Whose Story? - A Trilogy (Part Two)

                                           Ah yes, Truth 24/7!

James Lovelock it was who, in the 1970s, elucidated the self-regulating mechanism of the planetary Earth system, thereby formulating Gaia theory and becoming one of the founding fathers of modern ecology and environmentalism.  More recently, he was a major voice in promoting the theory of runaway global warming, principally through his book 'The Revenge of Gaia'.  As such, he is a darling and icon of modern environmentalism.  At least, he was until a couple of weeks ago.....

In an interview with msnbc, Lovelock dropped a bombshell.  He had made a mistake, he said.  This catastrophic global warming he had so direly predicted just wasn't happening - for now, at least. Planet Earth hasn't got any hotter over the last twelve years, he admitted.  We don't fully understand climate mechanics; 'the climate is doing its usual tricks.'

This, you would have thought, was momentous news indeed.  And fantastically good tidings, straight from the mouth of the guru.  We might not burn to a frazzle after all.  New York, London, and half of Bangla Desh might not disappear under the floodwaters.  Strangely, though, Lovelock's message of hope failed to make it onto the BBC.  Or into most of the apparently respectable newspapers, either.  It fell to a Daily Telegraph blogger to announce the news to the British public.  Shamefully, as a result of his honest admission, Lovelock himself became the target for nasty words from severely-miffed 'environmentalists': he's past it, etc etc. It was reminiscent of the tirade of viciousness unleashed upon former Greenpeace campaigner Peter Taylor when he questioned the orthodoxy on global warming.  Streams of truly nasty ad hominem attacks.

In similar vein, hardly a day passes without some further revelation on the great windfarm scam.  Three 'environmental' charities (World Wildlife Fund Scotland, Friends of the Earth Scotland, and RSPB Scotland)  were recently outed for accepting donations from windfarm builders (Pale Green Vortex had mentioned WWF funding a couple of years back).  But once again the BBC and those same 'liberal' and impartial newspapers, while expressing a tiresome obsession with integrity in the case of the Murdochs, seem to be oblivious to the same questions of integrity and objectivity when it comes to global warming scaremongering from these severely compromised, yet inordinately influential, organisations.  The last fortnight also saw fears for aeroplane radar interference from windfarms; global warming from windfarms (I jest not; at least the Guardian mentioned this one).  And probably much more that has escaped the eyes of the PGV staff, who actually devote little time to what's being presented in the mainstream media.

So, what we believe to be true is founded as much upon the sins of omission as what is actually being beamed into our living rooms on a daily basis.  I was recently discussing with a friend the subject of truth (or 'Truth'!).  While so doing, we stumbled upon a fantasy lodged in some cobweb-bedecked recess of the brain, that of the someone, somewhere, who really knows what truth is.  To discover that this omniscient being wasn't there, but was just a god fantasy, was a wee bit scary.  No cosmically impartial arbiter exists 'out there'; and the same is the case for 'the news'.  There is no infinitely wise greybeard sitting at the control desk of starship BBC, using a universal measure to evaluate what people should know about, how much, and why.  I suppose I find it strange when people cling onto every word issuing from the BBC, or any particular newspaper, while casting suspicion on everyone and everything else.  And here is where the situation begins to get a trifle vexing.....

When I started Pale Green Vortex, I was setting off on a journey of exploration, into some areas that were new to me, yet seemed extremely relevant to the overall theme of 'consciousness studies'.  It was an adventure but, like most adventures, it came with a certain degree of risk attached. In particular, I recognised that some of my new directions might appear a bit bizarre, and not especially edifying, to some of my old friends, colleagues, and assorted acquaintances.  As things have turned out, the area where a number of relationships have undergone a wobble has been in what I have written about aspects of the mainstream media.  More precisely, the BBC and various newspaper organs of the 'liberal left', all of which I have treated, not as superior arbiters of higher truths, but as just one part of the largely fake construct which is presented to us as 'normal' and 'reality'.

Today I shall go a step further, and in doing so risk more interpersonal alienation and wobbling. I shall venture to suggest that some of our 'green' friends, along with their media acolytes and buddies in the renewable energy business, are amongst the most dangerous people on the planet.  They are far more dangerous than the Anders Breiviks and Islamic fundamentalists of this world, who may be exceedingly nasty, but in the larger scheme of things are never going to win.  But the so-called greens I have periodically written about are in the process of actively shaping the world we inhabit. They are dangerous in part because they are based in ideology rather than pragmatic direct realities. Any ideology is dangerous, be it that of Hitler, Alex Salmond (a hardcore ideologue), or a Friends of the Earth stooge.  Ideology substitutes a ready-made, convenient, synthetic interpretation of reality for the real thing.  As such, it is rigid, alien from the mentality of learning from mistakes.  And this refusal to acknowledge error paves the way, as the Gnostics saw, for error to lurch out of control and morph into evil.

Furthermore, our green friends hold to their ideology in a manner fanatical enough to make even a Muslim extremist quake in his boots.  The evidence for this is abundant: the treatment of turncoats Lovelock and Peter Taylor; the refusal to countenance evidence that they might have got something a little wrong; the repeating of the same tired mantras in response to any questions or objections; their inflammatory language comparing global warming sceptics with holocaust deniers; this will do for now.  What's more, they are convinced they are right, and will implement their righteousness through control and regulation of the ignorant masses.  The climate change agenda - save the planet with carbon taxes and carbon trading; save the planet with windfarms that disfigure the landscape and work from time to time; and the rest - really has little to do with the environment, with Gaia-Sophia, but a lot to do with developing what is sometimes referred to as a kind of eco-socialism, a green 1984.  There are the naive, who still blindly believe in the guff put out by Greenpeace and the rest; and there are the control freaks, who see 'green' as a way of establishing a form of benevolent dictatorship. And the BBC, along with those 'respectable' newspapers, are very much part of this psycho-political complex.

