Light of the World

And God created Man in His Own Image........

I recently returned from a trip to visit family members in Colombia, South America. There are quite a number of good things about Colombia. No windfarms, for a start. Close encounters with a scaly, light-blue iguana, and the oversized toads that come out in the evening. And there exists a certain vitality among many of the poorer people that seems generally lacking in their British counterparts. Without a benefits system to fall back on, the Zen saying 'No work, no food' becomes urgently relevant. Go to the indoor fruit and vegetable market at eight in the morning and you will witness a scene teeming with folk from the countryside around announcing their wares to all-comers: 'aguacate, aguacate, mango, guayaba' they shout, as if we didn't have eyes to see what's on display today. Reeling from the shock to the senses at such a time of day, you can try to wear it off with a quiet ride on the bus. Here, however, the 'ayudante' - literally, 'helper' -leans out of the door of the moving vehicle to shout out the destination to any likely customer on the street. This would all drive our local friendly EU health-and-safety tsars apoplectic, for sure. But that is part of their job: to suck the lifeblood out of the languorous European beast. A century ago, D.H. Lawrence was writing about Europe, and how old, tired, and stuck it had become. Imagine how much worse it is nowadays! The European soul continues to be worn down by softly softly totalitarianism, rendered compliant, complacent, sheeplike, and world-weary. A trip to a country like Colombia only serves to highlight this rudely.

Unfortunately, I was not the only person to be visiting Colombia at the time. My sojourn coincided with the jet-set arrival of none other than the Saviour of Humankind Himself, Mr. Al Gore ('Just call me the Messiah. I don't mind.'). He was there as part of his global mission to save us all from ourselves, particularly through the holy medium of carbon taxes. While the idea of carbon taxes is hard enough to take in Europe, it is doubly criminal in a country where half the population can barely feed and house itself. Sadly, Colombians have a special weakness for the saviour complex (Jesus Christ and former President Alvaro Uribe come readily to mind), and the current President indicated that he welcomes Salvador Gore's initiative. To put things bluntly: in poorer countries, the imposition of yet another tax would most likely lead to many unnecessary deaths through material deprivation. The doctrine of carbon taxes is a form of hatred of humanity in action. My own feeling is that Al Gore and his ilk have something evil about them (I choose this word carefully and deliberately, and intend to expand on its use in a future blog).

It has been suggested elsewhere that Warmism is indeed a new religion. To my knowledge, however, the striking similarities between the psychological profiles of Warmist theology and Judeo-Christian-Islamic salvationism have yet to be spelt out. Until now, that is....

It is my observation that modern Warmism replicates quite precisely much of the pathological psychology at the root of the Judeo-Christian-Islamic complex (a psychology that has resulted in a great deal of human misery and destruction of the face of the Earth during the last 2000 years). I shall attempt to briefly sketch a few of the salient features below.

First and foremost, both are pervaded by a strong sense of human inadequacy and sinfulness, with all the guilt and generally feeling rubbish about being alive that necessarily accompany this assessment of the human condition. The Genesis story involving a woman, a man, a serpent and an apple is well-known as the mythical source for Christianity. In Warmism, the feeling emanates from the notion that we are destroying the planet through our actions, which will lead to us all yelling and screaming before being swallowed up in a fiery hell. We are a plague on the face of the Earth, and should be ashamed at our existence in the first place. Put on the kettle and feel the guilt; catch a plane and face eternal damnation. The Judeo-Christian complex lying unchallenged in our breasts is thus transferred directly into environmental angst and sackcloth.

This 'plague on the face of the Earth' thinking is the source of the humanity-hating that is a feature of at least some 'environmental' writing and rhetoric. We are no good, we are sinners, we are destroying the planet, it would be better if we all just shot ourselves and disappeared. I know about this, because I felt similarly myself a few years ago. Looking at the stupidity and destructive effects of the human species, I could feel only despair that sometimes tipped over into rage. I no longer see things this way: I have deeper alchemic/shamanic experience, plus exposure to the minds of some more positive souls, to thank for this change of heart.

