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July 10, 2004 - Art Bell

02:51:14

Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell - Daniel Pinchbeck - Psychedelic Drugs

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01:03:39

daniel pinchbeck

01:05:45

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art bell ▲ ● ▼		man immigrated and joined the marines for financial reasons corporal wasfali hussoon was doing well recovering at a u.s motor hospital in germany after being flown out of lebanon on friday so nobody really knows exactly what happened here did he did he well they just don't know uh strange he would turn up in lebanon but now that a senate committee has concluded the CIA
		falsely claimed that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction, expect more caution on Capitol Hill the next time a president seeks approval for preemptive military action, but don't expect America to strike only after an attack.
		Even the harshest critics of the Bush administration's policy of preemption say the U.S. must act in the face of a clear threat.
		Oh, by the way, I wonder if any of you can confirm this for me.
		I'll be watching for it.
		A friend of mine told me there's going to be a 3.01 a.m. Pacific time launch from Vandenberg, a pretty big rocket going into orbit and taking a satellite into orbit.
		And so I don't know it for sure, but I'm certainly going to wander out onto the porch at about 3.01 and see if I can see something ascending into the heavens.
		Does anybody know if that schedule is on?
		If so, I'll let the audience know.
		3.01 a.m. Pacific Time from Vandenberg, or if that has now changed, I'd be certainly very, very interested.
		And so if any of you have the schedule or know what's going to happen, just give me a quick, fast blast, and we'll take it from there.
		The End Curtis of Valdosta, California says, me and my wife got a chance finally to see the movie Day After Tomorrow.
		We thought it was excellent.
		Hope to see more to come.
		Curtis and Patricia, thanks.
		Well, the Day After Tomorrow is doing very well indeed.
		In fact, worldwide, it already has topped the $500 million mark.
		That's incredible.
		Absolutely incredible.
		DVD sale, well, it's still in theaters, and then DVD sales will come.
		Actually, it's, believe it or not, the day after tomorrow now is, I think, like number 35 or 34 or something like that, worldwide.
		All-time movies.
		Of all-time gross, what they have is some list of the gross a movie makes, you know, worldwide.
		All-time movies.
		I mean, for all of moviedom, all of time, period, over $500 million in number 35 or something like that, all-time.
		That's incredible.
		Absolutely incredible.
		So there is a lot of weather-related news.
		That's probably one reason why an awful lot of people want to see it, because people know inside they know the change is going on.
		Dr. Reese Halter, the president of Global Forest Science, says that prolonged drought conditions have created a once-in-a-400-year fire threat for British Columbia's coastal forests.
		Expect a lot of this stuff, folks.
		He says the last time this province was this dry was more than four centuries ago with disastrous results.
		It cooperates with the long drought in the 1580s when we had coastal forests ablaze, he said.
		He warns the evidence shows wildfires of 2003 could be just a warm-up for worse things to come.
		All the evidence goes to show that it could be as bad, and the shift may go from the interior to the coast, he said.
		Walter also warns the mountain pine beetle infestation in north-central BC has created vast areas of tinder-dry forest, compounding the potential risk.
		At some critical point, the stars, as it were, all are going to line up, and there's going to be a really big fire in British Columbia.
		And I've got some friends that I talk to on ham radio in BC.
		And, you know, there are times when their temperatures exceed ours down here in the desert.
		Bear in mind, I'm about 25 miles from Death Valley, and they named it that for a reason.
		Look around the rest of the world.
		The Guardian, the first sign that anything was amiss came just after about 11.30 a.m.
		This is a Thursday, July 8th story in the Guardian.
		The skies got dark.
		The temperature plummeted, and the first raindrops began to fall on the fishing villages along the Devon coast.
		Within an hour, winds were up to 60 miles an hour, and by late afternoon, the storm had swept across southern England and hit London.
		It had happened.
		If it had happened, for example, in October or November, why nobody would have batted an eyelid, but not this time of year.
		Falling trees with their summer canopies of leaves catching the full force of the wind, brought down power lines, left more than 13,000 homes without electricity across Kent, Sussex, and Surrey.
		While they predicted fallen temperatures, led British Gas to put its winter emergency contingency plan into operation as it prepared for a surge in demand with people switching on their central heating.
		Their central heating in July, folks, in England.
		I'm telling you, I'm telling you, look for a lot more of this.
		There are now more sunspots than there have been in the last 1,000 years.
		This could be a cause of global warming.
		Also, vast areas of cold water have suddenly appeared in the North Pacific and the North Atlantic, meaning we could be on our way to a superstorm.
		This coming from Whitley Streeber's unknown country, oceanographers are racing to study the unexpected event.
		It is possible that this is happening because the great oscillation that moves ocean water from the north to the south is weakening and getting smaller.
		This new abnormality suggests that the situation is getting worse, much worse, much more quickly than anybody anticipated.
		Should it persist, it will result in a very early autumn in the northern hemisphere, which will be accompanied by very violent weather.
		But would it or could it trigger a really big storm like portrayed in Superstorm in the day after tomorrow?
		Well, not unless tropical air penetrates deep into the Arctic in August, should air temperatures at quick watch high Arctic monitoring points soar to above 85 degrees Fahrenheit in August or September, and the conditions now present in the northern ocean persist, the extreme weather could indeed result.
		David Whitehouse writes in the BBC News that Swiss researcher Sammy Solanki used ice cores from Greenland to compare today's sunspot activity with that of the past.
		Seems over the last century, as the Earth's climate has become warmer, the number of sunspots has increased.
		Now, this trend is being made worse by greenhouse gases, but they are not the only cause of global warming.
	Sunspots have been monitored since, did you know this, 1610, shortly after the invention of the telescope, they began, counting.
	The sun usually has an 11-year cycle of activity, but this isn't always regular.
	Between about 1645 and 1715, there were fewer sunspots than usual on the sun's surface.
	At that time, the Earth experienced a long period of cold weather known as the Little Ice Age.
	Looking at sunspot activity during the past 15, or make that 1,150 years, Volanqui has found that the Sun has never been as active as it has during the past 60 years.
	That's interesting.
	The Sun has never been as active as it has during the past 60 years.
	However, during the past 20 years, the number of sunspots has remained about the same, yet the average temperature of the Earth has continued to rise.
	This, if you want to believe that, could be due to fossil fuel burning or not.
	Who knows?
	The fact of the matter is, though, the climate is clearly changing, and I'll say it for the millionth time.
	There's not much we can do to affect it, even if it's fossil fuels, frankly.
	It's already underway, and what we should do is be prepared.
	We should begin to anticipate the areas that will no longer grow what they now grow and look for areas where we would plant what we're going to continue to need.
	Had Shakespeare been a solar physicist, he may have written Hell hath no fury like the Sun, although the Sun provides the means for life here on Earth.
	It does have dark side.
	The sun regularly sends massive solar explosions of radioactive plasma with the intensity of a billion megaton bombs.
	A billion megaton bombs hurling through the solar system.
	And perhaps even more astounding, scientists now have the ability to track that energy billions of miles away thanks to an armada of explorers, including Mars Odyssey, Ulysses, Cassini, and the Voyagers, not to mention solar and Earth orbiting craft.
	It was with this unprecedented scientific fleet that scientists observed the events that took place late October and November.
	Do you all remember when the sun unleashed the most powerful solar flares ever detected in the history of looking at these things?
	I mean, there was a blast.
	Thank God it was not directed at Earth, but had it been, there would have been a real collapse.
	Even as it was, a sort of timeline emerged tracking the largest of the related coronal mass ejections from the Sun all the way to Voyager, expected to receive the shock blast sometime this month.
	They will get it, by the way.
	Then on to the helipause, which delineates our solar system from interstellar space, the force of the blast is expected to extend that region by as much as 400 million miles.
	All told, about 17 major flares erupted on the Sun during those two weeks.
	Boy, they were some rough ones.
	The result of energy building up in the Sun's magnetic field lines until they become strained enough to suddenly snap like an overstretched rubber band, the related CME or coronal mass ejection were the largest explosions in the solar system,
	capable of launching up to 10 billion tons of electrified gas into space, normally at speeds of one to two million miles an hour, while we're protected, of course, by Earth's magnetosphere and the atmosphere, power grids, radio, and GPS signals, satellites, and astronauts in space are indeed vulnerable.
	Unfortunately, effects on Earth from these events were minimal, in effect, a testament to the fleet of monitors that issued warnings as early as october twenty first.
	Most Earth orbiting spacecraft were put into safe mode to protect them from the massive onslaught of radiation.
	Power grids were safe, with the exception of a blackout in Sweden.
	Airplanes were rerouted to a more southern route to move them away from the increased radiation at the pole.
	At Mars, the Marie instrument on the Mars Odyssey spacecraft was not as lucky.
	Ironically, its task was to better understand solar radiation on Mars.
	It understands quite a bit now.
	It was able to make observations up until the powerful October 28th CME overheated a power converter and it no longer works.
	The Hubble Space Telescope may have discovered as many as 100 new planets orbiting stars in our own galaxy.
	Hubble's harvest comes from a sweep of thousands of stars in the dome-like bulge of the Milky Way.
	It confirms it would almost double the number of planets known to be circling other stars to about 230.
	The discovery is going to lend support to the idea that almost every sun-like star in our galaxy and probably the universe is accompanied by planets.
	They're out there.
	Stephen Beckwith, director of the Space Telescope Science Institute, told BBC News Online, quote, I think this work has the potential to be the most significant advance in discovering extrasolar planetary systems since the first planets were discovered in the mid-1990s, end quote.
	So what we've got here is indeed interesting, and it provokes a question.
	If, in fact, most of the stars we see, and even with the naked eye on a good dark night, why you can see more than you can count, thousands, hundreds of thousands, millions, I don't know.
	You can detect from where I live on a good dark night the Milky Way from one end to the other, from one horizon to the other.
	It is incredible.
	Now, what they're telling us is most, if not all, of those stars have planets surrounding them.
	That would mean that life, if life is even, I don't know, fairly common, should be everywhere out there.
	There should be planets crawling with life.
	I mean, if you've got uncountable stars and then multiply that by uncountable numbers of planets and a very great deal of time that has passed, there should be almost uncountable numbers of civilizations out there with life.
	But if they're there, where are they?
	We haven't heard a peep.
	Not one thing.
	I wonder if any of you have thoughts on that.
	Even those at SETI, Dr. Shostak and others, are saying publicly now that, you know, if X number of years go by and we don't get some sort of detection of life at some point, SETI's going to have to say something.
	Well, you know, we've looked at some percentage of what there is to look at, and we haven't found anything.
unidentified		Nothing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, I understand that the years when any emerging life might have radio and television and be emitting radio frequency would be, in the larger scheme of things, perhaps very narrow.
		But even so, just the numbers alone of civilizations that ought to be out there should be staggering.
		And there's just not a peep.
		SETI listens.
		And of course we have sightings.
		You can say, well, Art, you know, there's sightings and there's people that have been snatched up and all the rest of that.
		And surely there does seem to be something to that, but it's not ironclad.
		Nothing is yet ironclad.
		We have no message, no clear, unambiguous contact.
		To the point where everybody agrees, yes, we've been contacted.
		Yes, there is life out there.
		Nothing yet.
		And to me, that's incredible.
		All those stars.
		The Hubble discovering planet after planet to the point where they're now saying, well, planets are common around stars.
		And life should be at least reasonably common.
unidentified		So if they're out there, where the hell are they?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, we're going to do open lines coming up in this next half hour.
		And at the top of the next hour, we're going to be talking about psychedelics, mind, drugs.
		Daniel Pinchbeck is going to be my guest.
		It's going to be a wild night.
		So I suggest you buckle in and get ready for the ride.
		from the high desert.
		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		Well, I think it's time to generate To realize just what I have found I have been on a tail Of what I am It's all clear to me now My heart is on fire And all your sorrow
		It's a beauty It's all clear to me now It's all clear to me now It's all clear to me now You know it don't come easy It's all
		clear to me You know it don't come easy Run to play your Jews If you wanna see the blues And you know it don't come easy You don't have to shout or leave the vows You can even play them easy Forget about the past And all your sorrow
		The future won't last It will soon be your tomorrow I don't ask the folks I only want to trust And you know it don't come easy Wanna take a ride?
		To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free 800-825-5033.
		From west to the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach ART by calling your in-country sprint access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, I'm getting word here that maybe tonight's launch or tomorrow morning's launch, however you look at it, has been put off or is wrong.
		It says 301 is coming Tuesday morning, according to Dean in Bakersfield, California.
		So we'll keep an eye on that.
unidentified		I'm sure we'll get more messages, but I'll try and keep you informed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Those are quite spectacular to watch if you're somewhere on the West Coast, particularly in the southern part of the U.S. Anything that goes up from Vandenberg that big is really something to see.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Pretty interesting stuff.
		On the front of the CoastCoastAM.com website right now, there's an article that you can read the whole thing.
		It's going to kind of relate to what we're going to talk about tonight.
		Last month, apparently, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that peyote can be used by non-Native Americans for religious purposes.
		So I guess if, as long as you're saying that you want to have some sort of religious experience.
		The way I read this, let's read it again to be sure.
		Last month, the Utah Supreme Court ruled that peyote can be used by non-Native Americans for religious purpose.
		Now, the entire story is there if you want to read it.
		We're going to be talking to Daniel Pinchbeck tonight about not just peyote, but a lot of mind-expanding drugs.
		And a lot of people think that's sort of just an artifact of the 60s, and to some degree it is, but there's a lot going on in the modern world, and it'll be a very, very interesting discussion.
		He's a very bright guy.
		So that's coming up in, I don't know, 20 minutes.
		First time, Color Line, you are on the air.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hi, Art.
		Hi.
		Interesting story.
