Images of Summer Gone....

Sacrificial Lambs

Eden Court is the number one venue in Inverness for the arts: music, theatre, independent cinema all proudly gathered on the banks of the River Ness. Eden Court was noticeably devoid of high culture for three days just over a week ago, however: it was closed to the public while staging a very special event indeed. Though notably lacking in good jokes, the theatre undoubtedly saw plenty of buffoonery, generously provided by a veritable gaggle of court jesters. Experts in the performing arts were there aplenty, intended to deceive the unwary, and with ambition and intrigue fit for a Shakespearian historical drama. The event: the annual conference of the Scottish National Party.

Delegates were treated to a special welcoming party on the Saturday, as folk from various anti-windfarm groups across the length and breadth of Scotland met outside to protest at the Scottish misgovernment's crazy plunder-a-hill policies. I decided to go along. It would, in fact, have been hypocritical not to have done so, given the ferocity of my own objection to these metal-and-plastic monsters that are now bestriding some of the most marvellous wild locations in Europe. The result of my own investigations over the past several years, reported in part on Pale Green Vortex, is that large-scale windfarms possess no redeeming features whatsoever. They are promoted by, and benefit, three groups of people only: as a publicity stunt by politicians wishing to appear 'green' on the world stage; by energy companies and landowners who stand to make a fast and easy buck from government policies; and by those infected with a delusional, abstracted notion of 'environmentalism', as distinct from the real thing.

With their high-fives and victory fist-waving, the leading lights of the Scottish National Party demonstrate a worrying triumphalism. And, because they are driven by ideology - independence at any price and renewables at any cost - they can be blind to the pragmatic concerns of ordinary human beings. Put another way, they are dangerous people. They will be undone by their hubris in the end, I am confident; history seems to teach this lesson. But in the meantime, Scotland is subject to their shrill cries of 'Scotland for the Scots', while simultaneously blighting the lives of many who happen to live within their domain.

The SNP version of independence for Scotland seems firmly bedded in what, following John Lash, I refer to as the victim-perpetrator mindset. And as a grand ideology, independence, like all Big Ideas, transcends the individual. It follows, therefore, that it has its own sacrificial lambs. And foremost among those lined up for slaughter in the name of the Great and Good Cause are those who cherish wild places as a vital source of spiritual nourishment. At the head of the queue, as many of Scotland's upland and rural areas are destroyed, are those who happen to live there in the first place.

People tend to inhabit rural places for two main reasons. Either they are born there, or they move there because they find the rhythms of nature and the countryside more conducive than those of the Big City. Whichever way, to suddenly find your chosen way of life shattered by an army of enormous turbines waving at you from a nearby horizon or right on your doorstep, as a result of a decision made hundreds of miles away and in which you have played no part, is shocking. I am fortunate enough not to gaze at a bunch of turbines from my bedroom window, but many of the people gathered outside Eden Court now suffer this fate. And simply moving away often proves impractical or downright impossible, since nobody wants to buy a house next door to an industrial junkyard.

One of the placards being carried at Eden Court posed the question: 'Does independence mean dictatorship?' In the SNP version of events, most likely 'yes'. Even local democracy stands no chance in the face of the juggernaut of SNP-driven central government. Critical example: many decisions on windfarm applications are initially made by local councils. If turned down by the local bodies, they may be taken to central government by the energy companies. Get this - every single large-scale application refused by Perth and Kinross Council (which includes within its remit some of the most quintessential of Scottish landscapes) has subsequently been given the go-ahead by the powers-that-be in Edinburgh. So the more local form of government, which might just be a little more in touch with the realities of the location concerned, is held in total contempt. We have a situation of complete disempowerment by Central Control. Otherwise known as 'modern democracy'.

The terms of discourse of modern politics are such that everything which endows human life with true value is excluded. Matters of soul, heart, and spirit; of our intimate and intrinsic connectedness with the non-human world. These are strictly off the map, in general, and specifically when decision-makers discuss windfarms. Even the vague and cliched 'quality of life' gets short shrift nowadays, treated as a luxury, when finance and economics are presented as being so pressing. Times of apparent economic difficulty actually suit the political classes very well, since they can concentrate their materialistic minds exclusively on what comes naturally to them: food, water, property, employment, division of resources. They are on home ground.

Delegates strode in and straggled out. Some were courteous, accepting the leaflets offered to them, while others marched brusquely by. One or two stopped to engage in 'heated discussion', and a few more quietly, almost conspiratorially, whispered that they agreed with us. The protest had excellent front-page coverage in the Press and Journal, one of the local newspapers, which hopefully brought the scam to the awareness of more people. Thanks go to the reporter and photographer for this. As I walked home from the demo, I realised that I had been touched quite deeply by a mixture of sadness and inspiration. Sadness at the needless destruction of landscapes, wild nature, and the lives of those living proximate to them. Yet inspired by the tireless efforts and courage of people fighting for what is of real value to their souls, and for the soul of the natural world of which we are part.

