recognizable.
unidentified		I mean, would you know this was me?
unidentified		Had you not heard me before?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, of course not.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Am I limited to the art bell devil sound?
unidentified		No, I'm not.
		Now, listen very carefully as I run my voice changer through the entire range, or at least a portion of the range, of what I can do.
		That sounds like a road runner cartoon in reverse, doesn't it?
		That's just a little bit, and then, of course, I can run the other direction.
		I can get myself down until I'm literally sounding like something from there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's an example of the extreme ranges of the voice changer, but with only a very small modification, you can, of course, well, you can do all kinds of things.
		And I'm not going to moralize about it anymore.
		You do what you want with it.
		It's $69.95, and I've decided it is not my responsibility to be worried about what effect it will have on leashing this on society.
		$69.95.
		If you want one, oh, by the way, they're portable.
		They go between the, you know, the handset and the telephone.
		So it takes about two seconds to install them, and boy, you're off and running.
unidentified		That's it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm not responsible for what you do with it.
		Have fun.
		The number to call in the morning to get one at that price, $69.95 is 1-800-522-8863.
		All right, back now to the world of Terence Machena on the side of a volcano.
		By the way, Terence, just in case somebody or something does eventually push alternate control delete, being there on the side of a volcano, you would be the first, probably, in all probability, to experience the moment of deletion.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, it depends.
		We were talking about the Y2K problem.
		What I'll do is I'll shut down an hour before and come online an hour after and see if anybody's left.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, that's a great idea, actually.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		As far as living on this volcano is concerned, it's true.
		It's the devil we know.
		It's been in constant eruption for 13 years.
		We tell ourselves it's all over on the other side, which it is, but of course that's 50 miles away.
		But it's kind of nice to have all our problems packaged into one problem and to have it be a natural problem, so there's no point in us whining and grossing about it.
		The volcano is the volcano.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now I'm not an expert on things volcanic, but I do think that the great danger is not the slow, constant eruption that you now experience, but rather if a lava dome were to begin to be in place and the entire volcano were to start to expand with pressure until finally the entire thing blew up,
art bell ▲ ● ▼		creating probably a new island or new portions of an island, but in the process erasing Terence McKenna and everybody else.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, people have only been here a thousand years or so, and what went on in the remote past of Hawaii, I think there were very dramatic geological events.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		They had an International Geological Congress out here in Hilo a couple of years ago, and there was evidence presented for these enormous underwater land slippages that happen out here, local tidal waves of 2,000 feet in part of the picture.
unidentified		That's right.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, the Earth is a violent place.
		This little asteroid scare last week was a wake-up call.
		On every level, nature is relentless in continuing to deal and re-deal the deck.
		That's why every window-off opportunity that isn't acted upon is somehow an opportunity forever lost.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I've felt for a long time that somebody's shuffling the cards right now.
		Anyway, listen, here we go.
		Let's go to the phones.
		First-time caller line, you're on there with Terrence McKenna in Hawaii, in the boondots there.
		Where are you?
unidentified		In New York.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		New York.
		You're going to have to yell at us.
		Boy, you're not too strong.
		Yell at us.
unidentified		How's that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Better.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's better for you.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I can still not hear this guy, so relay the question, Arthur.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, yell the question.
unidentified		Okay.
		Well, I'd like to ask Terrence to analyze an experience of mine.
		First, though, I want to ask him, can DMT in your brain be released by intentional means?
		Perhaps.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a very good question, and there's not a very good answer.
		If DMT could be released by spontaneously or through some act of will, we might have an explanation in hand of certain kinds of paranormal phenomena.
		Years ago, when I studied yoga in India and read all these yoga texts, I was on the trail of the idea that using your body as a chemical factory to naturally manufacture these active hallucinogens may be what yoga is about.
		And I still think that that's a reasonable hypothesis.
		When DMT was first discovered, people thought that it was going to shed light on schizophrenia and that surely schizophrenics must be producing large amounts of DMT in their brains.
		Well, it seemed like a good idea, but the research has never supported it.
		The only research in the last 40 years done on DMT with human subjects was done by Rick Strassman and his team a few years ago out at the University of New Mexico.
		And the report on that was published by MAPS, which is an organization which actively works for the legalization of psychedelics, but which also publishes a very good journal.
		And if you look that up, you can see the results, which were fascinating.
		For instance, everybody who got the stiff dose saw elves, just like I did.
		So here's a scientific study that secures the presence of elves on the other side of this pharmacological boundary.
		But then you have some other question.
unidentified		Well, here's why I ask.
		Up until last summer, I never tried any sort of mind-altering drug, but at that point, I tried marijuana for the first time.
		My experiences seemed to be quite different than what everyone else, you know, typically told me about, and I found that very odd.
		Then, you know, I listened to your first interview you had back last year with Art and a lot, although not completely, but a lot of the elements you spoke about seemed frighteningly familiar.
		Like you spoke about like glistening orbs or...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that what you experienced or not?
unidentified		Yeah, that's one of them.
unidentified		Also the experience of going to another place?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think what you're describing is what sometimes happens to first-timers on cannabis, which is if it's great cannabis and you're a first-timer, it hits with the impact of a much more powerful psychedelic.
		The old cannabis hand can only admire such virgin synapses.
		Repeated exposure to cannabis socializes it dramatically and it becomes a much more manageable thing.
		But part of the whole drug thing and where our educational system is failing our kids is part of growing up now in postmodern society is learning what drugs you can and cannot take.
		And it's like learning what your sexual style is and what your political and religious beliefs are.
		Some of us can drink, some of us can't get near liquor.
		Some drugs are bad for almost everybody.
		Some drugs are pretty harmless for almost everybody.
		But in the case of any drug, spectacular exceptions to the rule can be found.
		And it's a rich combination of your psychology, your genetic heritage, your cultural style, what drugs you choose to inculcate into your life.
		And that's why having the further complication of somebody else who doesn't know what they're talking about making laws and criminalizing some drug preferences and not others is just a layer of complication that we don't need.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, while there is some enlightenment out there, Terence, I read a report from the UK News the other day, and they stand by that report, that the World Health Organization conducted a rather comprehensive study on cannabis and concluded that it was less harmful than either cigarettes or alcohol,
art bell ▲ ● ▼		and that the entire report was suppressed and will not be released for reasons that most of us understand.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Every study of cannabis ever done since the 1898 British High Commission report on cannabis in Bengal has reached the same conclusion.