Then there is the Apocalypse. This is an integral feature of at least more fundamental forms of Christianity, and is a nightmare fantasy that has been readily hijacked by the so-called Environmental Movement. Catastrophic global warming visions of cities going underwater, of continents of ice and snow crashing into the oceans, could come straight from the pages of Revelations. And, as with the nightmare scenarios of the Bible, the effect of these visions is to terrify and terrorise the populace, thus rendering it ripe for manipulation. Following the lead of the Christian missionaries who went before them, the Warmist zealots recognise the value of getting people young. Indoctrination of young, open, pliable minds is best. This is stated quite explicitly in the blurb accompanying the 'fact sheets' produced by Hi-Energy (Highland and Islands Scotland) for primary schools: 'Engaging with young people on the subject of energy is vital if they are to drive this industry forward in years to come.' And, given that their 'fact sheets' assert the incontrovertible truth of catastrophic global warming, we know what sort of energy is being touted here. I read that lots of kids are getting stressed out by the global warming propaganda at school. This is all shameless missionary-style brainwashing.

Fear not, however, good people. Redemption is at hand. The Saviour is with us. NOW. His name, Al Gore: Messiah for our troubled times. I exaggerate not. Al Gore has taken on the mantle completely. He has incarnated to save us from our sins; and to save the polar bears too. In common with the Abrahamic religions, there is the notion of the Chosen People. Our sins can be absolved, forgiven. Just believe, cover your mountains with turbines and pay your carbon taxes, and ye shall be saved. Isn't that great? Actually, lest we forget: there is something else that both Christian and Warmist saviours have in common. They are both total frauds.

In reality, the Warmist zealots function within a framework of what Jungians call unconscious shadow projection. Christianity does the same, manifesting the Shadow in the form of the Devil, the Anti-Christ, pagans and other non-believers. In Warmism, the complex is transferred onto carbon (black as the Devil!), users of aeroplanes, and scum-of-the-earth deniers. The intolerance demonstrated towards non-believers marks out Warmists as the true inheritors of the mantle worn previously by Conquistadors, Inquisitors, and the like. Instead of being reasonable thinking people who are merely sceptical of the official creed, those who dare to ask questions are evil 'deniers', standing in the way of the one and only truth, irritating obstacles to total world domination by those who have seen the Light.

And, once more in common with their Abrahamic buddies, the Warmists claim to be saving the world while they are simultaneously creating misery and planetary damage. Think destruction of landscapes and habitats; wiping out rainforests and food-producing land for biofuels; brainwashing and terrorising the kids.

My point is this: the pathological religious complex which has come to dominate the western world over the past two thousand years has been hijacked by our modern (pseudo) environmentalists. It is a psychology that comes only too naturally to many of us, and transfers, effortlessly and complete with all its neuroses, onto environmentalism, thus rendering this pathological as well.

Dreamtime

It is now almost a year since the inception of Pale Green Vortex. In retrospect, this has been one of the more remarkable and fulfilling years of my life to date, and Pale Green Vortex manifests a fair description of much that has taken place. During a recent trawl through my posts of the last twelve months, and managing to set aside the false modesty that customarily plagues me (in truth a symptom of pride), I felt a quiet sense of satisfaction. The superficially disparate themes scattered throughout these pieces actually represent different facets of an emerging gestalt of total interconnectedness, apprehended most properly through the cultivation of multidimensional consciousness. Lots of long words, but the the simple nub of the matter.

In his final, and arguably finest, book, 'The Active Side of Infinity', Carlos Castaneda is told at one point by sorceror/teacher Don Juan Matus that, in order to become a true warrior-traveller, he must first thank those who have meant so much to him. In particular, Don Juan singles out two young women from Castaneda's past, and we follow our hapless protagonist as he searches high and low in an effort to find them in order to repay his indebtedness.

My own wish to say thanks has a less dramatic context, maybe, but is heartfelt all the same. I would like to thank all those wise and courageous ones, whose hearts, souls, words, and actions have been so vital to me over this last period. There may be others but, in addition to my personal friends, I would like particularly to say thanks to the following: Neil Kramer, John Lamb Lash of metahistory, Karen Sawyer of ARC, Opaque Lens of Shamanic Freedom Radio, Peter Taylor, and those who have blogged tirelessly against the creeping non-environmental totalitarianism of the emerging warmist/windfarm religion. A special mention is also due to Ralph Metzner, whose course in Alchemical Divination I attended two years ago in Switzerland turned out to be a gradual yet empowering initiation into the ways of energy and consciousness.

