Sunday, 26 September 2010
Wake Up!
There are some who influence our lives as models fit for emulation. Others simply burn brightly, dazzling and disturbing briefly with their incandescence, before leaving this theatre of life exhausted, the light extinguished seemingly before its proper time.
Into the latter category steps one-time poet and singer with the Doors, Jim Morrison. Some portray him as the great rock god, the lizard king, heir to the mantle of Rimbaud; others as a drunken, debauched caricature of rock music excess. Both are probably in their way correct. But it is in celebration of the lizard king that we come today.....
Jim Morrison's life is sometimes depicted as a tragedy. From first flickerings of success to death in a bathtub in Paris in six short years. I am inclined to read things differently, however. There is a certain 'rightness' about the trajectory of that meteoric life: every note, every one-night stand, every confrontation, each and every shot of whisky, have their place in a story that could be nothing else but short and sharp. It is as if the gods took as a vessel for communication a particular human life and, once done, discarded it by the wayside. It could be no other way. There is only so much daemonic frenzy a human soul can bear and pour forth before it burns out. The same goes for those others who came incandescent, before the fire was extinguished at an early age: Mozart and Schubert; Raphael and Giorgione; Shelley and Keats. Morrison joins their noble ranks. This is the Romantic reading, at least.
At a certain point in his onstage career, Jim Morrison took to berating the audience at the beginning of a concert:'Wake up!' he would yell into the midst of the collective candyfloss. And, while forcing people to awake from their psychic slumbers cannot be done, there's no harm in politely suggesting that maybe, just maybe, they are wasting away in the unwitting throes of a deep unconscious sleep.....
Forty years on, and the collective somnolence continues, now aided and abetted by all manner of socially-sanctioned tranquilisers, the like of which make diazepam seem like a pick-me-up tonic. Today's dumbers and downers come in the form of new technologies, all of which perform the major function of keeping us asleep and blocking the mental pathways into those most dangerous of territories, personal introspection and self knowledge. Take the texting and mobile phone culture: designed to keep the user incessantly occupied, hopping, skipping, and jumping, but always on the surface of things. Info bytes:'I'm on the train.' Never enquiry about the condition of the soul. How many people cannot venture beyond the front door without their constant companion clutched hard in their hand? Next up: multi-channel television and computers. So much information, all there at the push of a key or a button. Total convenience, instant distraction. Ten minutes to spare: time to skim a few dozen channels, check the sports results, the latest celebrity news. Anything to escape that most dangerous and frightening of all things - stopping, being still and experiencing what is really going on. I know: it happens to me. Nowadays, I need to make far more effort to stay still, do nothing, just 'be', than fifteen years ago. I am not immune to the grasshopper mentality which has infected the whole of western 'civilisation' with a collective attention deficit disorder.
And what about digital cameras and home video? The ease and cheapness of digital photography mean that it is now possible to compile a full record of a holiday for family and friends without actually experiencing a place at all! Notice how people no longer stop to directly sense their surroundings. They simply get hold of the camera and click. The non-experienced present exists merely as a potential record of the past.
All of this serves to create a fast-moving, surface-defined mentality that takes itself as the norm so much that it does not even consider slowing down as a possibility. And this mentality of zappy stimulated dissatisfaction generated by full deployment of these modern technologies then feeds into the apotheosis of Control System strategies....... shopping.
Walk into the indoor shopping mall, and the narcosis is complete. Even those who normally go about life with a sense of vital purpose soon acquire the glazed eyes, the slow, soporific way of moving, the massaged brain, the softly-softly idiocy that are prerequisites for hardcore shopping. The population finally reduced to the narcoleptic dream state in order to fulfil its major functions at the service of the Control System: spend/consume and shut up.
While it may be untenable to conceive of this unfolding of modern technologies as part of an active conspiracy, still they are tools and devices that have the full encouragement of our current Control System and its emissaries. Do not think that a technology is neutral. If in doubt, imagine the opposite. A technology that enables people to reflect, slow down in order to become more aware, to go deeper into themselves and the world around them. As a result, they become more interested in matters of spirit and soul, less enthralled by Saturday afternoon shopping and the acquisition of consumer goods. Do we imagine dominator culture happily tolerating such a thing? Actually, such a technology does exist. It was discovered in the 1940s, developed in the 1950s, and popularised in the 1960s. It is called LSD. See what the Control System thinks of that.
The mass sleep of modern uncivilisation would bring no pleasure to Jim Morrison's soul (or souls: he toyed with the notion of being entered as a boy by the several souls of Native American Indians he saw newly dead in a road accident. 'Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding/ Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind'). Wake up!
Into the latter category steps one-time poet and singer with the Doors, Jim Morrison. Some portray him as the great rock god, the lizard king, heir to the mantle of Rimbaud; others as a drunken, debauched caricature of rock music excess. Both are probably in their way correct. But it is in celebration of the lizard king that we come today.....
Jim Morrison's life is sometimes depicted as a tragedy. From first flickerings of success to death in a bathtub in Paris in six short years. I am inclined to read things differently, however. There is a certain 'rightness' about the trajectory of that meteoric life: every note, every one-night stand, every confrontation, each and every shot of whisky, have their place in a story that could be nothing else but short and sharp. It is as if the gods took as a vessel for communication a particular human life and, once done, discarded it by the wayside. It could be no other way. There is only so much daemonic frenzy a human soul can bear and pour forth before it burns out. The same goes for those others who came incandescent, before the fire was extinguished at an early age: Mozart and Schubert; Raphael and Giorgione; Shelley and Keats. Morrison joins their noble ranks. This is the Romantic reading, at least.
At a certain point in his onstage career, Jim Morrison took to berating the audience at the beginning of a concert:'Wake up!' he would yell into the midst of the collective candyfloss. And, while forcing people to awake from their psychic slumbers cannot be done, there's no harm in politely suggesting that maybe, just maybe, they are wasting away in the unwitting throes of a deep unconscious sleep.....
Forty years on, and the collective somnolence continues, now aided and abetted by all manner of socially-sanctioned tranquilisers, the like of which make diazepam seem like a pick-me-up tonic. Today's dumbers and downers come in the form of new technologies, all of which perform the major function of keeping us asleep and blocking the mental pathways into those most dangerous of territories, personal introspection and self knowledge. Take the texting and mobile phone culture: designed to keep the user incessantly occupied, hopping, skipping, and jumping, but always on the surface of things. Info bytes:'I'm on the train.' Never enquiry about the condition of the soul. How many people cannot venture beyond the front door without their constant companion clutched hard in their hand? Next up: multi-channel television and computers. So much information, all there at the push of a key or a button. Total convenience, instant distraction. Ten minutes to spare: time to skim a few dozen channels, check the sports results, the latest celebrity news. Anything to escape that most dangerous and frightening of all things - stopping, being still and experiencing what is really going on. I know: it happens to me. Nowadays, I need to make far more effort to stay still, do nothing, just 'be', than fifteen years ago. I am not immune to the grasshopper mentality which has infected the whole of western 'civilisation' with a collective attention deficit disorder.
And what about digital cameras and home video? The ease and cheapness of digital photography mean that it is now possible to compile a full record of a holiday for family and friends without actually experiencing a place at all! Notice how people no longer stop to directly sense their surroundings. They simply get hold of the camera and click. The non-experienced present exists merely as a potential record of the past.
All of this serves to create a fast-moving, surface-defined mentality that takes itself as the norm so much that it does not even consider slowing down as a possibility. And this mentality of zappy stimulated dissatisfaction generated by full deployment of these modern technologies then feeds into the apotheosis of Control System strategies....... shopping.
Walk into the indoor shopping mall, and the narcosis is complete. Even those who normally go about life with a sense of vital purpose soon acquire the glazed eyes, the slow, soporific way of moving, the massaged brain, the softly-softly idiocy that are prerequisites for hardcore shopping. The population finally reduced to the narcoleptic dream state in order to fulfil its major functions at the service of the Control System: spend/consume and shut up.
While it may be untenable to conceive of this unfolding of modern technologies as part of an active conspiracy, still they are tools and devices that have the full encouragement of our current Control System and its emissaries. Do not think that a technology is neutral. If in doubt, imagine the opposite. A technology that enables people to reflect, slow down in order to become more aware, to go deeper into themselves and the world around them. As a result, they become more interested in matters of spirit and soul, less enthralled by Saturday afternoon shopping and the acquisition of consumer goods. Do we imagine dominator culture happily tolerating such a thing? Actually, such a technology does exist. It was discovered in the 1940s, developed in the 1950s, and popularised in the 1960s. It is called LSD. See what the Control System thinks of that.
The mass sleep of modern uncivilisation would bring no pleasure to Jim Morrison's soul (or souls: he toyed with the notion of being entered as a boy by the several souls of Native American Indians he saw newly dead in a road accident. 'Indians scattered on dawn's highway bleeding/ Ghosts crowd the young child's fragile eggshell mind'). Wake up!