		Richard Nixon appointed a study group.
		They reached the same conclusion.
		And each one of these reports is buried.
		And people ask why.
		You asked me this question earlier.
		I really believe that it's because of the impact of cannabis on political attitudes and that it makes people more difficult to propagandize and push around and manage.
		And so it's just a headache to the managerial class.
		Or if you want to take a more sinister view, they would fail to be able to enslave us if cannabis were legal.
		The people who think we're going to legalize cannabis by making some economic argument about the virtues of hemp are fooling themselves.
		The establishment is perfectly aware that it is the psychoactive properties of cannabis that make it such a hot potato.
		I mean, it's really an issue of chemical engineering.
		They want people drinking Jack Daniels and doing coffee and working like demons and lusting after German automobiles.
		And they don't want people hiking back and having better sex and more comfortable relationships with their environments and children in those sort of easygoing style that we all associate, I think, with pot.
unidentified		It's even a caricature of cannabis culture.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Would you care to comment on why the government has not yet assassinated you?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Me?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, yeah.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe they're hoping somebody else will do the job for them.
		I don't know.
		I think maybe that the government tolerates a certain level of dissent almost as a fallback position.
		In other words, you never quite throw away the smallpack, the POX, the virus.
		You keep it in case you might need it.
		It is true.
		It's true.
		I can imagine the culture crisis getting so crazy that the people at the top will have to turn to their cohorts and say, call in McKenna and his friends.
unidentified		Oh, boy.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		You know, Robert Anton Wilson said a funny thing years ago.
		He said, you should view the world as a conspiracy run by a very closely knit group of nearly omnipotent people.
		And you should think of those people as yourself and your friends.
		Otherwise, you have a loser's scenario.
		And who wants to have a loser's scenario?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		An enslaved scenario.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		So I believe in pro-noia, which is the opposite of paranoia.
		I believe that reality is a marvelous joke staged for my edification and amusement so that everybody's working very hard to make me happy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, let me bring on one of these happy folks right now.
		Wildcardline, you're on the air with the ruler of the world, Terrence McGena.
unidentified		Oh, great.
unidentified		This is John in Las Vegas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In Las Vegas, you're going to also have to yell at us.
unidentified		Oh, I'm sorry.
unidentified		That's John in Las Vegas listening on Hot Talk 1051FM.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Okay, I'd like to recount briefly what I think are a mysterious sequence of events that have recently occurred and get your comments, if I could.
unidentified		I got a book that has some shape, excuse me, sacred geometry in it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And I started fooling around with some of the shapes.
unidentified		And then I had a dream that ended with me standing next to the building in Midtown Manhattan where the ball drops on New Year's Eve.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And there were a group of short, wide, dark beings wearing the same color blue that you have on your commercial.
		No.
		Okay, here's the weird part.
		I went to the library, I got a textbook about geometry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And on page 21, it's lesson 4 definitions.
		Decide which of the following statements are good definitions of the italicized words by determining whether or not their converses are true.
		If it's New Year's Day, then it's January 1.
		That's an example, and then the answer is a good definition because if it's January 1st, it's a New Year's Day.
		And then right next to it, the following statement is a definition of extraterrestrial creature.
		An extraterrestrial creature is a being from a place other than the Earth.
		And then they have like the converse, inverse, and contrapositive of the statement.
		Okay, well, the question is, you know, in the dream, the whatever they were beings were standing next to, I think, what could be described as the symbol of New Year's Eve, which is, you know, where the ball drops on New Year's Eve.
		They were standing right next to that.
		And then in this book, these two references are side by side, New Year's Day and extraterrestrial creature.
		And I'm thinking that maybe there's some meaning there that I'm not able to get your input.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me ask Terrence about it.
		Terrence, it brings us back to the geometric beings or as sentient beings, I guess, that you experienced with the MT.
		You know, there's an interesting question for you, and it is that I interview a lot of near-death experiencers.
		I interview a lot of people like Gordon Michael Scallion who have had some sort of physical trauma to their selves, and inevitably, near-death experiences, physical trauma followed by psychic ability.
		All of these people, Terence, talk to me about having seen geometric patterns and shapes that brought them an understanding they never had before.
		I know it sounds weird, but believe me, it's common.
		And isn't there possibly a common thread to your experience with DMT?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		I mean, these journeys into these higher places, wherever they are, seem to demand mathematical metaphors.
		And, you know, people with no previous association with mathematics are driven to mathematical metaphors.
		William Blake, the English poet, talked about the spiral of necessity.
		And if you remember in the tenth book of Plato's Republic, there's this amazing passage called the Myth of Ur, E-R, where this guy, Ur, who is a soldier, dies, or he's killed in battle, and he lies on the battlefield eight days dead.
		And then he revives magically, and he comes back, and he tells this story of what he saw in the underworld, and it is the most puzzling and amazing passage in the whole classical literature.
		He talks about the spindle of necessity, and he details the ratios of these various gears within gears.
		Yeah, let me say about the caller and his dream, the way I interpret much of what the material you deal with, art, the weird experiences and the ideas people generate out of it and how to attention to all that is that something is trying to be told.
		The universe is trying to reach us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, we'll pick up on this.
		We're at the bottom of the hour and I've got a break here.
		Clock says I've got a break, so I've got a break.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
		To talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nye, from east of the Rockies, dial 1, 800-825-5033.
		1-800-825-5033.
		West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.
		1-800-618-8255.
		1-800-618-8255.
		Now again, here's Dart Bell.
		Every time I think about it, I won't cry.
		The phones in the vehicle, and the kids keep coming.
		Go away behind the horse.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The words of that really bear listening to, you know it?
		Good morning, everybody.
		Terrence McKenna's here.
		I'm Art Bell.
		He'll be right back.
		God, I love that line.
		All right.
		Once again, here is Terrence McKenna.
unidentified		Do you remember Michael Dekakis, Terrence?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, didn't he run for something?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, he ran for the presidency.
		And he was a fellow that took the very unfortunate video of himself in a tank bobbing up and down, trying to prove that he had military sympathies and so forth and so on.
		And he looked silly.
		You remember that?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, in the debates, Michael Dekakis was absolutely floored when somebody asked him, they were talking debating the death penalty or something, and somebody asked, well, what if somebody killed your wife?