		Incident several years ago, but we did some work at Tonopa Auxiliary Airfield, which is, I think it's about 63 miles north, kind of west of Area 51.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		And they were pouring runways, and it was very hot.
unidentified		And you can only work during the day on that base because you sign over all your rights and you come under their command and their control.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you were, what, part of a crew that was pouring these contracts?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or these contracts?
unidentified		No, we were actually working on the concrete after they got done pouring it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ah, you were one of the smoothers.
unidentified		Well, not a smoother.
unidentified		doing controlled expansion joints.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know, it's hot.
unidentified		So The next morning we would get on there, and it would already be cracking.
unidentified		So they reluctantly let us work at night because they had to tear a bunch of the stuff up, and it was real expensive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And so, what did you get to see?
unidentified		Yeah, well, a door opened out of a big hangar, and a saucer come out and flew away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, now.
unidentified		And I asked the guy, do you think it's something we built or one that we captured?
		And he goes, I don't even want to talk about it.
		I'm just telling you what I saw.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So this is something he told you or something you personally observed?
unidentified		No, it's something he told me.
		He was in charge of the crew.
		He's not into that stuff.
		He's never talked about it.
		He just told me that it was a very weird experience because they saw lots of things flying there that, you know, the people, the MPs, I guess, would come up and tell them to lay down or put your head in a trash can or whatever.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That really is in fly away.
		So you couldn't work during the day because of the heat and because of the cracking of the concrete, and that I surely do understand.
		And so they made you work at night.
unidentified		So they reluctantly, they had to let us because if they didn't let us cut at night, it would be cracked by morning.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I've got you.
		That sounds realistic.
		I wish you had seen it yourself, so it was a first-hand report.
		You believe him?
unidentified		I absolutely believe him, 100%.
unidentified		He said it that one time, and he's never mentioned it again because I think that it scared him.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, all right.
		I very much appreciate the call.
		Well, I do live adjacent to an area here, as you know, where a great deal of development of latest, who knows what generation aircraft are being worked on.
		So a lot of things do indeed fly in this area.
		And we see a lot of things in the night sky here.
		How many can be attributed to our stuff?
		Probably most.
		How many might be their stuff?
		Well, if we have indeed collected from some crash, previous crash, whether it be Roswell or something else, a craft, it would make sense.
		We would attempt, certainly, to back engineer to figure out what made it tick, as it were, and to try and fly it.
		And so could those be the things we are seeing?
		Yes, could be.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hey, Art, how are you doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm doing well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And who would you be, and where would you be?
unidentified		Oh, this would be Steve, and I'm near the Minneapolis area in a small little town called Wyzetta.
		Yes, sir.
		And I'm calling you about a show that you're very fond of called Dead Like Me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I love that program.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I love it.
unidentified		Yes, you do.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		People are telling me the CD of the DVD of the first season is out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I haven't seen it yet.
unidentified		Is it really?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's what I hear.
unidentified		God, I want to buy that.
unidentified		But you are the cause of me actually getting into this show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, good.
unidentified		And season two comes out.
unidentified		The first show is on the 25th.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, everybody should know.
		It's on Showtime.
		It's called Dead Like Me, and it's really cool.
unidentified		Yep, and it comes out.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's so different.
unidentified		25th is Season 2, Episode 1.
		Yay!
		Well, I and I cannot tell you how, but I saw Season 2, Episode 1 today.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How?
unidentified		I can't tell you that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, well, don't give anything away.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't want to be told.
unidentified		I'll fast blast it to you later.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, don't fast-blast me any endings or anything like that.
unidentified		No, can I give away a couple spoilers?
unidentified		Little tiny spoilers.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very, very small spoilers.
unidentified		They are very small, just to make sure that I'm not full of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, yeah, I'll take it.
unidentified		Well, George, Georgia makes out with a guy who is nowhere near as hot as me, and he's an idiot.
		And she gets to play.
		Stop there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Stop right there.
unidentified		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Stop right there.
		That's enough.
		Thank you.
		It's a very cool series.
		No question about it.
		It's called Dead Like Me.
		George is way cool.
		And I don't like TV.
		But I mean, I would volunteer.
		I really would volunteer.
		You know me in TV.
		I avoid it like the plague.
		But I would volunteer to have me soul snatched by George.
		I really would.
		I mean, there's got to be an occasion one of these seasons where they can kill off a talk show host, right?
		So I'd love to be killed and have my soul taken by George.
		I mean, it's really a cool program.
		So if you haven't seen it up until now, as he suggested, the 25th would be the premiere of the second season on Showtime.
		And it's very, very different.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hi.
frank in new york ▲ ● ▼		Good morning, Art.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Good morning.
frank in new york ▲ ● ▼		This is Frank from Brooklyn.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hey.
frank in new york ▲ ● ▼		And I'm calling.
		I enjoyed the discourse this evening, and I have a couple comments.
		One, I can remember when Carl Sagan talked about his theoretical postulate that there are billions of stars and then billions and billions of planets and things.
		But I would assume now in the last 20 years with the space telescopes, we've been able to chart and at least understand the distribution of light matter to dark matter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, when Sagan was first saying that, sir, we really didn't have the confirmation of the planet part of his equation.
		Since then, though, we have been getting confirmation of that.
		And it turns out planets are going to be common.
		So as I said in my dissertation, life ought to be common.
frank in new york ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
		And another question, you mentioned SETI, and years ago I had done some research on the program and also the radio telescopes that were used to, I guess, interpret and to send out radio signals and things and to map, in a sense, parts of the universe.
		What I found interesting was the fact that they only focus on a very small, small area.
		And I would assume that maybe if they shifted their focus many degrees, there would be a lot more interesting information to be had.
		And probably we'll be doing that in the future.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Have you ever had to mow a lawn?
frank in new york ▲ ● ▼		I have, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well, when you mow a lawn, you do it methodically.
		I mean, you go up a row, down a row.
		You don't sort of jump over and do it.
unidentified		Correct.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So I'm sure that's what they're doing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		They're mowing the sky lawn a little bit at a time, and they try not to jump around.
frank in new york ▲ ● ▼		We have some wonderful chaos algorithms that might help in that with regard to new permutations.
		So I think when that's applied, we make it a very different picture of the universe.
		But listen, thank you very much, Art, and I look forward to your guest tonight.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, all right.
		Thank you very much, and take care.
		I still want to know why we have not heard from them.
		You would imagine there would be many civilizations behind us, perhaps just emerging, crawling up from the lightning-struck mud puddle, and then all the way to what we would consider gods, and all those in between.
		Well, we should have caught a few of those in between by now.
		Of course, maybe we have.
		West of the Rockies, you're on the air.
		Hello.
unidentified		Hi, Art.
		This is Nick from Oak Harbor, and I just wanted to comment about that very subject.
		And I'm sure you've heard this before, but I think people need to think about it.
		Perhaps we're spending too much time trying to apply our own standards and our own technologies to what some other civilizations might have.
		And so we're looking perhaps in the wrong places for the wrong thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, if you could let your imagination run wild, Nick, and come up with a new way to look, I know they're switching, for example, over to light, from radio to light.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But how else would you look?
unidentified		I don't know that I have the answer to that because I'm not one of them.
unidentified		But there must be as many different ways of communicating as there are civilizations, probably, or at least quite a few different ways, and we may not even have a clue, which is why I don't have an answer for that, because maybe we don't even have a clue as well.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, Nick, if you listen to a lot of people who speak on these subjects, the only thing that appears to go faster than light would seem to be thought.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Now, that may turn out to be the way that we end up communicating with some other life form, maybe at the speed of thought.
unidentified		Which is a great idea.
unidentified		Great way to go.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, buddy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Yes, sir.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And take care, yeah.
		That may be it.
		What is the speed of thought?
		Well, according to what experiments have been done, there appears to be no limit to the speed of thought.
		So maybe that'll be it.
		And maybe it's already occurring.
		And maybe the people that are having those communications we presently call missing a card from the deck.
		But maybe some of them are not missing a card.
		First time caller line, you're on the air.
unidentified		Hi, this is Carlisle in Kenai, Alaska.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All the way up in Kenai.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How are you doing?
unidentified		Oh, really good.
		It's beautiful up here.
		Beautiful blue skies, warm day today.
		Very hot for us.
		I'm really happy you're having Daniel Pinchbeck on for an interview tonight.
		I've been trying to spread the word all over on the Intogen forums around the world.
		Well, thank you.
		I wanted to call when he was on, but I was pretty sure once he gets on, I won't be able to get through.
		But one of the things I wanted to tell you, there is a legal herb called salvia divinorum that has been legal, never been made illegal in this country.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Never heard of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What is it?
unidentified		Well, it's also known by Mexican mint.
		It's a rare strain of a salvia plant, and it's been touted to be as strong as peyote or some other illegal substances in some places, obviously Utah, not anymore, according to the state law.
		But if people want to do a search on it, they can go on the web and just put in the word salvia and then divinorum, which is spelled D-I-V-I-N-O-R-U-M.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there's a lot of things like that out there.
		I know here in the high desert, sir, there are a lot of things that regularly grow in people's front yards.
		You know, what you'd think of as weeds or something, and they can be anywhere from substances that will take you on a really wild trip to things that will kill you.
		The trouble is knowing the difference.
unidentified		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't.
unidentified		I'm aware of some of those, but one of the things about this particular plant, it only grows native to Mexico, by the way, in Oaxaca.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		But as far as I know, no one's ever been harmed by it.
		If you take too much, although it does have one problem, it will make you pass out.
		That's the only real problem with it.
		But if people are really moderate and start out very small, they can usually find a level where it won't do that.
		And I've seen some extraordinary things, as many people have, that put peyote and mesculine to shame, in my opinion.
		Really?
		Yeah, and it's completely legal, at least so far.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you know, maybe you can answer this question.
		I mean, I had my ride in the 60s, like everybody else did, I suppose.
		But have mind-altering drugs, what is their status these days?
		I mean, I hear a lot of other drugs, you know, ecstasy and all that kind of baloney going on, but what about psychedelics?
		Are they still commonly used in the U.S. by some sort of subculture or not?
unidentified		Yeah, I don't know about the illegal ones because I've steered away from them.
		But yes, there are.
		There's plenty of legal ones.
		There's a huge list of legal hallucinogens.
		The most effective, I believe, is the one I'm telling you about, Salvia Divinorum.
		But there is a large group of people that is growing larger every year on the Internet with small little forums scattered around the world who are devoted just to this subject.
		And the thing is someone wants to look for these groups of people to find out what's going on.
		They just got to put in a keyword, entheogen, spelled E-N-T-H-E-O-G-E-N.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You really want them to look at this, don't you?
unidentified		Well, I've been studying it for a few years, and I'm fascinated by it because it's really got my attention as a means to spirituality.
unidentified		I don't know that all of these plants or in cases of some drugs really will lead to a door to open into that dimension, but it appears for some people that some of them can.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm very interested in that, sir, and I thank you for the call.
		I really am quite interested in that.
		In other words, you'll hear people talk about gateway drugs and the negative side of drugs all the way, all the time, right?
		But I wonder if some of these drugs, and you will hear people admit it from time to time, that yes, they can be open doors to spiritual experiences that you might not have otherwise.
		That's not to say you can't have them without the drugs.
		But when honesty prevails, and I've had a lot of guests on it, and they will hesitantly, because of the attitude of the U.S. government about drugs these days, they'll hesitantly admit that they may open doors of that sort.
		It's a very interesting subject, and tonight we shall explore it no matter what.
		Wildcardline, you are on air.
		Hello.
		Hello?
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Yes.
		Hi, this is James.
		I'm Pluto Architect.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		James, you're going to have to yell at me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're not going to be able to do it.
unidentified		I wanted to say maybe the reason we haven't heard from any of these other civilizations is maybe you've heard of the Chaos Theory.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I have, yes.
unidentified		Billions of random events have to happen in order for us to be here now.
unidentified		And maybe those events haven't happened on those other planets, and the one civilizations that do exist are going to be very, very far behind us or very, very far ahead of us.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I just watched a very interesting movie called The Butterfly Effect on DVD.
		And that was with reference to the chaos theory.
		You know, the thought that a butterfly flapping its wings perhaps somewhere in Asia can cause a typhoon ultimately.
		That little tiny things can become very large things.
		Kind of a neat movie, by the way, about time travel.
unidentified		But that's maybe why we haven't heard anything, is because they haven't gone the same direction that we have.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that could easily be true of even you could suggest a fairly large percentage, but surely some percentage of those civilizations would have developed.
unidentified		I think life is rare in the universe.
		I think life is a very rare thing to find.
		You look in our solar system and the conditions have to be just perfect for it to fall right.
		Everything has to fall into place just perfectly.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think the fact that we haven't contacted anybody would bolster that thought.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wouldn't you?
unidentified		That's what I say.
unidentified		And thank you very much for having me on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're very welcome.
		Take care.
		And I wonder.
		I surely would love to establish contact, wouldn't you?
		In my lifetime, I would love to see that occur because I have this feeling, just this very strong feeling, that there is life out there, be it rare or be it common.
		And I'm beginning to agree with the last caller, that it is rare, very rare, but it's there.
		And eventually, we'll connect with them, and then we'll find out we're no longer alone.
		Or maybe contact will come in a flash, in a thought, by a brain talking to another brain.
		Daniel Pinchbeck is coming up in a moment.
		We're going to talk about psychedelic drugs, the state of psychedelic drugs.
		He's got a lot to say, and I know a lot of you have been looking forward to this program.
		So it's coming up next from the high desert in the middle of the night.
		is Coast to Coast AM.
unidentified		We'll be right back.
		Across the streams of hopes and dreams where things are really hot.
		Come along if you care.
		Come along if you dare.
		Take a ride to the land inside of your mind.
		To talk with Art Bell, form a wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach ART by calling your in-country sprint access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free, 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you feel the spirit of the late Terrence McKenna with us this night?
		I can.
		Daniel Pinchbeck has written for the New York Times magazine, Esquire, The Village Voice, and many other publications.
		He is currently writing a column here and now for Arthur, which is a new magazine following in the tradition of the original Rolling Stone.
		His book, Breaking Open the Head, chronicles his own investigation of shamanism and psychedelic drugs.
