Ep. 45 - Lorenzo Hagerty [Psychedelic Salon]

You wouldn't worry so much about what people think about you, if you actually knew how little anybody ever thinks about it. This is synchronicity. What do you want to do? I know. What do you want to do? What do you want to do? I think you look fantastic. You look amazing. You're all kind of a girl. [Laughter] Where did you get your ideas from? The ideas? Oh, man, I got a million dreams. A million dreams. A million dreams. A million dreams. A million dreams. That's all I do is dream. I thought you played piano. No, no, no, this is not piano. This is dreaming. Welcome to episode 45 of Synchronicity.

My guest this week is Lorenzo Hagerty from the psychedelic salon. We'll get to Lorenzo in just a second. As you can tell by the intro, or maybe you couldn't tell. I'm still at the beach. As long as I'm at the beach, I'm going to continue to use beach intro. What you heard after that is actually something put together by a musician named Slacker, who unfortunately killed himself long not to get too dark right at the beginning of an episode. I think it was about 10 years, within 10 years ago. He was big in the electronic music progressive underground house scene in the late 90s, early 2000s. His name was Slacker. Really, really awesome stuff.

That was a little something he put together, which is kind of like a musical vignette of something that Duke Ellington said. He's the one who's talking and saying, "I don't know what you're talking about ideas. These are dreams." Duke Ellington, super cool. I love that little thing. I used it to open up a mix that I made back in 2013. One of the rare recordings of mixes that I've done. If you like that, you can check that out on my SoundCloud, soundcloud.com/pureland. Don't ask me why I came up with that name. I have no idea. Welcome, though, again, to synchronicity. Super excited you are here.

I have an excellent episode for you today with Lorenzo. Before we get into that, though, I wanted to talk about a couple of other podcasts. What I've been doing, I've really been delving into podcasts this week. There's a show before that I'm not a huge listener of podcasts. That's weird. I own and run a podcast network, mine pod network. I have my own podcast, but I don't think I would consider myself a heavy podcast listener until this vacation. I've been taking long walks on the beach, which I do enjoy, I found out. Truthfully, I've just been listening to podcasts about hour, hour and a half long walks.

I can listen to one or two, depending on what they are, and I've been loving it. I've just something clicked, and I get it. Hopefully, that carries through to this podcast, but even if it doesn't. I think what I've learned, and I tweeted about this, I am on Twitter. You can find me, Noah Lampart, my name. It's easy, right? I tweeted about this, and I think it really clicked for me, is that one of the reasons that podcasts I think are so popular right now, or a lot of people kind of get the medium itself, is it's a really effective way at tuning people's consciousness, your own consciousness, by listening to other people, and there's something really to be said for that dynamic interaction between one person, two people, whatever it is, ideas in a person. It's just really, there's something pointing about it, and I've been listening to a variety of them.

Two podcasts that stuck out to me this week, that just when I've been re-listening to them, one was what my buddy Zach Leary did, had this guy Tony Moss on his show, it's all happening, and Tony is just truthfully one of the coolest guys I've ever heard, just so genuinely amazing in his perspectives in the world, so go and check that one out. It's on mindpodnetwork.com, it's also on Zach's new website, Zach Leary.com, really helped him out a little bit on that. He did such a great job, so either of those places, check it out, I really think you're going to like it. If you like this show, if you're tuning in, I can almost guarantee you're going to like it, it's totally awesome. Another episode just came out recently, it's on Duncan Trussell's podcast, he had this guy Dr. Bruce Damer on, and oh my god, this guy, what a cool guy, scientist, part of think tanks, just what an episode, really, really interesting, I think some incredibly valuable stuff, really a peak, peak guest for Duncan, really awesome. I know Duncan is a Burning Man right now, I spoke a little bit about Burning Man last night, or last week, everyone, I feel like literally everyone I've ever known will ever know is that Burning Man, everyone, it's like my whole social circle just gets whittled down to like two people who are not at Burning Man at this time of year, so I hope everyone's having fun there.

I look forward to hearing the music and the stories and the experiences that people will share when they come back from that. Okay, last thing, generosity experiment, it's over today, by the time you hear this, it will be September and it will be over. We ended up raising collectively about $720. I just logged in to the GoFundMe page and realized I fucked up, and what I did is I didn't set up my withdrawal settings, I didn't put in my bank account information because I wasn't thinking about it because ultimately the money's not going to me, so they disable donations. It looks like for about a few weeks, so that's totally on me.

Like I said before with this experiment, which is where we're collectively raising money to send some people who need it. Truthfully, I've learned a lot of things from this, I'm definitely doing it again, probably at the beginning of the new year, but I'm going to change the platform, I don't think I'm going to use GoFundMe, I think I'm going to use something else. I'd like it to be a little more transparent, a little more interactive, but I'm really proud that collectively as a community, we've raised over $700. Now, on to some not so great news with that, the fees afterwards associated with everything, it looks like the actual amount of money that we're sending is a little over $600, but still, that's pretty cool. So, where is it going to go?

Technically, it is not over, voting is still open. By the time you're hearing this, it will be closed, so I'm going to know tonight where we're going to be sending it. It's either to a humane society that was impacted in Louisiana with the flooding, or it's going to be to a child who's going through some very difficult times and needs some medical help. So, we'll know. And I also realized, I don't like the way I set that up at the end, like, basically making you pick and choose between animals and a small child. I don't know if that's really what I want to be doing. It's making people make those decisions.

I'm reading a really excellent book. I gave it away as a book. I have a giveaway called "Rambam's Ladder." I spoke about this before. It's about "Memodity's Ladder of Giving," and it's eight rungs, and there's all these different types of giving, and they have precedence. It's really good. And I've been looking at the generosity experiment through that lens, and I'm going to try to cater it to be a little more reflective of what I think the spirit of is going to be. So, again, thank you to everyone who participated. That's super cool. Over $600 is nothing to sneeze at. I can tell you that without a fact. Anyone knows that. That's not a small amount of money. It can absolutely have a major change on people's lives. So, really, thank you for everyone who participated.