Photo: Oast House Archive

The Gagging of Casey Hardison

Photo: Casey Hardison, entheogenic activist (Erowid, Brighton Argus)

Readers of Pale Green Vortex will already be familiar with Casey Hardison, sentenced in 2005 to twenty years in jail for producing psychedelic-type substances at his home in leafy Sussex, southern England. On September 22nd this year, Casey received a letter. I paraphrase freely, but this is the gist: 'Mr Hardison. We are finding your persistent correspondence with us on the subject of the legal status of various drugs increasingly tiresome and irritating. We are unable to stop you in your tracks rationally, as the logic of your position is irrefutable. Therefore, we have no option but to simply issue an order to shut you up. Yours, etc.'

Yes, folks, this is what those great western values of freedom of speech and democracy have come to after all these years: we don't like what you have to say, so shut up! It's as simple as that. During the course of the past seven years, Casey has consistently stood up for truth, honesty, liberty, and equality. At his trial, he did not do as criminals are expected to do - bow their head in shame, mumble something about seeing the error of their ways, and hope for a lighter sentence. Instead, he asserted his right to freedom of consciousness - cognitive liberty -, and argued that the 'War on Drugs' is in fact a War on Consciousness. As evidenced in the Operation Julie trial 25 years beforehand, such unrepentant behaviour is guaranteed to antagonise the powers-that-be, and result in a suitably harsh sentencing from an affronted man in a wig.

Instead of shutting up and lying down on his prison bed, Casey has devoted his time and considerable energy to delving into UK drug laws in great detail. The fine print of his investigations can be found through either the freecasey link on Pale Green Vortex or the Drug Equality Alliance website. I suggest that anybody concerned about freedom and discrimination in modern western society should take some time to look carefully at this information. But in summary Casey has argued that, on the basis of scientific evidence of their relative potential for harm, the socially and culturally acceptable drugs alcohol and tobacco are currently under-regulated, while various other substances, such as ecstasy and LSD, are over-regulated. The current scheduling of drugs does not mirror their relative dangers in the slightest. This is not personal opinion, but fact - see the work spearheaded by Professor Nutt for starters - and is not what you would expect if the purpose of law was to protect the individual from the effects of dangerous substances.

Furthermore, Casey has suggested that alcohol and tobacco, being drugs with a certain potential for harm, should logically be placed alongside other drugs under the strictures of the Misuse of Drugs Act, 1971. The special status that they enjoy is based on cultural factors - even the government has admitted as much -, and in effect discriminates against those who may which by personal preference to use other drugs instead which are no more harmful. This does not mean that alcohol and tobacco should be prohibited: this act simply provides the framework for regulation in one form or another of a variety of substances. Casey's argument has been wilfully misrepresented, however, and on September 22nd an 'Extended Civil Restraining Order' was duly placed on this individual who dares to repeatedly point out that the emperor wears no clothes. By the time the Order expires, Casey will most likely have been conveniently deported to the USA after completing his jail sentence.

As the 1960s and early 1970s, years that shaped much current UK drug policy, fade into distant memory, ignorance can no longer be held up as an excuse for the continuing disconnection between the legal situation and reality. It is impossible to avoid the conclusion that another agenda is at work. The Casey Hardison fiasco is further evidence that the prime purpose of law in modern 'democratic society' is not, as might be supposed, to protect the rights and freedoms of the individual, and to ensure fairness. A main function of law, in fact, appears to be to protect and perpetuate a particular version of reality. It also serves to advance the interests of the few at the expense of the many - but this is simply one aspect of that particular version of reality. There is no other possible conclusion that can be drawn from a close examination of the facts that we are confronted with, and it is vital to grasp this realisation if we wish to understand much of what happens in the world today.

A hallmark of the 'reality' that we are fed as the one and only reality is its strongly hierarchical configuration. The greatest enemy of the pyramid-of-power dominator culture spawned by this version of reality is anything that reveals other, wider realities, with their other, more positive attendant realms of consciousness. Dominator culture is terrified by the stance of Casey Hardison like it is terrified of nothing else; widespread access to other realities and forms of consciousness will be its undoing, and it will do anything within its power to suppress this knowledge. And while access to other realities can be afforded by a variety of means, the quickest and most reliable is with the assistance of psychedelic-type, or entheogenic, plants or substances. Not everyone is comfortable with this notion, but ask any Andean or Amazonian shaman. And on the subject of one of Casey's products, Andy Roberts summarises neatly in 'Albion Dreaming': 'At its most potent, LSD gives the user no option but to examine and challenge all accepted notions of perception, thought, identity, culture and the nature of reality. The danger to the Establishment must be that if enough people used LSD there might ....... be a revolution that could threaten how life in Britain is lived.' (Chapter Thirteen, 'Revolution in the head'). Just so, Andy, just so. And we wouldn't want that, would we?