		For the book, he underwent an initiation with a West African tribe in Gabon, visited Indians in the Ecuadorian Amazon, as well as in the mountains of Oaxaca, Mexico.
		He also wrote about the Burning Man Festival.
		October 2012, the return of prophecies of shamanic and traditional cultures, including the Hopi, classical Maya, Hindu, and Christian apocalyptic traditions.
		He believes that these prophecies are telling us something crucial about what's happening in our world today.
		They need to be understood properly.
		He argues in the book, which is due out, by the way, next summer, that the prophecies describe some sort of phase shift or perhaps transformation into a new form of human consciousness.
		Well, that would be a jump, wouldn't it?
		The most significant change, he says, since the development of language.
		So, in a moment, Daniel Junchback.
		Boy, depend on music to provide the right set and setting for what you're about to do.
		Daniel Pinchback.
		Hi there, Daniel.
		Welcome back to the program.
unidentified		Thank you so much.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It's great to be back.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, it's good to have you.
		Listen, you know, a lot of the audience, I'm sure, considers what we're about to talk about to be an archaic artifact of the 60s, not something that really goes on anymore at all.
		Psychedelic drugs are just sort of that thing that happened, and it's all over with.
		And they think of it as dangerous.
		And so let's start with that.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Well, I mean, the way I looked at psychedelics in my book was in Breaking Open the Head, the way I looked in the 60s was that it was kind of like the first stage in a kind of voyage of shamanic initiation.
		And it was a very new experience for people at that time.
		I mean, it was really only in the sort of 50s that we discovered the mushrooms in Mexico.
		LSD was discovered in the 1940s, didn't start getting used until the 50s and 60s.
		And it kind of opened this incredible Pandora's box of psychic effects and visions and confusions.
		And the society couldn't really deal with it at the time, so the whole thing was radically shut down.
		And it's pretty tragic.
		In the early 60s, psychedelics were considered to be the most fascinating subject for psychology and philosophy.
		I mean, Aldous Huxley and Alan Lawrence.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Psychology went berserk with them for a while, didn't it?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And then in 66, the drugs were made illegal.
		And then by the end of the 60s, or mid-70s, I guess people had really just, I think it was almost more like psychic exhaustion, kind of hangover from the 60s.
		People couldn't really deal with it.
		And, you know, as you mentioned in your introduction, sort of Terrence McKenna then sort of came around and carried the torch after Timothy Leary.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, came up with some really brilliant ideas and speculations about what these substances are.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I always thought, you know, I had Terrence on many times.
		He turned in to be a, he was a good friend.
		And Terence was about, gosh, he was the worst pro.
		You know, he just absolutely destroyed these anti-drug commercials, you know, the brain on drugs and fried brain cells.
		And Terrence was a brilliant, brilliant man.
		And he'd been on more trips than most of us had made to 7-Eleven.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		Well, I mean, you know, a lot of the anti-drug, especially the anti-psychedelic kind of propaganda has been just bad science.
		You know, I mean, in the 60s, they sort of had this scary study that said that LSD damaged chromosomes, but it turned out to be completely untrue.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But that's a hell of a story.
		I mean, that's going to scare you.
		Oh, my God, my chromosomes.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And recently, we've seen the same thing with ecstasy.
		I mean, the government has had to admit that a whole sort of battery of results were actually not ecstasy at all.
		They were methamphetamine that showed kind of brain damage and so on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let's for a second talk about the government and its entire attitude toward drugs, Daniel.
		I mean, really, it's why.
		The government is anti-drug.
		Why?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, I think that one reason is that there's a kind of self-propagating bureaucracy.
		If you look at the history, I mean, there was alcohol prohibition, I guess, in the 20s.
		And when that ended, they had created this huge bureaucracy to deal with alcohol.
		They didn't really know what to do with it.
		And so then they turned to marijuana.
		And then in the 60s, when sort of the hippies and the counterculture and the black radicals became kind of the target for the conservatives, it was very easy to demonize drugs and to kind of use that as a technique of social control.
		And if you think about the prison system now, we have millions of people passing through the prison system, a lot of them drug-related.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, actually, Daniel, most of them.
		The majority of people are in prison for drugs.
		The greatest percentage are in prison for drugs.
		It's amazing how many are in prison.
		But I want to go deeper.
		I'm wondering aside from the fact that the radicals used the drugs, and so they were sort of part of, I don't know, the drive against radicalism in the U.S., there's something more, and I've always thought it had to do with productivity and social versus anti-social behavior, but mostly productivity.
		Boy, the government's very concerned about productivity.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I think there are two aspects to it.
		I mean, the first aspect is it's a very convenient means of social control.
		And when you're dealing with kind of, you know, excess minority, poor population, it's a way of kind of warehousing them in this system.
		You know, it's kind of like warehousing excess labor capacity.
		And in the meantime, you create this whole industry, this prison, you know, industrial complex.
		And so that's one side of it.
		And then the other side of it is what it does to those people who actually want to explore consciously their own mind and kind of try to use psychedelics in a beneficial way.
		And ju it just makes it very difficult for anybody to undertake that exploration because it's demonized and made illegal.
		And so it puts a lot of fear around it.
		And that I think is really like fear of the psyche and also fear of the fact that as began to happen in the 60s, open exploration of these areas lead to a very different model of society and might actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, now you've hit it.
		Stop right there for a second.
		Exploration of these drugs leads to a very different concept of what society perhaps should be or what we should be.
		In other words, people take when they use these drugs, you're suggesting they take on an entirely different mindset about all that is around them.
		Is that true?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it's definitely true.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It gives you a different perspective on your own psyche and on technology and nature and the whole kind of process that we're kind of invested in that we're usually kind of unconscious of.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it a uniform effect?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It seems to be very much across the board.
		It's interesting because now even though psychedelics are illegal, there is a kind of room, certain kind of university environments where people go through a tripping phase or whatever.
		And there's sort of a little culture around that.
		And Even when people are just doing it hedonistically, they still often open themselves to all sorts of channels of information and ideas that maybe they have to spend the rest of their lives trying to then suppress.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, that's a fairly serious effect, I would say.
		If it's something that will affect you for the rest of your life, that's a very serious effect indeed.
		And so you think that's the prime reason that our government has this giant war on drugs?
		We have so many people in prison.
		It's a war between the government and the people's I almost said right to use drugs.
		I don't have a right.
		There's laws against it.
		I guess I'm a libertarian.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I actually do think the people have the right to use drugs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'm a libertarian.
		I think they ought to have a right, so that would have come, but they don't, of course.
		There's laws against it.
		Anyway, that's the basis of it all.
		You think that it would affect people in this way?
		There must be kind of a list of reasons to have such a big war, Daniel.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, and you could also make the argument that however it's come down, it's you know, we have to see it as kind of, I mean, there are positive aspects too.
		You know, and it does seem like in the 60s and early 70s, you know, the culture wasn't ready for the kind of psychedelic evolution or revolution.
		And it was kind of shaking things loose, and the energy got really, really dark, you know, kind of symbolized by Charles Manson and the Rolling Stones, Ultimate Concert and stuff.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Sure.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		So in a way, we needed to step back.
		And what I learned when I did Breaking Open the Head was that in the intervening 30 years, there's been an amazing kind of underground investigation, and a lot more knowledge has been pulled together.
		And those people who continued in the field have gone really, really deep and uncovered amazing amounts of information and material.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How many people are actively working in these areas, do you think, Daniel?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		I mean, it's very difficult to say.
		I mean, there's certainly thousands.
		It's certainly become more and more people go down to South America to seek out shamanic experiences, what's legal.
		Shamans also come here from other countries.
		And drugs are not the only way to explore non-ordinary states of consciousness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, absolutely.
		We were dealing with that in the first hour.
		But having said that, Daniel, they are one way to legitimately explore an altered state, are they not?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, of course.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And they provide you with access to extraordinary vibrational fields of consciousness that I don't think years of meditation is going to take you where DMT takes you in five minutes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, Terrence, you know, talked a lot about that, DMT.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think it was DMT he talked a lot about, wasn't it?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		He talked a lot about DMT and a lot about psilocybin methods.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so how DMT?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		He was famous for talking about the machine elves of hyperspace that appeared to him on DMT.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		Yes.
		What an incredible man he was.
		And so what can you tell me about DMT?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's definitely one of the most extraordinary experiences you can have to take DMT.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you describe it?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, you basically, I've only done it a few times myself.
		You smoke it, and it's very nasty stuff.
		Well, the first thing that should be mentioned about it, DMT stands for dimethyltryptamine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And it is a chemical that's contained in the brain and in the body.
		It's probably stored in the pineal gland.
		It's also in the spine at the base of the spine.
		Really?
		And it's very similar in structure to serotonin.
		So it's probably, or melatonin.
		So it's basically kind of a neurotransmitter.
		It may have something to do with sleep and dream states.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I was going to say, those are used to aid sleep, right?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, melatonin, yeah.
		Right.
		And there's a very interesting book called DMT the Spirit Molecule.
		Dr. Rick Straussman had official approval to study DMT and came up with some very interesting theories about it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		The spiritual molecule.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		The spirit molecule, yeah.
		But anyway, the experience is when you smoke it in a sort of synthetic form of it, it's first of all a very strange substance.
		It's kind of like a kind of weird plastic.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You said nasty.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It's very nasty.
		Really?
		It smells nasty.
		It's just weird.
		It has a kind of extraterrestrial tang to it.
		And the first thing that happens is that the whole area around you kind of fills with geometric patterns and runes and kind of strange symbols of some sort.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And then you kind of, in a very Star Trek kind of way, kind of hyperspace into, you know, sort of transport into this other reality.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Man, that's wild.
		This is a pretty common experience?
		I mean, are you just giving me anecdotal evidence for yourself, or is this described fairly universally?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It seems to be pretty completely universal, actually.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		My, my.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
		And I mean, and the first thing that one feels when one kind of arrives at this other realm or whatever it is is that it's incredibly different.
		And the best that I could do to describe it, and I actually, I mean, I have actually seen elves a few times, but usually on DMT, I haven't seen elves.
		It's more like some kind of like thousand-eyed, chattering, sort of hyper-organic entities who are in this kind of strange, vaulted, kind of plastic-feeling space.
		Boy, let me see.
		Walt Disney meets Tibetan mandatory.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, no, I'm getting it.
		Daniel, how in the world, how in the world can people taking this drug have such a similar experience unless they actually are in a place that really is?
		In other words, you would expect a drug would have very different effects on different people firing off in a different way, but for them to have a common experience as you're describing would seem to suggest that it's real, that whatever it is you're transforming and to be able to understand and see around you really is in existence.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, I definitely felt that it was at least as real as this reality.
		If you look at superstring theory and the Brian Green book and so on, I mean, quantum physics kind of opens up the possibility that there are these other dimensions or 11 dimensions of space-time.
		That's right.
		But of course, physics doesn't want to project the possibility that we could actually be connected to those other dimensions or have kind of direct experiences of them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, oh, listen, next time I have one of my theoretical physicists on, I'll bring up DMT and we'll see what kind of reaction we get.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, one thing I'm trying to do in the new book is try to like just, you know, if you think about all these different substances and these kind of different realities they introduce you to, these different kind of domains or dimensions, it sort of gives you a different idea of what consciousness is.
		And, you know, I sort of keep thinking of it now as being a kind of vibration or a frequency or something.
		And these different chemicals, you know, it may actually be that they sort of change the vibrational rate of synapses firing or they.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was there anything, Daniel, in your I mean, did your present reality when you took EMT dissolve entirely to this newer or different reality?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Or was there vestige of what was around you physically still?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		There's a complete disillusion into this other reality which takes over entirely, the entire perceptual field.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And at first you actually are like having a hard time remembering that you are anything.
unidentified		Wow.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Then you kind of figure out that you are you and that you're just in this alternate reality.
		And then by the time you figure that out you begin to come back into the normal reality.
		The whole experience lasts about five to seven minutes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'd heard it was very short.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And does it feel short?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		In other words, it feels like a different kind of time.
		And in fact, the second time I did it, it was with a group of people.
		And as I was kind of in this overwhelming reality, I said out loud, thank you very much.
		You know, trying to be courteous to the entities there.
		You know, I really appreciate this.
		And now I'd like to go back to my reality.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you are a polite traveler.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think it's good to be polite.
		I mean, you definitely feel that.
		I mean, McKenna actually talked about how you kind of feel that the beings in that reality, it's like you don't want to turn your back on them.
		They have a kind of cunning, you know, kind of sorceress kind of vibe to them.
unidentified		So you feel like you have to keep your wits about you.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		The other thing I want to say is that when I started to come out of the DMT trip, I looked down at my arm and there was like my arm was covered with this kind of science fiction jeweled city.
		And then I looked around at the other people in the room.
		And all of them were sort of, it was like they'd become the kind of cosmic cartoon superheroes or their greatest fantasies.
		They all had these kind of armatures around them and kind of suits of multicolored kind of prismatic.
		And it was just such a strange thing.
		It was like, you know, I was just baffled, basically, because it just didn't seem possible that a drug could create this effect.
		It wasn't like all over everything.
		It was like each person individually was in this kind of their own separate kind of superhero or kind of cosmic deity armature.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This is all right, Daniel.
unidentified		Hold on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're at the bottom of the hour.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From the high desert in the middle of the night, oh, this will be some trip tonight.
unidentified		You're listening to Coast to Coast AM.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		To talk with Art Bell, call the wildcard line at Area Code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is Area Code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from East of the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From West of the Rockies, call ART at 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach Art Bell by calling your in-country sprint access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely intriguing.
		I mean, you've got to give it a little thought.
		If all those, or even the great majority of those using this DMT, and I've certainly never used it, but if they actually experience roughly the same thing, generally the same alternate reality, then if that's really true, that would suggest that that alternate reality is real.
		How could it suggest Anything else.
		How could there be such a uniform chemical effect on any brain that would take it to the same place?
		Couldn't be.