In the meantime, March has been pronounced Dreamtime in the Vortex; which is a fancy way of saying there will be no further posts this month. I imagine the universe will survive somehow. But we shall be back in April, for year two. Who knows where this will lead us.....?

Artwork: Aboriginal Dreamtime Sisters, Colleen Wallace

The Dangers of Psychedelic Substances, Part Two

It's morning on a clear but chilly day in March 1974. I'm sitting in the bedroom of a friend in Redland, Bristol, south-west England. He opens a drawer by his bedside, takes out a piece of off-white blotting paper, then hands it to me. I glance at this unappetising offering, before turning to look into my friend's eyes. Part of me is terrified: like everyone else, I have read and heard the numerous media reports, and wonder if I will be thrown into complete and irreversible madness. At the same time, I trust my friend, and so many people I know of in the underground culture, who recommend it as a kind of rite of passage. I put the blotting paper into my mouth; it is dry to the tongue, but tasteless. I swallow it down. Then we head off to the Mendip Hills to burn a cat.

The cat is already dead. It is the recently-deceased companion of the man from the flat below. This fellow, who sports a remarkable long moustache, claims to be a Zen master; I do not believe him. I dutifully collect wood for the funeral pyre, then watch as the cat's elements are returned to the wider universe in what increasingly seems like a pointless ceremony.

We return to the flat, where more commune-type people arrive. At one point, my Bristolian friend unnervingly sprouts long donkey's ears. I blink hard, then turn away to watch Gandhi on a large wall poster as he dances vigourously to the music.

The following morning we climb to the top of Glasonbury Tor. The dark green melancholic countryside stretches quietly in all directions beneath a uniform grey sky, mirroring precisely my mood. This first LSD trip has been a shattering experience - quite literally. All my ideas, ideals, and ideologies - and believe me, I had plenty - have been shown to be just that: thoughts and viewpoints, nothing more. I have been living my life from ideas about it and, for the first time - since I was a child, at least - I have experienced everything directly, the veils of thought and idea ripped asunder. My view of self has been smashed, leaving a nihilistic-tinged, everything's-the-same, is-ness. I survey Arthur's magic lands from a standpoint of slightly depressive freedom.....

February 1975: Almost a year has passed since the cat's cremation. Enough of my old idea-defined self has been shed to allow the embryo of a new sense of reality to emerge. It is Saturday evening, and I am sitting near the fire in the commune living room in Oxford. Slowly the contents of the room and of my mind rearrange themselves, until I find myself participating in a web of total harmony. I have never known such peace and tranquility before. A hitherto unsuspected sense of 'at-homeness' manifests itself within my being.

At this moment, a dark cloud of realisation drifts across my mind. The means to this state of utter harmony is not officially approved. It is, indeed, frowned upon and highly illegal. This is a most bizarre state of affairs - that the means to bliss and wisdom can lead to a hefty prison sentence. There is only one unavoidable conclusion: bliss and wisdom can play no part in the official agenda. And from this point I know - as I had known for many a year, but less vividly - that one part of me will always be like a bandit, an outlaw, wandering on the peripheries of sanctioned existence.

April arrives: high spring in Oxford. I take matters very seriously. With an instinctive grasp of what Leary and co. refer to as 'set and setting', I read Tibetan Buddhist texts before chemistry-facilitated journeys into the unknown - to the amusement, concern and, in one case, barely-concealed ridicule, of my fellow communards. 'Secret Oral Teachings in Tibetan Buddhist Sects' by Alexandra David-Neal is a favourite. One Saturday afternoon I am sitting on my bed, when something miraculous seems to happen. In the Buddho/Hindu-tinged post-hippie speak of my diary entry for the day: 'I became one with the rest of the universe.......The 'I' dissolved totally into the rest of creation..... And the intuitive power, energy, of those few seconds was enormous, incredible..... it was all so simple, so obvious. Like it had always been like this.... And I don't know how long I'll remember, except that I'll probably never forget.....' And so it continues.