Okay, do. Okay, Lorenzo. Lorenzo, Lorenzo, Lorenzo. I don't know how many of you know about the psychedelic salon. It's a podcast. It's a community. Basically, Lorenzo has been putting up these talks by a ton of different people, but one of my favorites, Terence McKenna, for over a decade, 11 years now. We started in 2005, and I remember listening, probably not too long thereafter, 2005, 2006, and just being like, "Wow, this is some..." I mean, if you haven't heard Terence McKenna, this is where you go to find it. Go to thepsychodellixalon.com. Check out any talk. Pick one at random, and you will be blown away. I mentioned in this episode, and one of my favorite things about Terence, I don't believe everything Terence McKenna has ever said.

And I think anyone you know who knew him, even himself, if he was still around, he would tell you, "Don't take everything I say as gospel." Right? He just had such an amazing way of opening up his mind and other people's minds through novelty, through imagination, through just talking. But one of the greatest orders of our generation, my generation, earlier generation, whose ever generation he's from, just incredible. My big three, in terms of talkers, if you're going to listen, orators, it would be him, Terence McKenna, Alan Watts, and Ram Das. I think those three, we could put on any one of their tapes, and you can be captivated.

So Lorenzo has run the psychodellixalon. By himself, pretty much with help from other people, for over 10 years, he's actually at a point where he's transitioning away in March of next year to not having a personal involvement with it. He basically puts these together himself all every week. So I think that's a cool thing that he's doing. He's going to learn to delegate and kind of let the community run with it. But we speak about a ton of different stuff here towards the latter part of the episode. We stumble onto that we are both big fans of marijuana and kind of geek out over that for a little bit. But we talk about so many different things, technology, consciousness, synchronicities, just the importance of an open mind. His story, I mean, he's someone who was in the military, he was a lawyer, he was involved in early, the early computer scene. Just a very fascinating and interesting life, and just a really cool guy. And I know we're going to talk again, and just I'm thrilled that he came on.

It was nice to be able to do a podcast with him while I'm at the beach, and I'm super relaxed. So yeah, that's this week's episode. I think you're going to enjoy it. Thank you to everyone who has donated to the podcast. That's super duper cool. Thank you to everyone who is rating reviewing on iTunes. That is also super duper cool. Anything else I got to talk about? Listen, if you want to chat, want to send me anything, more and more of you are doing it. We're talking about some really cool stuff. Send me an email, Noah@syncpodcast.com. One note, I do these book giveaways every week, right? I've been doing, I'm not going to do one this week, I'm still at the beach.

And I'm probably not going to do one on a weekly basis anymore. Let me tell you why. When I started it, it was just like, you know what, I'm just going to give these books away. It's going to be a cool thing. I would love if it happens. And so I've been reviewing my expenses for the podcast. It looks like I spent almost $1,000 sending books out, and I love to do it. But I'm going to look for more, maybe not so expensive ways of doing this. So I have partners with a few people who I can give out books for. But I'm going to just, for now, I'm going to make it a monthly thing. So again, if you want to be entered in these giveaways, you can go to syncpodcast.com, join the community.

I send an email out every week about the episode and some other stuff. And you have a chance to win a free book. In perpetuity. I'm not changing that aspect of it. So if you are already enjoying the community and you're like, what? Now he's not giving away on a weekly basis. What a fucking scam. Well, ha ha ha. You fell into my trap. But seriously, you really, really like, I'm going to give him away once a month, maybe so I don't spend so much money sending people other books. Okay. That's it. Officially. Without further ado, enjoy this episode with Lorenzo Hagerby. Hey, gotcha. Hey, nice to meet you.

Good to see you. I've heard your voice on the podcast, but it's good to see your face. Oh, cool. Yeah. Good. I likewise, the exact same thing. I mean, I think I've probably been listening to your podcast for a little longer than my podcast has been around because I think if, you know, I didn't, I didn't connect the dots, but I think I heard psychedelic salon must have been around like 2005, 2006, sometime in that time period. So I was early mid 20s. And it was Terrence McKenna, some, some, and I just was like, oh, man, this is a whole thing. And this was right around the time where you could torrent stuff pretty heavily back then.

And I would just go and like, you know, there was not because I wanted to steal from anything, but just because there was so much stuff out there and I wanted to listen to it. And I have like the big three of speakers that I pretty much can listen to whenever, which is Terrence McKenna, Alan Watts and Rhombas. I can listen to them talk basically about anything forever. So yeah, treat to have you on. Thank you for coming. Yeah, you were there early on. In fact, I used to promote some of the torrents. I had links to them and stuff like that. That's awesome. Yeah. So yeah, we'll just get started. I'm going to turn my video off.

Yeah, we'll do that and then it'll be a cleaner audio. Yeah, I think so. All right. Yeah, I'll see you. I'll see you at the end. Okay. So yeah, thank you for coming on. So just to give you a little background where I'm at specifically in here and now. So I'm at the beach. I've been taking these really long walks, you know, two mile, three mile walks in the beginning of the day. The beach where I'm in North Carolina, southern North Carolina. So Carolina, you guys have a storm going to brush against you this weekend. You know, I saw that I think we'll probably be leaving in, I don't know, a few days, but I saw that there was a storm. Is it Gaston? Is that still the?

Yeah, I think that is supposed to kind of graze North Carolina and then head out to see. Yeah. So we'll probably leave before that just because this place has been, I was telling my wife there's a pier right outside of her house and that I was like, you know, I remember like 15, 20 years ago when there was like a shop at the end of the pier. And there was like video games, little arcade games. And I was like, that's been gone for like 10 plus years. This pier has been knocked down like 10 times in the past 15 years. So it's definitely, weather is definitely changing. That's pretty clear. So, so I've been listening to podcasts every day as I take these long walks.

And I've been, you know, re getting into psychedelic salon and a lot of talks you put up. And I remember your voice. It was bringing back nostalgia. And today I was listening to your most recent one. And I wanted to talk about that a little bit later in this episode. But I just wanted to say, you know, thank you for doing this for these past 11 years. And I know you're coming to kind of a transition point where you're relinquishing some personal involvement with the project. And, you know, I just wanted to express my sincere gratitude and thanks for putting it out there because I think it's such a service that you're doing.

