126 lines
6.4 KiB
Plaintext
126 lines
6.4 KiB
Plaintext
From: "Bartley R. Troyan" <bt26+@andrew.cmu.edu>
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Newsgroups: alt.drugs
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Subject: "Re: Evolution" by T.McKenna
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Date: Fri, 24 Jun 1994 04:17:09 -0400
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Message-ID: <8i2dO5i00WB6F2RkZx@andrew.cmu.edu>
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Well, somebody else posted a snippet of Terence McKenna's
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writing, and I was bored tonight so I finally decided to
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transcribe this. I think many of you will enjoy this...
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The following is from a song on Shamen's album
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_Boss Drum_, called "Re: Evolution", written by McKenna, Angus,
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and West (Colin Angus is the leader of Shamen, I think, I don't
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know who West is). Anyway, this is reproduced without permission,
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but I really don't care, because these are the lyrics to what is
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IMHO the best track on the album (not that the others are bad,
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far from it). Imagine a psychedelic techno/ambient backbeat that
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constantly varies in style, instrumentation, and tempo, with
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McKenna reading this in the background:
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If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed.
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Human history represents such a radical break with the natural
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systems of biological organization that preceded it, that it must
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be the response to a kind of attractor, or dwell point that lies
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ahead in the temporal dimension. Persistently Western religions
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have integrated into their theologies the notion of a kind of end
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of the world, and I think that a lot of psychedelic
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experimentation sort of confirms this intuition, I mean, it isn't
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going to happen according to any of the scenarios of orthodox
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religion, but the basic intuition, that the universe seeks
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closure in a kind of omega point of transcendance, is confirmed,
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it's almost as though this object in hyperspace, glittering in
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hyperspace, throws off reflections of itself, which actually
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ricochet into the past, illuminating this mystic, inspiring that
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saint or visionary, and that out of these fragmentary glimpses of
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eternity we can build a kind of map, of not only the past of the
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universe, and the evolutionary egression into novelty, but a kind
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of map of the future, this is what shamanism is always been
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about, a shaman is someone who has been to the end, it's someone
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who knows how the world really works, and knowing how the world
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really works means to have risen outside, above, beyond the
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dimensions of ordinary space, time, and casuistry, and actually
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seen the wiring under the board, stepped outside the confines of
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learned culture and learned and embedded language, into the
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domain of what Wittgenstein called "the unspeakable", the
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transcendental presense of the other, which can be absanctioned,
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in various ways, to yield systems of knowledge which can be
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brought back into ordinary social space for the good of the
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community, so in the context of ninety percent of human culture,
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the shaman has been the agent of evolution, because the shaman
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learns the techniques to go between ordinary reality and the
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domain of the ideas, this higher dimensional continuum that is
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somehow parallel to us, available to us, and yet ordinarily
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occluded by cultural convention out of fear of the mystery I
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believe, and what shamans are, I believe, are people who have
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been able to de-condition themselves from the community's
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instinctual distrust of the mystery, and to go into it, to go
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into this bewildering higher dimension, and gain knowledge,
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recover the jewel lost at the beginning of time, to save souls,
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cure, commune with the ancestors and so forth and so on.
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Shamanism is not a religion, it's a set of techniques, and the
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principal technique is the use of psychedelic plants. What
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psychedelics do is they dissolve boundaries, and in the presence
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of dissolved boundaries, one cannot continue to close one's eyes
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to the ruination of the earth, the poisoning of the seas, and the
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consequences of two thousand years of unchallenged dominator
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culture, based on monotheism, hatred of nature, suppression of
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the female, and so forth and so on. So, what shamans have to do
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is act as exemplars, by making this cosmic journey to the domain
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of the Gaian ideas, and then bringing them back in the form of
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art to the struggle to save the world. The planet has a kind of
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intelligence, that it can actually open a channel of
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communication with an individual human being. The message that
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nature sends is, transform your language through a synergy
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between electronic culture and the psychedelic imagination, a
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synergy between dance and idea, a synergy between understanding
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and intuition, and dissolve the boundaries that your culture has
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sanctioned between you, to become part of this Gaian supermind, I
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mean I think it's fairly profound, it's fairly apocalyptic.
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History is ending. I mean, we are to be the generation that
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witnesses the revelation of the purpose of the cosmos. History is
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the shock wave of the eschaton. History is the shock wave of
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eschatology, and what this means for those of us who will live
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through this transition into hyperspace, is that we will be
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privileged to see the greatest release of compressed change
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probably since the birth of the universe. The twentieth century
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is the shudder that announces the approaching cataracts of time
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over which our species and the destiny of this planet is about to
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be swept.
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If the truth can be told so as to be understood, it will be believed.
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The emphasis in house music and rave culture on physiologically
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compatible rhythms and this sort of thing is really the
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rediscovery of the art of natural magic with sound, that sound,
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properly understood, especially percussive sound, can actually
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change neurological states, and large groups of people getting
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together in the presence of this kind of music are creating a
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telepathic community of bonding that hopefully will be strong
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enough that it can carry the vision out into the mainstream of
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society. I think that the youth culture that is emerging in the
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nineties is an end of the millenium culture that is actually
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summing up Western civilization and pointing us in an entirely
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different direction, that we're going to arrive in the third
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millenium, in the middle of an archaic revival, which will mean a
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revival of these physiologically empowering rhythm signatures, a
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new art, a new social vision, a new relationship to nature, to
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feminism, to ego. All of these things are taking hold, and not a
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moment too soon.
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----------
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Comments,etc??? Apologies for any misspellings, I've never heard
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some of the more unusual words in there anywhere else... --Bart
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--
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Bartley Troyan bt26@andrew.cmu.edu
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"The television screen is the retina of the mind's eye"
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