Thursday, 9 September 2010
Over the Rainbow: the 2nd ARC Convention
I had vowed not to go to the 2nd ARC Convention. Once more the venue was Bath, far away. Being such a busy and obviously important person, I didn't have the time for such a luxury, and I didn't have the money either. Then I saw the line-up of speakers, and changed my mind.....
ARC - Alternative Research Community - is the brainchild (or soulchild, more like) of the seemingly indefatigable and infinitely good-humoured Karen Sawyer. One of Karen's many remarkable qualities, fully in evidence over the weekend, is that nothing appears to faze her. The mikes don't work: no problem. Computers crash: a mild expletive before she's up there on the stage joking, helping to sort things out. Karen actually introduces the weekend in front of a large picture of Sheela Na Gig, ancient representation of the eternal feminine, and a portal into another reality, the deeper reality of the event to come. Then she starts to sing/chant primordial sounds, and a communal shift in consciousness seems to take place. It is not so much HER singing, as allowing herself to be the vehicle for an archetypal dimension to make itself known through her. The atmosphere is electric; the weekend has been blessed by something sacred.
The first main speaker on Saturday morning is Michael Dunning. He has come to talk to us about, er...... a tree. Now, while I derive a good deal of personal sustenance from the non-human world - a skim through this blog will make as much obvious -, I harbour doubts as to whether he can maintain the interest of all of us for ninety minutes by talking about his relationship to a tree. The arboreal manifestation in question is the yew, a magnificent plant that reaches both upwards into the sky and downwards deep into the earth. Michael relates the rich mythology connected to the yew, and his own healing from serious illness through lying for long periods beneath its mighty boughs. I am entranced.
Next up is Peter Taylor. I am extremely grateful to Peter for his presentation at the previous convention. Alarm bells had been ringing for some time, as I witnessed weird things in the so-called green movement: lies, half-truths, support for big business destroying the natural world in the name of saving the planet, with zero respect for the sacred nature of things. Then I heard Peter speak on the 'corporatisation of the environmental movement', and I realised that my own instincts had been correct: much that passes itself as 'green' is a sham and a scam, absorbed into the dominator culture mainstream. This time round, Peter ends by talking about his own spiritual work, transforming energy and consciousness through the chakras, starting at the base and moving upwards. His message seems to be 'no transformation of self, no real change of the world.' He appears invigorated by this part of his presentation. I recommend finding out more about Peter's work on climate and the non-greens on the holistic channel and on Red Ice.
Afternoon arrives; enter Michael Cremo. The 'alternative research' giving its name to the convention is that which the 'information filter' imposed by mainstream dominator culture deems to be unfit for general consumption. This is work, often involving years of painstaking investigation, that does not sit comfortably with the belief and value systems that form the basis of our current non-civilisation. Michael's 'forbidden archaeology' is a classic case, calling into question as it does the orthodox Darwinian view of human origins. Michael's claim is that fully human remains have been discovered that vastly predate those normally recognised as being the earliest, findings that have been rubbished and discarded purely because they do not conform with the conventional belief system.
By the time Kenn Thomas takes centre stage to take us through the incredible amount of detailed investigation that goes into conspiracy theories, an imbalance has already occurred in the energetics of my chakra system, with a concentration of energy in the upper chakras (experienced less esoterically as a brain being immersed in a deep fryer). I am unable to follow clearly, but two vignettes leave their imprint. Firstly, there is a hilarious clip of Timothy Leary being 'interviewed' by a right-wing madman on American television. Then, as part of Kenn's tribute to recently deceased Jerry E. Smith, we see Jerry in full flow, describing the two main groups who wield power over our modern culture. There are the Banksters, who we are all familiar with; and there are the Water Melons, referred to on Palegreenvortex variously as eco-fascists and green Stalinists. Water Melons: green on the outside, red on the inside. Brilliant. And, while the Banksters and Water Melons appear superficially to be at odds with each other, they are actually part of one and the same system.
While those of infinite energy dance the night away to Karen Sawyer and Dirty Dog, I retire early to my room, to absorb the day's proceedings. Sunday morning, I am fresh and early for education, entertainment and participation from Nick Clements as he leads us into aspects of shamanism in modern times. The pace remains more relaxed with Ellis C. Taylor's tales of encounters and experiences with what we can loosely call the paranormal: time shifts, orbs, and others. For some this might appear ridiculous in the extreme. To me, it's pretty much business as normal. And that's either worrying or consoling, depending on which side of the fence you've decided to put up your tent.......
It is at the beginning of the final afternoon panel session that something begins to click. Someone asks 'Where are the women?' to the team of biological males lined up on the stage. Sitting to the side, Karen leaps up immediately, talking about male and female as literal physical embodiments being less the point than masculine and feminine energies (I am paraphrasing wickedly here, by the way...). She takes a good look at the array of goodly gentlemen on the stage before pronouncing that, in her experience, they have all recognised the feminine within, so the feminine energy has been well represented during the course of the weekend. What's more, she does not consider herself as a 'masculine' woman, but nevertheless requires access to that kind of energy, to organise conventions such as this for example.
A light begins to dimly flicker. Feminine as personal realisation, masculine as active principle for that realisation. My mind drifts off towards the koan that has followed me intermittently over the past thirty five years, and right into the palegreenvortex, appearing all over the shop either implicitly or explicitly: 'How to make the revolution? The demonstration or Zen?' It begins to vaguely dawn that, as so often, the answer to 'either/or' is in fact 'both/and'. 'Zen', personal transformation, and 'the demonstration', aka directed action in the world, are not opposites but compliments. Each needs the other for its complete fulfilment. For a Milarepa, directed action may be accomplished simply by seeding the collective unconscious with the power of your positive thought-forms. For most of us, a more mundane manifestation is required as well. The question is put further (by me, in truth): is there a place for direct action? Peter Taylor opines that yes, there may be a place, but the emphasis must be on our own transformations. And he is right. For me, the implications are clear. Write and protest about windfarms and drug laws, as manifestations of a reality I feel deeply inside. But remember that this is not the main story: it is an interface with mainstream dominator reality, and too much cannot be expected from this. Most importantly, take up the shamanic rattle, go deep into my own soul and the soul of the world, and travel wherever the journey may beckon.
I awake on the sleeper train soon after the sun has risen. I open the slight cabin window. A hillside of heather stretches upwards, before meeting a sky of pristine early morning blue. The gods and goddesses of the Scottish Highlands have woken to greet me. A tear wells up in my eye.
ARC - Alternative Research Community - is the brainchild (or soulchild, more like) of the seemingly indefatigable and infinitely good-humoured Karen Sawyer. One of Karen's many remarkable qualities, fully in evidence over the weekend, is that nothing appears to faze her. The mikes don't work: no problem. Computers crash: a mild expletive before she's up there on the stage joking, helping to sort things out. Karen actually introduces the weekend in front of a large picture of Sheela Na Gig, ancient representation of the eternal feminine, and a portal into another reality, the deeper reality of the event to come. Then she starts to sing/chant primordial sounds, and a communal shift in consciousness seems to take place. It is not so much HER singing, as allowing herself to be the vehicle for an archetypal dimension to make itself known through her. The atmosphere is electric; the weekend has been blessed by something sacred.
The first main speaker on Saturday morning is Michael Dunning. He has come to talk to us about, er...... a tree. Now, while I derive a good deal of personal sustenance from the non-human world - a skim through this blog will make as much obvious -, I harbour doubts as to whether he can maintain the interest of all of us for ninety minutes by talking about his relationship to a tree. The arboreal manifestation in question is the yew, a magnificent plant that reaches both upwards into the sky and downwards deep into the earth. Michael relates the rich mythology connected to the yew, and his own healing from serious illness through lying for long periods beneath its mighty boughs. I am entranced.
Next up is Peter Taylor. I am extremely grateful to Peter for his presentation at the previous convention. Alarm bells had been ringing for some time, as I witnessed weird things in the so-called green movement: lies, half-truths, support for big business destroying the natural world in the name of saving the planet, with zero respect for the sacred nature of things. Then I heard Peter speak on the 'corporatisation of the environmental movement', and I realised that my own instincts had been correct: much that passes itself as 'green' is a sham and a scam, absorbed into the dominator culture mainstream. This time round, Peter ends by talking about his own spiritual work, transforming energy and consciousness through the chakras, starting at the base and moving upwards. His message seems to be 'no transformation of self, no real change of the world.' He appears invigorated by this part of his presentation. I recommend finding out more about Peter's work on climate and the non-greens on the holistic channel and on Red Ice.
Afternoon arrives; enter Michael Cremo. The 'alternative research' giving its name to the convention is that which the 'information filter' imposed by mainstream dominator culture deems to be unfit for general consumption. This is work, often involving years of painstaking investigation, that does not sit comfortably with the belief and value systems that form the basis of our current non-civilisation. Michael's 'forbidden archaeology' is a classic case, calling into question as it does the orthodox Darwinian view of human origins. Michael's claim is that fully human remains have been discovered that vastly predate those normally recognised as being the earliest, findings that have been rubbished and discarded purely because they do not conform with the conventional belief system.