It's such an authentic way that really just thank you. Well, you know, I'm doing it because I enjoy doing it. And I don't even think of it as a service that, in fact, you know, I was in the military. And sometimes people say, Oh, thank you for your service. And I feel like saying, well, you know, I wasn't a volunteer. Even though I did volunteer, I was the draft was after me. But I don't feel like it was a voluntary service and a more forced servitude and you don't need to thank me for that. But this is different. This was just fun. Yeah. And it's just, you know, you've done it in a way that I think you use Terrence McKenna is one of my favorites, not because I take everything he says as gospel.

That's what one of the reasons I love Terrence so much is he specifically just had such an imaginative mind and could go in so many directions. It just it may it kind of snapped you out of your regular paradigm of thinking kind of like as he was almost like a psychedelic drug himself. And I realized this whenever I hear him speak, just his cadence and the words like so something that immediately this talk that you just put up is about culture a lot of the way. So I started thinking just the way he pronounces the word culture made me think about both definitions of the word, right? One, which is the arts and other manifestations of human intellectual achievement regarded collectively, and then the other, which is the cultivation of bacteria, tissue cells, etc.

And an artificial medium containing nutrients, which, you know, either of those could apply to our collective consciousness or world at any point. So he's just fantastic. So before we get into all that stuff, I wanted to talk about you specifically and kind of your how did you go from being in the army, a naval officer, being an attorney, an electrical engineer, motivational speaker, corporate geek, all of these things. I've read extensively. I've known a little bit about you for some time. What was the transition from, like, what were you doing early on life that led you to where you are now? I know that's a grand question, but nevertheless.

Well, you know that old U2 song that says I still haven't found what I'm looking for. I never really had a plan. You know, I get bored once I figure out how to do something. I used to joke about the fact that when I was in Houston practicing law, I practiced law, but once I learned how to do it, I quit practicing. I didn't need to practice anymore. And basically, I don't know, it's just I'm a curious person and one thing kind of leads to another. Technology has kind of directed me. You know, as a little kid, we live nearby a national guard armory and they'd throw out these old radios and I'd take them home in my wagon and take them apart.

And so I was always kind of geeky. And, you know, I was practicing law when personal computers started getting exciting. And to tell you the truth, I had this surefire scheme, how to win crafts in Las Vegas, but I needed a computer to work it out for me. And there weren't any powerful enough. So I started a computer company mainly with the idea of building computer I could use. And then of course, you know, I got distracted and I wound up in the computer business. And then when I was, I had to, I kind of went broke and stuff like that and had to work my way back up. And I became internet evangelist for a big phone company Verizon.

And in between that, the technology I found was ecstasy, MDMA. So, you know, one technology has led me to another. And that plus, you know, the sailing, I loved sailing and I was a sailing instructor in college and summer job and that led to stuntman and the movies. And so, you know, it's just, I've been following my interests, but as a headhunter told me in the 90s, they couldn't help me because I had no career path. I'm not too far, I can relate in a lot of ways. And I think, you know, I'm 33 now. I grew up, I can remember a time without the internet. But for, at this point, the majority of my life now, there's been the internet, which is a weird phenomenon and also just allows for so many different things that weren't even really even by tearing someone like Terence McKenna couldn't have conceived of what where we've come from just since, you know, the late 90s.

It's pretty nuts. And I love this idea of technology being an influence in your career, in your life, in your interests. I, I right now am reconciling the idea of what we call artificial intelligence and, you know, the singularity and all these things we hear people talk about, some of which have just become buzzwords. But what's very interesting to me is this theory of technology just being another manifestation of the divine. However, you characterize that, whether that's a God, whether that's a collective unconscious, whether it's a collective creative dream, whatever it is, technology to me seems to be just another extension and manifestation of what's going on.

So it makes perfect sense to me that this has kind of been an underlying current in your life, because that's where it connects in a lot of ways. Yeah, you know, I think that it's a basic human desire of some kind, or at least it was for me to connect with other people. And even when I was like 10, 12 years old, excuse me, a neighbor friend of mine lived two doors down from me. He and I rigged up lines, a cable through the trees to have a little telegraph set so that at night we could send Morris code back and forth to one another and, you know, it was not a very successful experience. But I think it's a basic human desire to want to connect and now that we have iPhones and Skype and FaceTime and Periscope, we've gone crazy with this, not crazy in a bad way, but in a good way.

And I think that if we're not careful, we give technology all the credit, but it's just a lever. And, you know, I was involved in the Internet at the corporate level when we were trying to roll out and convince people to use it even back 90s, you know, and one of our big dreams was that someday people would log on to the Internet without even knowing. It'd just be like electricity in the telephone. And that's the way it is today. You know, we didn't think we'd live to see it, but it's gone pretty fast. It is. It's such a huge kind of like exponentially increasing, you know, wave of what's going on with technology. It's very fascinating. I think it is, to me, it feels like kind of the culmination, or we're in the process of a transition where everything is kind of merging together. So this is somewhat of a singularity theory. I don't know that I'm fully on board with the exact term singularity or what's happening, but it does feel kind of like the omega point is drawing all these things in closer together of which technology is the manifestation of that. I mean, this is technology as we have it, like you just said, is pretty psychedelic in and of itself.

I remember when I first started taking psychedelics, which was when I was about 15 years old, not when about I was 15 years old, I took some LSD at a music college, five week program, which was my eventual college, 18-hour trip, three, three blotter tabs of sunshine acid from California. Very, very intense trip. It really kind of revolutionized every aspect of what I had experienced before. And we actually had the early versions of cell phones back then, just the very basic Nokia. Maybe there was snake on the phone, but it was, you know, it was like a crazy thing to have in your hand. I recently, like a year and a half ago, took some mushrooms and had an iPhone in my hand. And the last time I had taken psychedelics was probably 10 years before that, and I was just blown away what this tool actually connected us to in terms of other consciousness in terms of other people.

