Thanks to the MAPS Forum for this. I've trimmed it down a bit. — TR
================
Reply-to: [email protected]
Hi,
I am a member of an the MAPS forum, as well as a member of an
organization called SSDP
(Students for Sensible Drug Policy). We are hosting a similar
event in the SF Bay Area around the
same time as this one, so if anyone is in town, it will be free
and we'd love for you to come by. I've
included our press release as an attachment as well as in text,
please feel free to share this info. I will
also send this out to the MAPS student forum.
Thank you,
Barbara Marland
UC Berkeley SSDP
[email protected]
Press Release: Title: Religious Freedoms, Spirituality, and Shamanistic Practices
April 16, 2002, 7:00 PM
2040 Valley Life Sciences Building (VLSB) on UC Berkeley campus,
a short walk from downtown
Berkeley BART.
Berkeley, CA
Media Contact: (510) 205-8091
Readers Contact: (510) 702-5599 (voicemail only)
Admissions Cost: Free to the public
Sponsored by UC Berkeley Chapter of SSDP (Students for Sensible Drug Policy)
Event Description: Long version:
If your idea of intellectual enlightenment is listening to psychedelic
luminaries, then you can't miss the
symposium on Religious Freedoms, Spirituality, and Shamanistic
Practices.
This event, hosted by the UC Berkeley chapter of Students for
Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP), will
feature a diverse and noteworthy panel of speakers who will take
a look at the use of psychoactive
substances such as ayhuasca, LSD, hallucinogenic mushrooms, and
peyote in religious and spiritual
practices historically and contemporarily. It will also include
an emphasis the contradiction between
the religious freedoms protected by the 1st Amendment and current
US drug policy regarding these
traditional practices.
The list of speakers includes:
Dr. David Presti: psychotherapist and popular UC Berkeley professor,
Ralph Metzner: psychotherapist, author, and co author with Timothy
Leary of The Psychedelic
Experience;
Chuck Thomas: Executive Director of the Unitarian Universalists
for Drug Policy reform;
Richard Glen Boire: Attorney, author, and Director of the Center
for Cognitive Liberty and Ethics;
Mariavittoria Mangini: Midwife, nurse practitioner, recently received
Ph.D. from UCSF,
emphasis on the therapeutic uses of psychedelics.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------
Charles Grob will be speaking at the First Unitarian Universalist
Society on Thursday, April 11
from 7:00 - 9:00pm, 1187 Franklin Street @ Geary, San Francisco.
His talk is entitled " Healing
and Spirituality Through Modified States of Consciousness".
It is sponsored by The Circle of
Hearts Foundation. Cost is a suggested donation of $15.
=====================================================================================
World Wide Weed
http://metroactive.com/papers/metro/07.22.99/cover/marijuana-9929.html
[ Features Index | San Jose | Metroactive Central | Archives ]
World.Wide.Weed
Photograph by Christopher Gardner
Will the easy availability of drugs
on the Internet open the door to a
depraved new world? If current
trends are any indication, U.S. drug
policy is an endangered species
By Michelle Goldberg
It came in a plain brown wrapper--two varieties
of high-grade marijuana totaling a quarter ounce,
delivered to a downtown San Francisco office
building via regular mail. The pot had been
ordered off a website in Amsterdam,
members.xoom.com/drugsstore/, which is
designed to look just like a Dutch coffee-shop
menu. The site offers two types of weed and
five types of hash, all pictured and listed on a
pull-down order form with boxes to let buyers
specify how many grams of each kind they
want. After ordering, customers receive an email
with an address on it. They're instructed to send
cash. It's a risk, but in this case it paid off. The
twentysomething professional who ordered it
found the marijuana to be not only a bargain at
$92 including delivery, but sweet, green and
potent.
Of course, buying marijuana online is illegal. But
enforcing marijuana prohibition online isn't easy,
especially when sellers live in countries with
more tolerant drug laws, such as the
Netherlands. Even harder to detect is the
flourishing online seed trade, since packages of
pot seeds are usually undetectable by the U.S.
Department of Customs drug dogs. The result is
that the Internet, which for years has been
making national borders increasingly porous, is
slowly helping to subvert marijuana prohibition.
The new trade is thriving on two fronts: filling
up the stash boxes of recreational users who
want the same convenience buying their weed
that they have purchasing books and CDs at
amazon.com, and supplying medical marijuana
patients, especially those in places like San Jose
without a local pot dispensary.
"The government is going to learn what the
music industry is learning. The net is a wall
buster," says technology journalist Jon Katz,
who wrote the Netizen column for Hotwired
and who now writes for the tech news site
Slashdot. "It's not policeable. There are not
enough cops in the world to monitor all the
communications and digital commerce that's
going on. The effort to control the flow of drugs
into the U.S. is a complete failure with or
without the Internet. The Internet is just going
to make it harder. There are millions of new
ways for consumers and retailers to find each
other. The DEA can sniff all the packages it
wants, but it can't make more than a fraction of
a dent in the business."
In real life, a person without a regular marijuana
connection may spend days or weeks searching
for a dealer. Online, it takes just a few clicks.
Though he's never done it, Katz says he would
feel comfortable buying pot online. "I feel I can
buy almost anything online safely," he says. "I
know enough people online that could get
almost anything for me in minutes."
In fact, Katz believes that the Internet is going
to force a reconsideration of domestic marijuana
policy. "That's the power of the Net--it's really
not for the government to be telling people
whether they should be using marijuana or not,
and the Internet makes it possible for people to
make these judgments on their own. The
Internet has killed off traditional notions of
moral policing."
International Marketplace
OF COURSE, THE ONLINE marijuana
business is just the latest example of ways the
Internet has made national borders amorphous
and national laws hard to enforce. The wide
distribution of prescription drugs online without
prescriptions is well documented but difficult for
the government to fight, especially with Internet
doctors willing to write virtual prescriptions after
brief questionnaires.
There are dozens of online overseas pharmacies
that will ship drugs which are controlled in the
United States but not abroad. Try typing
"Viagra" or "Xanax" into a search engine and
see how many offers come up. In a recent issue
of The Industry Standard, James Ledbetter
wrote, "There's a pile of drugs on my desk.
Dozens of pills of different shapes, sizes and
colors, designed to treat obesity, baldness and
erectile dysfunction. My doctor did not
prescribe them, and--knock on wood--I have no
medical need for any of them. How did they get
here? Through the magic of the World Wide
Web."
Online gambling, another illegal activity in many
states, also thrives. Though a congressional
commission recently recommended a ban on
Internet gaming, they couldn't come up with a
viable way to enforce it. Writes Declan
McCullagh in Wired News, "The commission
identified overseas betting sites as a major
problem. Such sites are often located in
countries that license those businesses, as the
state of Nevada does for physical casinos. The
group appears to have recognized that the only
way to stop eager Americans from connecting to
offshore sites would be to censor all overseas
links, much as Singapore and China do when
restricting access to information that their
governments find objectionable. The report
notes that such a law 'may be easily
circumvented.' "
The same is true, it seems, for marijuana law.
Chain of Contraband Command
WHEN I CALL the San Francisco office of the
Drug Enforcement Agency and the Postal
Inspection Service they both claim to be
unaware of the Internet marijuana trade,
suggesting how easy it is for digital dealers to
escape notice. And even if they are caught, the
DEA has no jurisdiction outside the United
States. Not that they're admitting powerlessness.
"In cooperation with authorities in other
countries, we can arrest and extradite dealers,"
says Evelyn James, DEA special agent and
public information officer. Dutch police, she
points out, have shut down marijuana websites
before, usually at the request of foreign
governments.
Nevertheless, the possibility of legal trouble
doesn't much worry Joey Phdfort, a 35-year-old
Amsterdam man who runs a website
(people.A2000.nl/lpafort/) where people from
around the world can order weed. "I live in the
Netherlands, where cannabis is allowed. I do
nothing wrong," he says. Phdfort, who is
suffering from liver cancer, believes he is doing
humanitarian work. "In Holland, doctors give
cancer patients cannabis and it helps. I can help
other people who need it also. Most of the
people who are buying from me are ill. Most of
them have cancer themselves. That is why they
buy it on the Internet." He points out the
logistical troubles that many cancer patients
have in acquiring marijuana. It's not like they
can call up an old college pal who knows where
to score. "If somebody is 40 or 50 years old,
how can he buy it if the government won't allow
it?" he asks. "If you are sick and you need it and
you know that it helps, why not?"
Phdfort says that he used to send out 1,000
packages a week, but now that his sickness has
progressed, he only has time to serve a few
dozen regular customers, making about 25
mailings a week. Customs, he says, are rarely a
problem--he estimates that 99 percent of the
marijuana he sends out makes it to its addressee
intact. In the case of the order placed from and
delivered to San Francisco, the marijuana came
in small, plastic zipper bags, placed inside a
padded envelope. Nothing fancy about it.
Recipients in the United States are obviously
subject to our drug laws, but, although importing
drugs is a federal crime, buyers are unlikely to
face penalties much stiffer than they would for
possession of the same amount in their city and
state. "The whole purpose for having federal
law enforcement as opposed to state, county or
municipal law enforcement is so that we can
most efficiently and effectively utilize taxpayer
resources. It is not appropriate for federal-level
resources to be used to prosecute someone in
possession of one joint," concedes DEA
spokeswoman James. "That does not mean we
won't arrest you and prosecute you through the
state system. If you're using the mail, that's a
separate crime that you can be charged with."
But the Postal Inspection Service, the
government agency in charge of investigating
crimes involving the mail, is also unlikely to
throw the book at minor buyers, especially those
with a medical excuse. "If a website is in
Amsterdam we don't have any jurisdiction
there," says U.S. Postal Inspector Linda Joe. "If
marijuana does come here and if customs
doesn't catch it and we do, then of course we'll
seize it. There we run into the issue of whether
it will be prosecuted. That varies from
jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Sometimes if the
U.S. attorney's office doesn't want to prosecute,
a local DA will. It would depend on the quantity
of drugs and how often a person had been
receiving them. We'd definitely look into it to
see if this was a one-shot deal or if they'd been
getting packages every week."
The Postal Inspection Service is much more
concerned, it seems, with dealers sending huge
packages via the mail to other dealers. A quote
from the chief postal inspector published in the
agency's 1998 annual report reads: "Marijuana is
the most prevalent drug found in the mail, and
Postal Inspectors focus investigative efforts on
the large quantities associated with drug
dealers." Last year, for instance, three
Californians were arrested for mailing 11,000
pounds of pot to the East Coast. Of the 651
marijuana-related arrests that the postal service
made last year, most were of members of huge
drug-trafficking rings, like the 106 people busted
in Southern California in a sting involving the
seizure of 2,824 pounds of weed.
The fact that the feds are unlikely to prosecute
small-time recipients isn't always good news for
buyers. Joe recalls one case in which a man in
Virginia was receiving pot in the mail from a
relative in New Jersey. The sender's case, which
the government considered more serious
because he was dealing, was prosecuted
federally, and he got probation. Since the feds
weren't interested in going after the recipient, his
case was pursued by his own county DA in
Virginia, and he ended up getting six years.
Locally, Santa Clara County's prosecutors say
they'll certainly go after those ordering pot
online for fun. "Without hesitation we would
prosecute them. We prosecute people who
possess marijuana every day," says assistant
district attorney Karyn Sinunu. But she throws
in the caveat that her office would probably
leave those with legitimate doctor
recommendations alone. "If someone has
marijuana and they have a recommendation to
have it, under state law we're not going to
prosecute," she says. "We don't have any state
agencies investigating what goes through the
mail, so if the feds have a hands-off policy,
there probably wouldn't be a prosecution. I'd
have to see an actual case and make a
determination based on the person's criminal
history, medical need, the amount and whether
they had a legitimate [medical] recommendation.