By the time Kenn Thomas takes centre stage to take us through the incredible amount of detailed investigation that goes into conspiracy theories, an imbalance has already occurred in the energetics of my chakra system, with a concentration of energy in the upper chakras (experienced less esoterically as a brain being immersed in a deep fryer). I am unable to follow clearly, but two vignettes leave their imprint. Firstly, there is a hilarious clip of Timothy Leary being 'interviewed' by a right-wing madman on American television. Then, as part of Kenn's tribute to recently deceased Jerry E. Smith, we see Jerry in full flow, describing the two main groups who wield power over our modern culture. There are the Banksters, who we are all familiar with; and there are the Water Melons, referred to on Palegreenvortex variously as eco-fascists and green Stalinists. Water Melons: green on the outside, red on the inside. Brilliant. And, while the Banksters and Water Melons appear superficially to be at odds with each other, they are actually part of one and the same system.
While those of infinite energy dance the night away to Karen Sawyer and Dirty Dog, I retire early to my room, to absorb the day's proceedings. Sunday morning, I am fresh and early for education, entertainment and participation from Nick Clements as he leads us into aspects of shamanism in modern times. The pace remains more relaxed with Ellis C. Taylor's tales of encounters and experiences with what we can loosely call the paranormal: time shifts, orbs, and others. For some this might appear ridiculous in the extreme. To me, it's pretty much business as normal. And that's either worrying or consoling, depending on which side of the fence you've decided to put up your tent.......
It is at the beginning of the final afternoon panel session that something begins to click. Someone asks 'Where are the women?' to the team of biological males lined up on the stage. Sitting to the side, Karen leaps up immediately, talking about male and female as literal physical embodiments being less the point than masculine and feminine energies (I am paraphrasing wickedly here, by the way...). She takes a good look at the array of goodly gentlemen on the stage before pronouncing that, in her experience, they have all recognised the feminine within, so the feminine energy has been well represented during the course of the weekend. What's more, she does not consider herself as a 'masculine' woman, but nevertheless requires access to that kind of energy, to organise conventions such as this for example.
A light begins to dimly flicker. Feminine as personal realisation, masculine as active principle for that realisation. My mind drifts off towards the koan that has followed me intermittently over the past thirty five years, and right into the palegreenvortex, appearing all over the shop either implicitly or explicitly: 'How to make the revolution? The demonstration or Zen?' It begins to vaguely dawn that, as so often, the answer to 'either/or' is in fact 'both/and'. 'Zen', personal transformation, and 'the demonstration', aka directed action in the world, are not opposites but compliments. Each needs the other for its complete fulfilment. For a Milarepa, directed action may be accomplished simply by seeding the collective unconscious with the power of your positive thought-forms. For most of us, a more mundane manifestation is required as well. The question is put further (by me, in truth): is there a place for direct action? Peter Taylor opines that yes, there may be a place, but the emphasis must be on our own transformations. And he is right. For me, the implications are clear. Write and protest about windfarms and drug laws, as manifestations of a reality I feel deeply inside. But remember that this is not the main story: it is an interface with mainstream dominator reality, and too much cannot be expected from this. Most importantly, take up the shamanic rattle, go deep into my own soul and the soul of the world, and travel wherever the journey may beckon.
I awake on the sleeper train soon after the sun has risen. I open the slight cabin window. A hillside of heather stretches upwards, before meeting a sky of pristine early morning blue. The gods and goddesses of the Scottish Highlands have woken to greet me. A tear wells up in my eye.
Monday, 23 August 2010
Encounters with Dangerous Drugs
During 2009, in the U.S.A., the drug escitalopram was prescribed 27,698,000 times (figures from International Marketing Services). This made it the second most popular of all the 'psychiatric' pharmaceuticals, outgunning such well-known drugs as Prozac and Diazepam (Valium).
I have my own experience of this commonly-taken, apparently very useful, psychoactive substance. It was, I think, in 2002, during my final years of living in London. I had, in truth, outstayed my welcome in the Big City, and it showed. With 25 years of Buddhist meditation and practice behind me, I had nevertheless transmuted into a walking dictionary of modern stress-related disorders. I was sort-of able to manage it all, but eventually decided to pay a visit to my G.P.: not with any particular wish for him to do anything about it, but more because, as the cliche goes, it's good to talk - to someone, even the local G.P.
He welcomed me into his surgery. I took a seat, and began to regale him with details of my various discomforts. To my surprise, he became animated as I continued to talk: I had no idea that migraines and intestinal irregularities could cause such interest. By the time I had concluded my tales of urban malaise, he was positively bouncing up and down on his chair. He reached over and plucked a scrappy little piece of paper from beside his computer. On it were written several questions, so vague and general as to be meaningless. I answered them as best I could, after which the doctor turned to me and pronounced triumphantly:'G.A.D.!' Noticing the puzzled expression on my face, he expanded. 'Yes, G.A.D. Generalised Anxiety Disorder. By chance, we have just the thing for you here. We are trialling a new drug to deal with this very disorder. Would you like to join?' Now, taking prescription tablets for psychological difficulties was completely out of character, against all my ideas and theories about life,and the last thing I would imagine to be effective. So I said 'Yes.'
Within a few days, the escitalopram was doing its thing. Now, at last, I'd really got something to feel worried about! It seemed to have triggered a genuine generalised anxiety. I sensed that large areas of my consciousness were being closed off, and that what remained consisted of large, empty holes. Worst of all was the fact that I seemed unable to access my memory banks, which was particularly tricky since I was supposed to be teaching English language to people from abroad. Even the most basic piece of vocabulary was almost impossible to recall. One particular class was a fairly advanced one, studying for an examination that included aspects of physical geography. A student popped a question: 'What do you call it when rocks come down a mountain, for example after heavy rain or an earthquake?' I stood in front of the class, searching desperately down the empty corridors in my mind for an answer. At last something came to me. 'Avalanche' I declared proudly. Two French-speaking students in the class looked at each other doubtfully. 'Isn't that for snow?' one of them eventually piped up. 'No' I answered, looking him straight in the eye. 'In English it's different. We use "avalanche" for rocks as well.'
Soon I was back at the doctor's surgery. 'Please take me off the trial' I begged deep from within my state of babbling wreckhood. The doctor called in a senior colleague and, solemn-faced, they witnessed me signing off the escitalopram wonder drug trial. The fact that they looked so pissed off made me suspicious: did it mean that my experience wouldn't count in the final analysis of the drug? Surely 'reduced the subject to a total nervous mess' was a significant finding in evaluating the effects of escitalopram. Did my experience count in the final statistics? If not, the figures are warped.
I walked through the park on my way home. Being free of the escitalopram curse, I felt like singing to the tress in my state of semi-satori. What's wrong with a touch of anxiety, anyway? It's the natural response of any non-enlightened mind to the dualistic world it appears to inhabit. And I remembered a word: landslide.
During the course of this particular incarnation, I have had occasion to encounter a variety of psychoactive substances, ranging from sugar, coffee, and alcohol, to a number about which the U.K. Home Secretary is less enthusiastic. Sometimes this has been for fun or relaxation, sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes for reasons of gnosis, and sometimes for a mixture of all three. In the case of quite a few of these psychoactives, I have felt that too large a dose, or frequent consumption, would be unwise from the point of view of either mental or physical health. However, besides escitalopram, which seriously challenged my ability to function mentally at all, there is only one substance which I sensed could have truly blown me apart .......
It was probably 1975. Having graduated from Oxford University, I was now engaged in something far more meaningful, and living in a commune that I had helped to found. Carlos Castaneda was all the rage. Like many people around me, I was reading his books about the Mexican shaman sorcerors Don Juan and Don Genaro; unlike a lot of others, however, reading was not enough for me. Maybe supplies of acid had temporarily dried up, I do not remember. Anyhow, I turned to Castaneda's books for psychedelic shamanic wisdom. Three main plant teachers appear in his tomes. Peyote cactus was nowhere to be found, not even on a reconnaissance to Kew Gardens, and I was unfamiliar with the magic psilocybe mushrooms native to British pasturelands. The third, clearly weirdest and least predictable, plant was readily available, however. Datura stramonium, aka jimson weed, could be purchased from the local chemist as a remedy for asthma. I bought a green tin of powdered leaf over the counter, and knocked back a couple of spoons of the vile-tasting stuff.
Some time later I was sitting with my fellow commune members having dinner. Unfortunately, I was unable to swallow anything, since my mouth was so dry that all the moisture in the food was immediately sucked out. People and objects around me dissolved into a blurry mess; rather than the sense of ego-softening and connectedness that can come with classic psychedelics, there was just sensory confusion. It all became too much. I decided to give up for the day, and staggered to my bed.
As I lay down, it seemed that everything was closing down except for the basic automatic processes of the body, such as breathing. My friends were justifiably concerned about me, and came to check up on my state. Apparently, I was standing stock still on the landing near the bathroom, completely oblivious to their presence. They returned thirty minutes later, to find me still there, motionless. Then something changed, and I momentarily regained awareness of the world around me. 'I'm going to the toilet' I announced boldly, then dashed into the bathroom.