Producers of psychedelic-type substances generally get a bum deal - particularly if they are caught. No mention in the New Years' honours lists for their excellent products or services to humankind. Andy Roberts bemoans the lack of public protest when the Operation Julie defendants were tried and sent to jail, but I wonder what the point would have been: I can't see how it would have helped the chemists in any way. Manufacturers (or alchemists, depending on your take on reality) such as Casey Hardison and some of the Operation Julie defendants were primarily motivated by idealism, but this was outside the frame of reference of Judge Niblett's consciousness in the Hardison case, when he could only envisage greed and profit as motives. He could only envisage greed and profit because they are the currency of his version of reality! The truth is that thousands, if not millions, of people have had their lives quietly enriched and enhanced as a result of the substances that came out of a farmhouse in rural 1970s Wales and a room in rural Sussex. The acid chemists have helped improve countless more people's lives, opened more eyes, than have all our politicians and High Court judges put together.

When Al-Megrahi of Lockerbie notoriety was returned to Libya by the Scottish Misgovernment, he was accorded a hero's welcome on his coming home. Will a true man of courage and unflagging positivity receive a similar reception when deported to his native US soil? Probably not. But Casey certainly should be.....

Bring On the New.....

Visionary art by Alex Grey

In his seminal presentation for ARC 1,'Guerilla Psychonautics', Neil Kramer briefly goes into the notion of 'neophobic shutdown'. This, he explains, is the condition of refusal to entertain new and strange ideas and angles on life, reality, etc. Neil suggests various reasons for the defences going up in this apparently irrational manner. There's fear, built up and played upon by the media. Previous investment: if we have spent all our life buying into a particular version of reality, backing out can pose a threat to our very identity. Then cognitive dissonance, the uncomfortable and potentially depressing feeling of holding conflicting ideas about life simultaneously. Finally, Neil enumerates our inability to focus for any length of time. Fast cut edit in the media has led to attention deficit disorder being the modern norm, with a consequent inability to evaluate new information.

For myself, I have the opposite tendency. If anything, I am a neophile. Strange, unorthodox notions attract me like a bee to a honeypot, while most of 'normal' is old, tired, the same old fraudulent song played over and over again. It's an attitude I've had since an early age. I loved my parents, but I had no wish whatsoever to emulate the kind of life they led - even more so for my aunts, uncles, and grandparents. 'There must be more to life than this' was an intuition of mine even in infancy; which was accompanied by its darker corollary, the sense that a 'normal' life is stuffy, limited, and (to turn Buddhist for a moment) unsatisfactory. Then the 1960s arrived with an explosion of the new. Musical sounds that had never been dreamed, yet alone heard, before hit the radiowaves on a weekly basis. I was tailor-made for the era.

Pale Green Vortex is liberally sprinkled with ideas to make a neophobe's blood curdle: the multidimensional nature of existence, the entheogenic origins of our sense of the sacred; archons and nature spirits; partnership cultures as an integral part of our heritage. Not to mention the windfarm scam and global warming fraud as two of the least ecologically-enlightened topics on the political, social, and economic agenda. It may well be that some of these notions prove without foundation. But, in the spirit of a review of Terence McKenna's pioneering 'Food of the Gods', which declared that 'if only a fraction of McKenna's thought is true, he will someday be regarded as the Copernicus for consciousness', if only a handful of themes explored on Pale Green Vortex have real substance, this is enough to force a radical revisioning of what life and consciousness are about.

So, on to this article's neophobic spine-chiller, which concerns the function of the brain and its relationship to consciousness.....

Modern science, it would seem, now understands a good deal about how the brain works. Interestingly, though, with regard to 'what is consciousness?', it has failed to make much headway at all. Which is a polite way to say that it still hasn't a clue. There is a telling 'editorial note' provided by one Professor Richard Gregory in the New Penguin English Dictionary (2000) which sits on my bookshelf. 'The human brain is the most complicated structure known, with its 100 billion nerve cells, each with around 2000 connections' is its boggling factual introduction. But the note ends with this frank yet ominous statement: 'How it generates consciousness remains mysterious.'