O.K. So it's all very well becoming one with the rest of the universe, and realising that's how things have always been anyway: but where do you go from there........?

Timothy Leary, self-proclaimed 1960s High Priest of acid, was by all accounts an extremely complex character. What is frequently overlooked, however, is the fact that he was initially - and arguably remained - first and foremost a psychologist. Years before he set eyes upon anything remotely psychedelic, he was working with friend and colleague Frank Barron at the Kaiser Clinic, California. Taking advantage of the backlog of patients awaiting psychotherapy, Leary and Barron devised a nifty little experiment aimed at demonstrating how useful therapy really was. They would compare the progress of those undergoing therapy with that of those waiting for it. The results of their research were surprising, to say the least: there was no difference between the two groups at all! In both, roughly one third of patients improved, one third remained the same, while a third deteriorated. The critical factor, Leary concluded, was not so much therapy, as what he referred to as the 'vitalizing transaction': that elusive 'click' which, as Barron described it, was 'as frail as love or blessedness, as passing as the moment of grace or the beginning of creation.' (quoted in 'Storming Heaven' by Jay Stevens, chapter 11). (As an aside, Leary and Barron's idea would help to explain why so many people spend years and a fortune in psychotherapy, without escaping from the web of family relationships in which they are trapped. Lots of understanding but no vitalizing transaction.). A few years down the road, Leary swallowed some psilocybin-containing mushrooms and proceeded to devolve to a single solitary cell, an experience so vitalising that it profoundly influenced the course of western youth culture for decades to come.

So where could you go from union with the godhead; from watching the universe create itself moment by moment in front of your own eyes; from experiencing time and space dissolve into irrelevance, or whatever other vitalizing transactions took place with a little help from the LSD blotter or tiny brown microdot? It is difficult to convey the impact of those few short periods, sometimes mere moments, when the world was seen with fresh eyes, as if for the first time, and in a profoundly new and different light. Nevertheless, this was the question that many people were forced to confront in the early 1970s in Britain. Nobody told you about this stuff at school. Television and radio were silent on the matter. The local priest would want you committed. Hinduism and Buddhism offered more hope, however, and groups based on their teachings were among the main beneficiaries of all the acid-facilitated visions of the time. Rajneeshis, sanyassins, Hare Krishna people, Divine Light premies were everywhere if you frequented the alternative scene. I worked for a while in a Black and Decker tools warehouse in Didcot, Oxfordshire, making money for the commune project I was part of. Half the temps there seemed to be premies, mainly good-looking girls in long flowing dresses. 'She deserves better than that,' quipped one of my co-workers about a particularly beautiful girl on the warehouse floor, referring to her premie status as well as her rather passive Divine Light boyfriend. I was not inclined to disagree.

The overall ambience of these groups was one of 'going beyond acid', and before long I too joined the ranks of the post-LSD set. Barely fifteen months after realising my irreconcilable unity with the rest of the universe, I was giving away my last few blue microdots to an astonished friend named French Paul. Each successive trip now seemed to land me in a slightly different corner of the landscape of the cosmos, and I needed a map to help find a way around. The search was on for my own 'next step'.

I went to a Sri Chinmoy meeting. The guru came with impeccable credentials: one of his devotees was John McLaughlin of the Mahavishnu Orchestra. The evening consisted largely of a film about athletics, however, resulting in my leaving non-plussed. And while some of the phenomenology of my LSD-assisted ventures was mirrored in various Hindu texts, I eventually opted for a Buddhist path. I felt that Buddhism presented a clearer road map through the murky swamps of samsara towards the lands of nirvanic bliss.

In retrospect, all this 'going beyond acid' mentality was infected with hubris. The Beatles had already done it in 1967: 'LSD can only get you so far' was the subtext for John, Paul, and George at least, when they went off to meditate with Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, a guru I viewed with deep suspicion even at the tender age of fourteen. Instead of 'going beyond' - especially in the idealistically renunciate spirit that I adopted -, it might have been better to create situations where a more regular spiritual life was adopted, but one which included the chance to investigate more directly what precisely was going on at the height of the acid trip. Put it this way: 'going beyond' a substance that, even in the most miniscule of quantities, could open the doorway to the Absolute. What's that about?