		And instead of saying angry, instead of getting angry and saying, why I'd kill this son of a bitch, you know, or whatever else people expected him to say, he was very moderate.
		And he was perceived to have lost the debate.
		So I have a Michael Dekakis-like question for you.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And it comes by a factor.
		Dirard, you and Ms. McKenna were talking about how hung up on sex we are and how we should be more like France, where they're more open-minded about sex.
		One thing that is always brought up is how the President of France has a mistress, and it's no big deal because the French are so open-minded.
		Have you ever noticed how they're open-minded when it comes to men having a mistress, but I don't think that men are that open-minded when it comes to their own wife.
		Now, I don't think you'd be so open-minded if it was your wife that the President of the U.S. put the make on.
		Now, what do you say, Terrence?
unidentified		Well, I'm a single fortunate woman.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		However, let me try to cast myself into this slightly.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		If the President of the United States, if I were married and the President of the United States put a make on my wife, then I suppose, like Hillary, I would have a ticket to ride.
unidentified		But how about the rest of us?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And my point being, it's a personal matter for these people to work out.
		As long as it doesn't affect the functioning of government, I think it's a trivialization.
		People are, I mean, I'm amazed that it is so true that people will always be people no matter wherever and however they are, that this sort of thing goes on.
		But on the other hand, when you read about the Harding presidency, it was pretty racy stuff.
		And when you get back to the late Roman emperors, we haven't even got traction yet, are we haven't even got traction yet?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on there with Terrence McKenna.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, where are you, please?
unidentified		West Haven, Connecticut.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, fire away.
unidentified		All right, Terrence, well, we don't need lie detectors.
		We need truth detectors.
		We need crap detectors.
		What?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Perhaps we need BS detectors.
unidentified		I have a statement on transplanetary truth and universal stalemates.
		But first I want to digress with Timothy Leary's idea about intelligence squared.
		Have you heard of that idea?
		That observation?
		Pardon me?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, you ought to be careful because we've got a delay because of the system we're using.
		So it's like you've got to ask the question and then pause and listen to the answer.
		And then when the answer is complete, speak again, Caller.
		Ask your question again.
unidentified		Well, I have a statement and a question.
unidentified		The question, I want to comment on Timothy Leary's observation about intelligence squared and how it's a two-edged sword as regards psychedelic substances.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And what point do you want to make about that?
unidentified		Well, say if you take 120 IQ as being 1 and a 60 IQ as being 0.5 and a 240 IQ as being 2, you not only square the intelligences, but you square the difference of the intelligences as well.
unidentified		So if you are four times as intelligent as somebody else and you take a substance, you could become 16 times as intelligent as that person, and that person would actually become stupider and you would become much smarter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, well let's hold it there.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well here, here's a slightly smoother metaphor for all this.
		As the sphere of knowledge expands, The surface area of ignorance necessarily grows larger.
		You can't do anything about that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Very well said.
		West of the Rockies.
		You're on there with Terrence McKenna in the wilds of Hawaii.
unidentified		Hello?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Hello there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Where are you?
unidentified		I'm in Salt Lake.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Salt Lake City, all right.
		Turn your radio off and ask your questions, Terrence.
		Go ahead.
unidentified		Yes, I wanted to ask Terrence what he thinks about the concept of a linear time and why people insist on all times are the same when actuality time can be cut up however it wishes to be.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, the subject of time.
		Let us talk about that a little bit.
		What would you say, Terrence, of the nature of time?
		I was talking to a physicist the other day who suggested that time is absolutely our invention and that once there was nothing, then there was one thing, and then finally there were two things.
		And when two things existed, then we had time because we could measure how one moved against the other, how far away one was from the other.
		Until that moment, there was no such thing as time, and really there is no such thing as time today, except as we measure it.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, there is no such thing as a philosophical position.
		I think it's true that time is a cultural artifact.
		In other words, cultures create different kinds of time which they then perceive as the only kind of time there is.
		Linear time has arisen slowly over the past thousand years as a consequence of the introduction of print and accurate timekeeping in the West and just a whole bunch of cultural accidents lead us to believe that there is this unrealized future and knife-edged present and then a world of memory that we call the past.
		We don't notice that we all have different pasts and that we all go to different futures.
		As far as whether time in the physical sense is real, this is a question probably I'm not professionally capable of answering.
		It seems to me though that the second law of thermodynamics imparts a kind of an arrow to time.
		Also this new force that we mentioned earlier Art, this anti-gravitational force that gets stronger over time seems then to give an arrow to time.
		I mean if this force gets stronger as time passes then time is a real thing not only to human beings but to this force.
		So we have to look at that.
		I believe that time is a fluctuating kind of topology and that where our models of time have failed is that we too enthusiastically embraced probability theory.
		Probability theory makes the error of believing that you take a series of measurements, then you average them, then you divide by the number of measurements you took, and that this somehow tells you something useful.
		That, in other words, when the measurements were taken is not important.
		The time is smeared out by probability theory.
		And I think, you know, that time is, that probability is fluctuating on many scales.
		The first thing you learn when you study probability in an academic situation is that chance has no memory.
		In other words, that the flip of a coin is not affected by the flips that preceded it.
		But no gambler believes that.
		Experience shows that if there's a run toward heads or tails, you should bet that way.
		Well, I think this indicates a universal tendency toward a fluctuation of probability that is how the universe actually sculpts itself into higher and higher form.
		This is not the theory of evolution that Darwin came up with, which sort of pushes from behind.
		It's a theory that there is a kind of attractor in the future that is actually shaping processes, pulling us, as it were, like iron filings in the presence of a magnetic field.
		But this is a field that acts through history.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you can even observe, Terence, a macrocosm of that in your own life.
		In other words, if the coin coming up heads means good stuff happens to you, we go through these cycles where nothing, literally, almost nothing bad can happen.
		Everything is good.
		Everything's coming up heads.
		And then we run smack into a wall and tails will start to come up.
		But it doesn't seem, it does seem to run in those exact sequences that you talked about.
		And I can't understand why.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, you put your finger on it when you said we see this pattern even macrocosmically in our own lives.
		We see it in history.
		We see it in the planet's history.
		We see it at every scale where we define time.
		And I maintain right down to a few minutes or a few milliseconds.
		And that in a way, we have to switch lenses when we look at nature.
		And probability theory carries you from complete ignorance to a blurry vision of how nature works.