Just so, just so. It's a magnificent giveaway of the mainstream 'scientific' assumption that gets in the way of any real understanding. That the brain generates consciousness is the only way that modern science can conceive of things. This is the necessary reflection of its model of the universe as made up of separate units of matter and other stuff that are, of themselves, by-and-large dead. From a shamanic and psychonautic perspective this view is totally ridiculous. The shamanic, psychonautic universe is alive, its separate units actually inextricably interconnected. This worldview proceeds from a direct experiential rather than theoretical basis, that of anima mundi, the world ensouled. Consciousness is not generated by the brain, but is a 'given' of reality itself. As John Lash writes of those specialists in reality and consciousness, the initiates into the Mysteries of Eleusis: 'They realised that the entire cognitive field of human beings and of all sentient life is set up and supported by the external world, a projection of the living intelligence of the planet.' And, as David Abram says in his article 'The Perceptual Implications of Gaia': 'the psyche is a property of the ecosystem as a whole' (quoted by John Lash, 'Not in His Image', ch 16).

The brain turns out to be, not so much a generator of consciousness as a receiver. And we can take this further. Not only is it a receiver, but it can tune into different channels given the right circumstances. Prime among the aims of shamans, tantrikas, Gnostic telestai, psychonauts, and others is developing the ability to tune into other channels of reality for reasons of gnosis and healing. To expand the analogy: there is, it seems, a default channel to which we are tuned as human beings from early on. This is 'channel normal',' channel survival'. While familiarity with this wavelength is obviously important, it is commonly presented as the only one, and anybody protesting this viewpoint is dismissed as either dangerous or mad - or both. But it is like having a television complete with satellite dish and capable of receiving a hundred stations, only someone has hidden the remote control and all you can watch is BBC One. I submit that any quest for wholeness, wisdom, or whatever, will be futile, or at best seriously compromised, without experientially embracing the multi-channelled nature of consciousness and the universe.

This realisation that the relationship between brain and consciousness is not as often assumed can create a good deal of soul-searching for the best-qualified minds educated within the paradigms of mainstream science. One such example is Stanislav Grof. Classically-trained in psychiatry, he became a leading figure in the use of psychedelics in psychotherapy until this became legally untenable. He went on to develop the technique of holotropic breathwork ('holotropic' meaning 'moving towards wholeness') as a powerful means of opening the doors of the psyche (or tuning into other channels of consciousness, to use the model in this article).

In the Preface to 'When the Impossible Happens', his personal memoir, Grof relates the following: 'My initial encounter with holotropic states was very difficult intellectually, as well as emotionally challenging. In the early years of my laboratory and clinical research with psychedelics, I was bombarded daily with experiences and observations for which my medical and psychiatric training had not prepared me...... I was experiencing and seeing things that...... were not supposed to happen......' And later: 'After I had overcome my initial conceptual shock, incredulity concerning my observations, and doubts about my own sanity, I began to realise that the problem might not be in my capacity to observe or in my critical judgement, but in the limits of current psychological and psychiatric theories and of the monistic, materialistic paradigm of Western science.' And in the Epilogue he concludes: 'I now believe that the universe was created and is permeated by cosmic consciousness and superior creative intelligence (anima mundi) on all its levels and in all its dimensions.' Newtonian worldview, bye bye.

Another such example is Dr. Rick Strassman, who was privileged to conduct the first legally-sanctioned research on consciousness and psychedelics in the USA for 20 years during the 1990s. As he describes in his interview with Graham Hancock in 'Supernatural', he tried very hard to explain away his volunteers' many strange experiences under DMT (which include numerous encounters with alien beings) through more orthodox models. He tried the idea of subjective hallucinations, followed by Freud's notions of the unconscious and Jung's archetypes. But his volunteers were all unimpressed. Eventually, he was forced to treat their experiences 'as is': 'It was then I began allowing myself to consider that DMT provides a portal into alternative dimensions of reality.' And he says further: 'The receiver model is just that. The brain receives information at the level for which it happens to be tuned at that particular time.'

With the subjects of multidimensional consciousness and the brain as organ of reception rather than generation, we have stumbled into an area wherein lie some of the greatest fears of the Control System, including the hornets' nest of current inquisitorial approaches to psychedelic (entheogenic) usage. All for another time.......

With thanks to Nilo for mentioning to me Rupert Sheldrake, so inadvertently reminding me of the theme of this blog piece.

It's a Gas, Gas, Gas.....

