3.
July 7 - 20.
This is a 14-day seminar
with a series of lectures by Dale Pendell,
David Presti, and Luis Eduardo Luna, combined
with a mask seminar by Adriana Rosa, as well
as five evening rituals.
'Sacred Plants, Creativity and the Human
Imagination' with Dale Pendell,
poet, and David Presti, neurobiologist and Luis Eduardo Luna, anthropologist,
combined with a mask seminar by Adriana Rosa, cultural producer.
Three
lectures
by Dale Pendell
• The
Poison Path
and the Wisdom
of Eve.
• Divination and the Modern Worldview.
• Psychoactive Plants and History.
(more details coming soon)
Three
lectures
by David
Prestil
• Neurobiology
and Consciousness.
The
central problem
in the science
of mind is
the relationship
between what
we call mental
experience,
mind, or
consciousness
and the physical
and chemical
processes
taking place
in our brain
and body.
This problem
is perhaps
the most
interesting
in all of
science and
there is
every indication
that it will
continue
to be so
for decades
to come. How
visionary
plants impact
consciousness
is one very
powerful
probe of
the neurobiology
of mind.
• Steps
Toward a
Revolution
in the Mind
Sciences.
Major conceptual
revolutions
have been central to the development of expanded explanatory power and understanding
in the physical and biological sciences. No similar revolution has yet
taken place in the science of mind, although it may be the case that such a revolution
is poised to take place. Developing rigorous and reliable methods for observing
and studying mental processes is likely to be a major step toward an expanded
scientific understanding of the mind.
• Death, Near-Death, Out-of-Body Experiences, and the
Mind-Body Problem. If mental experience is solely accountable for
by brain processes, what do out-of-body experiences have to say about the relationship
between mind and brain?
Three
lectures by
Luis Eduardo
Luna
• Psychointegrator Plants of Ancient
South America.
• Ayahuasca and Creativity.
• Jigsaws from the Big Puzzle.
Dale Pendell is a contemporary author who combines science and poetry in his
explications of the relationship between psychoactive compounds and human beings.
A long time student of ethnobotany, Pendell discusses historical and cultural
uses of "power plants" in his works. He reads and distills the literature
of pharmacology and neuroscience, of ethnobotany and anthropology, of mythology
and political economics as they intersect with the direct experience of human
psychoactive use.
His publications include the Pharmako Trilogy: Pharmako/Poeia (1994), Pharmako/Dynamis
(2002), and Pharmako/Gnosis (2005), all published by Mercury House. He covers
all the major categories of psychoactives and details the use, the pharmacology,
the chemistry, the political and social historical implications and effects
of the use of psychoactives.
He is also well regarded as a myth critic. Certain of his works contained
detailed scholarship on the origins of cultural myths.
Dale Pendell is highly regarded for his expertise on psychoactive plants and
as a writer and poet; one of his works is used as a textbook for a lower division
course in the University of California, Berkeley's Molecular and Cell Biology
department.
David E. Presti is a neuroscientist and
clinical psychologist who teaches in
the Department of Molecular and Cell
Biology at the University of California
in Berkeley. For many years he also worked
in the treatment of addiction and of
post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)
at the Department of Veterans Affairs
Medical Center in San Francisco, where
he treated thousands of individuals for
these conditions. His areas of interest
and expertise include the chemistry of
the human nervous system, the effects
of drugs on the mind, and the treatment
of addiction.
He has doctorates in molecular
biology and biophysics from the California
Institute of Technology (where he worked
with Nobel laureate Max Delbrück)
and in clinical psychology from the University
of Oregon. He teaches large undergraduate
courses at UC Berkeley on the subjects
of "Brain, Mind, and Behavior", "Drugs,
the Brain, and Behavior", and "Molecular
Neurobiology and Neurochemistry,” as
well as small seminar classes on “Music
and the Mind” (for freshmen) and “Synaptic
Pharmacology” (for graduate students).
For the past three years, he has taught
neuroscience to a group of Tibetan Buddhist
monks in India who have been studying
science. His primary research interest
is the relation between mental phenomena
(such as consciousness) and brain physiology,
the so-called mind-body problem.
Dr. Luis Eduardo Luna
(See bio for more information)
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