The media play a pivotal role in creating what is generally considered 'normal' and 'reality'.  In the case of the mainstream, major ingredients of 'normal' include the generation of fear and insecurity, the depiction of 'reality' as routine killing with guns, bombs, and other explosive devices, lies, dishonesty, manipulative sex etc.  All this renders the shattered populace vulnerable to manipulation by those who will look after us and make the world safe and secure.  And as a palliative escape from this grim reality, we are offered mindnumbing entertainment, in which we can experience other people's mediocre celebrity in 'talent shows', thereby confirming our own status as half-dead passive consumers of the lives of others, those who are really living.

More profoundly, this all represents the constant generation of a particular form of consciousness, designed to keep us imprisoned in a small, fearful, 3-D world.  Politicians, parapoliticians, and others well up in the pyramid of control, know this full well: the media is one of their major tools in broadcasting a certain reality which they would like people to take as the only reality.  I'm not suggesting that Fiona Bruce and every Guardian journalist are evil - not at all, it doesn't work like that.  But unplugging to a large degree from the mainstream media, and taking it all in a spirit of sceptical discernment, is a very positive step in freeing our minds.


P.S. on Fiona Bruce, BBC newsreader!  She has been mentioned more than once on Pale Green Vortex.  Please don't think I have got anything against her.  On the contrary, we have something in common.  We attended the same college in Oxford University (me rather earlier than her...).  This college, it transpires, has quite a tradition of newreaders: Natasha Kaplinsky and Krishnan Guru-Murthy also attended.  Another college notable was one of my geography tutors (I was studying climate change in 1974, by the way....), one John Patten.  He went on to become a member of the Thatcher government, a minister for education, if I remember correctly.  He didn't do a lot to increase the popularity of that particular government, though, and was soon shunted off to the House of Lords as a life peer: Baron Patten.  A lot can be learnt from that.....

                  

Whose Story? A Trilogy (Part One)

Our prehistoric past......

One of the favourite books of my childhood was 'From Cavemen to Vikings' by one R.J.Unstead. In easily understood text and fully illustrated, it purported to tell the tale of our dim, distant, and often dark, human past. All I remember is a full-page illustration (it might have adorned the front cover, I have been unable to locate a copy of the edition in question) which left a deep impression on me. It showed a Viking, resplendent in horned helmet and with a mad glint in his eye, holding a dagger-like sword to the throat of a terrified Englishman (possibly a priest or monk). Nearby stood a terrified young English maiden, while behind the village burnt furiously. 'Rape, pillage, and plunder' is what those heathen Vikings were about as they raided the christianised coastlines of eastern England. To me, the message behind this scene of horror was clear: 'Things might not be perfect today, son, but we've come a long way. Don't forget, and be grateful to be alive in our wonderful modern day and age.'

The stories that we tell and are told profoundly influence our view of ourselves. We can go a step further and say that our world - our place in it, our attitudes and aspirations, our relationships with other human and non-human beings - is in fact largely created by these narratives. This is a notion that is widely acknowledged nowadays when dealing with the individual person. Modern psychotherapy, along with the host of related disciplines that has sprung up over the past fifty years, is based upon this premise. Its prime method is for the 'patient' to tell the various stories going to make up their life, see how these stories affect the person concerned, and then, if appropriate, create a new story or otherwise find a way to release the grip of a destructive narrative.

Less frequently recognised is the moulding influence of the stories we are told on a social or cultural level, and which go to create 'the world'. One reason is that it is often not even realised that we are being told stories in the first place. 'That's not a story: that's a fact' will be the common rejoinder. The world out there consists of solid facts and bits of information; such is the efficacy of the conditioning factor of the various narratives that shape our views, beliefs, perception even. Yet, I would contend, for the person seeking awakening and liberation, personal therapy (and 'self-knowledge' as commonly understood) is no more important than social, cultural and religious therapy: unravelling the stories we are told from birth that unconsciously go to create the world we inhabit, and in which we become de facto participants.

One most important area where the narrative is everything is that of our history. The story we are generally told of civilisation begins with the ancient Greeks. True, there had been the Egyptians beforehand, but with their huge impersonal eyes staring into infinity they are a bit too weird to be of much relevance. Before them existed various other folk, mainly notable for their bizarre propensity to stick enormous slabs of rock into circles, a clearly pointless exercise from our modern, enlightened perspective. Indeed, so the story goes, our ancestors seem to have been an autonomous collective of idiocy until the Greek philosophers, mathematicians and the rest appeared as beacons of light out of the mire of ignorance. Along with other luminaries across the globe such as Buddha, Confucius, and Zarathustra, they all came to embody around 2500 years ago what Karl Jaspers famously referred to as the 'Axial Age'. This was the period when outstanding figures (all of them males, strangely) appeared in order to bring culture, spirituality, and higher learning - in a word, civilisation - to a level hitherto undreamed of.