Father of free energy?: Nikola Tesla

Maybe it's time to come clean on the Archons. Unlike the Gnostic mystics who, it seems, as a result of their direct experience, took the Archons to be literally and inorganically real, I have to date no such personal experience (I should consider myself fortunate in that respect, I suppose). I can therefore claim no definite take on their status. In the manner described in my most recent post, 'Conspiracy? Wot Conspiracy?', I 'hold' them in my mind, an item in the portfolio of possibilities. Whatever the literal truth of the Archons may be, the adjective 'Archontic' to denote a mindset, a way of thinking and the creation of that way of thinking, is illuminating like no other. It has helped me to understand various phenomena in a clear, precise manner that previously seemed impossible.

Large segments of the modern environmental movement (so-called) is obviously a product of Archontic thinking and action. As John Lash describes in Chapter Seven of 'Not in His Image', the main method of Archontic deception is, in Greek, antimimon, literally 'countermimicry'. 'This means to copy something but make the copy, the fake version, serve a purpose counter to the original thing or idea.' Much modern environmentalism fits the bill to perfection, so much so that it takes the breath away. The sense of sacred connectedness felt by indigenous peoples from time immemorial, fed into the modern west by pioneers such as John Muir a century ago, and more recently by others like Arne Naess and the notion of 'deep ecology', has been turned on its head by self-serving ideologists and delusional groupings who have already taken up more space on Pale Green Vortex than they deserve.

One such grouping in particular, the multinational windfarm conquistadors, are probably pooing themselves at the moment. If not, they should be. This is as a result of the discovery of huge deposits of shale gas in Lancashire, northern England, which opens up the possibility of reasonably-priced, reliable energy supply for decades to come; in brief, everything that wind turbines fail to deliver. There are pollution questions surrounding shale gas and its means of extraction, 'fracking'. How serious these are, I don't know, and probably neither does anyone else. Predictably, the CO2 fanatics are up in arms as well. But these concerns can hardly outweigh those of the wholesale destruction of wild landscapes by wind abominations, not to mention the devastation of large tracts of peat bog, the Scottish CO2-trapping equivalents of the Amazon rainforest.

Energy is the key to many things. It is a topic through which people can be easily manipulated by the generation of fear, be it of nuclear leakage, the Earth frying due to Anthropogenic Global Warming, or whatever. Free energy is anathema to the current Power Complex, since it would liberate people from one of the main means by which the Dominators can control them - their need for energy. In the past, it would seem, anyone getting too close to the secrets of free energy would be dealt with appropriately: ridiculed as mentally unstable, bought out and the plans thrown away, or with poison or a gun. Interestingly, 'open source methodology' has been introduced into the field to avoid such problems in the future. This consists of making ideas widely available immediately; getting them 'out there', into the public domain, so taking out the inventor will be pointless.

Of course, some of the chief local Archons, notably Chris Huhne and Caroline Lucas (a self-confessed Watermelon, by the way, and proud of it!), are already up in arms about shale gas. Presumably, they prefer to see people die of cold - it's mainly old people, after all, not very productive members of society, but at least dying in a good cause. In the meantime, the shale gas story will, I suspect, unravel most interestingly. I predict a concerted dirty tricks campaign, spearheaded by the BBC and one or two choice national newspapers. It will focus on pollution hazards (real, imagined, and exaggerated), CO2 fears (largely Archontic imagination), and give great prominence to deluded, new-school environmentalists protesting. This is actually already happening on the BBC, by the way. It's funny how these same media outlets don't give ANY coverage to all the other protests and campaigns that spring up locally in response to nearly every new windfarm proposal. Still these are real people, whose real quality of life is being threatened, not self-righteous ideologues out on an Archontic picnic. This is media eco-fascism for you.

Conspiracy? Wot Conspiracy?

When I write about BBC 'news' and 'news documentaries' being propaganda, and a means by which a particular form of consciousness implants its own version of reality, some people just don't get it. Since this all now seems transparently obvious to me, I find this a bit irritating - but that, I suppose, is my own problem. If any programme fits the bill of being what Neil Kramer calls an 'official broadcast', telling people what to believe, it is the BBC's 'Conspiracy Files 9/11', recently beamed into the homes of the millions as part of their season to commemorate the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

I was slightly dismayed when a friend of mine told me that he had watched it, and found it good enough for him to be convinced that the 'official story' on 9/11 was the one and only truth. For myself, I had a look at the programme out of curiosity, to see whether the BBC would do what I suspected it might with the subject, and clearly viewed it through a different lens. It was indeed the selective and not-so-subtle cut-and-paste hatchet job on conspiracy theories that I could have predicted. The commentary was delivered in a rather old-school upper middle class BBC female accent, the type that is designed to ooze 'believe what I tell you, I'm not the kind of girl who sleeps around' respectability. The message of the programme was clear: 'Do not believe the doubters, have faith in us. We have your best interests at heart and would never dream of lying or hiding anything from you. There really is nothing to worry your little heads about. So shut up, get on with your life as normal, and leave us to fight terror and generally look after you.'