I truly believe that marijuana has some medical
purpose, and I truly believe that some people
are abusing Proposition 215 [the proposition
legalizing possession of medical marijuana].
Legitimate patients should be able to use
medicinal marijuana without being hassled by
the police."
Clicking for Cannabis:
The quarter ounce of
marijuana pictured above
ordered from an
Amsterdam website cost
$92, including shipping
and handling.
Photograph by Christopher
Gardner
Medical Quandary
EVER SINCE San Jose police shut the Santa
Clara County Medical Cannabis Center down in
March of 1998, it is unclear where San Jose's
medical marijuana patients have been getting
their pot. Buying marijuana online may be the
best option for those who can't score on the
street or through friends or make the journey to
Santa Cruz or San Francisco.
"Patients are scattering. It's all underground.
They're just getting it off the street," says Suzie
Andrews, owner of Rainbow Smoke Shop, a
store on West San Carlos Street that sells
marijuana accessories. Andrews is currently
working to open a new dispensary in San
Jose--she hopes to be operating by the end of
the year. Until then, she says, "People will try to
gain access any way they can."
Of the online marijuana trade, Andrews says, "I
think it's a great idea, as long as what they're
selling is what they're advertising. Patients don't
have too many choices these days." Andrews
says patients often come into her shop asking
where they can buy marijuana. "We go through
all the options," she says. "I talk to people about
growing, tell them about the right lights to use. A
lot of people can't grow their own so they try to
find out who is selling it. It breaks my heart that
they have to scramble around like that."
Right now, Sinunu is recommending that
patients grow their own. "One of the problems
with 215 is they say you can have marijuana for
medicinal purposes, but where the hell is it
supposed to come from?" Sinunu says. "You're
either going to have to grow it or have a
caregiver grow it for you. Right now that's all
the law permits." Besides sticking to the letter of
the law, she adds, patients who grow their own
can be sure that their marijuana is free of
additives that could exacerbate their illnesses. "I
had a very good friend use marijuana at the end
of her life, and you want your marijuana to be
clean; you don't want people who are already
sick to have stuff that might be contaminated.
Some of the stuff that comes up from Mexico is
often padded with other ingredients, really foul
ingredients. That's why I always recommend to
bona fide patients that they grow it themselves."
Growing the Grass
WHILE GROWERS can always pick through a
bag of pot for seeds, if they want to know
exactly what they're raising, the Internet can be
a huge help. There are dozens of seed banks
online based both in the Netherlands and in
Canada, where possession of marijuana seeds is
legal. The seed trade is flourishing both because
seeds, tiny and odorless, are easy to ship, and
also because selling seeds is more profitable than
selling actual marijuana.
"In the economics of marijuana, cultivating for
seeds is a better industry than cultivating for
bud," remarks John Entwistle, legislative analyst
for Californians for Compassionate Use and one
of the authors of Proposition 215. "Those little
seeds are just worth so much money. It takes
years to get them because you have to do all this
genetic work--when you buy seeds, you're
buying knowledge of what the plant is. If they
tell you, for example, that the plant will mature
in exactly 92 days, it generally will."
Indeed, the language on seed sites drips with the
kind of reverent connoisseurship often found
among wine snobs. On Heaven's Stairway
(www.hempqc.com), a strain called Amstel
Gold that sells for $50 per packet of 10 seeds is
described as "soft with a citruslike aroma and a
good high. Easy to grow, grows with long
compact resinous buds." The more expensive
Durban Poison ($75 for 10 seeds) is said to be
"100% Sativa. Large long bud leaves, buds are
also large and long with lots of resin. A sweet
licorice or anise flavor. 'Up' high similar to Thai.
... Also does very well under artificial light." To
order, you simply send an international money
order or certified check (all prices are in U.S.
dollars) to a post office box in Quebec.
Self-Regulation
FOR MANY WOULD-BE Internet pot buyers,
even those who aren't afraid of running afoul of
the law, the fear of being scammed is a strong
deterrent. But unlike the real-life black market,
the Internet fosters a community of users who
constantly rate sites and trade advice. "The odds
online overwhelmingly favor the buyer," Katz
says, based on his observations of the online
drug community in action. Discussions flourish
at www.yahooka.com and www.cannabis.com,
and on newsgroups such as
alt.drugs.pot.cultivation. There's even a Zagat
guide of sorts for seed banks at
www.suresite.com/ca/r/razzmat/, where online
seed stores are rated for reliability, speed of
delivery and convenience of ordering. Here you
can learn which sites take checks, which take
money orders at no extra charge and which
provide free shipping. Additionally, the
webmaster warns users against sites known to
burn would-be buyers.
Joel, a recreational grower who buys seeds
online, used the site as a guide and was very
pleased with the results. "I went with one of his
five-star guys. It took about a month, but I got
my product and I was very happy with it. They
did an excellent job." Before the Internet, Joel
says, buying seeds could be difficult "unless you
knew someone, went to Canada or flew over to
Amsterdam."
The Internet also makes growing easier by
providing access to a group of experts ready to
answer questions from novices growing the first
plant or from veteran cultivators attempting
new, more difficult strains. "The guys on the
cultivation newsgroup are really nice," Joel says.
"It's the greatest source on the Internet for
growing advice. There are four or five guys who
are really cool and will answer pretty much any
question."
Anyway, he adds, growing pot, even indoors, is
pretty simple. "It's easier than growing a house
plant," he says. "I'd kill a house plant. Marijuana
literally grows like a weed. You can buy a cheap
fluorescent light and keep it over your seeds and
in a 120 days you'll have a cheap, jumbo crop."
Joel says he's not too concerned about being
busted. "I worry to some extent, but really
they'd have to be kind of silly to pay attention to
me. Why would anyone spend an ungodly
amount of money to catch someone buying 10
seeds? I do take precautions, though. I use
proxy servers and remailers to post to the
newsgroups, which makes it a real pain to trace
it back to me."
He's probably right. "Technically seeds are
illegal, but there isn't THC in the seeds, only in
the plant itself," says postal inspector Joe. "They
would be seized, but as far as prosecution, it
would depend on the local climate."
Illustration by Winston Smith
Paranoid Collusions
STILL, MOST OF THOSE involved in the
fight for marijuana legalization caution against
buying anything illegal through the Internet. "I
would be very cautious about putting my name
out there as a consumer of marijuana,"
Entwistle says.
"We have run several messages on our website
saying that one of the stupidest things you can
do is buy pot through the Internet. It's even
riskier than going up to somebody in the street,"
says John Holmstrom, multimedia director for
High Times magazine. "Who knows who's
behind the website? What if it's a government
agency and they're keeping a list of everyone
they're sending pot to?"
Suspicions run especially high around sites that
offer to ship marijuana domestically, because
people worry that such sites are government
sting operations. Arizona Company Medical
(www.medical-marijuana.com), for example, is
a pot website registered to an address in
Anaheim, Calif. It's run by Anaheim resident
Mike Aranov, who refused to answer questions
except to say that his site ships to people
throughout the country, which is, obviously,
illegal. To order, buyers must send a check or
money order along with a copy of a medical
report or a doctor's note and "proof of ID"
(what constitutes proof is unclear) to 5051 E.
Orangethorpe Ave., Suite E, in Anaheim. The
prices are low, starting at $65 for a quarter
ounce. One Bay Area marijuana dispensary
worker said that he'd heard about successful
buys through the site, but he doesn't
recommend using it. "I met a gentleman from
the company who said they were doing fine. It's
strange that they're able to survive," he says. "I
have hesitations because of the federal
government's ability to tap into it. They might
even be dealing with a narc to catch people who
are propositioning them. You don't know what
you're getting into."
Enwistle said he's been getting lots of inquiries
lately from people who want to know whether
Arizona Medical is safe. "While in theory the
idea of being able to click for pot is good and in
practice it is happening, it's a very temporary
thing, I suspect. I wouldn't do it. It's frightening.
I think that people should be clear about what
they're doing. When you're breaking the law,
you shouldn't let yourself get caught. The
government can just trace where the clicks came
from and round up enormous numbers of
people. It lends itself to a conspiracy
prosecution. People get away with breaking the
law for a period of time, but it does catch up to
you."
Net Scum
BESIDES PROBLEMS WITH the law, online
buyers must also be wary of scams. Seed
buyers tend to protect themselves by constantly
exchanging information, but those who actually
order pot online are less likely to fess up to it.
"Most of my clients have been ripped off many
times on the Internet before they came to me,"
says Phdfort. "There's a lot of scum on the
Internet."
Indeed, if you do a web search for the words
"buy marijuana online," many of the resulting
links will be to a site called the "Netherlands
High Shoppe," which had dozens of separate
URLs. The site even promises free samples. But
before you get in, you have to buy something
called an "adult check ID" for $20, which, in
addition to providing access to the Netherlands
High Shoppe, also lets you in to a variety of
porn sites. The ID won't, however, get you any
closer to actual marijuana, because all the
Netherlands High Shoppe offers are the phone
numbers of U.S. companies selling legal herbal
marijuana substitutes with names like "Wizard
Smoke."
And as with Arizona Medical, buyers on some
sites are required to provide far more
information than they'd ever dream of giving to
a guy skulking around the park with a pocket
full of dime bags. A few months ago, an email
was circulating with the URLs of two websites,
civildisobedient.net and antae.org, said to be
working in concert, that promised to deliver free
medical marijuana to patients in San Jose. "This
is one more step in our movement to launch a
pacifist guerrilla medi-pot dispensary for the
chronic suffering patients of San Jose, but which
we will operate from a virtual location," said the
email's attachment. At first, it seemed thrilling.
But no local activists knew anything about it, no
phone number was given, and there was no
response to repeated requests for more
information. Users were instructed to send a
signed, notarized copy of their photo
identification, a signed "oath" with the name of
their primary caregiver, and a "Police or Police
Agent Waver (sic) form signed" (what this
means is unclear) to CivilDisobedient.net, c/o
Mahlon, Gen Del PO, Washington DC, USA
20090.
It turns out that both domains are registered to
the same person, one 'Mahlon Coats.' People
who register domain names are required to
provide phone numbers, and of the numbers
Coats used, one is for a Motel 6 in Oakland and
the other is for an Internet company in
Australia.
But most disturbing of all is the fact that Mahlon
Coats writes like a schizophrenic. "If our
website seems slightly irreverent toward the so
called 'drug war' (and so called 'drug warriors')
we apologize but we needed the dark humor for
novel extents of parabolic range and breadth," it
says on www.antae.org. "And the Internet novel
approach is intended to hopefully bring a
quicker end to any unnecessary suffering of
patients today, now--before even more of them
join the already-deceased patients (who now
feel no more pain, but) who were forced (as a
result of political positioning) to endure their
suffering without a safe source for this simple
herbal remedy. If our web sites also seem
slightly fanatical at times, it is because the
stratified contradictions in the so called 'Drug
War' become hilarious when exposed. And this
is also to heighten the novel experience."
The bizarre ramblings continue on
civildisobedient.net: "For those who believe that
we who used an illegally smoked mantra as a
unifying element, especially those who used it
with us but then after our goals were achieved in
halting the Vietnam War, should have stopped
the smoke, I argue that our next goal needed to
be to expose the government complicity in
causing such a benign substance to be so feared
and maligned--and thereby better prepare the
government against such a flawed policy
'Achilles heel,' from future protester strengths
against the government."
This, needless to say, is probably not a person
many would want to trust with their name,
address and medical history.
"The Internet can't gloss over the fact that it's
not Walgreens on the other end of the line. It's
still just a drug dealer with a home page,"
Entwistle says. But for some, especially the old
and the ill, a drug dealer with a home page is
easier to find than a drug dealer on the street. As
long as there are people who want pot badly
enough to send cash blindly through the mail,
there will be people all over the world more than
happy to sell it to them.
