Podcast 161 – “Reality Check”

Guest speakers: Ralph Abraham, Rupert Sheldrake, and Terence McKenna

PROGRAM NOTES:

"We have the concept of the ideal city in the ancient world, most especially the ideal city of Plato’s Republic. So casually we might call that Utopian fantasy. Although Plato did try to actually realize it in the political organization of a particular city. He ended up in jail for that effort. Another thing to kind of keep in the back of your mind as we choose whether or not to associate with this particular strand of the human endeavor [utopianism]."–Ralph Abraham

"A restoration of the sense of the life of nature could lead to a new society in which heaven and Earth are mediated through human beings. Human beings would be the mediator of the marriage of heaven and Earth to bring about a harmonious relationship at the whole of nature on this Earth, somehow bringing human society into a right relationship between the Earth and the heavens." –Rupert Sheldrake

"If you restrict yourself to the realm of the rational, then you only have two choices: utopia or more history. And more history is beginning to look less and less likely." –Terence McKenna

"I see all these Christian fundamentalists running around, they also believe in the millennium. And they are the major anti-progressive force in most advanced societies." –Terence McKenna

"We have the money, the scientific knowledge, the communications systems and so forth to solve any of our problems, feeding the hungry, curing disease, halting the destruction of the environment. The problem is our minds, that we cannot change our minds as quickly as we can redesign harbors, flatten mountains, cut rain forests, dam rivers, these things pose no problem. Changing our minds is very difficult." –Terence McKenna

"We represent the individual atoms that are flowing together to make the transcendental object at the end of time." –Terence McKenna

"The historical record does not support the eschaton." –Ralph Abraham

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