Generators of Imagination, The Historical Purpose of Human Beings – Terence McKenna (Video)

Generators of Imagination, The Historical Purpose of Human Beings - Terence McKenna (Video) | Third Monk

From a 1991 lecture entitled Where Does Reality Begin and End?, Terence McKenna talks about the role of human beings in nature and reality.

We can become a highly evolved and aware species that acts as the voice of nature but artificial conflicts are holding us back.

We are energy storage and release mechanisms, sanctioned by nature for some purpose which will be visible somewhere downstream in the flow of time but which is opaque to us now.

– Terence McKenna

Soundtrack: DJ Shadow – Transmission 2

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There is No Deeper Truth Than the Psychedelic Experience – Terence McKenna

There is No Deeper Truth Than the Psychedelic Experience - Terence McKenna | Third Monk image 1

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Terence McKenna served as the most visible expert on psychedelic culture during his time. He wrote five books – two with his brother Dennis – on his way to develop a worldwide following. Brainy, eloquent, and hilarious, McKenna applies his Irish gift of gab to making a simple case:

Going through life without trying psychedelics is like going through life without having sex. For McKenna, mushrooms and DMT do more than force up the remains of last night’s dream; they uncover the programming language of mind and cosmos.

Psychedelics are still controversial but McKenna’s lectures helped them emerge from the underground and into normal lives.

Today’s users are surgeons, bankers, physicists, computer programmers. They are productive members of society. You can’t point your finger at them and say they’ve dropped out.

– Scott O. Moore, editor of the psychedelic journal The Resonance Project

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In 1971, McKenna and his brother went to the Amazon to hunt for ayahuasca, a legendary shamanic brew. But when they arrived at the Colombian village of La Chorera that spring, what they found were fields blanketed with Stropharia cubensis, aka shrooms. Serious psychonauts knew all about the psilocybin mushroom from scholarly books on shamanism, but no one in the US was eating S. cubensis in the early ’70s because no one had figured out how to cultivate them. After returning from South America, the McKennas discovered the secret, which they promptly published. Shrooms were on the menu.

McKenna got his 15 minutes of fame when his books came out in rapid succession. Food of the Gods, published in 1992, aims directly at thinkers. In it, McKenna lays out a solid if unorthodox case that psychedelics helped kick-start human consciousness and culture, giving our mushroom-munching ancestors a leg up on rivals by enhancing their visual and linguistic capacities.

The psychedelic experience is not the equivalent of a dust bunny under your psychic bed.

It’s a product of the fractal laws that govern the world at an informational level. There is no deeper truth.

– Terence McKenna

Terence McKenna’s Last Trip | WIRED

PostHuman: An Intro to Transhumanism, Using Technology to Evolve (Video)

PostHuman: An Intro to Transhumanism, Using Technology to Evolve (Video) | Third Monk

The British Institute of Posthuman Studies provides a visual explanation of the three dominant areas of transhumanism: super longevity, super intelligence and super wellbeing,

The revolutionary ideas of thinkers Aubrey de Grey, Ray Kurzweil and David Pearce are briefly covered in the clip.

Transhumanism is an international cultural and intellectual movement with an eventual goal of fundamentally transforming the human condition by developing and making widely available technologies to greatly enhance human intellectual, physical, and psychological capacities. 

– Nick Bostrom,  A history of transhumanist thought –  Journal of Evolution and Technology.

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Evolution of Reality – Terence Mckenna

Evolution of Reality - Terence Mckenna | Third Monk image 2

The transcension hypothesis asks whether the evolution of our civilization is rapidly developing into something similar to a black hole.

Some physicists also argue black holes may be “seeds” or “replicators” for new universes, thus giving us a clue as to what we would do after we encounter other intelligent life forms.

The purpose of being a human is to complexify reality even more. To hand on a more diverse, more complicated, more multifaceted universe to our children.

-Terence Mckenna

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Magic Mushrooms Stimulate Growth of New Brain Cells (Study)

Magic Mushrooms Stimulate Growth of New Brain Cells (Study) | Third Monk image 2

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Psilocybin Drawing by Sara K. Glazier

New studies from The University of South Florida indicate that psilocybin found in “shrooms”, triggers new brain cell growth, and erases frightening memories from mice.

The studies showed that mice treated with low doses of psilocybin had significant growth of new brain cells, because the mushroom binds to a brain receptor that stimulates new brain cell growth, and short term memory formation.

This interesting discovery has given more plausibility to the Stoned Ape Theory, Terence Mckenna’s suggestion that human evolution was initiated by the mind expanding benefits of psychedelic experiences.