By chance, a couple of days ago I tuned into a programme - two hours long, no less - devoted to analysing and dissecting the 'Conspiracy Files' programme. And a most thorough and convincing job it did as well, clearly demonstrating the half-truths, the partial and selective nature of the information broadcast by the BBC. Surprisingly, this programme was not actually put out by the BBC, nor any other mainstream media network. UK Sky channels 200, 201, and 203 host Controversial TV and Showcase TV (this is liable to change, and they sometime go off air completely due to lack of funds), which relay, among a variety of other stuff, material by Paradigm Shift and Edge Media. A wide variety of viewpoints can be found on these networks, with a 'we present, you decide' approach, as Red Ice Radio (accessed via the internet) puts it. But these networks are invaluable for presenting material that otherwise just does not get any exposure at all in the mainstream - so, in effect, does not 'officially' exist. It pays to be selective, but in recent weeks I have seen some excellent stuff: the films 'DMT: the Spirit Molecule' and 'Cancer: Forbidden Cures'. And the coverage surrounding 9/11 was first rate.

One thing that is worrying for the mainstream is that doubts about, and disbelief in, the 'official story' on 9/11 continue to be voiced, not by wacky, easily-dismissed, fringe radicals, but eminently respectable and well-qualified engineers, physicists, and university people in suits and ties. It was John Lash (I think) who predicted that, with the tenth anniversary of 9/11, the message would be 'Forget all that conspiracy stuff now. It's all in the past anyway; time to move on.' This was actually the underlying agenda of the BBC programme. But 9/11 refuses to go away. That so many people, both in the USA and around the rest of the world, fail to swallow the official story must be highly encouraging. It shows how more and more people are waking up to the reality that the Control System and its emissaries cannot be trusted or believed at all; in fact, may act in ways that we might normally consider unthinkable.

For myself, I have no final take on 9/11. There is a plethora of data on melting points of metals, dynamics of building collapse and demolition etc, that I am simply not qualified to evaluate properly. Having said that, the more I see and hear, the more the official version appears riddled with inconsistencies and improbabilities, with difficulties in its narrative glossed over and many questions left unanswered. Following Neil Kramer's advice, I am 'holding' possibilities in my mind, rather than grasping at belief in a desperate need for certainty. To 'hold' an idea in ones mind, not believe or disbelieve and thereby attach it to ones already weighty ego identity, is elegant and open-ended. To hold ideas such as 9/11 being an inside job, a controlled demolition or whatever else, is something I can live with for now.

Out on the fringes of the abundance of ideas about what really happened on 9/11, and true to the general observation that the fringe is where things get most interesting, is the work of Dr Judy Wood. In the events of that fateful day, she sees evidence of the possible use of directed energy weapons, a technology that few people even realise may exist. If this seems far-fetched, bear in mind that the truth often seems fantastic from any current limited vantage point, just as the once preposterous notion that the Earth revolves around the Sun was. Inconveniently for the scoffers, Judy Wood is detective-like in approach: her work is based rigorously on hard evidence, not a priori theory. The facts are laid out on her monster website, where she goes into everything in detail. She also has an equally monster book, 'Where Did the Towers Go?'

There is another world-changing spin-off from Judy Wood's investigations: the existence of directed energy weapons would also point to the possibility of free energy. 9/11 conspiracy theories effortlessly morph into that area of undoubted Control System scam, fraud, and conspiracy: the Great Global Warming Alarmist Lie. As with 9/11 shenanigans, here too there is hope, as more and more people see through the surreal fiction peddled our way by politicians and the mainstream media. Increasingly, the Global Warming Alarmist Lie is becoming the preserve of a section of guilt-ridden, life-denying, Guardian-reading, white middle classes (in Britain, at least). The man who uttered to me the other day 'Global warming, my arse' is far more in touch with reality. As with 9/11, the Control System hopes we will cast aside our doubts, accept their stories and their taxes and high prices for inefficient and intermittent energy supply, destruction of the face of the planet in the name of saving it, and just get on with it. How long the windfarm scam can continue in Britain before even politicians cannot hide how much it is crippling the economy and effectively throwing people into needless poverty, I do not know. But the prospect of free energy, even as a hypothetical idea, raises yet another suspicion I have about windfarms. Doesn't it seem strange that, in this modern world of cutting edge physics, hosts of amazing new technologies and the rest, we are expected to have faith in a form of energy production that even Fred Flintstone would have considered prehistoric. I mean, sticking pointy bits of metal and plastic into the sky and hoping the wind will blow is not exactly sophisticated thinking. Yet the Control System appears set on shackling us with inefficient and expensive forms of energy production, rather than exploring the possibilities of liberating cheap or free energy for all. Funny, isn't it? Work that one out for yourself. And whether our so-called 'green' organisations and people would embrace cheap, plentiful energy for all is an acid test of their real attitudes towards humans that deserves an article by itself.