		So that means there has really got to be something to it when you think about it.
		really is something.
		The End Professor Michio Kaku, who I'm honored to interview frequently, talks all the time about 11 dimensions, all the time about 11 dimensions, beginning to be pretty, I don't want to say generic because it's still exotic,
		but I mean, you know, talked about right across the scientific community.
		And so are you suggesting, Daniel, that DMT may be a legitimate ticket to a glimpse of one of those dimensions?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's I suppose yes, but I mean, even our language is so difficult, you know, because maybe we won't see them as dimensions in a year or two.
		I mean, who knows?
		You know, it's like the kind of thought and the language is kind of still evolving to understand all of this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, the words are hard because you're describing things that I understand that are not able to be described in our frame of reference.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, so it's a kind of evolutionary process.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		But what I really see as happening is kind of like mysticism or what's traditionally been thought of as mysticism or esoteric traditions and contemporary science beginning to reach the point where they can look at each other and see that they're basically saying the same thing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Cross-pollinate a bit.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, this has been something that's been happening over time, you know, since the 60s also, I suppose, like the Tao of physics and so on.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		But science, even though quantum physics sort of states that the mind is central to the whole process of investigation, we haven't fully kind of integrated that idea into our way of looking at the world because it's kind of a big shift.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you recall from your experience, other than what you said, which you just related, any other interactivity that occurred?
		Did you receive any message?
		Did you make any observation that was profound and still now seems profound?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Right.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Actually, well, what I've really discovered is that I think that DMT is an incredibly powerful experience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And it's an incredibly overwhelming experience.
		But if you want to actually work with psychedelics, I almost think of them more as like medicines in a way now, sort of psychic medicines or something.
		But there are better substances to work with.
		So I've received messages on Iboga, also known as ibogaine, which is an African psychedelic.
		And I've received a lot of messages on ayahuasca, which is a South American potion.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Any commonality?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		In other words, if you look at DMT and then you look at some of the drugs you just talked about, is there any commonality or are they that different?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		There's definitely commonality.
		I mean, you know, well, definitely, I mean, first of all, with ayahuasca contains DMT as one of its ingredients.
		Some of the plants that they use contain DMT.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So there's a cocktail of even more stuff, huh?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, exactly.
		Exactly.
		And what I really feel is like it's really kind of like, I mean, our sort of computer metaphors help us here because it's almost like ayahuasca and ibogaine or iboga are kind of like interfaces over the DMT face-base, whatever it is.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What do you mean interfaces?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's kind of like over if the DMT realm is some kind of like cosmic machine language or some kind of operating system that we're not really ready quite yet to access.
		Ayahuasca and Ibogaine are kind of like Macintosh Windows or something.
		They slow things down and they allow you to have real communication and to pull in messages that can really help your own evolution and understanding.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I don't know if Apple should be happy or unhappy with what you just said.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure they didn't like the slowdown part, but you're suggesting that these other drugs allow you a glimpse of what compared to the DMT experience that you did explain.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I think they allow you to interact with the kind of cosmic intelligences that are manifest during the DMT experience, but are kind of just it's too much.
		Our little brains are not ready for it yet.
		In fact, the last time I took it, I've only taken ibogaine twice.
		I took it once in West Africa.
		I went through a tribal initiation for breaking open the head, and I took it in a ritual there.
		But then I also took it again in Mexico.
		Ibogaine is very interesting because it's actually being used very successfully recently for treating heroin and other addictions.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, especially heroin, also cooking heroin.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what is it about this drug that would assist somebody withdrawing from, say, heroin?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It seems to have several different aspects.
		And one is that, first of all, it's a very long-lasting psychedelic.
		It's probably about 15 to 20 hours.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, that sounds kind of like LSD.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's probably longer than LSD, and it's very different than LSD.
		But it has two aspects to it.
		One is that it's very psychoanalytic.
		People have described it as 10 years of psychoanalysis in one night.
		And my own first experience of it was very psychoanalytic, and I went through it.
		I saw a lot of early childhood material, kind of like re-experience, kind of sense memories of what it had been like to be a little child.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it was introspective.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You reviewed, was it like a life review?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It was sort of like, yeah, it was definitely like a life review.
		And it definitely showed me certain patterns and things that I was doing that were unhealthy.
		And it definitely key in.
		I mean, that was when I was in my late 20s, and it key into my relationship to alcohol.
		And after that, I did cut down on drinking because I just was shown that I was having a really negative effect on my life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it showed me just how it was kind of acting on my relationships and on my writing and how it was kind of not a helper.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, if it did things this good, if it took somebody off heroin or alcohol, which is, well, I don't want to say equally as bad, but as awful, that would be a pro-society kind of drug.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, if it really did that, then you would think, why, the government might even encourage that, encourage the use.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, well, I guess there were some government trials that then got kind of interrupted pretty early on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And there's still ongoing research.
		There's Deborah Mash, a doctor in Florida, and she's been putting out, I think, very, very substantial research that this has benefits.
		And then there's a lot of anecdotal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is there anything published on this aspect of it yet?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I believe there is.
		Probably if you went to the website for MAPS, which is the multidisciplinary approach to psychedelic studies, which is maps.org, and did a search for Eboga or Ibogaine, stuff would pop up.
		There's a lot of information about Ibogaine on the Internet.
		The Journal of American Medical Association did an article last year looking at it and taking it very seriously.
		And I have a number of friends who have been cured from heroin addiction from ibogaine, taking it once or several times.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you think that this is entirely psychological?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It seems to have two aspects.
		There's the psychoanalytic aspect, and there's also an aspect which is somehow purely physiological or chemical.
		It seems to kind of reset people's addiction receptors.
		And people who go in there with a heroin problem have after taking ibogaine, they don't have much withdrawal symptoms.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it would be analogous to resetting you know, for example, I have a lot of ham radios and stuff, they all have microprocessors.
		And you can issue a couple of commands to just about anything and do a reset to all the defaults.
		And you're saying it's analogous to that from an addiction point of view, that it does a reset?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that seems to be the case.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wow.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		So it basically gives people a few months to, you know, but then they have to be serious about really trying to change their life patterns.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it's not a cure for addiction.
unidentified		It's a kind of incredible medicine or a lot of strong aspects to addiction, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		One is physical, and the other is psychological.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Right, and just habitual.
		I mean, people's whole lives become based on getting the drug.
		Yes, oh, yes, so they don't change the pattern of their life.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, and you're saying this attacks both of those at the same time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That would be such incredible news that that should be headline news, if that's really true.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, it is incredible news, and I believe that it is correct.
		And a lot of people have been having this experience.
		I feel it's like filtering more and more into kind of the public consciousness.
		I mean, I wrote about it for LA Weekly a while back.
		There was a really great article in the UK Observer.
		An English addict got off heroin through taking it and described beautifully his experience.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, then I guess do you think psychedelics should be legal?
unidentified		Yeah.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I mean, when you consider the, you know, I mean, basically what we have in our society now is a kind of incredibly unlicensed experiment of chemicals gone haywire.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Very true.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		You know, and I don't see why anybody shouldn't be allowed to self-determine the chemicals they're going to use at this point, considering what we're being subjected to.
		You know, I never signed up for various pesticides or all these different kinds of things that we're just being bombarded with constantly.
		So why shouldn't I be allowed to self-determine substances that I would like to take?
		But I do also think it's good to respect the laws of the country that you're in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, okay.
		Let's just for a second talk about danger.
		All right.
		I want to know the truth, and I really want a straight-across truthful answer about is there any danger in any of these psychedelics?
		And if so, what kind of danger?
		How severe?
		Lay it out.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		I mean, there doesn't seem there is psychological danger, definitely.
		And yeah, there definitely are dangers.
		Some of the dangers are dangers that we don't actually have kind of categories for.
		I mean, if you read my book, I had an experience with a substance called DPT, dipropyltryptamine, which is a kind of analog of DMT.
		And after that experience, I was in a kind of weird kind of occult waking dream state for a while.
		And I had all these kind of crazy synchronicities happen.
		And I had this kind of what basically it felt like, you know, and up to doing that experience, I'd never really thought much about the Western occult tradition and had never really paid much attention to Aleister Crowley and people like that.
		But I had the sense of this kind of entity who was appearing in my dreams.
		And then poltergeist phenomena started in the house, like, you know, mirrors started falling off the walls.
		And I actually had to call on a friend to do an exorcism to kind of reintegrate the energy that had been released.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sorry.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What was this drug again?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It was called DPT, dipropyltryptamine.
		It's a synthetic chemical.
		I don't even know when it was exactly produced.
		But if you think of DMT as dimethyltryptamine, methyl and propyl are simple carbon compounds.
		So you have like methyl, methylene, propylene.
		So it's a synthetic analog of DMT, but it has very different effects.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Obviously.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		So anyway, so that was a very interesting and ultimately powerful and amazing lesson and stuff that I wouldn't have believed up until that point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Was it negative?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, it was negative.
		I mean, what I've more and more come to see as I've explored this stuff more and thought about it is that there's a reason why these shamanic cultures developed as they did to have kind of rituals around these substances.
		And for these indigenous cultures, a lot of them, these substances are really the sacred essence of their cultures.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're absolutely correct to suggest that.
		I mean, face it, folks, these cultures, when you look at them, have gigantic traditions and religions built around this.
		So there is something to this.
		Do you think that DPT opened a door, Daniel, that remained open, allowing spirits?
		Allowing what through?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, ultimately, I think it was kind of like a genie or something.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A genie.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		A genius, yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		A genie!
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, a dijin.
		That's what the Islamic tradition calls them.
		Or a kind of, you know, not a demon, but a kind of diamond.
		It was kind of like an amoral, kind of luciferic kind of a being.
unidentified		Oh, really?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I mean, it was very important just for my development.
		I mean, from that experience, I was able to kind of understand that there's a kind of, you know, some level of truth to the Western occult tradition.
		And I got very fascinated with the ideas of Rudolf Steiner, who was an Austrian visionary who wrote in the early part of the 20th century, started a whole movement called Anthroposophy.
		And he was trying to institute a kind of spiritual science, which would be a sort of systematic way that people could enter into these kind of other domains of consciousness through meditation techniques and developing waking clarity during the dream states and stuff.
		And a lot of the experiences I had, I found that he gave me a real context for understanding.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But I know, but to have to go to the extreme of having an exorcism, Daniel, there must have been some pretty significant stuff going on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And for how long did it go on after you ingested this DPT?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It was, you know, maybe two or three weeks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Two or three weeks.
		And during those two or three weeks, what did you experience?
		I mean, having somebody do an exorcism, that's, you know, that's pretty serious.
		I mean, you're obviously having serious trouble to go to that extent to find an exorcist.
		What happened?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, it was interesting.
		Actually, the person who did the exorcism was a friend of mine who's sort of has skill as a witch.
		And I'd actually taken the substance with her originally.
		And I went away from my house for a week, and then I came back, and we both kind of, you know, I mean, I re-entered the space, and I could feel that the energy was just completely crazy in the space.
		And I brought her back, and we both could feel this kind of, really felt like this kind of occult energy was just crackling in the rooms.
		And luckily she had some kind of skills for dealing with this stuff.
		it involved obsidian.
		It's a very good substance.
		Obsidian, black obsidian, is known to absorb negative occult energies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We have a mountain of obsidian pretty close to where I am.
		It's beautiful, black, shiny obsidian.
		It's just beautiful.
		So we have a whole mountain of it here if you need some.
unidentified		Yeah.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I mean, basically for me, it was also a big lesson in, you know, I mean, what Carl Jung talks about, the, you know, the reality of the psyche and the kind of shadow and how, you know, how you have to work with the shadow.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And it could actually be projected and take kind of psychophysical manifestations.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But didn't this experience with DPT put on the big caution light for you in terms of what I mean, you're dabbling in areas that you don't know about, and obviously you just dabbled in one that bit you in the behind a little bit.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So did it throw on the caution light for you?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yes, it threw on the caution light for me.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		But I also, I mean, my feeling through this whole investigation that I did for the book was that, you know, I mean, to a certain extent, once I understood the seriousness of it and began to have these, you know, kind of shamanic experiences, I felt that it was absolutely necessary that somebody like me go to the limit and try to interpret these domains for the modern consciousness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Were you ever concerned for your life?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, if you summon something of the nature you've talked about, you'd have to be, for a while, pretty damn scared and concerned for your life.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yes, I have been concerned not only for my life, but the lives of people around me.
		Because if you look at shamanism, I mean, you know, Eliada, in his book on shamanism, talks about how when somebody goes through their own kind of shamanic initiation process, which is basically what I think happened to me, the energy can be sort of uncontained and can sort of bounce around and affect people around them.
		This is kind of recognized in shamanic societies.
		And, you know, my father did die while I was writing the book.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Daniel, think about that and stay right there.
		We're at the top of the hour.
		Daniel Pinschbeck is my guest.
		And you're listening to one of several journeys Daniel took to the center of his mind.
		I'm Art Belt.
unidentified		Nights in white satin, never reaching the end.
		Letters I've written, never meaning to send beauty at all with these companies.
		Thank you.
		Thank you.
		To talk with Art Bell.
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		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast Again with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		This, of course, is a little more than vaguely Peruvian.
		It's Cusco you're listening to and of things Peruvian.
		I thought I'd mention my very good friend, and you'll remember her from years ago on this program, Bonnie Crystal, in search of the deepest holes in the ground in the earth.
		She's in Peru right now.
		I'm going to have her on for at least an hour about August 1st.
		She's in Peru with thousands and thousands of feet of rope and an entire crew, and they're attempting to go further into the earth than anybody's ever gone.
		That's what she does.
		So she's in Peru at the moment.
		I've got a schedule to try and meet her on the air and talk with her on ham radio.
		But she's down at the base camp now at a high altitude where they have found some caves they're going to explore.
		And Bonnie will indeed be on the program by satellite or however we're going to get her on about or on August 1st.
		So you're going to want to listen for that.
		Daniel Pinchbeck is my guest.
