Ralph Metzner's Blog

Brilliant short satirical video on the official conspiracy theory of 9/11

2012-01-19T17:46:00.000-08:00

Dennis Kucinich calls on Congress to disempower the Federal Reserve

2012-01-19T17:45:00.000-08:00

Congressman Dennis Kucinich (D-OH), a longtime advocate for reform of the Federal Reserve (like fellow Congressman Ron Paul (R-TX)), sharply criticized the Federal Reserve today after Bloomberg News reported that the Federal Reserve secretly committed nearly $8 trillion in support to American and international financial institutions during the 2008 bailout. See Kucinich address HERE.

Before going to the floor of the House of Representatives to call upon Congress to reclaim its Constitution primacy over monetary policy, Kucinich recorded a video for his website HERE.

“The Federal Reserve extended extraordinary support to financial institutions that crashed the economy with reckless speculation, and on that support many of the firms made billions in profit and paid obscene bonuses. The Fed asked for nothing from these firms in return and that is because the Federal Reserve works first and foremost for the welfare of private financial institutions, not the American economy.

“The message that emerges from these revelations for Americans who have lost their jobs, lost their homes, or watched their retirement nest eggs disappear is that we have unlimited resources available for the banks, but nothing for the American people,” Kucinich stated.

The Bloomberg report is the result of a court-ordered release of over 29,000 pages of Federal Reserve documents and records of more than 21,000 transactions. Through direct lending, loan guarantees and enhanced lending limits, the Federal Reserve supported national and international financial firms with as much as $7.77 trillion as of March 2009. The $7.77 trillion provided dwarfs the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) cap mandated by Congress.

Congressman Kucinich introduced legislation that would impose transparency on the Federal Reserve. The National Emergency Employment Defense (NEED) Act, HR 2990, would incorporate the Federal Reserve within the United States Treasury. The bill would establish fiscal integrity, reassert Congressional sovereignty and allow the federal government to correct crippling national deficiencies in infrastructure repairs and education nationwide by spending money into circulation without increasing the national debt or causing inflation. Learn more about the NEED Act here.

Michael Moore on next steps for the OWS movement

2012-01-19T17:44:00.001-08:00

(These passages extracted from his newsletters)

The national conversation has been irreversibly changed. Now everyone is talking about how the 1% are getting away with all the money while the 99% struggle to make ends meet. People are no longer paralyzed by despair or apathy. Most know that now is the time to reclaim our country from the bankers, the lobbyists -- and their gofers: the members of the United States Congress and the 50 state legislatures. …  The winter gives us an amazing opportunity to expand our actions against the captains of capitalism who have occupied our homes with their fraudulent mortgage system which has tossed millions of families out onto the curb; a cruel health care system that has told 50 million Americans "if you can't afford a doctor, go F yourself"; a student loan system that sends 22-year-olds into an immediate "debtors' prison" of working lousy jobs for which they didn't go to school but now have to take because they're in hock for tens of thousands of dollars for the next two decades; and a jobs market that keeps 25 million Americans un- or under-employed -- and much of the rest of the workers forced to accept wage cuts, health care reductions and zero job security.   But we in the Occupy Movement reject this version of the "American Dream." Instead, I suggest we shift our focus for this winter to the following actions:

1. Occupy Our Homes. Sorry, banks, a roof over one's head is a human right, and you will no longer occupy our homes through foreclosure and eviction because well, you see, they are our homes, not yours. You may hold the mortgage; you don't hold the right to throw us or our neighbors out into the cold. With almost one in three home mortgages currently in foreclosure, nearing foreclosure or "underwater," the Occupy Movement must form local "Occupy Strike Forces" to create human shields when the banks come to throw people out of their homes. If the foreclosure has already happened, then we must help families move back into their foreclosed homes -- literally (see this clip from my last film to watch how a home re-occupation is accomplished). Beginning today, Take Back the Land, plus many other citizens' organizations nationwide, are kicking off Occupy Our Homes. please remember the words of Congresswoman Marcy Kaptur of Toledo (in the film 'Capitalism: A Love Story'): “Do not leave your homes if the bank forecloses on you! Let them take you to court and then YOU ask the judge to make them produce a copy of your mortgage. They can't. If they can't produce the mortgage, they can't evict you.”

2. Occupy Your College. In nearly every other democracy on the planet, students go to college for free or almost free. Why do those countries do that? Because they know that for their society to advance, they must have an educated population. Without that, productivity, innovation and an informed electorate is stunted and everyone suffers as a result. This has to end. Students should spend this winter doing what they are already doing on dozens of campuses -- holding sit-ins, occupying the student loan office, nonviolently disrupting the university regents meetings, and pitching their tents on the administration's lawn. Young people -- we, the '60s generation, promised to create a better world for you. We got halfway there -- now you have to complete the job. Do not stop until these wars are ended, the Pentagon budget is cut in half, and the rich are forced to pay their taxes. And demand that that money go to your education.

3. Occupy Your Job. Let's spend the winter organizing workplaces into unions. OR, if you already have a union, demand that your leaders get off their ass and get aggressive like our grandparents did. For chrissakes, surely you know we would not have a middle class if it weren't for the strikes of the 1930s-1950s?! In three weeks we will celebrate the 75th anniversary of the workers in my hometown of Flint, Michigan taking over and occupying the General Motors factories for 44 days in the dead of winter. Their actions ignited a labor movement that lifted tens of millions out of poverty and into the middle class. It's time to do it again. (According to the Census Bureau and the New York Times, 100 million Americans either live in or near poverty. Disgraceful. Greed has destroyed the core fabric of our communities. Enough!) Here are two good unions to get your fellow workers to sign up and join: UE and SEIU. The CWA are also good. Here's how to get a quick primer in organizing your place of employment (don't forget to be careful while you do this!).

4. Occupy Your Bank. This is an easy one. Just leave them. Move your checking and your credit card to a nonprofit credit union. It's safe and the decisions made there aren't based on greed. And if a bank tries to evict your neighbor, Occupy the local branch with 20 other people and call the press. Post it on the internet.

5. Occupy the Insurance Companies. It's time to not only stand up for the 50 million without health insurance but to also issue a single, simple demand: The elimination of for-profit, privately-controlled health insurance companies. It is nothing short of barbaric to allow businesses to make a profit off people when they get sick. We don't allow anyone to make a profit when we need the fire department or the police. The same should be true for when you need to see a doctor or stay in the hospital. It's long overdue for us to Occupy the insurance company offices, the pharmaceutical companies' headquarters and the for-profit hospitals until the White House and Congress pass the true single-payer universal health care bill they failed to pass in 2010. This is what is needed.

350.org – a global grassroots movement to slow down greenhouse gases

2011-05-23T20:31:00.000-07:00

Here’s a 15-min. video of Bill McKibben, in front of 10,000 young climate leaders, laying out an inspiring vision for our movement and an impassioned call to action.watch this video.

And here are some key points from the 350.org website:

So, what is global warming and what’s the problem anyway?

The science is clear: global warming is happening faster than ever and humans are responsible. Global warming is caused by releasing what are called greenhouse gases into the atmosphere. The most common greenhouse gas is carbon dioxide. Many of the activities we do every day like turn the lights on, cook food, or heat or cool our homes rely on the combustion of fossil fuels like coal and oil, which emit carbon dioxide and other heat-trapping gases when burned. This is a major problem because global warming destabilizes the delicate balance that makes life on this planet possible. Just a few degrees in temperature can completely change the world as we know it, and threaten the lives of millions of people around the world.

And what does this 350 number even mean?

350 is the number that leading scientists say is the safe upper limit for carbon dioxide—measured in “Parts Per Million” in our atmosphere. 350 PPM—it’s the number humanity needs to get back to as soon as possible to avoid runaway climate change.

If we’re already past 350, are we all doomed?

No. We’re like the patient that goes to the doctor and learns he’s overweight, or his cholesterol is too high. He doesn’t die immediately—but until he changes his lifestyle and gets back down to the safe zone, he’s at more risk for heart attack or stroke. The planet is in its danger zone because we’ve poured too much carbon into the atmosphere, and we’re starting to see signs of real trouble: melting ice caps, rapidly spreading drought. We need to scramble back as quickly as we can to safety.

How do we create the political change to steer towards 350?

This year, we can create a grassroots movement connected by the web and active all over the world. We will focus on the systemic barriers to climate solutions, changing political dynamics whenever possible. At the same time, we’ll get to work implementing real climate solutions in our communities, demonstrating the benefits of moving to a clean energy economy. If this global movement succeeds, we can get the world on track to get back to 350 and back to climate safety. It won’t be easy, that’s why we need all the help we can get.

What would it cost to restore the world environment and meet social goals. And guess who has the money?

2011-05-06T13:46:00.000-07:00

Lester Brown of the Earth Policy Institute (www.earth-policy.org) put together the following very revealing cost comparisons, as part of his Plan B, budget. Published in the excellent quarterly journal Pop!ulation Press (www.populationpress.org).

Additional annual expenditures needed to meet social goals and restore the Earth.

PLAN B BUDGET: Additional Annual Expenditures Needed to Meet Social Goals and Restore the Earth

Basic Social Goals	Goal Funding (billion dollars)
Universal primary education	10
Eradication of adult illiteracy	4
School lunch programs	3
Aid to women, infants	4
Reproductive health & family planning	21
Universal basic health care	33
TOTAL	75
Earth Restoration Goals	Goal Funding (billion dollars)
Planting trees	23
Protecting topsoil on cropland	24
Restoring rangelands	9
Restoring fisheries	13
Stabilizing water tables	10
Protecting biological diversity	31
TOTAL	110
GRAND TOTAL	185
U.S. Military Budget	661
Plan B budget as share of this	28%
World Military Budget	1,522
Plan B budget as share of this	12%

Child musical prodigy joyfully play-conducts Beethoven symphony

2011-02-16T14:46:00.000-08:00

For a totally upbeat explosion of joy and laughter and music, watch this five minute video.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0REJ-lCGiKU

Richard Wolff on the meltdown of the American capitalist system

2011-02-11T14:52:00.000-08:00

Richard Wolff is an Economics Professor at the University of Massachusetts, whose documentary film Capitalism Hits the Fan reveals with stunning clarity the undeniable and ever more glaring deficits in the inherent structure of the capitalist economic model. Viewing this film could be used as wonderful starting point for a discussion or series of discussions on our present situation. In the following article by Wolff, from The Guardian /UK, he expands on this theme:

Until the 1970s, US capitalism shared its spoils with American workers. But since 2008, it has made them pay for its failures…One aspect of “American exceptionalism” was always economic. US workers, so the story went, enjoyed a rising level of real wages that afforded their families a rising standard of living. Ever harder work paid off in rising consumption. The rich got richer faster than the middle and poor, but almost no one got poorer. Nearly all citizens felt “middle class”. A profitable US capitalism kept running ahead of labor supply. So, it kept raising wages to attract waves of immigration and to retain employees, across the 19th century until the 1970s.
Then everything changed. Real wages stopped rising, as US capitalists redirected their investments to produce and employ abroad, while replacing millions of workers in the US with computers. The US women’s liberation moved millions of US adult women to seek paid employment. US capitalism no longer faced a shortage of labor…US employers took advantage of the changed situation: they stopped raising wages. …

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/01/18-2

January 18, 2011 by The Guardian/UK

Avatar – A mythic masterpiece for our troubled time

2010-01-05T15:15:00.000-08:00

In the Avatar film, James Cameron, the maker of Titanic, has taken the new computerized, digital, 3-D technologies to a new astounding level of brilliance and mastery. It’s a story of adventure, space exploration and the wonders of evolution on alien worlds, echoing the best of the Star Wars series; a searing critique of the military domination-exploitation agendas of our corporate empire and their devastating effects on indigenous, earth-centered cultures; and a Earth-human/indigenous-alien love story and cultural encounter that echoes the Pocahontas story and numerous similar “gone native” conversion experiences.

Avatar in Hindu mythology is a human form consciously assumed by a deity to function in our human Earth-world. In computerized gaming, your avatar is the humanoid form you assume to function in the virtual cyber environment of the game. In the film the avatars are the blue-skinned humanoid forms, mimicking the bodies of the native Na’avi of the alien moon, that the human military corporate raiders assume in a somatic exchange operation, while their normal human bodies are resting immobilized in a digital transfer chamber. Thus blending in with the natives, the hero, a paraplegic ex-Marine, is sent to scout out the alien world for information on how to take over it’s mineral-rich environment – but instead, becomes enamored of a native beauty and is so moved by the magic of their world and the peaceful animism of their culture – that he comes to their aid, with a few of his companions.

