Cairngorm Spring

The second photo is a rare Pale Green Vortex challenge: spot the ptarmigan.

'Walking thus, hour after hour (on the Cairngorm plateau), the senses keyed, one walks the flesh transparent. But no metaphor, transparent, or light as air, is adequate. The body is not made negligible, but paramount. Flesh is not annihilated but fulfilled. One is not bodiless, but essential body.

It is therefore when the body is keyed to its highest potential and controlled to a profound harmony deepening into something that resembles trance, that I discover most nearly what it is to be. I have walked out of the body and into the mountain. I am a manifestation of its total life, as is the starry saxifrage or the white-winged ptarmigan.'  Nan Shepherd, The Living Mountain.   

New World Order - Progress Report

'New World Order' is not a term I often use. It is very loaded, and can easily evoke responses that I feel to be neither appropriate nor intended. I generally prefer to utilise some of the concepts used by Neil Kramer: 'Control System' is a more general and all-inclusive designation than New World Order; 'the Construct' and 'Distortion' describe some of the overriding metaphysical aspects of the situation; and 'Empire' represents the way that the Control System goes about its practical day-to-day affairs. All the same, I have decided, for no special reason, to give the term 'New World Order' (NWO) an outing today.

New World Order or not, there is little doubt as to the creeping globalisation and increased interference in peoples' lives nowadays. You don't have to be a conspiracy fanatic to see increasing regulations in all directions, more controls on what you can or cannot do: eat, drink, buy, sell, grow, write, say, or otherwise express - particularly relevant here is the totalitarian scouge of political correctness -, all concerned with thought and behaviour control. Have a look around certain elements of the alternative media, and you will feel that we are on the brink of total domination and wipe-out by the nasty characters at the top of the tree. From a different perspective, the mainstream media is full of the machinations of politicians, finance people and the rest. This is hardly surprising, since reporting this stuff and insisting on its importance and reality is the function of mainstream 'news' and 'current affairs'. Look at life within these frameworks and you will give New World Order a serious thumbs-up on its endeavours, slowly yet inexorably moving towards its objectives of global domination and control.

I was struck, therefore, to listen to a recent interview with Neil Kramer in which he opined that Empire was about to implode. Actually, he continued, it has already imploded; its self-serving agenda is not sustainable. This was, I felt, an unorthodox take on current proceedings. Although there appear to be increasing numbers of people 'waking up' and seeing through the veils hiding deeper realities, still the signs are that Empire is progressing rather nicely, thank you very much.

I decided to run with Neil's notion for a while. One thing that quickly dawned on me while going about my daily affairs was how much of moment-to-moment experience is not touched by the grubby mitts of Empire. This is, indeed, one of the tricks of Empire, to deceive you into thinking it is more important than it really is. It gets into ones mindset, eating away at the wider experience that is invariably there, should we just stop to allow its influence to come through. Going for a walk in the mountains and spending all the day thinking about windfarms is just one example that Pale Green Vortex needs to be constantly aware of.

Should Empire be in the process of imploding, the New World Order quietly crumbling as I write, it is not surprising that it may not be immediately apparent. Rather like a bicycle speeding along the road. Its motion is obtained through energy input - that of the cyclist pedalling away. The cyclist stops putting in energy, but the bike continues to move, its momentum provided by the energy provided beforehand. It slows down inexorably, however, before finally grinding to a halt, possibly catapulting its rider painfully to the ground in the process.

It is axiomatic that Empire requires the input of energy provided by human masses for its continued existence. This comes from people investing in it in one way or another; the imperial trick of deluding folk that reality as presented by Empire is the only reality is a crafty way of achieving this - and in this way we return to the theme of a previous post, the deeper meaning of the threat posed by the Leary slogan of 'Turn on, tune in, drop out'.