		And what a fascinating topic this all is.
		We're talking about psychedelic drugs.
unidentified		We're talking about psychedelic drugs.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Pretty cool.
		You don't frequently get guests who write on a subject as Daniel has written on this subject.
		By the way, I should promote his book for him.
		It's Breaking Open the Head.
		Now, there's a title for you.
		Breaking Open the Head.
		You can get it at Amazon.com and so forth.
		And we are talking about psychedelic drugs.
		And Daniel was telling us about DPT.
		And he said he admits that it opened some kind of door.
		That's just an expression.
		But he had to have an exorcism.
		And he actually, well, it sounded like you were worried that some of that negative energy that was, I guess, surrounding you, could that have had anything to do with your father's death?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, my father actually died before that.
		But there was a, you know, it's interesting.
		I mean, our kind of, I was just thinking about this over the break.
		I mean, you know, there were dark things that happened during my investigation, you know, psychedelics.
		It was mainly this DPT thing kind of ripped the veil off in terms of this darkness and shadow material.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How dark was it?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, it was pretty dark.
		I mean, the most kind of traumatic thing that happened is that my girlfriend at the time was pregnant.
		And it was probably maybe a couple months after the DPT, I had this incredibly vivid dream the night before she was going to get an ultrasound.
		And in the dream, it was a dream like I'd never had before.
		It had a kind of sizzle to it.
		It was vibrantly colorful and alive.
		And in the dream, I was at the top of a skyscraper and I uncovered an occult conspiracy.
		They were about to do this kind of ritual sacrifice.
		And I was a kind of undercover agent, and I'd stumbled on this thing.
		And then they chased me out.
		I was on 42nd Street, and these two kind of assassins came up to me, and they said, tomorrow we're going to kill you, your girlfriend, and your baby.
		And I woke up immediately after that.
		It was the morning.
		And had tremendous anxiety over this ultrasound that Laura was going to do.
		And up until then, the pregnancy had seemed absolutely normal.
		And when she did the ultrasound that day, it turned out that the baby had a slight handicap.
		I mean, she's now three years old.
		She's a very beautiful child, but she does have a slight handicap, a kind of limited range of motion in her arms.
		And I believe that was punishment for trespassing and going after knowledge without a kind of traditional support structure and a basis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I believe that...
		I mean, how do you come to the conclusion that with any amount of training or understanding of what you're doing, that it would have been all right?
		I mean, that's such a severe...
		You really, that's a lot of guilt to carry around, my friend, if you really believe that.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's, I mean, from my perspective, I'm pretty sure that it's the case.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Isn't that an awful lot of guilt to carry with you?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's heavy duty, but I mean, you know, what I, you know, and, you know, perhaps, you know, I mean, how can I say this?
		I mean, what came, what I've kind of ascertained from doing this book and then working on this book about prophecies is that in some sense, you know, I feel that I am a kind of messenger who's trying to bring in this kind of information that the culture is very resistant and reluctant to deal with.
		And we don't really have categories for it yet.
		And in a way, it's a kind of return.
		I mean, McKenna talked about an archaic revival.
		It's a return to very old kinds of information.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I'll tell you right now, what you've described over the last 30 or 40 minutes, that's enough to cause anybody to go, keep it away from me.
		I don't want anything to do with it.
		Not if anything like that or any part of it could even happen.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		That's fine.
		Of course, people can think that, but you really have to go deeper than that because you have to think about what all this material says.
		And I can tell you equally powerful stories about healings that have taken place through the Native American Church, through using Peyote, through ayahuasca.
		I've heard many stories from people of their incredible healings from cancers and all sorts of ailments.
		Gotcha.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So it can go both ways.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, and the more you're rooted in a tradition and are kind of pushing the energy up.
		And I think that part of my problem was as a kind of New York nihilistic kid, the background I was coming out of, I was a little bit attracted to the dark side.
		And that attraction kind of pulled me in.
		And even that, I don't think, is all bad, because the dark side is part of us.
		And there's something ridiculous about the New Age spirituality, which is always kind of insisting on this kind of bliss-bunny light.
		We actually have to do, I mean, when you realize that this stuff is for real, we have incredibly hard work to do to kind of integrate the dark and the light and to recognize the shadow.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To integrate the dark and the light.
		Boy, a lot of people would argue against that.
		They can never be integrated.
		They're like matter and antimatter.
		How do you integrate the dark and the light?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I think it's becoming more and more clear that I think Carl Jung is underestimated and he's incredibly important and valuable.
		But his whole idea that as psychic beings, we have the shadow, this sort of dark matter.
		And if we don't deal with it, if we don't integrate it, if we don't look at it, we project it.
		And if I look at what's happening in our world right now, what basically seems to be the case is that people don't want to deal with the dark matter of the psyche.
		They don't want to deal with the shadow, so we're just projecting it further and further.
		And when I look at the war on Iraq, what I basically see are people like Bush and Cheney who don't want to take any sort of personal responsibility for their own psyche.
		They're simply projecting the shadow deeper and deeper into material reality to the point where we threaten the destruction of the whole planet in terms of using radiation, depleted uranium, attitude that you're expressing right now is clearly why it's against the law.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've gone right to the core of it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If you become anti-war, anti-administration, anti-anti, then that's why it's illegal, and there's no amount of cajoling or good deeds that you can cite from it that's going to get it made legal if it does this.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, I have to say that from my perspective as a messenger, and you know that in this new book I've been studying, the prophecies around 2012.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, we'll talk about that.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I don't think that this civilization in its present form is going to exist for too much longer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, you don't?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		No, I don't.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And I think that the turnover is going to require a kind of reckoning with the psyche and with the dark matter of the psyche that has to be on an individual level to prevent basically global death.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To prevent global death.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What signs or understandings have you received to believe that global death is pending?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, I think it's clear that if you, I mean, basically, what happened to me was during this book, Breaking Up in the Head, I went down to the Amazon.
		And, you know, I had never been to the Amazon before, and it's an incredibly amazing experience to go to the jungle for the first time.
		I mean, you definitely feel this kind of creative force and fecundity of nature, and this kind of PlayStation for nature to express itself.
		We passed through these huge sections of the Amazon that the people who'd been there a lot said that 10, 15 years ago were incredibly lush jungle, and they were now basically scrubland.
		And section by section, several million acres of a time, the Amazon is hacked down.
		Well, basically, first the oil company goes in, finds oil, builds a road, then the kind of poor mestizos start burning out for farms, timber companies move in and take out the logs, and after a few years you have, from the kind of living lungs of the planet, you have just sort of scrubland that can barely support anything.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, you know, it's happening several million.
		The astronauts, Daniel, from space say the one sure thing they always see from space, without question, are all the fires in Brazil and in South America and all the burning of forests that's being done.
		They see that from space as a constant.
		And so you're right.
		They're burning it up down there.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		But the point that I wanted to make is just that each big discovery for the oil companies, this huge inroad and then this destruction, usually destroys one or two Indian tribes who've been sort of holding on, leads to enough oil to support the U.S. kind of demand for oil for something in the area of like three to five days.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		So when I understood this fully and I came back and I started reading about the ecological situation, I realized that the unsupportable nature of our society is beyond what most people are capable of reckoning with.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		To be fair, Daniel, it's not just the oil companies.
		Listen, the government will build a road, for example, in Brazil through the rainforest, and then farmers will come along, and they'll burn down part of the rainforest and plant it, and it's good for two or three years, and then the soil is no longer any good, so they've got to burn down more of it and more of it.
		So it's not just the oil companies that are contributing to the destruction of the rainforest.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And it's not just the rainforest.
		I mean, as we know, a year ago, there were all these articles about how the oceans are 90% fished out, and entire oceanic food chains have disappeared.
		But when I walk around New York, I don't notice people consuming less marine life.
		people are sitting at restaurants eating gigantic swordfish and tuna and everything else.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, yes.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		So we seem to be, you know, so basically what I came to understand when I put these two things together, on the one hand, there's this kind of shamanic and occult and psychic reality which our society has completely negated and suppressed, but actually is completely real.
		And then there's this kind of materialist destruction of the planet taking place, that these had to be reconciled.
		And what I really began to understand is that the kind of material destruction of the biosphere is a willed cataclysm, which is carefully designed to force an evolution of human consciousness to a different level.
		And what I'm presenting in the next book is ultimately, I think, that once we get through the transition, we'll enter an incredibly harmonious and harmonic period.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it going to be a sudden transition, Daniel, or a more subtle one?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I wish I knew that.
		I mean, I can see the endpoint, the kind of turnaround, and I can see where we are now.
		But I think that a lot is up to the individuals to kind of activate their will.
		It's like I was talking to this New Age woman writer, channeler, and she was saying, oh, the prophecy says that there's going to be the rainbow nation, we're all going to walk in harmony.
		And I was like, it's all well and good to say that.
		But if you're not actually doing something towards that, I think that that's a problem.
		And even with Terence McKenna, much as I totally adore his writing, I think that he's a genius, there was a sense that, oh, it's just going to happen.
		This 2012 escaton, Creason's point is just going to happen.
		We don't really have to do anything.
		It's kind of a passive situation.
		And I think it's quite the opposite.
		I think that we're actually already in the prophecy.
		We're in the transition to the new structure, but it requires individuals willing and doing and awakening to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And where do you see the evidence of this being underway already?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think that what's happening right now, and this is partially personal, partially anecdotal, observational, talking to a lot and a lot of people.
		And also, I've been studying the crop circles in England.
		And I think that's one indication on the level.
		That basically material reality is becoming subtly less physically dense and subtly more psychically responsive.
		And that people are experiencing this over time through increases in synchronizations.
		You sort of think about somebody, they call you up, you have a dream about something, it happens.
		As one of my friends who's studying the Crop Circle said, it's kind of like the karmic rubber band is snapping back faster and faster.
		People seem to be getting rewarded and punished.
		It's like there's this kind of sense of incredible psychic acceleration taking place.
		And it's something that I've just experienced every day in my own life, so I know that it's the case.
		And that's the way I look at it.
		It's a change in the kind of vibrational frequency of the planet.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you see it fully as an evolutionary event for the human race pending?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yes, definitely.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		No doubt about it in my mind.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		An evolutionary step.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But you don't know for sure whether it's going to be a very quick event or it's going to be something that just...
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		So I mean it's going to have to be pretty quick.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		That's only eight years away, right?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And are you suggesting that the occurrence of this evolutionary event, the change of, I don't know, all these mindsets, impossible as it seems, is sort of an event that's in a race with otherwise what's going to be the end of everything?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yes, definitely.
		And I think, but it's only in this situation that the evolutionary step could happen.
		Because, you know, humans, when they get into their comfort zones, they get very, very relaxed.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely true.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		That's like why we've been kind of turning the heat up on everything is to kind of force ourselves to take the steps that we have to take.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How does psychedelics fit into this?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is it something that would aid that process along?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, psychedelics are incredible tools and kind of technology for understanding the psyche and for exploring these other dimensions of reality.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, they probably will be the beginning of a kind of new science, a new way of exploring paradox and possibility that we just haven't been ready psychically to handle up to this point.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but if the end result of the use of some of these is to put one in the psychological mindset that you're in right now, I mean, you began to explain your worldview and so forth, then the chances of that ever becoming legal and hence widespread are almost slim and none.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, you're under the assumption that this civilization is going to continue in its present form.
		And anyway, that legality is really the key issue here.
		I mean, what is happening is happening.
		and whether, you know, the kind of government establishment of a certain country wants to do something or not, it can't prevent what is, you know, meant to happen and in some sense already has happened.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you have any, you know, With events.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Events have got to get so dramatic.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Right, right.
		I mean, one thing that this is complicated, and it's something I'm trying to really explore in the new book, which is that what we're experiencing is a kind of phase shift of consciousness.
		And the consciousness we're in right now, which is kind of mental, rational consciousness, is obsessed with masses and statistics and abstract quantities.
		So, you know, we're always concerned about mass this and cataclysms and so on.
		The consciousness structure that we're moving into is kind of the opposite.
		It's much more about kind of subtle distinctions, qualities, attunements, synchronicities, and deeper levels of being.
		So, you know, I certainly hope that there will be a mass awakening, and I certainly work for that, you know, whenever I speak or whatever I write.
		But, you know, it may happen in a different way.
		You know, it may not be like the 60s where suddenly, you know, 50 million kids turn on to a whole new culture.
		It may be something that happens in a different way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So an event outside that arena altogether.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, you know, new things manifest in a new way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, that's a fact.
		All right.
		Thank you very much.
		Hold on, Daniel.
		We'll get back to all of this.
		With Daniel Pinchback, he thinks there's going to be an evolutionary step for mankind, that it's going to be like the gigantic light bulb goes on.
		And, of course, it's a race because there's a darkness out there.
		From the high desert, I'm Art Bell.
unidentified		I'm Art Bell.
		To talk with Art Bell.
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		To talk with Art Bell from East to the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
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		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Even if you're not going to take the trip yourself, and it's certainly not recommended by for all, or maybe it is by Daniel, I don't know.
		But it sure is fascinating to hear the experiences of one who has taken these trips, and boy, he has taken a few.
		The DBT one was really fascinating.
		We're going to get back to that in a way in a moment.
		Stay right there.
		The phones have been, you know, lit like a December 25th tree for the hours that we've been on.
		So it's obvious you want to talk to Daniel, and you're going to get your opportunity.
		I promise.
		We're talking about psychedelics, DMT, some derivatives of it, and then DPT, kind of a scary drug to be sure.
		And either way, whether it's DMT or DPT or something else, these are really, really powerful, powerful experiences that you've described, Daniel.
		Very powerful.
		No matter how you look at it, pro or negative.
		And you've had both.
		So, you know, this is part of the danger question, Daniel.
		Haven't there been people, or are they just government-generated disinformation stories?
		You know, people have ended up in psych wards.
		I mean, popped some sort of something, and, you know, like the song says, you might not come back.