In the final Hollywood-obligatory battle, reminiscent of the Lord of the Rings saga, native warriors riding flying dragons battle with bows and arrows against monstrous armored space cruisers armed with missile launchers – but, with the unexpected aid of equally armored indigenous dinosaurs and the necessary doses of improbable luck, prevail. The final delicious twist in this tale, is that the rapacious alien invaders, i.e. the Earth-based humans, are sent packing, leaving the greatly damaged but still surviving world to its indigenous Na’avi and their formerly human, now true native avatar sympathizers.

The concept behind the Hindu mythology of avatar is that at higher levels of evolution (such as that of a deity), human bodies are consciously chosen for incarnation in the Earth time-space environment. Esoteric spiritual traditions of East and West teach that human incarnation is also by choice of a human soul, although ordinarily, the choice is heavily predetermined by karmic patterns left over from previous incarnations. I discuss this multi-dimensional view of the human being, which is inherent in shamanism, alchemy and yoga, in my book Alchemical Divination:

Humans are multi-dimensional spiritual beings, living in a multi-dimensional
universe…As the Sufis say, w human beings live in a many-storied mansion, but
have occupied the ground-floor for so log, we have forgotten even the existence
of the higher realms.(p. 59-60)

The concept behind the game and film adopts the theme of conscious deliberate choice of a humanoid form appropriate to the planetary environment. The spiritual element is eliminated, and the conscious creation of an avatar vehicle for planetary existence is subordinated to the classic capitalist-colonialist exploitation agenda: use scientific technology to trick the natives out of their planetary resources, and if that doesn’t work or takes too long, kill them and take what you want.

I discuss this historic pattern in my book The Roots of War and Domination:

The mega-corporations of the military-industrial complex…with the help of
their governmental clients, promote wars of aggressive invasion that destroy a
designated “enemy” country, complete with sophisticated PR campaigns to induce
psychological shock and economic paralysis. Finally, these same imperial
corporations appropriate the natural resources (oil, forests, minerals, water)
of the destroyed nation state into their corporate machines.(p.34)

There are many exquisitely beautiful image sequences in Cameron’s film. Two stand out for me. One – the way a native or hybridized humanoid on this world “tames” their horse for riding is by connecting the fibrils in their tails with analogous polarized fibrils in the horse’s mane – the result being that horse and rider become one being, functioning according to the thought intentions of the rider. The other image that I found truly magical are the phosphorescent jellyfish that float in the air and may land on your body. They are the emanations of the Mother Goddess Aiva, and when they touch your skin they infuse you with the essences of peace, healing, knowledge and delight.

Louis Pasteur versus Claude Bernard on the Causes of Disease

2009-08-06T19:32:00.000-07:00

Two giants of scientific medicine in the 19th century, both French, propounded radically different paradigms for the understanding and treatment of disease, that are still relevant today. Louis Pasteur (1822-1895), chemist and microbiologist, put forward the germ theory, according to which diseases are caused by infectious microbes, that impair the functioning and structures of different organ systems. This paradigm is the basis for the use of antibiotics to destroy these invasive microbes and vaccines with low doses of the microbe to challenge the body’s immune defenses and thereby prevent systemic infection.

Pasteur’s contemporary and friend, the physiologist Claude Bernard (1813-1878), argued instead for the importance of balance in the body’s internal environment – what he called le milieu intérieur. “The constancy of the interior environment is the condition for a free and independent life.” Bernard thought that the body becomes susceptible to infectious agents only if the internal balance – or homeostasis as we now call it – is disturbed. After all, there are billions of microbes and bacteria inhabiting our guts, our blood, our whole body. Why do we sometimes sicken from them, sometimes not? When a bacterial or viral agent is “going around,” as we say, why do some people sicken and others remain healthy ?

There is an apocryphal story that Pasteur renounced his germ theory on his death-bed, saying that “Bernard is right. The microbe is nothing. The environment is everything.” The renowned 20th century French-American microbiologist René Dubos (1901-1982) agreed with Bernard’s principle: “Most microbial diseases are caused by organisms present in the body of a normal individual. They become the cause of disease when a disturbance arises which upsets the equilibrium of the body.”

Today, Pasteur’s germ theory of disease provides the rationale for the pharmaceutical industry’s billions of dollars research and sales programs for ever more potent anti-bacterial and anti-viral drugs, the use of these antibiotics as a feed-additive in the disease-prone, overcrowded environments of industrial farming – with the predictable consequence that bacterial evolution is out-stripping the discovery rate of effective antidotes.

The Bernard/Dubos theory that health and resilience is a function of homeostatic balance in the internal environment is reflected in the growing influence of the ancient medical systems of India and China, as well as homeopathy and Dr. Andrew Weil’s integrative medicine. In all these approaches, the maintenance of health and prevention of disease involves conscious attention given to factors of life-style, environment, nutrition, exercise and recreation, as well as psychological well-being and spiritual practice.

Divination, altered states and psychedelics

2009-07-28T19:30:00.000-07:00

There is a long history of different methods of inducing altered, heightened or trance-like states for divination. The word “trance” derives from Latin transire, “to pass or move across,” and is related to transit, transition and transient. All altered states involve a transition or disconnect of some kind from the waking state of ordinary life; then a period of time in which the psychological functioning of mind, emotion and perception are different; and then a return to the ordinary waking state for integration and application. Trances and altered states follow the pattern of a journey: departure, travelling through (interior) space, and then returning home. In the classic shamanic journey traditions, rhythmic drumming, rattling or chanting is used to facilitate the entering into, travelling through and returning from the spirit world – while the physical body lies prone on the ground. Research in consciousness and brain function suggest that something called auditory driving or entrainment takes place: the rhythmic beat of the drum brings the rhythms of breathing, of the heart, and of the brain into resonance or coherence with each other.

The other main method for inducing the divinatory journey trance in shamanic traditions worldwide involves psychoactive, visionary or entheogenic plants or fungi, such as ayahuasca in South America, iboga in Equatorial Africa, and the psilocybe mushroom (teonanácatl) in Meso-America. Among the Mazatecs in the highlands of Mexico there is the rare use of a infusions of a leafy plant called the “sage of the diviners” (salvia divinorum). It appears that the choice of which method is used is partly a function of ecology: in the Northern hemisphere areas of Asia (where the word shaman originates), Europe and America the use of rhythmic drumming is more common; whereas in the tropical regions, where plant diversity is greater, plants, roots and fungi have been found that profoundly alter consciousness.

The choice of method may be a function of history and the socio-political context: Michael Harner has suggested that in Central Europe the rhythmic drumming journey method (still used by the Sami in Northern Scandinavia) was, during the Middle Ages, abandoned by shamanic practitioners (known as “witches”), to avoid detection by the enforcers of the Inquisition. Instead, the silent and therefore safer use of plants was adopted for shamanic journey work, giving rise to the folklore of witches’ ointments and brews. Unfortunately, the psychoactive plants available in the Central European temperate zone are from the solanaceous nightshade family (datura, henbane, belladonna), in which the dissociative factor is particularly strong, making this method less reliable and more complicated.

It should be said too that in classic entheogenic plant divination ceremonies the ingestion of plant concoctions or preparations is usually combined with the rhythm method: the chants and songs of the mushroom curanderas and the ayahuasqueros have a soft, but persistent rhythm, and may be accompanied by the rattling of branches of dried leaves; and the ceremonies with peyote and iboga involve prolonged and vigorous drumming as well. The plant substances provide an amplification of perception, and the rhythmic auditory entrainment provides the sense of traveling through (inner) space. The Asiatic shamans say the beat of the drum is the hoof-beat of the spirit horse they are riding on their journey.

In modern societies, the successors to the shamans of indigenous peoples are the psychiatrists and psychotherapists, who seek to unravel the tangled skeins of dysfunctional mind-body patterns and integrate them into a more harmonious, less painful wholeness. The psychiatric anamnesis (“un-forgetting”) is exactly analogous to the shamanic soul retrieval, and the divinatory re-membering. The broken connections of one’s past history to one’s present condition are recalled and recollected, and can then be integrated and made whole again. Painful, traumatic or confusing experiences tend to freeze or distort the normal processing of our experience.

Though the use of entheogenic plants, fungi or psychedelic substances can amplify perception of the core question-and-answer process in divination or psychotherapy, it is not essential to it; and it does have some drawbacks, chief among them being that intensified awareness of somatic responses to the drug can make concentration more difficult, especially for an inexperienced person. Even the experienced shamans in South America, for example, will use low intensity psychoactive substances (such as tobacco) or dosages when they are dealing with particularly difficult diagnostic questions. When psychoactive drugs are used to amplify the psychotherapy process, the use of low-intensity graduated dosages, the “psycholytic” approach, is preferable to the high-dose “psychedelic” paradigm – with the probable exception of the treatment of alcohol or drug addiction, where the high dose intense experience may provide longer-lasting relief from relentless cravings and withdrawal sensations.

For contemporary seekers in the psychedelic sub-culture, the exclusive reliance on drugs when doing inner exploration (i.e. “tripping”) has the further liability of confusing the answers one receives in response to divination questions with a pharmacological drug effect. “I took this drug (or plant, or mushroom) and had this vision” is a typical account, which tends to overlook or minimize the crucial role of set (intention, question) and setting (context) in determining the contents of one’s experience.

Besides the two methods of divination we have discussed so far – the use of a non-rational symbol system and entering into an altered state of consciousness – there are some other methods that have been used traditionally to enhance perception of non-ordinary or hidden aspects of the past, present or future. Gazing into a crystal ball, also called scrying, is one of the traditional practices of focusing clairvoyant perception. Erroneously assumed to be limited to prophesying the future, the practice and the term refers to perception of normally hidden aspects of reality, past, present or future, i.e. divination.

Carlos Castaneda, in his writings on the teachings of the Yaqui Indian sorcerer Don Juan, lists a number of other practices to develop what he calls seeing (i.e. non-ordinary, clairvoyant perception). He stated that different individuals on the sorcerer’s path of learning to enhance their seeing ability might specialize in one or another of these natural phenomena for their concentrated gazing: fog or mist, clouds, smoke, rain, rock faces, stars, fire or streaming water. Gazing into fire is also the divinatory perception practice in Native American Church peyote ceremonies, which are held in a teepee, sitting around a fire. And gazing into streams or pools of water was a clairvoyance practice widespread in the classical period.

We can see that in all the different methods of divination, whether they involve an intuitive symbol system or an induced state of amplified perception, the core of the process is the posing of a question and the receiving of an answer. The questioner or seeker is the personal ego-self, in search of healing or guidance. The diagnostic or visionary insight is received from a source (wise self, intuition) or a being (deity, power animal, spirit guide) with access to higher, spiritual perspectives or hidden forms of knowledge. This source, is either mediated or channeled by another human being, called the diviner (or medium, psychic, teacher, sage); or it is accessed directly through a structured, intuitive inquiry process. In all cases a framework of appropriate set and setting, or intention and context, is essential to the effectiveness and usefulness of the outcome.

What is Divination?

2009-05-21T19:29:00.000-07:00

Essentially, divination is a structured inquiry to obtain knowledge about past, present or future, either from sources within oneself, or from another individual, sometimes called a diviner or psychic. In traditional cultures and esoteric traditions as well as the contemporary “New Age” sub-culture divination is usually practiced in conjunction with a symbolic system such as the ancient Chinese I Ching, the Nordic Runes, astrology, the medieval Tarot cards, or the reading of patterns of stones or bones or small sea-shells, or gazing into a crystal ball. In Graeco-Roman times the professional diviners, called augurs, interpreted the patterns made by flying flocks of birds, or a slaughtered animal’s entrails.

We may regard such systems as divination tools or accessories, through which the mind of the questioner-seeker and the diviner are taken out of the usual cognitive framework of rationality and causality. In the business world, it is often said that in order to solve problems or devise new approaches, we have to “think outside the box.” A problem always and only exists as a problem within the usual framework of our rational thinking. So the non-rational divination symbol systems serve to shift our perspective, our point of view, out of the box. We can see that at the core of all these methods there is the process of asking a question and obtaining an answer.

In addition to the use of these formalized symbolic accessories, there is another and more direct way to access inner spiritual knowledge, and that is to go into a heightened or expanded state of consciousness. In an expanded state of consciousness, such as a shamanic drumming journey, or an experience with a psychoactive plant substance, or a concentrative meditation, we transcend the time-space framework of ordinary reality, and can ask our questions from the spirit world, or the divine world (hence the term ”divination”). Thus the essential process in divination involves a questioner or seeker (also sometimes called “querent”) asking questions and the diviner obtaining answers, by non-rational, non-analytical means. In the inner traditions of shamanism and alchemy the querent and the diviner are one and the same person, accessories are dispensed with, and one taps into direct intuitive knowing.