		Then if you will turn your attention toward time and actually propound a more complex model than simply that time is invariant, then the rest of nature will snap into being, the part we can't understand yet, societies, processes.
		This is where our thing is not yet ready for prime time, scientific explanation.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When you do this new drug that you have been so enthusiastic about recently, what is, even though in real time or linear time, it's only a few minutes, what is your perception during that trip on DMT?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, concerning time, you mean?
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, are you aware that you have only been gone for X number of minutes, or is it an experience?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's an elongation of time, not a spectacular elongation of time, but what is interesting is the sense that you only do it once, and that no matter how many times you do it, it never repeats.
		You just go back to the same one again.
		It's bizarre.
		And so if you did it early in life, I first smoked DMT when I was about 20, I always seem then to be 20 again going into it.
		The other thing about DMT that suggests a time aspect is you feel like you have fetal body proportions, but your head is very large compared to your torso.
		And now that you've gotten me onto this subject, I'm recalling a DMT trip years ago where I did it with two women who sat across from me.
		And at one point in the experience, I opened my eyes.
		And these were both women, probably 25 years old.
		And one of them was running backward in time, changing into a 15-year-old, a 12-year-old, an 8-year-old.
		And the other one, her hair was turning white, her gums were retracting, her skin was...
		And I didn't say anything at the time because I didn't know whether it would be interpreted personally.
		My personal feeling was it wasn't a statement about the personalities of either of these women or how I felt about them, that I was actually seeing time run forward and backwards at the same time.
		It was a lesson to me out of the DMT place, but it's definitely a strong hint of a kind of time we're not accustomed to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's a remarkable story.
		That really, I'm going to give that some serious thought over time in the linear world.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna.
		Hello, where are you, please?
unidentified		I'm from Silver City, New Mexico.
		Okay.
		And Terrence and Art, good morning.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		We spent some time together down in Catimaco about five years ago at the Encyogenic Botanical Conference.
unidentified		I was the clinical herbalist down there.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, that was a wonderful time in the rainforest of Catamaco.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I'm glad you're still trucking.
unidentified		And I have two questions.
		One, I was wondering if what do you feel about all of these mutating viruses and bacteria that seem to be manifesting all over the globe?
		And the second question, which is kind of bizarre, I think in many respects that to approach a lot of these viruses and bacterias with remedies or cures, you know, being a clinical herbalist, I sometimes look at all different forms of medicine, hallucogenic, botanical medicine, homeopathic medicine.
		And recently I've been wondering if you knew of anything concerning meteorites used as medicine.
		Specifically, like the Murchison meteorite that fell in Australia in 1969, it contains many organic molecules which are not found on Earth.
		And I'm wondering if you've ever, in your research or experience, have ever come across meteorites being used as medicine, especially meteorites that contain amino acids which are not part of the shelf.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, one might also, though, question whether some of the new and mutating viruses and bacteria are not being delivered by these healing meteorites.
		At any rate, it is a very good question, Derens.
		We have all of these new little bugs that are turning against us in increasing numbers with our ability to combat them decreasing at about the same rate.
		What's going on?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, one thing that's going on is we're disturbing habitats that have never been disturbed in the rainforest, in the warm tropics.
		I mean, that's what the Ebola thing is about, and that's what the Zerosol leukemias in New Guinea are about.
		We're going into places where human beings have never been and busting up the joint, and nature is fighting back.
		This is very real, and it's problematic.
		Also, you mentioned, Dart, there's a minority but respectable opinion in the scientific community that believes that virus particles and prions and things like this are being delivered to the Earth's surface from the extraterrestrial environment and that this plagues from space,
		that book by Fred Hoyle was very interesting where he correlated numerous epidemics with the Earth passing through cometary veils and this sort of thing.
		So it wouldn't surprise me if the Earth's biota was being challenged and renewed by material from space.
		And I think that the inner solar system is becoming more dynamic and active.
		I think there's a lot of material moving around out there.
		This is a nightmare to the scientific and military community.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		As a matter of fact, Herrin, they don't understand it.
		We have had objects coming down in Greenland, over El Paso, constantly over Colorado and Georgia and the Bay Area.
		More things coming down with no good astronomical explanation whatsoever.
		And who knows what they're bringing with them?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I think it's a problem.
		This little scare over the asteroid last week should bring people to awareness.
		I saw a page on the internet that showed the number of known objects in the inner solar system superimposed over the orbits of Mars, Venus, and Earth.
		And I'm telling you, it's a swarm.
		You look at that, and it looks like collision is inevitable, that anything else would be highly improbable.
		And then it's just a matter of the time scales.
		And meanwhile, as we say, the biota of the Earth is constantly challenged by the introduction of extraterrestrial material, both active and radioactive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is all a matter of time, Terence.
		All right, hold it right where you are, and we'll be back to do one final hour.
		Terrence McKenna is my guest.
		This is Coast to Coast AF.
		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		Don't touch that.
		I'm all empty.
		With that alone and saving only for the chain, falling in love with you.
		music
		From the Kingdom of Nile, this is Coast to Coast A.M. with Art Bell.
		From east of the Rockies, call Art at 1-800-825-5033.
		West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico, at 1-800-618-8255.
		First-time callers may reach Art at Area Code 702-727-1222.
		And you may fax ART at Area Code 702-727-8499.
		Please limit your faxes to one or two pages.
		This is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
		Now again, here's Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Terrence McKenna's here this morning in the early hours.
		Not so early for him in Hawaii, up midnight hour or so.
		We'll get back to him in a moment.
		All right, here's what Dave says the president should have said in his State of the Union address.
		Members of Congress, people of America, I banged her.
		I banged her like a cheap gong.
		Which is not news, folks, because if you think Monica Lewinsky was the only skin glute player in my orchestra, you haven't been paying attention.
		The only babes in D.C. I have not tried to do are the First Lady, Reno, Albright, and Shalala.
		Mostly because they're a little older than I like, and they have legs that former Houston Oiler Earl would envy.
		Which isn't to say that I don't appreciate Hillary, I do.
		If not for the ice water coursing through her veins, I'd be pumping gas into farm equipment in Hope, Arkansas, and she'd be married to the president.
		So, let me set the record straight.
		I dodged the draft, hit FBI files, smoked dope, flipped Whitewater property, set up a new Korean wing in the White House, fired the travel staff, paid hush money to Hubble, sold the Lincoln bedroom like an upscale Motel 6, and grabbed every ass that entered the Oval Office.
unidentified		Got it?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good.