The story of Britain from here onwards is a familiar one: Romans, Christians, the Dark Ages, Saxons and Vikings, Medieval stuff, the separation of Church and State, Industrial Revolution, the age of science and rationality, and so on and so on. And underlying this grand story of western civilisation is the assumption of progress and evolution. Despite the blood that's spattered on every page, it's a case of onward and up. The fruits of this narrative of development are plain for all to see today. OK, there are still millions of folk going hungry across the globe, and huge numbers of young children needlessly suffering cheaply and easily treated diseases. Genocide is ongoing in eastern Democratic Republic of Congo, and over 100,000 people have been killed in Iraq since western powers intervened to bring peace. Cities are ravaged just south of the U.S. border in turf wars over drugs (don't worry, they're only Mexicans). But still the signs of our evolutionary history are clear. We have clean water and no longer need to poo in the street. We can watch Lady Gaga 24/7 on the latest mobile devices. We have Simon Cowell; we have wind farms.

The trouble is, scratch beneath the surface and the story begins to fall apart. Were our Neolithic and Bronze Age ancestors simply neo-agricultural barbarians with a stone circle fetish, thankfully superseded by the glorious civilising influence of those noble Greeks and Romans? Quite possibly not. One readable source with a different narrative is 'The Chalice and the Blade' by Riane Eisler. There are aspects of this book that I cannot go along with. She talks of evolution and progress too much, where it would be better to let the evidence speak for itself, rather than jamming it into a dubious telos. There appear to be gaps in her understanding of modern dominator system techniques: she takes groups like the Club of Rome seriously as world improvers. And she has been duped by the story of Jesus the compassionate, peace-loving revolutionary, whose message has been corrupted along the way. She did not have the benefit of John Lash's 'Not in His Image' to expose the fake love-and-peace ethic of the Nazarene carpenter. And the words of D.M.Murdock, aka Acharya S, run to several hundred pages in demonstrating that Mr. Christ is most likely nothing more than a made-up character for political power purposes.

Be all this as it may, Eisler's descriptions of the Neolithic partnership societies of the Near East, 'Old Europe' and Minoan Crete in the first eight chapters of the book are brilliant. She shows how these peoples, with their worship of the Goddess, were relatively life-loving, equalitarian, and peaceful, as well as bringing in many technological advances. It was only with the incursion of waves of more warlike peoples with their bloody male gods from the north and east that these civilisations began to break down between c4300 BCE and 2800 BCE. From then on the pattern of dominator cultures leading to our current situation began to emerge.

Scratch more deeply, and things get stranger still. What do we make of the already well-developed cave art of south-west Europe that goes back over 30,000 years? Were its creators really gormless primitives? And what do we make of Tony Wright's contention that human brain capacity seems to have increased rapidly until about 200,000 years ago, since when it has been pretty much stable. Get this: our ancestors of 200,000 years ago had the same kind of brain as us (actually, Tony suggests it might have been superior to our own). Do you really need all that cranial capacity simply to organise a trap for a woolly mammoth?

Of course - and this is a vital point to recognise vividly - the stories that we are told are not random, related as if by accident. The story of civilisation that has come down to us today is a reflection of a cluster of belief systems, and serves specific purposes. The notions of progress and evolution superimposed onto the passing of events confirm Darwinian principles, those by which the world is largely interpreted in our western world. Forget that this application of a distorted Darwinism to social changes in the human realm is a highly dubious project. The story of our history, achieved in large part by plunder and domination, is excused and justified by fitting it into this cheapened and dumbed-down version of Darwinism, summarised as 'the survival of the most brutally fit' and 'human nature, red in tooth and claw.' Slaughter, beheadings, betrayals, tyranny over the many by the few: all are an integral part of this inevitable march of progress, of evolution.

We, meanwhile, and it goes without saying, stand at the apex of this process, in spite of our little problems. This is our story, and it couldn't be any different. Needs must that our children are informed that they are the brightest and best, fortunate to be living at this pinnacle of human civilisation (one of the major functions of education in modern society, it appears, is to inculcate the main stories of our culture into the hearts and minds of our young ones). How could they be told otherwise? That times may have existed that were less warlike, more caring, and that somehow we messed up and got lost along the way. Not exactly the story to tell if you want children who are obedient to the status quo, 'good members of society', fearful and respectful of the imperatives of modern western civilisation.

Revisiting and revisioning the narratives of our history is an ongoing project that I have found extremely liberating. There is freedom in escaping the confines of the past 2500 years as the only past that is relevant to the question of who we are. Our story is broader, richer, and possibly far more noble. Maybe times have existed when human minds have been imbued with a deeper spiritual awareness. Maybe (in fact most likely) some of our ancestors possessed vast knowledge of the workings of the universe that has been lost or deliberately destroyed by those who superseded them. Maybe some were creators of marvellous technologies that we remain hopelessly ignorant of. Maybe, just maybe, the much-vaunted 'Axial Age' marks, not so much a flowering to new heights of human consciousness, as a wisdom once in the more general domain, now able to manifest only through the lives of a few individuals. Plato, Mr. Axial Age himself, referred to his times as 'a remembering of things forgotten.'

Reflecting on the undulating horizon of this much vaster panorama of human history also gives the lie to the notion that human nature is fixed: that the way things are is the inevitable consequence of our makeup, of a selfish gene and a nature red in tooth and claw. It becomes clear that the application of half-baked Darwinian principles to our story is a fabrication, a convenient narrative for those deeply invested in maintaining the social and perceptual status quo. To echo William Blake, the manacles we clamp upon our present and future are mind-made, nothing more.