A barometer of my local state of affairs with regards the health and strength of the Control System has recently appeared in the form of the imminent General Election, a mere few weeks away. An event such as this is an excellent way for Empire to inject into its workings the energy it needs constantly for its functioning. That energy, it goes without saying, derives from the populace investing its own energy into this event, treating it (because they believe it to be so) as an authentic expression of reality, and their own great privilege to be able to participate in this marvellous process of western democracy. A little thought and accompanying bitter experience show this to be utter bullshit, but there we go. Time and again, people who have spent the past few years deriding this charade end up signing up to its self-proclaimed validity by putting their energy behind one candidate or another. In this way, Empire is fed, validated, and permitted to roll on its grubby way as normal.

To see the whole thing being rolled out yet again beggars personal belief. Suddenly, they are all at it again ('they' being the media flunkeys and the politicians), arguing, analysing, behaving earnestly and enthusiastically, as if it's all ultra important and the future depends on it. The strategy is simple: stuff something in front of people often enough, ram it down their throats forcefully enough, and sufficient folk will buy into it to grant it some reality - vapid, for sure, but past the threshold for validating Control System worldview.

The spectacle paraded before the British public this time round is uniquely jaw-dropping. There was a time when the political leaders at least made an effort to appear as people of seriousness and substance: Macmillan, Heath, Wilson, Douglas Home from my youth. Today's candidates don't even bother with that. They appear tired, worn-out, as if they know somewhere deep inside that it's the end of the line, time's running out, the game's up. Cameron, Miliband, Clegg: sad, hollow figures, acting out their parts in a sad, hollow play that has all the marks of ending up as a tragedy.

Confronted with this deficit of vitality, our local corner of Empire gains a much-needed boost of energy (remember, it requires energy for its existence, like any other organism) from the phenomenon of the 'false dawn'. Amidst the rubble, the horrible wreckage, there arrives - hope. False dawn first appeared in the form of UKIP. A breath of fresh air, so the UKIPpers told us, pledged to the interests of Britain, rather than Europe and the hordes of faceless bureaucrats. Not very good New World Order people at all, the UKIP folk. As predicted on Pale Green Vortex a while ago, UKIP has been the object of a torrent of mainstream media bad publicity - a lot of our media is fully paid up to the aims of Empire, and finds people like UKIP a bit threatening - and the wheel appears to have fallen off somewhat.

False Dawn number two (at least in the northerly regions of our locality): Scottish National Party (SNP). The local heroes, standing up for local people against those nasty people down south. In my view this is all unfortunately bullshit. One spin-off from my own passionate concerns about windfarms and energy provision is that I have had to dig a bit deeply into the mechanics of how things in this area take place, and how decisions are made. I can report that the systems put into place by the SNP in this respect are highly insulting to the wishes of local folk, highly undemocratic and high-handed, the kind of thing some totalitarian regimes from the past would be envious of. The priorities are the programmes and agendas - you hear these words a lot from some members of the SNP - rather than local concerns. Bulldozing in the name of the 'greater good'. Programmes and agendas are dangerous things: people who think in those terms are dangerous people.

When I moved to Scotland about a decade ago, I was struck by the sense of pride and identity that many people had with being Scottish. This sense of belonging I felt to be a healthy thing, and was very noticeable for me, coming from southern England, where it is little in evidence. It's a quality that I don't manifest in my own being very much. It seems to me that this 'positive patriotism' embodied by many Scottish people has been hijacked and distorted by the SNP, with its programmes, agendas, ill will and extreme polarisation. Lots of folk who support the the SNP are, I know, good and decent people, but I feel they have been duped. The movers and shakers of the SNP are, it seems to me, ideologues first and foremost. And make no mistake; fully paid-up members of the Imperial world view. They just want a bigger slice of the pie.

Old, tired, running on empty? Quite possibly. Empire staggers on to another dreary day. As far as the British General Election goes, it provides an excellent opportunity to practice in its genuine meaning the art of turning on, tuning in, and dropping out. In the meantime, we could do worse than contemplate for own lives Neil Kramer's maxim:'The fastest way to dissolve Empire is to cultivate your own power and excellence.' Go for it.