Two days later, a friend called in for a chat. He was still a blur in front of me, and I feared that I had suffered permanent damage to my eyes. My trepidation proved unfounded, but the episode was a great teacher to me. I learnt the need for respect for psychoactives, and for life in general. That this life, so precious (as Buddhist texts teach us), is fragile; approach with love and reverence.
Nowadays, there is no excuse for the jimson weed misadventure: excellent sources of education and information are out there. Read about datura stramonium on Erowid, and you will know not to mess with this particular plant, unless you are a highly experienced shaman. Meanwhile, western society is sufficiently lacking in soul and vital life force so that millions of people resort to escitalopram and the like to stumble their mind-numbed way through the day. At the same time, huge numbers of folk languish in jail for selling or taking substances that are statistically less harmful than alcohol and tobacco. Hats off to Angus Mcqueen for his recent excellent three-part documentary 'Our War on Drugs' on Channel Four. As predicted on this blog, it takes Channel Four, rather than the biased BBC, to come up with a hard-hitting series that effectively tears global drug policies to shreds. Watch it if you can, it's a rarity, a highly recommendable and in places poignant piece of education on mainstream television.
I have my own experience of this commonly-taken, apparently very useful, psychoactive substance. It was, I think, in 2002, during my final years of living in London. I had, in truth, outstayed my welcome in the Big City, and it showed. With 25 years of Buddhist meditation and practice behind me, I had nevertheless transmuted into a walking dictionary of modern stress-related disorders. I was sort-of able to manage it all, but eventually decided to pay a visit to my G.P.: not with any particular wish for him to do anything about it, but more because, as the cliche goes, it's good to talk - to someone, even the local G.P.
He welcomed me into his surgery. I took a seat, and began to regale him with details of my various discomforts. To my surprise, he became animated as I continued to talk: I had no idea that migraines and intestinal irregularities could cause such interest. By the time I had concluded my tales of urban malaise, he was positively bouncing up and down on his chair. He reached over and plucked a scrappy little piece of paper from beside his computer. On it were written several questions, so vague and general as to be meaningless. I answered them as best I could, after which the doctor turned to me and pronounced triumphantly:'G.A.D.!' Noticing the puzzled expression on my face, he expanded. 'Yes, G.A.D. Generalised Anxiety Disorder. By chance, we have just the thing for you here. We are trialling a new drug to deal with this very disorder. Would you like to join?' Now, taking prescription tablets for psychological difficulties was completely out of character, against all my ideas and theories about life,and the last thing I would imagine to be effective. So I said 'Yes.'
Within a few days, the escitalopram was doing its thing. Now, at last, I'd really got something to feel worried about! It seemed to have triggered a genuine generalised anxiety. I sensed that large areas of my consciousness were being closed off, and that what remained consisted of large, empty holes. Worst of all was the fact that I seemed unable to access my memory banks, which was particularly tricky since I was supposed to be teaching English language to people from abroad. Even the most basic piece of vocabulary was almost impossible to recall. One particular class was a fairly advanced one, studying for an examination that included aspects of physical geography. A student popped a question: 'What do you call it when rocks come down a mountain, for example after heavy rain or an earthquake?' I stood in front of the class, searching desperately down the empty corridors in my mind for an answer. At last something came to me. 'Avalanche' I declared proudly. Two French-speaking students in the class looked at each other doubtfully. 'Isn't that for snow?' one of them eventually piped up. 'No' I answered, looking him straight in the eye. 'In English it's different. We use "avalanche" for rocks as well.'
Soon I was back at the doctor's surgery. 'Please take me off the trial' I begged deep from within my state of babbling wreckhood. The doctor called in a senior colleague and, solemn-faced, they witnessed me signing off the escitalopram wonder drug trial. The fact that they looked so pissed off made me suspicious: did it mean that my experience wouldn't count in the final analysis of the drug? Surely 'reduced the subject to a total nervous mess' was a significant finding in evaluating the effects of escitalopram. Did my experience count in the final statistics? If not, the figures are warped.
I walked through the park on my way home. Being free of the escitalopram curse, I felt like singing to the tress in my state of semi-satori. What's wrong with a touch of anxiety, anyway? It's the natural response of any non-enlightened mind to the dualistic world it appears to inhabit. And I remembered a word: landslide.
During the course of this particular incarnation, I have had occasion to encounter a variety of psychoactive substances, ranging from sugar, coffee, and alcohol, to a number about which the U.K. Home Secretary is less enthusiastic. Sometimes this has been for fun or relaxation, sometimes out of curiosity, sometimes for reasons of gnosis, and sometimes for a mixture of all three. In the case of quite a few of these psychoactives, I have felt that too large a dose, or frequent consumption, would be unwise from the point of view of either mental or physical health. However, besides escitalopram, which seriously challenged my ability to function mentally at all, there is only one substance which I sensed could have truly blown me apart .......
It was probably 1975. Having graduated from Oxford University, I was now engaged in something far more meaningful, and living in a commune that I had helped to found. Carlos Castaneda was all the rage. Like many people around me, I was reading his books about the Mexican shaman sorcerors Don Juan and Don Genaro; unlike a lot of others, however, reading was not enough for me. Maybe supplies of acid had temporarily dried up, I do not remember. Anyhow, I turned to Castaneda's books for psychedelic shamanic wisdom. Three main plant teachers appear in his tomes. Peyote cactus was nowhere to be found, not even on a reconnaissance to Kew Gardens, and I was unfamiliar with the magic psilocybe mushrooms native to British pasturelands. The third, clearly weirdest and least predictable, plant was readily available, however. Datura stramonium, aka jimson weed, could be purchased from the local chemist as a remedy for asthma. I bought a green tin of powdered leaf over the counter, and knocked back a couple of spoons of the vile-tasting stuff.
Some time later I was sitting with my fellow commune members having dinner. Unfortunately, I was unable to swallow anything, since my mouth was so dry that all the moisture in the food was immediately sucked out. People and objects around me dissolved into a blurry mess; rather than the sense of ego-softening and connectedness that can come with classic psychedelics, there was just sensory confusion. It all became too much. I decided to give up for the day, and staggered to my bed.
As I lay down, it seemed that everything was closing down except for the basic automatic processes of the body, such as breathing. My friends were justifiably concerned about me, and came to check up on my state. Apparently, I was standing stock still on the landing near the bathroom, completely oblivious to their presence. They returned thirty minutes later, to find me still there, motionless. Then something changed, and I momentarily regained awareness of the world around me. 'I'm going to the toilet' I announced boldly, then dashed into the bathroom.
Two days later, a friend called in for a chat. He was still a blur in front of me, and I feared that I had suffered permanent damage to my eyes. My trepidation proved unfounded, but the episode was a great teacher to me. I learnt the need for respect for psychoactives, and for life in general. That this life, so precious (as Buddhist texts teach us), is fragile; approach with love and reverence.
Nowadays, there is no excuse for the jimson weed misadventure: excellent sources of education and information are out there. Read about datura stramonium on Erowid, and you will know not to mess with this particular plant, unless you are a highly experienced shaman. Meanwhile, western society is sufficiently lacking in soul and vital life force so that millions of people resort to escitalopram and the like to stumble their mind-numbed way through the day. At the same time, huge numbers of folk languish in jail for selling or taking substances that are statistically less harmful than alcohol and tobacco. Hats off to Angus Mcqueen for his recent excellent three-part documentary 'Our War on Drugs' on Channel Four. As predicted on this blog, it takes Channel Four, rather than the biased BBC, to come up with a hard-hitting series that effectively tears global drug policies to shreds. Watch it if you can, it's a rarity, a highly recommendable and in places poignant piece of education on mainstream television.
Monday, 2 August 2010
Body Politic
The time has come to tear up and throw away all the markers on the political landscape that I grew up with. Socialism, Conservatism, Communism; left-wing, right-wing: all are now obsolete, and irrelevant to current conditions - in the UK for sure, and most likely for the rest of the western world. The political arena of today is defined very simply: Control System versus the Rest. It is a stark dualism of which even the Gnostics would have been proud, apart from the fact that it is based on pragmatic factors rather than ontology.
The collapse of the old distinctions could have been predicted long ago, when Labour, traditionally defender of the poor and down-at-heel, became New Labour and, under the dark magic of the Blairite grin, started hobnobbing with the rich and famous, while the rest of us just plodded on. New Labour happily oversaw and encouraged the emerging celebritocracy, along with related get-rich-quickers of the banking and big business worlds. Eventually Blair took his smirk off elsewhere, leaving Brown to fiddle while the fantasy banking world that he had helped to create started to burn all around him.