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Researchers are eager to look into the idea of using magic mushrooms to cure mental problems like PTSD (Post Traumatic Stress Disorder) and chronic depression but the legal status of shrooms restricts freedom in experiments.

Mice trained to fear electric shock when hearing a noise associated with the shock, stopped reacting in fear to the noise when given a small dose of psilocybin, much more quickly, in contrast to mice given no psilocybin.

The science behind psilocybin treating depression is, depressed individuals typically have over active medial prefrontal cortex regions of the brain, and psilocybin eases this, and makes the brain function normally here.

Despite its harmlessness, amazing medical potential, and ability to produce phenomenal spiritual/mystical experiences, the governments across the world have nearly all banned Psilocybin Mushrooms. Dangerous pharmaceutical pills can’t compete with the toxic cell purging benefits of cannabis and the positive mental state that shrooming promotes. 

Evidence of Psilocybin “Magic Mushrooms” Growing New Brain Cells

Juan R. Sanchez-Ramos, Professor of Neurology at USF presents the effects of psilocybin mushrooms on neurogenesis (birth of new neuron cells).

Psilocybin Mushrooms Promote Growth of New Brain Cells, Can Even Cure PTSD And Depression | Banoosh

Psychedelics Influenced the Origins of Prehistoric Cave Paintings?

Psychedelics Influenced the Origins of Prehistoric Cave Paintings? | Third Monk image 4

psychedelic-cave-paintingsA new scientific paper on the origin of cave paintings suggests that humanity’s earliest artists deliberately sought out psychedelic states to create visionary art.

Prehistoric cave paintings across the continents have similar geometric patterns not because early humans were learning to draw like Paleolithic pre-schoolers, but because they were using psychedelics, and their brains—like ours—have a biological predisposition to “see” certain patterns, especially during consciousness altering states.

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At its core, this proposed theory challenges the long-held notion that the earliest art and atrists were merely trying to draw the external world. Instead, it sees cave art as a deliberate mix of rituals inducing altered states for participants, coupled with brain chemistry that elicits certain visual patterns for humanity’s early chroniclers.

The cave painters had rituals that involved taking drugs (undoubtedly plants) that they consumed in a frenzy to get to this creative state. This behavior and the same results were noted by 1960s-era academics studying the effects of peyote, a hallucinogenic cactus found in North America.

The non-ordinary visual experiences were often characterized by similar kinds of abstract geometric patterns, which he classified into four categories of form constants:

(1) gratings, lattices, fretworks, filigrees, honeycombs, and checkerboards

(2) cobwebs

(3) tunnels and funnels, alleys, cones,and vessels

(4) spirals

“Intriguingly, these form constants turned out to resemble many of the abstract motifs that are often associated with prehistoric art from around the world, including Paleolithic cave art in Europe.”

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psychedelic-cave-paintings-ShamanFremontWarriorA BBC Documentary How Art Made the World suggested that art was originally an exclusive domain of spiritualists – these images were what the “Shaman” saw in trance. Terence Mckenna’s Stoned Ape Theory goes even deeper by suggesting that the ingestion of shrooms by early primates was the starting point of human evolution.

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psychedelic-cave-paintings-huntBut why would people across continents and cultures be drawn to record the same shapes?

The paper states the images generated by specific neural centers do resemble the templates for lots of 1960s psychedelic artists.

Why did they early humans gravitate to these patterns? Because the imagery was seen or sensed while having a super-sensory experience and therefore seemed to be imbued with cosmic significance. Put another way, people who explore their consciousness with psychedelics tend to find magic in simple details.

Were Paleolithic Cave Painters High on Psychedelic Drugs? Scientists Propose Ingenious Theory for Why They Might Have Been | AlterNet

Terence McKenna – Shrooms Are Organic Space Probes Sent to Earth by Aliens

Terence McKenna - Shrooms Are Organic Space Probes Sent to Earth by Aliens | Third Monk

In this awesome lecture, Terence Mckenna adds some psychedelic flavor to Panspermia, the theory that life in the universe is distributed by meteors and asteroids. Mckenna believed that mushroom spores were able to survive space travel to become the catalyst of human evolution.

Shrooms Are the Most Unique Lifeform on Earth

First argument – entirely a physical argument. Psilocybin is O-phosphoryl-4-hydroxy-N,N-dimethyltryptamine. What this means is that there is a phosphorous group substituted at the 4 position of the molecule. Now here’s the headline folks: This is the ONLY 4-phosphorylated indole on this planet! On this planet.