In fairness, most of us had no precedents to help us on our way. For the majority, little had changed since, fifteen years beforehand, Timothy Leary had written of his initial intensive experiments with psilocybin: 'We were on our own..... Western literature had almost no guides, no maps, no texts that even recognised the existence of altered states.' The western traditions that might have accommodated psychedelic experience - shamanic, alchemical, pagan - had been thoroughly destroyed by the monotheists, through inquisitions, witch-burnings, and the rest. What felt radically new in the 1960s and 1970s was, in fact, more like a fumbling attempt to reconnect with our own natural sacred traditions, our suppressed and persecuted birthright. Traditions within which, as in modern-day shamanic societies in Central and South America, and in West Africa, psychedelic, or entheogenic, experience is firmly embedded within a wider psycho-spiritual context and tradition. It is testament to the success of the Christians that I, along with many others, had to look far afield for traditions that said anything about altered states of reality that may be entered courtesy of psychedelics, or indeed other practices. And the ensuing love affair with organised religions born in the East brought with it, in turn, its own catalogue of problems and pitfalls.......

Highland Autumn

Well, they're a bit late. But, then, what's three months in eternity?

Jump Aboard the ARC!

February 19/20th 2011 sees the third ARC (Alternative Research Community) convention, once more to be held in Bath. Rather unfortunately, I shall not be there, but I attended the first two weekends, and cannot recommend them highly enough! Friendly atmosphere, stimulating people, well-presented talks from folk at the forefront of independent research into the things that the Guardian and BBC just don't want to know exist. And all hosted by the irrepressible Karen Sawyer.

There are probably not a lot of weekends in the course of a lifetime that can alter its trajectory, but a couple of days at the ARC convention can do just that. In my less modest moments, I like to think that Pale Green Vortex shares in the same spirit as the ARC conventions, that of 'looking outside the box' in the search for greater authenticity, greater understanding, and deeper meaning. Hey, who created the box anyway?!

My thanks and gratitude to those who have actively participated in these events. For any reader who has yet to experience their magic: get on down there!

website: arcconvention.org

Archons Everywhere

Infected by archons?: Scottish Energy Minister Jim Mather (top), and Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond

How did we get to be this way? How come the human species, with a potential to be so fabulous, so fantastic, to dream such wonderful dreams, often turns out petty, nasty, and downright rubbish? It's the question of questions, yet barely anyone bothers to look for an answer.

The human condition itself is described reasonably well by the various Buddhist traditions. Greed, aversion, and ignorance are the forces driving its less savoury aspects. The repeated habit of looking for fulfilment in impossible places, in what is essentially unsatisfactory, impermanent, and without substance, continues our frustration. All this in turn is a reflection of our mistaken assumptions of fixedness and separatehood.

So far, so good. But while it serves as a decent preliminary description, it leaves well alone the 'why' and 'how' that form the vital core of this piece. Generally, Buddhist traditions show scant interest in such explanations. If my memory serves me well, the Tibetan Gelugpa school says that samsara (conditioned existence) has existed from beginningless time, but frankly this does not help all that much. Maybe a story from the Pali Canon exemplifies the Buddha's approach. Imagine, he said, somebody coming to you with an arrow stuck in his eye. He wouldn't be interested in the 'why' and 'how': who the archer was; why he shot the arrow in the first place; how the arrow was made; what the archer ate for breakfast. No, the person would just want you to pull the arrow out. Similarly, explained the Buddha, my teachings are an exercise in spiritual arrow-yanking. The rest is superfluous.

I suppose that the Buddha has a point: in modern times, it's a warning against wasting too many years in psychotherapy digging up yet another occasion when daddy misbehaved. But the Buddha seems to ignore the times when knowing a bit about 'how' and 'why' might come in useful. It could be, for example, that Mr. Arrow-in-the-Eye's way to work passes, unbeknownst to him, the hideout of a bunch of crossbow-wielding bandits. He should know this, and change his route if he wants to avoid a recurrence of the incident. The Buddha's story, I suggest, appears a little simplistic for our modern troubled times.