                   

Return of the Drop-Out Boogie

Wow, the medium is the message, folks. Look at that badge (available in a variety of places online) morph and swirl and almost dissolve into No-thingness before coming back into focus again.

The best of western culture and civilisation, it seems to me, is in good part the result of the creativity of the Flawed Genius. Mozart, Beethoven, Schubert; Shelley, Byron; Michelangelo, Leonardo, Giorgione; a pleasure boat full of Impressionists on the Seine on a Sunday afternoon. I quote from the few slender slices of cultural history with which I am familiar. There is, in some quarters, a tendency to romanticize the Flawed Genius. Not a necessary move, I propose. And the notion finds itself devalued and debased, the 'genius' bit removed altogether, with the arrival of 'the Loveable Rogue'. This tag could fruitfully be thrown straight into the bin. Look at little Billy. Robbed an old man of his savings, beat up his girlfriend and her sister, but he's always got a chirpy smile when he goes to buy his Sunday newspaper. Always buys his mum a nice Christmas present. A loveable rogue. No, I don't buy that one at all.

If we were to look for the perfect embodiment of the Flawed Genius archetype from recent times, we would need to look no further than Dr. Timothy Leary. His flaws were incontrovertible and enormous. They revolved around his tendencies to shameless opportunism and an endless thirst for self-publicity. Anyone trying the 'Leary said this..... Leary believed this....' gambit is onto a loser: he said almost everything at some point or other in his rich and all-too-varied life. People try to put all sorts of things on to Leary - he was a Control System stooge, he was in the pay of the CIA etc etc - based on some random comment he once made, or one teensie weensie sliver of his life story, but it's all a blind alley. There is a remarkable couple of minutes (like many other things, you can find it on YouTube). Leary is almost dead, you can see it in his gaunt and wasted face, and he is being interviewed by some dude or other. 'Doctor Leary, you have been  deeply involved with psychedelic drugs during your life. Do you have any regrets about this?' 'Yes I do.' (And at this moment the world is waiting for that great deathbed confessional). 'I regret that I didn't take more psychedelic drugs during my lifetime.' Brilliant.

It is fashionable to trash Leary nowadays. He gets it from both mainstream and 'alternative' directions. But, despite the bullshit, he said more of insight and wisdom than all the heads of state of the past fifty years put together. He gets a particularly huge amount of flack for the motto he made a commonplace: Turn on, tune in, drop out. It's the 'drop out' bit that folk have particular problems with. It's been turned into 'take over','transform','transcend' and doubtless others that I haven't come across or have forgotten over time. But the thing is this: Dr. Leary had it well-and-truly nailed. He hit the spot, spot-on. 'Drop out' was it to perfection.

The meaning that Leary gave to 'dropping out' has been widely distorted and misrepresented, sometimes wilfully, sometimes through ignorance. I don't think he ever had in mind the classic student drop-out, who rolls out of bed in the middle of the afternoon for a strong coffee, a joint, and to hang around the rest of the day on the sofa watching television. For Leary, dropping out was an act of strong intent and volition. The notion of 'dropping out of society' meant leaving behind the many games, as Leary put it, that characterise modern life, and which ultimately act as barriers between us and our deeper, more real and authentic nature. Here it is in his own words:

'By drop out, I mean to detach yourself from involvement in secular, external, social games. But the dropping out has to occur internally before it can occur externally. I'm not telling kids just to quit school; I'm not telling people to quit their jobs. That is an inevitable development of the process of turning on and tuning in.'