Once again, the reality foisted upon us by the Control System proves more surreal than anything a science fiction writer could come up with. And whether we can really buy the story of a bunch of Muslim extremists fresh out of pilot school and wielding box cutters stage-managing and choreographing the pure and perfect theatre and tragedy that was 9/11 is another question we need to soberly consider. In the meantime, I suggest that it behoves any aspiring responsible planetary citizen, not to mention any budding Bodhisattva, to research these matters. The resources are there and can be easily accessed, thanks largely to the internet. Check out Judy Wood, 9/11 truth, Paradigm Shift TV and the rest; google PNAC, and explore some of the stuff that the BBC and the rest of the mainstream doesn't tell you, doesn't want you to know about. Don't fall victim to what Neil Kramer terms neophobic shutdown, the tendency to dismiss new ideas and information because of the threats and challenges it might pose to our current way of life, sense of security etc. Without this work, any understanding of mind and consciousness is, I feel, seriously lacking an essential dimension. This is where I come into this field....

A Democracy of Visions

Edgar Broughton and Sidney Cohen: two sides of the same tab.....

I passed the 1960s in the pleasant but generally unremarkable Home Counties market town of Aylesbury, England. An unexpected gift was bestowed on the place in 1969, however, when it began to play host to a rock music club named Friars. The club quickly gained a reputation for its discerning eye in spotting good quality bands in their infancy. Some, such as Mott the Hoople, went on to commercial success; others found fame elusive, yet were equally good.

One fairly regular fixture at Friars was the Edgar Broughton Band, and I saw them several times. They put on a solid set, but two songs always stood out. One was 'Out, Demons, Out', a kind of public exorcism of the evil that surrounded us all. The other was 'Dropout Boogie/Apache'. Edgar Broughton was, to one impressionable sixteen-year old at least, hairy, scary, and very hip, the very epitome of everything that my parents' generation had so lamentably failed to be. We would all watch, wide-eyed and slack-jawed, as His Royal Hairiness scowled, growled, and magically intoned those fateful words: 'What do you want, what do you want/ They think they know what it's all about/ Turn on, tune in, drop out, drop out/ I told you once, I told you twice'. From that moment on, the die was cast, my fate sealed: I didn't stand a chance.

Turn on, tune in, drop out: Timothy Leary's clarion call to the mass of disenchanted visionary youth that terrorised a generation. For those with any sympathies for psychedelic culture in its many guises, the third in the triad of exhortations always proved the most problematic. Ray Manzarek, keyboard player in the Doors, says that, instead of urging people to turn on, tune in, and drop out, Leary should have been urging them to turn on, tune in, take over. Elsewhere, Paradigm Shift TV exhorts us to turn on, tune in, and transcend. Sidney Cohen, an early LSD researcher and therapist, bemoaned the effect of Leary's ravings: 'Cohen had warned that Tim was skimming the cream of a generation and leading them down a blind alley. While the Best and the Brightest were grooving on the cosmic, the second-rate and the venal were appropriating the traditional slots of power' ('Storming Heaven' by Jay Stevens, Epilogue). As an Oxford graduate who went on to help form a cosmically-grooving commune then teach Buddhist meditation, I take Dr Cohen's charges very personally.....

Once the 1960s were out of the way, it was difficult to find anybody (with any social credibility at least) who would give much support to Tim Leary's apparent crusade for social revolution spearheaded by psychedelics. Terence McKenna, a leading light for the next generation, was at pains to criticise the excesses of the '60s, pointing to the use of psychedelic substances by a pioneering dedicated few, rather than widespread ingestion by the psychedelicised masses. And more recently still, Rick Doblin of MAPS (Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies) has bemoaned what he calls the backlash that took place against psychedelics as a result of their reckless use in the 1960s. This backlash has meant that research into their value in psychotherapy (as psychological aids for the terminally ill, for example, or for those suffering from post-traumatic stress) has been curtailed or, in most cases, brought to a grinding halt.

These pronouncements echo a debate amongst protagonists of psychedelics in the early years: whether they should be available to all, or whether access should be reserved for those who mystic-cum-author Aldous Huxley referred to as 'the Brightest and Best'. This was Huxley's more cautious approach: provide LSD for the philosophers, politicians, artists and academics - those mainly responsible for shaping and influencing society at large.