Control System versus the Rest: an elegant forces-of-darkness against bringers-of-light scenario. Even a year ago, I didn't see things much like that at all. Two visitors from Germany told me matter-of-factly that democracy doesn't exist, which I took as a bit of a blanket statement, and one which puzzled me. It was only when I began to dig more deeply that things started to click. I suppose that sufficient passion for a given subject is required before the time and effort necessary is devoted to getting beneath the skin of what the television headlines tell you. In my case, the invasion of the windfarms and UK drug policy were the triggers for the collapse of my old world view. What I began to discover was that reality was completely at odds with the 'information' dished out for public consumption by politicians and most of the mainstream media. The variance could not be put down simply to personal and reasonable differences of opinion, either; reality really was totally different. There was either a great deal of wilful ignorance going on, and/or a hidden agenda of some sort. Slowly, bits of the jigsaw puzzle began to fit together, until a picture of active collusion, if not exactly organised conspiracy, started to emerge. A collusion between politicians, the media, the world of big business and finance, maybe others: those whose aim is to maintain power, wealth, and control for themselves and themselves alone; who feel the right to dominate. Welcome to the Control System.
Uppermost in my mind of late has been the invasion of the wind turbines, following Mega-Disaster Minister of Energy Chris Huhne's pronouncement that we shall be seeing more of them soon. This is the real environmental catastrophe confronting us, not the various chimera rolled out by the not-very-Liberal and not-at-all-Democratic Huhne. Interestingly, in these days when the Anthropogenic Global Warming camp are having a bit of a hard time - even Guardian readers are expressing some doubts - he played down the 'save the planet with a turbine' line, instead mumbling something about safeguarding national energy supply. Total nonsense, since the one way that can't be done is through a source of energy that is intermittent, and completely unpredictable and unreliable.
I have written already, in 'Manna from a hot heaven', about the lack of credibility to the invasion of the wind farms. It has no reasonable justification whatsoever. It serves two unspoken purposes, however. Firstly, lots of money for Control System bigwigs through indirect subsidies and high energy prices. Secondly, the menace of Anthropogenic Global Warming provides a good excuse for fear-mongering, an excellent weapon in the fight to increase control over people's lives, and a reason to circumvent the fragile vestiges of democracy in the name of 'saving the planet for our grandchildren.'
Various internet sites rail ferociously against this stuff. References to 'Green Stalinism', and even more talk of 'eco-fascism'. Strong terms but on reflection, and after consulting a dictionary, I find them not greatly exaggerated. On orwelltoday, Green Stalinism is defined as 'a planned economy in the name of environmentalism.' 'The consequences are the familiar Soviet ones: centralised decision-making and localised devastation.' That is it precisely. And these 'familiar Soviet consequences' are exactly what our Control System emissaries have in mind, be it Huhne, Second-in-Command Corporal Clegg (whose wife, by pure coincidence, works for a wind farm company.....), partners-in-crime the Millibands, or the Not-so-Green Party's Caroline Lucas.
Control System gets full backup from its various organs of miscommunication and spreading of lies to the rest of us. Two deserve special mention. First off, the BBC. I am fed up with hearing the refrain (thankfully less common in recent times) that the BBC is somehow superior and more trustworthy because it doesn't depend on courting advertisers, and is therefore more independent. It is NOT independent! It depends on licence payers' money, which in turn depends on continued consent from the government. Which more-or-less defines what the BBC's agenda is. Take UK drug policy as an example. It is completely untenable, and could be destroyed with ease in next-to no time, should the BBC decide to do so. Strangely, our national broadcasters have thus far failed to rise to the challenge. Instead, when the opportunity arose, around the time of the Professor Nutt fiasco, they dealt with the good man's impeccable logic in perfunctory and derisory fashion. Hidden agenda of complicity with the government is clear for all with eyes to see. It has been left to Channel Four to dish the dirt in a hard-hitting three-part documentary on the 'war on drugs', starting this week. And, back on the wind, read for yourself James Delingpole's blog on 'BBC; official voice of Ecofascism.' By the way, ever wonder why the once-ubiquitous David Bellamy no longer does his much-loved nature programmes on BBC? He dared to disagree with Central Control belief system on global warming: made into a pariah because of his inconvenient views. Yes, the BBC: Control System propaganda machine par excellence.
The other Control System stooges I would like to highlight are resident at the Met Office. A look at the 'climate change' section on their website shows it to be a hotbed of lies, half-truths, deception, and opinion expressed as fact. Example: Question: 'Are you sure there's a link between temperature rise and CO2?' Answer: 'Yes. Temperature and CO2 are linked. Studies of polar ice layers show that in the past, rises in temperature have been followed by an increase in CO2. Now, it is a rise in CO2 that is causing the temperature to rise.' Er, excuse me, but the logic of this would baffle even a demented walrus. Go to your GP and tell him or her: Eating cheese was followed by my having migraines. Now, my migraines are causing me to eat hunks of cheddar. You will be told to stop wasting limited NHS resources, or sent to see a shrink.
All this would be laughable, except that it is nonsense churned out as propaganda in a shameless attempt to dupe the public in what are serious matters. In the meantime, protesters on the Lammermuir Hills in southern Scotland made a giant heart from stones on the hills as an expression of their love for the places they say will be devastated by a proposed wind farm. Ah yes, love! How quaint! How cute! How often do our pseudo-environmental Control System advocates speak of love, and of beauty? Caroline Lucas, Brave New Green World MP for Brighton, speaks of targets, not love and beauty. Such talk makes Control System people distinctly uneasy; it's not in their ball park. 'Green' is now a mental abstraction, an ideology used to justify all manner of terrible thing, and to manipulate people by playing on their fears. Certainly not a matter for the heart and the soul.
It's weird: leap outside the Control System box, and you find yourself in unlikely company. A seemingly disparate bunch of alternative culture people, disaffected Tories, conspiracy theorists, real liberals, psychedelic people, and the rest. All have in common a sense of being marginalised by the diktats of the Control System. I'm not the only person to feel a trifle confused: in an interview on Red Ice Radio, Peter Taylor talks of how he used to feel that he was 'left', but now finds himself agreeing more with what some people 'on the right' are saying. And the best thing I can find to read in mainstream media is James Delingpole's Daily Telegraph blog!
In the meantime, it befalls us to act, however clumsily or imperfectly. As James Hillman, in his 'time capsule for the year 2100' reminds us (see youtube), we are in part political animals: political, not in the debased dominator sense, but in its true, noble meaning, as being related to public affairs. Our soul is not ultimately separate, but is connected to and part of the world around us. To repress its horror and sense of injustice at what goes on outside the shell of our individual body is the same as to repress any other constituents of our mind. To be fully human means to act in defence of the true and beautiful in the world of which we are part. Brothers and sisters, take up your hearts, souls, and pitchforks! The world needs you......
The collapse of the old distinctions could have been predicted long ago, when Labour, traditionally defender of the poor and down-at-heel, became New Labour and, under the dark magic of the Blairite grin, started hobnobbing with the rich and famous, while the rest of us just plodded on. New Labour happily oversaw and encouraged the emerging celebritocracy, along with related get-rich-quickers of the banking and big business worlds. Eventually Blair took his smirk off elsewhere, leaving Brown to fiddle while the fantasy banking world that he had helped to create started to burn all around him.
Control System versus the Rest: an elegant forces-of-darkness against bringers-of-light scenario. Even a year ago, I didn't see things much like that at all. Two visitors from Germany told me matter-of-factly that democracy doesn't exist, which I took as a bit of a blanket statement, and one which puzzled me. It was only when I began to dig more deeply that things started to click. I suppose that sufficient passion for a given subject is required before the time and effort necessary is devoted to getting beneath the skin of what the television headlines tell you. In my case, the invasion of the windfarms and UK drug policy were the triggers for the collapse of my old world view. What I began to discover was that reality was completely at odds with the 'information' dished out for public consumption by politicians and most of the mainstream media. The variance could not be put down simply to personal and reasonable differences of opinion, either; reality really was totally different. There was either a great deal of wilful ignorance going on, and/or a hidden agenda of some sort. Slowly, bits of the jigsaw puzzle began to fit together, until a picture of active collusion, if not exactly organised conspiracy, started to emerge. A collusion between politicians, the media, the world of big business and finance, maybe others: those whose aim is to maintain power, wealth, and control for themselves and themselves alone; who feel the right to dominate. Welcome to the Control System.
Uppermost in my mind of late has been the invasion of the wind turbines, following Mega-Disaster Minister of Energy Chris Huhne's pronouncement that we shall be seeing more of them soon. This is the real environmental catastrophe confronting us, not the various chimera rolled out by the not-very-Liberal and not-at-all-Democratic Huhne. Interestingly, in these days when the Anthropogenic Global Warming camp are having a bit of a hard time - even Guardian readers are expressing some doubts - he played down the 'save the planet with a turbine' line, instead mumbling something about safeguarding national energy supply. Total nonsense, since the one way that can't be done is through a source of energy that is intermittent, and completely unpredictable and unreliable.
I have written already, in 'Manna from a hot heaven', about the lack of credibility to the invasion of the wind farms. It has no reasonable justification whatsoever. It serves two unspoken purposes, however. Firstly, lots of money for Control System bigwigs through indirect subsidies and high energy prices. Secondly, the menace of Anthropogenic Global Warming provides a good excuse for fear-mongering, an excellent weapon in the fight to increase control over people's lives, and a reason to circumvent the fragile vestiges of democracy in the name of 'saving the planet for our grandchildren.'