[ San Jose | Metroactive Central | Archives ]
==========================================================================================
Psychedelic Rock Posters
Tomlinson, Sally; Medeiros, Walter (2001). High Societies: Psychedelic
Rock Posters of
Haight-Ashbury. San Diego: San Diego Museum of Art.
ISBN: 0-937108-27-8
Description: paperback, 89 pages, 29.3 cm x 20.2 cm x 0.8 cm.
Contents: Foreword by Don Bacigalupi, ackowledgments, 5 unnumbered
parts: (1) Dancing on the
Edge: Re-collecting the Sixties by Paul Prince, (2) High Societies:
An Introduction by D. Scott
Atkinson, (3) Psychedelic Rock Posters: History, Ideas and Art
by Sally Tomlinson, (4) Colorplates,
(5) Annotated checklist by Walter Medeiros, credits.
Contributors: D. Scott Atkinson, Don Bacigalupi, Walter Medeiros, Paul Prince, Sally Tomlinson
Note: Tomlinson's chapter is an especially succinct history of the times.
Excerpt(s):
Foreword
by Don Bacigalupi
High Societies represents a milestone for the San Diego Museum
of Art. The exhibition engaged all
the Museums curatorial departments in an unprecedented collaboration
- a process that was marked
by lively conversations from beginning to end and was both revelatory
and motivating. Together we
explored the central thesis of the exhibition
- the elevation of graphic art ephemera to the fine art canon
in different places and times. The result,
we believe, is a keenly stimulating exhibition. I trust that
the synergies created in this
cross-disciplinary, multicul-tural effort will continue to generate
fresh responses to all manner of
material. It is our great hope that viewers' eyes will be refreshed
as well and will be opened to seeing
many familiar works in new ways. (page 4)
Dancing on the Edge: Re-Collecting the Sixties
by Paul Prince
My family relocated to the West Coast in 1955, and I moved to
Santa Barbara six years later to
study at the University of California. By the mid-l960s most
of the political, social, and cultural
changes that would profoundly impact the culture for the next
decade were in full bloom in California.
The rapidly escalating war in Southeast Asia, political assassinations,
increasing social unrest, and a
proliferation of mind-altering substances all had their effect
on a spiritually malnour-ished generation
who had grown up in the
conservative "gray flannel fifties." They were starved for authentic
emotional experiences with others,
the world, and the mysteries of life. (page 6)
High Societies: An Introduction
by D. Scott Atkinson
The exhibition High Societies is divided into three parts, each
representing a moment in which graphic
design was used to celebrate a popular entertainment. The first
section, Japanese Woodblock Prints
and the Floating World of Edo, is drawn from the San Diego Museum
of Art's collection of Japanese
prints. Toulouse-Lautrec and the Cabarets of Montmartre, the
second part of the exhibition, presents
all thirty-one of the artist's posters in the Museum's celebrated
Baldwin M. Baldwin Collection, along
with a selection of graphic designs by Lautrec's contemporaries.
The posters in the third section,
Psychedelic Rock Posters of Haight-Ashbury, were chosen from
the large body of original
psychedelic graphics assembled by collector Paul Prince.
Seeing the three parts of High Societies together encourages the
viewer to investigate the relationship
of aesthetics to social mores and popular awareness. For example,
European artists quickly
embraced the formal aspects of Japanese woodblock prints but
were unaware of the social context
in which the prints were made. In the United States books and
films, such as Moulin Rouge,
presented for a generation of Americans romanticized, yet vivid,
portrayals that cast Toulouse
-Lautrec as a celebrity. As a result, his work became pop-ular,
though not well understood.
Conversely, the media's disapproving view of hippie culture and
the LSD experi-ence shaped
negative public response to the psychedelic graphic designs produced
in San Francisco during the
1960s. By bringing works from the three cultures togeth-er, High
Societies aspires to provide a
forum in which three moments in the history of graphic design
may be viewed, and judged, afresh.
(page 8)
What galvanized the hippies was their defiance of an authoritarian
culture steeped in the work ethic
and suspicious of any hint of earthy pleasure. In contrast, hippies
were advocates of leisure time,
shared resources, and communal living. The most subversive element
of the hippie ethos was the
belief in a higher level of consciousness that, when attained,
called into question all the moral, social,
economic, and political values of American culture. This level
of enlightenment could be received
through various channels, including the study of transcendental
meditation, Zen Buddhism, and Native
American spiritual practices. The most popular key to the new
consciousness, though, was the
experimental drug lysergic acid diethylamide, known as LSD, which
had been synthesized in 1938 by
Swiss chemist Albert Hofmann as a possible cure for migraine
headaches.
LSD produced a modified state of consciousness and changed the
user's visual experience, bringing
on visions of intensified colors and distorted forms and sometimes
vivid hallucinations. In combination
the mental and visu-al responses to LSD were called "mind expanding;'
an idea that for the hippies
represented a new, uncharted frontier ripe for exploration. The
drug-altered state, referred to as the
"psychedelic experience," was the essential inspiration for the
artists who created the posters
included in High Societies. The psychedelic graphics not only
reveal information pertaining to bands,
places, and times, but convey the dynamic movement of a dancing
crowd, the intensity of a light
show, and the high decibels of the San Francisco sound as well.
(page 12)
The first large public forums for mind exploration began in the
fall of 1965 as events
loosely organized by author Ken Kesey and his followers, called
the Merry Pranksters.
They conducted a series of "Acid Tests" - acid being a slang
word for LSD - that were multisensory,
Dionysian experiences consisting of sounds, music, lights, and
movement. The purpose of the tests
was to mount a nonviolent social revolution. Kesey believed that
if LSD expanded the consciousness
of a broad enough section of society, the world would become
a better, less hostile place. The
culmination, and perhaps the most
success-ful, of the Acid Tests was a three-day affair in January
1966 called the Trips Festival, held at
the Longshoremen's Hall in San Francisco.
Today it is hard to understand how events that openly promoted
the use of LSD could have taken
place. It is, however, necessary to keep a historical perspective
on the period: the Acid Tests and the
Trips Festival were underground activities, and, more important,
until October 6, 1966, LSD was
legal. By the time a law banning the drug was enacted, many aspects
of hippie culture had already
been established. Among them were the dance concerts, a direct
outgrowth of the Trips Festival, that
adopted the idea of an event as a fully sensory experience.
The dance concerts became among the 1960s' most important contributions
to American popular
culture. … (page 13)
========================================================================================
Psychedelic Island Views
ISLAND VIEWS ELECTROZINE No.14
March
2002 Edited by Bruce Eisner
Copy Editors
-- Will Penna and Ray Soulard, Jr.
Staff:
Sony Vaio PC and Cute Blue IMac
********************************************************************
+++ A
Call for a Psychedelic Sanctuary (Part 1)
by
Bruce Eisner
+++ Some
Things You Can Do to Help Island Foundation
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+-
This is part one of an article which
I published in Island
Views No.6, which was sent to our world-wide
membership in
November. I began writing this article
more than a year ago
and I believe that it is more urgent
that our community
consider the project proposed here --
given the events that
have occurred since I decided it was
time to find a place for
us to "get away."
The article is divided into two sections,
Manifesto and
Utopia. They are better read in two
sittings, I have
discovered, despite much rewriting.
So I will publish part
two in our annual Bicycle Day Issue
of Island Views
ElectroZine and I will have an announcement
of an initial
fund raising campaign for the Sanctuary
Project which I think
you are going to like.
A Call For A Psychedelic Sanctuary
by Bruce Eisner
"Wooden ships on the water, very free and easy,
Easy,
you know the way it's supposed to be, Silver
people
on the shoreline, let us be, Talkin' 'bout
very free
and easy... Horror grips us as we watch
you die,
All we can do is echo your anguished
cries,
Stare as all human feelings die, We are
leaving
- you don't need us. Go; take your sister
then,
by
the hand, Lead her away from this foreign
land,
Far away, where we might laugh again, We are
leaving
-you don't need us. -
Paul Kantner(1)
MANIFESTO
Four decades have passed since fresh
winds of change blew
across our nation and around the world.
In the song in the
center of the page, Paul Kantner wanted
to catch some of the
wind from those changes to "keep the
party going" as the
decade drew to a close. The 1960s were
an extraordinary
period - a time in which millions of
people acted as if they
had swallowed some kind of pill which
made them quite
different - and of course they had.
The cultural icon of the man in the thin
gray flannel suit
with a drink in his hand gave way to
the image of a different
kind of cocktail party - the kind they
had on the popular TV
show "Laugh In." They were having drinks
with a different
kind of rum. It wasn't the rum that
young John Kennedy's
elders had run in from Cuba in the thirties
in martinis that
made sixties parties swing. Old Ike's
stolid attitudes had
given way to a new vision of the Western
world, as
articulated by Kennedy, who was both
a symbol of the strong
stirrings of change as well as a martyr
to the kind of
reaction that it would bring forth.
The sixties were inspired by a new openness
(you might call
it predecessor of The Soviet Glasnost).
Roles and ways of
doing things that had persisted for
centuries were quickly
dissolving. In the old South, young
Freedom Riders rode into
town and threatened to overturn "Jim
Crow" discriminatory
laws. Women in great numbers decided
not to be housewives and
play the traditional role of the submissive
sex. Many
concerned that economic progress might
eventually ruin the
earth began using the word "ecology"
(heretofore reserved for
those seriously academic) to talk
about a movement often
symbolized by the "Whole Earth" as seen
by the first humans
to orbit the earth. And of course, with
the advent of birth
control pills, there was the sexual
revolution-before the
tragedy of AIDS.
It was a period marked by so much cultural
change that the
highly respected historian Arnold Toynbee
observed of this
period in American history: "I have
been visiting the United
States since 1925. Before my last visit
(1967), I had been
absent for two years, and I came away
with the impression
that in those two years there has been
more change in
American life than in all the previous
forty."
Of course, it was LSD in the pills that
gave people so much
insight. LSD, a potent mind-changing
drug with few side
effects, was discovered in Basil, Switzerland
during the
dark days prior to World War II, around
the same time as a
much larger group in New Mexico was
cooking up the atomic
bomb. Just as Gutenberg's revolutionary
printing press in
the fifteenth century allowed
for anyone to own his or her
own bible, a privilege that until then
had only been enjoyed
by the monks, so now the same mass production
machines that
had turned out bibles (and later Ford
motor cars) were
turning out insight pills (handing out
this Holy Grail to
somewhere between one and two million
people between 1959 and
1970). The numbers who passed through
Aldous Huxley's well-
described "doors of perception," stepping
out of Plato's cave
to glimpse the white light of the sun,
far exceeded any
generation before it. The mystical experience,
from being
something reserved for saints, became
available on sugar
cubes.
For many, LSD was a roller coaster ride
through their
unconscious-a kind of virtual Disneyland.
But for a few, it
took on a significance that they called
"mystical" or
"religious." It was these profound experiences
which led a
large segment of the Boomer generation
to a commitment to
altruism and idealistic pursuits that
was to became the
passion during what is often referred
to as the "Psychedelic
Sixties." In many, that commitment to
change has never really
faded.
The Psychedelic Revolution, as it came
to be known by some,
grew from a small intellectual elite-composed
mainly of
writers and artists in Los Angeles,
New York, and London-into
a mass movement which involved the "best
minds of [their]
generation," including college students
and open-minded
people of all ages.
The Psychedelic Revolution provided a
catalyst for many
changes that occurred in our culture.
The long-haired,
bearded hippie with his or her open,
loving ways was born as
an American archetype as a result of
the experiences and
unique consciousness that resulted from
the use of LSD on a
grand scale.
Because these changes were sudden and
profound, they were
quickly viewed as a fundamental threat
by powerful forces in
our society which make up the economic,
political, and other
social strata we call The Establishment.