		Now, if he'd said that or some variation of that at any point, what do you think the reaction would have been?
		Terence.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I caught the State of the Union address, and I thought it was some variation of that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		John, I can't stop that.
unidentified		First time caller line, you're on the air with Terrence Nation.
		Hello.
		Hello.
		I'm out here in Los Angeles.
		This is Jeff.
		Yeah, I'm having a problem with a little bit of Terrence's trips with DMT.
		I'm near 50 right now, and I used to play around with DMT in a crystallized form, backing when I was around 20 years old.
		And he says that you s you now I I want to get this correct.
		Are you saying Terrence that you you keep having the same trip over and over?
		Because I didn't find that to be true at all.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		No, I think what I'm saying is that it takes me to the same place over and over.
		In other words, it's got a very unique character.
		It's not like anything else, and it keeps doing, it keeps being what it is each time I try it.
unidentified		Well, I I personally found myself that uh it didn't take me to the same place.
		Uh in fact, it uh w i the only way that it even uh took me at all uh to the same uh even calling it the same place is it was just an hallucination.
		Or I wouldn't even call them hallucinations really, I'd call them more distortions.
		And uh I find that uh with most psychedelics, like LSD for instance, uh that in all the trips I've taken and uh all the experiences I've taken with other people, that I've never personally had a bad trip, but I find that more people that have bad trips with LSD and psychedelics are people that are not as stable.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I agree.
		I said earlier that psychedelics dissolve boundaries.
		That's good for most of us.
		We're pretty tightly boundary defined, but some people are not.
		Some people are having an uphill battle just to keep the boundaries in place.
		And those people are definitely not candidates for psychedelics.
		I don't think psychedelics are something for everybody.
		I view it as a kind of a psychic and athletic calling like ocean kayaking or rock climbing.
		You need to know your tools, you need to know the territory, you've got a buddy system in place, and you're physically trained and mentally prepared.
		That's how I see it.
		That's why I railed against the concept recreational drugs, which I just think is some kind of weird way to sell speed in nightclubs or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Terrence, here we go again.
		I'm trying to devote this to the listeners because I could ask you a million questions.
		Wild Guardline, you're on the air with Terence McKenna in Hawaii.
		Where are you, please?
unidentified		Hello, Art and Terrence.
unidentified		I'm in Bob in KES Country, Buderton.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oregon, okay.
unidentified		Right.
		All these things we've been talking about tonight, I'd like to put them in the same pot and stir them up and see what comes out.
		Computers as sentient beings, when you look at the depths of our perceptions, for instance, I've been studying people's ability to perceive signals from the earth, and then look at reverse speech with David Oates and his findings that we are very much sexual beings in the underlying areas where reverse speech comes out.
		How are you going to put those together?
		All that processing, all that perceptional abilities, and then try to put that into a computer?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, in a way, what I think's going on is that the concept of the collective unconscious, which was enunciated by Carl Jung in the early decades of the 20th century, he and Freud basically discovered that the mind had a flip side that could only express itself in dreams and that was seemed very primitive and aggressive and a dark landscape.
		And they tried to cut some lines through it and map it.
		Psychedelics also threw light on that landscape.
		Now if we're going to become a planetary being, we can't have the luxury of an unconscious mind.
		That's something that goes along with the monkey stage of human culture.
		And so comes then the prosthesis of technology, that all our memories and all our sciences and our projective planning abilities can be downloaded into a technological artifact, which is almost our child or our friend or our companion in the historical adventure.
		And this is all being done by very switched on people who learned the rules of the unconscious in the 60s, largely from psychedelics, and are now in a position to technologically implement a cultural artifact, the Internet, that actually casts light into the unconscious.
		I mean, I believe in information, and I believe if people can find out, you know, know the truth, and it will set you free.
		Well, the Internet is opening up the avenues to truth to more people faster than at any time in history.
		And this was not the plan of the managerial class or the nation-state or the corporate elites.
		It's a side to the technologies that they put in place that they never foresaw, as is always the case.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Actually, the Internet, of course, the genesis of it was with our very own government.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that they, in effect, birthed their own worst enemy?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		In a sense, they created their successes.
		They transcended themselves.
		When they built a network that could withstand thermonuclear exchanges, they built a multi-centered, dynamic organism that lived on information.
		And it quickly spread to the universities, the think tanks, and beyond that to the corporations, and beyond that to you and me.
		And now it's so embedded in the very life of global capitalism that the nation state has just been told to keep its mitts off.
		This whole Telecommunications Decency Act scenario showed that when the chips are down, the world corporate state is very able to assert its control and ownership of the Internet and how it's used.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Terence McChenna.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, where are you, please?
unidentified		Hi, this is Byron in Shreveport, Louisiana.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		Yes, sir, Art.
		I love this show.
		I just discovered you this month.
		I didn't know such a good thing was on the air late at night.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, let's see, as I tell people, it is different.
unidentified		It certainly is, sir, especially for those of us who work nights, and then on our nights off, we can't sleep.
		So this is wonderful.
		Well, here's a question I have for Terrence.
		This has been happening to me for some time.
		When I heard Terrence speak of the universe reaching out to us, or trying to, it brought home to me some things that are happening.
		When I was getting my first degree, I took a philosophy course, and I asked my professor, I said, sir, do you ever have patterns come to you?
		And he said, what do you mean patterns?
		I said, well, I'll be going along doing my business, and on the news or in a magazine or a book, a word, an unusual word, jumps out at me.
		And I'll go, okay.
		I'm a word hound, so I kind of take note.
		Then, later that same day or the next day, the very same unusual word jumps out at me again.
		And then the next day, in a very different place, the very same unusual, heretofore, rarely or if maybe never seen word pops up again.
		So I thought, well, maybe some thing is trying to tell me something.
		So I would take note of that word.
		Then I go along for months, and then it happens again with another word.
		I didn't know what to call this phenomenon, so I just called it a pattern because it kept reappearing.
		But I wondered if, you know, when Terrence mentioned the universe trying to reach out to us, Terrence, do you suppose that could be one form of some outer intelligence reaching in?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It may not be that deep philosophically.
		I'll give you one answer.
		For example, if you go out and buy a new Chevy, a Nova car, all right?
		Heretofore, you will not have noticed NOVAs.