Various internet sites rail ferociously against this stuff. References to 'Green Stalinism', and even more talk of 'eco-fascism'. Strong terms but on reflection, and after consulting a dictionary, I find them not greatly exaggerated. On orwelltoday, Green Stalinism is defined as 'a planned economy in the name of environmentalism.' 'The consequences are the familiar Soviet ones: centralised decision-making and localised devastation.' That is it precisely. And these 'familiar Soviet consequences' are exactly what our Control System emissaries have in mind, be it Huhne, Second-in-Command Corporal Clegg (whose wife, by pure coincidence, works for a wind farm company.....), partners-in-crime the Millibands, or the Not-so-Green Party's Caroline Lucas.
Control System gets full backup from its various organs of miscommunication and spreading of lies to the rest of us. Two deserve special mention. First off, the BBC. I am fed up with hearing the refrain (thankfully less common in recent times) that the BBC is somehow superior and more trustworthy because it doesn't depend on courting advertisers, and is therefore more independent. It is NOT independent! It depends on licence payers' money, which in turn depends on continued consent from the government. Which more-or-less defines what the BBC's agenda is. Take UK drug policy as an example. It is completely untenable, and could be destroyed with ease in next-to no time, should the BBC decide to do so. Strangely, our national broadcasters have thus far failed to rise to the challenge. Instead, when the opportunity arose, around the time of the Professor Nutt fiasco, they dealt with the good man's impeccable logic in perfunctory and derisory fashion. Hidden agenda of complicity with the government is clear for all with eyes to see. It has been left to Channel Four to dish the dirt in a hard-hitting three-part documentary on the 'war on drugs', starting this week. And, back on the wind, read for yourself James Delingpole's blog on 'BBC; official voice of Ecofascism.' By the way, ever wonder why the once-ubiquitous David Bellamy no longer does his much-loved nature programmes on BBC? He dared to disagree with Central Control belief system on global warming: made into a pariah because of his inconvenient views. Yes, the BBC: Control System propaganda machine par excellence.
The other Control System stooges I would like to highlight are resident at the Met Office. A look at the 'climate change' section on their website shows it to be a hotbed of lies, half-truths, deception, and opinion expressed as fact. Example: Question: 'Are you sure there's a link between temperature rise and CO2?' Answer: 'Yes. Temperature and CO2 are linked. Studies of polar ice layers show that in the past, rises in temperature have been followed by an increase in CO2. Now, it is a rise in CO2 that is causing the temperature to rise.' Er, excuse me, but the logic of this would baffle even a demented walrus. Go to your GP and tell him or her: Eating cheese was followed by my having migraines. Now, my migraines are causing me to eat hunks of cheddar. You will be told to stop wasting limited NHS resources, or sent to see a shrink.
All this would be laughable, except that it is nonsense churned out as propaganda in a shameless attempt to dupe the public in what are serious matters. In the meantime, protesters on the Lammermuir Hills in southern Scotland made a giant heart from stones on the hills as an expression of their love for the places they say will be devastated by a proposed wind farm. Ah yes, love! How quaint! How cute! How often do our pseudo-environmental Control System advocates speak of love, and of beauty? Caroline Lucas, Brave New Green World MP for Brighton, speaks of targets, not love and beauty. Such talk makes Control System people distinctly uneasy; it's not in their ball park. 'Green' is now a mental abstraction, an ideology used to justify all manner of terrible thing, and to manipulate people by playing on their fears. Certainly not a matter for the heart and the soul.
It's weird: leap outside the Control System box, and you find yourself in unlikely company. A seemingly disparate bunch of alternative culture people, disaffected Tories, conspiracy theorists, real liberals, psychedelic people, and the rest. All have in common a sense of being marginalised by the diktats of the Control System. I'm not the only person to feel a trifle confused: in an interview on Red Ice Radio, Peter Taylor talks of how he used to feel that he was 'left', but now finds himself agreeing more with what some people 'on the right' are saying. And the best thing I can find to read in mainstream media is James Delingpole's Daily Telegraph blog!
In the meantime, it befalls us to act, however clumsily or imperfectly. As James Hillman, in his 'time capsule for the year 2100' reminds us (see youtube), we are in part political animals: political, not in the debased dominator sense, but in its true, noble meaning, as being related to public affairs. Our soul is not ultimately separate, but is connected to and part of the world around us. To repress its horror and sense of injustice at what goes on outside the shell of our individual body is the same as to repress any other constituents of our mind. To be fully human means to act in defence of the true and beautiful in the world of which we are part. Brothers and sisters, take up your hearts, souls, and pitchforks! The world needs you......
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Religion is Psychedelic
Education is one of the major weapons of mind control available to dominator culture. Seen in this light, the British National Curriculum is a most effective tool, enabling those in power to determine quite precisely what our young citizens should be taught; what they should and should not know and believe to be true. One book unlikely to find its way onto any course of Religious Studies is 'Supernatural' by Graham Hancock: it might give the kids all sorts of inconvenient ideas.
What is ignored by scientists and academics as a topic for study can be as revealing as what they endlessly research. Two such ignored mysteries readily come to mind. One is the seemingly unfathomed question of the origins of religion and the spiritual. Another - which, we shall see, dovetails neatly into the riddle of our sense of the religious - concerns human anatomy in general, and the human brain in particular. With regard to the latter theme, it would seem that the human being of 100,00 years ago was anatomically identical to our 21st century specimen. This fact extends to the brain, in terms both of its size and its complexity. In other words, everything we are mentally capable of today, our ancestors of that time should have been likewise. For most of the intervening time, however, nothing much seems to have happened - an enormous time gap exists between the appearance of the modern human skeleton and behaviour that is deemed fully human by we moderns.
Suddenly, and without prior warning, we get the great cave paintings of Peche Merle, Cosquer, Fumane, and the rest, between 20,000 and 35,000 years ago. No gradual evolutionary path leads to these astonishing eruptions of artistic vision and accomplishment, at least as far as current evidence shows. They appear as if out of nowhere, and with a degree of artistic skill that amazed Picasso, among others. They are also the first signs we have of anything beyond a most rudimentary imagination, which again seems to manifest fully formed, as does a sense of cognisance of supernatural forces and spiritual dimensions. A closer look at these paintings shows their content to be bizarre. Alongside half-naturalistic animals, the paintings teem with therianthropes (half-human, half-animal beings), people transforming into animals, wounded men, and extensive patterns of dots, lines, and arcs. What on earth is going on?
As the earliest expressions of complex artistic imagination, let alone a sense of the broadly religious, you would think that these paintings are uniquely significant in helping us understand what it is to be human. Yet their meaning has remained elusive. Earlier theories, such as hunting magic, have been thoroughly discredited, and most scientists have moved on to less enigmatic subjects - and ones that are more likely to attract research funding....
Enter Graham Hancock and his 700-page tome. His investigations lead him from these magnificent cave paintings of prehistory onto the almost modern rock art of the San people in South Africa. He is subsequently drawn in the direction of European fairy lore, the psychedelic shamanism of Africa and South America, modern encounters with UFOs and abductions by aliens, and the experiences of volunteers in Dr. Rick Strassman's groundbreaking research with the powerful psychedelic DMT.
His remarkable conclusion is that all these peoples and situations, disparate in time and space, are nevertheless expressions of the same core phenomena. They keep on cropping up, regardless of culture: weird alien beings, therianthropes, transformations and shape-shiftings, wounds and surgical procedures, patterns of dots, lines, and other entoptic phenomena. It appears that these are all universals to the human condition, somehow hard-wired into our very being. And that they can be accessed through entering into what are called (rather unsatisfactorily) 'trance states' or 'altered states of consciousness' (a.s.c.'s). The means for exploring such states are various, and have been used by shamans and others since time immemorial: meditation and yoga techniques, psychedelic (entheogenic) plants and substances, sensory deprivation, fasting, trance-dancing, flotation, and sleep deprivation are some that immediately come to mind.
If this scenario is not already bad news for pontiffs, archbishops, imams, and other leaders of organised hierarchical religions - that religion most likely has its origins in a.s.c.'s accessed by hallucinating shamans in caves 35,000 years ago - then things are about to get far more uncomfortable. The obvious next question any half-intelligent humanoid is bound to ask is: how did our Paleolithic ancestors get to experience these a.s.c.'s anyway, all of a sudden after thousands of years of apparent cultural stagnation? While difficult to prove conclusively, the most likely contender as a means for significant numbers of a population to access such states would be a psychedelic plant of some kind - for our European ancestors, this could well have been the liberty cap mushroom, psilocybe semilanceata. The possibility of a fungal contribution to the evolution of human consciousness was made more speculatively by Terence McKenna in 'Food of the Gods'; Graham Hancock's treatment of the subject is more thorough and convincing, however. It seems that, in any given human population, around 2% of people have a natural ability to enter altered states. For the rest of us plebs, we need help in one form or another, and our Paleolithic ancestors may well have discovered that the swiftest, simplest, and most reliable means was through ingesting the sacred mushroom.