To succeed in what Leary is advocating requires a profound turning inside-out of ones life and entire being. I would suggest that the good man himself was only partial successful in the endeavour - hence some of the 'flaws' in his life, which inevitably influence his work. In Leary's psychological theories, one of the central concepts is 'games'. Most people, most of the time, live their lives through the unconscious adoption of a succession of games. These games are more basic, more visceral, than what we normally attribute to the word 'role'. For a time, Tim Leary played the professor game, wearing the clothes, adopting the style, the social milieu, the values, the motivations and objectives suitable for that particular game. And so it continues.....

A section from 'Flashbacks', Leary's autobiography, illustrates for me most poignantly the devastating effects that shattering the world of games can have. The good doctor is in the middle of his first and terminally game-changing LSD trip:

'After several billion years I found myself on my feet moving through the puppet show of reality. The thought of my kids led me upstairs to my daughter's room. Susan was sitting in bed, the very picture of a thirteen-year-old with her hair up in curlers, frowning at the school book in her lap while rock-and-roll music blasted through the room. It was pure Saturday Evening Post. "Hi, Dad." She was biting a pencil. I slumped against the wall, amazed at this marionette stranger from assembly-line America. She glanced up at me. "Dad, what would you like for Christmas?" She went on biting the pencil, frowning at the book, waving slightly at the beat of the music. In a minute she looked up again. "Dad, I love you."

Leary continues: 'A shock of terror. This was my daughter and this was the father-daughter game. A shallow superficial stereotyped meaningless exchange of Hi, Dad,  Hi, Sue,  How are you Dad? How's school? What do you want for Christmas? Have you done your homework? The plastic doll father and the plastic doll daughter both mounted on little wheels, rolling past each other, around and around on fixed tracks. A complete vulgarization of the real situation: two complex trillion-cell clusters, rooted in an eternity of evolution, sharing for a flicker this unique configuration of space/time. Offered this chance to merge souls and bring out the divinity in the other, we exchanged Hi-Dad-Hi-Susan squeaks. I looked at her beseechingly, straining for real contact. I was stunned with guilt.'

Knowledge, insight, wisdom, awakening: with what a price they come!

Let's return to dropping out, and run through this again: 'dropping out must occur internally before it can occur externally'. This is the nub of the matter. What Leary is doing here is nothing less than reformulating the mystic way - the game to end all games. Invoking the spirit of the Wise Ones of Yore, and presenting it for the times that he found himself in. Dropping out of games, the habitual ways we go about our lives, in large part unconsciously; our default identities, thrust upon us partly by ourselves and partly by the world around us. It's the alchemist's way, purifying the vessel. It's removing the obscuring veils, as one ancient Buddhist text puts it. It's creating the ground on which we may miraculously blossom into our authenticity, our original face, our magnificent uniqueness.

                    

The Photos Are Here......

OK. Worked it out in the end.

Call of the Wild

Day One

It was a big week - for me, anyway. The wind and rain that had threatened to wash the whole of Inverness into the Moray Firth finally abated, leaving a string of dry, calm, and largely sunny days. There were no excuses remaining, and my body felt ready. Time for the big test: after my hugely debilitating illness, the hour had come to go to the hills. I still experienced some tightness around the bottom of my chest, and could produce a decent nose-full of dark, dried bloody stuff from my sinuses if prompted. But other than that, not bad at all.

Weather forecasts suggested the clearest conditions in the west and, as Jim Morrison intoned, all things being equal, 'the west is the best'. One hundred minutes after boarding the train, I was disembarking at a tiny station in the midst of the mountains. So remote is this place that the station is a single platform, request stop only. Inform the ticket person on the train, who will in turn tell the driver to stop. For the way back, make yourself known on the platform. 'Should I jump up and down, so the driver will see me?' I had asked the first time I used this station. 'No' replied the ticket lady emphatically. 'You'll probably fall on the rails.' I think she was being serious.

