Dr. Bruce Damer's Levity Zone

In honor of the passing of Dr. Alexander 'Sasha' Shulgin a special group journeyed to a lush green spring-fed valley in dry far Northern California back in June of 2014. Dr. Bruce spins a tale of how we came to vision, the coevolution of technology and then on into how we may open to a group overmind driven and connected through the 'Shulgin Chip' and reach a place where we resonate with a cosmic destiny.Thanks to author Ramez Naam for his novel Nexus which was the inspiration for this talk. Credits: Dr. Bruce Damer, Jacob Aman (cover art), Erothyme (music). [released 27 Sept 2014]

Rolling the clock way back to 1994 we find Dr. Bruce living and working in Prague, the beautiful medieval capital of the Czech lands. As well as leading a team of top class Bohemian engineers at Elixir, Dr. Bruce presents his very own Prague Gnosis in three interviews edited for you here in the Zone: Jan and Krystyna Kaplan's video documentary Good Morning Prague, Molly's interview on Radio Metropolis, and Wendy Haller's D-Salon arts piece on Radio Prague. Hear a very early Dr. Bruce wax poetically about the magic of Prague and the new alchemy of computers, give a futuristic view of the tech-nomadic life coming in the 21st Century, and the value of patronage of the arts in the post-communist world. Credits: Dr. Bruce Damer (interviewee), Jan Kaplan, Molly, Wendy Haller (now Drapac) (interviewers), Jacob Aman (cover art). [released 28 July 2014]

Back in June of 2012 Lorenzo Hagerty and yours truly, Dr. Bruce, presented a program on the life of Terence McKenna at the Esalen Institute in Big Sur, California. Join us in the Big Yurt perched over the Pacific in one of the most beautiful places on Earth. I fulfilled a promise Terence and I made to 'do my own thing' and return to Esalen in his name to present my particular raps.Join me as I weave some new myths, flow out Esalen visions and inspire a hopeful view of our coming to consciousness. Credits: Dr. Bruce Damer (presentation), Lorenzo Hagerty (introduction,editing, photography), Tom Riedel (recording), Fabio Scalabroni (music),Jacob Aman (cover art). [released 20 June 2014]

In part two of the Bubble Culture Dhiren Dasu and Dr. Bruce continue to tackle the trends, economics, and purported transformational community of the festival scene. This August 2013 studio session unravels the 'entitlement generation' and recalls the features of real community versus the ephemeral and unsustainable nature of the festivals. While peak experiences have value, Dr. Bruce asks the question: does the festival scene feed the machine? Still there is a chance for the opening of lives through transformational experience but we have the happenings from the fabled but failed 1960s Haight Ashbury to serve as our warning about the cost of casualties. Credits: Dhiren Dasu and Dr. Bruce Damer (discussants, recording, editing), Dubr8r (music), Penny Slinger (photography) and Jacob Aman (layout). [released 9 May 2014]

Recorded at the Blue Lotus Temple of Sound and Light, this is the first of the "studio sessions" to be brought out into the Levity Zone. Featuring musician, artist and neighbor Dhiren Dasu in conversation with Dr. Bruce we tackle a topic not often taken on: the viability of the festival scene and the image and the reality of the "counter' or 'bubble' culture lifestyle prevalent on the West Coast of the US and elsewhere. As the philosopher Alan Watts counseled fifty years before, Dr. Bruce offers loving but concerted advice to young people that while you pursue peak experiences you must also develop skills and a grounding in this life. Credits: Dhiren Dasu and Dr. Bruce Damer (discussants, recording, editing), Dhiren Dasu-Dubr8r (music), Penny Slinger and Jacob Aman (photography and art). [released 15 April 2014]

Part two of the first Levity Zone Salon held in December of 2013 at Ancient Oaks Farm covers Dr. Bruce's personal integration guided by the teachings of Eckart Tolle and J. Krishnamurti. Travis then shared his heartbreak and frustration with powerful prescription drugs given to kids at his school putting them into a manic monkey mind state. The medicating of generations of youth by society may be altering the future of human consciousness and the very world in which we will all live. Mikey casts a more positive light on all this suggesting we may be actually moving toward balance and freedom rather than dysfunction. Credits: Dr. Bruce Damer (hosting, editing), William Sol Family (music), Jacob Aman (art). [released 28 March 2014]

In this special edition of the Levity Zone we embark on a new leg of our journey with the start of Levity Zone Salons. The first one was held at Ancient Oaks Farm in the Santa Cruz Mountains on December 7th 2013 and featured: Dr. Bruce, Jacob Aman, Mark Boolootian, Mikey Siegel, and Travis Rios. The theme was: how do you integrate deeply powerful spiritual experiences into your everyday life? Those precious elevated states doled out from some ineffable source are rare in the human experience and successful practices to integrate them not only honor their source but could help to create a new Earth. Credits: Dr. Bruce Damer (hosting, editing), William Sol Family (music), Jacob Aman (art). [released 22 February 2014]

This lost talk from Fractal Nation at Burning Man 2012 was resurrected by Andrew O'Keefe! Introduced by the artist Android Jones, Dr. Bruce goes on to unbolt the gears and camshafts of the machine that drives society, from the Mad Men who created the advertising that is supposed to define who we are, to how the machine may rattle itself apart like the long lost Soviet Union. How do we prepare for when the wheels come off? Listen in and find your way to slowly, but surely leave that machine and live an independent and powerful inner and then outer life. Dr. Bruce concludes by bringing us wise words from Dr. R. P. Kaushik from his Levity Zone #005 appearance which shows how new communities we might build to replace the machine must be based on shared experience of spirit, not on ideas. Credits: Dr. Bruce Damer (presenting, editing), Dr. R. P. Kaushik (excerpts), Andrew OKeefe (audio restoration), Dr. Magnus (music), Jacob Aman (art). [released 30 January 2014]