Changing tack, the story of the transition of western civilisation from partnership to dominator cultures (see Pale Green Vortex entry 'Dominators Everywhere', May 2010) is highly relevant for a proper understanding of our descent into the delusion of alienated separatehood with its consequent nastiness. Yet this, too, is at root descriptive rather than explanatory, and can only get us so far.

We are left with the prevalent notions of mainstream western science, where life and the universe are chance happenings, with our current predicament a natural reflection of Darwinian 'survival of the fittest' theory (which, taken simply, translates as 'it's good to be nasty: you gotta look after yourself.'). Alongside one-eyed Darwinism runs the notion of 'the selfish gene', a most convenient idea for justifying the pursuit of personal interest at the expense of others, along with the social, political, and economic systems that reflect this dismal picture of human nature.

These theories of science, however, have nothing of interest to say about our main theme, the yawning abyss between the fantastic potential and oft-mediocre reality of the human lot. Rather, they deal with it simply by removing one side of the equation altogether, dismissing the fabulous and the fantastic as mere delusions, generated by chemical reactions in the brain, perhaps. Such a dismissal says more about the people creating the theories than it does about the human condition itself. It belies the bias in most mainstream scientists and academics, showing them to be scientistic in belief rather than truly scientific in approach. Scientific materialism is in fact a continual process of self-validation within which, by definition, it cannot accord significance to higher, deeper, archetypal, and holotropic ('tending towards wholeness') dimensions of experience.

With the Buddha viewing the question as irrelevant, social systems analysis only going so far, and Darwin and the selfish gene not up to the job, what remains to account for the paradox of the human condition? Nothing within our normal terms of reference comes to mind at all......

When the well-worn paths lead nowhere

The oft-repeated formulae sound old and tired

radiating dull-grey their mean fabrications

What remains is the fabulous, the fantastic, the impossible -

We are left with....... the archons

The archons crop up time and again in the ancient Gnostic texts, and John Lash, who has worked tirelessly on the Gnostic writings, discusses them at great length on his website, metahistory.org. In brief, archons are alien intruders, inorganic beings, whose aim is to invade and confuse human minds. Their prime motivation is envy - of the paradisical biosphere that we inhabit, while they are consigned to live outside the Earth's atmosphere - and they get their kicks from leading us astray from our true nature. The archon's main tactics are twofold. Sowing error in our minds is one, principally mistaken ideas and beliefs, such as that in an off-planet creator god. Their other major ploy is simulation, meaning the inability of the human to distinguish a real pearl from a plastic copy, as John Lash vividly describes it. Or, in modern times, to tell the difference between directly experienced and virtual realities.

The theory of archon intrusion does seem a bit wacky at first sight, granted. But then notions of 'normal' and 'wacky' are very much culturally-defined, and whatever our modern western systems of thought have produced on the theme of human nature is shown to be severely wanting. The Gnostics' pedigree is impeccable, if John Lash's suppositions are correct: they were the inheritors of shamanic wisdom in the west, gleaned from millenia of practice and experience of the many spheres of human consciousness.

And when you thought the story could not get any stranger: John Lash comes up with remarkable parallels to the Gnostic theory of archon intrusion in a source far more modern, yet no less enigmatic. He points us in the direction of master raconteur Carlos Castaneda, specifically the chapter entitled 'Mud Shadows' in the final book he wrote before his death, 'The Active Side of Infinity'. "Think for a moment" the incorrigible sorceror Don Juan Matus urges his student (Carlos) at one point "and tell me how you would explain the contradiction between the intelligence of man the engineer and the stupidity of his system of beliefs, or the stupidity of his contradictory behaviour. Sorcerors believe that the predators have given us our systems of beliefs, our ideas of good and evil, our social mores..... they have given us covetousness, greed, and cowardice. It is the predators who make us complacent, routinary,and egomaniacal." And again, "The predators give us their mind, which becomes our mind." "Man, the magical being that he is destined to be, is no longer magical. He's an average piece of meat. There are no more dreams for man but the dreams of an animal who is being raised to become a piece of meat: trite, conventional, imbecilic." The name given to these mind predators is 'flyers'.