The first hour, I knew, would be critical. I would be either gasping for breath, calling out Mountain Rescue, or walking not too bad at all. Through the forest, beside the river tumbling down from the hills, then climb the stalkers' path to a height of about 350 metres. A stiff, but not excessive, ascent. I took it easily, with plenty of short stops to get my breath and take in the wonder of being out in wild places once more. I wasn't actually feeling ill or in dire straits. Good news.

After an hour I reached  a great crossroads, a meeting of mountain paths, where decisions had to be made. A whole rucksack of options present themselves from here, from full mountain ascents to gentle valley walks. Something between the two seemed appropriate. I turned left, heading down to the river crossing. Getting to the other side involves hopping across the boulders that are strewn on the river bed. I have done it many times before: not exactly easy, but well within the capabilities of anyone with reasonable agility and balance. Today, however, some of the natural stepping stones are well under water: the rains have left their mark.

I am viewing the boulders and the rushing water with increasing doubt when another figure comes into view. Tall, slim, rangey, the perfect build for a mountain walker. Replete in head bandana, sun shades, and stubbly greying beard, he strides in my direction. He speaks with an unmistakeable Irish accent, but hails from Glasgow. He, too, wishes to cross the stream. But, unlike me, he has no choice (unless he goes back where he came from, entailing a four-hour detour). His gear is stashed in a bothy that is over the river, up a path, down a precipitous mountain slope, and across another river. He has rashly informed his girlfriend that he will be back in Glasgow by nine. I assure him that this is the normal crossing place, but he might find success further upstream, where the water is wider but more shallow. As for myself, I prefer to avoid an easily-prevented soaking. I've decided on other plans, and I move off in the opposite direction. A few minutes later I hear the triumphant yell behind me: 'I'm across!' I give a distant thumbs-up, and he gives an emphatic victory clenching of the fist. Still a lot to do to get to Glasgow by nine, I reflect.

Up, down, up, down. My newly-chosen route takes me through a variety of landscapes, all in their way fascinating. And my chest seems to be actually enjoying the work-out! At one point I descend to a hidden shangri-la that I had forgotten existed. Remnants of the ancient Caledonian forest form a sheltered glade, where waterslides and waterfalls tumble over some of the oldest rock on the planet. Beyond this, the river cuts a deep, precipitous gash into the landscape, difficult to get a view of, so deep and narrow is the defile.

The walk is a splendid circuit, and I arrive at the station twenty minutes before the last train. Just as well, otherwise it will be a thirteen-hour wait for the next one. I hear a distant warning whistle, before the train ambles round the corner into view. I raise a sober hand to announce my existence. The driver waves his in acknowledgment. I am on my way home.

Day Two

The benign weather continues. Four days later, I am up early, ready to profit from what appears, according to the mountain weather forecasts, to be the last of the calm and the sun. I am well organised, and go to make my picnic mountain lunch with the bread that I thoughtfully removed from the freezer the night before. I take it from its wrapping; something doesn't smell good. Then I check the ingredients. The cheese in the loaf hasn't enjoyed the freezing and defrosting, it seems. These sandwiches could be dangerous. More fodder for the compost bin.....

The same venue is planned, for the ultimate test; climbing. Having bought my train ticket, I venture into W.H.Smiths in search of a substitute main piece for lunch. Five minutes later I emerge with my prize. 'Urban Eat; No Fuss; Egg Mayonnaise on White Bread'. The list of ingredients fills half one side of the packet.

Three hours later I stand once more at the mountain crossroads. A small group is down by the stream examining the stepping stones. One by one they go over, the last lad with difficulty. The water level has dropped with the continuing dry weather, but this isn't the way for me. I scan the face of the mountain to my right. The hills hereabouts are steep and craggy, and this one is no exception. A scree-ridden path of sorts can be seen climbing the hillside. Rather than zig-zag up the slope, it generally makes a steep beeline for the upper mountain. In one place it appears nearly vertical.

I've been up here before, and know what it feels like in definite good health. How I'll get on today, I've no idea. I cast a wistful glance back at the path that winds its way gently upwards on the other side of the river, then set forth. There's only one way to find out what I'm capable of.