In a rather
successful effort to keep the genie
in the bottle, they made
possession and use of LSD and several
other related
psychedelic drugs serious crimes.
In making LSD illegal, which was formerly
legal and available
in powerful and pure forms, the Establishment
was able to
effectively freeze the fluid changes
of the sixties. The
Psychedelic Revolution lost its ability
to pass on to new
generations the opportunity to have
the powerful experiences
that LSD had given them access to, leaving
those that came
after them to try new synthetic and
botanical substitutes
which are only a shadow of the real
thing.
Despite the repressive actions of the
powers that be, young
people continued to be fascinated by
the lifestyle and values
represented by the Psychedelic Revolution.
Many sought out
and some found psychedelic compounds-mainly
the psilocybin
mushroom and various synthetic compounds-and,
although it was
harder to find them, they remained determined
and persisted.
The followers of the Grateful Dead kept
the hippie image by
following their esteemed band "on tour"
each year with the
look and feel of the hippies. Since
the Dead's demise, other
bands attract this "rainbow hippie"
following. The members of
this youth movement used what compounds
they could get and
were able to gain an inkling of what
the million-plus members
of the Psychedelic Revolution of the
sixties had experienced.
New generations maintained a faith and
trust in the
Psychedelic Revolution-treating psychedelic
compounds as
religious sacraments for all the years
that followed the
Supreme Court's ruling that psychedelic
compounds could not
be protected under the rights given
by the First Amendment.
And those of us who had those powerful
experiences three
decades ago continue to value them and
to be guided by them.
We million-plus who participated in the
Movement gained an
understanding of the transparency of
the superficial TV show
reality most people live their lives
by that cannot be erased
by the passage of time. Many of us wondered
what a world
might be like in which psychedelics
were as integral a part
of society as traditional intoxicants
like alcohol, coffee,
and tobacco.
The influence of psychedelics permeated
many aspects of our
everyday life and permanently changed
the way we live, love,
work, and play. The impact that the
Psychedelic Revolution
made on our culture appears everywhere,
from the television
commercials for Coors or Porsche that
look like underground
films from the sixties (complete with
their computer-
generated effects-impossible back then),
to casual clothes in
the workplace. Our language is less
formal, and filled with
the groovin' vernacular of those heady
times. Our rock-n-roll
society has adopted and made commonplace
the rebellious
symbols of the youth culture of the
sixties. In addition, the
tremendous technological advances in
many areas give a
science fiction veneer to our lives-making
them somehow
resemble the fast-paced mind acceleration
characteristic of
tripping. The connection between the
cyberspace of computers
and the shamanic space of vision quests
is one example. The
energies and mechanisms of new devices
and gadgets we use
today almost seem magical, just as our
LSD trips once felt.
But while widespread adoption of
sixties styles and the
external advances in modern technology
remain, the
metamorphosis of a new culture which
sometimes led LSD users
in the sixties to think of themselves
as a mutant species
("acid freaks"), has slowed to a glacial
pace. In many ways
our society has returned to the conformist
trends of the
early fifties that preceded the Beat
movement.
Timothy Leary said back in the sixties
that "this generation
will never be like their mothers and
fathers." Yes, we have
moved forward in many ways technologically,
and in some ways
socially, but the feeling of rapid change
that gave many
participants in the Psychedelic Revolution
the sense that we
were fast evolving toward a dramatically
different and vastly
more humanistic society is gone. Certainly
there are social
youth movements and an alternative culture.
But nobody
believes-as many did in the sixties-that
a new culture is
just around the next corner.
The media has gained tremendous power
over the way we think
and believe. In some ways our society
resembles the "Brave
New World" Aldous Huxley wrote about
back in the thirties,
where people enjoy their mindless pleasure
while working more
hours than ever before and living in
a reality created by the
media.
Given the situation I have described,
it is time for those of
us whose lives have been touched by
or identified in some way
with the innovative world view inculcated
by the psychedelic
experience to:
. preserve the large body of knowledge
and wisdom that came
out of our Psychedelic Revolution against
the possibility
that it will be forgotten over time
. develop an effective strategy for liberating
ourselves from
the frustrating and stagnant situation
we find ourselves in
. get those winds of change a'blowin' once again!
Essential to the strategy for accomplishing
these goals is
one central fact that many of us know
at a gut level but
which don't often verbally acknowledge:
those of us who
believe in the appropriate use of psychedelics
as an
experience, and one we wish to have
or share with others, are
for the most part not wanted or tolerated
in the United
States. In fact, the drug user of the
year 2002 has replaced
the Communist of 1951. Strong top-down
hierarchical political
institutions seem to need some group
to scapegoat so that
people's eyes are diverted from the
real show in front of
them. Prisons are filled with our friends.
It was in the sixties that the laws against
LSD and other
psychedelics were first enacted. Laws
against marijuana had
been on the books for years but LSD
was a much more powerful
experience and played a central role
in creating a large
group with worldviews different from
any that had come before
it.
For some who took it, LSD had such an
impact that they
believed it might provide insights
of a similar magnitude in
anyone who took it. There is the story
told in High Priest by
Timothy Leary of poet Alan Ginsberg's
taking psilocybin (an
extract of the "magic mushroom" synthesized
by LSD discoverer
Albert Hofmann and used in early experiments
at Harvard with
psychedelic compounds). Ginsberg became
convinced that if he
could get John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev
to take LSD, it
would end the Cold War; after not being
able to get the
telephone operators to connect him to
either man, he slowly
returned to the realities of 1962.
In a way, this kind of thinking colored
many of even the most
conservative leaders of the Psychedelic
Revolution. Although
known to believe that LSD should be
kept for the intellectual
elite, even Huxley, in a speech delivered
in Copenhagen,
Denmark, speculated on a "mass experiment"
of social LSD-
taking as a remedy to the disturbing
directions our society
was taking.
However, whether an experiment of mass
LSD use would have
turned out differently if the Vietnam
War had not been part
of the scenario will never be known.
Those opposed to the war
advocated LSD use for everyone as a
"weapon" against the US
government. If LSD had instead been
used as a personal
development tool, the urgency to spread
LSD use might have
been mitigated with the result being
a smoother integration
into society (fewer "freak outs," etc).
But LSD was politicized and its image
with the public deeply
scarred by its association with the
anti-war movement. The
same kind of social transparency that
people felt toward some
of the mundane and even violent games
people play was
magnified when people examined from
an altered consciousness
the terrible costs incurred by the U.S.
intervention in
Vietnam. This in turn made the Establishment,
already
threatened by the challenge to their
traditional values by
LSD, even harsher in their counterattack
on the Psychedelic
Revolution. After all, many of those
in power felt, these
people (the anti-Vietnam policy hippies)
were akin to
traitors.
There was a split back then in the ranks
of the Psychedelic
Revolution between those who were committed
political
activists and those who saw LSD more
as part of an
apolitical spiritual path. There were
the famous Hippies vs.
Yippies debates and efforts to reconcile
them such as the
1967 Human Be-In in San Francisco. Those
not specifically
political in their participation in
the youth culture
imagined that when the war was over
and society has
progressed, LSD and marijuana would
join alcohol as socially
sanctioned drugs, and that some of the
new ways of relating
which they had learned using LSD would
be assimilated into
our society as a whole.
However, as one of those who looked forward
with idealism and
an expectation of rapid change, I don't
think in my wildest
dreams I could have imagined the "War
on Drugs." In the
thirty-three years since I first puffed
a joint, there has
been a trend toward marijuana decriminalization
(it certainly
is by no means accepted). On the other
hand, LSD has been put
in the same category as powerfully addictive
drugs-heroin,
cocaine, and amphetamines, and new drugs
such as MDMA-as a
threat to the health and safety of our
citizens.
As the sixties ended and the seventies
began, when Nixon left
office and Jimmy Carter became president,
there was a sense
that there might be some change in the
attitudes of
government toward drugs. But as soon
as Ronald Reagan took
office, that hope was quickly dashed.
Reagan and his wife
Nancy had always been firmly opposed
to drugs, and Nancy
actively joined the War on Drugs; her
"Just Say No" campaign
was her personal contribution to the
administration.
There were many elements at play here.
Reagan was an old Cold
Warrior and as the threat from Communists
both at home and in
the Soviet Union ended, he felt we needed
a new enemy to turn
our attention to. A new internal enemy
to fight was the drug
dealer and the drug user became that
enemy. While their
rhetoric was targeted toward all the
major drugs we mentioned
above, it is probably no coincidence
that the purity and
price of cocaine and heroin has decreased
by a factor of ten
since the War on Drugs scaled up while
the availability and
purity of LSD and other psychedelics
has plummeted. During
the years when the Grateful Dead scene
threatened to keep the
spirit of the Psychedelic Revolution
alive, the DEA even
started an Operation Deadhead to make
sure that there would
be no resurgence of the "craziness"
of the sixties.
Because of it was used by many more people
than Huxley,
Leary, or Hofmann ever could have imagined
or approved of,
LSD gained a public image as a "crazy-making"
drug, an image
that has been engraved so deeply and
is reinforced by the
media so frequently that it is almost
impossible that it can
be rehabilitated in the public mind
anytime soon.
As the Berlin Wall fell (perhaps partially
the result of the
Psychedelic Revolution and its effects
upon tolerance among
the younger generation), the drug user
has replaced the
Communist as the identified threat to
our society and our
youth. So we must hide away to use our
sacraments, and read
underground magazines, and fight the
propaganda war fueled by
government billions-with their prime
time TV commercials and
school DARE programs -with a few Web
sites and small
circulation newsletters like Island
Views.
The government is waging a war on us.
According to the I
Ching (hexagram 33) sometimes the best
strategy for later
victory is to retreat. It is my belief
that we need to go
elsewhere and establish a place where
a culture can be formed
that allows for the use of psychedelic
compounds as part of
its social contract. So this is a call
to found a psychedelic
sanctuary somewhere in the world-perhaps
somewhere in the
Southern Hemisphere, far from U.S. politics-in
which those of
us in the Psychedelic Revolution can
feel at home and make a
homeland.
Island Foundation and its previous incarnation,
the
Psychedelic Education Center (founded
in 1977), was the
earliest organization aimed at furthering
the cause of the
Psychedelic Revolution. So it is fitting
that Island
Foundation makes the founding of a psychedelic
sanctuary our
primary mission.
In the years since our founding, many
other organizations
have been formed; each with a specific
set of agendas which,
they believe, will help put the Psychedelic
Revolution back
on track. These include MAPS and the
Heftner Foundation which
both hope to get psychedelic research
going again (there were
over 4000 studies with LSD before it
was made illegal in
1966); the Albert Hofmann Foundation
which hopes to build a
psychedelic library; and the Council
for Spiritual Practices
which aims at making a legitimate religion
of the use of LSD
and other "entheogens" as they call
psychedelic compounds.
None of these groups have been particularly
effective in
changing the extremely negative climate
in which psychedelics
continue to find themselves. Yet each
of them would benefit
enormously through the establishment
of a psychedelic
sanctuary somewhere in the world. Such
a sanctuary could have
research parks for both MAPS and the
Heftner Foundation,
permit the Council for Spiritual Practices
to practice their
religion, and allow for the creation
of a library and museum
in the name of the great Swiss biochemist
Albert Hofmann.
Since we put on the "LSD-A Generation
Later" Conference in
1977 and the Future of Consciousness
Conference in 1980,
there have been an increasing number
of annual events in
which members of the Psychedelic Revolution,
many now in
their forties and fifties, assemble
to hear speakers talk
about various aspects of psychedelics
and entheogenic plants.
These conferences also would find our
new sanctuary outfitted
with facilities enabling people such
as Jonathan Ott and Rob
Montgomery to hold meetings with a new
degree of safety.