It was just like a revolutionary kind of mind-blowing experience where it's like, well, now, like you said, people don't even realize they're connected all the time. It's just something that we are doing via these things that are attached to us. It's very fascinating. So, I also not to shift gears too dramatically, but you're going to Burning Man? Are you going coming up? No, actually, it just started today. I'm not going. No. I've decided to live it vicariously by watching it online, but it's really expensive for one thing and very uncomfortable for old people. And not all people say too. I've never been to Burning Man, but I swear it feels sometimes like I know 90% of the people who are going there. I mean, my group and my social group, it just seems like everyone flocks there every single year, you know, and I've never made it myself, but it's a fascinating thing.

Talk a little bit about, because you've been going for a while now, or you had been, you're not going this year, but what exactly was the experience like when you're early times? Because I know that's how you got your name changed. Used to be known as Laird. Yeah. In 2002, I lived out here. A lot of friends went to Burning Man, and I knew a lot about it and seen videos. Excuse me, I'm going to cough a second here. I've got this frog in my throat. I can't get rid of it. Anyhow, I got shamed into going in 2002, my 60th birthday, and this woman friend of ours who I met, actually the first time I went to a Terrence McKenna meeting in New York.

Anyhow, she was going for her 60th birthday, more or less shamed into going. I don't know, you get off. I don't like camping. I don't enjoy the desert. After a half hour there, I knew I was going to come back. I wanted to stay. It's a vibe of some kind that has nothing to do with the physical senses as much as all of a sudden you feel like, "Oh, wow. This is where I belong. It's some kind of a communal vibe." Now, there were only about 25,000 people there that year, which we thought was huge. They're up to 70,000 now. But you can get the same vibe in more comfort at places like, "Well, there was just the sci-fi festival in Holland this last week, which has one of the most beautiful sights on a lake that's all spread out in islands."

It's really a great sight for something like this, a festival. Symbiosis is coming up. There's a lot of really great festivals that probably can give you even more. You can get more out of it than Burning Man because it's not a survival mode in the Burning Man. You've got to take everything in and everything out. You can't even pour your gray water on the ground. It's a different vibe, but you don't have to go to Burning Man to get it. Now, there's all these things they call the afterburns. There's maybe 50 of them around the world. What it's really about is more than the event and the place, it's the people and the consciousness that you meet.

I think that the important part of Burning Man happens afterwards when the people come back and their energy is shared with those of us that didn't get to go. It's an awareness that the world doesn't have to be like it is, that it can definitely be a better place, even in a really rugged situation like the fly at Burning Man. I love that what you're saying too, because a parallel all draw is a lot of people I know kind of have, depending on their particular path, whether it's Buddhist, whether it's a Hindu path. A lot of them want to go to India, DharmSala to see Tibetan stuff at this point, but a lot of them want to go there and they feel they have to go to get what is there.

Of course, there's no harm in going to a place like that. I think you can pull in vibes or energy from really holy places, but you don't have to. You really can tap into that same level of consciousness and what you're saying is we think the world can be a better place and we can work towards some better collective evolutionary stance than where we are now. That's the real point of it, because that's what I said. I know so many people who go, and in some ways I want to go, but in some ways I'm totally a pansy. I don't want to go with harsh conditions in the desert, and I know you transcend all that, and that's the juxtaposition, I think, is a part of why it works so well.

But in the same sense, we can all still tap into that vibe at any point. It's interesting, Burning Man really came to the forefront of my consciousness, because there's these parties there that they do robot heart. It's electronic music, and they're huge. There's these buses, and there's these festivals. It's now become a popular cultural thing to do. I want to go into the talk that you just released and talk about culture a little bit, but that's how it got in front of my face. Some of the DJs who play there, and some of the music that comes out every year, is just right in my wheelhouse. I love it, but I also see how it's shifted in its meaning for a lot of people, because it's now an event to do.

It's something that happens. With that, I want to talk about this most recent episode of Psychedelic Salon that came out, which is Terence McKenna, a talk from 1997, and it has a lot to do with culture. You took out some very interesting parts of it, too, and spoke about the role of culture, and now with life spans, being what they are, people have more time to reflect on the role of culture, and see if they got screwed or not, and how they feel about that. If you're up for it, I'd love to talk a little bit about that episode, and what it means for you, and what do you think about the state of culture where we are these days?

Well, you know, there's not a single culture, first of all, even a great man, you know, that's not a single culture, there's dozens and dozens of cultures there, and I do agree with what Terence says about if you're not careful, culture can become a cult. And, you know, in a sense, our culture is what we've begin with in life, and, you know, I was raised Irish Catholic, and so the Irish thing was big, and the Catholic thing was big, and it took me a long time. Actually, it took me until I found psychedelics, that my mind was open enough that I could really start to question many of the things that I was led to believe as a child, you know, and, of course, going to Vietnam taught me a lot about that.

The government worked, and so, you know, I've been questioning things, and that's the real value I see in psychedelics, not necessarily you don't have to do ayahuasca every month or anything like that, but a single trip like what you had can be enough to open somebody's mind to the fact that, you know, everything I'm being told should be questioned, and, you know, lyrics thing, think for yourself and question authority. And, you know, we get into these loops, like, if I had been born in Saudi Arabia, you know, I'd probably be a Muslim right now. And so I see little infants coming into the world essentially like human stem cells, and they can become anything.

If I had my way, nobody would be allowed to teach anything about religion to anyone under the age of 21. Not a bad idea. And then, when you're old enough, you can start looking at it and seeing it, but if you're brainwashed with this as a child, it takes a lot over common, and that's the culture of your family, your religion, your nation that you're in. You know, my father was a World War II vet, so I had all the flag waving stuff growing up, and, you know, culture is really something more to be overcome when you talk about common culture, not high art culture or anything like that. But we all live in these little bubbles that we were born into, and I think our growth pattern is one that we have to start pricking these bubbles and popping them, and then seeing what the next bubble is that we're in.

And eventually you kind of figure out what you're all about, and I think Karen set the nail on the head is that, you know, if you're only living for 40 years, you don't have time to do these things. And now I'm old enough that I'm looking back, and quite frankly, I wouldn't have liked to known myself when I was in my 30s. I was a conceited jerk, you know. Yeah, that's how I feel myself when I was under 20. I didn't understand. Pardon me, go ahead. That's how I feel about myself when I was under 20, and I'll probably feel like that about myself when I'm like 40 and 50 so. I feel about myself like that when my 60s, you know, it's only about two weeks ago I started figuring things out.

