Podcast 071 – “The Unconscious” (Part 1)

Guest speakers: Terence McKenna, Ralph Abraham, and Rupert Sheldrake PROGRAM NOTES: (Minutes : Seconds into program) 06:48 Ralph Abraham: Explains his bifurcation theory of the unconscious 08:01 Ralph: "We can speak of the consciousness of animals, the consciousness of plants, the consciousness of Mother Earth." 11:57 Ralph: "Chaos goes to the basement, and with this gesture created the bifurcation in consciousness, giving us the unconscious, which appears to be gaining ever since." 17:02 Ralph: "I think we want Saint George and the Dragon getting it on together in a May Day celebration where Dionysian elements are accepted." 18.21 Terence McKenna: "The orgies driven by the psychedelic religion completely frustrated that desire to identify male paternity." 21:21 Terence: "Basically the choice was between fun [through orgies] and full knowledge of the flow of your genes, and once it was decided that male paternity was an important issue, then the concept of ‘mine’ comes into existence. . . . And this was the whole thing which this orgiastic, psychedelic, boundry-disolving mushroom religion was holding at bay. It was literally a pharmacological intervention to keep that kind of a psychology [patriarchal] from getting going." 23:33 Terence: "They went from an ecstatic goddess cult of orgy to a drunken reverie of warriors and whores." 30:16 Ralph: "And in this sense, a restrictive society which narrows the choice of addictions is somehow anti-evolutionary in that it promotes the growth of unconsciousness, insensitivity, is a danger to the biosphere and so on." 31:11 Rupert Sheldrake: Explains his proposal to legalize psychedelics in an ‘age-related manner’. 33:55 Rupert: "And the heart of all living systems is unconscious habit. However conscious we think we become we don’t become fully conscious of the unconscious embryonic habits that formed us." 40:03 Ralph: "And so we would have to work at maintenance of consciousness as we work at maintenance of the garden." 46:47 Terence: "It [coffee] is the only drug sanctioned by industrial capitalism in the form of the coffee break." Download MP3 PCs – Right click, select option Macs – Ctrl-Click, select option