Now, if you were searching for extraterrestrial thumbprints on the biology of Earth, you would look for molecules that are unique – that don’t have near relatives spread through other lifeforms. In psilocybin we have a perfect example of this. It is the only 4-phosphorylated indole known to occur in nature! Nature doesn’t work like that folks, nature builds, always, on what has previously been accomplished. So this is a red flag saying at the molecular level this thing looks like an alien artifact – at the molecular level.

Shrooms Used as Probes to Detect Life

A single mushroom in the sporelization phase can shed up to 3 million spores a minute for up to six weeks. ONE mushroom could do this. I maintain, that a strategy for extraterrestrial contact carried on by a super technology would take the following form:

Build a probe.

Give the probe the ability to replicate itself.

Start these probes out from your home planet.

The probes replicate so the volume of the probes stays constant as the volume of space increases.

If you’re carrying out an exhaustive search of the galaxy for life, it’s very hard to imagine a civilization that could visit and monitor every star over long periods of time. A much more efficient strategy would be the “phone home” strategy. You send, essentially a calling card which says if you get this message, call the enclosed toll free number and immediately report your location, we will come at that point. That’s what I think is going on.

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Neil deGrasse Tyson – Maybe We’re Not As Smart As We Think We Are (Video)

Neil deGrasse Tyson - Maybe We're Not As Smart As We Think We Are (Video) | Third Monk

Everything that we are, that distinguishes us from chimps, emerges from that one percent difference in DNA. It has to, ’cause that’s the difference. The Hubble telescope, these grand… that’s in that one percent.

Maybe… everything that we are that is not the chimp is not as smart compared to the chimp as we tell ourselves it is.

Maybe the difference between constructing and launching a Hubble telescope, and a chimp combining two finger motions as sign language – maybe that difference is not all that great. We tell ourselves it is.

Just the same way we label our books optical illusions. We tell ourselves it’s a lot. Maybe it’s almost nothing. How would we decide that?

Imagine another life form that’s one percent different from us.

In the direction that we are different from the chimp.

Think about that.

We have one percent difference and we’re building the Hubble telescope. Go another one percent.

What are we to they? We would be drooling, blithering idiots in their presence. That’s what we would be.

Neil deGrasse Tyson Animation by PersonifciationOfMe

The Transcension Hypothesis, Life After the Singularity – Jason Silva (Video)

The Transcension Hypothesis, Life After the Singularity - Jason Silva (Video) | Third Monk

What happens after the Singularity? The Transcension Hypothesis by John Smart offers an account of what comes after the technological singularity, also accounting for Fermi’s Paradox. Basically, after our technological adolescent and expansionist explorations, we turn from outer space to inner space.

Our journey undergoes S.T.E.M. compression, the compression of Space, Time, Energy and Matter – until non biological minds live inside virtual worlds at the Nano and Femto scale, further compressing complexity until we create black hole-like conditions and disappear from the visible universe.Jason Silva

Click here for more detailed information on the Transcension Hypothesis.

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How Drugs Helped Invent The Internet – Jason Silva Interview (Video)

How Drugs Helped Invent The Internet - Jason Silva Interview (Video) | Third Monk

Reason TV’s Zach Weissmueller Interview with Jason Silva

Biological and Technological Convergence

When the internet does is it connects all of our minds together. And we sort of transcend the limitations of time and distance, so now we move into a post geographical world where we can come together and self organize, and have unexpected relevancy, and serendipity based on shared passions, not bounded by the skin bag.  Amber Case, the Cyborg Anthropologist says that every time we make a telephone call, we’re actually creating a techno social wormhole. It’s technological mediated telepathy. Andy Clarke (Natural Born Cyborgs) says “We should stop thinking of the mental apparatus as bound by the skin bag because the reality is the mental apparatus is dance between brains, their environment, their technology, and their tools.” The extended mind thesis talks about how our iphone is not just a tool but its actually outsourcing our cognition, storing parts of our memories. Just like we have a neocortex, the iphone is part of the extended man.

Psychedelics and Technology

It’s interesting to draw the analogy between psychedelics and computers. Timothy Leary used to say you take psychedelics to get rid of your mental filters, to get rid of your preconceptions,  to expand your sphere of  possibility, to unbound…to free your mind. When he saw the potential of the computers and the internet, he came out in the 90s as a techno optimist and said the computers are the LSDs of the 90s. A lot of the engineers who invented the personal computer and the microprocessor, they were all tripping when they had those realizations of extending the mind with technology.

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