It's a continual process if you let it be. Now, I have friends back in this little Midwestern town where I went to high school that they never left the town. And, you know, their lives are exactly like their parents and their grandparents. And, you know, they go to their grandkids' little league games like they went to their kids' little league games. And, you know, they don't even want to talk to me. I've just totally freaked them all out, you know. But, you know, and that's okay. They seem to be happy, but it wasn't something that made me happy. I had to keep stretching, and I love it here in California because, talk about cultures.

I'm in Southern California, and this is really a conservative area. You know, San Diego County has the biggest military footprint of any comparable area on the planet. And everybody is ex-military or, you know, working for the defense industry except for the surfers and the tourist industry. And so it's a very conservative area, and yet, you know, I'm a 74-year-old guy with a ponytail and nobody ever looks twice at me. And I'm accepted, you know, my wife and I are both ex-military ourselves. And so you're accepted out here much better than you are in other parts of the world. And that's why I feel so comfortable here.

You know, I've been, my Irish genes have been heading west for generations. Keep going, yeah. You're epigenetics. I'm at the edge of the west now. All I can do is go up. So that's really funny. Your epigenetics are continuously pushing you to the west. There's nowhere else to go at this point unless you want to go with Asia. So yeah, go around. That's hilarious. Well, so talk to me a little bit about what was the first time you did psychedelics and what psychedelic was it? Well, it's technically not a psychedelic. It was MDMA, ecstasy. And it was in 1984 in Dallas, Texas. And of all places in the world to have ecstasy really hit the street big time, the last place you'd pick would be Dallas.

And yeah, that's where it happened. And I just happened to be at the epicenter of it and knew people involved. And, you know, I was 42 years old going through my midlife crisis and my computer company was having financial problems. And, you know, a lot of pressure was building up on me and then I took MDMA, which, you know, is not really a psychedelic per se. Per se, yeah. And that essentially took me back in my mindset to when I was a little boy and I was dreaming about, you know, changing the world and things like that. And it really released a lot of these mental toxins I've been carrying around.

But it was another full year later before I even tried cannabis. And another year or so after that, before I finally got up the courage to try LSD. And so, you know, I was in my mid-40s when I really started experimenting. And then after finding Terrence McKenna and the Planke crowd coming out here, I got involved in a research group. We were working our way through Sasha Schulgen's index. And, you know, we did a lot of things. So I finally have made up for my misspent youth. I spent by not doing anything. And, you know, I've done a lot of stuff that I wouldn't recommend people to do. But, you know, I didn't have any mentors.

When I first got started, you couldn't find anything about drugs. The only literature in the library or bookstores that you could find was in the occult book section. And it was Carlos Castaneda's novels about Don Juan. And so, you know, you just couldn't find information. And, you know, I'd find a little mimeograph copy. They did mimeograph back then of Sasha Schulgen's speeches. And Rick Doblin was making the news some. So there just was no information. And so I didn't have any peers. You know, I was an old guy and didn't have anybody to teach me about these things. And so I made a lot of mistakes.

And now, of course, we have Arrowwood. We have hundreds of podcasts about this. And so things have changed dramatically in the time that I've been involved in it. But I don't have any regrets about what I did. You know, every once in a while, I sit here. I had a lot of money at one time. And now we're down to an eight-year-old Honda fit. And we've been living months to month in this apartment for ten years. So, you know, every once in a while, I'll say, oh, you know, if I just hadn't dropped out, we could have a mansion right now. And then I got thinking, oh, the maintenance on those days. Exactly.

But I'm totally free. You know, I quit my corporate job in the summer of '99. And I haven't been to a regular job since then. So I've had to scrape and scratch around and do a lot of different things. But I haven't had that calling where I've had to show up at a certain time every day and stay for the best hours of my day every day. And so things have really improved for me by getting off of this acquisitive treadmill of getting more stuff all the time, and I've gotten more interested in things of the mind than of physical things. And by giving up my quest to get more and more and bigger and better and faster cars and stuff, it's really relieved a lot of pressure and made me much more relaxed.

And sure, there's a few things I'd like from time to time. But overall, I wouldn't trade my spot now for any alternative I could have come up with. See, and that's the thing. You're fortunate. And I'm sure you realize that too, because a lot of people who gravitate towards, let's say psychedelics, a spiritual practice, anything esoteric and not completely based on, you know, materialism, physical materialism in the world, you know, it can be a rough transition. In the later in life that comes, that can be the rougher of the transition. So you've been living what you want to be doing, you know, wants aside at various times for, you know, 20 years almost.

That's pretty great. That's really awesome. And it's also refreshing to hear that you wouldn't change it. And I think that's an important message because I think all of us in our lives come to these points where there's these transitional times, and we have to question on what do we want to do. And to you, it sounds like, through the aid of psychedelics as well, that you were able to determine, you know, I don't want to be going to an office for eight hours a day to make money, to get a better house, to get a better car, to get a better this. It's like, I actually want to start exploring what's going on inside of me.

And to me, this brings us to a very interesting space, which is part of the reason this podcast is called Synchronicity. It's on the huge Carl Jung fan love the way he was able to serve as a bridge between East and West. And of course, his, you know, expositions on the collective unconscious, which I think gets very crystallized in a lot of ways when you do psychedelics, is this connection between the inner worlds and the outer external world, as we call it, regardless of whether we believe there's actually a distinction when you get down to non-dual theories, you know, we can know that we have a mind, a world inside of our minds and a world that's out there perceived through our senses.

And this connection between psyche and matter is one of my most, like that's what fascinates me. And I think there is a substantial connection because I ultimately, I don't believe there's a big difference. It's more of kind of like an optical illusion or perceptual illusion. So I mean, during your course of studying psychedelics, have you come to any kind of theories or ideas about what life is, what the role of us being here? What are your kind of theosophical views on life? Well, that used to change by the week and it's changing by the hour now. I hear you on that. That, you know, when I was younger, I used to give a lot more thought to the metaphysical world and what happens after you die.