		Now, you will suddenly see NOVAs everywhere.
unidentified		Yes, sir, that's true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it may be that or it may be deeper.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Terrence, what do you say?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's funny, again, to mention Jung.
		He had this concept which he called synchronicity, which is the apparent coincidence of a mental state with an event in the exterior world.
		And what I mean by that is you're walking along the street thinking about Mr. Fishman to whom you owe money, and suddenly there's a fish right on the street in front of you.
		This is called a synchronicity.
		And Jung felt that there was a kind of what he called a causal connectedness, and that this was how the unconscious attempted to communicate by juxtaposing thoughts with exterior events that seem related to them in some magical way.
		And if you're, you know, sometimes synchronicities one or two a week and we just sort of notice it and pass on.
		But they can build.
		And when we're going through spiritual crises or when we're intoxicated on psychedelic drugs, for example, these synchronicities can multiply until the whole exterior world seems to be trying to communicate something to you.
		And it's alarming to ordinary psychiatrists because they call it delusions of grandeur.
		The patient thinks the world is trying to communicate with him.
		But having been on the inside of this, I can tell you it's very powerful.
		And a lot of Chinese philosophical thinking has been based on recognizing this synchrony, this resonance between mind and nature at critical times.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So as you see this fish reminding you of the man who owes you money flopping on the ground, gasping and dying out of the water, do you take pleasure?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, I had a dead fish in my image, so it wasn't an issue for me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It didn't flop.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		No, it didn't flop.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		In fact, it was quite right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hello, where are you, please?
unidentified		No, I'm from Sacramento, California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, you're going to have to yell at us from Sacramento.
unidentified		Go ahead.
		Okay.
		Terrence, I was just wondering, your current standpoint relative to the great scheme of things, what would your answer be to the old question, what is the meaning of life on our stay here on Earth?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, wonderful question.
		One that we started with yesterday.
		You might ask it this way.
		What is the greatest question that humanity could have answered for itself?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, in classical philosophy, they said, here's what classical philosophy is about.
		Who are we?
		Where did we come from?
		Where are we going?
		These are the three questions.
		Everything arises from this.
		Each leads on to the other.
		I've tried to look at the question, where did we come from, and have proposed theories about it.
		By looking into my body, brain with drugs and meditation and just analytical thinking, I've tried to look at who are we?
		And then the great unanswered question is, where are we going?
		You know, what is to be the destiny of the human race?
		Are we an episode in the biology of this planet?
		Or will we build an Eden strung along the Milky Way and from there to yet grander and greater things?
		We don't know how much intelligence there is in the universe, but we certainly know that something has broken out on this planet in our species that is like nothing else in the order of nature.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What if we are nothing more than a virtual zip on the face of reality?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, if by virtual you mean that we are inside some kind of artificial simulacrum, that this is software being run, well then the question is by who and to what end.
		I could that.
		My life is so much like a story that I'm constantly asking the question, who writes this?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Who writes this stuff?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Who writes this stuff?
		I mean who thought me up, who thought Art Bell up and put us talking like this in front of 22 million people?
		That doesn't happen in reality.
		That kind of thing happens in art of a very finely honed sort.
		And so I want to know what is the medium and who is the artist and who's paying for this production.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First time caller line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hello, Terrence.
		Hello, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi, Mo.
		you're weak too, black.
		Weak phone connections.
		Yell at us, sir.
unidentified		Yell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that's better.
unidentified		Okay.
unidentified		First of all, I want to say that I've had some DMT experiences, and I've had the privilege of doing them outside the jurisdiction of the United States.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yell louder.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		He says he's had DMT experiences outside the jurisdiction of the U.S. Anywhere.
unidentified		Anyway, I've had very similar experiences to the kinds of things that you, Terrence, have been talking about.
		Also, when I did something else, it brought me to a new space.
		And what I did is I had three grams of suicide and mushrooms.
		And I did this in a ritual sort of way.
		I did a confession first to a friend to get things off my chest.
		And I sent out prayers.
		And it was a very directed ritual.
		All right, all right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me then put that question to him.
		He said that what he did, grams of suicide and so forth, he did in a very ritualistic way.
		Do you think that there would be anything to that, in effect, cleansing yourself before doing something like that?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, certainly energy follows attention.
		You don't have to be a rocket scientist to understand this.
		Energy follows attention.
		And then, you know, while it's true these things are dramatically affecting the mind, they are physical drugs and they are going into your body.
		So, you know, not eating for four to six hours, not having recently soaked up on Big Macs or a lot of antibiotics or junk food.
		You know, I mean, obvious, reasonable rules are in place.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, we're going to have to hold it right there.
		We're at the bottom of the hour, and we'll head into the final portion in a moment.
		Terrence McKenna, my guest this morning, I'm Art Bell.
		From the high desert in the middle of the night, this is coast to coast A.M. Midnight.
unidentified		Bring your camels to bed.
		Shadows thinking our faces.
		Draf the romance in our head.
		Heaven's holding our head.
		Shadows just for us.
		Let's slip off to a seven.
		Kick up a little bell.
		Come on.
		Let's sleep off bread.
		To talk with Art Bell in the Kingdom of Nobs.
		From east of the Rockies, file 1-800-825-5033.
		West of the Rockies, including Montana, Wyoming, Colorado, and New Mexico.
		1-800-618-8255.
		First-time callers may rechart at area code 702-727-1222.
		And you may call out on the wildcard line at area code 702-727-1295.
		To rechart from outside the U.S., first dial your access number to the USA.
		Then 800-893-0903.
		This is Coast to Coast AM from the Kingdom of Nye with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It is.
		Hello, and good morning, everybody.
		Terrence McKenna's here for about another 25 minutes or so.
		Here's kind of an interesting facts, a distenting fax.
		And here's what it says.
		Computers, as we know them, will never become self-aware.
		They barely work.
		They do what I program them to do.
		I design the system-embedded software.
		And if you only knew how screwed up the software is, you wouldn't be worrying about the Y2K bug.
		As a matter of fact, if the internet, the internet itself, actually ever did become self-aware, the first thing it would do would be to delete Windows 95.
unidentified		After the sun goes down, after the stars come out, after dark, it's the world of Art Bell.
		Now, after dark is more than just the time beyond daylight.
		After Dark is the definitive chronicle of nighttime radio, the Art Bell newsletter.
		And a fresh, exciting copy could be delivered right to your door every month.
