Psychedelic 'McKenna' Adventures At the edge of the Abyss (on-line course)

The Brothers McKenna are widely known to the psychedelic community.  Their ideas and adventures, explorations of inner (and perhaps outer) space, and their Amazonian odyssey in search of answers to the mysteries of time, history, and being have been well chronicled by Terence, who though he passed on in 2000, still haunts the Net as an avatar and articulator of a radical and highly unconventional perspective on humanity’s current precarious perch on the edge of the singularity.  Even the most skeptical souls can no longer deny that our species is at the threshold of an enormous and irrevocable plunge into novelty; a plunge that will change forever our understanding of who we are as a species, and our place in the scheme of a universe that is marvelous, terrifying, beautiful and puzzling in ways that we cannot begin to comprehend.

US PRICE: $110

Early bird special, through May 20th: $90.00

To join click the image above or go to  http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=1350994

 or read more below...

Terence, not by choice, escaped to a hyperspatial redoubt, just as humanity crossed the threshold into the third millennium of its problematic  career on this planet.  His younger brother Dennis continues to grapple with the revelations and insights, perhaps delusions, that the two brothers confronted during their journey to the Amazonian rainforest in 1971 in search of exotic hallucinogens and high adventure. They found both, in spades, and it changed them, and perhaps the world, forever.

Now Dennis has determined that the time has come to tell his side of the story, and is proposing to write a book, The Brotherhood of the Screaming Abyss; the title is in recognition of the name the two brothers and their intrepid band of fellow adventurers chose for themselves, partly tongue in cheek, and partly – mostly, as they discovered – deadly serious. Dennis is using Kickstarter.com to garner the resources, and time, needed to write this work, which will be both a memoir of sorts but also a fresh examination of the revelations forced onto them at the climax of that heart-of-darkness journey. Those who may be interested can find a detailed description of this proposal on the Kickstarter web site at http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1862402066/the-brotherhood-of-the-screaming-abyss

The Course


This course is offered as a follow-up to the launch of the writing project and an anticipation of themes that will be explored in depth in the book, slated for release in the fall of 2012. The course will consist of four sessions, with dates set for June 5^th, 12^th, and 25^th and July 2nd.  Using live video, each webinar session will be hosted by Dennis McKenna in wide-ranging conversations with key guests who are recognized leaders on the cutting edge of post-millennial thought: Daniel Pinchbeck, Ralph Abraham, Marc Pesce, Ralph Metzner, Luis Eduardo Luna and Erik Davis.

Most have also been close personal friends of Terence and Dennis over many decades; they have shared Terence and Dennis’ fascination and preoccupations with the concepts under discussion and have been key players in the development, elaboration, and expression of these ideas.  Like Terence and Dennis, they lived through the social, environmental, and political changes that have characterized our ever-accelerating race toward novelty during the late 20^th century and the first decade of the 21^st; in many respects, they are the people who have helped to catalyze the radical changes in global consciousness that have resulted.

Each webinar will be 90 minutes in length, with the first 60 minutes devoted to a dialog between Dennis, the host, and one or more invited guests.  The format will be an informal discussion, preceded by a brief exposition outlining the main themes under consideration in that session. There will be ample opportunities for the audience to interact in real time with the host and guests following the hour-long conversation. Participants from the audience will be able to ask questions and offer their own comments and insights via live video chat, text, or email.  If you can watch a YouTube video, you can take part in this course.

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FEATURED GUESTS

Daniel Pinchbeck

Sunday, June 5, 3:00 p.m. EST

In this first session, the role of host and guest will be reversed. Author and commentator Daniel Pinchbeck will fill the role of host and moderator, and Dennis will be the interviewee.  It will take the form of a free-wheeling retrospective look at the influences that led the brothers to forego any hopes of a normal life or careers and head to the Amazon in search of psychedelic secrets in 1971.  It will be a personal reminiscence.

Daniel Pinchbeck is the author of 2012: The Return of Quetzalcoatl (Tarcher/Penguin, 2006) and Breaking Open the Head: A Psychedelic Journey into the Heart of Contemporary Shamanism (Broadway Books, 2002). His articles have appeared in The New York Times Magazine, Esquire, Wired, The Village Voice, LA Weekly, ArtForum, Arthur, and many other publications. He is currently the editorial director of Reality Sandwich and a national columnist for Conscious Choice magazine. He is also the executive producer of the PostModernTimes series of interviews, directed by Joao Amorim, and is featured in Amorim's upcoming documentary, 2012: Time for Change.

