Mavericks of the Mind: Conversations with Terence McKenna, Allen Ginsberg, Timothy Leary, John Lilly, Carolyn Mary Kleefeld, Laura Huxley, Robert Anton Wilson, and others… (65 page)

I want to say that it would have happened without any of us on this panel, but this is a moment where I want to get very sentimental. The three people on the other side of this panel were involved in the creation of chaos using psychedelics when I was a straight kid drinking martinis. John was doing LSD research with dolphins and for the Navy. Oscar, of course, was doing LSD research in Hollywood. And the incredible gifts that Alduos Huxley made to our culture with your (to Laura) cooperation and help. So, it’s interesting that this movement, which was going to happen anyway, had such elegant and such fine people as you.

Laura: You think it would have happened anyway? You think anything would have happened without what you or what Alduos did? You had such different methods, you and Alduos, but you seem to think it was inevitable, that the development of LSD was inevitable. So you had no choice?

Timothy: Listen, for over fifty billion years DNA has been working, making all these different vegetables and growing the human brain—which has 100 billion neurons, each of which can interact with ten thousand other neurons. And this brain has all these receptor sights for these specific little vegetables, and I think that’s excellent. The fact that the psychedelic molecules operate in the brain, that’s inevitable. It became known worldwide because of jet propulsion, television, and so forth. But yes, I have a sense of genetic destiny here.

David: What kind of knowledge are you privy to, Timothy, that makes you know that these things were inevitable? You’re assuming a kind of teleological design to the universe, which is not exactly established.

Timothy: Why would they give us a brain, with a hundred billion neurons, if they didn’t want us to fucking use it?!

David: Timothy who is this ‘they’ that you’re referring to? It’s the predatory pronoun!

Timothy: We’re children. We have this enormous brain, and we don’t even know how to use it, because we’re still children! Why do we have a hundred billion neurons?

David: Well, who gave it to us? You just said “they” gave it to us. You said, “Why would they give us a brain, with a hundred billion neurons...”

Timothy: I didn’t say “they.” You’re saying “they.”

David: You just said it, Timothy.

Nina: You said it.

Timothy: Well, all right then—I’m fucked again! (laughs) Wrong again! What’s the score now?

John: The DNA control officer did this.

David: Did you want to say something Carolyn?

Carolyn: I think that it’s time that we started thinking about so-called ‘drugs’, entheogens, not on a moral level, but on a biological level. I think, hopefully, that that’s the point in time that we are in. We will understand entheogens as part of the bounty that this Earth has given us. Through the information that we now can share better, through the electronics and so forth, that we will be able to put it in a classification of biology and understand what it’s all about, rather than living in prejudice and fear, and being exploited through intimidation.

Laura: Carolyn, what is the difference? I don’t see any difference between biology and morality.

Carolyn: What I meant was we have been the victims, or we don’t have to be, but we haven’t been given enough information about these entheogens, these ingredients of the Earth. We haven’t been given the right information. Therefore, we haven’t been able to use them properly, and therefore it becomes a moral issue, because we’ve been told there’s something wrong with using them. That’s why it’s moral.

Laura: Oh, oh—it’s moral in that way. The way that you use it—is that it?

Carolyn: I mean, it’s completely illegal.

John: Biology changed morality.

Laura: Okay, well then, there you are. It’s moral in the sense that we have the choice to use this thing in one way or the other.

Carolyn: I mean we were judged in the past, or people were judged. I remember in high school people thought it was a big deal if some students smoked grass. At Beverly High it was a big deal. They were the bad guys or whatever. And it’s illegal, a lot of the things that we’re talking about.

Laura: The legality is a different story.

Carolyn: Then it’s a moral issue in that regard, and it shouldn’t be a moral issue. It should be a biological issue, so that we understand what it’s about. That’s really what the Hofmann Foundation is about, so that we have an archive, a library, where all this information can be available to people. We need a society that makes this information available, so that there isn’t this ignorance, bigotry, and fear.

Laura: So it was because of ignorance that things were used badly, not because of morality. I understand.

Carolyn: I think so.

Nina: I always wondered about the fact that college educated people have not been taught that these substances have been used throughout history. It’s part of our history as human beings that mind-altering substances have been used again and again.

Timothy: I can think of a hundred things that aren’t taught at this university, that any person with any street smarts understands. That’s just one of a hundred things they never talk about. They never talk about anything that would encourage you to think for yourself or change things. Ra! Ra! Ra! •

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Glossary

Algorithm: A recipe outlining the steps in a procedure for solving a problem; often used to describe key methods used in a computer program.

Amino Acid: One of the building blocks of proteins in the body.

Androcratic: See "Dominator Society."

Anaerobe: An organism that can live without oxygen.

Ariadne's Thread: According to myth, Ariadne gave Theseus a thread with which to find his way out of the Labyrinth.

Attractors: A term used in modern dynamics to denote a limit towards which trajectories of change within a dynamical system move. Attractors generally lie within basins of attraction.