Looking at the larger picture, organizations
aiming for the
decriminalization of all drugs, including
the powerful Drug
Policy Foundation and the Lindesmith
Center, have attempted
to promote a harm-reduction strategy-popular
in Europe and
much of the rest of the civilized world-here
in the U.S. They
have had some limited success but with
the recent victory of
George W. Bush, I don't think that we
can look for drug
decriminalization as a national strategy
any time soon. There
will be progress but unless something
unforeseen occurs,
these changes will progress at a glacial
speed.
In the early days of the Psychedelic
Revolution, many of the
leaders attempted to found sanctuaries
in other
places-including Mexico and the Caribbean.
They had limited
success, I believe, because they chose
to stick so close to
the United States with its powerful
control mechanisms.
Later, the group leased a large estate
at Millbrook, New
York, and so was born the first of the
efforts to build a
community around visions emanating from
the Psychedelic
Revolution. As the revolution expanded,
these communes and
co-operative experiments proliferated.
Two years after the founding of Millbrook,
the residents
found themselves under siege by G. Gordon
Liddy. Later in
that decade, most of the rest of the
hundreds of efforts at
building a representative psychedelic
culture dissolved due
either to their own internal problems
or negative forces
aimed at them from the larger community.
Several books,
including The Modern Utopian (edited
by Richard Fairfield),
describe many of these fascinating,
diverse efforts at
creating something new right here in
the good old USA.
A few of these efforts remain, most noteworthy
the Farm in
Tennessee, but also a handful of others.
There is also an
organization dedicated to intentional
communities that
publishes an annual guide to literally
hundreds of communal
efforts. What is different, however,
is that psychedelics are
rarely a part of this new generation
of experimental
communities. Even the Farm-famous for
its excellent weed-has
an official rule against smoking marijuana.
We will discuss
more about the quest for a utopian community
in part two of
this essay.
The desire for new vistas for the "heads"
of our time became
in the 1970s even- shall we say-"further
out." At various
times Tim Leary advocated building a
starship to carry the
hippie masses to a new star and even
had the Jefferson
Airplane-turned Jefferson Starship-singing
the anthem. Later,
after his release from jail, Leary decided
that putting the
heads in high orbiting space habitats
might be a more
immediate possibility. As we can see
by the state of our
current space efforts, he was perhaps
forty or more year
ahead of his time. The feeble attempts
at a space station in
the year 2000 hardly look like fit housing
for psychedelic
refugees.
Along with the strong bonds of group
identity that the
psychedelic community felt in the sixties,
there was a strain
of thought that perhaps the only way
to live the way we want
was to go somewhere else. In the sixties,
Crosby Stills, and
Nash made famous the song "Wooden Ships"
which suggests we
set sail and find a "distant" land.
"We are leaving; you
don't need us" was their refrain. Indeed,
we still aren't
wanted and that distant land still beckons.
The mutant genes
that carried our forefathers from England
need new soil.
We who were the youth generation that
comprised the
Psychedelic Revolution are now middle-aged.
We are an
important segment of the huge Baby Boom
generation- the
population explosion that followed World
War II. We went to
Woodstock, we dropped in and had careers,
and many raised
families. Many have not forgotten their
idealistic past, and
our income supports many projects which
we all hope in some
way may improve the "psychedelic situation."
I propose in this manifesto for a sanctuary,
that Island
Foundation set up a separate account
to raise capital to
purchase the land and build the facilities
for a psychedelic
sanctuary. Before the account is set
up, there would be a
committee formed to look into two important
issues:
. The legalities of such a sanctuary
with regard to
international law. The United Nations
and its related World
Health Organization attempt to enforce
drug laws
internationally. Considerations such
as this must be taken
into account as they relate to the feasibility
of the project
as well as to the decisions regarding
the acquisition of the
sanctuary.
. The availability of an island or island
property with the
proper requirements for the creation
of the psychedelic
sanctuary must be investigated. A German
broker, Dr. Farhad
Vladi, has sold over 700 islands over
the past ten years and
there are currently 3000 on the market.
Once these two items have been clearly
understood, the
committee would project a budget, and
a separate "lock-box"
account administered by two Island members
would be formed,
in which all tax-free donations would
be kept and not used
for any purpose until a fixed amount
of money was raised. The
committee would determine the amount
needed to fund the
project used for any purpose and no
money would be withdrawn
until the committee determined there
would be sufficient
funds to purchase the land and build
the facilities for the
island. Of course, all contributions
would be tax-deductible
and could be placed in an interest-bearing
account, which
would leverage our contributions.
A study committee would be formed to
decide the exact
requirements for being allowed to go
to the island, and also
to define some of the parameters-economic,
political, social,
and ethical - by which the island's
psychedelic sanctuary
should function. In fact, there might
be two portions of the
island, a welcoming area that would
be the place where
outsiders would first visit, and one
or more experimental
community areas where the actual Huxley
experiment, detailed
in his novel Island, would take place.
"A map of the world that does not include
Utopia is not worth
even glancing at, for it leaves out
the one country at which
Humanity is always landing. And when
Humanity lands there, it
looks out, and seeing a better country,
sets sail. Progress
is the realization of Utopias.
- Oscar Wilde
1 According to
http://www.airplane.freeserve.co.uk/lyrics.htm,
this song was
written by (David Crosby/Stephen Stills/Paul
Kantner)
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
SOME THINGS YOU CAN DO TO HELP ISLAND
FOUNDATION
Although Island Foundation is a Federally
Chartered Non-
Profit Educational organization, it
is difficult to raise
grants or public funds and so we rely
mainly on private
donations, memberships and sales on
our Island Marketplace to
sustain our projects. After September
11, we experienced as
did many other non-profits, a drop-off
in our funding from
these sources. You may have notice
our web site went down
for a week due to lack of funds to pay
our web host.So if you
want to see our project realized, here
are some of the ways
you can turn our psychedelic vision
into a global reality...
1. Join Island Foundation -- We have
several levels of
membership. Information on joining can
be found here:
http://www.island.org/member.html
2. Donate! Island Foundation relies on
financial support from
private individuals to continue its
work as a communication
hub for the psychedelic community. Island
Foundation is a
Island is a 501 (c) 3 organization and
all donations are tax-
deductible. Information on donating
can be found here:
http://www.island.org/member.html
3. Volunteer! Island Web is in need of
individuals with web
experience. Currently, we have no individuals
to help put up
additional content which can be done
by anyone who has web
access anywhere in the world -- who
has the time to do some
volunteer work that might prove to be
fun. Our links database
needs updates (I have a collection of
about 200 links to
review. We have a lot of content to
put up and so if you are
oriented in this direction, here is
your is a chance for make
a big difference on our website and
in the world as you work
on one of the pioneer web sites on the
Internet. Also,
someone who can coordinate development
on the site (i.e. work
with programmers, content providers,
etc) would be of amazing
benefit. Send email to mailto:[email protected]
if interested.
I am also looking for volunteers in the
Santa Cruz and
greater South Bay area to work donate
an hour or more of work
to help me get things organized at Island
headquarters.
Currently, I've been doing it all by
myself since our long-
time administrative secretary Cathy
Weiss moved to Maine. I
actually ship products ordered from
the marketplace -- which
is why you don't see more content coming
from Island. I need
your help! Call (831) 427-1942
+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+--+
Island Foundation 849 Almar Ave. Suite
C-125 Santa Cruz, CA
95060 Phone: (831) 427-1942 Fax: (831)
426-8519. World Wide
Web http://www.island.org E-Mail [email protected]
-. . .--
=========================================================================================
Society for the Anthropology of
Consciousness
[from John Baker]
Subject :
Society for the Anthropology of Consciousness - Spring Meeting Program
Date :
Sun, 24 Mar 2002 18:04:30 -0800
Attachment :
emailprogram.rtf (201k)
Hi there!
After a lot of to and fro, and much cogitation, deliberation,
solicitation, and a tiny bit of discombobulation, the program
for the SAC
spring meeting is now available and has sped right into your
email box in
the form of an attachment to this message. Don't worry
if it's not
formatted completely right - you'll have to come to the conference
to see
the printed version in all of its magnificance! So if you
have not yet
decided whether you are going to attend, here's what you might
miss. And
if you have already decided that you will attend, here's what
you will be
able to expose your neurons to. And if you never even heard
that therehanks to Richard H for this item.
article:
"Neural correlates of conscious self-regulation of emotion," Mario
Beauregard, Johanne Lévesque, and Pierre Bourgouin, Journal
of Neuroscience,
Vol 21, 2001, 1-6. Address: Mario Beauregard, Centre de Recherche,
Institut
Universitaire de Gériatrie Montréal, 4565 Queen
Mary Road, Montreal, Quebec,
Canada H3W 1W5, [email protected].
http://www.crime-times.org/02a/w02ap2.htm
Reply
was going to be a meeting, where have you been???
=========================================================================================
Stairways to Heaven:
Drugs in Ameriican
Religious History. Boulder, CO: Westview Press.
ISBN: 0-8133-6612-7
Description: Hardcover, first edition. x + 237 pages.
Contents: Preface, 6 chapters, chapter notes, bibliography, index.
Excerpt(s):
Preface
The subject matter in this book is one of the most fascinating
in all of religious history. It is also one of
the most controversial. The fact that even a tiny amount of LSD
or mescaline can trigger mystical
rapture raises challenging questions. What, after all, is an
"authentic" religious experience? Is it
possible that religious experiences are nothing more than aberrations
in our brain chemistry? Or is it
possible that the Kingdom of God is truly within us, but awaiting
release through whatever means we
can discover? Given the widespread cultural support for our government's
"war on drugs," how far
can we go in tolerating drug use under the banner of religious
freedom? And, legal issues aside, how
can we go about assessing what may or may not be the legitimate
role of mood-altering substances in
the development of mature spirituality? These are all issues
that have a great deal of scholarly
importance. They are also issues that have a great deal of relevance
to the person and public
controversies that continue to be debated in our families, legislatures,
and courts. For this reason I
have tried to write a readable introduction to the topic that
academic specialists will find of interest,
but that nonspecialists will find enjoyable as well. (pages vii
- viii).
Chapter 1. From the Plant Kingdom to the Kingdom of God.
The story of North Americans' pursuit of ecstasy is by no means
limited to the quest for simple
intoxication. It is also very much a story about the different
ways in which American culture has
transformed plants and chemicals into entheogens. An entheogen
(literally, to generate god or spirit
within) is a botanical or chemical substance taken to occasion
spiritual or mystical experience. A
peculiar property of some plants is the ability to foster an
experience of having momentarily
transcended our normal range of mental and emotional powers.
Given the proper context, certain
drugs have been understood to afford humans with a direct experience
of a "higher" spiritual reality.
In such contexts plants are more than just exhilarating. They
also appear to disclose enlightenment;
they momentarily narrow the gap between humans and the spiritual
powers that are thought to
animate our universe. In this sense, the use of drugs is often
more about the quest for ecstasy than the
quest for intoxication. Ecstasy, after all, means "to stand out
or go beyond" one's normal state of
being. Certain species of drugs have been valued by humans precisely
for their ability to afford this
sensation of stepping outside the confines of our physical senses.
The quest for ecstasy is thus the
quest to penetrate mystery, to make momentary contact with the
divine kingdoms thought to
surround us. And for this reason, the Americans' interest in
ecstasy-producing plants is very much a
chapter in their continued quest for spiritual understanding.
(page 2)
Peyote, coffee, and marijuana have also been consumed in ritual
contexts that help socialize
Americans into a set of beliefs and values that constitute a
sacred world. The use of peyote on
Native American reservations forged communal solidarity over
and against the more dominant white
culture, while simultaneously affirming a religio-cultural vision
that combined native traditions with
Christian precepts. The sharing of marijuana by members of the
'60s and '70s counterculture not only
enabled persons to experience alternate realities, but also to
bond with fellow spiritual seekers.