		Have there been people, Daniel, who haven't come back?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yes, definitely.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It's basically all you can do, because we don't have any real science on psychedelics because there's so much hysteria around the subject, negativity, that all that the individual can do, if they're interested in this area, is to do the best they can to gather information.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I mean, there's a website, arrowed.org.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, but that's what I've got you here for.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You've gathered the information.
unidentified		Right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		When I asked, are there people who end up in wards?
		The answer was yes.
		So tell me.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
		I mean, it is unclear with people who've ended up in wards whether or not what happened with the chemical psychedelics were due to the psychedelics, were due to the psychedelics kind of activating some pre-existing schizophrenic or psychotic condition.
		So there are definitely dangers here.
		However, before the culture turned kind of negative against LSD, for instance in the 60s, it was considered an astonishingly safe drug, a wonder drug, in the 50s and early 60s.
		They'd done thousands and thousands of studies with it and had not had any serious problems.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Let me approach it this way with you, Daniel.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Let me just finish my saying, there are also more experimental chemicals that are newer, and some of them are very dosage sensitive.
		And we don't really know too much about a lot of them, including DPT.
		So people are definitely being, I mean, I guess the term is psychonauts.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Psychots.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Psychonauts.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I mean, they're definitely taking risks.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, all right.
		So here it is for you, Daniel.
		I went through the 60s like everybody else, and what I remember is people who were unstable and leaning toward the psychotic, who used marijuana, very light compared to what else we're talking about here, would definitely get into a more psychotic state of mind using marijuana.
		So I assume it's a similar thing you're describing to me here, and you're suggesting that if you end up in a psych ward someplace, that there was something in your brain that would have had you there eventually anyway, or you tended toward that direction or what?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I can't really know that.
		I mean, I'm not a scientist.
		I'm not a doctor.
		I'm not a psychologist.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But you appear to be a suggestion.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I have to go with my own subjective experience, which is that for me and for some of the people that I know, these explorations have been very, very valuable and have been worth the risks that we've had to take.
		And there are also a lot of substances where we know there are almost no risks, including mushrooms and peyote, the natural ones, ayahuasca, where there are thousands, maybe tens of thousands of years of relationship between human nervous systems and these plant compounds.
		So clearly, those would be, if it was possible, good places to start.
		And especially if it's conducted with somebody who's knowledgeable, who's a shaman, who's been trained in some way.
		I mean, the music is very important.
		I mean, basically, my understanding is that in indigenous tribal societies, the rates of mental illness are much, much lower than they are in modern industrial societies.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Do you think that a native shaman would speak sufficiently to a person that he's about to introduce to a trip of this sort, and that a traditional shaman would look for those signs, those negative signs that would indicate a potential bad or disastrous trip and stop it and not proceed?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		You know, it's possible, but I feel like this whole area of inquiry, for me, there's an element here which is like all we can do in this area, and I think it's positive in a strange way, is because we don't really know that much, the science has been rigged and there's so much hysteria about it.
		It's an area where the individual has to decide for themselves and completely take responsibility for their own activity.
		I don't counsel people to take psychedelics.
		I don't think that's correct.
		It's completely up to the individual.
		And we have a society where people really want to have experts.
		They don't want to take responsibility.
		They want to have somebody to blame.
		Well, this is an area where all you can do is get the best material you can.
		You can read books like mine, Andrew Wiles.
		You can study the Arrowid website and see what the reports say.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, maybe I can request a stat from you.
		During the 60s, do we have any records at all, Daniel, that would show how many people ended up in psych wards?
		It's such an old thing to hear.
		I mean, you confirm it did happen, but how many?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I mean, does anybody have any studies showing I have no clue, and I think that the number has been wildly correct.
		But I just keep insisting on it, and I have a lot of friends who are psychonauts and trippers.
		And what sort of bums me out about the way they handle this stuff is that they don't go out of their way to try the indigenous shamanic traditional methods, which create a totally different context for these substances and give you an incredibly different sense of their meaning and possibility.
		And in November, I actually have an article out in Black Book magazine.
		In November, I went down to Brazil and I went deep into the Amazon on a rickety boat that took like four days to get there, where we went to the center of this religion called Santo Daime, which uses ayahuasca as its sacrament and kind of mixes Christian and indigenous elements.
		And it was an amazing experience.
		These ceremonies were incredibly visionary.
		The music was incredibly beautiful.
		It was the most profound connection to kind of sacredness that I'd ever experienced.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But on the one hand, Daniel, earlier you told me that no matter what, pretty much, people are going to have the same life-altering experience, for example, with DMT.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But on the other hand, you seem to be sort of looking down your nose a little bit at those who don't participate in the traditional aspect of it, but just pop it and have the experience.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		No, no, no, no, no, I'm certainly not looking down my nose at anyone.
		And I started as somebody who had popped this stuff to have the experience.
		And I think that's, you know, especially in our culture where we have no traditional basis, that's kind of where you start.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		But if you have this common wonderful experience, then what difference does it make?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I don't think the DMT experience is frankly that wonderful.
unidentified		It scares the bejesus out of you.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I think that the more guided tours kind of, you know, I mean, what happens with a lot of people is they have one or two very violent and volatile psychedelic experiences and then close the door on the whole subject because it's just something they don't want to deal with ever again.
		You know, whereas if we integrated, you know, the subject better into our culture, or if people go and had experiences in these other traditions, it would be a much easier landing and a much safer ride.
		And the healing and the positive aspects might predominate over the kind of psychic bungee cord jumping aspect, which I think is pretty trivial.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I wonder how many people are doing the psychic bungee cording versus those who are getting the right set and setting, as it were.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, I don't know.
		And once again, it's not about, for me, it's not about statistics and numbers.
		It's about individuals having.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it just helps us understand the scope of things.
		That's all.
		If you have any, just drop them on us.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I don't have any numbers.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		But I can tell you my little story about seeing the elves down in the representative.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		By all means.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I had an experience.
		So this tradition, the Santa Daime, you drink ayahuasca.
		They have a kind of round church-like structure.
		Everybody wears white.
		They separate the men and the women.
		And it's very much like a church.
		And you either stand or sit or dance all night long.
		Sometimes you do this little dance step back and forth for like 12 or 15 hours or something while you drink ayahuasca.
		And you sing.
		And it's pretty intense.
		And at first I had a very negative reaction to it.
		And it was just so church-like, I couldn't believe it.
		I was kind of running out of the ceremonies.
		And finally, we went down towards the Amazon, and we stopped at this village, and we did the ceremony.
		And people were dancing all night.
		My friends were dancing.
		And I ran out and I went back to my hammock.
		And the ayahuasca was very, very strong.
		So I lay down in my hammock, and finally, for the first time, or maybe I'd seen them before, but anyway, I saw the Terrence McKenna's machine elves.
		They came leaping over to me in my closed-eye vision, and they were showing me these kind of things in their hands and pointing in all directions and being all kind of hectic and crazy.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Can you describe them?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they're very elf-like.
		You know, kind of attenuated limbs, chirpy, kind of fast-moving.
		You have the sense that they're kind of like technicians of hyperspace.
		They're kind of like, you know, holding reality together on some level.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Man.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Anyway, so I was sort of with that for a little bit, and then I was like, you know, I'm bored of these elves.
		It just seemed more distraction.
		And it seemed more like something that was just being generated at a certain level of the mind.
		And so I went back to the ceremony, and I actually just invested in the dancing and the singing and spent the rest of the night there.
		And I realized that when you fully got into the ceremony, that the whole point of doing it is to kind of raise the group vibration and to focus positive energy.
		And it was the most amazing experience, devotional experience, that I'd ever had in my life.
		And I was not somebody who had ever been very interested in kind of devotion as a spiritual practice.
		I mean, it's called bhakti yoga.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you're saying elves are passe.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I think elves are passe.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Passe.
unidentified		Yeah.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I think we have to move into a different level of engagement with this material.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Which is the ceremony.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think it helps.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you know, everybody can do whatever they want.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you said you were kind of, I don't know, you just didn't really like the dancing.
		So what changed?
		After the L's and you went back, what changed?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I understood that my friend who was there described doing these ceremonies as kind of like a spiritual washing machine or something.
		That it becomes this way to clear out your psyche of negative stuff and garbage.
		Your energy is focused upwards, and when kind of negative thoughts come up, disturbing thoughts, you kind of just learn to let them go and stay in what they call the current.
		So it's almost like psychic yoga or something.
		It's a kind of mental training, or it's like a kind of vipassana meditation training, where you're learning how to, using the technology of these substances and these ceremonies to retrain your mind in a more positive way.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You said DMT is likely to scare the hell out of you first time or second time.
		Is it the kind of thing where 90% of the people, see, here I am with my numbers again, will try DMT once and say, wow, that was scary.
		I didn't like that, and never touch it again.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I would think so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I don't think so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So how are there a few brave individuals who will venture forth from that frightening experience to go on to more?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, there are definitely some people who find it to be very conducive or their favorite experience.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		However, I mean, I just stick to my guns that, well, I think it's an amazing experience and right for some people.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Did it scare the hell out of you first time?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
unidentified		It did.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And what kind of mental adjustment did you make to go for number two?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, I just had to go back and see what was going on again.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Curiosity.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Curiosity, huh?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, yeah, I mean, obviously, since I'm somebody who seems to be involved in this investigation, I have some responsibilities?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, and also a deep, you know, interest and thirst for kind of more knowledge and more understanding.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So third and fourth time, you popped it and said, I'm doing this for my readers.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, doing it for myself.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And yeah, and I think writing about this material is a way of kind of taking in the vibrations and trying to use them.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How much feedback do you get about what you have written?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How much mail and email and feedback from readers do you get?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I've gotten quite a lot.
		It's been really beautiful.
		I mean, really amazing testimonies, people writing about their own spiritual experiences.
		There's also a discussion board on my website, which has been great.
		People really coming in and kind of wowing me with their intelligence and brilliance.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Really?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How big a subculture do you think this is now?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You don't know.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Nope.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, you must have some sense.
		You hear from people.
		Do you hear from people across the country?
		Do you hear from people in every state?
		Do they have friends?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It seems like there's little pockets of it, you know, almost everywhere.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		So, you know, maybe kind of the Northwest, larger concentration.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, really?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		West Coast, Northwest, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, so it has always been, I think.
		That's fascinating.
		So I can only assume from watching the phones tonight, I mean, they just have been lit up like a Christmas tree.
		Either people have a lot of questions or criticism.
		How much criticism do you get just in speaking about this sort of thing, Daniel?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
		I think that I sound pretty sensible when I talk about it.
		I haven't gotten an excessive amount of criticism.
		I mean, I would say that my problem has been more that, I mean, it's interesting to be in New York City and to be part of the kind of mainstream media world here and to be trying to move these ideas more into the mainstream of the culture.
		And that's definitely a huge struggle.
		And basically what you get is kind of incomprehension and people just not wanting to think about these areas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'm sure.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Because they, yeah, because obviously it sort of threatens the kind of knowledge system that people are trying to hold on to.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you know, if all of what you have described comes to pass or came to pass in terms of some evolutionary jump, gosh, that's a real biggie.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And you'd have to say that most people out there don't see it coming.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It does seem to be the case.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Although, I mean, you know, you have, for instance, like the evangelical Christians completely absorbed in the kind of apocalypse scenario.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		But they see it on such a literal kind of atavistic level that to me it's kind of pathetic, you know.
		But, you know, that's why you really need to go into kind of, you know, like the Jungian perspective, which sees the apocalypse essentially as a psychic event.
		One of Jung's disciples, Edniger, describes it as the momentous moment of the coming to self-realization of human consciousness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but you don't really disagree with the Christians about the apocalyptic nature of our future now, do you?
		Not really.
		You agree.
		You agree, actually.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, I agree.
		I believe that we are in the apocalypse.
		Yes.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, there you go.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		you are so the differences you describe are I don't know how meaningful they are I mean if you really agree well I don't think as in the Left Behind series Christ is going to come on a white horse and kill millions of Islamic people or whatever.
		I mean, I think it's a little bit more subtle than that.
		I mean, I think it's more like that Christ was a real avatar and that he came at a certain point to bring a kind of higher vibrational level of consciousness to humanity.
		And because it was so higher, it kind of shook everything down to its core.
		And we're moving to the point where we're going to have to be able to integrate that level and simulate it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Hold on, Daniel.
		What we're going to do is open the phone lines when we get back.
		And this really should be something because this program really has been something if you've been listening.
		My guest is Daniel Pinchpeck.
		And his book is Breaking Open the Head.
unidentified		Be it sight, sound, the smell of the touch, the something inside that we need so much.
		The sight of a touch, or the scent of a sand, or the strength of an oak root deep in the ground.
		The wonder of flowers to be covered and then to burst up through tarmac to the sun again.
		Or to fly to the sun without burning a wing.
		To lie in a meadow and hear the grass sing.
		I hold these things in our memories home.
		From the use of...
		Is it how it goes?
		To my...
		Yeah!
		Ride, ride past your soul.
		Take this place.
		On that street.
		Just go me.
		I'm here.
		No.
		Take a free roll.
		Take my place.
		I'm gonna sing.
		It's for free.
		Wanna take a ride?
		To talk with Art Bell.
		Call the wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from East to the Rockies, call toll-free 800-825-5033.
		From west to the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country sprint access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I bet it's interesting reading his book.
		I really do.
		Breaking open the head.
		Daniel Pinchbeck is my guest, and if he writes the way he talks, then it's going to be a very honest assessment, a very honest assessment of the world of psychedelics as he knows them.
		Because he's really given us that.
		The positive from his point of view, and certainly the negative as well.
		Fascinating stuff.
		And we're about to go to the phones.
		I have just a couple of more questions, then it's off to all of you.
unidentified		Thank you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just a couple of more questions, Daniel, then I'd really like to go to the phones.
		Let me be clear on this.