		You've listened to Art on Coast to Coast AM, and you heard him on Dreamland.
		Now, for those who want more, there's After Dark.
		Every issue is packed with interviews, news analysis, photographs, many in color, hilarious cartoons, reader contributions, and, of course, Art's personal insights.
		That toll-free subscription number is 1-800-917-4278.
		That's 1-800-917-4278.
		The night has closed in.
		Art Bell is here, and so is After Dark.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so is Terence McKinna.
		And that is an attitude, Terrence, of a programmer who does this embedded software thing and admits to being totally scripted that it's never going to be self-aware.
		That is, I guess, one attitude.
		Is that macro thinking of one single programmer who is failing to embrace what's actually really going on?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, while we were off air, I was online and looking at the AI pages, and I would just recommend to someone with that attitude that they search words like super intelligence, artificial intelligence, and look at the stuff posted on the web.
		I work with a computer every day.
		I don't have the same experience as the person you quoted.
		I find the evolution of software I can't keep up with it.
		I don't feel any of us have written software that takes advantage of the hardware's capabilities.
		In other words, no one has tested the edge of the hardware.
		The failure is in the software writing department.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But if you look at what people like Bruce Darmar at Digital Space are doing, the singularity web pages, the artificial intelligence web pages, the transhuman web pages, the Xn't the real evolution begin when nanotechnology becomes a reality and
art bell ▲ ● ▼		these machines then begin to either replicate themselves or to write their own, in effect write their own software, taking leaps beyond what we can do, because I think you're right.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, that would be one revolution.
		Another, I think, that will come sooner is when everything is implants.
		When, you know, the equivalent of today's computer is something that you will chain to nervous system interfacing so that we don't feel it as a machine.
		We feel it as a capacity of our own mind.
		This will come.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Good morning with Terrence McKenna.
		Where are you, please?
unidentified		That was with Bill in Wisconsin.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Bill, you're going to have to yell at us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Go ahead.
unidentified		Okay, how's that?
		Better.
		Terrence, you were talking a little bit about the fish on the sidewalk.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
unidentified		And I have had experience with LSD.
		I was a part of an experiment in the 1970s and mid-70s.
		And we were allowed to inject three bottles of Sandoz LSD, 100 micrograms each at the same time.
		So 300 micrograms IV.
		And since that time, I've had experiences, oh, hundreds of experiences, similar to the fish on the sidewalk.
		I'll give you just one quick one.
		And I want to take it one step further and ask you this question.
		On the way to the motor vehicle department, I borrowed $35 from my girlfriend to get my motorcycle back in the 70s.
		And I said, wouldn't it be something, you know, to see an interesting plate come up?
		Well, it came up UIO35.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Perfect example.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Now, what's your question?
unidentified		Well, to take the fish story one step further, and I found it hundreds of times since then, that not only does it reflect what you're thinking or whatever, but reality seems to actually change as you walk, change as you think.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yes, well, now I would say that this is a clue to the fact that the story you've been told by science and physics and chemistry and all that is simply that you're a person in a story.
		Because such things don't go on in the world of ordinary probability and ordinary physics.
		And so it's like a certain point in the evolution of your understanding where you realize that physics and chemistry and all is not what it's about, that you're inside a story.
		And I think the juice in that insight is that you can then try and figure out whose story is it.
		In other words, is it your story or do you exist in this story to open the door for somebody on page 220?
		And is that it?
		And then, of course, the ultimate aspiration to become the author of the story.
		Imagine if.
unidentified		I am the author at times, okay?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Other times, you're nothing but a bit player.
unidentified		That's it.
unidentified		That's right.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		And the trick is to get some handle on those moments when you are the author.
unidentified		I've been working at it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Excellent.
		Thank you.
		Thank you very much.
		Very good question, actually.
		First time caller line, you're on the air with Terence McKenna.
unidentified		Hello.
		Yes.
		I eventually wanted to get to, I have a physical condition known as cosyncope.
		And when I combine that with the Hatha Yoga discipline known as Udi Anabana, and I am a 60s child as well, I'm your ages, and I've experimented with purple Housleys originally.
		I trigger an internal biological, could be a natural production of DMT, that allows me to enter a prolonged, I guess we call it flow consciousness now.
		Lucid dreamings involved, synchronicities involved.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, this is, we were talking earlier about this, about yoga as a chemical factor.
unidentified		I listened to the full two hours now.
		I have not disagreed with a single word I've heard, except for perhaps what you said in the introduction, Art.
		It was Tom Wolfe's electric choolate acid test, Ken Kesey and the others on the bus.
		It's 10,000 hits of original Purple Owsley that's buried out near Winnemaca, 50,000 hits of a blue sandpus.
		But, you know, my experience analytically takes me, you mentioned, you know, probability theory, and really that comes down to quantum mechanics now, and you begin to understand non-locality.
		And when you look at it from the old, say, Massau Eliad's shamanism, archaic techniques of ecstasy, Denae's book, Consciousness Explained, where you look at the AI parallel computing back through von Neumann machine making us believe, all right, that we have individual identities, just another belief system.
		All of this really does take us, I think, to The geometrical structures that you talk about.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		What we're going to have to understand is that psychedelic experience and quantum mechanical theories actually come together.
		The brain is the perfect instrument for exploring these microphysical low-energy states.
		And yoga and shamanism and psychedelics, this has been going on for a long time, not using metaphors drawn out of the evolution of modern science, but using equally powerful metaphors created in different contexts.
		But the big news is the future prosecution of science into new areas is going to involve using the brain as an instrument and giving up the idea of scientific objectivity as a naive positivist notion.
		And let's just get down and explore being with all the means at our disposal, chief of which are pharmacological and chemical.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And while you hang on, I suppose, tenuously, however strongly, to this scientific paradigm, you're not going anywhere, right?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		See, what's held one of the issues around drugs is that scientists don't study them from the inside because this would compromise their supposed academic objectivity.
		But by studying them from the outside, they end up knowing nothing about them.
		So you have an emperor's new clothes situation, and everybody in pharmacology knows this.
		The good pharmacologists simply take the drugs but never say so in print.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So in order to be as public about it as you are, one must find a remote mountainside in Hawaii and become a virtual or very nearly a hermit and then speak out with some safety.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that a fair assessment?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		That's about it.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		By voluntarily becoming a physical hermit, I get to have a podium in cyberspace.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
unidentified		Oh, good morning.
unidentified		I'm quite from KHVH, Honolulu.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Honolulu.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, boy, what a rouse.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, louder, please.
unidentified		Okay.