And I did a lot of the deep psychedelics that were like near-death experiences. And now that I'm getting a much closer to my end day, that those things don't seem as interesting to me, quite frankly, I'm more interested in what's going on day to day. I do think that no matter what your spiritual bent, that one of the things to kind of keep in mind might be the fact that maybe one of the things we should do here are things that we can do in a physical body that are not capable of being done in just as a pure spirit. It means to me, you should enjoy life. It gets some pleasure. Eat ice cream, drink wine.

So, you know, that's part of it. And the other thing, I love the title of your show, Synchronicity, because there's been some very synchronicistic events that, to me, synchronic, that I don't really plan these podcasts very far ahead. I know how it goes, man. I know how it goes. Yeah, I start playing a McKenna talk and all of a sudden it just synchronizes with something going on in my life or in the world. I used to say that coincidences are clues and when the coincidences stop, then you're on the wrong path and a synchronicity is really powerful is the coincidence on steroids, you know? Yeah. So, there's something, now, whether it's extra outside of me or if it's just my own spirit that's attracting these things, there does seem to be some interaction between my spirit and or my consciousness.

I like to think of it as consciousness rather than spirit, and everybody can kind of relate better to consciousness and the way that some of these talks fall out. Now it also can be a fact that Terrence was just one of those people who had a spinger on the pulse of the world and had a far eye, could see way ahead and, you know, a lot of the talks that we're playing now from '87 to '97, he could have recorded him last night, so in a way that shows that things haven't really changed all that much, but then you started out earlier, we were talking about technology and, you know, the iPhone, the web phone is 10 years old, not quite 10 years old, and yet almost half the people in the world have one.

Now, in the early days of the internet, that was one of the big complaints everybody had is this is going to be just for the rich, for the West, and now the cell phones are bigger in other parts of the world than they are here even, or web-enabled phones, that something is happening. There's some sort of a bifurcation going on, but it's not between the advantage and disadvantage as much, and I certainly is, that's still there, but the less fortunate among us, many of them are now able to get cell phones. We have, I think, close to half of the human race is connected to the net in one way or another, right?

That's a change that it's going to take hundreds of years for people to realize what really is happening here, but something big is underway, and I don't know what it is, but I know I'm fortunate to be able to hang around an eight and a half year old and a 11 and a half year old girl, they are two granddaughters, our youngest ones, and so I get to see them and their friends interacting, and you see kids out there and they're just playing games. Well, one of the games they play is Minecraft, and the oldest of the two, she's going to be a great architect if that's the way she wants to go, I mean, she's created some amazing structures, and they create music videos with some of these apps that I'm just blown away with the creativity that's coming out, and they're using these tools for what they are, they're just tools for their creativity, and so a lot of things are going to happen that we are just not prepared for, but I think in a good way, and we have to just go with the flow and not try to resist these changes, because the only thing I really have a fear of is the status quo.

That's, you know, it's really interesting to hear you, you're clearly very optimistic about the future of our temporal time here, and I am too, and that can seem like a very odd position to stake out given that there's a lot of things going on in the world that, I mean, listen, let's be honest here, we have a political election that regardless of your political persuasion isn't particularly inspiring, it's not something that you're saying, well, this is great, I don't care if you're a Bernie Sanders supporter, hard line Trump supporter, like either way you're looking at this, this is not looking like a wonderful opportunity to change kind of the status quo as you put it, and I also think because of where the quote unquote status quo has gotten us in the past 50 to 100 years, haven't done a great job, but I love how you talk about how these technologies allow, I mean, this is what I've seen particularly in the past 10, 15 years, I'm a musician, and I kind of grew up with teenage years with computers as music making tools, and it blew me away, just realizing that 10 years earlier, if I wanted to pursue making music, you know, with technology, I would have need to be very rich or known someone who is very rich, because you were not going to get your hands on music making equipment or recording equipment in any by accident type of way, or especially with the ease that we can do it now by getting digital audio workstations.

So I saw how technology enabled creativity, which also felt like it enhanced what you're talking about, consciousness, spirit, however you want to describe it, which does, I love that you put it that when you are on the right path, when you're in the flow of things, when you're really feeling connected, synchronicities do seem to multiply. I mean, just they come in and very much like a psychedelic state, right, when you're on psychedelic sometimes, it just feels like every, I mean, that was Carl Jung's position. Everything is one giant synchronicity, if you look at it the right way, if you have eyes to perceive it, you will see that everything is actually one giant synchronicity, which I believe as well.

So yeah, I love that you're describing technology as a means for expressing creativity. I view almost everything that comes out of the world, whether created by humans or just in nature as inherently neutral, right, we can look at nature, I'm looking at the ocean right now, it's beautiful, it's peaceful, it's majestic, nature also has horrible elements to it, death, dying decay, you know, a beautiful little baby lion cub gets eaten by a rival lion. It all exists and it's a neutral state and I do believe that the consciousness and what we bring to the situation ultimately is what shapes our kind of collective reality.

So I would love to hear though, what are some synchronicities that particularly stick out to you in your life as being meaningful? Well, you kind of hitting me from left field here, I haven't, you know, I hardly even pay attention to them anymore because they happen to me. You know, how did I wind up not only in Dallas, Texas, but knowing the person who was one removed from the person that brought MDMA to Texas and how did I get, how did a geek conservative Republican Catholic like me wind up dancing all night on MDMA at the start club, you know, in '84, so, you know, I was just happened to be in the right place for me at the right time.

And I point out little synchronicities from time to time in the podcast simply because I've had so many people write and say they like hearing about them. But none of them are really big or earth-shaking so much as just saying, oh, well, that's interesting. And how did that come to be, you know, that this isn't really a synchronicity, I don't think that, but my ex-wife's name was Mary, Mary Alice, my current wife's name, given name was Mary and her sister is Alice, they both had fathers who were electricians, both of their fathers died while they were teenagers. And then it goes on and on, there's so many of them, like that, little things, you know.