Unburdened of the prejudiced moralistic clutter and inhibition that blight our modern monotheistic-based cultures, most extent shamanic peoples appear to use pretty much whatever thay can get their hands on in order to enter altered states, including plants that are potentially far more hazardous than any psychedelic psilocybin-containing mushroom. Whatever, it is worth considering for its far-reaching implications: the major catalyst for our human sense of imagination and spirit may well be growing in a field or grass verge near you right now!
For anyone interested in the human endeavour beyond the pathetic confines of the western dominator pig trough (apologies to our porcine buddies), 'Supernatural' is pretty much a must-read. If Mr. Hancock's 700 pages seem a bit daunting, believe me, they are not. But you could always listen to his excellent lecture at October Gallery in episodes 27 and 28 of Shamanic Freedom Radio (see my 'sites on the web' list for the connection).
What is ignored by scientists and academics as a topic for study can be as revealing as what they endlessly research. Two such ignored mysteries readily come to mind. One is the seemingly unfathomed question of the origins of religion and the spiritual. Another - which, we shall see, dovetails neatly into the riddle of our sense of the religious - concerns human anatomy in general, and the human brain in particular. With regard to the latter theme, it would seem that the human being of 100,00 years ago was anatomically identical to our 21st century specimen. This fact extends to the brain, in terms both of its size and its complexity. In other words, everything we are mentally capable of today, our ancestors of that time should have been likewise. For most of the intervening time, however, nothing much seems to have happened - an enormous time gap exists between the appearance of the modern human skeleton and behaviour that is deemed fully human by we moderns.
Suddenly, and without prior warning, we get the great cave paintings of Peche Merle, Cosquer, Fumane, and the rest, between 20,000 and 35,000 years ago. No gradual evolutionary path leads to these astonishing eruptions of artistic vision and accomplishment, at least as far as current evidence shows. They appear as if out of nowhere, and with a degree of artistic skill that amazed Picasso, among others. They are also the first signs we have of anything beyond a most rudimentary imagination, which again seems to manifest fully formed, as does a sense of cognisance of supernatural forces and spiritual dimensions. A closer look at these paintings shows their content to be bizarre. Alongside half-naturalistic animals, the paintings teem with therianthropes (half-human, half-animal beings), people transforming into animals, wounded men, and extensive patterns of dots, lines, and arcs. What on earth is going on?
As the earliest expressions of complex artistic imagination, let alone a sense of the broadly religious, you would think that these paintings are uniquely significant in helping us understand what it is to be human. Yet their meaning has remained elusive. Earlier theories, such as hunting magic, have been thoroughly discredited, and most scientists have moved on to less enigmatic subjects - and ones that are more likely to attract research funding....
Enter Graham Hancock and his 700-page tome. His investigations lead him from these magnificent cave paintings of prehistory onto the almost modern rock art of the San people in South Africa. He is subsequently drawn in the direction of European fairy lore, the psychedelic shamanism of Africa and South America, modern encounters with UFOs and abductions by aliens, and the experiences of volunteers in Dr. Rick Strassman's groundbreaking research with the powerful psychedelic DMT.
His remarkable conclusion is that all these peoples and situations, disparate in time and space, are nevertheless expressions of the same core phenomena. They keep on cropping up, regardless of culture: weird alien beings, therianthropes, transformations and shape-shiftings, wounds and surgical procedures, patterns of dots, lines, and other entoptic phenomena. It appears that these are all universals to the human condition, somehow hard-wired into our very being. And that they can be accessed through entering into what are called (rather unsatisfactorily) 'trance states' or 'altered states of consciousness' (a.s.c.'s). The means for exploring such states are various, and have been used by shamans and others since time immemorial: meditation and yoga techniques, psychedelic (entheogenic) plants and substances, sensory deprivation, fasting, trance-dancing, flotation, and sleep deprivation are some that immediately come to mind.
If this scenario is not already bad news for pontiffs, archbishops, imams, and other leaders of organised hierarchical religions - that religion most likely has its origins in a.s.c.'s accessed by hallucinating shamans in caves 35,000 years ago - then things are about to get far more uncomfortable. The obvious next question any half-intelligent humanoid is bound to ask is: how did our Paleolithic ancestors get to experience these a.s.c.'s anyway, all of a sudden after thousands of years of apparent cultural stagnation? While difficult to prove conclusively, the most likely contender as a means for significant numbers of a population to access such states would be a psychedelic plant of some kind - for our European ancestors, this could well have been the liberty cap mushroom, psilocybe semilanceata. The possibility of a fungal contribution to the evolution of human consciousness was made more speculatively by Terence McKenna in 'Food of the Gods'; Graham Hancock's treatment of the subject is more thorough and convincing, however. It seems that, in any given human population, around 2% of people have a natural ability to enter altered states. For the rest of us plebs, we need help in one form or another, and our Paleolithic ancestors may well have discovered that the swiftest, simplest, and most reliable means was through ingesting the sacred mushroom.
Unburdened of the prejudiced moralistic clutter and inhibition that blight our modern monotheistic-based cultures, most extent shamanic peoples appear to use pretty much whatever thay can get their hands on in order to enter altered states, including plants that are potentially far more hazardous than any psychedelic psilocybin-containing mushroom. Whatever, it is worth considering for its far-reaching implications: the major catalyst for our human sense of imagination and spirit may well be growing in a field or grass verge near you right now!
For anyone interested in the human endeavour beyond the pathetic confines of the western dominator pig trough (apologies to our porcine buddies), 'Supernatural' is pretty much a must-read. If Mr. Hancock's 700 pages seem a bit daunting, believe me, they are not. But you could always listen to his excellent lecture at October Gallery in episodes 27 and 28 of Shamanic Freedom Radio (see my 'sites on the web' list for the connection).
(photo by G. Mueller, from Erowid)
Wednesday, 7 July 2010
Musings From the Fringe
During the week following the solstice, while most of Britain was basking in sunshine, and with even Glastonbury escaping its traditional soaking, Martha and I were enjoying the grey clouds, intermitttent drizzle, and fresh cooling breezes of the far-flung islands of Lewis and Harris in the Outer Hebrides. Take a look at a map. These islands are on the very fringe of the Eurasian landmass with all that implies. And on the edge of our familiar universe is what they sometimes feel like.
Lewis: a vast sea of peat topped with scrubby heather constantly racked by the zephyrs of the North Atlantic. Callanish: to those with ears to listen, Neolithic wisdom still speaks from the stones, whose essence no photo is able to capture. Luskentyre, Seilebost, West Berneray: enormous swathes of sand, stretching into the middle distance, dazzling the eyes when the sun deigns to shine.
Out here, on the perimeter of the monolith we call western civilisation, it is easier to conceive of life and world beyond the confines of that suffocating dominator complex. The lull of the dark ocean, constantly breaking on crystalline shores or against contorted rocks, its slow and steady rhythm punctured only by the occasional cry of a sea bird. The Stones, each displaying unique and fantastic patterns in the ancient Lewisian gneiss from which they have been wrested, and whence they have been quietly radiating their message for millenia. The slow yet measures cycle of life of flowers and birds on the machair, the sandy, windblasted marine hinterland. After a while, these begin to nibble away at your soul, imposing a slower and more spacious rhythm. Alongside this process, life deepens and opens up, and individual consciousness strains to expand to the further horizons of the Hebridean skies. An invitation to the perimeters, to give up the narrowness of self-obsession, and to embrace instead the greatness and fullness of existence.
It's when you get on the bus that you remember where you are: Radio One is playing as the theme tune for our journey past remote farmhouses and lochans embedded in the ocean of rock that is South Harris. Here in the Outer Hebrides, where for a moment life beyond the grasp of global non-culture can be savoured, still the mainstream must make itself known somehow. On Monday, on our way back to the mainland via the ferry to Ullapool, I notice an old lady reading a magazine. The previous day she was most likely perusing the Bible in a Free Presbetyrian church in Stornoway, fearfully fuelling her sense of guilt and chiding herself for her sins. Today she is reading about the private (or not-so private) lives of Cristina Aguilera, Jordan, and Britney Spears. I struggle to grasp the relevance of these 'celebrities' for the grey-haired lady from Lewis, but there it is for all to see. Alternative culture internet sites teem with articles about global conspiracy, the New World Order, forthcoming one-world government and a single global economy. No need to look to the future: it's with us right now, in cultural terms at least. The globalisation of culture, along with media as its prime means of dissemination, is a necessary element in the dream of world domination. Culture creates the mindset. For culture, read brainwashing. Stornoway, Stepney, or Singapore, it's all the same. Cristina Aguilera's the one. Or, for the boys, football.
So in the Outer Hebrides, the sense of remoteness from the mainstream, though fragile, is palpable, an increasingly rare experience in the modern west. Brussels, Westminster, Holyrood, all seem gloriously irrelevant. Yet they are not. For these sinister centres of power, it is vital to extend their grubby tentacles into every nook and cranny of the Empire. The dining room of the Bed and Breakfast on Harris overlooks a dark sea loch set deeply into the grey rocky hillscape all around. The lady running the establishment tells me how she is unable to put up benighted travellers on the sofa or the floor, because it would be breaking the rules, and she fears word getting back to the Inspectors, who would remove her four-star rating. This is the legacy of the New Labour nightmare of soulless bureaucracy, happily imitated by Scottish Parliament. Highland hospitality blown to pieces. Rather die of hypothermia on the doorstep than sleep on the sofa, risking the wrath of Big Brother's henchmen, the Inspectors. One World, or One Europe at least, even out on the fringes, where the Atlantic relentlessly batters the coastline, and the main sounds are the cries of gulls and oystercatchers. Faceless, soulless, creeping death.