This climb is never a huge amount of fun. Still, I am in a wild and spectacular place, and height is gained quickly. Behind me, remote wild regions come into view with their remote wild mountain peaks. Overnight bivi-camp country. After a while I reach the level of a small, solitary tree that grows bizarrely on the edge of nearly vertical hillside. I stop for respite and for 'Urban Eat'. As I revitalise myself with the deadly cocktail of ingredients that goes to make 'No Fuss' egg mayonnaise, I marvel at this tree. How? Why? Why here? Eventually, I start off again, but am soon struggling. The way now leads through patches of snow interspersed on steep mud, rock, and dwarf heather. I stop frequently for rests. Then we are on the upper scree and quartzite boulderfield. Plod, plod, plod, stop. All said, however, my lungs are coping well, benefitting even from the workout. It's those thigh muscles, which haven't been used for months, that threaten to give up on me.

Then I am on the summit. A huge cairn has been built here, along with a tiny wind shelter made from stones. The view and the location is remarkable. Strange, primeval shapes in disorderly yet perfect array all around, their structures indistinct in the haze of the sun. Blotches of stale snow lighting up the otherwise monotone of their peaks and flanks.

I wander round the top; sit down; wander some more. And slightly later than is wise, I bid a fond farewell to this place, making my way once more across the boulders and the field of scree homewards. Care is needed when descending from these places. The almost vertical bit coming up is nearly vertical on the way down, too. I move deliberately and mindfully, taking care not to disturb the stones of the mountain more than is possible. In the early evening light, the sides of the hills appear to give off a glow of their own. They breathe, live, and today at least are smiling. Despite my growing fatigue, I attempt to walk with dignity and grace, in tune with the spirit of the place. I am alive, I am almost well, and I am thankful.

P.S. My original intention was to include a few photos with this post. However, and without wishing to get conspiratorial about things, every Windows update changes settings and makes the once-simple task of incorporating photos a more complex procedure. At this very moment, I can't be bothered. Maybe another time. I'll put a couple of days aside in my diary.





               

                      

More Fruit, Please..... Part Two

Author Tony Wright

Note: This is the 'most eagerly-awaited' second part of an article - Part One can be found in the November 2014 archives.

It's a theme that runs through a whole multitude of traditions and cultures across space and time. That the human species isn't living all that it's capable of. That something has gone wrong, maybe; that we have undergone a fall, even. It's there in the Bible, in the expulsion from the Garden of Eden. It's there in a variety of indigenous cultures, whose myths often contain reference to some kind of fall. It appears in the Gnostic notion of archontic infection. We can find it in the cosmic mythologies of Hindu and Buddhist traditions, which place us firmly in the Kali Yuga, a dark age of barbarism, far from spirituality. I suppose that even in phenomena such as the surging popularity of non-traditional political parties such as UKIP and the SNP we detect a sense, however vague and faint, that all is not as it could, or should, be with the world.

In 'Return to the Brain of Eden', Tony Wright and Graham Gynn propose that our fall can be largely attributed to a change from a diet based on fruit, a transition that may have occurred some 150000 years ago. This may appear a long time ago; in fact it is relatively recently in human prehistory, The typical brain size of humans was slightly larger then than now, it seems, a remarkable but little-considered piece of information. These were our true ancestors, but to realise their significance requires rejecting the notion that nothing relevant to the human condition took place before the times of Jesus and Buddha. We were around for a long time before then. What the hell were we doing with all that brain capacity?

There is something special about fruit, an obvious facet that is often ovelooked. Unique among the foodstuffs that make up the human diet, it is food that is intended to be eaten. This is its purpose: a plant produces fruit so that it is eaten by animals in order to disseminate its seeds. This is the precise opposite of meat, for example - the last thing an animal wants is to eaten, I suppose. So we might logically expect there to be something nutritionally excellent about fruit that is absent from our other food sources.

