Leary & McKenna podcasts

McKenna: “Shamanism”
(& Pallamary: “Spirit Matters”)

"Shamanism is not some obscure concern of cultural anthropologists. Shamanism is how religion was practiced for its first million years. Up until about 12,000 years ago there was no other form of religion on this planet. That was how people attained some kind of access to the sacred."

"The sine qua non for obtaining a psychedelic experience is humbling yourself to the point where you admit that you must submit to the experience of the plant or the drug. This act of surrender is the major technical function you will be called upon to perform during the psychedelic trip."

"Cultural conditioning is like bad software. Over and over it’s diddled with and re-written so that it can just run on the next attempt. But there is cultural hardware, and it’s that cultural hardware, otherwise known as authentic being, that we are propelled toward by the example of the shaman and the techniques of the shaman. … Shamanism therefore is a call to authenticity."

"The same organizational principles which called us forth into self-reflection have called forth self-reflection out of the planet itself. And the problem then is for us to suspect this, act on our suspicion, and be good detectives, and track down the spirit in its lair. And this is what shamans are doing. They are hunters of spirit."

"I don’t believe that shamanism without hallucinogens is authentic shamanism or comfortable shamanism."

"Don’t diddle the dose. Once you have done your homework, go for it."

Leary: “The Cyber Society”

"We know that typically the real changes in human nature, the changes in human politics and economics and society, are brought about by two things: By people who have a map or a vision or a model of where we’re going to go, these are the philosophers. And then the technicians, the people who get together the printing presses, or the compasses, or the high technology that can take us where we want to go."

"Viewed in the 1930s, when Einstein came to America, he was considered as far out as a crack dealer."

"Heisenberg taught us to take the universe very personally … in both senses of the word."

"So who? Who’s gonna prepare a civilization of factory workers and farmers and people who haven’t even got the Model T Ford yet? Who’s gonna prepare them for an Einsteinian, relativistic, quantum physical, ever-changing, probabilistic universe? Who? Well you know who you can count on at every time in human history when we had to make a big philosophic lurch forward. Who always came to the front and saved the day and made us feel happy and comfortable with a new future? I’m talking about those friends of ours who have always been around when we needed them, the musicians, and the artists, and the poets, and the writers, and the bards, and the performers, and the storytellers, and, OK, the minstrels, the rock n’ rollers. Right! The actors, the script writers."

"The whole 20th Century, to me, is the story of how artists and writers prepared us to be comfortable in a quantum-physical world."

"We’re talking about a generation of people who, since the time they were born, have been inundate by data, electronic data. To the Baby Boomers and subsequent generations electronic data is the ocean they swim in."

"The Cyber Society is a society made up of individuals who think for themselves, linked up with other individuals who think for themselves."

Thanks to Psychedelic Salon (amazing archive of podcasts)