As a postscript, there is a wealth of written and spoken information out there on revisiting our past. Be discerning, treat it as opening doorways rather than trying to nail down 'the truth'. Red Ice Radio has interviews with a multitude of researchers in these areas. For myself, I have been respectfully instructed by, among others, Riane Eisler as described above; Terence McKenna's rather speculative but visionary and poetic evocation in the first part of 'Food of the Gods'; Graham Hancock, especially 'Supernatural'; Marija Gimbutas; Lucy Wyatt; there are the energy-challenging but remarkably comprehensive tomes of Acharya S.; Michael Cremo. Michael Tsarion is another prominent figure in this world. Loads more. Dip in and follow your daimon!

And as a final postscript, even not pooing in the street is nothing for modern civilisation to be uniquely proud of: private loos with efficient sewage systems existed in the townships of the Indus Valley in 2,700 BCE!

Trouble at Mill

Belted Galloway Bull

Pale Green Vortex is not usually in the game of commenting on 'current affairs'. However, in a hastily-arranged meeting of PGV staff, it was decided to make an exception, and botch together a sentence or two after the Bradford West by-election last week.

For any reader unfamiliar with the geographical landscape of Britain, Bradford is a large settlement, part of the West Yorkshire conurbation in northern England, a child of the Industrial Revolution. It is the sort of place that, with its preponderance of working class and poor populations, only needs the Labour candidate to turn up to be elected to parliament with a handsome majority. Enter George Galloway, however, renegade and maverick politician, once a Labour man, now leader of the 'Respect' party. He is probably best known for his fierce and unfailing opposition to the Iraq war - and, less edifyingly, for his participation in a series of 'Big Brother' shows on television. He is looked upon by the 'main political parties' with loathing, scorn, and ridicule in equal measure. Nevertheless, in a way that no mainstream politician or commentator had an inkling of, he won the Bradford West by-election - not just scraping through, but with a huge majority, a swing of roughly three million per cent.

The pros and cons of Galloway's political policies are not the subject at issue in this piece. It is that here, in Britain, that most conservative and traditional (one might say 'dead') of nations politically, large numbers of people appear to have started to see what Pale Green Vortex has been intermittently banging on about for two years now. The mainstream political landscape is by and large irrelevant in terms of the welfare of the citizens of this planet. All players and parties are embedded in the same system/construct/matrix/call it what you will, that does not have the best interests of the majority of people in mind. Its agendas lie firmly elsewhere. Democrats - Republicans, Tories - Labour: all this means rather less than whether you support Chelsea or Arsenal. Similarly the bizarre sideshow of Scottish independence, a local moribund distraction from the important matters of the moment. Of course independence, as everybody knows, immediately confers enormous benefits on the mass of people; we only have to look at the majority of African nations, and how everyone has prospered in a fantastic atmosphere of benevolence and democracy since their rush for independence in the 1960s.

In the longer term, Bradford West might turn out to be insignificant. Yet, as a possible sign of a growing disenchantment with the entire rigged game, of some kind of awakening to what is really going on behind the facade of parliamentary democracy, we can watch with interest.

That clean green wind energy

There is a little-known aspect to industrial-scale wind farm development that should be read about here. With a current malfunctioning of one or two technical functions, I shall merely point the reader to putting 'neodymium pollution' in an internet search engine and reading the Daily Mail article that should come up. That it falls to the Daily Mail of all papers to bring this to public attention should, I suppose, be cause for reflection.

Just in case anybody still hasn't got it, this is my conclusion from six years of research on the subject: industrial-scale wind farms provide no discernible benefit to the majority of human beings whatsoever, and are destructive of the natural world within which we are embedded. They have no redeeming features. Please allow me my moment of absolutism. In this case, it is justified......

Assembling The World

A topic that features heavily in some of the later writings of Carlos Castaneda ('The Fire From Within' and 'The Art of Dreaming' for example) is that of the assemblage point. As is customary whenever C.C. is mentioned, in order to anticipate and deflate the cynics and scoffers, the detractors and debunkers, it is necessary to define the basis on which to proceed. We shall assume that the writings of C.C. are indeed fictional or semi-fictional in nature; and furthermore that the matter of the assemblage point can, if preferred, be taken metaphorically rather than literally. Enough said......

Don Juan Matus, the seer/sorcerer/shaman teacher of Carlos Castaneda, outlines at length and in several places the nature of the assemblage point. The universe, he states, is composed of energy, which manifests as millions of fibres of luminosity. The human being, too, consists of energy and luminous fibres, and can be perceived as something resembling a luminous egg or cocoon. Great numbers of the universe's fibres of energy pass through this luminous egg, most of them outside our conscious awareness. A few, however, channel through a particular node, called the assemblage point. It is these specific fibres that are 'assembled' to make up the world as we normally perceive it. '.... perception takes place because there is in each of us an agent called the assemblage point that selects internal and external emanations (of energy) for alignment. The particular alignment that we perceive as the world is the product of the specific spot where our assemblage point is located on our cocoon.' ('The Fire From Within', chapter seven). But, continues Don Juan, the precise location of this assemblage point is the result merely of habit and repetition; infants have no fixed assemblage point at first. Furthermore, sorcerers can train themselves to move the position of the assemblage point, thereby altering which fibres of the universe go to create the experienced world. In this way, they 'assemble' different realities, each in their own way as real and as 'valid' as the 'normal' reality of human consciousness.