The importance of being clear and explicit about one’s question cannot be over emphasized. If we approach a wise person or teacher or counselor we can hardly expect to learn from them unless we are clear about what we are asking. Similarly, in any kind of divination process, whether using a symbolic template, or going into an expanded state of consciousness, the value and significance of the information or guidance received is very much a function of the manner of the question. Asking a question is a basic gesture of receptivity. If we are in a conversation and I ask you a question, any question, even a mundane one (such as “What time is it?”) I am then receptive to what you are going to say next. If I haven’t asked the question, I may or may not be receptive to what you are going to say, because my attention may be elsewhere occupied. So, when in a spiritual divination, I ask a question, addressing my inner wise self, or my intuition, or my shamanic power animal, or my ancestral spirit guide (however I conceive of this inner wisdom source), the next thought, or image, or feeling or memory that comes to mind is the response, from that wise source.

The simplest and most direct expression of this self-divination process is the phrase “I asked myself…” If I’m pondering or reflecting on any kind of issue, whether in relation to work, or interpersonal relations, or creative expression, the use of that phrase implies the belief that there is a part of me that is wiser and more knowledgeable than I am personally, at this time. Otherwise, why would I be asking the question? So, I would like to suggest to the reader, that from time to time as you read the thoughts I am presenting, you stop and ask yourself whether what is being said “rings true” or, in other words, is confirmed by your own inner wise self.

This process, divining by simply asking your inner wise or guiding self, is also involved in the practice known as dream incubation. This is one of the best ways to increase the meaningfulness of one’s dreams: before you go to sleep you ask your inner guide, your dream-weaver, for help in solving a particular issue. Whatever dreams may come can then be much more readily interpreted as symbolic answers to the question you posed.

Divination and the scientific method

Modern individuals, trained in a scientific outlook, tend to shy away from divinatory practices, fearing to give any credence to what they consider ignorant and irrational superstition. However, to say that divinatory practices are non-rational is not to say they are irrational, or based on superstition. It has been said that the divination systems, such as the Tarot or the I Ching, are simply ways of structuring intuitive knowledge. Intuition plays a significant role in the empirical research methods of science. It is intuition from which the scientist obtains the hypotheses and theories, which are then tested by observation and experiment. Albert Einstein was famous for describing the divinatory “thought-experiments” (as he called them) by means of which he arrived at his theory of relativity: he said he imagined himself traveling at speeds approaching the speed of light, and asked himself what would happen to the dimensions of space.

My friend, the pioneering English biologist Rupert Sheldrake, author of A New Theory of Life and other works, has pointed out that a scientific experiment is essentially a sophisticated form of divination – the asking of a question. In a typical experiment, whether in the natural or social sciences, all the known variables but one are held constant, so that the observations that are made (the dependent variable) can be reasonably attributed to the one parameter that is allowed to vary in a controlled fashion (the independent variable). An experiment is a divination situation in which we are asking a question of Nature, and testing our understanding of the underlying laws and forces (called “theory”).

Divination, in other words, is an empirical procedure. Intuitive knowledge is subjected to testing and verification by experience. Just as an experiment gives us results that are then used to confirm or disconfirm our theory or hypothesis, so the knowledge obtained by intuitive divinations are also subject to verification or confirmation. In the realms or medicine and healing, the divination to discover the cause of the illness is the process of diagnosis; and the confirmation of the diagnosis is in the healing or cure of the illness. “The proof of the pudding is in the eating” is the old saying, which should perhaps be more accurately stated as “the proof of the rightness of the recipe for the pudding is in the eating.”

At the same time, the fact that some insight or point of view comes from an intuitive source does not guarantee its correctness or appropriateness. Intuitive perceptions can be mistaken, just like ordinary sense perception. I may see a man walking down the street, and after a while, as the distance between us gets smaller, I realize the figure is really a woman – I correct my perception by further observation. My teacher Russell Schofield used to say that when he obtained an intuitive perception about something that seemed unusual, he would ask again and again, sometimes nine or ten times, to determine if the answer he was getting to his question was consistent. So in any divination, if the answers we get are unclear or unbelievable, we can ask repeatedly for further confirmation or clarification.

(extracted from Alchemical Divination, 2009)

Mythic Dimensions of Domination and War

2009-05-12T19:27:00.000-07:00

I wish now to examine some of these more esoteric as well as mythic perspectives on the roots of war and domination. Other writers interested in the problems of war in society have investigated its mythic dimensions. A notable recent example is the Jungian psychotherapist and scholar James Hillman, now in his 80s, who recently published A Terrible Love of War (Hillman, 2005). Hillman says that war is normal, not just usual. It is inhuman in the same way the gods, including Mars and Venus, are inhuman. Venusian qualities of beauty and love belong to war as do the Martian qualities of violence and aggression. Hillman concludes that war is inherent in the existence of states, and identifies the exclusive worldviews of the monotheistic religions as a major contributing factor.

In my own research, have been led to a view that recognizes at least two (or possibly more) kinds of archetypal forces or spirits guiding and inspiring the lives of individuals and societies. One group are those who support the peaceful, creative unfolding of life’s evolutionary potentials and the preservation of the planet’s life-support system. The pursuit of knowledge and the development of technology is integrated with respect for all living beings, and reverence for the spiritual reality of the universe. The other kind are those who have chosen the adaptation of accumulating and taking from others, using violence and war, and can thus be aptly described as counter-evolutionary. I would like now to examine some mythic and legendary prototypes of this kind of dualistic heritage.

World mythology is filled with stories of rival brother gods, such as the Egyptian Osiris and Seth, the Sumerian Enlil and Enki, or the Zoroastrian Ahura-Mazda and Ahriman. Some myths tell of feuding groups of deities, such as the Aesir and Vanir of the Norse people, and of battles between “gods” and “titans” or “monsters,” found on planet Earth in earlier times. In both Hindu and Buddhist mythology, we have the conception of devas and asuras, – the former beneficent light-beings, the latter violent and destructive dominators. Both are supra-human spirits, inhabiting their own worlds, which nevertheless intersect and interact in consciousness with the world of humans, in complex ways.

The persistent legend of the high civilization of Atlantis, which is said to have collapsed in a catastrophic flood, about ten thousand years before our time, also has this theme of a struggle between highly advanced beings, some creative and constructive and another group on imperialistic and exploitative path. In our time, such myths have been given new formulations in the literature on UFOs and ETs, where the rival “gods” of ancient times are technologically highly advanced beings from extra-terrestrial civilizations who have been intervening in human affairs for a very long time.

Buddhist Myths of Devas and Asuras

Buddhism is basically a non-theistic religion, in which the essential moral teachings involve not so much an appeal to a book of rules handed down by an omnipotent creator and his priesthood, but rather the exhortation to practice meditative yogic methods designed to raise consciousness. Moral and peaceful behavior would then follow naturally from the inner peace and equanimity of a person who is in touch with their true essential nature, their “Buddha nature.” Unconsciousness or ignorance of your own spiritual essence, along with craving and hatred, are the “three poisons” at the core of all human life. They are symbolized by the three inter-linked animals at the hub of the great ever-cycling Wheel of Birth and Death.

Buddhism did adopt and adapt some of the key cosmological myths of their Vedic and Hindu religious ancestors, including the conceptions of devas and asuras. Devas are the “shining ones,” light spirits, analogous to “angels” in Western religion. They guide and inspire humans in their artistic and creative endeavors, and remind them of their spiritual essence. Asuras are violent and envious demons, armed with weapons, focused on materiality, who are forever competing with the devas and attacking all forms of life in general. Whereas in the Indian Vedic (and related Persian Zoroastrian) mythology the focus is on the competition and struggle between the light and dark, good and evil, deities, Buddhism developed a more sophisticated analysis expressed in the symbolism of the six worlds of existence (samsara), linked by the twelve-fold chain of interdependent causation.

The iconic image of the Wheel of Samsara, which could also be called the Wheel of Earthly Existence, portrayed in numerous temple paintings throughout the Buddhist world, is held in the grip of a gigantic demon, representing the ceaseless flow of time and entropy. At the hub of the churning wheel are the three “poisons” (unconsciousness, craving and hatred) and around the outside rim of the wheel are the twelve links of the chain of interdependent mutual causation. The six worlds of possible existence are arrayed around the wheel, turning ceaselessly in cycles of birth, death and rebirth. These worlds can be regarded as realms of consciousness and reality inhabited by various beings, both human and non-human.

One of the six realms is specifically designated the human realm, and is considered the most favorable realm for humans –because it has the greatest freedom of choice and therefore possibilities for liberation. Human beings may be incarnated into any of the six realms, in any given life-time, according to their karma; and within one life-time, humans can find themselves, temporarily, in the state of consciousness associated with that realm (Metzner, 1996). Our spiritual growth challenge then is to recognize and identify the world we are inhabiting by raising consciousness; and thus we learn to gradually free ourselves from the thrall of the three poisons.

One of the six worlds is the world of animals: this does not mean that humans may reincarnate as animals, as some simplistic beliefs hold. It means rather that we, as human beings, are essentially living in the consciousness of the animal realm, along with the animal spirits, when we are focused exclusively on instinctual mammalian survival programs. There is also a realm of pretas – “hungry ghosts,” with huge bellies and thin throats, forever craving and forever frustrated. This could be considered an apt symbolic portrayal of the realm of humans fixated in addictive and obsessive states of consciousness.

The realm inhabited by the devas is an angelic world of great natural and aesthetic beauty, peace and harmony. Heaven, in the Buddhist conception, is not so much a realm we may enter into after we die. It is, like all states, a temporary state into which we come by good karma and spiritual disciplines. We are in the deva realm when we are in heavenly, blissful states of consciousness. There is a hell world, opposite on the Wheel of Samsara, which is marked by extreme pain, suffering and victimization. “Hell” may be a purely subjective state of painful illness or madness; or it may also be experienced in an objective environment of war, torture and violence. In Buddhism, heaven is not a promised after-life reward and hell is not a threatened punishment – both are impermanent states of consciousness. We are in these realms for varying lengths of time, or perhaps sometimes for an entire lifetime, in accordance with the law of choices and consequences (karma).

In the iconic images of the Wheel of Life found in Tibetan Buddhism, the deva deities are sitting peacefully in a garden setting, an ecological paradise, full of flowering plants, peaceful lakes and musicians playing. The asura realm is located next to the deva realm on the Wheel, and the asuras are shown as horse-mounted, armed warriors, brandishing their weapons and howling with frightful noise. In an image eerily symbolic of our present ecological catastrophe, where industrial mega-corporations backed by military gangs are devouring the rainforests and other biosphere resources, the asuras are cutting down the fruit-laden giant tree that the deva gods are contemplating and enjoying. Opposite the asura realm on the Wheel of Samsara, lies the realm of the addicted and frustrated pretas. This could also be regarded as a symbolic portrayal of the global situation, where massively armed and violent gangs amass huge illicit profits from trafficking in drugs which hold millions in addictive bondage. The asuras correspond most closely to what I (and other writers) have called dominator or counter-evolutionary, or “dark force” spirits.

In both the Hindu and Buddhist cosmology, the devas, the spirits of peace and sustainability, and asuras, the spirits of violence and domination, are present in human civilization and history in varying proportions. According to Indian traditions, there are cosmic cyclical ages, the yugas, extending over tens of thousands of years, in which either the peaceful devas or the violent asuras are more prominent. Modern researchers like John Major Jenkins, in his work Galactic Alignment (Jenkins, 2002), relate these ages to the 26,000 year cycle of precession. All sources, agree that the present age, the Kali yuga, is the climax or low point, of an age ruled by the war-like asuras. The fact that for most of recorded history, at least in the past 6,000 years, since the Kurgan intrusions into Old Europe, Western societies have been ruled by warrior-chiefs, autocratic monarchs and emperors, and in our time, military juntas, this conception has an undeniable plausibility.

As far as I know, the Buddhists, while recognizing the transience of all rulers and empires, do not have a cosmic time-table for the change-over from one age to another. They would say that, both for the individual and for societies, the balance of peaceful and violent forces is a matter of the choices made by human individuals, and the groups to which they belong. Undoubtedly, the certain knowledge of the transience of all phenomena, including political ones, would help one to maintain equanimity and dignity even in the face of the most outrageous violations of human decency and morality, and to continue to counter the virulent depredations of the asuras and their human incarnations. Whether the defense against armed predatory plunder will inevitably lead to continuing cycles of violence and vengeance, or whether war can be countered and contained by active, yet non-violent struggle for peace and sustainability, can be seen to be the central challenge of our planetary civilization.