For the record, it is worth noting that the advocacy of indiscriminate distribution of LSD sometimes accredited to Leary is a caricature and/or distortion pumped up by the popular media. Leary was in equal measure visionary genius and unashamed opportunist/personal publicist, and he said many different, often contradictory, things at different times. In his more sober moments, however, he called for careful and responsible use of psychedelics, as sacred substances, to be taken in a conducive environment by those who were psychologically prepared. He claimed that, had the US authorities listened to him and established clinics/temples where people could use psychedelics in the company of experienced guides, much of the negative fallout could have been avoided. If it is to be associated with any one figure of the era, the more casual use of LSD could possibly be linked with Ken Kesey and his busload of tripping Merry Pranksters.

The idea of restricting access to psychedelics to 'the Brightest and Best' is all very well. Except that it is unworkable and terribly naive. Who decides? Cui bono? What's the basis on which 'the Brightest and Best' are selected? The critique peppered liberally throughout the posts on Pale Green Vortex - of Control System dynamics, dominator culture values, and the insight that all this is a construct of consciousness - makes it abundantly clear that there is no benign Ubermensch who is likely to look favourably upon drawing up a list of the deserving few on whom the privilege of psychedelic experience is to be bestowed. There is something that rankles about Rick Doblin's continued lament about the backlash against psychedelics as if, had Timothy Leary not been around, the research and the therapy could have quietly continued unabated. Despite the stupid and ill-judged things that Leary said over the years, the disturbing truth remains that enormous numbers of people found their lives enriched by following something of the course he outlined. More fundamentally, there is the very nature of the vistas opened up by LSD and other psychedelics. While sometimes described as 'non-specific amplifiers', they have tended to turn people away from a life dedicated to 9-to-5 and a blind belief in the diktats of dominator culture. The potential that they embody is inherently threatening to the status quo. This is the unspoken agenda in the 'War on Psychedelic Drugs' that sees Casey Hardison serving twenty years for producing psychedelic drugs (for comparison, Albert Speer, Minister of Armaments and War Production to the Third Reich 1942 - 45 received the same length of sentence at the Nuremberg Trials). So I think Rick Doblin is mistaken in pointing the finger solely at the 1960s for the collapse of official research into psychedelics. Point one finger, yes; but look at the effects of the substances as well. Access to the multidimensional nature of our being is the greatest danger of all to the continued reign of dominator culture. If Rick thinks that the Control System will eventually smile upon research, provided it conforms to the standards of modern science and is conducted by folk with PhDs, I hope he is correct. I rather doubt it will come to pass, however.

By the same token, Sidney Cohen's (and Ray Manzarek's) objections are fatally flawed. It is not a case of slotting envisioned beings into the places of power, thereby producing a benign government. The ego-softened consciousness does not want to - is not able to - function within an apparatus constructed by dominator cultures over millennia. It needs to find other ways of working, to create different forms of social organisation that reflect its own experience of reality.

I suspect that, at root, the collapse of the psychedelic-fuelled counterculture of the '60s and early '70s was tied in with the lack of a mythology connecting it to a sacred past. It imagined itself as something new, unprecedented, an evolutionary leap. Better to envisage the rejection of dominator culture as part of a greater tradition extending into deepest prehistory. It is not a case of creating something new, out of thin air, but one of reconnecting with humanity's true, but almost lost, heritage. It is here that Terence McKenna made one of his greatest contributions, through his work on what he terms the 'Archaic Revival'. The modern western counterculture - to the extent that we can talk of such a thing - senses its heritage stretching back to pre-Christian times: to the Minoans, the Gnostics as expounded so elegantly by John Lash, the partnership cultures of Catal Huyuk and beyond. Now the tree does not simply show off flowers of great beauty: it boasts a sturdy trunk and hardy roots that penetrate to the deepest strata of an enriching subsoil.

It is not a question of limiting use of psychedelic substances to therapists, medical researchers, or any other 'Brightest and Best'. Indigenous cultures regard their psychedelic, or entheogenic, plants as sacred, and their sacredness is not normally reserved for an elite. It is a matter of ensuring the substances are accorded the respect and seriousness they warrant; handing out acid like sweeties at free festivals in the '60s and '70s wasn't a very clever idea. Timothy Leary had likened tripping to being an aeroplane pilot, where training and a licence are required. For more sense on the subject than anything Control System emissaries such as politicians have ever said, take a peek at the section on psychedelics in Transform's document 'After the War on Drugs: Blueprint for Regulation' (available online). Introduce an element of rationality to the subject and it's not so hard to get your head round at all......