Coffeehouses provided both physiological exhilaration and important
modes of social bonding that
have factored significantly in the transmission of various strains
of "alternative spirituality" in recent
decades. The point here is that drugs are not only associated
with the sacred world of private
religious experience. When consumed in particular settings, they
are also avenues of communal
bonding and communal affirmation. Throughout the course of American
religious history, drugs of
various kinds have repeatedly factored in the process whereby
individuals are inducted into the
sacred world of a living religious community. (pages 10 - 11)
Perceiving God in the Natural Order
The following chapters examine the historical record of the role
that drugs have played both in
fostering personal religious experience and in helping to create
solidarity among members of religious
communities. It is important, however, that we remind ourselves
that a great deal of religion in the
United States exists outside of churches, temples, and synagogues.
And while some drugs have
functioned in the two sacred worlds associated with America's
"churched" religions, others have
functioned in the service of what might be called "unchurched"
religion.
This is particularly true in connection with what religious historians
term "nature religion." Nature
religion has been a persistent theme in American religious history.
It is a form of spirituality that in
independent of the doctrines or rituals of institutional religion.
Nature religion doesn't define
spirituality in terms of church attendance or adherence to any
specific creed. Nor does it possess a
sacred scripture or claim to have been granted absolute knowledge
in the form of revealed truths.
Instead, nature religion looks to human experience for intuitive
knowledge of God. It is based upon
the conviction that God is always and everywhere available to
humans, if we but learn to become
receptive to the subtle presence of divine spirit in and through
the natural order. Whereas the biblical
religion of America's churches stresses the transcendence of
God, nature religion is based upon
experiences of God's immanence. And, importantly, whereas biblical
religion teaches that there is a
gulf or chasm separating humans from God, nature religion is
a form of spirituality that sees the
"natural" and "supernatural" as intimately connected orders of
life.
The term nature religion is applicable whenever a form of spirituality
is based upon the belief that
"contact" with God can be initiated within nature. What distinguishes
nature religion from the revealed
religions of Judaism and Christianity, then, is this conviction
that every human being can awaken to
the presence of a divine power. Religious orthodoxy in both Judaism
and Christianity teaches that
any contact between the human and divine realms must be initiated
by God (or perhaps by God's
angelic messengers). … Mystical experiences imply that these
individuals - on their own - have
learned to initiate "contact" with the divine. This helps to
explain why religious institutions often
develop negative attitudes toward ecstasy-producing drugs (even
when drug-induced mystical states
were prevalent in the early development of this religion). Prohibitions
against drugs are, as
anthropologist Mary Douglas has demonstrated, frequently motivated
by the desire to prevent
individuals from having direct access to the divine. Conversely,
advocacy of drug use to obtain
religious experiences is often an expression of commitment to
some version of nature - rather than
churched or biblical - religion.
(pages 12 - 13)
Importantly, however, nature religion has an inherent tendency
to quest for more ecstatic forms of
mystical experience. Nature religion implies that every human
being has the potential to experience a
vivid connection with the divine spirit that flows through all
things. Thus, when the nineteenth-century
philosopher and mystic Ralph Waldo Emerson went alone into nature,
he was moved to the mystical
realization that the individual human mind can open itself to
the influence of a divine power. Emerson
wrote that in such moments, "all mean egotism vanishes, I become
a transparent eyeball; I am
nothing; I see all; the currents of Universal Being circulate
through me; I am part or parcel of God."
With these words Emerson voiced what might be called the ecstatic
form of nature religion.
Emerson was claiming that there are particular states of consciousness
that create a connection
between the divine and human realms. When "mean egotism" or the
normal mind-set of everyday life
is temporarily set aside, we make ourselves receptive to a range
of sensations that are ordinarily
excluded from awareness. Such nonegoistic states of consciousness
enable us to become receptive
to what Emerson described as "an influx of Divine Mind into our
mind." Mystical ecstasy is thus an
imminent possibility of experience. The path to achieving full
communion with God is one that leads
right through our own minds. (pages 14 - 15)
Those who yearn for a closer harmony with nature's sacred depths
are attentive to those conditions
that permit us easier access to the "recesses of consciousness."
And this, of course, is precisely why
certain drugs have been a continuous part of American religious
history. Tobacco, datura, peyote,
LSD, marijuana, wine, and coffee have all been seen as vehicles
to direct, personal mystical
experience. These elixirs of ecstasy are believed to open up
a range of sensations ordinarily relegated
to the margins of awareness. And, in so doing, they give persons
a communion with nature and a
divine reality that is beyond the mind's ordinary reach. (page
15)
… The history of religion in America is at least in part the
story of how persons have sought
pathways that might lead from the kingdom of nature to the Kingdom
of God. And thus this study of
Americans' attraction to various elixirs of ecstasy provides
important clues about our enduring search
for stairways to the heaven of mystical experience. (page 16)
Chapter 2. The Native American Heritage
Drugs were also occasionally employed in Native American vision
quests. It should be emphasized,
however, that many tribes made little or no use of psychoactive
botanical substances to induce
visions. Indeed, a great deal of North American religion was
not particularly ecstatic. Yet, as we shall
examine more fully in the following sections, the historical
record indicates that some Native
Americans have employed dozens of botanical materials in their
quests to make contact with the
spirit world. The important point here is that the Native American
belief in the supernatural world and
supernatural power bestowed great importance upon vision-like
states of consciousness in which an
individual might experience a particularly close connection with
these powers. To this extent, then,
Native American cultures created a religious complex that gave
sacred meaning to botanical
substances capable of assisting individuals in their quest for
visionary contact with the spirit world.
(pages 22 - 23)
One way of illustrating the cultural differences between Old
World and New World attitudes toward
ecstatic states of consciousness is by examining the numerous
accounts of Native American culture
written by Catholic priests. When Catholic priests, the "official
emissaries" of Old World culture, first
encountered psychoactive drugs in the Americas, they were certain
that they were observing the
work of the devil. Their descriptions of drug use in the New
World were far more concerned with
theological denunciation than empathic understanding. One reason
for this is that by the time of
Christopher Columbus, European religious life was highly bureaucratized.
This brought attainment of
exceptional states of mind under the regulation of the Christian
church. Ecstatic states were thought
to be restricted only to those under the careful control of the
Church, such as those individuals who
inhabited monasteries. (page 26)
Psychoactive mushrooms have also been a part of the Native American
narcotic complex. The fly
agaric mushroom (Amanita muscaria), for example, was undoubtedly
used by the Maya of highland
Guatemala. They called this mushroom "the lightening mushroom"
and related it [to] one of the Gods,
Rajaw Kakulja or Lord of Lightening. Richard Schultes and Albert
Hofmann noted that this same
mushroom was ritually used in Asia for centuries. Evidence suggests
that use of this mushroom
subsequently traveled across the Bering Strait into North America.
Schultes and Hofmann reported
that indications of the hallucinogenic use of the fly agaric
mushroom "have been discovered among
the Dogrib Athabascan people, who live on the Mackenzie Mountain
range in northwestern Canada.
Among this tribe, the fly agaric mushroom was used as a sacrament
in shamanism, bringing with it
experiences of dismemberment, death-rebirth, and meeting with
a tutelary spirit. Schultes and
Hofmann also point out that the religious use of this mushroom
as a sacred hallucinogen was
discovered in an ancient annual ceremony practiced by the Ojibway
Indians who live on the shores
of Lake Michigan. The fly agaric mushroom is indigenous to the
upper Midwest and could well have
been used in any number of religious and medical ceremonies.
Unfortunately, because we have so
very few records of North American Indian culture, we know very
little about the uses of mushrooms
in most tribal societies. (pages 30 - 31)
Perhaps the most intriguing feature of peyotism is its overt
emphasis upon preaching and moral
instruction. Moral lectures are commonplace. Participants admonish
one another to forego vices,
particularly in regard to abstaining from alcoholic beverages.
This preaching element of the peyote
ritual escalated with the continued incorporation of Christian
elements into the ceremony. Nowhere is
the impress of white Christian culture more conspicuous than
in the gradual "Christianization" of
peyotism. Even as early as the 1890's, the Bible was being introduced
to the liturgical format of the
peyote "singing." Prayers once made to the Indian spirits were
being redirected to the Christian god.
Although traditional elements were continued, their symbolism
changed drastically: The fire in the
peyote tipi became associated with Christ's alleged midnight
birth; the roadman's gestures to the four
directions became a way of announcing the birth of Christ to
all the world; and the meal eaten in the
early morning became a sacrament for all those who are saved
in Christ.
In the Christianized version of the peyote ceremony, the roadman
reads from the Bible and calls
upon the participants to confess their sins and repent. Participants
respond to the roadman's
exhortations by proclaiming their intentions to give up sinning
habits and testifying that "All this Jesus
has done for me." Christian hymns have come to dominate most
peyote ceremonies. Peyote songs
express traditional evangelical themes such as "Saviour Jesus
is the only Saviour," "I know Jesus
now," and "You must be born again." In essence, the Christianized
peyote rituals synthesized the
religious heritages of the Native Americans and Europeans. Peyote
thereby fostered the belief that
the Great Spirit and the God of Christianity are one and the
same. This Great Spirit created the
universe and controls the destiny of every person and all events.
The Great Spirit put some of his
supernatural power into peyote, which when consumed under proper
ritual conditions, can have the
same redemptive or sacramental power that other Christians avail
themselves of when consuming
bread and wine. (page 44)
In sum, peyotism has performed a variety of important cultural
functions in the late nineteenth and
early twentieth centuries. Viewed from almost any perspective,
peyote rites have been a vehicle for
religious and cultural renewal during a bleak period of Native
American history. The rites enable
individuals to reorganize their personalities in ways that are
both personally and communally healthy.
Peyotism validates Indian tradition by fostering individual religious
experiences that are directly linked
with inherited religious patterns. It does so, furthermore, by
heightening the sense of social solidarity
along participants. American Indians north of the Rio Grande,
then, are therefore no less likely than
the Mexican Huichol to find that peyote use "evokes the
timeless, private, purposeless, aesthetic
dimension of the spiritual life, mediating between former and
present realities and providing a sense of
being one people, despite dramatic changes in their recent history.
(pages 47 - 48)
… The readers of Castenada's books were participating in a spiritual
awakening rooted in an
American religious tradition that has included such visionaries
as Ralph Waldo Emerson, Walter
Whitman, and William James. It was this heritage of American
aesthetic spirituality, not the heritage
of North American Indians, that influenced how American reading
audiences responded to
Castenada's writings. And it is to this heritage that we will
now turn. (page 49)
Chapter 3. Psychedelics and Metaphysical Illumination
Concern over addiction led to steady efforts to curb the medicinal
use of opiate-containing
medicines. By the turn of the century there was a noticeable
decline in the pool of medical addicts,
accompanied by federal legislation such as the Harrison Act of
1914 that both forced physicians to
maintain careful records of their prescriptions and paved the
way for the legal prosecution of those
who prescribed narcotics that perpetuated addiction. The unintended
consequence of legislation such
as the Harrison Act was to make drug addiction a criminal rather
than medical issue, hastening its
association with the urban "underworld." As the legal supply
of narcotics dried up, addicts (some of
whom first learned about opium, as well as morphine and heroin
into which it can be transformed,
from the opium dens of Chinese immigrants on the West Coast)
were forced to turn to the
burgeoning black market. And since the black-market prices were
considerably higher, many turned
to various forms of urban crime and vice to support their habit.
Thus, by the early twentieth century,
a new profile of drug user had emerged. As Jill Jonnes chronicled,
"the portrait of the new American
addict that was emerging was of a young man adrift, someone without
solid roots or any particular
vision of his future." For persons already adrift in the world,
drugs provided a distinctive identity,
replete with a ready-made community, lifestyle, and vocabulary.