The Legend of the Downfall of the Civilization of Atlantis

A vast literature exists, ranging from the scientific and scholarly, to the speculative and mediumistic, telling of a lost civilization on an island in the Atlantic, that was so completely destroyed, with all its records, in a cataclysmic flood, that it has been lost to historical memory. As a proto-historical legend, the story of Atlantis was first recorded in the 5th century BCE by the Athenian Plato, the god-father of Western philosophy, who said he heard the story from ancient Egyptian sources. In the 20th century, the Atlantis legend was revived in a major way by the gifted American psychic Edgar Cayce, who left a multitude of paranormally channeled readings concerning Atlantis (Hope, 1991).

According to Cayce and other psychic pre-historians, Atlantis was a civilization with a naval empire, whose ships dominated the globe, engaging (in its later stages) in plundering warfare with various other societies, including the Athenian, as recorded by Plato. The empire was ruled by a theocratic priesthood of humans with highly advanced psychic abilities, vastly extended life-spans and extraordinarily advanced technology of genetic engineering. Later myths told of these beings as “gods,” because of their apparent “immortality” (actually supra-human longevity), and seemingly supernatural capacities. Esoteric mystical schools of modern times call them high-level initiates, adept at working with the energies of multiple dimensions of consciousness and reality. Atlantean scientists apparently mastered technologies based on crystals and sound vibrations, both for building pyramids and military weaponry.

According to Edgar Cayce, some of these high-level adepts had chosen a “dark force” path of sorcery and exploitation, using their super-human abilities to create animal-human hybrids for the purposes of work or sexual slavery. Others in the ruling priesthood adhered to a mystical path of oneness and respect for all beings, and attempted to counteract or ameliorate the depredations of the dark force dominators. In the modern channelled ET literature, it is often proposed that the Atlanteans actually came to Earth from another star-system (Sirius being a favored candidate), for the purpose of establishing colonies on Earth.

In accounting for the downfall of this powerful global empire, there are several versions: one is a classic “punishment of the wicked” scenario, as in the Biblical legend of the Great Flood, in which the karmic consequences of the dark ones’ activities came back to destroy them. Other writers point to the physical and geographical evidence that there actually were planet-wide catastrophes around the 11th and 10th millennium BCE – and suggest that the Atlantean technocrats were blind to the consequences of their physical interventions on the Earth’s energy-systems. In either case, so the story goes, those of the ruling elites who could see the catastrophe coming, years ahead of time, sent out expeditions to establish settlements in different parts of the world, where the indigenous people were taught the rudiments of the Atlantean sacred science and structures (for example, pyramids) containing coded memories were built. This activity is then said to have led to the beginnings of the ancient Egyptian, Meso-American, Northwestern European and perhaps other civilizations.

One psychic pre-historian that I came to know, stated that a number of souls of the Atlantean scientists who had been involved in the hyper-development of the physical, biological, and psychical technologies of that empire, were now reincarnated, again as visionary scientists and engineers, to try to prevent the same or similar misuses occurring again. Undeniably, there are eerie parallels between the putative pre-collapse situation of Atlantis, and our own time, where the dominator forces of techno-industrial exploitation are pushing the Earth’s ecosystems to the brink of collapse, while scientific and environmental groups and their allies, struggle to build and maintain sustainable communities at a local and regional scale.

The Wars of the Gods in Norse Mythology

In the religious mythology of the Nordic-Germanic people, there is fascinating evidence for the interaction between the Indo-European Kurgan invaders and the Old European cultures. We find this in the myths of the prolonged warfare and eventual peacemaking between two families of deities, the Aesir and the Vanir. I have discussed these myths in my book The Well of Remembrance, basing my interpretation on the archaeo-mythological work of Marija Gimbutas (Metzner, 1994). She has proposed, on the basis of the archaeological record, that the invasions of the Indo-European nomadic herder tribes called Kurgans into the agrarian matricentric cultures of Old Europe, starting in the 5th millennium BCE, led to initial warfare, and eventual hybridizing of cultures and religious worldviews. In this kind of approach to the interpretation of mythology, ancient stories and epics are seen as recordings of even more ancient oral traditions concerning actual events in pre-historic times, often overlaid with fantastic elaborations. Such a view of mythology is consistent with that of Robert Graves, Mircea Eliade, and Zachariah Sitchin, whose work on Sumerian myth we shall discuss further below.

According to the Nordic-Germanic mythic history, there were two families or clans of deities, the Aesir and the Vanir. The Aesir were primarily sky- and warrior-gods, including Odin, Tiwaz and Thor the Thunderer. The Vanir, including Nerthus, Njörd and the brother-sister pair Freyr and Freyja, were primarily earth- and nature-deities, associated with prosperity and peace. The two groups of gods were portrayed in the myths as warring rivals, although there are also stories of peacemaking attempts and cooperation. Presumably these myths reflect the conflict, drawn out over many centuries, between the invading Indo-Germanic tribes from the East and the aboriginal populations of Old Europe, who resisted the attempted assimilation. It seems probable that after the Indo-Germanic people had settled in Central Europe, the Vanir continued to be the gods of the farmers and fishermen, while the Aesir were worshipped by the military aristocracy, who had appropriated the land and established their domination.

In the Eddas, the mythic poems that are our prime source for the Nordic myths, the aesir envied and craved the wealth of the vanir, and “thus war came into the world.” The archaeological evidence from the cultures of Old Europe shows that it was in fact the patriarchal Kurgan or Aryan invaders, with their sky- and battle-gods and gleaming weapons, who brought warfare to the peaceful agrarian societies, with their deities of fertility, abundance and peace. The new religion that the descendants of both peoples developed was a hybrid of Eurasian shamanic warrior cults and the earth-based fertility magic of the indigenous inhabitants.

For the migrating Indo-Germanic people, the lands to the West were fabulously rich and fertile lands, where they could graze their herds and learn farming from the indigenous people. Both peoples had developed the arts of extracting metals such as copper, bronze, gold and iron from the earth, and gold was highly prized for its malleability in shaping shining ornaments. The wealth, both agrarian and mineral, of the peaceful cultures of Old Europe, personified in the figure of Gullveig, the "Golden Goddess", undoubtedly did arouse the greed and envy of the rapacious invaders. Gold seems to have been an obsession for the Indo-Europeans wherever they went, including the Spaniards and Portuguese who invaded the Americas – an obsession that has triggered more than one blood-drenched military adventure.

The characterization of the aesir, as attacking and invading the lands of the vanir out of rapacious envy for their wealth, parallels the mythic imagery of the asuras as “envious titans” attacking the fruit-laden tree of abundant life that the devas are peacefully enjoying. The names aesir and asuras may actually have same linguistic root, according to some scholars The hell world, like the heaven world, is impermanent.. The idea that it is the “gods” who bring war into the world, and drag their human followers into their competitive struggle, is one we will encounter again in Zachariah Sitchin’s work on Sumerian mythology.

A Meditation on Oneness and Wholeness

2009-04-09T19:24:00.000-07:00

There are those, associated with political, religious, corporate or military organizations, who proclaim the need for oneness of purpose and goals. The resulting hierarchical structures of leadership and control can be efficient and productive – but run the risk of degenerating into authoritarian domination systems that violate the foundational ethical principle known as the Golden Rule.

There are those who seek to experience oneness by becoming absorbed in blissful states of deep meditation, aesthetic contemplation, or erotic union. The resultant states of oneness can be supremely satisfying and inspire creative expression – but run the risk of degenerating into detached and superior attitudes that fail to adequately engage the physical and social realities of our world.

I prefer to go with those who follow the path of inclusive wholeness, accepting of the diversity and multiplicity of their own being, and all other beings they encounter, human and non-human; as well as the diversity of communities and cultures and worlds. Such a one would be practicing respectful balanced interchange of giving and receiving in relationship to all other beings and with the Macrocosmic Creator Source Oneness.

Sonoma, Feb 2009

Expansions of Collective Consciousness – The 1960s - II

2009-03-16T19:05:00.000-07:00

It is possible to apply the consciousness expansion of concept to the forms and patterns of collective consciousness: to mass-mind images and memes, to scientific paradigms and worldviews, to the ideologies of spiritual practice and religious devotion. In my book The Expansion of Consciousness (2008), I pointed out that the decade of the 1960s was a time of several interconnected movements of socio-cultural transformation that profoundly changed Western society, and more indirectly other countries in the world as well: the environmental movement, the women’s liberation movement, the anti-war movement, the civil rights movement, the revolution in sexual and family relations and an explosion of new forms of expression in music and the visual arts. Even though there is no evidence of a direct causative connection between ingestion of psychedelics and these socio-cultural transformation movements, each of them represents an expansion of collective consciousness, a transcending of existing limited conventions, attitudes and norms, similar to what is classically associated with psychedelic experiences in the individual.

The historian Theodore Roszak, in his very influential 1968 book The Making of a Counterculture, identified and described these transformation movements as constituting a kind of quasi-revolutionary culture in opposition to the mainstream. Although these social movements were countercultural or even, at times, revolutionary, in that they challenged unjust, limiting or outmoded attitudes and practices of the dominant social order, it is important to recognize that being against something was not the primary intention behind these movements.

In an infant’s struggle to be born, ultimately into a larger world and way of being, there may be a phase of intense and sometimes violent opposition to the limitations of the existing order (represented by the mother’s body). This kind of opposition, which may even threaten the mother’s life, is not however the ultimate aim of the neonate’s struggle – which is rather to emerge from a condition that has become intolerable, too limiting, into an expanded world of greater freedom and possibilities for growth. Let us look at these movements, which continue in various ways to this day, through the dual lens of counterculture and expanding consciousness.

Rachel Carson’s book Silent Spring, published in 1962, raised awareness of environmental despoliation and is generally considered the beginning impetus for the American environmental movement, and for major conservation and preservation organizations and policies that persist to this day. The very title Silent Spring refers to an experience of expanded consciousness: if we do not hear the singing birds we are accustomed to hear, we naturally ask – why not? This question in turn leads us to investigate environmentally destructive processes caused by human technology – which we then engage as activists to ameliorate, for the health and wellbeing of humans and the integrity of the ecosystems which we inhabit along with other animal and plant species of life.

This process is analogous to the kind of therapeutic “course-correction vision” that drug addicts and alcoholics often report when relating their experience with plant-based entheogens such as peyote or ayahuasca: under the influence of these botanical sacraments, a person may report becoming clearly aware of hitherto hidden patterns of thought and behavior that are leading them in a self-destructive direction – and therefore feel empowered to make health preserving new choices. I have published several accounts of this kind of healing vision in my edited volumes on the sacred mushroom and on ayahuasca. Also in these books are accounts by individuals who in the early 1960s were powerfully affected by their psychedelic experiences and became committed environmental activists for the rest of their lives (including myself).

Many individuals and groups integrated their expanded conscious visions for a food supply free of chemical additives and pesticides into the development of the organic food movement, which in the ensuing decades emerged as a wide-spread and viable alternative to industrial factory farming. Similarly, the recognition of the industrial pollution of the atmosphere and water supply was channeled into political advocacy for clean air and water preservation. Thus, we see that the environmental movement counters and critiques the destructive and polluting effects of industrial corporations and seeks to preserve and enhance the integrity of both wilderness and built environments.

The women’s liberation movement critiques and counters the sexist discrimination of deeply entrenched patriarchal attitudes and institutions and seeks to establish equality in work and pay and to protect the rights of women to make their own choices in the areas of sexuality and child-bearing. The 1963 publication of Betty Friedan’s The Feminine Mystique launched the women’s liberation movement, with its “consciousness-raising” groups, in which women-only groups met in council to discuss issues of identity and relationship. Questioning themselves and each other – who am I, besides being someone’s wife, daughter, sister, lover, secretary? And such consciousness expanding questions would naturally lead to making new and healthier choices in life-style, work and creative expression.

The anti-war movement countered the American war-machine, with all the formidable power and resources that it disposes – and this opposition could and did result at times in flare-ups of public violence between state authorities and countercultural rebels and dissidents. But the underlying intention and vision of the anti-war movement is to be oppositional only temporarily, and then to further the peaceful unfolding of the civilization’s potentials in all their diversity.

Similarly, the civil rights movement countered racist discrimination practices, the legacies of slavery, principally in schools and housing. But its ultimate intention vision, as in Martin Luther King’s “I Have a Dream” speech (1963), was to see a society in which black children and white children, and those of other races, could go to school together in freedom and peace. In the 19th century, waging war against the slave-holding South was not the ultimate intention of the abolitionist movement -- rather it was the emancipation of slaves.

“Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere” was one of the Reverend King’s memorable inspired sayings. And it is probably because of King’s unshakeable commit to the practice and advocacy of non-violence that the counter-cultural impulse in the civil rights and anti-war movements did not lead to more violence than it did. Even so, the repressive forces of the established power-elites, who saw their positions and wealth threatened by the counter culture, exacted a heavy toll: the assassination of four dynamic and popular leaders – the Kennedy brothers, and M.L. King and Malcolm X. Interestingly, at the present time of 2009 and beyond, American society again will examine the atavistic residues of slavery and racial discrimination under the presidential leadership of a younger, and multi-cultural African-American.

The movement for increased freedom of sexual expression, supported also by the women’s movement, by the invention of the contraceptive pill, and by the books of zoologist Alfred Kinsey on human sexual behavior (1943, 1953), countered and critiqued many unexamined and prejudicial religion-bound conventions of marriage and family; but ultimately aimed for wholesome, non-patriarchal alternatives to the so-called “nuclear household.” There was a wave of communitarian experimentation, as has happened periodically in American history. Intentional communities sprang up, such as the one Leary, Alpert and myself participated in for a few years at Millbrook, New York, experimenting with new forms of extended family relations, sexuality and child-rearing, A conversational memoir by Ram Dass and myself of the Harvard and Millbrook years is forthcoming under the title Birth of a Psychedelic Culture (Synergetic Press, 2009).

The vision motivating the counterculture of the 1960s was pioneering innovation, reform and liberation, based on an expanded awareness of the needs of the whole society (as in the civil rights, women’s liberation and sexual revolution), of all of humanity (as in the peace movement) and the regional ecosystem and biosphere (as in the ecology movement). The innovative and pioneering aspects of these socio-cultural transformations are particularly obvious in the breakthroughs that occurred from new discoveries in the sciences, and new forms of celebratory expressions in the arts. Here we don’t necessarily see opposition to an existing order, but simply a highly energized, innovative and creative “moving beyond” into an expanded worldview.

On the other hand, the countercultural and revolutionary elements in these movements, especially in the political and economic sphere tends to produce violent backlash and repression by the dominant culture, as “the empire strikes back.” This in turn leads to intensification of the rebellious oppositional forces, bringing about an escalation of violence and destruction – all tendencies that we can see being played out in subsequent decades, to the present day.

Undoubtedly, an energizing and amplifying influence in the growth of the expanding consciousness culture during the 1960s was the widespread availability of inexpensive psychedelic drugs, as well as cultivated mushrooms, for personal use by increasingly large numbers of people. This certainly amplified the innovation and creativity in the arts and sciences and added much larger numbers of spiritually committed individuals to what before were relatively small minority movements. Whether psychedelics also amplified the rebelliousness and confrontational resistance movements of the 1960s, is impossible to say. Some would argue that the greater physical violence of the revolutionary movements was more connected to amphetamine use.

American society had developed into a highly stratified and diversified system, with multiple internal divisions of class, race and religion, and competing interest groups, both overt and covert. Multiple traumatic shocks to the body politic occurred during the sixties: the assassinations of two white leaders (JFK and Robert Kennedy) and two black leaders (Martin Luther King and Malcolm X). The revolutionary changes in society and culture envisioned and initiated by the counterculture, were met with violent backlash from the establishment forces of empire, domination and control. As part of this backlash, possession and use of psychedelic drugs was criminalized and all legal research on their consciousness expanding possibilities came to a halt.
Perhaps this is the impact of a very different series of developments that also started at the end of WWII: the expansion of the global military hegemony of the American Empire. Outgoing US Republican president Dwight D. Eisenhower warned of this development in his presidential farewell speech (1961), in which he spoke of the threat posed by the “growing and unwarranted power” and influence of the “military-industrial complex.” In the light of later developments his warning was chillingly prescient.

Going beyond the political and economic changes brought by the counter-cultural movements of expanded consciousness, our global human civilization may be involved in change processes at the level of planetary evolution. Processes of desertification, deforestation and the destruction of habitats have plunged planet Earth into what has been called a “sixth extinction.” At the same time, industrial civilization’s addiction to carbon fuels as energy source has brought the biosphere to the brink of catastrophic collapse through global over-heating.

Many individuals who have worked in a respectful and spiritual way with plant and fungal teachers, as well as working shamanically with animal spirit guides, have reported increasing communication from the spiritual realms of Nature in response to their divinatory questioning. Their messages and visions have to do, as one might expect, with practices that reduce our adverse impact on ecosystems, with the preservation of wilderness and the essential diversity of life, and with the development of sustainable, bioregional economies and communities.

There may be a profound and mysterious shift occurring in the balance of life on this planet. The dominant and dominating role of the human in relation to the natural world has brought about unparalleled ecological disaster, degradation of habitats and loss of species. Could it be that the profound consciousness-raising and compassion-deepening effects of the visionary plant brews and tinctures are signaling an evolutionary initiative coming from other, non-human, intelligences on this planet? Instead of the usual attitude of arrogant and exploitative superiority, those who have experienced mushrooms, peyote, ayahuasca and other entheogens are more likely to find themselves humbled and awed by the mysterious powers of nature, and strive to live in a simpler way that minimizes environmental harm and protects and celebrates the astonishing diversity and beauty of life.

Expansions of Collective Consciousness – The 1960s - I

2008-11-21T11:37:00.000-08:00

In the early sixties, the first astronauts and cosmonauts were launched into space on Earth-orbiting satellites, bringing back dramatic photographs of the whole Earth from space. Emblematic of the aspirations for space exploration, the television series Star Trek, with an alien as one of the main characters, began airing on NBC, and became a cult classic in American science fiction. In 1969 Neil Armstrong became the first man to walk on the Moon. Multiple close conjunctions and alignments of the planetary archetypes Uranus, Pluto and Saturn, as described in Richard Tarnas’s book Cosmos and Psyche, characterized the revolutionary, liberating and creative energies of this period.
As far as I know, the concept of consciousness expansion was first used by Tim Leary and his associates (of which I was one) at Harvard, to describe the effects of drugs like psilocybin and LSD, which were also later termed psychedelic (“mind-manifesting”). Leary and his associates began their research in the early 1960s, carrying out studies with “normal” people in supportive, naturalistic settings that were neither clinics nor laboratories. Participants in these studies could clearly confirm that these substances, although called hallucinogenic by some, did not induce hallucinations in the sense of seeing illusions of things objects that weren’t “really there.” Rather, they seemed to affect the actual psychophysiology of perception in such a way that one would see everything that was there, as ordinarily, and in addition much more: vibrating fields of subtle energies, or associated thought-forms and patterns that related to one’s personal history, or our relationships with other beings, human and non-human in the world around us.
The process of consciousness expansion induced (with the appropriately favorable set and setting) by these drugs, was in some ways analogous to the process of awakening: when we awaken from sleep, our perceptual world opens up and we emerge from the closed cocoon-like state of dream and sleep to become aware of our body, the bed we’re in, our sleep companion, the room, perhaps the garden outside the window, the greater world beyond – potentially all the way to the infinite cosmos. As we do, our sense of identity changes, we may remember the more limited dream world we had been in, and find that we have a greatly enhanced freedom of choice – freedom to think and see differently, to move and do things hitherto impossible.
Later studies with LSD or peyote in the treatment of alcoholism, or ibogaine or ayahuasca in the treatment of cocaine addiction, were based on the finding that experiences of expanded consciousness could be, depending on set and setting, associated with insight into one’s own character and deeper needs, and therefore lead to more healthy and positive choices. Addictions and compulsions, whether consumptive (drugs, alcohol, food) or behavioral (sex, gambling, shopping) can be understood as involving contracted states of consciousness, where attention and awareness is fixated on repetitively and ritualistically taking in something or doing something. The treatment of addictions and compulsions with psychedelic, consciousness-expanding drugs was (and is again now) one of the most promising applications of these substances in health care.
One of the studies carried out as part of the Harvard research, involved the “experimental mysticism” study of Walter Pahnke, in which theology students took psilocybin in a religious setting, and reported a high proportion of classic mystical experiences. This study of religious-mystical experience induced by psilocybin has recently been replicated in research at Princeton University. Mystical experiences involve a complete transcendence of the usual boundaries of time, space and the physical body and a sense of oneness with the divine and the cosmos – representing the ultimate expansion of consciousness. In my view, a second major application of psychedelics in the future is likely to be in the psychological preparation of people for dying, enlarging their awareness and sense of identity beyond the confines of the body and personal ego-mind.
Through the discoveries of R. Gordon Wasson and others in Mexico, and Michael Harner and others in South America, by the late 1950s and early 1960s, the psychological and medical researchers who first applied LSD and other consciousness expanding drugs in Western laboratories and psychiatric clinics, found themselves unexpectedly connected to ancient lineages of mystical, spiritual and shamanic teachings and practices. Both the shamanistic and the Asian yogic traditions are based on worldviews vastly expanded in comparison to the standard materialistic paradigm accepted in the West. In these worldviews there is a recognition of many levels of reality, many dimensions of being, equal in reality to the time-space-matter dimension, which is the only one recognized as real in Western science. Furthermore, these Asian and indigenous traditions also recognize the reality of beings, called “spirits” or “deities,” existing in these multiple dimensions, that have their own independent, autonomous existence, and are not merely symbols or archetypes in human consciousness.
Thus, the discovery of consciousness-expanding drugs in the West and the re-discovery of the role of consciousness-expanding plants and fungi in shamanistic societies, along with other modalities of exploring consciousness such as the shamanic drumming journey and yogic meditation practices, led to significant expansions of the Western materialist scientific worldview – at least in the thinking and writing of many individuals, if not the academic establishment and mainstream media.
One of the studies carried out as part of the Harvard research, involved the “experimental mysticism” study of Walter Pahnke, in which theology students took psilocybin in a religious setting, and reported a high proportion of classic mystical experiences. This study of religious-mystical experience induced by psilocybin has recently been replicated in research at Princeton University. Mystical experiences involve a complete transcendence of the usual boundaries of time, space and the physical body and a sense of oneness with the divine and the cosmos – representing the ultimate expansion of consciousness. In my view, a second major application of psychedelics in the future is likely to be in the psychological preparation of people for dying, enlarging their awareness and sense of identity beyond the confines of the body and personal ego-mind.
Through the discoveries of R. Gordon Wasson and others in Mexico, and Michael Harner and others in South America, by the late 1950s and early 1960s, the psychological and medical researchers who first applied LSD and other consciousness expanding drugs in Western laboratories and psychiatric clinics, found themselves unexpectedly connected to ancient lineages of mystical, spiritual and shamanic teachings and practices. Both the shamanistic and the Asian yogic traditions are based on worldviews vastly expanded in comparison to the standard materialistic paradigm accepted in the West. In these worldviews there is a recognition of many levels of reality, many dimensions of being, equal in reality to the time-space-matter dimension, which is the only one recognized as real in Western science. Furthermore, these Asian and indigenous traditions also recognize the reality of beings, called “spirits” or “deities,” existing in these multiple dimensions, that have their own independent, autonomous existence, and are not merely symbols or archetypes in human consciousness.
Thus, the discovery of consciousness-expanding drugs in the West and the re-discovery of the role of consciousness-expanding plants and fungi in shamanistic societies, along with other modalities of exploring consciousness such as the shamanic drumming journey and yogic meditation practices, led to significant expansions of the Western materialist scientific worldview – at least in the thinking and writing of many individuals, if not the academic establishment and mainstream media.