Yes, I do know. One of the things that has happened to me that I find as an advantage, I didn't always, you know, I've had to go through some downspots to get here too, you know, that on my 40th birthday, I celebrated the fact that I was worth more than a million dollars and my 45th birthday, I was sleeping in my car under an overpass in Tampa, Florida. You know, I had gone from the top of the mountain to the bottom and then I had to find a job as a temporary legal assistant to a lawyer who was eight years old when I passed the bar in Texas and that was a real ego-dissolving ex-wife. Yeah, better than psychedelics, I bet, geez.

But the big thing that really happened to me, and it was all bad, but my father, my brother and my mentor, all three died when they were 63 years old, and when I turned 63 is when I started the psychedelic salon. And so now I feel I'm 11 years past my expiration date, so each day I try to make sure I have at least one special moment, you know, that something good that I look forward to each day, and it can be a little thing, maybe seeing the granddaughters, but whatever it is, I've really learned how to live more intensely in the present. And, you know, the future hasn't happened, the past has gone, all we have is here and now, and so much time at the here and now we spend planning for the future, like, was it John Lennon that said that life is what happens when you're planning what you're going to do next?

Yeah, that's right. That's right. That's when you're making other plans. Exactly. That's it. Yeah. Well, that's, I mean, so I love this concept of the here and now. I think that's one of the things that psychedelics can offer us as well as a practice, like meditation or something else. It can put the focus back on the here and now. I mean, how, what would you describe the trajectory of you kind of learning that as a beneficial tool for experiencing life? I'm sure, like you said, you know, after going past your expiration date as you put it that crystallizes, you know, the importance of living for every moment, but not everyone latches on to that, you know, depending on where they are in their lives, what their prerogatives are, what their priorities are, what was kind of your transition into that?

Was that also aided by psychedelics? Yeah. And, and I think a couple of have had several really deep psychedelic experiences that those are the plus fives, you know, that you can't bring anything back. The one thing that you do bring back, however, and this seems to be this universal among all my friends, is that you come back from one of those experiences and you say, you know, ultimately, everything's fine and, you know, there's just no way to describe it, but you come back with this sense, and after a few times reinforcing it, you know that, you know, ultimately, everything is fine. The world is going to be what it is, and we're all going to do whatever we do in, in, in beyond this, whether it's nothing, it doesn't matter.

But everything is, is fine when you get into one of those deep, deep states. And I, I don't know what it is, but it comes, somehow becomes part of you that you no longer worry about the things that you were always worried about. No, I still have worries. I still have down days. Of course. You know, my PTSD will kick in every once in a while and I'll become hard to live with. But, you know, I have to, you know, pull myself together and say, you know, wait a minute, this is all going on in my head. Time to, you know, reboot. And I haven't done psychedelics themselves in, in the last time I did ayahuasca was maybe two years ago now, you know, I, I had high blood pressure and so I decided to kind of ease off.

And, you know, but I smoke cannabis every day. And so that kind of keeps me in the mindset where I just, well, I'm a stoner, I guess. I know. So let's talk about, I'm chill. I'm, I'm very happy to hear that too, because I, I, I also smoke every day. I ingest marijuana, I, I'm, I'm a big heavy user, and I use it for a variety of reasons. And I'm constantly reflecting on what those reasons are partially because of some of the stigma that comes along with marijuana, just growing up in a culture where, listen, I mean, the DEA still classifies us at a schedule one, no medical, no medical use whatsoever.

Oh my God. But it's an interesting topic to me because I, I personally view it as a tool and an aid. And like any tool and any aid, any medicine, however you plant ally, whatever you want to call it. So it's important to realize and reflect on the intention and the reasons that I'm consuming it, like anything, truthfully. So what is, what's your experience like as a cannabis user every day? I, I, it, I, like before a couple of years ago when I did a very low dose of psilocybin, I, I hadn't done psychedelics in 10 plus years. I felt like I had gotten most of what I needed from them. I got the message, I hung up the phone, so to speak.

But I still do routinely use cannabis because I find it not only to be a leveling tool, something that helps balances, but it also gives me an open mindedness that I think if I didn't maintain, I, I worry to think where I would be because I can be as judgey and close minded as anyone you can imagine, but I kind of actively foster this sense of not being like that because of my cannabis use. So can you talk a little bit about what that, what, what, what's we done for you? Well, it's done so many different things. And what you just hit on is one of the things that it seems to be missing in the discussion of medical marijuana, because people are afraid to say, Hey, this helps my attitude.

This makes me a better human being, which it does for me for sure. It also though, as you get older, you, you start paying more attention to some of the medical reports and cannabis is like this miracle substance that a friend of ours is a gerontologist, a doctor, he works with people in their 80s and 90s and up in Northern California. And this one nursing home that he started getting people to start using cannabis, I believe almost everybody there now is a daily user of cannabis. And I think they've almost all of them completely gone off their prescription meds. The people running the place say, this is a great place to be around.

There's a lot more interaction. They're happy. Their appetites have come back. And by putting all these old people like me on all kinds of different prescription medicines with horrible side effects, we're really doing disservice to the people that cannabis alone, you know, as an edible or I vaporize, I've been vaporizing for a long time. But cannabis has so many medicinal properties that we don't even know about yet. For me, I'll have my first talk when my back and leg pains start distracting me so much that I can't concentrate. But if you smoke every day like I do and I smoke fairly amount, I really can tell when I'm not stoned, but I really don't know when I am stoned anymore because that's more of a natural state to me.

And I'm much more pleasant for one thing. But it's also, like you say, it's some sort of a leveling substance for consciousness to where you don't hit all those spikes of peaks and valleys like you do a normal life. It's fascinating to me. And I was just having a conversation with someone where I was describing some people get very paranoid, especially with sativa is very paranoid. They don't like what's happening. And one of the other things I've noticed that it does, and this is something I find very valuable, is if you have something just below the conscious threshold of your experience there, when you smoke the right type, a nice sativa, something pretty potent, that's going to come to the top and it serves as kind of a bridge or a mechanism that can pull thoughts that maybe you don't consciously want to investigate, including emotions in this, and it can allow you to actually do some pretty deep work and explore some aspects of yourself or what's going on around you in a way that can get to this leveling.