My mind goes back to what I wrote in my last post, about the narrow horizons of so many people's lives nowadays. And, to spell out more from what I wrote then: a little experience of the innately pure, habit-free nature of our mind, through whatever means, leads to an altogether different take on the 'civilisation' going on around us, with its typical thought-patterns and forms of behaviour. None of it - complacent, routinary, conventional, imbecilic, to borrow a few choice adjectives from Juan Matus - is inevitable, none of it a predetermined parade in a fixed direction, whether it be decided by genetic predisposition or fantasies of the apocalypse. There is something else going on..... something.

Fortunately, the archons/flyers can be repelled. The Gnostics speak of what we may vaguely call 'spiritual life' as effective, in particular those practices of energy aimed at what, in other traditions, is known as awakening and raising the kundalini. Inner stillness, silence, frightens them away, according to Don Juan Matus; they have no concentration whatsoever. Looking at much modern technology from this perspective, it seems purpose-designed to make human beings into ideal archon fodder. Folk rushing to work texting with one hand, grasping a Starbucks in the other, oblivious to the natural world around them. It is the archon dream come true. Attention deficit on a grand scale as the norm; simulation and virtual reality totally replacing the real world. Inner stillness? What's that?

Inner stillness. Profound knowing of our own mind in its vajra-like strength and infinite radiance. "The flyers are an essential part of the universe" concludes Don Juan Matus....."They are the means by which the universe tests us.......we are the means by which the universe becomes aware of itself. The flyers are the implacable challengers." Can we pass the test?

The Dangers of Psychedelic Substances

Photo: Hofmann LSD blotter (Erowid library)

I recently finished rereading 'Acid Dreams' by Martin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain. Along with 'Storming Heaven' by Jay Stevens, and Andy Roberts's 'Albion Dreaming', this forms part of a trio of books relating tales of consciousness, counterculture, and larger-than-life characters, all connected in one way or another with the history of that classic psychedelic LSD. Fact may or may not be stranger than fiction, but in this case it is certainly every bit as compelling - if you're into that kind of thing, at least.

'Acid Dreams' sheds light on the CIA's involvement with LSD in the 1950s, both in their search for a wonder 'truth drug' and as an agent of incapacitation. The book's particular strength, though, lies in its exploration of the counterculture of 1960s U.S.A., and the relationship psychedelic experience had to its birth, growth, and eventual disintegration.

Media and consumerism have successfully reduced the more significant aspects of this side of 1960s American life (which spilled over into the early 1970s in the U.K.) into a predictable set of cliches, caricatures, and fashion features. 'If you remember the '60s you weren't there' is a typically dumb and trite soundbyte, a translation from alcohol-based assumptions on the effects of drugs into foreign territory. It you were really there, you might just as likely recall it as if it were only last week. Then there are those television rockumentaries of the period, making occasional reference to 'drugs', and daring to show a couple of clips of long-haired dopers taking a toke at a music festival; yet with LSD, the bete noire, getting no more than a passing reference, as if it were an incidental add-on to the main story. All this amounts to a massaging of history, removing its more problematic and threatening aspects: typical Control System tactics.

Most critically, 'Acid Dreams' resurrects the genuine psychic ambience of the mid- and late 1960s in the U.S.A. 'Nearly everything was being questioned and most things tried in an orgy of experimentation that shook the nation at its roots.' (chapter 5, 'Acid and the New Left' section). And central to this upheaval was the growing popularity of LSD, which opened doorways in the mind that the initiate had hitherto not suspected even existed. Even those counterculture affiliates who did not directly partake of the new sacrament, viewing it with fear, suspicion, or distaste - I knew plenty of people like this in the mid-1970s - were nevertheless caught up in a maelstrom that had acid at its centre.

LSD was capable of facilitating many things, among them personal and social change. On mid-60s Dylan: 'The vastly accelerated personal changes Dylan underwent as he moved from protest to transcendence were archetypical of a rite of passage experienced by thousands of turned-on youth.' Carl Oglesby, former president of Students for a Democratic Society: ' It (acid) draws a line right across your life - before and after LSD - in the same way you felt that your step into radical politics drew a sharp division.' (all quotes from chapter 5).