In short, in the absence of any
religious context, secular forces helped create a burgeoning
"drug culture" in the United States that
exacerbated rather than healed the ruptures arising in twentieth-
century American society. (page 53)
A Nitrous-Oxide Awakening
This "metaphysical illumination" was to become a signal event
in James's personal and professional
life. For one thing, nitrous oxide had enabled James to view
religion from the "inside." From that
moment forward he was able to appreciate the mystical experience
from the mystic's own standpoint.
Perhaps more importantly, however, nitrous oxide provided James
with an experiential context for
his emerging interest in the philosophical concepts he called
"pluralism" and "radical empiricism." By
pluralism James meant that there are always alternative points
of view and that no one point of view
is inherently privileged over others. This was more than a simple
statement of philosophical tolerance.
Pluralism was instead a full-fledged commitment to the possibility
that there is no single, absolute
truth. In this sense James was moving beyond the vision of modern
science to what is often called the
"postmodern" view that focuses on how humans construct their
various interpretations of reality.
James's radical empiricism was also connected with the metaphysical
illumination afforded by his
experiment with nitrous oxide. James was convinced that experiences
such as his and Blood's
deserved to be considered authentic perceptions of reality. He
reasoned that what the natural
sciences ordinarily mean by empiricism is not fully empirical
at all; instead, the natural sciences
typically restrict their understanding of experience to the normal
waking state of consciousness. A
radical empiricism would thus pay attention to the full range
of human experience, including the kinds
of mystical and religious experiences that occur at the margins
of waking consciousness.
The developed fruits of James's metaphysical illumination can
be seen in his epochal The Varieties of
Religious Experience. First published in 1902, the Varieties
argues that personal, mystical experience
is the core of authentic religion. All of the various creeds
and rituals associated with the world's
organized religions are, in James's view, but secondhand translations
of the original experiences from
which they arose. James was thus contending that authentic spirituality
can be traced back to
experiences that provide individuals with the felt conviction
(1) that the visible world is part of a more
spiritual universe from which it draws its chief significance
and (2) that union or harmonious relation
with that higher universe is our true end. Importantly, James's
understanding of the authentic core of
religion was at least partially anchored in his own earlier experiment
with nitrous oxide: … (page 55)
It appears, then, that were was a slumbering potential for drug
use among middle-class Americans to
become associated with religious concerns. By the 1960s there
would be a sufficient core of
middle-class Americans who would become culturally and spiritually
restless. They would be
especially receptive to newly emerging religious prophets who
would introduce them to the
psychedelic stairways they might ascend in search of exciting
metaphysical illuminations. (page 57)
Huxley did not consider psychedelic experience to be the ultimate
purpose of life. He compared
mescaline-induced experience to what Catholic theologians call
"a gratuitous grace." It shakes us out
of the ruts of ordinary perception and allows us to see life
as it is apprehended by Mind at Large.
And although Huxley did not offer a full theological discourse
on the ontological and metaphysical
significance of Mind at Large, he did give some broad hints.
First, it was clear to him that institutional
Christianity had little of importance to say about the Light
that radiates through Being. True, certain
Christian mystics had slipped past the doors of ordinary perception
and gained insight. But by
embracing the doctrine of the Fall, Christianity long ago adopted
a deprecatory attitude toward
nature that jams the doors of perception shut. Christianity,
by proclaiming that the Absolute was
incarnate only in Christ, makes it difficult to see that the
Absolute is actually incarnated in the whole
of Being. (page 60)
As Ellwood aptly put it, the 1960s witnessed a dramatic cultural
shift away from modernism to
postmodernism. And the psychedelic movement was both a contributing
cause and a symptomatic
effect of this cultural shift.
What Ellwood refers to as modernism was the intellectual and
cultural expression of rationalistic
science. Intellectually, modernism affirms the existence of single,
universal truths that can be
discerned through disciplined rational inquiry. Psychologically,
modernism posits the unity of the self,
asserting the existence of a true or essential self lurking behind
the various identities that society
imposes on us. And culturally, modernism assumes the inevitability
of material progress. In contrast,
postmodernism embraces relativism and what physicists call the
uncertainty principle. Although
postmodernism means different things to different people, it
is commonly understood as a
philosophical outlook that distrusts the subject-object dichotomy
of conventional rationality. It is
skeptical of universal, general truths and finds value instead
in multiple perspectives and
conversations. And if modernism emphasizes the "distance senses,"
such as viewing, reading, or
hearing, postmodernism embraces the "proximity senses" of touching,
tasting, or - in the words of the
sixties - just happening. Postmodernism sees the self as plural,
capable of being many identities
without any conflict or necessary incompatibility.
The use of psychedelics turned the logic behind modernism upside
down. The point here is not that
psychedelics were alone responsible for the major ideological
reorientations of the sixties and early
seventies. Many arrived at new philosophical outlooks without
ever using mind-altering substances;
and many who did use psychedelics never changed their fundamental
way of viewing life. But the use
of psychedelics, in conjunction with exposure to the philosophical
themes of the era's youth culture,
provided tens - maybe hundreds - of thousands of Americans with
an experiential template for
arriving at a new spiritual outlook that might be characterized
by such words as pluralism,
postmodernism, and religious eclecticism.
Psychedelic experiences were thought to have exploded the pretensions
of rationalistic science to
understand the totality of existence. As James would have put
it, they proved that normal rational
consciousness is but one special type of consciousness. (pages
77 - 78)
Most persons connected with the hippie movement never really
elevated drugs to the point where
they were themselves the object of religion. Instead, drugs were
heralded as catalysts or "skillful
means" for obtaining religious experience. Psychedelics were
said to be vehicles to spiritual
authenticity, not authenticity in and of themselves. But one
thing was for sure. As vehicles,
psychedelic were traveling in a direction opposite of the churches
in which the hippie generation had
been raised.
The mostly white, middle-class youth who were attracted to the
counterculture came from fairly staid
religious backgrounds. (pages 81 - 82)
Ecstasy and Spiritual Awakening
By the early 1960s it became abundantly clear that a significant
ideological revolution was beginning
to take shape in American religious and cultural life. Literally
millions felt they were searching for
something more than they were finding in the established churches.
Their intellectual curiosity made it
difficult to settle for a one-size-fits-all form of mainline
religion. Many also hungered for the spiritual
excitement that comes from personal religious experience. This
spiritual restlessness gave rise to what
historian William McLoughlin termed the "fourth great awakening"
in American religious life. By
"awakening" McLoughlin means a significant moment in a nation's
religious life in which a great many
people undergo an alteration and revitalization in their religious
thoughts or feelings. …
Unlike previous awakenings of American spirituality, however,
the awakening that began in the early
1960s occurred largely among those opting for an unchurched or
alternative form of spirituality.
Robert Ellwood has suggested that the major themes of this reorientation
were (1) a shift from
mainline to nonconformist religion, (2) a rediscovery of natural
rather than revealed religion, (3) a
new appreciation for Eastern religious thought, and (4) a new
Romanticism that accords spiritual
importance to certain nonrational modes of thought and
perception. In general, this represented a gift
from seeking God in the church to seeking God in the depths of
nature (including the depths of our
own psychological nature). The spiritual awakening of the sixties
was committed to the belief that the
sacred is already implanted in the human heart and the natural
world. The essence of personal
spirituality, in this view, is to seek out new avenues for discovering
the point of connection with this
immanent divinity. American authors such as Emerson, Whitman,
and James surely provided clues.
So, too, did the mystical writings of Hinduism and Buddhism.
And not to be overlooked were the
kinds of metaphysical illumination made possible with the help
of mind-manifesting drugs.
Psychedelics were, without doubt, one of most important factors
the spread of spiritual change in the
1960s and early 1970s. (pages 84 - 85)
For thousands of Americans, then, psychedelics and interest in
Eastern religious practices went hand
in hand. The statistics are staggering. A recent poll of over
1,300 Americans engaged in Buddhist
practice showed that 83 percent had taken psychedelics. Some,
of course, had eventually decided
that the two were incompatible. But 59 percent responded that
psychedelics and Buddhism do mix,
and 71 percent believed that psychedelics can provide a glimpse
of the reality to which Buddhist
practice points. Ram Dass, a.k.a. Richard Alpert, was interviewed
in this issue and admitted that he
still took drugs as a supplement to his other spiritual practices.
He offered that "from my point of
view, Buddhism is the closest to the psychedelic experience,
at least in terms of LSD. LSD catapults
you beyond conceptual structures. It extricates you. It overrides
your habit of identifying with thought
and puts you in a nonconceptual mode very fast."
Drug-induced states of consciousness appealed to many Baby Boomers
who yearned for an
experientially based spirituality. As one researcher put it,
psychedelics serve "as a kind of phase
through which we pass when we're trying to become more truly
who we are, more authentic, and
more genuine."(pages 86 - 87)
Even those pursuing a scholarly approach to understanding religion
were forced to consider the
possibility that drugs constituted a legitimate and genuine path
to metaphysical illumination. The highly
respected scholar Huston Smith, for example, argued that psychedelics
provide an "empirical
metaphysics." Smith argued that the extensive data collected
by Leary, Masters and Houston, and
Grof provided impressive evidence in favor of a worldview that
proclaims humanity's inner
connection to a wider spiritual universe. In this way Smith,
Watts, Leary, and others whose writings
often found their way into college courses helped create a bridge
linking academe, the use of
psychedelics, and the counterculture's advocacy of such
themes as individuality, nonrational modes
of thinking, multi-sensory experiences, and the inner divinity
of every person.
One example of the connection between the use of psychedelics
and the larger awakening occurring
within American religious life was the way in which psychedelic
experiences helped put new
understandings of God into popular circulation. Psychedelic literature
hastened the period's trend
away from identifying God solely in biblical terms and instead
defining God in more monistic and
even, pantheistic ways. For instance, Alan Watts claimed that
psychologists were "studying peculiar
states of consciousness in which the individual discovers himself
to be one continuous process with
God, with the universe, with the Ground of Being, or whatever
name he may use by cultural
conditioning or personal preference for the ultimate reality."
Huston Smith, meanwhile, claimed that
LSD research substantiated a very different view of God than
is found in the Bible. As he put it, "the
God who is almost invariably encountered [while under the influence
of psychedelics] is so removed
from anthropomorphism as to elicit, often, the pronoun 'it.'"
A theological student writing in the
mid-1960s witnessed that under the influence of LSD he, as an
individual, "ceased to exist, becoming
immersed in the ground of Being, in Brahman, in God, in 'nothingness,'
in Ultimate Reality." The
religious experiences connected with the use of psychedelics
were thus powerful testimony to the
era's yearning for a religious vocabulary grounded in our own
personal existence and experience.
And, again, even many who never used psychedelics were confirmed
by these accounts in the
legitimacy of their growing interest in new and unchurched forms
of spirituality.
All in all, then, psychedelics led a good many Americans down
the road toward a more Romantic,
postmodern, and unchurched form of spiritual thinking. Even among
those who didn't use them,
psychedelics were a symbol of the metaphysical illumination available
to all who venture past the
narrow confines of consensus religion. They demonstrated in the
most vivid of ways that normal
waking consciousness is but one special type of consciousness,
parted by the filmiest of screens from
unsuspected other worlds of Being. Psychedelics opened the doors
separating these otherwise
discrete worlds of consciousness, allowing passage back and forth.
The ecstatic adventure was
nothing short of a metaphysical illumination. And that illumination
provided the key symbols and
metaphors for a great deal of the unchurched spirituality that
has flourished in the late twentieth
century. (pages 88 - 89)
Chapter 4. Wine and the Varieties of American Religious Life
Wine and Affiliation with Mainstream Denominations
The early history of wine and religion in the United States is
not in the scope of this chapter.