According to Castaneda, 'the world' is something we assemble on a moment-to-moment basis. Many people take this world to be the only world, but this is erroneous. Other realities, sometimes operating to different laws, are equally real, yet most people are unaware of their existence, solely because their assemblage point is fixed in one spot.

Deep meditation and energy work, conscious dreaming, work with entheogens, shamanic journeying, sensory deprivation, trance dance and the rest: cultures throughout human history and prehistory have developed a range of techniques aimed at deliberately shifting the assemblage point. It is ordinarily located on the surface of the luminous egg behind the right shoulder blade, according to Don Juan. In fact, a quick internet search reveals that Castaneda is far from alone in acknowledging the existence of the assemblage point, but different healers and researchers may locate it in slightly different places. It seems that, while a large shift in its position may catapult the subject into unrecognisable worlds, a small shift can affect mood, and physical and emotional health - hence its value for healing.

And with the notion of the assemblage point, humankind is divided neatly into two different groups. Those who acknowledge the teaching of the assemblage point - that reality and the world are the constructs of perception, which in turn can be altered. And those who reject the idea, clinging to the belief that 'the world is the world', that experience is fixed and immutable, and that is that. It's a difference in perspective of enormous import. It lies at the bottom of, well, almost everything.

The sorcerers of old, says Don Juan, moved the assemblage point to all manner of places, thereby entering a host of outrageous magical worlds. Their aims were at times less than noble, however: manipulations for personal gain, for example, or to get one over on another human being. But for Don Juan and the modern seers, shifting the assemblage point is the key to freedom. To change the terms of discourse: experience of shifts in the assemblage point is a precondition for a more fluid, less fixed, sense of ego identity. Who I am, what the world is, become more relative. They are matters of personal perception, alterable and always altering, rather than absolutes; a truth that needs to be experienced directly, not just reflected on and thought about, to be effective. As the sense of fixed self and world dissolves, so comes freedom, liberation; the ability to fly everywhere and nowhere. The teaching on the assemblage point shows itself as a key to infinity, to freedom.

Organised Religion and the Limits on Gnosis

Tripped up by Holiness: Dr. Rick Strassman

Rick Strassman has turned up before in Pale Green Vortex. In 'Bring on the New' (October 6th, 2011), he was cited as an example of somebody educated within the scientific orthodoxy who was forced to revise his world-view, based upon rational materialism, as a result of his own scientific investigations. In some respects, the most remarkable aspect of his research - into the effects of DMT (the 'spirit molecule') in the early 1990s, if you recall - was not the testimony of his subjects who volunteered to take this powerful psychedelic. Even more noteworthy was the way he actually succeeded in obtaining U.S. government approval for his research in the first place, the first officially recognised of its type for twenty years. And, secondly, that throughout this entire period Strassman was a practising Buddhist. It is this latter aspect, the interface between his Buddhist life and the DMT research, that is most revealing here....

Strassman first came across the U.S. Zen monastery with which he was to become affiliated in 1974 through a meditation retreat ('I felt as if I had arrived home' - yes, a familiar feeling!). In classic Zen fashion, his main practice was to 'just sit', though he substantially augmented his understanding of the mind by means of teachings such as those on the Abhidharma, a catalogue and analysis of different types of mental states, received from the Nyingma Institute of Tibetan Buddhism in Berkeley, California. He later ran a Zen meditation group in his home; underwent a lay ordination into Zen Buddhism; was married at the Zen monastery in 1990. In other words, he was the 'real deal', a serious and sincere practitioner, not at all an armchair Buddhist.

Strassman's approach to his research in psychedelics was accordingly infused with his Buddhist practice: how he would adopt the inner attitude of 'just sitting' while attending his volunteers' sometimes existentially-challenging DMT experiences; assisting those same volunteers to let go of the contents of their mind if they became stuck; and so on. The crossover between his research and Buddhism was further pointed up when he discovered that the majority of people involved in the Zen monastery had initially been propelled in that direction by their experiences with psychedelics.

Over the years of his research, Rick kept informed of progress his trusted monk friends, as well as seeking out their advice on occasion. To begin with, all was well. Come 1994, however, personal doubts about the value of the research were growing, and circumstances led to his moving to Canada. There he attended the local, monastery-affiliated Zen group, where he met Venerable Gwendolyn, with whom he discussed the research project. A week after the meditation retreat, he was surprised to receive a phone call from Gwendolyn. 'I was sick for three days after talking to you........ I called the abbot who, as you know, is near death. This is the first issue he has taken a personal interest in for over a year. He and I have talked, as I did with other senior monks. We have decided you must stop your research immediately......' A catalogue of accusations was harshly addressed at Strassman by Gwendolyn and others within the monastic community. Strassman was eager to discuss, but 'none of (my) attempts at enlarging the dialogue met with any success. What was going on?'

The end came when, in autumn 1996, Strassman wrote an article for 'Tricycle' magazine, a prominent western Buddhist publication, entitled 'DMT and the Dharma'. Among other things, he suggested that members of the psychedelic community might benefit from the discipline and structure afforded by Buddhism. At the same time, certain Buddhist practitioners, dedicated but with only limited success in meditation over the years, could conceivably gain assistance from a carefully-organised psychedelic session to accelerate their practice.