Here are some of the questions he will be asking Dennis about his early years with Terence:

• What were the personal, familial, and societal factors that led to their preoccupation with matters both arcane, and peculiar?
• What was behind their early interest in psychedelics, transdimensional realms, consciousness exploration?
• What did their baffled parents, teachers, priests and peers make of all this?

Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna

Sunday, June 12, 3:00 p.m. EST

The second session will be a conversation between Dennis and his guest, Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna. Eduardo is one the closest and oldest  friends of Terence and Dennis.  He also happens to be one of the world’s leading experts on ayahuasca ethnography and New World psychedelic shamanism.
Eduardo was there (almost) from the start. A well-educated but distinctly un-psychedelic seminary student growing up in the tiny Colombian river community of Florencia in 1971, Eduardo’s first encounter with Terence on his way back from his second visit to La Chorrera changed his life forever. Terence was fizzing with fresh revelation when they met and was literally wild-eyed, a Messiah come back from the forest.  Eduardo’s exposure to the strangest ideas in the known universe drove him to abandon his dreams of the priesthood forever and to plunge headlong into the pursuit of psychedelic shamanism. Terence and his companion traveler, the legendary Kumi, lived at Eduardo’s vinca for several months while they worked out what was to become TimeWave Zero and the first draft of the Invisible Landscape.

One of the most influential anthropologists in the field of ayahuasca research, Luis was the first to study the ayahuasca shamanism practiced   by mestizo (or mixed-blood) people in the Amazon. Born and raised in the Colombian Amazon, Luis was educated in Spain and Norway, and always had a foot in both worlds. His work revealed the importance of the diet that ayahuasqueros follow, and the pivotal role played by the icaros, or magic melodies, in shamanic ceremonies. Luis has also studied the Brazilian ayahuasca churches such as Santo Daime, Uniao do Vegetal and Barquinha. He is the director of Wasiwaska, a research center for the study of psychointegrator plants, visionary arts and consciousness, in Brazil, and is the author of several books, including Vegetalismo: Shamanism among the Mestizo Population of the Peruvian Amazon, Inner Paths to Outer Space: Journeys to Alien Worlds through Psychedelics and Other Spiritual Technologies (co-authored with Rick Strassman et al.), and his much loved collaboration with the painter Pablo Amaringo, Ayahuasca Visions: the Religious Iconography of a Peruvian Shaman.During this session, Eduardo and Dennis will talk about:

• How the path of Eduardo's life was changed after meeting Terence McKenna
• How the nature of Eduardo and Dennis's collaboration has changed through the years
• The inside scoop on the psychedelic scene they were a part of--between the two of them they know where all the bodies are buried!

Ralph Abraham

Saturday, June 25, 3:00 p.m. EST

What is TW0? And does it really describe anything? Terence proclaimed to his dying day that it was a map of the quantum structure of time, and that it could be used to predict the future; even more shocking, he claimed that its spiral structure predicted the collapse of the space/time continuum on a specific date, December 21^st, 2012.  This date just happens to coincide perfectly with the predicted end of time based on the Mayan Calendar, as well as other world traditions that seem to express expectations of a major shift in the planetary world order, if not the cosmic order, on or around that date.

This is the ‘teaching’ that two bemushroomed, raving wild men walked out of the jungle proclaiming??  Dennis is not so sure, and in recent years has begun to publicly question whether it means anything, or whether it means what Terence believed it to mean. No one knows the answer, but many very intelligent people have been both baffled and fascinated by Time Wave Zero.

Ralph Abraham has been involved in the research frontier and the development of dynamical systems theory in the 1960s and 1970s. He has been a consultant on chaos theory and its applications in numerous fields, such as medical physiology, ecology, mathematical economics, and psychotherapy. He is the author of Foundations of Mechanics with Jerrold Marsden, Dynamics, the Geometry of Behavior with Christopher Shaw, Chaos, Gaia, Eros, and Chaos, Cosmos, and Creativity with Rupert Sheldrake and Terence McKenna.

Ralph Abraham will join Mark Pesce and Dennis McKenna in a lively debate about the validity of the Time Wave, which Dennis has become more skeptical about in recent years. They will discuss:

• Is the TWO real?
• What is the proof in favor of its existence? 
•  Is there something about it we need to understand before 2012, in order to avert or prepare for global catastrophe?

Mark Pesce

Saturday, June 25, 3:00 p.m. EST

Dennis and Terence disagreed on whatever it was they experienced together following the Experiment at La Chorrera.  Was it a simultaneous psychotic break, a shamanic initiation, an alien abduction, or something even stranger?  They honestly don’t know, and interpretations have changed over the years. What is definitely odd about the La Chorrera “Event”, whatever it may have been, was that they brought something back with them.  This was the mathematical construct derived from the King Wen sequence of the I Ching that has become known as Time Wave Zero. Most psychoses or shamanic experiences do not end up yielding a mathematical tool, particularly one that purports to describe the fractal topology of time, and one that (possibly) predicts the end of the world.