Not only, according to the authors, has our brain shrunk, it has also degenerated. This is particularly true of its left hemisphere. Very roughly, the left side of the brain is associated with the linear, rational, time-and-space aspects to reality, while the right side concerns itself more with imagination, intuition, non-linear and non-rational functions of reality. In the left hemisphere, therefore, we have a degenerate organ that has also made a smash-and-grab raid for dominion over the entire kingdom! Modern western culture and its attendant way of life is built almost entirely upon the characteristics of left brain function - an organ that is severely damaged. If there is any truth in all of this, the implications are profound indeed. It's no wonder that somehow, somewhere, in the depths of our being, we sense that we are in a mess, and that things have gone wrong on the way.

This is not all just a fantasy of the authors. A good deal of the book deals with scientific information, experiments, and other research, all pointing in the direction of their hypothesis. Some of the most remarkable work concerns how the left hemisphere actually confabulates reality. It is a degenerate organ that seeks to confirm its error through making up, inventing reality, nothing less. Aspects to reality that it doesn't like, or finds inconvenient, or that don't fit into its predetermined view of life, are rejected through an automatic and unconscious process of self-deception: lying to itself.  '.....it turns out that perceptual organisation is powerfully determined by expectations built from past experience. The perceiver in effect finds it hard to come to terms with the new reality and tends to make up stories to cover over the incongruity.'  And again: 'Could it be that though we routinely make our decisions subconsciously, our rationalization of our choices might be pure fiction?' (Chapter Six, section on 'Confabulation').

Personal reflection will reveal the extraordinary implications of all this on ourselves and the world we inhabit. Virtual reality is nothing new: we have been making up the reality we live in for millenia.

This is a remarkable book in my view, one that I have increasingly warmed to as the months have passed. And that's enough from me. There is an excellent review of the book by Kim Taggart on Reality Sandwich - follow the link below. Then go and buy the book. For the price of a four cheeses pizza you may read something that will alter your perception of reality.

realitysandwich.com/220103/fruit-for-thought-return-to-the-brain-of-eden-book-review/

    

   

Special Ones

I enjoy reading Casey Hardison's occasional articles for Erowid in his section 'Metanoia - Diet for a Drugged Planet'. Casey's writing style is articulate, witty, and lively, the content of his pieces honest, heartfelt, thought-provoking, and gently provocative. Not that I agree with everything he writes. I don't agree with anybody on everything. I don't agree with myself quite frequently, if truth be told.....

His contribution of November 27th, 2014 ('If a plant told you to jump off a cliff, would you?') contains observations and reflections following his attendance at the World Ayahuasca Conference held in Ibiza during September 2014. In case anybody is unfamiliar with ayahuasca, it is a potent psychedelic-type plant brew associated predominantly with the Amazon Basin. It is composed of two or more different plants, which are boiled and combined into a brew that many claim to be not only psychologically active, but to also possess powerful healing qualities on the physical level. While being one of the staple technologies of transformation used for millenia by people indigenous to the Amazon, it has become increasingly popular in the west among that niche population that finds such things to be of interest.

In his article, Casey writes once more about 'Cognitive Liberty', a subject close to his heart. His (self) defence during his trial for the manufacture of psychedelic substances a decade ago focussed upon cognitive liberty, the individual's freedom to do whatever he or she wishes to with their own consciousness, provided they are not thereby impinging on others' freedoms. Needless to say, the judge was not impressed, instead curtailing all manner of freedoms by sentencing Casey to twenty years in prison.

Cognitive liberty is allied, though not identical, to freedom of speech and thought. Rather than the freedom to communicate whatever we think or feel, it is concerned with the  freedom to experience internally whatever one wishes to. Should I hanker to take a plant or a pill, thereby facilitating a meeting with the Godhead, union with the cosmos, encounters with aliens and psychedelic serpents, relive pre-birth experiences or dredge up long-forgotten psychological trauma, then that is my business and my business alone. Government has no place in such matters.  This is the nub of cognitive liberty, as least as far as its application to forbidden substances goes.