Axons: A thin neuronal branch that transmits electrical impulses away from the cell body to other neurons (or to muscles or glands).

Basin: A supporting element and/or foundation in a mathematical equation. In fractals these are the areas of dense information.

Bell's Theorem: A mathematical proof derived from physics demonstrating that when ever two particles interact, they are thereafter connected in a mysterious faster-than-light way that doesn't diminish with time or distance and can't be shielded. Also known as the "mechanism of non-locality."

Bifurcation: The splitting or branching of possible states that a system can assume due to changing parameters.

Catastrophe Theory-- In mathematics, catastrophe theory seeks to describe the structure of phenomena in which sharply discontinuous results follow from continuous processes. The theory was first developed by French mathematician Rene Thom in a paper published in 1968, but it has its roots in such fields as topology and dynamical system theory. While its subjects would include actual catastrophes such as a girder suddenly buckling, it is intended to apply to an abrupt change in any process. When catastrophe theory first appeared, controversy was created by some of the claims being made for its possible applications to real-life situations in such diverse fields as sociology and the behavioral sciences. In the following years, however, the theory has become an established area of mathematical research and has demonstrated its usefulness in the study of many problems in physics; its wider relevance continues to be explored.

Chaos Theory: A new perspective emerging out of the study of dynamics that is discovering and mapping a high level of order and pattern in what has long been thought to be random activity.

Chaotic Attractor: Any attractor that is more complicated than a single point or cycle.

Collective Unconcious: Carl Jung made a distinction between the personal unconscious, or the repressed feelings and thoughts developed during an individual's life, and the collective unconscious, or those inherited feelings, thoughts, and memories shared by all humanity. The collective unconscious, according to Jung, is made up of what he called "archetypes," or primordial images. These correspond to such experiences as confronting death or choosing a mate and manifest themselves symbolically in religions, myths, fairy tales, and fantasies.

Copenhagen Interpretation: Physicist Niels Bohr's notion that an unmeasured atom is, in some sense, not real, and its attributes are created or realized through the act of measurement.

Cybernetics: A term coined by Norbert Weiner, meaning the study of communication, feedback, and control mechanisms in living systems and machines.

Dendrites: Tiny tree-like branchings at the electrical impulse-receiving end of a neuron.

Differential Topology: The study and mapping of changing surfaces.

Dimorphism: Biological division of structure in a species, such as for sexual reproduction.

Directed Panspermia: Francis Crick's theory to explain the origin of life on earth. He 300 hypothesizes that spores traveling through space on the back of meteorites seed planets throughout the galaxy.

DMT: Dimetyltryptamine-- an extremely powerful, short-acting hallucinogenic mol ecule found in the South American shamanic brew Ayahuasca.

DNA: Deoxyribonucleic acid-- the long complex macro-molecule, consisting of two interconnected helical strands, that resides in the nucleus of every living cell, and encodes the genetic instructions for building each organism.

Dominator Society: A type of society in which one sex, or one group, dominates or rules over another. Also known as "Androcratic."

Dynamical Systems Theory: Mathematical models devised for understanding the processes of whole systems.

Dynamics: The study of systems in motion, which overlaps both physics and mathematics, and seeks to devise mechanical models used to understand processes.

ECCO: John Lilly's acronym for the Earth Coincidence Control Office. A hypothetical hierarchy of entities who manage coincidences in a fashion intended to accelerate the motion of human beings along their psyche-spiritual evolutionary pathways.

EEG: Electroencephalogram- electrical potentials recorded by placing electrodes on the scalp or in the brain.

Empiricism: in philosophy, a doctrine that affirms that all knowledge is based on experience, and denies the possibility of spontaneous ideas or a priori thought.

Endogenous: Found naturally within the body.

Epistemology: (Greek
episteme,
"knowledge";
logos,
"theory"), branch of philosophy that addresses the philosophical problems surrounding the theory of knowledge. Epistemology is concerned with the definition of knowledge and related concepts, the sources and criteria of knowledge, the kinds of knowledge possible and the degree to which each is certain, and the exact relation between the one who knows and the object known.

Eros: Eros is love. Originally Eros was considered to have been one of the great forces spawned from the primordial chaos. In this role Eros causes the fury of procreation that brings into being the world as we recognize it. In later myths Eros has been reduced to a pleasant but, minor god. By Roman times Eros had become Cupid.

Eucharist: Central rite of the Christian religion, in which bread and wine are consecrated by an ordained minister and consumed by the minister and members of the congregation in obedience to Jesus' command at the Last Supper, "Do this in remembrance of me." In the Orthodox and Roman Catholic churches, and in the Anglican, Lutheran, and many other Protestant churches, it is regarded as a sacrament, which both symbolizes and effects the union of Christ with the faithful. Baptists and others refer to Holy Communion as an "institution," rather than a sacrament, emphasizing obedience to a commandment.