		To you, the year 2012 means what?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, from the Mayan perspective, it means that they were basically if you look at the Mayan and Toltic civilizations for about 1,000 years, they were obsessed with trying to establish this particular date, which I think, there's a really good book called Mayo Cosmogenesis 2012, where it's established December 21st, 2012, and it's kind of imprinted in a lot of their sculptures and stonework.
		And at that point, the Earth and the Sun come into direct alignment with the center of the Milky Way, which the Mayans knew as the cosmic mother.
		And they also called it a black hole, interestingly enough, because it turns out that there is a huge black hole, the center of the Milky Way that was only discovered recently by astronomers.
		So it's pretty interesting that the Mayans had this idea over 1,000 years ago.
		And basically, it's kind of like a vibrational step up or reintegration point, a kind of reconnection with the cosmic center, with the kind of intelligent force, guiding force behind the whole situation we're in.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, then is that this evolutionary jump point that we were talking about?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I think so.
		I mean, I think what we're going to learn is like we've, you know, if you look at modern development the last couple thousand years in a way, we kind of had to wrench ourselves away from nature and from the cosmos and become, you know, and have this kind of separate understanding ourselves as individual egos.
		You know, but if you look at Stonehenge and Chaco Canyon and the way that indigenous and traditional cultures think and the pyramids, they were completely aware that human consciousness was integrated with kind of cosmic cycles and kind of galactic cycles, and that there were these kind of continual streams of information waves flowing from the sun and from other parts of the galaxy.
		And I think that's an understanding that we're kind of on the verge of reaccessing.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, good enough.
		Now, one other subject very quickly.
		Sorry to push you, but I do want to get to the phone lines.
		Those that we regard as, and what we call the grays, everybody knows, I think, what the grays are or what they look like.
		What is your experience with these little things?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, yeah, I mean, because that's going to lead me into a long discourse.
		But I mean, I started studying the crop circles, and then some of the crop circles particularly referenced the graze.
		And then I had to sort of think about it.
		Well, there was particularly, there was one in summer of 2001, which was a mirror image of something that Carl Sagan had sent into space in the early 70s.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Oh, quite right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You mean an apparent answer to the mercy problem that's going to be a little bit more than that?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		That turned up in the School Bolton field.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's right.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And it showed basically, you know, it had, where we had our DNA, they had a three-strand DNA.
unidentified		Right.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Where we had a certain planetary configuration.
		They had a slightly different planetary configuration.
		Where we had a little human, there was a little smaller alien figure with a big head.
		Yep.
		So I had never thought of the gray alien abduction stuff as anything more than kooky, new age trash.
		But I decided that I had to begin to think about it seriously.
		And so I started reading all of these accounts and reading the books about them and stuff.
		And then I began to have some kind of weird dream experiences that I felt like I was kind of pulling the energy of the whole gray thing towards me.
		And what I began to, as I went deeper and deeper into thinking about it, I think there's almost no real evidence that they're extraterrestrial.
		I think there's more sense that they're kind of infraterrestrial and kind of goblin-like or demonic.
		And I think they're connected to these kind of prophecies.
		I mean, the Aztecs talked about, I think they're called the Zitzilimente, these kind of sky demons who are supposed to descend at the transition from the fifth sun to the sixth sun, which would be this 2012 kind of transition.
		And what seems to be it's hard to explain these things because you have to sort of go beyond dualities in a way.
		In a sense, they're a psychic projection.
		They're a kind of shadow projection of where we're at psychically.
		We've kind of created this model of these entities that are obsessed with technology and genetic reproduction and super advanced technological species, which kind of fits all of our kind of notions based on our kind of material technological state of consciousness and state of being.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We probably tried to imagine ourselves in the far future, and there you are.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Right.
		But actually, I think that, I mean, I'm much more interested in the idea that José Arguelos puts forth that the future will be actually post-technological, that technology is a kind of bridging mechanism to get us from one state of consciousness to another.
		And I think that actually these entities are almost like kind of cosmic bacteria.
		And they are functioning on the level of consciousness very much like a different kind of virus or a bacteria that are going to break down levels of densified consciousness that aren't ready for this transitional shift.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's quite a view of the grays.
		Now I'm going to jump, and then we're going to go to the phones, but I can't resist this question because it'll answer so much for so many people, I suppose.
		DMT, once you got past the terrifying stage and you got to the joyful, incredible, hard to describe with any words stage.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Did I say joyful?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, you didn't.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Interestingly, I'd say fascinating.
unidentified		Anyway, go ahead.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Is that accurate?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Whatever, go ahead.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, no, no, let me stop.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		If that's not accurate, then what word is it?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, joyful was coming back into normal reality and being like, ah, I remember hugging this woman next to me and just her hair and her perfume.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I was like, ah, thank God.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So there wasn't anything all that joyful about the experience itself at any point, even after the fright.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, there was something joyful about it.
		I mean, it was the kind of sense of complete conviction in these alternative realities that I did feel this kind of completion of a certain level of my understanding, That this otherness did completely exist in its own realm,
		and that I felt a lot of gratitude, actually, because I felt that the beings in that other reality are sort of much more advanced than we are and are kind of guiding us along.
		And it seems like kind of good news.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		David from Bullhead City, Arizona, asks, ask your guest, which was more enjoyable, DMT or sex?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, they're just kind of like totally different voltages or something.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I guess I would answer that I wouldn't recommend trying them together.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, we'll take that answer.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First time caller line, you're on the air with Daniel Pinchbeck.
unidentified		Hello.
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, hello.
unidentified		Oh, hi, Art.
		This is Jeremy calling from Baton Rouge listening at 11.50 a.m.
		I have just been enthralled by this show so far.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Absolutely.
unidentified		It's been fantastic.
		And I had a comment that the experience that your guest was talking about, about synchronicity and psychic events after experiences with hallucinogenics, I have had those exact experiences a few times.
		I found that to be really amazing.
		First of all, go ahead.
		Yeah, go ahead.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Oh, no, I mean, for me, that's just become very commonplace.
		I mean, many, many people I've spoken to, people talk about one phrase I heard which I really liked was the synchronicity drop.
		You know, that for a while it's like your kind of psychic voltage meter.
		It's amped up, and these things are kind of, you know, things start flowing, synchronicities happen, and then you get a little too self-confident or ego involved in the whole thing, and the whole thing kind of collapses on you.
unidentified		Exactly.
		And I had another question.
		I'm from the south, obviously, and down here, method of choice is usually hallucinated mushrooms.
		I was wondering, as far as research is concerned, where could I look for to find information about the original uses of that down here in this area?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		God, that's very interesting.
		You know, you probably want to just go and talk to, you know, if there are any local indigenous people around, go and talk to them.
		I mean, I think actually that's something that I really feel is going to be important in this transition period is that people with really good intentions and kind of non-patronizing intentions and attitudes kind of go and re-contact the Indigenous people of America who are really holding a lot of knowledge and wisdom.
		And I think would answer your question if you found the right people and approached them in the right frame of mind.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How many God, here I go again.
		Of those who, I don't know, do this, any of this, Daniel, what kind of percentage do you think do it the way you have prescribed it be done?
		Well, you do in a way.
		I mean, you're saying, look, if you're going to do this, then go to a local native.
		Get instruction on how it's done from their understanding, which is a lot more than we've had any understanding of it.
		You seem to be suggesting that's important.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I think it's important, and I think that it's useful.
		I've also talked to people, especially in the Northwest, in the Northwest you have the phenomenon of a lot of kind of hippie parents moved out there in the 60s and kind of semi-commune situations.
		Now you have a second, or almost like a second and a half generation, of kids who've been grown up with the psychedelic experience.
		And in some cases, I think that they're kind of naturally rediscovering traditional ways, even without any contact with indigenous people.
		They're kind of becoming more ceremonial about the way they're thinking about using these substances.
		And that seems positive.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Daniel Pinchback.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hey, Yard, B.G. in Las Vegas.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, sir.
unidentified		So a couple things.
		I'd like to offer my overall anecdotal view of DMT.
		I've done it several times.
		I've done the combination orally, smoked it.
		The grays, they're there, man.
		You know what?
		I know what it feels like to be a lab rat, you know, to have that gloved hand reaching down in the little glass aquarium examining you.
		Not pretty.
		I don't have a good view of those guys anymore.
		It used to be kind of a funny thing.
		But the point I'd like to make is the government knows all about this stuff.
		Freedom of Information Act has disclosed back in the 50s, Albert Hoffman, the man who is credited with bringing LSD to the planet Earth, awakening millions, was a victim or, well, he's almost victimized, but he was smart enough to find it off.
		But the CIA sent over a pseudoscientist after the rediscovery of the mushrooms by Gordon Wasson through Harvard, and they were looking for the active ingredient of mushrooms.
		And they finally isolated it.
		It was porphosloxy-dimethyltryptamine.
		And, you know, eventually it was just a moot subject because a few years later, dimethyltryptamine in the double N form was synthesized by, I believe, a guy named Sausa.
		And the CIAs had their hands on it since the 50s.
		I mean, you know, that's when this whole alien thing really got rolling, you know?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That's an interesting thing.
unidentified		You have to look to Dreamland.
		What Dreamland is the CIA?
		That's a dream, man.
		Matrix, can you say that?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You think that's how the word Dreamland, the name Dreamland, came to be?
		That's an interesting observation.
		Daniel, what do you think our government may be doing?
		We know what they did years and years ago.
		They gave LSD to soldiers and did some other stuff.
		You know, it all stopped, or did it all stop?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, it seems to me the government is now interested in other kinds of behavior control substances, such as military smart drugs.
		I mean, I actually tried a substance called Provigil, which is a kind of wakefulness smart drug substance, and had a really negative reaction to it.
		It made me sort of feel very aggressive for a long time.
		And apparently it's been given to a lot of kids in Iraq and Afghanistan.
		And maybe that accounts for some of the kind of erratic behavior stories that we're getting out of there.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Being given to them by the military.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It keeps you awake, keeps you up, keeps you clear.
		But I also want to say that I think that I don't know.
		There are a lot of directions I can go with this.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		No, no.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I'll settle for the one we're in right now.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		You're saying that our government is dispensing these drugs to who well that's a known I mean that's well known that um this this substance I think is called Provigil.
unidentified		Yes.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It's also being used by students for you know uh um exam grinding or whatever.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Uh-huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, well I don't know anything about it.
unidentified		Yeah, well I don't know.
unidentified		I'm sorry, I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I mean, you know, and then it's just but are you saying that our government is giving it to our own troops?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, they're using their as far as I know, they're using this compound, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know that pilots were given what amounts to speed on occasion if they need it.
		I've heard that story.
		And you're suggesting that ground troops are being given some sort of well as far as I know that's what I've read myself.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		But I mean you know I think that the government you know if you want to get into the kind of paranoid spooky stuff they're probably very interested in well you know I don't really like to go in that area so much anymore.
		But anyway they're very interested in different behavior modification substances.
		But psychedelics, my guess is they've kind of closed the book on.
		They're just not that interested because you can't really control anybody's behavior with psychedelics.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Same reason they're illegal.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Daniel Pinchback.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi.
		My name is Sam listening on WTAM.
		I wanted to ask your guest a couple of questions.
		One, particularly about a drug that a lot of physicians know about, injectable ketamine.
		Also, I would like to know about the validity of the experience of nitrous oxide and possibly hexameter.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hold on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Ketamine, the near-death drug, they call it, Daniel.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, I mean, ketamine has become very, very popular.
		And as psychedelics go, I mean, it's an animal tranquilizer, originally, an anesthetic.
		And it's a very interesting, visionary substance.
		But it unfortunately seems to be, can become psychologically addictive.
		And it seems to have a kind of a group of kind of entities attached to it who really like to get humans kind of into their reality and give them this sense, kind of inflated sense of enormous kind of power and potential.
		At the same time, it may be that these entities are not really beneficial for us, and it's more kind of like a parasitic situation.
		That would be some of my main thoughts about ketamine.
		I consider it's a substance that seems to leave people vulnerable and kind of spiritually weak.
		And in that way, I see it as kind of the opposite to ayahuasca, which when it's used properly, I think helps people to really go deeper into themselves and become spiritually stronger.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How did you discover ayahuasca?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You talk a lot about it now, so obviously.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It's probably my favorite of all the substances.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I sensed that.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And I don't know, a friend of mine told me about it.
		I first did it in downtown New York.
		And I wrote about this in Breaking Open the Head.
		I did this sort of new age ceremony where we all had to wear adult-depends diapers and keep a vomit bucket near us in case the stuff came out direction.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It sounds better and better.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It's fairly noxious tasting.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		But you get used to it, and actually you sort of then get to like it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You know, wait a minute.
		Now, adult diaper, vomit dying nearby.
		Now, gee, what a stroll in the park that sounds like.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, it can be pretty tough on the stomach, especially the first time you take it.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Although now my system is totally assimilated to it, I don't seem to have any problem with it.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It's toughened up, right?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I've toughened up.
		But it basically sort of sends you into a kind of waking dream state.
		Very, very visionary.
		And people just have really, really wonderful experiences.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, apparently after they have other problems.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, I think there's one thing I really like about the natural psychedelics.
		I kind of like the fact that they have, you know, I mean, mushrooms taste horrible.
		Peyote is totally horrible.
		Iboga was the most awful tasting thing I ever tried.
		You know, most of them cause stomach problems.
		You know, so it's kind of like a natural defense barrier.
		It's like you really have to want to have these experiences and go into these realms.
unidentified		Hold on.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		We're at the bottom of the hour, Daniel.
		Great.
		This sounds like a ball of fun, doesn't it?
		Strap on the adult pens and have the vomit bag close by and get ready for, well, I don't know.
		It's a picture.
		In the middle of the night, only in the middle of the night, do you hear stuff like this?
		Coast to coast AM at your service.
unidentified		Coast to coast AM at your service.
		Coast to coast AM at your service.
		To talk with Art Bell.
		Form a wildcard line at area code 775-727-1295.
		The first-time caller line is area code 775-727-1222.
		To talk with Art Bell from east of the Rockies, call toll-free at 800-825-5033.
		From west of the Rockies, call 800-618-8255.
