120rwpm/2,840 words/25 minutes: The Sacred Mushroom [NEED TO MOVE]
TO BE EDITED, CLEANED UP AND INTEGRATED INTO STENO JIG
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this member of the mushroom family
this fungus is for the moment known only
as x
it was discovered barely weeks ago
growing in a remote rainforest
science has not yet given it a name for
science knows scarcity anything about it
but it is felt that x might have one
remarkable quality
that it stimulates extra sensory
perception
enabling the mind to become telepathic
and clairvoyant now that's a rather
large claim
is it true or false the answer to that
question
took us on a unique and distant journey
we're in mexico thousands of miles from
our hollywood sound stages in a place
called meetla
on the very edge of civilization there
are no actors there's no script
for this psychic report can only be
recorded at the moment it happens
here in the plaza of the kings of
zapotec here in the antiquity of mexico
we begin a search whose ending at this
very moment of filming
we do not know we are searching for
something far
older than these ruins which if found
could hurt an ordinary man infinitely
beyond his five senses
and now the first step beyond the first
step
is a faltering one we wait day after day
for perfect flying weather
for the only way to reach our goal the
inaccessible village of huquila
is by light plain over trackless
mountains has he come back yet
no well keep your fingers crossed
this lovely hacienda at the foot of the
dombach mountains
has been here a little longer than we
have but not much
from here weather permitting our
chartered plane will apply us to a
remote mountain village
to look for of all things a mushroom
but a very strange mushroom indeed
with powers beyond belief and here are
the mushroom hunters
as improbable a group as you will find
anywhere for instance
this is dr barbara brown brilliant
neuropharmacologist
of the university of california at los
angeles
with her is david gray one of the last
kahunas of hawaii a spiritual leader
whose line goes back 900 years
and whose quest for knowledge beyond the
world of materialism
has led him everywhere in the world and
now
here and here with friend
is jeffrey smith a distinguished
professor of philosophy and humanities
at stamford university
and now and mighty important
is our translator williamson a
missionary who has lived among the
people of our remote village
for the last nine years and the only man
in the world
who speaks their language
the pilot says he'll be ready soon john
and last
our forever optimistic doctor andrei
pouharish
who wrote the astounding book the sacred
mushroom dr paharash's book brought us
here in the first place
and in it he explains how the mushroom
seems to
have an incredible effect on the power
of extra sensory perception
incredible is the word we're here for
some very specific purposes we want to
know why these people here in mexico
have kept this right so secret for so
many centuries
but I would say that our prime mission
is to explore and examine the
biochemicals present in these new
mushrooms and find out if they
can be of any benefit in this problem
of mental disease what dr parish hasn't
told you
it is not all as simple as it sounds the
last time he was here
looking for the mushroom a man was shot
and shot at
and another man was uh driven out of his
mind for a while
in english means the pilot said
now
the shadows of our two small planes fall
on rainforests which hide villages
where the 20th century does not exist
and that's the landing strip chopped by
hand out of a mountainside
missionaries can bring the word of god
to this lost world
as we approach the pilot warns us to
grab hold of something and hang on
a certain gust of wind could smash us
against the mountain
or plunge us into the abyss below
at last we are in the village of hukita
slogging through mud
each of us with an odd sense that all
the clocks have stopped ticking
we've brought television cameras to
people who've never even heard of radio
who've never seen a telephone an
electric light have never heard of
aspirin
let alone penicillin but perhaps the
sacred mushroom has given them a
psychic insight far beyond our deepest
explorations
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he breaks up to go about its various
investigations
dr brown and a missionary nurse named
dean duggan go looking for the mushroom
guarded by armed soldiers because in the
past months
shots have been fired machetes have been
flashed
mushroom hunters who came before us have
been murdered
dr puharish and missionary ups and begin
searching the town for a bruho
a priest of the mushroom cult but
everywhere they go
an iron curtain of silence comes
clanging down
amid much shaking of the head and
wagging of the finger everyone
emphatically denies the existence of a
mushroom cult
and it is made very clear that if this
is why we have come to hukila
we are not welcome
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our search seems hopeless until dr
buharis gets an idea that might help us
push open an ancient door
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bill upson sent through the village
announcing that a free medical clinic is
open to one and all
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within minutes the first patient appears