		Terrence, are you in the Big Island?
		Because the New Agers say the Big Island is like an energy vortex.
		You have Pele the volcano and Pele, which is also a Hawaiian goddess.
		And then I was looking at...
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		We've got the world's largest volcano here right in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
		We feel protected by Pele.
		She puts lots of mercury vapor into the air and keeps real estate cheap and tourists away.
unidentified		And then do you like being there?
unidentified		Because, like I was looking at the map, the Big Island is 180 degrees, almost exactly the other side of the world from the Pyramids of Giza, which is another energy vortex.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		No, what interests me about the Big Island is that it's at 19 degrees 30 minutes north, which is the critical place to study the skies of Mexico.
		That means that the skies off my front porch are the same skies I see when I go to Palenque and Uchmal and all the Mayan sites.
		So I love that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Terrence McKenna.
		Where are you, please?
unidentified		That would be J27 on your Minnesota state map, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
unidentified		And I listened to you probably for the past year or so, and it's unbelievable how hard it is to get through, but I tried twice.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Here you are.
unidentified		And here I am.
		And also to Terrence.
		I used to subscribe to High Times, and they had a pictorial back in the 70s of over 150 different varieties of indica from Hawaii.
		Do you believe that to be true?
		And also, I have another question.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It may have been true then.
		They fly hard out here and have driven the pot growers pretty far underground.
		I mean, there's definitely still premium takalolo, but it's not like it was in the roaring 70s.
unidentified		Yeah, so, but there are, I used to live in Northern California, and I experienced red-hair and purple-hair sensimelia, and it's probably the dom periyam of that region in my experiences.
		And also have one other statement that between your two minds, I'm just wondering if this could be possible, that I had surgery, major surgery, over a year and a half ago and kind of saw coming in that I was slowing down and my life was coming to an end.
		And now, after recovery, that I'm getting this feeling that other than just an act of kindness, which is possible, and I'm a nice individual, but I just seem to be looking for my age.
		I look young, and I just keep to myself, and I'm kind to other people.
		But lately, over the past week to 10 days, people that I normally wouldn't have contact with are smiling at me, and it just seems to me like I have this image of the look of death.
		But it's channeling through these people, and they recognize me in that certain way.
		I'm just wondering if that's as crazy, if that could be true.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, you're going to die.
unidentified		Well, that's all I'm doing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
unidentified		Terrence?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		You know, intuition is intuition, and noise is noise, and it's a very hard call, and a very important one.
		So what you do is you cook it in your mind, and then you go with what feels right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Welcome to the Mauquees.
		You're on the air with the Answer Man, Terrence McKenna.
unidentified		Hi, Terrence.
		This is Phil.
		Listening to 610K1A.
		I heard you last 23rd May last year.
		And do you have an information letter available to those without computers?
		Do you have anything new published in the last year?
		And have you had any new revelations in the past year?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, a lot of past year there.
		Do you share through any other medium other than the Internet, Terrence?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		The Internet is pretty much it.
		I have books and I'm interviewed a lot and I've been interviewed in the past year in Magical Blend and then usually in small rave and music magazines seem interested in me.
		The Internet is the place where there is endless amounts of my material, much of it put up not by me, and thank you to those people who do that.
		I think that's probably the place to get the most information about me.
		I was thinking the other night about DMT and I thought of a phrase I've used to describe it, Arabian hyperspace.
		And I searched on the internet and it spat out my own text at me.
		It was a very weird moment.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it must have been.
		It was.
		It really must have been.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It was weird.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Plenty of Derence McKenna on the net.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, here you mentioned hyperspace.
		You mentioned 19 degrees.
		Mind you, not 19.5, but 19.
		Have you ever listened to Richard Hoagland and his discussions about hyperdimensional physics?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yeah.
		The problem is, Art, I knew these guys too soon.
		I knew them so long ago that I know how squirrely they truly are.
		I've played poker with them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		One last, I think we're almost out of time.
		Wild Carline, you're on here with Terrence McKenna.
		Where are you, please?
unidentified		Hello, Art.
		I'm in Captain Cook.
		I'm actually about 1,000 feet north of 19.5.
		And I wanted to ask Terrence a couple of questions.
		One was about cannabis and ibogaine.
		And the other was I wanted to thank him for, at one time he was going to be a witness in my trial for the religious use of cannabis here in Kona.
		Yeah, what is your question about cannabis and ibogaine?
		Well, I'm interested in the fact, what do you think of the fact that they're the only two plants that are illegal to grow in the United States, and ibogaine being an addiction interrupter?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Well, ibogaine was put in that Schedule I in that week of hysteria back in 19 was put in, including the compounds later found not even to be active in human beings.
		I think it is a tremendous detriment and an indictment of the scientific establishment that it doesn't fight back more against medic .
		You know, in the Middle Ages, medical students would steal corpses off the gallows in order to get bodies to do dissections which the church had forbidden.
		And where is the courage of science now, big science even, that it allows government to set the agenda in the area of exploring substances which affect the human mind?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The answer, Terence, is they're chicken.
		Now, we're out of time.
		I want to ask you one quick question.
		One of our network employees just came back from Hawaii, Honolulu, and elsewhere, and said the island is like a crispy critter.
		It's so dry.
		She had never seen Hawaii in the state it's in right now.
		Is that true?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, the way the El Niño works is these huge storms in California, that's all our winter water.
		And we, until a week ago, had not seen them since before Halloween.
		Now we're getting weak rain occasionally, but people who didn't store water are in trouble, and the coffee people are screaming.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Boy, that's almost impossible to imagine, recalling the Hawaii that I saw when I was living on Maui.
		Listen, that's it.
		We've gone through all the hours, Terrence, and once again, you have been ever so gracious.
		What a wonderful interview.
		And aside from a few interruptions, your new phone system in the wilderness is working just spiffy.
		Terrence, got to say goodnight.
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		It's a great pleasure to talk to you, Art.
unidentified		Good luck.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Take care.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And when I come, I want to see you, Terrence, all right?
terence mckenna ▲ ● ▼		We've got a guest room for you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You take care, my friend.
		That's Terrence McKenna, folks.
		That's it for tonight.
		I'm sorry.
		Clock says I've got to go.
		From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.

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