The nastiness escalated; anybody wishing to detail its course should read up for themselves. How Strassman, manifesting in his suggestions those most Buddhist of virtues helpful speech and compassion for his fellow human beings, was treated is both salutary and shameful. But for Rick, what was happening began to become clear. The abbot was dying, and wanted to leave his teachings unsullied by controversy. Even the monks, those former users of psychedelics, who Strassman had once treated as confidants, were up for promotion in the ranks, and similarly wished to appear clear, clean, and pure ('Who was the most zealous defender of the teaching?'). It was imperative to 'prevent mistakes from being made in the name of Buddhism'. It's what I, less charitably, call the stink of organised religion. As Strassman says 'Holiness had won out over truth. The particular brand of Buddhism was no different from any other organisation whose survival depended upon a uniformly accepted platform of ideas.'

Holiness winning out over truth? In the Catholic Church maybe, and among the more rigid orthodoxies of Islam. But in Buddhism? Aren't Buddhists nice people, striving selflessly towards the Enlightenment achieved by Shakyamuni Buddha 2500 years ago? Well, sometimes, it appears....

My conclusion, based upon reasoning, personal observation, and direct experience, is that, the moment any 'tradition of awakening' becomes reified into a formalised structure and hierarchy, its integrity stands to be compromised. That is not to say that there aren't individuals within those organisations who are fantastic folk, seriously motoring along the sacred path. But when the religious instinct comes to roost within a formalised context, it will inevitably encounter the pitfalls and distractions inherent to that approach.

Buddhism is, typically, a subtle example. While Catholicism, for instance, is structured in a simple hierarchical pyramid of authority and control, with the Pope at the top and the multitude of ordinary sinners at the bottom, Buddhism is best considered as multicentric. A web of schools, sects, and traditions has grown up over the years. Yet each is its own little formalised pyramid with its own agenda that, to varying degrees, concerns continuity, corporate survival, group identity, and appearance to society as a whole, as well as it does personal liberation.

Let's take the example of the Dalai Lama. A few naughty websites aside, the consensus is that he is a great guy, always talking up compassion, peace, patience, and all sort of worthy stuff, invariably with a cheeky smile on his face. But take a step back and consider how totally compromised the fellow really must be! Given his status in the political arena and role as spiritual leader for the people of Tibet, the number of things he can say or seriously allow himself to think is probably outweighed by those that are off-limits. Take a piece of paper and make a quick list of the viewpoints he will not be able to have. Is this really a recipe for the great liberation of Enlightenment? For sure, this is one dignitary who won't be recommending the integration of Buddhism and DMT in a hurry......

Then there is the small matter of personal experience. It is not my intention to belittle the undoubted benefits I accrued through my involvement over more than two decades - at first wholehearted and enthusiastic, later on less so - with a particular Buddhist organisation in the U.K. But there again I encountered a dynamic that is subtle yet clear. In retrospect, I can say that my experience was of a constant uneasy alliance between 'the development of the individual' on the one hand, and 'the needs of the movement' (the organisation) on the other. Over the years, an inordinate amount of time and energy has gone into trying to create that 'uniformly accepted platform of ideas', as Strassman so brilliantly puts it. With the wisdom of hindsight, I can affirm that there were times when my own best spiritual interests were sacrificed for the 'greater good of the needs of the organisation'. More than a several times was I exorted to 'give the benefit of the doubt' when I questioned the wisdom of some edict from those apparently more experienced than me. Sadly, I suspect that I succumbed to the great 'benefit-giving' teaching myself on a number of occasions, when speaking to relative newcomers. I apologise to anyone whose intelligence I may have insulted in this way.

Rather unkindly, maybe, I have been known to wonder whether, had certain individuals put the same effort into their personal practice as they have into creating systems, elucidating principles, and evolving all manner of processes that protect people from the thornier reality of actually working things out for themselves, they might be fully-fledged bodhisattvas by now. As it is, in an echo of Strassman's Zen group, the head of the Order appears, in this late stage of his life, to be greatly concerned with expounding and clarifying the platform of ideas that he would like to be as universally accepted as possible, and which he is anxious to be seen as his legacy.

The main hope, I feel, for the future of this Order as a genuine vehicle for awakening and liberation lies with those members - some friends of mine included - with sufficient experience and maturity to cast an eye over these more formalised aspects before just getting on with their own walking of the sacred path.

For me, things could easily have been far worse. Extreme disempowerment is something I avoided, but it can be the sorry bedfellow of formalised hierarchy in religion. In 1976, during my quest for a suitable Buddhist group to get involved with, I attended a three-week retreat at the then newly-established Manjusri Institute in north-west England. This was the real deal, with proper Tibetan lamas, and I intended to move there and get stuck in immediately afterwards. The retreat proved to be fairly rigorous in a rather uptight way, including a week of doing the monkish thing of one meal per day, with no food at all after midday. One evening, in the midst of our endeavours, an extremely strong atmosphere manifested in the shrine room; many of us, me included, were well and truly 'blissed out'. I was quietly horrified the following morning, however, when all the talk was of how the lamas must have been beaming down really strong energy from their quarters above the shrine room. Er, excuse me, but what about all our blood, sweat, and tears shed over the past fortnight in pursuit of our spiritual ideals? That, apparently, counted for nothing, and I realised that this gurucentric stuff was not only deluded but downright dangerous. So certain had I been previously that this would become my spiritual home, that I had given a good portion of my post-commune savings to the Institute. However, I could not go ahead with the move. This was no place for me. I went to London instead, to walk the gold-paved streets with the group I have written about above.