Mark Pesce is an inventor, writer, entrepreneur, educator and broadcaster.  In 1994 Pesce co-invented VRML, a 3D interface to the World Wide Web. Pesce founded graduate programs in interactive media at both the University of Southern California’s world-famous Cinema School and the Australian Film, Radio and Television School. In 2006 Pesce founded FutureSt, a Sydney consultancy dedicated to helping clients negotiate the challenges presented by our ‘hyperconnected’ future.

In this session, Mark Pesce will discuss all things Time Wave with Ralph Abraham and Dennis:

• What is TW0? And does it really describe anything?
• Does it really hide the answer to our current ontological and historical dilemma?
• Why does its interpretation coincide so closely with the apocalyptarian predictions of so many other cultures?

Erik Davis

Saturday, July 2nd, 3:00 P.M., EST

Although Terence did not live to see it, many of his ideas have been accepted into the mainstream cultural zeitgeist--a state of affairs about which he would feel quite comfortable.  He predicted much of the wild changes we are witnessing during this time of global transformation. There can be little doubt that psychedelics, in permeating our culture, in opening the door once again to the rediscovery of parallel worlds and non-human intelligences, have functioned as a major catalyst of that change, and that new transformed worldview. These ideas no longer seem so strange because many people have taken psychedelics; many have confirmed for themselves what Terence and Dennis were raving about. In this session, Erik Davis joins Ralph Metzner and Dennis for a conversation about the evolution and transmission of these ideas.

Erik Davis is a North American writer, social historian, cultural critic and lecturer. He is noted for his study of the history of technology and society and his essays about the fate of the individual in the dawning posthuman era. Although significant aspects of his work include media criticism and technology criticism, his works span across other disciplines to include a larger social history of art, religion, and science, technology, and politics. His books include TechGnosis: Myth, Magic, and Mysticism in the Age of Information, The Visionary State: A Journey Through California's Spiritual Landscape, and Led Zeppelin IV. 


Erik will be talking to Ralph Metzner and Dennis about the following:

• Is there an impending historical singularity on the horizon?
• What are the possibilities for trans-human metamorphosis and plant-human symbiosis?
• Has alien contact already taken place and what is the likelihood of humanity migrating into space?

Ralph Metzner

Saturday, July 2nd, 3:00 p.m.

Whether or not Time Wave Zero is ‘true’ or not, there is little doubt that it has evolved into a pervasive cultural meme, sharing the space with a whole universe of cultural archetypes that certainly did not exist, or at least were a lot less overt, when Terence and Dennis were growing up in that small town in Colorado in the 1950s.  In the post-millennial, pre-eschatology decade of the third millennium A.D., a whole host of bizarre notions about the impending historical singularity, trans-human metamorphosis, plant-human symbiosis, the emergence of the Gaian planetary intelligence, the globalization of the human nervous system, the archaic revival, alien contact, space migration, transdimensional realities, parallel universes, and many others that would have seemed like schizophrenic delusions to earlier generations, have now become an accepted, almost mundane, component of the contemporary cultural zeitgeist.  Suddenly we find ourselves living in a science-fictional universe; without even noticing it, things seem to be getting stranger and ever more bizarre at a rapidly accelerating pace.
This final session, hosted by Dennis with guests psychedelic pioneer Ralph Metzner and techno-guru Erik Davis, will explore the ways in which many of Terence's predictions about the changing nature of the world have become true.
Ralph Metzner's work has been focused on the transformations of consciousness, and as a graduate student, he worked with Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (later Ram Dass) on the Harvard Psilocybin Projects. He co-wrote The Psychedelic Experience, and was editor of The Psychedelic Review. He is founder of the Green Earth Foundation and His books include The Well of Remembrance, The Unfolding Self, Green Psychology, and two edited collections on the science and the phenomenology of Ayahuasca and Teonanácatl.
The discussion will cover various topics including:

• How have Terence's ideas permeated culture?
• Do psychedelics have an evolutionary function? 
• Can psychedelics help us transition into ahistorical time?

We could ask for no two finer minds with whom to explore these themes. At the end of this final session, you may have a glimmer of some of the answers, but we guarantee, you will have a lot more questions! And it is in that dynamic space between knowing and unknowing, that understanding and insight may flourish.