a little chattino indian with a lot of
aches
and a lot of pains
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and then they come in droves all of them
humble
all of them hopefully
all of them grateful finally the mother
of a child whom dr buhari has treated
timidly suggests that she might help
kindness and a bottle of vitamins have
worked a magic of their own
sometime tonight we will have a visitor
thanks to the help of the sick child's
mother secret arrangements are made
and we are guided to this hidden place
to wait but it is almost midnight before
the brujo appears
he has practiced the secret and all but
forbidden rites of the sacred mushroom
for decades rights passed on from father
to son
for perhaps 4 000 years but of course he
has never performed before such an
audience
or a camera our scientists have prepared
test questions to evaluate the brujo's
extrasensory perception
but he insists on one condition to
achieve spiritual
union they also must eat the mushroom
however in the interest of detached
scientific observation
he agrees that dr brown does not have to
take the mushroom
the rights begin
a strangely aromatic root is burned
inhaled
a language unknown anywhere else on this
earth
as our group waits for the mushroom to
take effect bill ups and questions the
brujo
because of the circumstances the sound
is of course far from perfect
i just asked him when we would see
something when something would happen
and he held up his hand to indicate that
he didn't want to talk at this
particular time
and then silence again as we wait
and then oddly enough the first sound we
hear as the chemical in the mushroom
takes effect
is laughter
the brujo has just told of an amusing
moment from bill's childhood in indiana
indiana a place the brujo does not even
know
exists now each of the group tests the
extrasensory powers of the brujo
sometimes he is accurate sometimes he is
not well
right in the eyes the whole rabbit uh
will brighten your eyes huh
ah that's perfect this means
clairvoyance
right the following is one moment when
he is startlingly correct
suddenly he turns to dr brown whom of
course he has never seen or heard of
before
very good no no
you're still sick because you're sick
[Music]
without a moment's hesitation he
accurately diagnosed a personal illness
that only dr brown
knows about
our next experience with a brujo and the
sacred mushroom comes quickly
and unexpectedly and this time it has
nothing to do with scientific
investigation
since it is now common knowledge that we
have already witnessed the right
we are allowed to come along to see a
second priesthood work
a man named macedonia who agreed to take
the mushroom and listen to the villagers
problem
he said his bureau was stolen and he
wants to know where to find it
in this village of huquila the theft of
aburo
a man's most important possession his
donkey
is second only to murder he said three
men
are involved macedonia hardly paused a
moment before he named the thieves
gustavo said he was going to take the
three of them to jail tomorrow
but don't macedonia warned him not to go
near the house of juan and pedro
because they would kill him but to look
for it in the house of jose
we go with the villager through a valley
across fields
past other villages to the exact spot
where macedonia said the borough would
be
and here indeed it is its identifying
brand
clearly marked on the borough's flank
now perhaps we can understand
more or less why for four thousand years
and from one civilization to the next
the sacred mushroom has endured we have
been given a practical demonstration
of how it works in the daily lives of
this primitive people
three weeks have passed and we're a long
way from our remote mountain village of
huquila
in mexico we're also a long way from the
secret rites of the sacred mushroom cup
but our search for the truth about the
mushroom
that is the truth as we understand it is
far from over
these men are our technical crew who
have come with me from los angeles
to help us continue our search
we've come to the home and laboratory of
dr andre pujaris
in northern california for me
personally this next step beyond
may be a rather large one
this is part of the laboratory and study
of dr puharish
here among his solid and sound books of
orthodox medicine
there are also other books they are
written in
french and spanish in english here's one
that says
mushrooms russia in history they're
written
in syrian japanese
all the languages of the world and
they're all concerned with one thing
the same thing the riddle of the sacred
mushroom
now when we were in mexico the brujo who
discovered the stolen bureau
might have been coincidence and the
other brujo who told dr barbara brown
about her past illness might have made a
wild guess
but today we should be able to prove the
case for
or against the mushroom the sacred
mushroom
with quite a lot more accuracy what's
that now john are those the uh
those the mushrooms you brought back
from mexico yes andre how many people
have you tested since you've been back
you'll be number 26 about the results
encouraging the average of the group as
a whole and the series is quite small
you understand
uh shows evidence for extra sensory
perception
after taking the mushrooms well i'm
ready