A side issue to emerge from this article is how it points up the 'anarcho' element in the anarcho-shamanism of Pale Green Vortex. Taken in its more serious meaning, 'anarchism' denotes a minimisation of formal and organised hierarchy. It emphasises that direct and unique contact with the sacred, the divine, our authenticity, or whatever, is more likely outside the constraints of organised, 'officialised' groupings. One reading of the history of religion over the past 5000 years or more involves the progressive removal of the possibilities for direct experience of gnosis from the general populace. At best, it could be mediated by members of a priestly class (who, at worst, turned out to be self-serving bullies). Those who claim that the context of a formalised organisation is necessary for personal awakening are, frankly, speaking through their hat. My admiration extends to someone like James Hillman, whose work has profoundly influenced many people, but who strenuously and persistently refused to accede to the formation of a James Hillman Institute or any other reification of Hillmanesquerie. It is not uncommon to hear the refrain nowadays that the day of the guru and the cult is over. I tend to agree.

There is a second side-show elucidated by the anarchism in anarcho-shamanism. Historically, shamanic techniques have not always been used for the good. Access to other dimensions has been attained with the aim of getting one over on your neighbour, for taking out a rival, for power and domination; black magic, in common parlance. It is important to recognise this dark side to shamanism, if only to acknowledge its existence then move on. 'Anarcho' connotes a lack of hierarchical power games since it connotes minimising hierarchical power. It has no truck with this kind of stuff. Its concerns are with healing and, above all else, gnosis. It is to this that Pale Green Vortex is primarily dedicated.

All quotes in this piece from 'DMT: The Spirit Molecule' by Rick Strassman, M.D.

Dark Unveilings on the Monadhliath

Photos: Near the Allt Duine; trying to protect the Allt Duine.

Bit of a long piece, this one; I've divided it into two parts. Thanks for reading.

Part One: Dark Unveilings

Elegant and simple as it is comprehensive, 'The Gates of Awakening' is Neil Kramer's map and model of the process that comes under a whole variety of headings: 'finding yourself', 'walking the spiritual path' - you get the idea. The Gates are four in number, to be opened both successively and simultaneously. First up is 'engagement', characterised by an enthusiastic recognition of the 'subjects that really matter' in this world, followed by the study and other forms of investigation that are the natural consequence of this initial realisation. Second come the 'unveilings', which are of two types. Look behind the curtain and you can find the 'Light Unveilings': that the universe is essentially magical, formed of different densities of energy; that all phenomena are interconnected and inseparable; that consciousness creates reality; and so on. But take another peek behind the barriers to deeper perception of what is really going on, and you will encounter the 'Dark Unveilings'. Which is where we come in today......

The Dark Unveilings reveal the other side of the fact that things are not the way they seem. These may include uncovering the roles of illuminist groups and other unelected groups with a globalist agenda, such as the Bilderbergers; the significance of PSYOPs, media propaganda, disinformation, and the rest. It extends over a range of phenomena, from the highly visible - politicians and other public figures - through the realms of geopolitics and parapolitics, to the more fundamental realisation that this entire system of hierarchical organisation and control is itself a manifestation of consciousness; specifically, a particular form of consciousness, a main feature of it being its attempt to contain, to restrict human consciousness to a certain (low) level.

Among people variously engaged with alternative/spiritual things who I am aware of, three broadly different stances are taken with regard to the Dark Unveilings. There are those who are fully cognisant of the machinations involved, but have incorporated this understanding within a wider view of the nature and potential of the universe. This is, I suggest, the place to be. Then there are those sincere and serious practitioners who are either ignorant of the Dark Unveilings, or fail to see their relevance. The western Buddhist movement with which I was once engaged seems to be in this situation, in terms of its public face and activities at least. This I find curious -an unjustified sentiment, since I was in precisely the same position until a few years ago...... But nowadays I find it a significant missing piece of the jigsaw of consciousness. Buddhism overflows with notions such as 'mind is primary', 'Mind Only', 'Our life is the creation of our mind' (verse one of the central Buddhist text, the Dhammapada). So to fail to acknowledge how the minds of human beings are put on by a system intended to contain and deceive - to mould the way our minds are created - and to see that in operation on a daily basis, all strikes me as an omission. Particularly since that system itself is, on a deeper level, a form or level of consciousness. Buddhism might try to encase all this within 'the workings of samsara', but it is too abstract to simply leave it at that. To properly understand some things, it is necessary to examine them precisely and closely, through the lens of concrete examples.

And then, finally, there are those who, often fearlessly, have uncovered layer upon layer of the 'Dark Unveilings', but have got stuck there. This is not a good place to be at all. Ultimately, darkness breeds darkness. Like the process of personal psychotherapy, the task of revealing the shady machinations perpetrated by and through certain human beings is endless. By itself, it will get us nowhere; certainly no solution offers itself on that same level. We need to incorporate and move impeccably on.