ABOUT OUR HOST

  Dennis McKenna is a ethnopharmacologist focusing on the therapeutic uses of psychoactive medicines derived from nature and used in indigenous ethnomedical practices. He is well known for his work with his brother Terence McKenna and their ground breaking research in The Invisible Landscape: Mind, Hallucinogens, and the I Ching, and is co-founder of the Hefter Research Institute that promotes scientific research on hallucinogenic compounds.

By participating in this online course, you will receive:

• Four 90-minute live video seminars with Dennis McKenna and his featured guests
• 30 minutes of question and answer time in each seminar
• Breakout sessions for student discussion following each seminar
• Participation in a private online community with other students
• Unlimited online access to videos of all seminars
• PDF articles about course topics from Dennis and each of the guests

We hope you join us for this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore the lives and ideas of Terrence and Dennis!

PRICE: $110

Early bird special, through May 20th: $90.00

To join click http://www.1shoppingcart.com/app/?af=1350994

Evolve The Spore

Evolve and revolve to solve the Novelle’
Loose spore, spoor, spell s’poor.
Lou’s Spore

Spore of Destiny. The weir of brandy,
Spart of the Lyf Cycle cycle.

Sports Day. Sport for all. 
Reproductive seed,
Ballistico Spores blowing, 
Spores and cures and 

cleansed pores, 
Rowing a shore with oar to spore.


Dream fish...the Net, an ‘idea’ sized catch?
Starseed Transmissions 2010.

The Intelligence in the Cherry Stone
Words are 

Cryptospores, fossilized messages
Paragraphs in

    the Zoospore, locomotion 


Swarmspore social movement, decentralized, 

self-organized
Natural or artificial? Thought sport?

Moving

away and outword, wayward sores float


Dispersed verse turning a propeller in the wave crush


Water sports thoughts awash with salt

Growing both on the ground and
Underground


Spore Mycollegee Degree
Liberty Butter 

Yeasts and Leomould Bloom

The role of spores

in Decomposition of the matter?

Terence McKenna by Robert Venosa

Terence McKenna by Robert Venosa

Time for the monkeys to move into hyperspace!
"Nature is not our enemy, to be raped and conquered.
Nature is ourselves, to be cherished and explored."
—Terence McKenna
One of the principle philosophical underpinnings for our assumption of 2012 being a planetary tipping point comes from our years of working with the late Terence McKenna. In 1996 we presented the Terence McKenna Prophets Conference Timewave Zero tour of America beginning at the Cathedral of Saint John the Divine in New York then moving across the country, ending at UCLA in Los Angeles . Combine fractal mathematics with the I-Ching into a computer program created with a giant punch card computer at Berkeley in the 1960s, and you come up with a graph of history measuring novelty (new things and events) vs. habit (nothing new). From this you come to a Zero Point on December 21, 2012, which as we know happens to also be the end of the Mayan long-count. Interesting.

YOU CAN GET A BETTER GRASP OF THIS BY GOING TO
www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtnV25LWFQ8&feature=related.
So, back in the 90s we brought together for an exciting weekend workshop on Maui, Hawaii Terence McKenna and leading fiction author and close friend of our's and McKenna’s, Tom Robbins. Participants came from around the world for this one time mind boggling event, which we agreed not to record. But here is some of what Tom Robbins wrote about McKenna in the forward to McKenna’s book The Archaic Revival which is reminiscent of the Maui gathering

“Our problems today are more complex and more threatening than at any time in history. Sadly, we cannot even begin to solve those problems, because our reality orientations are lower than a snowman’s blood pressure. We squint at existence through thick veils of personal and societal ignorance, overlaid with still more opaque sheets of disinformation, thoughtfully provided by the state, the church, and big business (often one and the same). The difference between us and Helen Keller is that she knew she was deaf and blind.

“Radical problems call for radical solutions. Conventional politicians are too softheaded to create radical solutions and too fainthearted to implement them if they could, whereas political revolutionaries, no matter how well meaning, ultimately offer only bloodshed followed by another round of repression.

“To truly alter conditions, we must alter ourselves—philosophically, psychologically, and perhaps, biologically. The first step in those alterations will consist mainly of cutting away the veils in order that we see ourselves for that transgalactic Other that we really are and always have been. Terence the Tailor has got the sharpest shears in town. And he’s open Sundays and holidays. Once the veils are severed, we, each of us, can finally start to attend to our self-directed mutagensis.