However, I might note that the Puritan settlers of New England
utilized alcohol for religious and
recreational purposes. As Emil Oberhozer observed in his study
of Puritan Congregationalism in
early Massachusetts, "the Puritan who shuddered at the very sight
(or thought) of a glass of beer or
wine, not to mention hard liquor, did not live in colonial Massachusetts.
"Grape Juice Protestants"
became a phenomenon only in the nineteenth century, (pages 95
- 96)
Wine and the Dynamics of Religious Affiliation
… There are, in fact, at least three different ways in which
the use of wine has helped contribute to
the innovation and diversity that characterizes American religious
history. First, wine's inherent
capacity to foster what Donald Horton calls experiences of "social
jollification" has clearly
contributed to the communal affirmation that is basic to all
religious communities. We saw this, for
example, in how Judaism connects various personal and family
moments with a transcendent
standard of meaning by hallowing life with the presence of wine.
This was even more pronounced in
the Amana colonies and in the early years of the Latter-day Saints
when the day-to-day survival of
these countervailing religious communities depended upon their
sense of social solidarity. In the
words of Joseph Smith, the Mormons' "hearts were made glad" by
partaking of the earth's bounty
and "joy filled every bosom." …
Second, the mental changes induced by wine drinking favor the
kind of "variation in ideas" that is
often necessary to embolden individuals to strike out in theological
directions that veer from the
established churches. The enjoyment of wine while being engaged
in lively discussions of religion and
philosophy was important to affiliation with both the Amana and
Latter-day Saint communal
societies. …
Third, and finally, wine promotes the formation of religious
groups by providing individuals with a
sense of emotional expansiveness. Recent study suggests that
Jesus' ministry promoted just such
emotional expansiveness through the commensal sharing of food
and wine. This, in turn, became part
of Christian worship, just as Judaism and other Mediterranean
religions had long recognized wine's
symbolic association with spiritual ecstasy. Alcoholic beverages
help create the sensation that we
have momentarily transcended our ordinary mental and emotional
powers. Whether pronounced or
mild, the ecstasy occasioned by wine thus reinforces the conviction
that one has suddenly been
granted superior intellect and enhanced spiritual well-being.
This enthusiasm tends to lessen the
inhibitions that might otherwise counter any inclination to go
against prevailing community opinion and
embrace a novel religious path. The Mormons, for example, passed
around cake and wine until it
"was the season to speak in tongues." (pages 120 - 121)
Chapter 5. Drugs, Aesthetics, and Unchurched Spirituality.
… Unchurched American religion also has a rich history. One fascinating
chapter in this history is the
connection between drugs and the emergence of many of the most
innovative forms of American
spirituality. Estimates of the percentage of the American
populace that has no affiliation with a church
vary a great deal. One of the most thorough studies of religious
affiliation throughout American
history concludes that about 38 percent of the American population
is currently unchurched. The size
of America's unchurched population is itself not very surprising.
But what is surprising about
unchurched Americans is that they are for the most part just
as likely to be personally religious as
those who have formal church affiliation. That is, unchurched
Americans are just as likely as their
churched counterparts to claim belief in God and to espouse religiously
based values. The main
difference between the two groups appears to be that unchurched
Americans lack confidence in
traditional religious institutions' ability to meet their personal
spiritual) needs. (page 123)
… Popular psychologies, self-help paperback books, meditation
seminars, New Age organizations,
theories about near-death or out-of-body experiences, and the
study of world religions have all
emerged to supplement Americans' understandings of how they might
find harmony with the
"highest" power of the universe. Indeed, perhaps the most
fascinating chapter in recent American
history is the progressive growth of unchurched forms of spirituality.
Historian Robert Ellwood has
noted that the very social and intellectual forces that have
weakened Americans' loyalty to religious
institutions have simultaneously enabled spirituality "to exist
principally, possibly even to prosper
unprecedentedly, within subjectivity and in small groups."? Unfortunately,
however, few historians
other than Ellwood have paid attention to the various ways in
which drugs have enhanced the kinds
of subjectivity and small-group camaraderie that foster the growth
of unchurched spirituality.
Coffee, marijuana, and wine serve as ready examples of how certain
patterns of drug use have
enabled spirituality to exist, indeed flourish, within subjectivity
and in small groups. The principal
reason is undoubtedly the fact that these particular drugs are
frequently used in ways that open up an
aesthetic or non rational way of perceiving the universe. (page
125)
Marijuana and the Celebration of Interiority
The 1950s spiritual underground focused new attention on subjectivity.
In contrast to mainstream
religion's concern with public creeds and outer ritual, the counterculture
championed an
inner-directed spirituality. Those who promoted an alternative
spirituality in the United States drew
heavily upon the mystical writings of Zen Buddhism and Vedanta
Hinduism. They consequently
believed that authentic religion is something inward, having
to do with mystic receptivity. Sensing that
mainline religion lacked a mystical dimension, these idealists
proclaimed that spirituality must be
based on firsthand experience of a higher reality. Youthful seekers
yearned to open up to the hidden
reaches of the universe. First, however, they had to learn to
expand personal awareness.
Marijuana became the counterculture's drug of choice. Although
marijuana lacked the hallucinatory
or vision-giving powers of the major hallucinogens such as LSD
or psilocybin, it could be used more
casually and more frequently. Smoking marijuana created unique
social settings that allowed young
cultural rebels to "bond" with a countercultural community centered
around the spiritual goal of
personal growth or individuation (even if at the expense of traditional
cultural values). (page 139)
Chapter 6. The Quest for Ecstasy.
… Most importantly, Russell unquestioningly assumes that the
normal waking state of consciousness
is the final arbiter of all truth claims. And, as a corollary,
Russell assumes that alterations of
consciousness render truth claims unreliable. There is, however,
no empirical warrant for these
assumptions. Most individuals who use drugs for spiritual purposes
would grant Russell that the
normal waking state is best suited for adapting persons to the
exigencies of our physical and social
environments. The point is whether reality is limited to what
can be known by the normal waking
state of consciousness. Those who find spiritual enrichment with
the assistance of wine, coffee,
marijuana, or peyote insist that by widening our capacity to
engage reality we simultaneously put
ourselves in a position to realize that a wider reality is there
to be engaged. (page 170)
It is not clear, however, whether the views advocated by Katz,
Penner, and Gimello fully apply to
drug-induced ecstasy. Their theory presupposes the existence
of a generalized reality-orientation that
mediates and structures all experience. Yet the most distinguishing
feature of drug-induced ecstasy is
the destabilization of the generalized reality-orientation. Drug-induced
ecstasies, by definition, are not
as "culturally and ideologically" grounded as the normal waking
state of consciousness. To the degree
that the subject's generalized reality-orientation has faded
from awareness, the individual having an
ecstatic experience is relatively free of the very set of culturally
engendered conceptions that Katz
and others insist structure all experience.
Robert Furman and other scholars have maintained that the constructivist
perspective breaks down
when applied to the kinds of mystical states produced by drugs.
(page 175)
Drugs and Spiritual Maturity
The quest for ecstasy is a quest to go beyond one's ordinary
mental and emotional boundaries. It is a
quest for greater subjective richness, a more intense mode of
experiencing life. The pursuit of ecstasy
thus has a natural affinity with human spirituality. Spirituality,
too, is rooted in the desire to expand
one's range of experience and action. (page 190)
The philosopher and religious studies scholar Huston Smith was
himself drawn to psychedelics
precisely for this very reason. They provided him a long-desired
vehicle for achieving mystical states
of consciousness. Smith wrote that "drugs unquestionably can
occasion Otto's mysterium tremendum,
majestas, mysterium fascinans; in a phrase the phenomenon of
religious awe." This ability to disclose
dimensions of the universe normally screened from our conscious
experience gives drugs tremendous
religious import. Smith laments that the scientific and materialistic
bent of modern Western culture has
made spiritual receptivity a rare commodity. He joins theologian
Paul Tillich in arguing that the
greatest threat to genuine spirituality in our age is the general
absence of such a mystical sensibility.
As Tillich put it, "the question our century puts before us [is]:
Is it possible to regain the lost
dimension, the encounter with the Holy, the dimension which cuts
through the world of subjectivity
and objectivity and goes down to that which is not world but
is the mystery of the Ground of Being?"
Spirituality cannot survive in the absence of such mystical experiences.
The ritual use of certain drugs
seems to create conditions favorable to "regaining" the lost
dimension that Tillich referred to. (page
191)
The final test of mature spirituality, however, is the degree
to which persons are transformed into
effective agents of wholeness-making and world-building activity.
And it is here that the most serious
reservations arise about the value of drugs for nurturing a mature
spirituality. As Huston Smith put it,
"short cuts may become short circuits." Spirituality does not
consist solely of spiritual experience. It
also consists of participating in ongoing process whereby life
is "breathed" into our universe. The
quest for spiritual insight, as with any other human desire or
motivation, must finally be judged by its
long-term consequences. Metaphysical illuminations must ultimately
be judged by their ability to
direct us toward sustained wholeness-making behavior. (page 192)
… The historical record shows that the government has indeed
attempted to estimate "the effects of a
governmental action l on a religious objector's spiritual development."
This is not only unavoidable
but necessary for a government that wishes to preserve and even
promote its citizens' spiritual
well-being.
History also seems to indicate that the conceptions of "spiritual
development" held by socially
empowered groups are more likely to be given legal sanction than
those of social minorities. But we
can make efforts to remedy that unfortunate tendency of democratic
government. It is possible to
engage in open, democratic debate over the effects of specific
patterns of drug use in promoting both
spiritual receptivity and spiritual agency. The debate will rarely
focus on the ability of drugs to render
persons more receptive to the private heavens of religious belief
and experience. Instead, the more
contested issues will have to do with whether specific patterns
of drug use promote sustained spiritual
agency. And here the government must weigh the evidence carefully
to ascertain whether the patterns
of drug use in question are likely to foster long-term spiritual
development. Indeed, drug-related
disputes concerning the free exercise clause can be greatly clarified
by appealing to empirical studies
dealing with the development of addiction and habit-forming behaviors.
Quantitative data alone, of
course, will not dictate either spiritual or legal judgments.
Yet social scientific research can tell us
much about whether certain patterns of drug use are statistically
likely to be conducive to
wholeness-making behavior on a consistent basis. This information,
open to public debate and
scrutiny, can tell us much about whether certain patterns of
drug use will prompt persons to become
effective agents of world-building activity or victims of habit-forming
chemical processes.
If we, like Justice O'Connor, believe that the commitment religious
liberty is one of the noblest
aspirations of the American legal system, then we must be willing
to enter into the difficult process of
judging the effects of governmental actions on a religious objector's
spiritual development. We must
be prepared to recognize that certain patterns of drug use have
indeed proven supportive of spiritual
maturity. The historical record does not support those neo-Prohibitionists
who find any and all
expressions of the plant kingdom to be inimical to humanity's
introduction to the Kingdom of God.
We must, however, also be prepared to recognize compelling interests
of society that might well
prompt us to curtail the right to certain behaviors under the
colour of religion. The spiritual well-being
of society requires the existence of safeguards to ensure the
triumph of wholeness-making and
world-building processes over sickness-engendering and world-dissolving
addictions.
Americans have, for centuries, viewed drugs as stairways to heaven.
These stairways have, on
occasion, opened up a pathway to a paradise of mystical delight.
For some, these stairways never
led any further. What initially appeared to be a paradise of
intoxication all too often becomes a
self-imposed exile from the wider life of spiritual activity.
Yet, in other contexts, these stairways have
led not only to enhanced spiritual receptivity but also to a
revitalized capacity to serve as an agent of
life-affirming activity. Although history alone cannot tell us
what actions are truthful or right, let us
hope that it can provide us at least a little more wisdom in
understanding this enduring impulse in
American religious life. (pages 193 - 194)