While the precise phenomenology of different psychedelics at reasonably high doses tends to differ, it is not exceptional for the subject - certainly with the help of the classic psychedelics LSD and mescaline - to enter a dimension of complete existential open-ness; infinite potential, unbounded possibility reveal themselves within and without. All the games, as Timothy Leary termed them, which go to make up our repeated patterns of behaviour, our unconsciously acted roles - in short, who we think we are - temporarily vanish. For the moment, all conditioning seems in abeyance, all habit unravelled, and the human being bathes in fullness, a transpersonal luminosity that is strange yet familiar. This moment correlates roughly with the aim of Castaneda's Don Juan, when he speaks of 'erasing personal history'. It also resounds with Buddhist scholar Herbert Guenther's translation of 'sunyata' as 'the open dimension of being'. There is additionally an echo of the esoteric meaning of the 'drop out' section of Timothy Leary's frequently ridiculed clarion call to 'turn on, tune in, drop out'. It is not the literal leaving of society so much as the dropping out of the games and habits which bind us to a blind and limited existence.

This is all very bad news for the Control System, to use Neil Kramer's most apt term. For its functioning, the Control System relies on its subjects following games and habits seriously and unthinkingly. Intimations of infinite possibilities in our life are definitely not part of the game plan. They pose a dire threat to the entire set up; when Richard Nixon declared Timothy Leary to be the most dangerous man in America, he wasn't joking.

How close the whole shithouse came to collapsing in the late 1960s will never be known for sure; not very close, I suspect. All the same, the Control System was given a severe jolt, and realised the potential threat to its own game of total domination that psychedelics posed. Enough people get hold of this stuff, and who knows what will happen? The Control System was determined that no such situation should be permitted to arise again. Once the CIA and other agencies of domination decided that LSD was no good as a truth drug for interrogation purposes, Operation Psychedelic Crackdown was instigated. Spearheaded by the U.S.A., and ushered into the global arena by the U.N., it classified psychedelics alongside heroin and cocaine as the most dangerous of drugs (in truth, the Control System prefers heroin to LSD: it enslaves people to the system, reducing their autonomy, and offers up huge profits, a proportion of which can be seamlessly sequestered). All nations must follow the line: step outside, and there will be serious trouble, chiefly in the form of bullying and threats from the U.S.A. and U.N. Control System emissaries. And so the story continues until today. With few exceptions, politicians and the media play the 'psychedelics mean death' game, either without a clue as to what they are talking about, or as a cynical publicity ploy. Practical examples can be found littered throughout the posts in Pale Green Vortex and across the web.

Looked at from one perspective, the history of western 'civilisation' over the past 45 years can be read simply as the slow but inexorable clampdown on the hearts, minds, and bodies of the populace by a system intent on extending its influence and preventing a repeat performance of the goings-on of the past. To spend any amount of time in a shopping mall today, and compare what goes on with the dreams of hope and infinite possibility illuminated by the acid-fuelled visions of the 1960s and early 1970s is a salutary experience. Most people's horizons are very narrow. The Control System's strategies have been extremely successful. A new pair of trousers (the right cut and colour, of course), a McDonalds, and sweeties for the kids. That'll do nicely (speaking of children, it is noticeable how many of them are out there in the shops. 'Get them early' has been another successful Control System ploy: kids who can't spell their own name, but can shout 'Buy one, get one free' with gusto. That's the kind of citizen we want....).

Fear and a perverted sense of normality created by media saturation characterise our Brave New World. Yet any extreme position inevitably throws up its opposite. And a system based upon the suppression of the many by the few is built upon inherently shaky foundations. Personal observation suggests that humans are an extremely flexible species ( I use 'flexible' deliberately rather than 'adaptable', with its Darwinian connotations). Just as so many have been duped and suckered into a life that falls far short of its amazing potential, so they could equally rise into fullness and an awareness of the possibilities latent in every breath they take. We dream mad dreams regardless, and live from the innate purity that resides deep within our hearts, minds, and bodies.....