Expansions of Collective Consciousness – The 1950s

2008-11-20T11:37:00.000-08:00

In this decade, alarmed by advances of the Soviet space program, the United States established NASA (the National Aeronautics and Space Administration). Space exploration vastly expanded human knowledge, but also became an arena of Cold War competition, hand-in-hand with military armaments competition. The first birth control pill was introduced, making the management of contraception easier for millions, and opening up possibilities for exploring sexual experience beyond reproduction. Francis Crick and James Watson discovered the double helix of DNA, the fundamental molecular code of life. Crick later stated that ingestion of LSD sparked some of his creative insights. The polio vaccine, developed by microbiologist Jonas Salk, was declared safe for use. Just three years prior, polio had stricken over 50, 000 Americans. Louis Leakey found the oldest hominid skull in Olduvai Gorge in Tanzania, suggesting that human evolution began on the continent of Africa, not Asia as previously believed.
Key books emblematic of the spirit of the 1950s: Ernest Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea; James Baldwin’s Go Tell It On The Mountain; Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot; Arthur Miller's The Crucible; Vladimir Nabokov’s Lolita; Allen Ginsberg’s Beat classic Howl; Jack Kerouac's On the Road; Boris Pasternak’s Dr. Zhivago; John Kenneth Galbraith’s The Affluent Society.
In the psychedelics sub-culture, the therapeutic applications of consciousness-expanding drugs such as LSD were further developed, especially in the treatment of addictions and compulsions, which involve states of contracted, fixated consciousness. By the end of the decade there were about a half-dozen alcoholism treatment centers in North America, which used LSD at the core of the program. Another significant application area for psychedelic drugs was in facilitating the creative and artistic processes, as in the work of psychiatrist Oscar Janiger in Los Angeles, who collected art work produced or inspired in psychedelic states of mind. The eminent English philosopher and writer Aldous Huxley’s Doors of Perception and Heaven and Hell appear in 1950. In these books Huxley describes his experiences with mescaline as genuinely mystical, a “gratuitous grace,” thus lending his enormous authority for the serious consideration of the potential spiritual significance of psychedelics.
For the psychedelic culture, the decade of the 1950s involved the finding of its roots in the shamanic traditions. Robert Gordon Wasson, the conservative New England banker who virtually founded the field of ethnomycology (the relationship between fungi and culture), rediscovered the sacred mushroom ceremony of the ancient Aztecs, which had been kept alive in remote mountain hamlets in Oaxaca, Mexico. Wasson participated in a ceremony with the magic psilocybe mushroom, conducted by an illiterate curandera and visionary poetic genius named Maria Sabina. Wasson wrote an account of his experience, suggesting that a psychoactive plant-based visionary experience may be at the original core of every religion, publishing his account, with photographs, in LIFE magazine in 1957. His account in LIFE triggers a movement in which tens of thousands North Americans and Europeans start experimenting with hallucinogenic mushrooms, at first wild and then also cultivated. Also in the 1950s, two separate Brazilian rubber tappers start urban churches (Santo Daime and Uniao de Vegetal) in which the Amazonian shamanic entheogen ayahuasca is the central sacrament, initiating a grass-roots religious revitalization movement that now has thousands of adherents worldwide.
Thus, in this decade, the psychedelic subculture moved into seeing these substances as adjuncts to psychiatry in the treatment of addictions and other psychopathologies. Consciousness expansion, it was found, could facilitate creativity and artistic expression; and it could also facilitate mystical and spiritual visions, with the appropriate set and setting. A culture that discovered a powerful tool for exploring the mind and aiding in psychological problem solution, found its roots in the animistic, shamanic traditions of indigenous cultures, and recognized its highest expression in the spiritual mystical dimensions of human existence.

Expansions of Collective Consciousness – The 1940s

2008-11-19T11:35:00.000-08:00

I believe that the end of World War II and the explosions of two atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945 will be seen by future historians as the cusp of a new post-atomic era. It marked the beginnings of an awakening of global human identity, and the beginning of a series of cultural movements of expanding consciousness.
Already in the 1930s, and even earlier, there had been significant expansions of the Western worldview through the work of the cultural relativism school of anthropologists, including Franz Boas, Ruth Benedict and Margaret Mead. They argued that we needed to abandon the ethnocentric superiority stance of Western science and scholarship toward the so-called “primitives,” and instead adopt the method of “participant observation.” In 1947, the Dead Sea Scrolls, dating from the time of Christ, were discovered near Qumran in Palestine; they belonged to the ultra-orthodox Essenes, and shed new light on the historical origins of Christianity. Archaeologists too were enlarging our awareness of human origins: in 1942, Ice Age cave paintings, depicting shamanic animal themes, were discovered in Lascaux, France, and dated to 15, 000 years BP (before present), thus vastly extending and deepening our conception of human prehistory.
The increased frequency of UFO sightings in the 1940s attracted public and media attention, raising the astonishing possibility that Earth civilization may not be alone in the Universe. There were reports suggesting an alien craft crashed in the New Mexico desert in 1947; and much later disclosures that some alien technologies were reverse engineered by ultra secret government programs. Reports of UFO sightings, alien contacts and secret government military cover-up programs continued over the following decades, and clearly represent, for those who take them seriously, an expansion of our collective worldview.
After the war, as US veterans return home, the birth rate increased by about 20% – the “Baby Boom” generation was born. Millions of new parents read Benjamin Spock’s The Commonsense Book of Baby and Child Care, forever changing Americans' attitudes on child rearing, making it less controlling and more respectful – with far-reaching positive consequences for the health and well-being of families and communities.
In an astounding synchronicity, the discovery of LSD, in April 1943, occurred within months of the first controlled nuclear chain reaction, which lead directly to the development of the atomic bomb. Was this most profound mind-altering substance destined to provide some kind of psychological counterpart to the nuclear death weapons? When Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann discovered the consciousness expanding properties of the drug LSD, he compared the experience to his mystical experiences in Nature as a child. His discovery marks a convergence of medicinal chemistry with the ancient tradition of spiritual development known as alchemy, from which it had become disconnected in the break between science and religion in the 16th century. The first research into the possible applications of LSD was performed by the military and the CIA, as one would expect from a scientific discovery made during war time and in the immediate post-war climate of cold war confrontation. The first civilian applications were in promoting understanding of psychosis – the psychotomimetic model, and as an adjunct to psychoanalytic therapy, for loosening of neurotic defenses and bringing about insight – the psycholytic model.
In considering the significance of this birth of a modern consciousness transformation movement and its subsequent spread, we can note that Hofmann found LSD in the fungal realm -- he was working on ergot alkaloids, and ergot is a fungus that infests rye and other grains. Having identified, on his own person, the profound convergence between science and mysticism that this substance afforded, he published his findings in the scientific literature of his profession, thereby bringing this modern version of the philosopher’s stone into the light of public knowledge. Attended by many paradoxes and mysteries, it was as if he had stumbled upon a remedy for an illness of civilization, that we didn’t know we had.

Historical and pre-historical roots of war and domination

2008-11-18T11:34:00.000-08:00

No one can deny that the collective human manifestations of war and violence have horrifyingly long historical and pre-historical antecedents in the age-old, long-continuing struggles between tribes and societies for territory and economic survival. Many believe that all war is basically fought over resources: in historical times at first over land and animals; later, the extraction of valuable minerals and metals; still later, in the petroleum age, the biosphere’s stored carbon deposits. Contemporary indications are that water may turn out to be the most bitterly fought over resource in the era of global fever-heat and climate-change into which we are moving.
The cut-throat competition of the haves and the have-nots seems to be a deeply ingrained factor in the consciousness of the human race. Just how deeply ingrained is a question of intense debate among anthropologists, historians and archaeologists. Can we transform territorial and economic competition into peaceful and cooperative co-existence? Have we ever? Is there any evidence that peaceful societies have ever existed, which would give us hope that it can be done?
Here the work of archaeologist Marija Gimbutas on the matricentric, peaceful, goddess-worshipping cultures of Old Europe, in the 8th to 6th millennia BCE, is of great importance. Although her work is controversial because it goes far beyond the accepted academic paradigms in prehistory and archaeology, I am among those who find the massive accumulation of detailed evidence in her work to be convincing in a revelatory way. Around the 5th millennium BCE, the people she calls Kurgans, with their sky and warrior gods, their horses, chariots and weapons, started emigrating from their homeland in Central Asia, perhaps in reaction to spreading drought conditions (for which there is independent evidence). Gimbutas’ work shows, convincingly to my mind, that the Kurgan peoples’ practice of invading the rich farming communities along river valleys and taking what they wanted by force of arms, was not a form of culture that could have evolved naturally out of those peaceful, artistic cultures of Old Europe. It was imposed by violence and war at first, and later by forced assimilation and intermarriage. The historical outcome of this millennia-long transformation were the mixed cultures, in which there was a ruling class or caste of patriarchal warrior chiefs and kings, and a subordinate class of farmers and other workers. Some scholars have suggested that the ancient Indian civilization, with its rigid hereditary caste structure, was similarly a product of an layering of the dominant Aryans over the indigenous Dravidians.
In my book The Well of Remembrance I show how hybrid mythologies wove together the histories and religious cosmologies of the two kinds of cultures in Europe. In Nordic-Germanic mythology as related in The Edda, the deities of the Old Europeans, called Vanir, were all associated with the land, fertility, peace and wealth, including mineral wealth. The sky and warrior deities, called Aesir, were originally the protector gods of the nomadic herders, highly dependent on sun and weather changes. The Edda poems say that war came to mankind by extension from the competitive feuding between the Aesir and Vanir deities. These myths are religious stories that tell the histories of the peoples involved. The invaders and conquerors tell their justification stories – “they stole from us,” “they started the fighting,” “our supreme god told us do this.” The conquered also tell their stories of resistance and retaliation.
And then there are the myths of peace-making and reconciliation rituals – like the Mystery Celebration of Eleusis and the creation of the Mead of Inspiration. One of my favorites is the Iroquois story of how the legendary Peacemaker (who lived in what we call the Middle Ages), persuaded the savagely warring tribes of the Eastern woodlands, using magic words, to bury the hatchet and meet in council at the foot of the Great Tree of Peace. They formed a federation of seven tribes living peacefully together that inspired Franklin, Washington and the other founders of the United States. These federations have lasted, mostly though not completely peacefully, for several hundred years. Perhaps it is time for Americans to remember the unifying and peace-making myth that is also part of our national identity, besides the themes of freedom, wealth and power that seemingly loom so large in our public discourse.