Casey writes cogently about the 'special exemptions' sought by various self-styled religious groups with regard to the consumption of ayahuasca and other entheogenic plant substances ('We use these substances as religious sacraments; they are part of our religion. Therefore we should not be subject to the general prohibitions surrounding these substances'). Groups such as the Uniao do Vegetal and the Native American Church have campaigned with success using this approach. Their 'special case' is not a valid one, argues Casey. Spiritual aspirations are equally spiritual aspirations, regardless of whether they involve meeting up with a bunch of like-minded people in a 'church', or sitting alone at home or in a forest. Cognitive liberty applies whether psychedelic-type substances are ingested for spiritual motivation or in order to watch the swirly colours and pretty patterns.

Casey goes on to consider some of the ayahuasca enthusiasts he met at the conference, and the 'specialness' that strong experiences with psychedelics can confer upon the partaker:

"At the Ayahuasca Conference, after listening to umpteen people tell me what 'Mama Aya' had told them - she told me this, she told me that - I was struck by more than a few thoughts. Many of those tales were of the more mundane nature of what to eat, who to break up with, who to get together with, what career to pursue, how to handle some tricky inter-personal situation, and so on. But more than a few of these stories were of a fantastical nature, about how the spirit of ayahuasca had facilitated talking with long-dead ancestors, how through ayahuasca they had gained access to a higher spiritual plane where they made contact with extra-dimensional beings who acted as guides or healers......"

Go through all this stuff - experientially, that is - and it's difficult not to end up feeling a little bit different. A little bit special, even: Mama Aya spoke to ME. A browse through a few entheogenic-based websites suggests that consumers of ayahuasca among the different psychedelic-type substances are especially prone to this.

I find it personally a bit disappointing that things do not seem to have changed much in this regard since my own LSD-fuelled epiphanies forty years ago. You knew at the time that it was erroneous, if not downright delusional, but it was hard to escape the 'us and them' mentality. 'We' had been there and seen things; while 'they' had not. 'They' were stuck in a little box of their own making without even realising it, and this limited the frame of discourse available. Our sense of being different only too easily morphed into a feeling of being special.

It is a tricky one. There is a sense in which 'we', and for that matter the ayahuasca visionary with the extra-dimensional soul guide, were different, and kind-of special. But not in the manner that normally revealed itself. The error - difficult to avoid - involves identifying with, becoming attached to, ones visionary experiences. Allowing them, if you like, to get swallowed up and become part of ones ego-identity. In 1976 I stopped using psychedelics the way I had for the previous three years. I was getting confused by going up and coming down into different psychic spaces all the time. Each experience seemed to correspond to something numinous, resembling a chapter from a Buddhist or Hindu text that I had read. But which was the real deal? To which could I truly say 'This is It!'?

The trick lies in letting go of all that commentary, that pigeon-holoing. Adopt instead an attitude of endless exploring of the mysteries of consciousness and the universe. Avoid the temptation to reify
experience by  looking for 'the Answer'. Changing all this is not easy - it involves a good deal of 'deep letting go'. But it can be done. I once read about an old South American shaman who was asked how many dimensions of existence there are. He was silent for a moment before replying. 'The number of dimensions is infinite' he said.'Every time I venture, I find something new.' So be it.

Having, in 1976, renounced the peculiar specialness conferred by LSD-catalysed mystical experience, I demonstrated how little I had learnt in this respect by becoming deeply involved with a certain Buddhist organisation. Which of course had a very special teacher. With a very special message. And was peopled by very special human beings doing very special things for the planet. Now, it was all special in a manner of speaking, whether in peak psychedelic experience or deep Buddhist meditation. But not in the way we normally think of it.....