So I know that there are a lot of people when they think of smoking or taking cannabis in any way, they think of, oh, you're going to get sleepy and happy and hungry, and that's an indica for sure, but there's this whole other balancing mechanism that I'm still investigating. I mean, unfortunately, we don't have literature, medical literature on this stuff because it's still schedule one, but I'm sure in my lifetime it's going to come out and, you know, the other fascinating thing to me talking about it physiologically is this endocannabinoid system that we have that's endogenous to us in our bodies, which is mind blowing.

I don't think people realize just how mind blowing it is that there is a system that seems to interact specifically with something out there in the world. It's quite fascinating, but yeah, I'm happy to hear you're a regular user and I support that. Yeah, I'm a regular heavy user, you know, I judge my annual intake and pounds, not an as do I and see I'm in a place where unfortunately, you know, one of the things that I'm really looking forward to with legalization, especially when I can start growing it, is the financial cost of someone like me who's on the east coast of maintaining a regular consumption of it is it's expensive when I review my finances at the end of the year, you know, I know people in DC, which is I regularly regularly live in Silver Spring, Maryland, which is like right outside of Washington, DC, where it's legal, yeah, it's I grew up there, I live there now, we're about to move to the Hudson Valley, but you know, right in DC, it's legal now and people can grow marijuana.

And to me, that's just such a revolutionary thing because their costs are cut to zero. Their growth costs are what they're doing. And that to me is somewhere I aspire to be. And I think it's going to open up a lot of different creative outlets. And I know, as you know, a lot of people who consume weed regularly, irregularly, there is clearly some element of creativity and playfulness that emerges from it. And that I think collectively can help society and what's going on in the world as much as anything else. I know for me from the day I started using it, my perception on the world changes. And another thing, I just said I go a little deeper into the to the weed stuff.

You know, weed suppress another thing I'm very much interested in is dreams and a theory that I've been exploring pretty rigorously, not just through the Western psychologists, but through Tibetan, you know, different lenses is this concept of as the world as a dream, as a collective dream, which is also found in many plant medicine traditions, many native populations around the world, Aboriginal, you know, collective dream time. And marijuana also has this interesting property of suppressing dreams at night quite, quite often I, you know, whenever I take a little bit of break, I get crazy dreams.

And I'm thinking like this is a completely unfounded, you know, hypothesis and speculation. But I think part of the reason dreams can be suppressed when consuming cannabis is that it does kind of make the world, you see a bit of the dreamlike qualities that emerge, which I think synchronicities are a part of, things that don't really fit in to how we are taught or are supposed to look at the world regularly, quote unquote. And that's another thing I just think is fascinating about it. And I use and am aware of it when I do it because you're talking about, you know, you don't notice when you're not high anymore.

Of course, you're a regular heavy user like me. This is kind of our natural state, you know, depending on what type of marijuana we're consuming. I know what that's like. And I think it gives a different bent and perspective on the world that to me, at least in my life, sounds like in your suit has been extremely beneficial. And it's not just something like ice cream to me where like, oh, I really like it. I just want to have a ton of ice cream. It's something that in a totally different category that really does provide tangible benefits. Yeah. Well, you know, you to live, you need food, water and air.

I go air cannabis, water and food without the cannabis. You don't really care about that getting into I got an interesting dream story that just happened. Yes. A week ago, our youngest granddaughter was here and she and I were out in the other room and we were just hanging around talking and she told me, she said, Oh, you were in my dream last night and she went into some detail about this particular dream. Now my wife didn't hear this and she's genetically, she's my wife's granddaughter. I'm her step grandpa. Right. Gotcha. And my wife never heard the story, but the very next morning, my wife gets up and says, you won't believe this dream I had and she tells me this dream.

And it's a continuation of her granddaughter's dream that she hadn't even heard about. So that's just kind of a curious little synchronicity there. It's an interesting thing. I mean, I think it points to a lot of different interesting ways of looking at the world and what it could be, you know, Tibetans, they refer to as when we go to sleep and dream as the example dream. And they talk about our waking life as the actual dream. And they talk about the after death states as the dream at the end of time. And I think that's a really interesting way of looking and kind of dissecting our experiences in general.

Lorenzo, we're getting to the end of this podcast. And I have, I have four questions, three that come in a group that are rapid fire and one at the end, which we will get to. So I just want to say I've had an incredibly fun time speaking with you during this conversation. I would love to do it again. I've enjoyed it myself. It's been great fun. Cool. So here are the three questions. These are the somewhat rapid fire questions and just, you know, there's no pressure on these. What is your favorite color? Oh, it would be Kelly Green. Love it. What is your favorite number? Three. Three. Love it. And what is your favorite animal?

Dog. Great. Great, great, great. So my last question is I ask every guest at the end of every episode. What is a practical tip that you could offer the listeners that has served you particularly well in your life? Probably the best thing that served me is years ago, somebody, I was worried about something I'd done or whatever, and this guy says, you know, you wouldn't worry so much about what people think about you if you actually knew how little anybody ever thinks about you. So true. And so I've applied this to myself and I realize that, you know, I don't think about all these other people very much either, you know, and people aren't out there thinking about me all the time.

They're thinking about their own issues, you know, and so you've got to kind of let go and forgive yourself for any things you've screwed up or people you've irritated or made mad or done wrong to because they're probably not thinking about it anymore. It's only you that are thinking about it and so it helps me to relax by realizing that I just have to worry about myself and not what they're thinking about me. I love it. That is such great advice and couldn't be more true. And I'm sure if everyone was saying examines that in their head, they'll see that it probably holds up to. Thank you so much for coming on.

I would love to have another conversation and one of the things we didn't get into that I want to continue will continue via email some other way talking is, you know, what's coming next for psychedelics salon, the psychedelic salon 2.0 as you put it. And I think there's going to be some really cool things to come out of that and I'd love to help manifest any vision that collectively people are going to have for that. So truly, thank you so much for coming on. This has been awesome. Sure. I'd love to come back anytime just to let me know. I'll be happy to do it. Cool. Thanks. Thank you. Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.