i'm as ready as i'm ever gonna be well
not quite
yet we have to do some control tests
first
to see if you have any esp before you
take the mushroom oh
i see and these will be done with cards
pictures and books
i see now you just sit still there
look why am I trying to be a great big
psychic without anybody's help from
anything huh
mushrooms from where are you
i'll uh be with you excuse me
john you take your left hand and bring
it in here on this first block
there's a row of ten blocks by you you
bring your right hand
over and you scan this far row
and you remain sensitive any impressions
and when you think you're over the
uh card that matches the one your left
hand is on you pick it up and move it
opposite that car I see
it's it's like like tall buildings in
chicago or new york somewhere
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got your scores added up on that this
test you've got
five hits out of 50. on the book test
here
you've got one out of 16 and you've got
nothing on the pictures
this is a chance score and shows
despite three years with our show I have
what they would call practically no
extra sensory perception at all
what do we do now uh now to eat the
mushrooms
all right i'm ready all right maybe
that's improvement
which ones we're going to eat these are
you have so many here andre
which which one oh these are for you
these are
chew em well when you ingest
not bad are they tastes like mushrooms
and one more for you
i'll drive
all right what now
now we'll lie you down on the bed
uh before who do some physical
testing before the effects of the
mushroom take hold
like what what like what effects uh
you'll find out
well it's been about 20 minutes since
you had the mushroom john how do you
feel
uh fine I feel uh
strong sort of you know it's kind of
hard
strong a sense of
a kind of sense of well-being is that
yes some people feel that way
let's try something
i want you to stand right up here in
front of this life
yes close your eyes and tell me what you
see
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lower your head a little bit a little
more
now
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i see it
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now I see I see so many things I can't
tell you
can't you slow it
now I see like but I see so many colors
that are
you go are they pretty the geometric
signs does not it's like great things
they're magnificent but they are they're
magnificent
i have never been so aware of color
of color it makes me quite dizzy
i feel like I would like to dive into
the middle of it well
we'll try the card test again
now all right same way start with your
left hand and try to find
one in this row
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a very distinct impression of like
the dunes of a desert or or
like half hoops
find the other
that's pretty close john
want to try another one please
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it has
it has a great deal it has something
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like like noise
i don't know how to translate that into
a picture
it seems to have
that noise and speed
he was like
there's a there's a face looking this
way
another face is looking up that way
that's pretty good would you like to
take a look and see what it's like
amazing isn't it holy mack without
radius
andre before you tell me anything about
the
score let me tell you something that i
did feel something
sort of profound well profound
when touching the pictures touching the
cards I felt something I don't know how
i did but the sensation
well john I can tell you it wasn't an uh
delusion on your part because
your card scores were 12 hits out of 50
which are significant for esp
you've got three out of 16 of the page
numbers on
the book and of course
most intriguing of all was you work with
the pictures you got
six adequate descriptions out of eight
pictures
you know andre
i think I understand a little
why for so many centuries they have
called this mushroom
sacred
now our mushroom hunters are reassembled
here in our studio
dr brown was our search worth it
yes I think so the chemicals in the
mushrooms I think
will offer us another tool by which we
can explore
the mechanisms and the capabilities of
the mind of man
and that's both sensory and extra
sensory what about you professor smith
well john the more I experience of life
in its ordinary and extraordinary uh
aspects the more I feel like a wide-eyed
child reaching for
knowledge and life as for the mushroom
uh it took me out into worlds I didn't
believe
existed far beyond
ordinary perception and yet
even today they're as real
and as important to my everyday life as
anything i've experienced
dr poharish during our stay in hokila
i witnessed quite a number of cases of
extrasensory perception by the brujos
some of which we could not film as you
know john
these in addition to the ones we did
film and the work which we have done
since our return
convinces me that the mushroom contains
a chemical
which is most promising for the further
investigation
of extrasensory perception
when this program began the question was
were the claims for the mushroom true or
false
or for those of us who made the journey
the answer is true
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