Passing through the splendidly wild and rocky landscapes of North Harris, I cast my eye in the direction of a hill called Muaitheabhal. Soon it will sport a cluster of metal-and-plastic wind turbines. Love and connectedness coexist in the core of my soul alongside a seething anger, which is sometimes tinged with a sense of despair. Another thirty-turbine project is proposed near Stornoway. There seems no end to this onslaught on the spirits of the landscape by dominators in suits. The talk nowadays is of 'consultation with local communities', though precisely what this entails remains to be seen. Plus what the BBC, in its own biased euphemistic language, refers to as 'money contributed by wind scheme operators.' Translated into realspeak, this amounts to bribes offered to hard-up villagers for messing up their lives. The Coalition is now talking of institutionalising this bribery through lower council tax bills for communities that agree to the invasion of their locality by wind turbines. This is actually no different to the sort of thing that makes our modern middle-classes recline in horror if it happens elsewhere, or as part of history. Giving Coca-Cola to indigenous Amazonians in exchange for their land, or their souls in the form of religious conversion. It was one of Carl Jung's great insights that we are nowhere so blind as in the centre of our own egos, a principle that holds collectively as much as individually. It's easy to condemn when it's 'out there', 'other'; far less so when it's happening in our midst.
Small communities may accept these shameless bribes from the pimps in suits, and I can understand why. Probably too late, they'll realise their mistake, and what they have lost by selling off their soul. In addition, tourists will stop coming, the local economy will suffer, while the dominators in suits in their centrally-heated offices hundreds of miles away will rub their grubby mitts at another mission successful.
To finish on a more optimistic note, a few words of beauty from the artist Alice Starmore. I know little about her, except that she was born and grew up among the peat and heather of Lewis, and she has exhibited her work at An Lanntair, the rather smart Arts Centre in Stornoway. The exhibition is dedicated to Mamba, an acronym to describe Lewis. To some it is 'Miles and Miles of Bugger All', but to Alice it is 'Miles and Miles of Beauty Astounding.' 'North Lewis is the largest undisturbed blanket bog in Europe' she writes. 'Its importance as a rare and special habitat is equivalent to that of the Serengeti or the rainforest of Brazil.' 'For many islanders the moor is a part of their soul....... The catalyst for creating the Mamba exhibition was the realisation that there are people, some in positions of considerable power, who have no regard for the moorland and think of it as a bleak and empty place which has no value other than space to be exploited. The exhibition shows that it is neither bleak nor empty....... Mamba is about precious landscape and the life within it. Step into that landscape and look, for there are wonders to behold.....' Thanks, Alice.
Lewis: a vast sea of peat topped with scrubby heather constantly racked by the zephyrs of the North Atlantic. Callanish: to those with ears to listen, Neolithic wisdom still speaks from the stones, whose essence no photo is able to capture. Luskentyre, Seilebost, West Berneray: enormous swathes of sand, stretching into the middle distance, dazzling the eyes when the sun deigns to shine.
Out here, on the perimeter of the monolith we call western civilisation, it is easier to conceive of life and world beyond the confines of that suffocating dominator complex. The lull of the dark ocean, constantly breaking on crystalline shores or against contorted rocks, its slow and steady rhythm punctured only by the occasional cry of a sea bird. The Stones, each displaying unique and fantastic patterns in the ancient Lewisian gneiss from which they have been wrested, and whence they have been quietly radiating their message for millenia. The slow yet measures cycle of life of flowers and birds on the machair, the sandy, windblasted marine hinterland. After a while, these begin to nibble away at your soul, imposing a slower and more spacious rhythm. Alongside this process, life deepens and opens up, and individual consciousness strains to expand to the further horizons of the Hebridean skies. An invitation to the perimeters, to give up the narrowness of self-obsession, and to embrace instead the greatness and fullness of existence.
It's when you get on the bus that you remember where you are: Radio One is playing as the theme tune for our journey past remote farmhouses and lochans embedded in the ocean of rock that is South Harris. Here in the Outer Hebrides, where for a moment life beyond the grasp of global non-culture can be savoured, still the mainstream must make itself known somehow. On Monday, on our way back to the mainland via the ferry to Ullapool, I notice an old lady reading a magazine. The previous day she was most likely perusing the Bible in a Free Presbetyrian church in Stornoway, fearfully fuelling her sense of guilt and chiding herself for her sins. Today she is reading about the private (or not-so private) lives of Cristina Aguilera, Jordan, and Britney Spears. I struggle to grasp the relevance of these 'celebrities' for the grey-haired lady from Lewis, but there it is for all to see. Alternative culture internet sites teem with articles about global conspiracy, the New World Order, forthcoming one-world government and a single global economy. No need to look to the future: it's with us right now, in cultural terms at least. The globalisation of culture, along with media as its prime means of dissemination, is a necessary element in the dream of world domination. Culture creates the mindset. For culture, read brainwashing. Stornoway, Stepney, or Singapore, it's all the same. Cristina Aguilera's the one. Or, for the boys, football.
So in the Outer Hebrides, the sense of remoteness from the mainstream, though fragile, is palpable, an increasingly rare experience in the modern west. Brussels, Westminster, Holyrood, all seem gloriously irrelevant. Yet they are not. For these sinister centres of power, it is vital to extend their grubby tentacles into every nook and cranny of the Empire. The dining room of the Bed and Breakfast on Harris overlooks a dark sea loch set deeply into the grey rocky hillscape all around. The lady running the establishment tells me how she is unable to put up benighted travellers on the sofa or the floor, because it would be breaking the rules, and she fears word getting back to the Inspectors, who would remove her four-star rating. This is the legacy of the New Labour nightmare of soulless bureaucracy, happily imitated by Scottish Parliament. Highland hospitality blown to pieces. Rather die of hypothermia on the doorstep than sleep on the sofa, risking the wrath of Big Brother's henchmen, the Inspectors. One World, or One Europe at least, even out on the fringes, where the Atlantic relentlessly batters the coastline, and the main sounds are the cries of gulls and oystercatchers. Faceless, soulless, creeping death.
Passing through the splendidly wild and rocky landscapes of North Harris, I cast my eye in the direction of a hill called Muaitheabhal. Soon it will sport a cluster of metal-and-plastic wind turbines. Love and connectedness coexist in the core of my soul alongside a seething anger, which is sometimes tinged with a sense of despair. Another thirty-turbine project is proposed near Stornoway. There seems no end to this onslaught on the spirits of the landscape by dominators in suits. The talk nowadays is of 'consultation with local communities', though precisely what this entails remains to be seen. Plus what the BBC, in its own biased euphemistic language, refers to as 'money contributed by wind scheme operators.' Translated into realspeak, this amounts to bribes offered to hard-up villagers for messing up their lives. The Coalition is now talking of institutionalising this bribery through lower council tax bills for communities that agree to the invasion of their locality by wind turbines. This is actually no different to the sort of thing that makes our modern middle-classes recline in horror if it happens elsewhere, or as part of history. Giving Coca-Cola to indigenous Amazonians in exchange for their land, or their souls in the form of religious conversion. It was one of Carl Jung's great insights that we are nowhere so blind as in the centre of our own egos, a principle that holds collectively as much as individually. It's easy to condemn when it's 'out there', 'other'; far less so when it's happening in our midst.
Small communities may accept these shameless bribes from the pimps in suits, and I can understand why. Probably too late, they'll realise their mistake, and what they have lost by selling off their soul. In addition, tourists will stop coming, the local economy will suffer, while the dominators in suits in their centrally-heated offices hundreds of miles away will rub their grubby mitts at another mission successful.
To finish on a more optimistic note, a few words of beauty from the artist Alice Starmore. I know little about her, except that she was born and grew up among the peat and heather of Lewis, and she has exhibited her work at An Lanntair, the rather smart Arts Centre in Stornoway. The exhibition is dedicated to Mamba, an acronym to describe Lewis. To some it is 'Miles and Miles of Bugger All', but to Alice it is 'Miles and Miles of Beauty Astounding.' 'North Lewis is the largest undisturbed blanket bog in Europe' she writes. 'Its importance as a rare and special habitat is equivalent to that of the Serengeti or the rainforest of Brazil.' 'For many islanders the moor is a part of their soul....... The catalyst for creating the Mamba exhibition was the realisation that there are people, some in positions of considerable power, who have no regard for the moorland and think of it as a bleak and empty place which has no value other than space to be exploited. The exhibition shows that it is neither bleak nor empty....... Mamba is about precious landscape and the life within it. Step into that landscape and look, for there are wonders to behold.....' Thanks, Alice.
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