“The flying saucer is warming up its linguistic engines. The mushroom is shoving its broadcasting transmitter through the forest door. Time for the monkeys to move into hyperspace! It’s going to be a weird, wild trip, but, guided by the archaic, Gaia-given gyroscope, we can commence the journey in a state of excitement and hope. With his uniquely secular brand of eschatological euphoria, Terence McKenna is inviting us to a Doomsday we can live with. Be there or be square.”
—Tom Robbins

CLICK HERE TO CONTINUE READING
From the Grasslands to the Starship by Terence McKenna

2012 TIPPING POINT - The Prophets Conference Vancouver
23-25 July 2010

Conference Information: www.greatmystery.org/events/vancouver2012.html
In-Depth Post-Conference Workshops 26-27 JULY 2010
Exhibitor Information: www.greatmystery.org/events/vancouver2012register.html
Download an Event Flyer to share with friends Color or Black/White.

The purpose of this GROUNDBREAKING conference is to explore a radically different, more optimistic interpretation of the Mayan prophecy – as referring to the end of the world as we have known it. In addition to predicting a physical destruction of the material world, the Mayan prophecy might refer to death and rebirth and a mass inner transformation of humanity. The conference brings together JOSE ARGUELLES, FLORDEMAYO, ANDREW HARVEY, BARBARA MARX HUBBARD, JOHN MAJOR JENKINS, JOHN KIMMEY, JOHN PERKINS, DANIEL PINCHBECK, LLYN ROBERTS, RICHARD TARNAS, and MIGUEL ANGEL VERGARA and in the beautiful setting of Vancouver, Canada. Following the conference will be in-depth post-conference workshops. We hope you can join us for this powerful and inspiring event.

ADDITIONAL WRITINGS
Closing Of The Cycle : The Last Days and What Is To Be Done by Jose Arguelles
Guardians of the Light by John Perkins
The Revolution that the Divine Mother is Preparing by Andrew Harvey
Reflections on John Kimmey by Hannah Janulewicz
The Dalai Lama and The Economic Hitman by John Perkins
Our Crisis Is The Birth Of A Cocreative Universal Humanity by Barbara Marx Hubbard
Our Moment in History as an Initiation for Humanity by Richard Tarnas
The Hinge Of A Transition In Our Species’ Awareness by Daniel Pinchbeck
Gazing Into The Cosmic Center December 21, 2012 by John Major Jenkins
An Alliance of Prayer, Education and Healing for Our Mother Earth by Flordemayo
2012 Planetary Evolution by Barbara Marx Hubbard
A Radioactive Nuisance to All Those in Power by Andrew Harvey
1000 Days to Zero Point 2012 by Jose Arguelles
The Eternal Fire of Transformation by John Major Jenkins
Planetary Whole System Design Science by Jose Arguelles
Sacred Activism and the Birth of the Divine Humanity by Andrew Harvey
Something Monumental Is Going To Happen by Mayan elder Flordemayo
This Is It by John Eesawu Kimmey
2012 and Other Indigenous Prophecies for Transformation by Llyn Roberts
How Do We Get Ready for 2012? by Barbara Marx Hubbard
It Happened In Cancun a preview for Vancouver
2012 : The Primal World Ensouled - Richard Tarnas
The True Meaning of 2012 by John Perkins


CONFERENCE SPONSORS
New Awareness - The Review for Spiritual Seekers.
Banyen Books & Sound - A Watering Hole for the Spirit on the World Wide Web.
Conscious Living Radio - To expand your consciousness.
Reality Sandwich - Evolving consciousness, bite by bite.
Lilipoh ~ the spirit in life
Gaia Media - For a holistic and up to date understanding of our existence and the potential of human consciousness.
Shaman Portal - The global resource for all things shamanic.

http://www.greatmystery.org/

Zero degrees of separation: The social Network, what is to be done.

Zero degrees of separation: The social Network, what is to be done.

All over the internet new connections and being made at an ever increasing daily rate, group and swarm intelligence is swarming, grouping and the world is awakening or birthing itself into a new level of coherence. A new game emerges each day when we wake from our nightsleep, with new rules and players, and we navigate the field, searching for meaningful games to play and share with others.

We are blown to atoms, bits and genes in the information age, like the Hadron super-collider, identity has been blown into ambiguity, everybody and everything fission fusion collusion. Here Comes Everybody’ wrote Joyce, and now we are all thrust into the palace halls of the 1000 narrators searching for the author, looking for the plot to pick up the thread, to check that one is living and writing, not reading and dead, some said that these voices are schizophrenia and/or hallucination, and helped to brainwash the Human nations with psychiatric double speak keeping mum about MK Ultra.

Everybody will feel ripped to the tits now the World Wide Web is awake and turning over the ages of mankind at ever greater speeds, bootstrapping itself into higher dimensions, doing more with less, hyper-intelligent computing.

I feel we need a new set of standards, ark, listen to me, I never thought I would say this but there we have it. Steve.