War on Drugs, War on Terror

2008-11-18T11:30:00.000-08:00

For years, ever since Nixon started using the “war on drugs” language, in the late 1960s, I couldn’t fathom the stupendous irrationality and wastefulness of this policy. 1.5 million non-violent offenders are in prison in the US for the victim-less crime of drug possession (two thirds of all inmates). Numerous studies have been published over the years, demonstrating conclusively that (1) the overall levels of drug use have remained constant; (2) treatments, where available, do help addicts/abusers recover; (3) the so-called “war,” a $19 billion-a-year boondoggle, whether waged on producers (in Mexico, or Columbia, or SE Asia) and on street-level consumers in the US, has not made a dent in the volume of drug traffic. (For insightful and informative histories see Smoke and Mirrors by Dan Baum; or Drug Crazy by Mike Gray; or www.DrugWarFacts.org)
As an psychologist, educator and parent, I was particularly amused (when not horrified) by the absurdity of the PR campaigns to scare people off drug-use: remember the image of the egg breaking, and the authoritative voice intoning “this is your brain on drugs”? Amused, because I knew that drug-using young people of my acquaintance were not scared – rather they derided the heavy-handed and mendacious pseudo-science of these campaigns. Horrified, because if the apparent purpose of these scare-campaigns was so obviously failing, why were they continuing? What was the real agenda? Why wasn’t drug abuse being treated as a public-health matter, which it clearly is, instead of as a law enforcement issue, with the attendant monstrous social costs.
I came to some understanding and (at least partial) answer to these question in the aftermath of 9/11, and the launching of the “war on terror.” First of all, as Gore Vidal quipped , having a “war on terror” makes about as much sense as having a war on dandruff. Military metaphors have entered into discussions of the politics and economics of medicine – we have wars on cancer, on heart-disease and other abstractions. Second, why wasn’t the crime of 9/11 investigated like any other crime, with concerted international police and law enforcement agencies? Like many observers, I was struck by the parallels between the attacks of 9/11, and the burning of the German Reichstag parliament in 1933. Both events led to a precipitous increase in police state measures, increased power of an authoritarian, fascist-leaning political party, and the quashing of internal dissent. In the US, a pervasive climate of fear settled over the land – with pointlessly humiliating airport security measures, color-coded “terror alerts” and the like. At the same time, we got vastly increased mobilization of money and technology for wars of aggression and invasion against “enemy” countries, belonging to a supposed “axis of evil.”
Clearly, the events of 9/11 had been used, by the US government, to provide a casus belli, a pre-text or excuse to launch an aggressive war of invasion, most probably, world opinion seems to agree, to gain control of Middle-Eastern oil resources. To get a population to agree to go to war you have to have a plausible threat – this is a principle well understood by ambitious militaristic leaders from the most ancient times. You had to have a Pearl Harbor to motivate Americans to enter WWII. Historians have shown that Roosevelt knew of the coming attack, and used it. Leaving aside the complex and unresolved question of who actually carried out the 9/11 attacks, and to what extent governmental entities were complicit in it – there is no question about the use to which the attacks were put. They functioned to support and rationalize a fascististic control agenda as a matter of policy, by stimulating fear. What should have been a law enforcement matter became instead an open-ended “war” on terror, with stupendous profits and growth opportunities for the American military-industrial complex.
The parallels with the war on drugs are striking: both “wars” don’t actually work to diminish the targeted “enemy” – drug use and trafficking are not declining; and terrorist attacks by rogue gangs and states all over the world have increased. Polls show that Americans feel less secure since these wars have been launched. Both wars have led to spiraling cycles of violence and retaliation in many countries, as well as profound moral corruption on the part of military and police personnel (Think: decapitated bodies on the streets in Mexico; teenage suicide bombers in Iraq). Since these wars on ill-defined abstractions have no clear declaration of what a “victory” or even an “end” might be, they offer the perfect program for the unending accumulation of profits and power in the military-industrial-prison complex.
With the launching of the internal propaganda campaign to spread fear (of terrorism) throughout society, I finally understood the paradox of the ridiculous fear campaigns against drug use. These campaigns are not actually addressed to drug-using young people. From the perspective of the prison-industrial complex, it doesn’t matter if you turn your brain to scrambled eggs – in fact, it would provide more fodder for the system. These campaigns are directed at middle-of-the-road average Americans, possibly with teen-age sons or daughters –playing on their fears and getting them to vote for and support prohibition legislation and punishment. For example, when MDMA (a psychotherapy adjunct) was criminalized in the 1980s, it was not primarily doctors or pharmacologists who testified in congress, but police officials and government agents. (The same thing happened with marijuana in the 1920s, LSD in the 1960s, GHB in the 1990s … etc). Please note that I am not saying these drugs are all perfectly safe; but prohibition and “war” does not increase safety.
So what do we do about these endless wars? First, what would be a public-health centered approach to the problems of drug abuse and trafficking? To think of “legalize” or “prohibit” as the only options is stupidly simplistic. The key strategies here are decriminalization, regulation and education, with the overall goal of harm-reduction. Increasing numbers of European countries (e.g. Netherlands, Switzerland, Germany), recognizing that drug use is not going away any time soon, are adopting such strategies. Prior to the 1960s, Britain used to have a system where opiate addicts could register with the National Health Service, and obtain their needed supply – in one fell swoop eliminating a vast and hugely profitable criminal underclass, and minimizing the health and social harm from addicts stealing to support their habits.
In the US, there is precedent for such strategies in how we deal with nicotine and alcohol – two powerful psychoactive drugs, widely used recreationally, but with high potential for abuse and devastating for health when used addictively. The use of these drugs is not prohibited or criminal – instead they have hugely profitable worldwide industries involved in their production and distribution. Certain behaviors associated with these drugs are punishable by law (driving while drunk, providing the drugs to youth) – and no one finds that an infringement of their freedom. The regulation provides a safer framework for distribution. In the case of tobacco, massive PR campaigns and legal prosecutions in recent decades have reduced the incidence of smoking and thus the costs in health and lost productivity.
Treatment and recovery programs for alcoholism and addictions of all kinds should be made widely available to all who need them – the benefits to society would far exceed the costs. Alcoholics Anonymous is an excellent model for one such program. Treatments with consciousness-expanding substances such as ayahuasca, ibogaine, peyote or LSD have been used successfully to counter the consciousness-contracting addictions and compulsions.
A case could be made (and I for one would support it) that there should be more education and stricter regulation of the sale of tobacco and alcohol. Perhaps a kind of licensing exam could be devised prior to obtaining a permit to buy these products, demonstrating that the adult purchaser fully understands the health consequences of use. My former colleague in the Harvard University studies of psilocybin, the much-maligned Timothy Leary, testified in 1962 before a Congressional Committee chaired by Robert Kennedy, that using consciousness-altering drugs responsibly and safely requires a similar level of education and skillful preparation as piloting an aircraft, and should be similarly tested and licensed.
What to do about the “war on terror?” What is our present situation? During the eight nightmare years (now blessedly coming to a close) of the Bush neo-con presidency, America’s imperialist ambitions have been overtly supported and publicly promoted. (For the longer historical view read Howard Zinn’s powerful recent illustrated People’s History of the American Empire). “Exporting democracy” and “regime change” have becomes the smoke-screen cover phrases for military intervention to bring about forced subservience to American corporate interests. So-called “free trade” agreements are a smoke-screen covers for neo-colonialist exploitation agendas which seek to assure free movements of finance capital, with elimination of any controls in favor of justice for workers or protection of the environment. In the name of expanding markets and controlling access to key natural resources we’ve seen the blatant undermining of democratic practice, contempt for international law, restriction of civil liberties and the use of state terrorism to further foreign policy objectives.
It is possible that the shocks to the body politic of the attacks of 9/11 will ultimately have the effect of strengthening the progressive momentum within civil society of the US and elsewhere. There is a global movement of resistance to wars of aggression and desire for peace; increasing commitment to racial and ethnic equality; increasing commitment to environmental preservation and conservation; support and protection of equal rights for women and children; recognizing the normality of diversity of sexual orientations; the flourishing of an incredibly rich global culture in the areas of the arts, communications, films, music and lifestyles. We could say also that the heightened knowledge we have of our extra-planetary environment, with space-faring scientific missions, and of our evolutionary cosmology, represents an enormous expansion of collective consciousness.
Perhaps the time has come when we will be able to live up to the founding declaration of the United Nations in 1945 – “to free mankind for ever from the scourge of war.” Perhaps we will manage to fully establish non-violence as the foundational principle of resolving our differences, following the teachings of Martin Luther King, the Dalai Lama, Mahatma Gandhi in the 20th century, and many other spiritual leaders throughout history, including Jesus of Nazareth. If and when this occurs, I believe it will make it possible for the human civilization on Earth to enter consciously into the evolving network of civilizations in our galaxy and beyond.

Barack Obama’s Spiritual Values

2008-11-17T11:33:00.000-08:00

A revealing interview with Obama, on his religious beliefs and values, has come to light – that to my mind greatly enhances the significance of his ascent to the most powerful leadership position in the world. The interview took place in March 2004, when Obama had just won the Democratic nomination for the US Senate seat that he eventually won. It was conducted by Cathleen Falsani and published in the Chicago Sun-Times. It’s available, in a lightly edited version, at http://www.WantToKnow.info/008/obama_religious_beliefs_views.
Obama speaks of being rooted in Christian faith and his belief “that there are many paths to the same place, and that there is a higher power, that we are connected as a people. There are values that transcend race or culture that move us forward, and there's an obligation for all of us individually as well as collectively to take responsibility to make those values lived.” He speaks of the influence of his mother, a Christian but “not a church lady,” who married an Indonesian who wasn’t a practicing Muslim, and going to Catholic school in a Muslim country. “My mother was a deeply spiritual person. She would spend a lot of time talking about values and give me books about the world's religions, and talk to me about them. And I think always, her view was that underlying these religions were a common set of beliefs about how you treat other people and how you aspire to act not just for yourself, but also for the greater good.”
Obama speaks in the interview about how the community organizing work that he did in Chicago in the mid-1980s was primarily inspired by the Civil Rights movement. “The Civil Rights movement has a powerful hold on me. It’s a point in time where I think heaven and earth meet. Because it’s a moment in which a collective faith transforms everything. So when I read Gandhi or I read King or I read certain passages of Abraham Lincoln and I think about those times where people’s values are tested, those inspire me.” Gandhi, King and Lincoln are his three great role models that he returns to several times in the interview.
His commitment to Christianity is inclusive and definitely not fundamentalist: “I’m a big believer in tolerance…religion at its best comes with a big dose of doubt. … as somebody who’s now in the public realm and is a student of what brings people together and what drives them apart – there’s an enormous amount of damage done around the world in the name of religion and certainty.” On the positive side of religiousness, he speaks of how he came to appreciate “the power of the historic black church, and the power of that church to give people courage against great odds. And it moved me deeply.”
In a beautifully nuanced statement on the role of religious faith in politics and public life, Obama affirms that “Alongside my own deep personal faith, I am a follower, as well, of our civic religion. I am a big believer in the separation of church and state. I am a big believer in our constitutional structure. I mean, I'm a law professor at the University of Chicago teaching constitutional law. I am a great admirer of our founding charter, and its resolve to prevent theocracies from forming, and its resolve to prevent disruptive strains of fundamentalism from taking root in this country.” 
In response to the interviewers question about prayer, Obama says “I have an ongoing conversation with God. Throughout the day I’m constantly asking myself questions about what I’m doing, why I’m doing it. …The biggest challenge, I think, is always maintaining your moral compass. Those are the conversations I’m having internally. I’m measuring my actions against that inner voice… it tells me where I think I’m on track and where I’m off track.” The process of inner questioning that Obama describes is what I’ve been calling a simple direct form of divination: to speak of “asking myself” implies the belief that there is something or someone within me that knows more than I do, some higher, wiser or divine source of wisdom or intuition.
Later, he returns again to this theme, that in the time pressures of public life, instead of setting separate time periods for prayer or meditation, “it’s much more sort of as I’m going through the day trying to take a moment here and a moment there to take stock. Why am I here, how does this connect with a larger sense of purpose?” So meditation “on the run,” so to speak, and the constant conversation with your inner spiritual and moral intelligence – this is his practice. Gandhi, King and Lincoln are his guides. We are fortunate indeed to have elected this man President – he has the leadership qualities needed in this time of catastrophic change.

Ayahuasca – Vine of Spirits II

2008-11-16T11:28:00.000-08:00

If we inquire into the basic model of reality that is revealed and implied by the visions and experiences of Westerners with ayahuasca (as well as other plant entheogens), we find they have developed (often implicitly) a worldview radically different from the prevailing Western paradigm of scientific modernism. A recognition of the spiritual essences inherent in nature is basic to the worldview of indigenous peoples, as it was for our own ancestors in pre-industrial societies. By contrast, our modern materialist worldview, obsessively focused on technological progress and on the control and exploitation of what are arrogantly called "natural resources", has become more or less completely dissociated from such a spiritual awareness of nature.
What does it mean that people in large numbers are now returning to these ancient traditions of spiritual and healing practice in our world of multinational industrial corporations, of computers and electronic networks?
There exists a vast gulf in common understanding between what we regard as sacred and what we regard as natural. And yet, out of the experiences of millions of individuals in the Western world with visionary plant sacraments, as well as other shamanic practices, we are seeing the re-emergence of the ancient integrative worldview in which all of life is a vast interdependent web of relationships that needs to be carefully protected and preserved. It is tempting to speculate that the introduction of powerful mind-expanding agents, both drug and plant, into the culture, might somehow relate, at some deeper cosmic-karmic level, to the mounting crisis in world civilization.
The rituals of the Brazilian ayahuasca churches, such as the Santo Daime and the Uniao de Vegetal, express a respectful and spiritual attitude toward the use of the visionary plant medicines, and a strong feeling of connection to their indigenous roots in shamanic healing practices. These groups, which along with the Native American Church (with peyote) and the African Bwiti cult (with iboga), can be considered genuine religious revitalization movements. During the 1980s and 90s, the ayahuasca-using churches spread from Brazil to centers in North America and Europe, and are attracting thousands of people. The US branch of the UDV in New Mexico won the legal right to use its hoasca sacrament in a case decided by the Supreme Court in 2004. On the face of it, ayahuasca, with its powerful emetic action and sometimes shattering self-revelations, would seem to be an unlikely candidate for a religious sacrament. But it has become just that and has acquired a near-legendary reputation for its healing and empowering attributes. I have myself seen remarkable transformations of personality in people who have become involved in one or another of these churches.
What is happening here? Could these churches become widely popular religions in the 21st century? Two thousand years ago, three monotheistic religions arose in the desert borderlands of the Middle East. As the ecologist Paul Shepard has argued the often harsh and unforgiving environment may have contributed to the idealization of transcendence found in monotheism, as well to its "authoritarian, masculinist and ascetic ideology" that has come to dominate the world stage. In the Brazilian hoasca churches, as well as the Amazonian shamanic traditions from which they originally, though indirectly, derived, the underlying ethos and imagery is very different. Here the essential imagery is of flowing waters and growing plants. The river flows, the inebriating vision-drink flows, the purging vomit flows, the feelings of joy and sadness flow; plant and animal life grows in the luxuriant green abundance of the richest rainforest on Earth. The ultimate theology of these churches is very different. There are hymns, prayers and invocations of Biblical figures, but also the spirits of the forest and the sea, the sun, moon and stars, and various indigenous deities. This is polytheistic, animistic nature religion, bringing about a re-unification of the sacred and the natural.
* * *
An even more radical set of questions arises from the perspective of evolutionary and ecological biology. Why do these plants carry psychoactive tryptamines and other chemicals that are capable of producing profound consciousness-transforming perceptions in human beings, opening them up to the deepest mysteries of life and death? On one level this confirms the basic unity of all life on Earth, the oneness of the molecular genetic code. But the standard Darwinian view is that nothing evolves by chance – natural selection works to favor those structures and capabilities that are adaptive in some way. So how is it adaptive for plants to produce alkaloids that seemingly serve no other particular function, and yet provide profound healing or insight in the human? Some kind of strange symbiosis seems to be going on.
So with these "plant teachers", as ayahuasqueros call them, there must also be an exchange. We humans get knowledge, insight, psychic or physical healing from the plant teachers. In exchange, we should be giving something back. Individuals who have found themselves at this juncture may at first not know how or what to give back. If they then ask the plant teachers, or ask themselves, how do we give back, how do we repay what appears to be a gift of astounding generosity from the plant teachers, the answers are remarkably consistent. They have to do, as one might expect, with practices that reduce our adverse impact on the ecosystems, and with the preservation of wilderness and the essential diversity of life. That's why so many people who have experienced ayahuasca (as well as other etheogens, and other shamanic practices), become deeply involved in ecological preservation and sustainability projects, as well as in efforts to preserve the culture of indigenous peoples.
There may be a profound and mysterious shift occurring in the balance of life on this planet. The dominant and dominating role of the human in relation to the natural world has brought about unparalleled ecological disaster, degradation of habitats and loss of species. Could it be that the profound consciousness-raising and compassion-deepening effects of the visionary plant brews and tinctures are signaling an evolutionary initiative coming from other, non-human, intelligences on this planet? Those who have experienced ayahuasca and other entheogens are more likely to find themselves humbled and awed by the mysterious powers of nature, and strive to live in a simpler way that minimizes environmental harm and celebrates the astonishing diversity and beauty of life. The following poem came out of an ayahuasca experience I had in Manaus, Brazil a couple of years ago.