The Levity Zone features the third and final 2013 Burning Man talk held at the Palenque Norte tent in Camp Soft Landing, Dr. Bruce takes up the vitally important theme of the re-balancing of the feminine in the world as a force to re-center the course of our crazily careening civilization. Dive into this fanciful yet provokative story, based partly on profound new scientific discoveries yes mostly drawn out of the imagination, Follow the life of one of the most important figures in our deep human prehistory: a woman known as: Mitochondrial Eve, the true mother of us all. Is she now on her return? Dr. Bruce supplements his own creative license with well founded excerpts from scholar William Irwin Thompson. Credits: Dr. Bruce Damer (presenting, editing), William Irwin Thompson (excerpts), hiddenpath (music), Jacob Aman (art). [released 15 January 2014]

Dr. Bruce returns with another 2013 Burning Man talk held in the spectacular dome at Fractal Planet, a camp centered around visionary art led by the eclectic crew of spectacular visionary artist Andrew (Android) Jones. Android and a large spirited audience resonated with a vision of how we monkeys might use our fully activated minds to re-imagine and then re-make our world. Is this even plausible or possible? Dr. Bruce invites you to try it in your own life and see for yourself, for the universe is a mighty big probability engine that is just waiting for you to plug in your big inspirational flash. Credits: Dr. Bruce Damer (presenting, editing), Andrew O'Keefe II (introducer, recording), Chris Adams (music), Jacob Aman (art). [released 15 December 2013]

Dr. Bruce returns from the Amazon rainforest and opens the Burning Man 2013 talks series with Sacred Monkey Power, a talk about our 90 million year deep ancestry starting out on the limbs of rainforest giants. A real dragonfly graced the colorful pavillion of Sacred Spaces Village during the talk adding to the magic. Pressing on Dr. Bruce showed how we may push back against the coiling snake of technology, the thrall of our manic monkey masters and aim our civilization for that bright crack opening to a future we all know is possible. Credits: Dr. Bruce Damer (presenting, editing), David Houle (introducer, host), Jake McDonald (music), Jacob Aman (art). [released 19 November 2013]

Join us on the Pantheon stage at Symbiosis Gathering 2013 for Dr. Bruce introduced by visionary activist and coyote spiritwoman Caroline Casey. Dr. Bruce threaded together five of his recent raps from the Levity Zone and Burning Man, weaving in the story of the birth of the visionary experience 300 million year ago, the Madre seeing through our tiny primate eyes and being challenged by the snake of tech, the birth and life of Mitochrondrial Eve, all the way up to the dreamed for ascension of us monkeys to a union with the universe. And hear a bonus piece on how we may find a way to move life off Earth to inhabit space. Credits: Dr. Bruce Damer (intro, editing), Caroline Casey (introducer, closer), Fabio Scalabroni (music), Jacob Aman (art). [released 27 September 2013]

A spirited group in Ojai Salon number 3 takes on a big theme: what is the highest purpose of humanity? Topics include: our deepest origins in time, bringing a new myth to the extant world, alien abduction visions, Burning Man as a vehicle for ascension, the thinking of joseph campbell, or simply existing in the present. It is true that humanity is already on the best possible path, carried along by the enormity of nature, and that we are accelerating toward some kind of ascension? This positive group of young people including join Golan, Alali, Ingrid, Johann, Immanuel, Andros, Nathalie, David, Beth, Sol, Rebecca and yours truly, Dr. Bruce seemed well prepared ready to take on this transformation and through each of their good works were well poised to make that come to pass. The Salon ended with all of us coming back to the present to a glorious fruit pie and some beautiful improvised strings on the oud, guitar, flute and voice by David, Golan, Johann, Beth and Ingrid. Host a Salon for the Levity Zone in your own home, on a hilltop, deep in the woods, or anywhere that inspires the discussion. Credits: Dr. Bruce Damer (intro, editing), David Bergaud, Alali, Golan Donino, Johann Wolf, Beth Leone and Ingrid (music). [released 14 September 2013]

This is the final audience QA session for Ojai Salon number two (podcast 13). We continue with Dennis, Jeff and Dr. Bruce delving deeply into the mad mesmeric monkey, creator of one of the greatest diversions in history from our path to personal freedom and to fashioning a better world by 2050. 200,000 years ago did the mad monkey run off with history's greatest secret? In the 21st Century will we finally witness the waning of male blood lust as he puts down the spear? You've spread our genes, monkey, but return now to our mitochondrial mother. Credits: Dr. Bruce Damer (intro, editing), Steve Murtaugh (music-hear his compositions), Jacob Aman (art), Jeffrey Harris (photography). [released 21 August 2013]

This second audience QA session for Ojai Salon number two (podcast 13) returns to a key theme for how we might reinvent a beautiful world by the year 2050. Central to that vision is the re-centering of civilization on the feminine. Sarah, Dennis, Jeff, and Dr. Bruce explore the rise of the feminine in the west, Travel from 21st Century Europe where women's power is strongly returning back to the shores of southern Africa where the male manic monkey may have been born in the very hearth and home of mitochondrial Eve, our common mother. So, are we finally witnessing the sunset of male patriarchy? Is there a powerful and transformative story that we could tell the world to begin that return to a healthy planet for us monkeys? Credits: Dr. Bruce Damer (intro, editing), Steve Murtaugh (music), Jacob Aman (art), Jeffrey Harris (photography) [released 15 August 2013].