		International callers may reach Art by calling your in-country print access number, pressing option 5, and dialing toll-free, 800-893-0903.
		From coast to coast and worldwide on the internet, this is Coast to Coast AM with Art Bell.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		From Phedra Salos, Sausalito, California.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hired, please ask your guest about the government's recent crackdown on ephedra.
unidentified		M-A-H-U-A-N-G.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How long is it?
		I and many friends have long been fans of ephedra tea.
		Ephedra tea.
		Where is that epedra tea?
		The whole herb, herb, over coffee.
		And I've noticed its very strong psychedelic effects.
		Signed Phaedra.
		Sorry.
		couldn't resist.
unidentified		The End All right.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What was the name of the book that your next book, Daniel?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		2012, The Return of Quetzalcoatl.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And when will that be available?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		That will be available probably like next summer or something.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		But I mean, I'm sort of writing a column for this magazine, Arthur, and I'm kind of throwing in ideas from that book on a bi-monthly basis.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, so people can look at that as well.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Exactly, yeah.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So you consider yourself kind of like an astronaut in a way, only your journeys are to the center of the mind.
		And by the way, is that a fair expression?
		Journey to the center of the mind?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I like it.
unidentified		Do you?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay, back to the lines.
		A lot of people want to talk to you.
		East of the Rockies, you're on the air with Daniel Pinchbeck.
		Hi.
unidentified		Hello.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		How are you doing?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Just fine.
unidentified		It is an honor to talk to you, Art.
		Thank you.
		I have a couple quick questions.
		The first one is, I was wondering if you and your guests have heard of the book, The Power of Now, by Eckhart Tolley.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Daniel?
unidentified		I've heard of the book.
		The main idea of the book is it's all about consciousness.
		And I am a semi-experienced psychedelic drug user.
		I've used mushrooms, LSD, peyote.
		I've never used the DMT, but I imagine it's somewhat similar to the other hallucinogens that I've used.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, don't forget the depends in the barf bag.
unidentified		From what I've noticed from my hallucinogen drug uses is that out of all of them, the peyote was, I would say, probably the most powerful.
		And the best way I would describe peyote is probably like the first couple seconds of waking up from a dream state.
		And I found that I've been able to create that type of consciousness through a presence.
		And I was wondering if you or anybody out there had experienced anything like a drug state or a hallucinogen-induced state just without using drugs through methods of just trying to become present.
		And also, I was wondering if...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hold on.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I think that's a great comment you're making.
		First of all, I would say that people have different allies.
		That's the whole Casinate idea.
		Maybe PayOD is your best substance.
		It's your particular ally.
		Somebody else would like something else.
		But I think that really the point of taking substances is not just the experience of the substance.
		It's what you do with that experience afterwards and how you integrate it into your life.
		And for me, it really is like a process that when I have these experiences, I try to take more back with me.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, he did ask you if you've been able to produce the experiences naturally.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I would say so.
		I mean, for a while, I got very interested in practicing Tibetan dream yoga, and my dreams began to go just wild and expand.
		And then I started having lucid dreaming and sort of different hypnagogic visions.
		It seems like once you kind of open, you know, break open the head, open the doorway, you become more attuned to these other frequencies or other levels of vibration.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hence the name of your book, Breaking Open the Head.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Exactly.
		And I think that's a positive thing.
		And I think that's, you know, for some people, that kind of spooks them or freaks them out.
		If they're not really ready for that, then that's one reason maybe people end up.
unidentified		I also had one quick question.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, go ahead.
unidentified		I'd like to ask everybody listening to your show right now to just close their eyes and just pause for one second and just ask themselves what in this moment is lacking?
		And that is a question that then masters have asked their students for thousands of years to get themselves to just come into the moment and think.
		So if everybody could do that, that would be excellent.
		Okay, well, it's my show.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		But I mean, I think that you're making a good point, too, which is that, you know, and once again, it's like trying to become more present and more in the here and now is something that these psychedelic states really, really bring on in a way.
		And it's something that our society kind of suppresses.
		If you think about the way people live in our society, they're sort of always frantic and worried about the future or kind of anxious and depressed about the past.
		So they tend not to kind of really settle into the present moment.
		And if you read kind of Buddhism or Zen or Dzogchen teachings, it's really about becoming more and more comfortable and more and more calm in the kind of lucidity or the luminosity of the present moment.
		That's definitely something that I feel that my own psychedelic experiences have helped me to understand.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		West of the Rockies, you're on the air with Daniel Pinchback.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hello.
		On the air?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, on the air.
unidentified		Okay, all right.
		Hi.
		You just hit the jackpot art.
		I was one of the few first people to help coordinate getting currents on your station years ago.
		I'm the publisher of Psychedelic Illuminations.
		Hi, Daniel.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Hey.
unidentified		How are you?
		I don't know if you read my publication before.
		But, you know, I find it strange, and I'm glad that you're doing what you do here tonight and getting the message out to people because I find it strange that George's show doesn't have as much of this going on.
		I hope, Art, that maybe you can get with them to do that.
		I have close to 100 speakers that like Sasha Shogun.
		I'm sure you're familiar with Sasha's work.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, it's a fascinating area.
		I'm sure George will get intrigued and explore this area.
		It's one of life's mysteries.
		So, sure.
unidentified		Yeah, I would love it, Art, if you can.
		I'll get in touch with you.
		I'll talk to Lex or something.
		Daniel, question and comment.
		About what we have is in this country, the legislation, everything scheduled as including marijuana as a Schedule I substance, which is ridiculous, in my opinion, with medical marijuana's abilities to be able to cure certain diseases.
		I just find it really hard to deal with when it comes to the way that they're treating the churches, the religious implications of this.
		We do have some moves going on now, and Utah just recently, from what I understand, proved that non-white or white people can actually get the same privileges as the Native American church, the Peo Church of God for the Church.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right, we're about to run out of time.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		So the bottom line here is.
unidentified		Okay, so the comment then, Daniel, like the Unite de Vegetalas, the Sente Daime Church, how do you see that happening in the future?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Well, there is a case which the head of the Unite de Vegetalas has taken, and he's won in the federal court, which would protect sacramental use of ayahuasca for the Unite de Vegetalas, and maybe that would also transfer over to the Sente Daime.
		Because these religions are officially sanctioned religions in Brazil.
		They're also sanctioned in Europe and parts of Europe and Holland and so on.
		So they have UN protection.
		And, you know, under the Freedom of Religion Act and so on, it should be justifiable to have these practices here.
		We'll just have to wait and see what happens.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		It would seem that the court rulings are going in this direction, so I guess you would be hopeful?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I am hopeful.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I think maybe this is just going to sneak through right now.
unidentified		Huh.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		International Line, you're on the air with Daniel Pinchback.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Hi.
unidentified		Hello?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, go ahead.
unidentified		Hi.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Art?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes.
unidentified		Okay, Daniel.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Hi.
unidentified		Yeah, how are you?
		I kind of down here in a data point area, go to the theory days.
		And I had the exact same experience as you did.
		And, you know, like you said, it was the most terrifying thing in my life.
		And I think at that time I took some MDA or LSD.
		I don't remember.
		But it was definitely a present, shaky doors and the whole thing.
		And it manifested itself.
		And it basically took over me for a while.
		And it was a very, very, very shaky thing.
		Thank God I didn't have to get exercise.
		I was going to wonder what you thought about, like, a belladonna.
		That's more of an Indian with the feet.
		Uh-huh.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, I mean, there's the whole family of, well, I mean, there's the Torah.
		Belladonna was used in European witchcraft a lot.
		The problem is that, I mean, I never tried them.
		They sound, they're kind of dissociative.
		I mean, they send people into trips that last, like, three days.
		They really don't even know who they are for most of the time.
unidentified		And they have all these intense, you know, crazy visions.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		It's kind of, like, really like being in a psychotic state.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		So I would be very cautious about exploring those substances.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Daniel, tomorrow night I'm going to have Evelyn Paglini here.
		She's a witch.
		She's a really powerful witch.
		And witches, for one thing, they don't joke around.
		They firmly and absolutely believe that magic, so-called as we call it, is real.
		They also use in their ceremonies a great number of things.
		Various forms of incense.
		And there are all kinds of ceremonies involved in witchcraft.
		Is that sort of an American version of a path?
		Is it the same kind of path that can be followed other ways in other parts of the world?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I suppose.
		I mean, I, you know, personally I find some of that, you know, I mean, you know, all power to this woman and her powerful witchiness.
		You know, I mean, that's all good, I guess.
		But, you know, I'm kind of more into, like, the whole idea of, you know, the Taoist teachings.
		I mean, in the Tao, it talks about how, you know, occult abilities are just flowers of the Tao and the beginnings of foolishness.
		And it's kind of like...
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yes, but you saw some of the very same dark forces that they talk about.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Right, which makes me even more, gives me an even deeper level of understanding of why there's not really much sense in eliciting that kind of stuff.
		That, you know, I mean, reality itself is magic.
		You know, we're living in, you know, I mean, the Buddhists, interestingly, called it Maya, the world of illusion.
		Interestingly, that's the same name as the, you know, civilization of the classical Maya, who were very involved in magic and illusion.
		I think that what we need to do at this point is, rather than kind of separating off of these kind of ceremonial magical situations, is to invest deeper in the magic that is real reality.
unidentified		You know, if that makes any sense.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I think so.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		First time caller line, you're on the air with Daniel Pinchbeck.
unidentified		Hi.
		Hi, how are you?
		Terrific show.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Thank you.
unidentified		Daniel, have you had occasion to take or use salvia divinorum, the sacred sage?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I've used salvia a few times, yeah.
unidentified		What was your experience like?
		Well, first, I'm sorry to interrupt, but first, how did you adjust it?
		Did you use fresh leaves or dried?
		You use dried leaves with 10X extract.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I also took it as a liquid version.
unidentified		Ah, interesting.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		And, you know, the thing about salvia, salvia divinorum is an herb from the Mazatec Indians.
		And it's a very strange and interesting plant.
		It only grows in a handful of, they've only found it in a handful of shamanic gardens there.
		It doesn't produce seeds, usually.
		It's a cult gem.
		Anyway, it's just everything about it is very magical and kind of wonderful.
		And the experience that one has when one takes it is kind of like just a kind of orthogonal kind of experience of a different time and space, kind of coming at you from a different angle.
		And also often a sense of a strong presence.
		Often people describe it as a kind of feminine presence.
		Some people who have more visual hallucinations than I did see kind of like female presences in a garden or in a forest.
		It seems to be a substance that, you know, when people smoke it, you know, strong extractor, they often have very, like, once again, kind of freak out DMT style experiences, which is, once again, like nice as kind of...
		psychic bungee cord jumping but it also seems there's the potential for real healing and beneficial experiences you know if we were to learn a little bit more about how the Mazatecs treated the plant or one could say held the medicine very interesting thank you yeah very interesting indeed this whole Thing is absolutely fascinating.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I know that some people listening to this conversation won't get past the surface of some prejudice they have, and that's fine.
		But the others who are listening, I think, are getting a great deal out of it.
		Maybe one more.
		Wildcard line, you're on the air with Daniel Pinchbeck.
unidentified		Hello.
		Hey, Art.
		It's a pleasure to talk to you.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And to you, sir.
		Not a lot of time.
		What's up?
unidentified		Okay.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, for one thing, we don't allow the use of names on the air.
unidentified		Sorry about that.
unidentified		Anyway.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Well, for one thing, we don't allow the use of names on the air.
unidentified		Sorry about that.
		Anyway, my reference was, y'all were talking about the Grays earlier.
		Yes.
		Kind of not to be off the subject, but let's just say this war on terrorism, I get a kick out of this president, and I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		You're off subjects, sir.
unidentified		Way off.
		Anyway, to make a long story short, they get off on these wars and everything.
		There's a bigger one brewing, and I always get a kick out of people talking about these grays and everything else.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What bigger war is that?
unidentified		They're our best ally we can have.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		What bigger war are you talking about?
unidentified		Well, I've seen a lot of things in my time here, and 2012, let's just say I think it's going to come a lot sooner than that.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right.
		Well, there's a lot of people just like that man, Daniel.
		They're convinced 2012 is the time, and you're saying it is.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Right, but, you know, I think I'm saying it with a slightly different emphasis, that really it's the time to become calm and to become more attuned to your reality and to take your consciousness more seriously and to develop in that way, you know, rather than getting into paranoid states of, you know, this war and that war.
		I don't think those are going to serve us very well.
		I think it's about attaining a different level of consciousness.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How many different caller or two, and you were familiar with what they were talking about.
		So I'm sort of curious.
		How many different substances do you think you've tried?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I don't know.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I don't know.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Honest answer?
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, maybe 20, 25.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		I mean, I'm not, you know, as psychodaughts go, I'm not like a huge, you know, exploring machine.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		How far are you a virgin, though?
		I mean, 20, 25, that's...
		That's a whole lot more than most would take, considering that 90-some-odd percent bail out after the first attempt.
		So you're down the road a little ways.
unidentified		Not quantity, it's quality.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		I understand.
		And reading what you've got to say about these experiences should be fascinating.
		So people should go, I guess, and get the book they can get right now, right?
unidentified		Sure.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		And I'm sure you're hoping they will go to Amazon.com and get Breaking Open the Head.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Why not?
art bell ▲ ● ▼		Yeah, why not?
		All right.
		Well, listen, man, it really has been a pleasure, hasn't it?
		Yeah, it's been a lot of fun.
		Excellent show, Daniel, and you just know we'll do it again.
daniel pinchbeck ▲ ● ▼		Cool.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		All right?
		Yep, be good.
		Later.
unidentified		Daniel Pinchback.
art bell ▲ ● ▼		That was a trip, wasn't it?
		Okay, that'll do it for tonight.
		Tomorrow night, we'll be back.
		Well, among other things, Evelyn Paglini will be here.
		She's really something.
		She is really something.
		And she'll talk a little bit about the connection between sex and the paranormal.

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