My personal gateway into the Dark Unveilings was, strange as it may seem, through windfarms. One of my aims on moving from outer London to highland Scotland in 2005 was to extricate myself, in part at least, from the artificial environment of the Big City. On arriving in the Highlands I was disturbed to see these enormous metal-and-plastic whirling structures appearing in wild and upland places. The general consensus propagated on television and in the newspapers was that large-scale windfarms were an essential ingredient if we were to avoid catastrophic human-created global warming. If it was indeed true that polar bears, Pacific islanders, and the rest of us, could be saved with a few turbines on the hills, that would be a sacrifice worth making, I reckoned. However, just to be sure, I decided to do a bit of research. Surprise, surprise: what I began to discover was that the reality was not remotely what was depicted in the popular media. I had opened a Pandora's box of lies and deceit, covert agenda, a panoply of little-publicised facts about windfarms. A small difference between the official story and the results of my research I could have stomached. But the disconnect was so great that it could mean only one thing: something else is going on. From here, it was only a step towards investigating the entire human-created global warming theory, and realising that here was another can of worms (Peter Taylor's presentation at the First ARC Convention, Feb 2010, was an important stepping-stone for me in this particular unveiling). And from here it was just another small move to begin to look at the deeper realities of Control System dynamics in general - from its lower levels in visible politics to its (ultimately more interesting and significant) manifestation as a certain form of consciousness.

Part Two: The Monadhliath

All of which led to my standing outside Highland Council headquarters on an icy morning in Inverness two days before the winter solstice. I was not alone: a cluster of good-natured Highland folk were there, along with a male press photographer and a lady from BBC Alba (I think). Our purpose: to let Highland Council (at least those councillors who could bother to turn up) know that we were not impressed with plans to stick a windfarm at Allt Duine, right on the edge (and I mean right on the edge) of Cairngorms National Park. Actually, on the edge of the National Park is the more emotive way to describe this potential catastrophe's location. It's situated on the eastern fringe of the Monadhliath Mountains. These are rounded, moorland-type hills, rather than spiky, dramatic peaks, so they do not get overmuch publicity. One or two books describe them as uninteresting. But there is a fantastic sense of space, of silence, of nature-is-big, on the Monadhliath: in short, a great place for devotees of modern anarcho-shamanism. I have particularly frequented these hills in the autumn, when you can feel like a visitor granted privileged access to different worlds: stags in rut roaring on the hillsides; ptarmigan strutting in their developing white winter coats; if you are really lucky, a mountain hare racing across the scrubby heather near the summits.

An announcement came that the meeting had been postponed until 11 o'clock: the councillors had been bussed off to look at the site of another proposed wind-crime beforehand. So we headed off into town for a coffee and to warm up. 'Stop-trashing-the-Highlands' people I have met are examples of what decent human beings can be. With a palpable love of the natural world of which we are part, more and more of them have a growing sense of the deeper issues shadily informing the windfarm invasion. Deception by governments and energy companies; collusion and corruption; fortunes to be made by the few at the expense of the many; how wild places are being rubbished in the name of wider but often unspoken political agendas. There is an increasingly bizarre disconnect between the global rhetoric on spending cuts, austerity measures, etc, and the millions that continue to get thrown in the direction of an energy technology that is unreliable, unpredictable, expensive, and as green as a red herring. I spoke to one or two people at the Allt Duine gathering who, like me, had no illusions about changing the policies of politicians through our actions. But if even one piece of wild land is saved this ignominy through these efforts, it will have been worthwhile.

While many 'save-the-environment-from-the-environmentalists' people maintain a sense of humour, there are some who are clearly the worse for wear. This is particularly so, maybe, for those unfortunates who have had personal visitations from the intermittently waving machines from hell. Anybody glibly sitting in their armchair saying 'Windfarms are good' should take the time to read the experiences of some people at least who have had turbines foisted on their daily lives. As a moderately sensitive soul, I find it disturbing to meet these people, fraught and drained of lifeblood from fighting an unequal battle against heartless bastards who have made their life a misery. It is, however, imperative to try and avoid ending up like this: doom and despair achieve little. Even John Muir, pioneering conservationist and someone who was not afraid to speak of the sacredness of wild places, succumbed to this particular form of bloodsucking. His vigorous campaigning against the flooding of Hetch Hetchy was unsuccessful; his death from pneumonia was linked by some to his heartbreak over the matter. No. The Dark Unveilings need to take their place within a wider context of light, love, expansion.

I urge any intelligent human being to do their own research into these deeper realities, the Dark Unveilings. In my case, I needed a personal passion to propel me into this endeavour. It is no good to take the mainstream newspapers and television as ones sole source of information; all too often, it is commentary and opinion that is offered up anyway. Personal research is easier than ever, thanks to the internet - I feel we should make the most of it while it exists in its current format. Just start off through a search engine, see where it goes. But you need to go beyond the mainstream sites; look for real reports, reliable data rather than opinion dressed up as something more noble. And learn to discern, and see through the propaganda. Here is a simple example of what I mean by propaganda-dressed-up-as-fact. We are all familiar with the boasts paraded about yet another new windfarm: 'It will produce electricity for up to 40000 households.' Sounds impressive, doesn't it. But stop to reflect that wind is unpredictable, and sometime doesn't blow hard enough to turn the blades on the turbines at all. So it is equally true to state: 'This windfarm will produce enough electricity for as little as a dog kennel.' How come the mainstream media never puts it like that? Why? Why? This is how it works. Simple. Develop your own bullshit detector. And remember: when you watch Fiona Bruce reading the 6 o'clock news on BBC, you are really watching consciousness manifesting in a certain way.

The Highland councillors disembarked from their minibus round the back of the building, thereby avoiding meeting our little group. Still, a victory-of-sorts was declared: they decided that a site visit is in order before a decision can be made. It seems we'll be back.........