Omens for Our Planetary Future

For one hundred years now wise teachers and elders have urged,
“We must bring together the spirituality of the East,
With the energy and material mastery of the West.”

The Tibetan Oracle said: “When the iron horse flies,
The dharma will come to the Land of the Red Man.”
This prophecy has come to pass.

And behold, a new vision arises, for a new century:
The people of the Northern nations
Will relate with respect and justice,
Not violence and greed,
To the uncounted millions of the Southern countries,
And the land, the forests and riches of the earth.

The prophet seers of the Incas say:
“The Condor of the South and Eagle of the North
Will fly together, in freedom.”

The visionary serpent vine says:
“The Bear and the Wolf of the North,
And the Jaguar and Lion of the South
Will track together and hunt together,
For vibrant life and healing knowledge.

The great Serpent of the Amazon forest,
The wise Turtle of the California desert,
Will share their ancient secrets again,
With humans humble enough to want to learn
To live in balance with one another,
And with the Earth, Great Goddess Mother of All the Living,
Embracing and nourishing all her children.

Ayahuasca – The Vine of Spirits I

2008-11-15T11:26:00.000-08:00

Ayahuasca is an hallucinogenic Amazonian plant concoction, that has been used by native Indian and mestizo shamans in South America for healing and divination for hundreds, perhaps thousands of years. Western trained physicians and psychologists have acknowledged that psychedelic or entheogenic substances like ayahuasca can afford access to non-ordinary, spiritual or transpersonal dimensions of consciousness. In the Brazilian churches using ayahuasca, which by now have thousands of followers, including in North America and Europe, we have seen the development of an authentic folk religious movement that incorporate the hallucinogenic plant extract as a sacrament - developing both syncretic and highly original forms of religious ceremony.
In the context of Amazonian traditional healing practice the drinking of ayahuasca, combined with a highly restrictive diet, is something like a master cure for all illnesses, both physical and psychological. Not that the medicine itself is a panacea, but that it functions as a guide or teacher or instrument for the healer, pointing him or her to other herbs that might be needed, allowing him to counteract sorcery or extract poisonous infections. Clearly such practices presume a completely different understanding of illness and medicine than what we are accustomed to in the West.
Even from the point of view of Western medicine and psychotherapy it is clear from the literature that remarkable physical healings and resolutions of psychological difficulties can occur with this medicine. There have been ancedotal accounts of the complete remission of some cancers after one or two sessions with ayahuasca. Since these occurred in the context of traditional healing ceremonies, it is impossible to separate out the pharmacological effect from the psychosocial and shamanic elements.
On the psychological level also, there is intriguing evidence of positive therapeutic changes being induced by the ritualistic ingestion of ayahuasca. The research with the Brazilian hoasca church known as UDV showed that long-term users of hoasca reported making positive changes in their behavior (less drinking and drug use, more responsibility) as a result of their participation in the ceremonies. Many of the stories recounted in my book on ayahuasca – Sacred Vine of Spirits - and elsewhere, support the notion that under the influence of ayahuasca people are able to see and understand themselves better, to think more clearly about their relationships, the nature of the cosmos and their own place in it.
The combination of physical and psychic purging that occurs quite regularly with ayahuasca has lead me and others to suggest that potentially the most useful application of this medicine in Western society may be in the treatment of addiction and alcoholism. The Brazilian hoasca project with long-term members of the UDV reported a marked decline in alcoholism and drug addiction among church members. Similarly, among members of the peyote-using Native American Church in the United States, it has regularly been reported there is a significant decline in the alcoholism that is otherwise so devastating to the Native American population. Looking back at the history of Western research with psychedelic drugs, the most widespread therapeutic applications of LSD was found in the treatment of alcoholism. At one point during the late 1960s, there were about five or six hospitals in North America with an LSD alcoholism treatment program; the efficacy rate was on average about comparable to other forms of treatment.
Since the psychedelic (entheogenic, hallucinogenic) drugs and plants as consciousness-expanding, heightening awareness and providing self-insight, they are the logical and natural antidotes to the consciousness-contracting, fixating, narcotizing effect of addictive drugs and alcohol. And because of the purging effect (found in peyote and ayahuasca) there is reason to believe that such plant combined emetic-hallucinogens may be even more effective in treating alcoholism and addiction than LSD. The addict needs to purge not only the toxic residues of alcohol and other drugs from their system, but also the mental, emotional and perceptual reaction-patterns and habits. I believe there is a strong possibility that an alcoholism and addiction treatment program using ayahuasca in the context of a holistic approach that also uses nutrition, exercise, and psychospiritual group therapy can be established some time in the next ten years; if not in the United States, then perhaps in Mexico or Canada, where anti-drug political hysteria is less intense.
In the Amazonian shamanistic cultures, there is a deep association between the ayahuasca medicine and the serpents. Visions of giant or multiple serpents, in and around the body, as well as in the environment, are often reported – and portrayed in the tribal art. The shamans say that the power and knowledge to heal comes through the vine, but comes from the serpent – the serpent is the mother of ayahuasca. Jeremy Narby, in his fascinating book The Cosmic Serpent has made a powerful case for the idea that when the shaman-healers take ayahuasca, their perceptions are attuned to the cellular and molecular level, like a virtual electron microscope, where they can see the double helix forms of DNA – the basic evolutionary code of all life on Earth, coiled into the nucleus of every one of the trillions of cells of our body. The following poem describes a vision I was shown when I participated in an ayahuasca ceremony in Manaus, Brazil, a few years ago.

Ayahuasca Serpent Vision

I pray to the serpent vine of visions:
Help me heal the ancient wounds.
Slowly, the glittering snakes glide and slide,
Insinuating intimately into my deepest roots.
I’m inside the Serpent Mother now,
Coiling, writhing, turning, squirming,
Our bodies merged – one skin, one spine.

The space within expands to spaciousness,
Our little band of travellers on the spirit boat,
Are in the house, on the river, in the snake,
Sailing serenely along the darkening stream.

The Great Serpent’s body expands once more,
Encompassing now the River of Time,
The barque of human civilizations:
Whole villages & towns, I see, temples & palaces,
Pyramids & towers, kingdoms & nations:
Egypt, Rome, India, America,
Carried by the currents of collective fate,
Through the millenia, one great stream, one great Snake.

Now – continents & oceans, cloud montains, I see,
Vast deserts, rain forests, river deltas,
Are only the shimmering body of Diamond Rainbow Serpent,
Mother of All Organic Life on Earth.

And now – the great Earth with all her sibling planets,
Companion worlds, Moon, Mercury and Mars,
Spinning and whirling in stately serpentine orbits,
Around Primordial Mother-Father Sun.

The barque of hundreds of millions of years sails on,
Great Cosmic Star Sun Serpent,
Wheeling majestically around the Milky Way
Galactic Center, Dark Source of All Radiance.

The Gonzo Journalist

2008-11-14T10:54:00.000-08:00

Alex Gibney’s film Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson is about a very different kind of man and journalist, one who tested the edges of human possibilities, while staging a spectacular career critiquing the mind-control matrix of the political power structure. The Gonzo journalist is the same character that Native American myth calls the Trickster or Coyte – telling stories of his misadventures and “bad boy” capers, designed to shock you ouf of your accustomed reality framework and assumptions. In the book Ram Dass and I have just written about our Harvard and Millbrook psychedelic explorations with Tim Leary, we describe how our project of careful consciousness exploration with mind-expanding drugs, in a quiet setting, differed from the Ken Kesey and Merry Prankster approach of going as far-out as possible on a creative limb, with huge doses of a variety of hallucinogens and high-volume rock music. “The drugs were beginning to come on as we drove across the desert…” writes Thompson in his insanely brilliant book (made into a film with Johnny Depp), Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, describing the escapade that made him famous, where his acid-addled brain caused him to see the hotel lobby filled with two-legged reptiles sitting at their cocktail tables. I’m not making invidious comparisons here, although this approach to working with psychedelics would not be my chosen way. He took what I would consider reckless amounts, in chaotic settings, but he did not use the drugs to surreptitiously brainwash other people.
Thompson’s infatuation with guns and shooting is also alien to my nature, although as the film makes clear in the interviews with his wives, friends and admirers, he never used them to hurt or threaten others, and in general seemed to limit his violence to verbal abuse. In his writings on the 1968 and 1972 presidential campaigns he used his writings like a rapier to ferociously and hilariously skewer the pretentiousness of the candidates he detested (Edmund Muskie, Hubert Humphrey, Richard Nixon) and to support those he admired (Jimmy Carter, George McGovern). I believe that Thompson’s bravoura persona masked a sensitive soul who reacted keenly to the injustices and inequalities of American society. When he came home from reporting on the 1968 Demcratic convention in Chicago, where Mayor Daley’s police clubbed demonstrators with bloody brutality, Thompson’s wife Sandi says it was the only time she saw him weep – tears were streaming down his face. Unlike the French aerialist Philippe Petit, the Gonzo journalist did not retire gracefully: the contradictions he found in himself and in his country seemed to finally get to him, and he shot himself at age 67. I can’t help but admire his high-spirited and zany contribution to our culture.

The Man on a Wire

2008-11-13T10:52:00.000-08:00

Man on a Wire is the story of Philippe Petit, the French aerialist who in 1974, when the World Trade Center towers had just been constructed, tricked his way into the building with his accomplices and equipment, strung a wire between the two towers, and then walked or rather danced back and forth in thin air for about an hour, 1350 feet above the ground, while spectators below gaped in amazement, including the police who, had to wait(!) to arrest him for trespassing. They knew they were breaking the law, but they were not robbing or hurting anyone – “so, it’s wonderful,” as one of Petit’s friends says; but they had to plan the whole “coup” (as Petit calls it) as if it were a bank heist, complete with disguises, and waiting for hours in a cramped space for the night-watchman to leave the top floor. It’s an astonishing synchronicity that now, seven years after the debacle of 9/11, when a growing chorus of voices is questioning the official story of the Towers’ destruction and pointing to much more sinister agents and motives behind the attack (and hats-off to James Marsh, the filmmaker, for not even mentioning that story) we see the Towers again, in their pristine architectural glory. And there is the 25-year old sky-dancer with the lithe body of a cat and the concentration of a sphinx, who takes a few steps into the air, pauses, smiles and waves with one hand, and then lies down on the wire – so you see his form, tiny from below, like a dragon-fly high up in the mist swirling between the towers. It was an act of astonishing beauty and playful daring, inspiring all who saw it then (and now, in retrospect) to expand their sense of human possibilities. “Why did you do it?” the journalists crowding around him asked Petit, as he was being driven off to jail (he was booked and released), unable to fathom that here was an action with no ulterior financial motive. “There are no whys” he replies. Petit, now in his sixties, is the main narrator of the film, and is charmingly voluble in describing the years and months of preparation and elaborate planning. There is a scene where he and his friends are confronting the enormous technical challenges and the emotional charge between them (one of them says “I don’t want to be involved in something where he’s going to end up dead”), “It was impossible” Petit says, “so we had to do it.”
Next week: Gonzo – The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson